Estimated reading time — 15 minutes

Jason watched the hands of the clock ticking. The hour hand was moving to nine o’clock. The hour he dreaded so much. His eyes darted around the room. In the corner his blue lava lamp cast fleeting shadows that resembled dogs, silhouettes and long-fingered hands, prancing and clawing up and down the bedroom walls and on the window curtains. He clutched his beloved teddy, Bubbles, very tightly.

He hid under the sheets. The clock struck nine. It was time. A minute passed and there was only silence. He peered out from beneath the covers. His toy robot, Mr Jangle, sat in the corner next to the dresser with the clock on it, motionless. The hour hand was on nine. Silence.

Maybe they aren’t coming? he thought. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Tonight wasn’t the night. They’d be here by now if it was. ‘The degdubers aren’t real,’ his mother would have told him. ‘They’re just in your head.’ He began to drift off when he heard high pitched squeaking and giggling. They were coming after all! Shadows came from the landing corridor and crept over the walls, but this time rather than flimsy spectres, they were undeniably concrete forms in motion. They entered the room. The heads were pointy with annuli and looked like the ends of worms, and the arms the same. They had otherwise humanoid physiques. Two legs, two arms, head and something of a torso, though that wasn’t a word he’d know until years later. Several of them burst into the room and made for him.

He cowered under the blanket and started screaming for his mum. The degdubers were tugging and pulling at the blanket and it came away. He screamed and wailed but the monstrous creatures continued as they squawked and cackled hysterically from wherever in their bodies the vocals might have come from. Their skin was brown and they looked like hairless moles without eyes or mouths that stood up and moved on two legs in a way it’s difficult to imagine moles doing.

They wore hazmat suits as if they were scientists exploring some strange world, though with no masks or headwear. Together they held a sheet of plastic which they wrapped around his body. He seemed to be getting smaller. It was their special magic plastic that they would wrap around him to shrink him so they could carry him down the sink, away to their underground kingdom forever.

He was screaming, fighting, punching back at the degdubers with everything he had. The light flickered on and he found his mum kneeling next to his bed.

‘What’s wrong sweetie?’ asked his mum. ‘Stop trying to hit me.’

Jason stopped thrashing. Dad stood leaning in the door frame, his arms crossed. He had an annoyed look on his face, but he also looked like he was trying to suppress it out of sympathy.

‘They tried to take me!’ he sobbed. Mum looked sympathetic.

‘It was just a nightmare. They’re not real.’

He hugged her tightly and sobbed into her chest. She wiped away the tears and when she saw his snot she pulled a handkerchief out of her nightgown pocket and wiped it away. He asked if he could sleep in their bed that night. They agreed, but Dad seemed somewhat reluctant. Jason held Bubbles. As they left the room and Mum turned off the light, he looked behind him and shuddered. He didn’t want to think about the degdubers ever again.

The next day after school, Jason had finished his homework just as it was seven o’clock. Mum told him to go and get ready for bed. He didn’t want to think about the degdubers, but he remembered what his mum had told him that morning, as she had last night – they’re just in your imagination.

He went into the bathroom nearest his bedroom which was where he always brushed his teeth and bathed. However, when he entered the bathroom, he found to his surprise that the floor was slightly dirty. Earlier that day, the cleaner, Mrs Winslow, had been around. She usually made the place immaculately clean and she did every room. True, he thought, it was only a few specks of mud on the carpet, but it was odd. Perhaps her sight wasn’t quite as good as it used to be. She was quite old after all.

But another detail that struck him as he brushed his teeth was how cold the room was. The radiator in the hallway was on, but the room had a distinct nightly chill. He realised it was coming from the room’s only window, which looked out onto the house’s gated garden and the street below. He looked out and saw nothing odd. The streetlight was on as usual. Dad’s car was parked outside the gate. Dad liked to park his car there, whilst mum preferred hers inside the gate on the gravel driveway.

But he noticed the window was slightly open. This was very seldom the case. But on rare occasions – maybe five times a year – dad did open it to get some fresh air. It helped him sleep. That had to be it. So Jason smiled and thought nothing of it.

Later that night he lay in his bed and stared up at the ceiling. His favourite book, Where the Wild Things Are, lay on the floor next to the bed. He hadn’t put it back in the bookcase. The night light cast shadows of Mr Jangle and the clock across the room and onto the wall next to him. He was getting tired and rubbed his sleepy eyes. The last time he checked the clock, it was 8:30. He preferred not to check. The degdubers weren’t coming. They were a figment of his imagination.

He closed his eyes for a few minutes and snuggled up to Bubbles. Suddenly he felt a very strange sense of being watched. He opened his eyes. His blood turned to ice as he saw two very large brown eyes staring down at him. The eyes bulged and he could see bloodshot veins. He couldn’t move or breathe as fear had completely gripped him. He opened his mouth to scream, but no noise came out. After about a minute the eyes briefly blinked, but continued to stare. Him staring up at them didn’t change that. There was no shame, nor attempt to hide. They just stared, fixated on him.

Finally he got his breath back.

‘Muuuuuuuuuummmmmm……’

The shriek was so loud that she came instantly. The bedroom light flicked on and mum ran over to his bed. She comforted him in the same way she had before, and dad stood in the doorway, his arms folded, but this time visibly irritated. Jason looked back up at the ceiling but the eyes were gone. The ceiling was just the same blank white plaster it had always been.

‘The degdubers aren’t real, honey.’

‘It wasn’t the degdubers, mum…’

He was gently crying little tears. She hugged him and wiped the tears away with her sleeve.

‘It’s ok,’ she said, as if she hadn’t heard. ‘They’re not real.’

‘It wasn’t the degdubers. There were eyes mum!’

He pointed at the ceiling. ‘They were there!’

Mum glanced up. Dad didn’t. They looked at each other, unsure what to say. He asked if he could sleep with them that night, but dad interjected and firmly said no. He tried to argue but dad wasn’t having it. His mum gently pulled the covers back over him and told him again he had just been having a bad dream. He was starting to believe she was right and calmed down. After giving him a final kiss and telling him he would be ok, Mum yawned and said goodnight then left the room.

Jason’s dad came over to him and sat on the end of his bed.

‘They were real, dad!’

‘Son, you’re six years old now. Monsters aren’t real, no monster, or diggerdubers or whatever you call them. You’re a good boy but you’ve got to put on your big boy pants now, ok! What would your friends at school think? I haven’t slept well recently and need the quiet.’

He patted Jason’s legs then got up and left the room, turning off the light on his way out. Jason didn’t protest anymore. It was no use. But if the eyes came back he would scream screams so loud, he thought, that it they would never forgotten. He glimpsed dad’s shadow going down the hall being cast over his wall by his nightlight.

He lay awake staring at the ceiling. Nothing was there. Just the blank whiteness. But he couldn’t sleep. Had it just been a dream? He felt very strange. He had seen something, he was sure of it. And he knew what he saw. He knew exactly! But the eyes weren’t there. He squinted hard but there was still just the ceiling. He was young but just about old enough to know that eyes don’t really just appear on a ceiling. Right?

He lay awake and watched the clock ticking but after about an hour he felt strangely at peace. The eyes had been in the dark after all, and he was tired. He figured he really must have been having a nightmare. Eyes on ceilings didn’t exist, just like the degdubers didn’t.

The next morning Jason stared at the ceiling. Squinting he could imagine the faintest outline of the eyes, just the faintest circular traces where they had been. He blinked. Nothing. He was up five minutes earlier than usual and went down to the kitchen dressed for school. He felt surprisingly good, having rationalised the eyes a figment of his wild imagination. His mum was already sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper with a mug of coffee. He wanted to ask her about last night. He sat down.

‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning.’

‘Cereal or toast?’

‘Toast please mum.’

If he wanted cereal he would have got it already. Mum got up and put another slice of toast in the silver toaster on the kitchen counter board. When she came back he cleared his throat in that way that said he had something important to say and that she’d better listen.

‘Mum, the eyes.’

‘Yes, honey, don’t worry about it. We know.’

‘What?’ He was slightly confused. Knew what? She had told him they weren’t real. But if that’s what she was suggesting it was an odd way to say it.

‘I swear they were real!’ he said, hoping she’d tell him they weren’t.

‘Yes Jason. They are.’

His stomach sank. She was meant to say that no, they were a figment of his imagination like the degdubers. He must have misheard. Or was he still asleep, trapped in some kind of nightmare. He pinched his skin to check, but mum continued.

‘They were the eyes of your guardian angel. We asked the angel to watch over you to protect you whilst you sleep. Now you’ll never have to worry about the degdubers ever again because if they come the angel will come down and protect you with his sword of light and his shining shield and his mighty armour. But until then, he’ll watch over you as you sleep.’

‘They’re not!’ he protested. But mum, who was a mum and a doctor, was very clever and wise and he knew if she said so it must be true.

‘You’ll never have to worry about the degdubers again! They’ll be gone for good.’

She smiled at him. Jason disliked the eyes intensely. The thought of the eyes made every night feel unsafe, except for Christmas Eve when Santa would come into his room and make sure the eyes didn’t do anything bad to him. That was months away. He questioned her more. He thought angels weren’t real. She said they were, and he needed to go to school. Dad appeared moments later, looking groggy. He told Jaime to get ready and packed all Jason’s stuff up and loaded it into his car because it was his day to do the school run and off they went.

Jason thought about asking dad about angels, but the grim expression on his face in the rearview mirror made him decide not to. Several days passed. He packed his bag every morning, came and went to school, went to after school clubs, came home, did homework, brushed his teeth showered and went to bed. Three days had passed and he had almost forgotten about the strange bulbous eyes.

He was lying in bed at 8:30 pm. The lights were out, except his nightlight, casting the same usual shadows which drifted around his room. They crossed the carpet and ceiling but mostly stayed on the walls at the opposite side of the room. He never thought about the degdubers anymore. He thought about the eyes of the Angel. He now kept Mr Jangle and several other toys closer to his bed as if they would somehow protect him.

He was getting sleepy when he thought he heard a rustling. His stomach tensed. His heart palpitated aggressively in his chest. He opened his eyes. Just the bare ceiling. He exhaled and closed his eyes. Taking deep breaths, he opened them again.

Two bulging eyes stared down at him. They were more bloodshot than last time. How were they there? Didn’t the angel have a face? He screamed.

‘Quiet!’

yelled dad’s voice from down the corridor.

‘The angel is watching, mum!’ he screamed.

The eyes stared down, unflinching at his every syllable. But they did squint and close a little allowing him to see what looked like eyelids before they opened up again and stared down intently, pupils dilated, absorbing all the light they could.

‘Mum’

‘Go to bed!’

‘Muuuuum!’ he screamed even louder.

Feet stomped down the corridor. The bedroom light turned on. Dad was furious and so was mum. ‘Right!’ Dad grabbed Jason by the shoulders and shook him. ‘That’s enough. I don’t want to hear another word out of you. You’re not three.’

Mum interjected to calm him, but she looked very angry herself and had bags under her eyes. But dad was at his ropes end, so to speak. He stormed out of the room, down the corridor and slammed the door shut to his bedroom. Mum sat on the end of the bed looking at him. She cleared her throat.

‘I know what you saw. You don’t have to be afraid. The angel’s eyes are only there to watch over you.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. I asked him to come down from heaven and watch you. That’s why he’s here, like I told you. You don’t have to be afraid.’

‘I don’t like him.’

‘Well don’t tell him that. He spends a lot of his time here when he could be floating about the sky doing other things.’

Strangely, Jason felt a little relieved. If mum said the angel was watching him to protect him then it must be true. She tucked in Bubbles and asked him why Mr Jangle and his other toys had been moved. He told her it was to keep him safe. She told him he would be safe now and put them back in the corner of the room, next to the bookcase. She told him Mr Jangle would be put to better use guarding Where the Wild Things Are and his history textbooks. Then she smiled and left the room. He felt then strangely serene. But it wouldn’t last. He knew the uneasiness with such a sight would never leave.The next several days passed. After dark, he secretly moved the toys back to his bed, circling it in a protective formation. They at least made him feel a tiny bit more secure. Every night the eyes of the angel would just stare down at him, voyeuristically. What were they waiting for? What did they really want? He didn’t quite know. Why did it need to stare that intently, as if the eyes didn’t want to blink. He stared up at them.

Upon direct contact he thought he could perceive a slight twitch. Recognition of some kind. Some kind of …he didn’t know. He felt like he was being forced to have some kind of connection with this…thing. He struggled to look into the eyes for more than about two seconds anyway, so he just turned on his side and pulled the covers over his head. Those disgusting, slimy eyes that seemed both fully white and brown at the same time because of their size and the fact everything in them seemed all-encompassing!

Nighttime was now nightmare time. He loved waking up, knowing the eyes were gone in the morning, and loved going to school when he used to dislike it. But every night. The eyes! Just staring. He often didn’t dare look at the ceiling at all and closed his eyes then turned over as soon as he was in bed.

Then one night it was different. He glanced up at the eyes. They were gone. He looked at the clock. It was 11 pm. They should be staring at him. They did from soon after lights out until dawn. Suddenly he heard footsteps. Was it the degdubers? Had the disappearance of the angel summoned them? Did they know that he was gone? Were they watching him through some kind of scientific device in their own world that peered into his bedroom?

He squinted for any sign of the angel. Nothing. Then he heard the footsteps come to a stop outside his bedroom door. He pushed himself up and leant back against the headboard of the bed frame. Light shone maniacally from Bubbles’ eyes. His heart thudded with each beat sounding like a log falling. He could hear the faint sound of breathing, which was much deeper and more pronounced than his own.

Whoever was outside the door was breathing slowly as if trying to muffle the sound with long inhalations and breathing out the nose. He wanted to cry out but at the same time didn’t. Dad wouldn’t come. Neither would mum. They were tired of his antics. But he had to do something. He looked at Bubbles then up at the ceiling for help. The eyes were still gone. Though the room was silent, the tension was in itself deafening.

A minute passed before the sound of the door handle turning, very slowly, made his blood turn cold. He had to do something, so he called out. He wanted his voice to stop whoever was outside. Perhaps it would scare them. It took everything in him to call out.

‘Hello?’ Jason said. He was trembling. The handle stopped turning immediately.

‘Hello,’ a voice whispered back. It was an adult but it wasn’t mum or dad.

Jason let out an involuntary squeak which he immediately suppressed behind his hands. Bubbles almost seemed to be smiling in the dark, the shining eyes amplifying his temporary derangement. Mr Jangle wasn’t going to be any help, nor his toy soldiers, posed in formation around his bed. His ribs felt like iron bars crushing his lungs. His heart was pumping a stream of ice through his body. The door handle creaked as it slowly continued to turn open.

Jason let out the longest and loudest scream for help that had ever come from his diaphragm. Immediately the footsteps bolted away, towards the stairs. He heard his parents talking and running as the corridor light switched on and shine through his semi-ajar door. After frantic talking he heard dad run downstairs whilst his mum came into the room to comfort him.

‘Someone came into my room, mum!’

She looked at him with some hesitation and swallowed. After a pause she told him it was just his imagination. Dad came back upstairs and called for mum. He went quiet when he reached the room and looked inside but Jason saw them make eye contact. After telling Jason he could sleep with them that night she went over to him and they spoke in hushed tones beyond the door, but he heard dad say that he ‘found nothing.’

Mum came back into the room. ‘Come on!’

‘But dad won’t like it.’

Dad interjected: ‘I’m going to sleep downstairs tonight.’

Jason couldn’t help thinking he looked worried.

‘Was someone there?’

‘No,’ both of them blurted out.So he went to bed with mum and dad went downstairs. He lay awake for several hours, shaken by what had happened. Someone had been there and was entering his room when his shouting scared them away.The next day dawned like any, but disquiet filled the house. Mum asked Jason to get ready and they went downstairs as usual. There was a strange silence as the three sat in the kitchen and ate. There wasn’t much to say. Jason asked about last night and they both glanced at each other. He told them someone was there but they weren’t having it.

‘Enough.’

Mum was taking him to school. As Jason left with her he looked back and saw his dad talking to a policeman and a police car parked outside the house. The whole scene was bizarre.

‘Was someone outside my room last night?’

‘No.’

‘But…’

‘The angel left you last night, Jason. He told your dad and I that you are a safe and normal boy who is in no danger and it is time for you to grow up. He said he scared the degdubers so much that they will never come back and the portal to their kingdom was veiled forever, so they can’t even if they want to.’ When he got back from school that day he noticed a camera had been installed to overlook the patio from the front of the house and several windows had extra bolts installed.

Years came and went and Jason went through the usual milestones of secondary school life. He never saw the eyes again. He did his GCSEs, joined the football team, made friends, and even had a girlfriend. He kept his toys for sentimental value though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone. He felt Mr Jangle had a lucky charm and that perhaps his scary face that night had contributed to scaring off who or whatever had come to his room. The strange incident of the angel and the voice never came back, and he had almost completely forgotten about them despite their once great intensity. One night when he was lying in bed in the dark, he stared up at the ceiling and remembered those dark-brown eyes. He shuddered and the memories came back.

He couldn’t remember all the conversations he had with his parents but he could remember the intense image of the eyes above him. And the police car and the voice. Whilst the degdubers were just night terrors, these had all been real.

The next day he asked his parents if anything had happened that night years ago. They looked uncomfortable but his father finally admitted they had heard a strange noise, but that was it. He pressed further but his father insisted that was all, but since they found a window open they had called the police. There had been an investigation but nothing had ever come of it. He didn’t want to push them and thanked them for being honest since that was the most they had ever told him despite him pressing for more information when he was younger.

Jason wondered what had happened. If someone had been in the house, had they been scared off by some kind of spirit that had watched him? That was nonsense. But one thing he had never thought of struck him. Above his room was an attic. His parents had only been in there three times in the several decades they had lived in the house. Twice was to clear it out and once was to add loft insulation and put some storage in it.

He went to get a ladder from the garage when his parents went out to have dinner with some friends. He got a torch since he knew it would be dark inside. The attic hatch was by the bathroom, the far end of the house from his bedroom. He carried the ladder up and rested it by the wall below the hatch. He looked into the bathroom and remembered how the night before the voice he had found the window open.

He stood the ladder up and climbed up into the attic. As he pushed the ceiling aside he was hit with the smell of dust and old paper. Entering, he found a pile of newspapers and several boxes full of stuff. Looking through, he found mechanical parts, bicycle chains and wheels, old nails, gaffer tape and spare plastic bags and rubber bands. Not much of interest. But the room was big and he would take his time. After a few minutes of careful walking to test the floor and searching, he found a few more boxes that were above where his room would be.

It was strange to think that somewhere between where he was and below him was where the supposed angel of his childhood would have been. He moved several of the boxes aside, looking aimlessly. Suddenly he noticed some sandpaper on the floor. It was white, which made it stand out from the rest of the things in the attic. It was the same colour as his bedroom ceiling. He heard the voice of the spectre from outside his room more than a decade ago and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He moved it and found two eye holes which peered down into his room. They clearly were drilled and had been covered.

Credit: James Kelly