Tick. Tock.

tick.   tock.  

tick.   tock.

tick.   tock. 

The clock on my bedside table ticked it's repeating statement, as it had for several years.  But something was different. The sound wasn't right.  There was something added to it.  it seemed to be louder, and there was more than the mechanical sound.  It sounded almost like...

I bolted straight up in my bed, looking around.  nothing looked out of the ordinary, but the room was dark.  I looked over at the nightstand, and the clock lazily ticked away, showing the time at just past 3 in the morning.  A dull light from a streetlight shone in the window, obscured by limbs of a tree in the yard, which caused a more eerie feeling by the shadows it cast across the back wall.

Assuring myself this was something in a dream, I rolled back over to go back to sleep.   I closed my eyes, and begun drift asleep again. 

tick.   tock.

tick.   tock.

tick.   tock.

The sound was back.  It was louder than it was the first time.  it seemed to be coming from the opposite side of the room, from a shadowed corner.

I gently felt the opposite side of the bed for my wife, hoping that her presence would calm my overactive imagination.  My hand found her side of the bed empty and cold.  My spine stiffened, and I broke out in a cold numbing chill.  The sound started again from the corner.

mmmk.   nnnk.

mmmk.   nnnk.

mmmk.   nnnk.

I slowly sat up, looking at the corner of the room, trying to decern any movement, but it was too dark to see anything. I slowly reached over toward the bedside lamp, when I heard a very sharp HISS.  I stopped, and continued to look in the corner.  Unable to see anything, I again reached toward the lamp.

HISS!   HISS!

Frozen in place, heart racing quickly, but still unable to see the source of the sounds.  I told myself I must find out what is happening, and I quickly reached over and switched on the lamp.  I wish I hadn't.

Three heartbeats were all I had left, to look around me, to see the walls covered in blood.  My wifes body in a pool on the ground, with several of her limbs eaten down, with bone exposed.  When I looked to the corner, all I can tell you of what I saw, was a blur of something in the shape of what appeared to be a small child... with hollowed, sunken black eyes, hunched over in a 4-legged recoil of the light.  It looked at me,  gave one last ear-piercing hiss....

and I remember nothing more...