Danny Dormer awakens, head heavy and bones stiff. Black and white thin stripes line his vision like highway strips in the eyes of a bald eagle. He lifts his head as his neck jars and pain spikes at the base of his skull as his eyes struggle to focus through the pain. Blurred greys, muffled black and metal stripes fade into focus as his breath catches in his tiny throat, pulling him upright on the small bunker bed, pressed tight against a concrete wall, its corners thick with the bushes of contaminated moss growth. 

 ‘Jack!’ He yells, ‘Toby, Will.’ His voice hoarse and heart pumping a heavy pounding against its cage as it too realises it is trapped behind bars, bars so thick it could never break free — (But what if the door was not locked) Danny thought to himself as he stands on weak and shaken legs, muscles burning as he runs over to the cell door, hands gripping the bar in a solid thump before shaking it and causing a racket — though it did not budge. not an inch, its locked - obviously his escape would not be as easy as he thought, perhaps being a skinny, runt of a child he decided to test whether he could slip though the metal bars …No, why did he have to be so fucking stupid. Outside, a long corridor stretches down to his left to a florescent lit wall highlighting a single blue plastic chair angled right on a polished concrete floor. The air smelt of metallic rust or could it be blood as the fluorescent tube flickers in its plastic casing, buzzing with with effort to stay awake in the middle of his cell and the darkened cell across from him. In the distance, he can almost pin point the sound coming from the end of the corridor, an old record player — like the one his mom used to have — scratches a round disk, it’s sound echoing throughout this horrid nightmare. 

 “Only the lonely (Dum-dumb-dummy doo-wah) Know the way I feel tonight (Ooh yay, yay, yay, yeah) Only the lonely (Dum-dumb-dummy doo-wah) Know this feeling ain’t right (Dum-dumb-dummy doo-wah)” 

 (No, please) Danny begs internally as he glances around through misted eyes, his tears standing on the ledge and threatening to fall. A metre back from the gate, a small basin plasters itself to the wall as if afraid to ever be seen, above it a broken vanity mirror and as he stands before it he can see the the shattered remains of the mirror, it’s right corner was missing a solid triangle chunk, leaving a brown trail of dried glue on a darkened board. He always believed that mirrors were portals, his mother always got up him for the many times he had reached a hand out to touch the bathroom mirror just to see if his fingertips would sink in and go through the other side — but of course they did not and he earned himself a backhanding on the backside. He steps back, before hearing the graze of glass on concrete as he looks down to find the missing piece of the broken puzzle, the corner piece. He gasps and bends down, his brown mop of hair and pale complexion cutting in and out of the mirrored shard as his eyes fall on the scattered pallet of purples and blues on the side of his neck, dotted with the distinct marking of twelve teeth marks, six lining the top and six lining the bottom and with a gentle caress and a hiss he was certain he had been bitten, but not by The Sandman. No, he wouldn’t. (He was my friend) — but then he remembers, the fear, the taught and the horror. The way he leant forward, His grey eyes unyielding, pupils round and watching as he smiles in the darkness. Teeth razor-sharp and bonelike, like a Chester-cat in a grey midnight mist as it throws itself forward towards the boy. He squints his eyes closed and shakes the memory away as he grabs the shard and stands up — what was he to do with it, his mother never let him play with sharp things, but he figured he might need it. His eyes survey the room, lost and edging towards the sickening chill of being frightened, but now was the time to be a man, even if he was only six. His eyes lock on a small louver, its glass frosted and illuminated by the white glow of what had to be a lamp post outside. It was embedded high on the rear wall from the cell door, about five millimetres from touching a lawn of ever growing moss. He figured that if he could drag the bunker bed over, beneath the white framed louver, he could jump up and lift himself over, hoping all his years of climbing trees would finally pay off and he could slip right out and go home. Though which direction would home be? He knew it would never be that easy, but God forbid he wasn’t going to try. Nobody was here and he needed to be saved, so he needed to save himself. He runs, knowing his time was running short and he would be back, judging from the record player that was running. Who left there house without turning off their record player, unless they only left for a few moments, perhaps thirty minutes then that was ok. He deposits the shard of glass on the grey striped, sheet-less, stained mattress before enclosing his hands around the steel metal rung at the base of the bed, a bridged, cylindric rail that grew feet and held onto the ground, and hand it a good pull, it’s feet came screaming in protest and dare he say he was waiting for it to bend at the knees and start kicking. ‘Hello.’ A small voice echoes in the silence of the beds cries. Danny stops, listening to the crickets that chirped outside before even they too fell into a silenced shock at the unexpected voice of the small boy. 

 ‘Hello?’ It was a question hanging with the balance of honourable doubt, perhaps he was going mad, who else could be here in a place like this. ‘Can you hear me?’ (Yes) Danny want’s to yell, scream back at the boy, announce his presence and declare he is not alone anymore. Though would it be victorious or desperate?

 ‘Yes where are you?’ He begins with the small questions first, how could he ever help someone if he didn’t know where they were. Danny dismisses the bed, from where it is angled out from the wall, and runs back to the cell door. ‘Over here.’ The boy confirms, jolting Danny’s head to the left to a similar cell door right on the corner before the corridor curved around and continued its dreaded path. 

‘Can you see me? You gotta help me.’ The boy pleads, voice on the verge of cracking.

 ‘I see you.’ Danny whispers, before his voice breaks to normal, ‘What’s your name?’ A chubby hand curls around the last bar on the left of the cell, large enough to be the same age as his brother Toby — A sudden gasp and a glimmer of hope settles in his stomach as he silently prays Toby were here with him. He would find a way out, he just knew—

 ‘Joe McDougall, but my mum calls me Mac.’ He confesses, voice pure and innocent, trying to mask the face of fear but vocally failing into the shadows as Danny’s heart drops.

 ‘I’m - I’m Danny.’ He stutters, twisting his hands around the bars in what appeared to be a comfort, the roughness of it’s callous scratching the palms of his hands, taking the edge off — for a while, that is, he knew fear would return to him soon.

 ‘Are you ok?’ He probes, unsure by the quivering in the other boys voice. Perhaps he was injured, broken or in serious need of medical help - a Psychiatrist maybe.  ‘Hell- Hell-o.’ The boy nodded, dragging his exposed arm back through the shadows and away from the light. The angle of keeping his head pressed against the bars to see Mac was straining his neck and causing an ungodly ache. 

 ‘Where are you going!’ Danny shrieked, scared of being alone once more. ‘Shhh.’ A small shadow of a girl hisses in the cell before him as he snaps his eyes to her silhouette. A skinny child, not much past the age of eight sat beside her vanity, clutching her knees to her chest as she rocked herself back and forwards ever so gently. Through the darkness he could just make out her two fluffy pom-pom tails on her head. She was the kind of girl who skipped during recesses and played hop-scotch during the lunches, the kind who sat quiet and kept much to herself.  ’He might hear us.’ She whispered. For a moment Danny could not believe the words that were about to come out of his mouth. 

 ‘Who?’ He pushed, fingers slipping on the bars as he awaited the reply. ‘The one who put us here.’ She murmurs on the brink of tears, 

‘The one who took us. Don’t you remember.’ Oh he remembered, he remembered the paralysing fear, his grey eyes piercing through the night as his grainy finger pressed against his gaping lip, silencing him from crying out and alerting the world of his arrival. 

 ‘What Sherri is trying to say is .. ‘ Mac tries to explain before a ghostly creak of a warehouse roller door tears open causing them all to scoot back into the shadows, unseen. 

 ‘He’s here.’ Mac gasps as Danny attempts to mask his fear as he who was in discussion begins to whistle a simple harmony only Danny could recognise as Only you by The Platters. It’s vibrant harmony bellowing down the hallway, lyrically clear and for a moment Danny feared he was drawing close, coming to get him and take him to his death. 

 “When you hold my hand I understand the magic that you do You’re my dream come true, my one and only you.” 

 (But wouldn’t he take the others first, hadn’t they been there the longest) The thought was almost on the boarder line of psychotic, was he was that terrified of the thing he had claimed and called his friend over the last nine months of his life, that he was willing to sacrifice his new friends in a hope of running away? (All you do is run away Dan, face your fears. Grow up.) And suddenly it ceases with a slam of a warehouse door, the chain left rattling against the metal wave board of the shed, leaving them all uncertain of there fate. 

The hurried breaths of scared children radiate the only sound in the warehouse as the record player warps on an empty vinyl. Danny returns to the bars, hands sweating and body anxious.

 ‘Who is it? Who, Who.’ He needed to know, needed to hear it, the words he feared, and loved.

 ‘The Sandman. He’s back.’ The horror, the fear, the joy all came flooding back to him all at once. The beauty trapped in the beast that was his nightmare reality. He wanted it, but feared the realisation of it all. He needed to get out, run away and take everyone held here with him. There had to be a way. 

 ‘I’ll get us out of here.’ Danny echoes, his own voice coming back in to slap him in the face. ‘Yeah an’ how will you do that?’ Mac hisses, his voice catching on a thick sheet of phlegm bringing him to a hunch of broken coughs as he fights to free himself from its hold. His breath rattles in his chest, like the sound of an old generator as it flutters and fucks around to start, coughing on bolts and loose metals. Danny looks around, his blue eyes catching the water stained ceiling boards where they had sunken under the notorious leaking of sewerage pipes. The room had an old stench to it, the kind that said dirt, with a side of human waste. The striped mattress lay thin and crumpled soaked in stains and Danny believed if it had feelings it would surely be feeling insecure. He figured that if he were able to haul his bed over beneath the moonlit window and if the springs could hold his weight - surely they would, he was only thirty-eight kilograms - he would be able to bounce himself high enough to grab the latch on the window ledge and he’d be able to slip right on out the window.

 ‘Here’s how we do it.’ Danny nodded in confidence, his eyes casting to the metal bunk bed. “We pull the bed to the window. Just beneath it. We use it to jump up, grab the window ledge and pull ourselves out to the other side.’ ‘And what await us on the other side?’ The little girl sulks, he couldn’t see her but he knew from the sound in her voice she had been here for a very long time. 

‘What if he’s there?’ She had a million questions, none of which young Danny Dormer had an answer to. 

 ‘I don’t know.’ Danny sighed, listening to his voice reverberate back into his ears, ‘We’ll just have to wait and see.’ But to wait and see felt like to tempt life and death. What if he was climbing out into the jaws of death ready to be swallowed whole with a jaw like a python - unhinged and sharp? What if he was waiting just below the window, ready to grab him by the ankles and haul him into a sand hole in the ground. Danny shuddered at the thought, “You’re just going to have to trust me.” Truth was he was scared, terrified to take the lead, but he new he had to be brave. For himself, for his brothers and for the unknown number of victims hidden within the walls of this dreaded place.

 The needle on the record players sinks at the end of it’s disk on a zipping thump, soon resuming its tune of a rung out guitar as it pitches itself into the lyrics of the Everly Brothers’s - All I have to do is dream. 

 “Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream When I want you in my arms When I want you and all your charms Whenever I want you, all I have to do is Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream.” 

 He moved quick, deciding he had enough time to act out his plan. Danny grips the bed at its bottom arch, pulling it with all his might, a slight sweat began to powder his forehead as he shifted it an inch. He hauled it again, this time shifting it at least twenty centimetres before a chain rattles against the wall and the bed pulled taught from in a harsh tug at the metal wall. The children gasped.

 “What was that?” Mac shrieked, his body spluttering in another wave of unrelenting coughs.

 “The bed, it’s attached to the wall.” Danny replied, soon realising he wasn’t as smart as he had thought. It was plain to see that other children had been here before and this creature, whatever it was, was definitely not stupid enough to fall for a simple escape plan. 

 “When I feel blue in the night And I need you to hold me tight Whenever I want you, all I have to do is Drea-ea-ea-eam.”

He had to admit the music was awfully chilling as it ricocheted through the small hallway of there dorms. Danny wasn’t going to give up at the most simple obstacle that lay in his way. The small boy moved around the bed, eyes catching on the taught rusted chain coated in specs of orange with the occasional green. Danny eyed the bolted link to which it lay enclosed around a welded O ring in the middle of the metal bed frame. He figured that if he kick it hard enough, stomp down and angle it back he could snap it, just like he’s father had done to the upstairs vanity the time it had clogged - though kicking it didn’t resolve the problem, but it had sure as hell broken it. Danny lifts his leg and stomps into the chain. its posture bending as a thunderous echo deafens the halls of the cellar.

 “Shhh.” The terrified girl all but shrieks, her bony tanned finger the only thing Danny can see from the mist of her shadows. “He’ll hear you.” 

 “He’s not here.” Danny barked back, as if he was almost certain in his remark, pushing down that hint of doubt and swallowing thickly. What if the — he was sitting down the end of the hall, tapping his feet along to the sound of the beat. What if he was just smirking with the racket. Just listening to their attempts to escape. His smile long and sharp, grinning ear to ear with awaiting tragedy. The thought sent a chill running down his spine as if all the nerves he just had five seconds before had grown legs and was running south out of his ass. He must admit, he wasn’t a very brave boy, though he pretended he was. He could always stand up and say you were full of shit but when the tables turned he struggled to believe the harshness of his own make believe reality. But it wasn’t make believe. The Sandman was real, and he was here and he was about to prove how wrong he was. With his knee bent, Danny rose it to his chest, bringing it down once, twice, six times, listening to the echo of the metallic racket as the chain began to bend the bracket out from the silver washboard wall. The nail corked itself sideways clinging to the warmth of the hole it had called home for so long. 

 “Stop it! Stop it!.” Mac pleaded, voice almost unheard over the intense destructive noise. Danny’s foot stilled on the chain, listening to the record skip, drawing its needle on nothing as Mac’s lungs struggle on gutless, mucus filled gasps. All he could hear was the sure infection in the kids chest. The florescent tubing began to flicker, the electric hum silencing them all. Danny’s head whips around, eyes caught on the shadowed movement of Sherri’s face as it slips back into the darkness once more, the tracks of her fallen tears glimmering in the remains of his final memory of her. 

 ‘He’s here.” Two words fall from her mouth, stealing every ounce of air in the room. Danny steps back from the chain turning around before walking over to the bars of his captivity. His left shoulder meets the cracked tile wall as he allows his hands to grasp the rough iron of the bars. His eyes dart left to the green exit directory at the end of the corridor. His eyes dart to the right as his breath picks up speed with the humming of electrical buzz overhead. Danny watches the swing of chain on the shed door whistle in the breeze like a wind chime, or what he wished was the breeze for he did not want to know that he was in here. The florescent tube begins to flicker in a struggle to hang on and cling to its life. An array of struggling blues, tainted purples and distant whites is all the warning he received before a strong breeze blew up from his right and the thing shattered to smithereens. The shed falls into darkness. The only light that dares to fall is through each window of the cells. A crossed square panel stretched by the shadowed finger of each bar. Danny looked at the pale white illumination coming from Mac and Sherri’s windows, but when he looked down all he saw was a tinged yellow, something that reminded him of a streetlamp glow. A chaotic bout of laughter echoed on another rush of breeze as Danny shot his head up on a small gasp. His little heart pounded in his throat as all his saliva had left him dryer than the Grand Canyon. He swallows despite his fear and decides to speak. 

 “Hello?” Danny listens to his own voice echo in the darkness, he listens to the way the other children breath, rigid and fearful. He can almost hear the whimper of exhaustion and paranoia in each shaky breath they heaved into resisting lungs. Another laugh is all he receives back before a young girl screams down the end of the hall, her cry cut off abruptly. “Hello! …..Hello!” Danny cries, slapping his hands desperately on the bars “Can you hear me?!” Danny cries, his fingers now gripping the iron bars desperately as he pushes his nose between them, desperate to see and desperate to help. That’s exactly who Danny Dormer was, nosey and heroic, through no one could see past his slim figure and pitchy voice. The light flickers down the hallway to his right before blinking back to life to illuminate the blue plastic chair and sanded floor. Silence is all that faces him and his captured convicts. In his head he can still hear the scream of a lung-less long lost forgotten girl. “Are you ok?” He calls out to the nothingness and awaits a response. “Hello?” He tries once more. 

 “She’s dead. Can’t you hear the way her tongue gurgles in her throat.” Mac calls, his chest huffing on broken sobs of fear, shame and exhaustion. And if Danny listened carefully he could hear the fountain slow its pour and chug lifelessly on voiceless heaves. If he was mistaken, he swore it could’ve been a tap. Down the hall behind him the doors begin to creak before taking off in a hurried slam destined for fast impact. Danny jolts, his ears hurt by the harshness of the collision before he hears it; the grinding of bone on unborn gums, a sharp inhale and the lowering of teeth on human flesh. She was gone. Another victim.

 “Perhaps she will wake up… just like we did.” Sherri’s voice jerked in the darkness, as if she was holding back that one hiccup that threatened to take her voice away to the depths of sadness. 

 “Oh wake up to yourself Sherri! Will she wake up? Are you fucking high? She’s dead.” Mac screeched panicked, no doubt flailing his hands in the darkness. “Once your dead here you stay dead forever.” His voice calmed, though if you listened close enough you could still hear the waver of unmistakable fear in his voice. He wanted to run, but his hamster of a life in his cell had prevented him that long ago.

 ‘Hush- shuddup, Just let me figure it out.’ Danny let go of the bars as Sherri began to cry in wracked sobs. 

 ‘How can you possibly —‘ Danny looked around, casting his eyes north, south, east and west looking for everything he could possibly put together as an escape plan, only problem is he had already put the nail on the head the first time. By this time Mac was raving about some newbie bowl cut kid wearing his underpants on the outside of his shorts.

 ‘The bed —‘ Danny cut him off, silencing the shed completely ‘If we stomp the nail out from the wall and and we shove the bed under the window, we can pull ourselves up and out through the window.’ 

 ‘But the window ..it’s bared?’ Mac stated in slow judgement. Danny looked up at his, it was latched, not barred. 

 ‘Mine is too.’ Sherri accompanied Mac’s response. 

 ‘Well than I will come back for you guys.’ Danny huffed out and put his foot back on the chain before taking a closer glance at the bent nail. He figured with a few good kicks he could do a good deed of damage and rip it from the wall.

 ‘They all say that Victor.’ Mac snarked, his voice low and full of disbelief. Danny rolled his eyes, another unbeliever. He brought his foot to his chest before striking the chain once, twice, five times before surveying the damage. The nail had bent out slightly. He had seen his father use his boots in the shed to break chains and dint metal for the ol’ skip bin down the back of their property. The man knew how to create damage and little did he know young Danny always wanted to be like his father, he always wanted to work in his fathers working shed, though he knew it would be a long time until his father would hand him something more than an oily cloth with instructions to take it to his mother for cleaning. He wanted to be like the boys, he wanted to be treated like a man and sometimes in scary situations when fear overtook everything one has no other option but to become a man. With a racket of seamlessly never ending strikes, the chain loosens and falls in surrender. Danny moved quick knowing his noise would’ve create some unwanted attention as he grips the middle of the bed and begins to push the bed with all his might towards the window though he was quick to conclude pushing bare metal on concrete was harder than breaking the chain from the wall. He grimaced and pushed harder, the muscles in his stomach tight and quivering with the beads of sweat that were beginning to emerge on his forehead. Keeping his head bowed he crushed his eyelids together and pushed it across the cell, occasionally cracking his eyes open to see the stubborn scratches of its legs across the concrete. It reminded him of his uncles shed on the far back of there property, the one without the working lights, not his fathers - he was fond of that one, but rather Uncle Steve’s. His mother had turned it into a small garden where she grew all kinds of things, Carrots, beetroot, parsnips, eggplants ..the occasional marijauna or as Jack called it the “hoochie cooch”. He can still smell it even as he pushed the bed over the second half of the floor, the scent of dirt, mould and rust - in fact it much resembled the smell of blood. Every time Danny would go in there to gather supplies he imagined a ‘thing’ reaching up to grab his hands when he would pick the vegetables for his mother. He imagined ‘it’ grabbing him and pulling him into the small garden beds, he imagined the crunch of his bones as they struggled to fit in the pot let alone through it, he imagined the pain before he had ever felt it and most importantly of all, he imagined the sound of his fingernails scraping against the porcelain pots as he struggled for freedom. Danny pushed the bed with struggle, imagining he was on the American Hawks football team, hauling a 4 foot tyre behind him, ready to make his family proud as he reached the final quarter of the field. The bed met the wall in unexpected distance as Danny nearly falls into the middle of the mouldy mattresses side and without wasting any time he climbs up, arms hot and heavy but his eyes stuck on the latched window. Ignoring the heavy burning in his right arm he reaches up and tugs the latch to the right and to his surprise it unlatches almost welcoming as the first roll of the breeze comes rushing in to lift his fringe and pat his forehead in an almost awarding manor.

‘You still here Victor?’ Mac remarks and if Danny was honest in the silence he had forgotten they were even there, he was so focused on getting out himself he had forgotten about the others. But he wouldn’t be so selfish, he would return - he would come back.  ‘I guess n-‘ But before the words could leave his lips Danny replied. 

 ‘Still here.’ He turned around as if facing the faceless boy ‘Why do you keep calling me Victor?’ ‘Go now, before he comes back.’ Mac shot out, dismissing the question. Danny was not one to want to stay in a dangerous place, so with his hands placed firmly on the ledge he bounced twice before pulling himself up and swinging a leg out over the white metal frame, taking note of the chips of paint and rusted ledges before he sat still and looked back into the nothing.

 ‘I will come back.’ He pledged, ‘I pinkie-swear it.’ The bond of an unbreakable promise was one thing kids their age could count on, it was a form of timing your life away to another act. If you said it, you meant it. With that he slipped from the window, taking a glance down the concrete wall. It was far but only far because he was short. He hung down at arms length, not letting go and suddenly regretting his decision to wait for the burn to cool in his arms as he tried to dig his feet into the creases of brick in the wall to give himself leverage if only for a little while. Before he slipped, that was, and the world fell out from underneath him and he crashed hard on a heavy hard ground. Sharpness of twigs and the scratchiness of fallen, crumpling leaves were the second sign of acknowledging he had hit the forrest floor, the first was the pain in his back and the inability to breathe for awhile. The wind rolled around him with the steady chuckle of the breeze through the trees above as the little boy gasps for air, pleading and wanting. 

He squints up at the blazing orange sun engulfing his vision, yet the sky is now dark. On a gasping breathe his lungs begin to grind and splatter as he fights to welcome it and reject it all at once. He rolls over and pulls himself to his feet, coughing out into the open forgetting his silence before his lungs settle a steady rhythm and he looks up at the sun. A small moth flutters around it and begs for warmth from the cold. Danny is quick to realise the sun had not risen at all and he was in fact standing beneath a street lamps glow in the middle of a forrest made of shadows and dense bushland. Accompanying his loneliness was a large cleared area of debris, different shades of leaves stretched forth in a large semi circle so far he watched it roll into the darkness. Danny’s eyes followed the curve as he finally found his feet again and staggered to an upright position. His feet crunched in the grey and orange Autumn leaves as he walked over to the edge of the shed, casting his eyes up as he ran a steady hand alongside the concrete wall of the outer edges of his cell. The night was silent excluding the chirping of cicadas in the bushes around and the cool breeze sent a chill up his spine but dare he not leave the side of his cell yet. One thing Danny Dormer was always unsure about was going out after dark, he would always cling tight to his mothers side as they left dining carparks and most importantly he would surely run if his mother had handed him the trash to put out. The boy had a fear of the dark, hated the idea of things watching him in the night - in fact one time Will was certain Danny had broke the Guinness Book Of Records racing the trash out when the bats were awfully bad one summer. They reminded him of those cotton puff weeds, one harsh blow and they all depart from the tree in all kinds of terrifying directions, ready to turn you into a vampire or maybe even a zombie - you didn’t know what kind of diseases those bastards carried. He felt as unsafe now as he did back then. The sky was overcast, and he was quick to note the lack of stars on this un-magical night. If the Sandman was so magical why wouldn’t there be stars. Danny Dormer always found pleasure in the sky and always had a million questions - such as why stars exists, who put them there, was it some old wizard dressed in a blue and white star velvet robe with a really long white beard who whisked his wand and casted endless specs across the sky? Though nobody cared to answer this silly little boys questions, in fact nobody cared too much for him at all. Did they even know he was gone, had they opened that door to find empty sheets, had they cried, had the sun even risen yet? Danny had a million questions he had wanted to scream and then he heard it, that soft paddling of feet - the kind that were running barefoot on the hot summer concrete of the Stop ’n’ Gas service station begging for there mother to pick them up and save them from the danger of burning alive. Danny spun around, left and right, back and forth - they sounded so damn close, he felt he could reach out and grab the coat of whoever was running around him, rip the invisible cloak off the body and unmask the owner of the racket. He stepped cautiously, he’s heart gripping the cage bars of his chest as he neared the corner of the concrete shed and crouched as the choir girls began to sing the acapella riff that sounded exactly like the repetition of the word ‘bung’ in different tones. He thought about smiling at the thought that ‘bung’ sounded like ‘dung’ and ‘dung’ was another word for shit. but the fear in his heart prevented his facial muscles to do such a thing. Then the voices began to call in the distance in a soft haunting tune. 

 “Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream (bung, bung, bung, bung) Make him the cutest that I’ve ever seen (bung, bung, bung, bung) Give him two lips like roses and clover (bung, bung, bung, bung)."

 Danny crouches low and armed with a long stick he had found, calming his nerves as he thought about the many times him and his brothers had played cowboys and Indians - this was no different - right? In the distance, a long long distance away, through the lashes of thin and thick tree bodies he heard it, a wail of a child in distress. The kind of squeal that belonged to a young girl or perhaps a pre-pubescent boy, but whoever it was it evaporated the saliva in his mouth, dried out his eyes and throat and shot his spine straight as he stood alone, standing, wielding a stick and with no doubt he was certain with one hit it would snap and his bones would surely be next. 

 ‘Hello!’ Danny screamed into the silent chaos, and that’s when he heard it, a low busty growl at ground floor to his right. His head turns ever so slowly as his eyes fall slowly down the tallest canopy to the shrubbery below to see two grey eyes staring back at him, wanting but never moving. All of a sudden his teeth are pleading to meet in a chitter as a cool breeze lifts the fringe from his eyes and slaps him across the cheeks. 

Time to wake up boy. 

 ‘Whats the matter Danny-boy, is it too cold for you?’ 

 ’N-no, Who-Who’s there?’ Danny had lowered his voice. ‘It’s me Jack.’ It pretends. Danny heart lets go and he nearly begins to cry, Jack had come to save him, he didn’t have to be the hero today. 

 ‘Oh Jack thank God you gotta help me, there’s others …he he took them all - He — What’s wrong with your eyes?’ The boy drops his chest, breath turning into ghosts as he steps forward, boots crunching in the autumn leaves cautiously. 

 ‘—He’s not who he thought he was, was he?’ The eyes chuckled in the darkness. ‘Do you feel silly now boy?’ Jack mocks. Alarm bells start ringing in the boys head, a red twirling of get the fuck out of here and get to safety begin to scream at him. Maybe perhaps he was over reacting — 

 ‘No - what? He’s here and if you don’t come with me he’ll get you too!’ Danny exclaimed. 

 ‘Oh I know.’ it smiles, it’s teeth reflecting the moonlight in it’s pearly whites. He saw it clear, like a deer stuck in the headlights, he saw the steady drip of red plum fluid fall from the points of its eye teeth as it began to growl. Not over reacting. His breath stills in his chest, eyes wide and body rigid as he watches the silhouette of lengthy, thin-skinned fingers emerge from the shrubs and dig its long fingernails into the soil. They reminded him of the plastic skeleton gloves his father had tormented him with in the local Wall-mart back home last halloween, except these had the state of the art pedicure from MISS NAILS on Jefferson Boulevard. He couldn’t quite tell the colour of them but he knew he had to move, and very fucking fast. The thing growls once more, low and throaty and with his continuous stare, he felt the twigs snap behind him as the thing rose back on its hinges, breaking twigs as it prepared to come for him. 

 Run rabbit. The lambs are screaming. 

Danny’s breath was short and rigid, barely helpful as the moonlight struck its teeth once more and his feet snapped into action. He ran, bolted if you must, to the only place he knew where to hide - The Shed. The thing screamed and if he dared to remember, it sounded like the T-rex off the dinosaur documentaries he used to watch with Will last summer. His little feet pound the floor as he skids around the bend of the concrete shed, almost slipping in what appeared to be shit but was none other than a lumpy mud track before he caught sight of the open roller door, spilling light into the vacant landscape. The thing - the monster reeled a scream of resent, no longer Jack but something much worse as it hit the bend, manoeuvring around the mud that almost cost Danny great time like a professional before continuing its chase. Danny waste no time, running straight back to where he started. Just meters from the door he had felt it, the distinct swipe of a three laced whip against his back as he slid through the door and yanked the rope of chain, dropping the door and listening to the ringing of the bang through the small shed. Danny falls to the floor, chest heaving and body a cascade of pain, burning and exhaustion. His back burnt as if someone had wiped sandpaper clean across it, and his legs, oh god his legs burned right down to the bone - God he had not run like that in months. Sure he was a skinny kid, but skinny kids had no need for running - not unless you liked to be a little show off in sports class but at his age he was flat out kicking a bean bag into the air and making sure it did not touch the ground, they called that hot potatoes at his age. His mind had left him as he lay silently huffing, sprawled on the ground. 

“Ohh Danny Boy.” It called from behind the roller door, a soft mocking hymn created from his name sent chills down his spine. It was Jacks voice once more but he wasn’t stupid, that thing was not his brother. He scooted upright as the children made efforts to still the squeals that dared leave there mouths. Suddenly the burning in his shins did not matter anymore as he began to drag himself backward, fear overtaking him with no destination to go but backwards- the sand and dirt of the all natu-rel floor now sifting into his crack, with a sure possibility to create a heavy rash but he didn’t care, it knew where he was, it knew he was in here - still breathing, still hiding, still fearful and for the first time he wished he didn’t believe.