The Story of Isaac, Part 2.

As he got older and more self-conscious over his fear, Isaac started abandoning childhood comforts. First, he agreed to have the hallway light switched off. He didn’t dare leave his bedroom in the night, no matter how badly he needed to – for the first short while, it led to the most humiliating of circumstances, in which his refusal meant he would soil his sheets. In time, he got used to it, and prepared accordingly. No drinks after dinner, which he insisted had to be at six o’clock at the latest, and he’d visit the bathroom three times before officially turning in for the night whether he felt he needed to or not.

Then, it was the nightlight. His curtains had to be thrown wide open, and it had to be bright outside for him to even consider shutting the little light off. The moon had to be especially visible against a clear sky and stream light into his room, like a natural substitute for that blessed bulb he was weaning himself off of.

After many nights with this practice…Isaac was finally starting to feel ready. His phobia was in his head; he could control it. That was what his psychologist told him, what his parents reassured him was true. Isaac was beginning to believe, at last, that his dependence on light had only made things worse. He was getting more sleep, bettersleep, with the lights out.

It was a new moon. There would be nothing to see by. After agonizing deliberation, turning over the nightlight in his twitchy, stiff hand, Isaac opened the drawer to his bedside table and put it inside.

He managed to fall asleep after tossing and turning for an hour. When he woke, it was because he had been jolted into such a state, and he couldn’t figure out why.

Something was rolling across his floor.

Familiar panic was welling up in his throat, and automatically, he reached for the drawer. He jerked it open, and felt around desperately for the nightlight.

It was gone.

The replacement bulbs were missing, too.

He could see the shadows moving, and there was a creak at the end of his bed as a weight was removed. His eyes weren’t adjusting to the darkness; someone had drawn the curtains shut…

Isaac drew the blankets around himself tightly, and spent the rest of a sleepless night listening to the thumps, bangs, and creaks of his dresser drawers being open, filled, and forced shut.

The shadows stopped moving, when the sun came up, but Isaac still didn’t leave his bed. He rocked back and forth, almost catatonic, and didn’t respond when his mother tried to shake him into alertness. He didn’t scream, when he saw that the rolling object he’d heard in the night turned out to be his father’s head.

And he wasn’t surprised when he police opened the drawers and found the body, folded and broken to cram neatly inside among Isaac’s clothes.