Mr. Scratch
When I was seven years old, my parents bought me a bunk bed. It was big, heavy, and painted a dark, glossy blue. The salesman said it would “last a lifetime,” and back then, that sounded exciting. But the thing about bunk beds is that the bottom one feels like a cave, enclosed, dark, and separate from the rest of the room. That’s where I slept. And that’s where I met Mr. Scratch.
I told my mom about him over breakfast one Tuesday. I was stirring cereal that had gone soggy, staring at the pattern on the tablecloth.
“He lives under my bed,” I said casually. “But he comes up to play when the lights go out. He’s my best friend.”
My mom smiled, wiping crumbs from my cheek. “An imaginary friend? How lovely. What does he look like?”
I thought about it. “Tall. Really tall. He has very long fingers, like sticks. And he doesn’t have a face. Just smooth skin where his eyes and mouth should be. But I know he’s smiling. I can feel it.”
My dad chuckled from behind his newspaper. “Classic kid stuff. Just don’t let him keep you awake at night, okay, sport?”
They thought it was cute. Normal. A sign of an active imagination. Every child has one, right? A make-believe companion to fight the monsters in the dark.
What they didn’t understand was that Mr. Scratch was the monster, but he was my monster. And he wasn’t imaginary.
He appeared only when the room went completely dark and the door was shut tight. He would slide out from the gap between the floor and the bed frame, not crawling, but flowing, like smoke made solid. He was always pale, almost grey, and impossibly thin. His arms were so long his hands dragged on the floor even when he stood upright.
We played games. Mostly Hide and Seek, but his rules were different. He would hide, and I had to find him in the blackness. If I found him, he would tickle me. light, sharp touches from those long fingers that felt like pins against my skin. If I didn’t find him… well, he would find me. And he would whisper things.
“Your parents don’t listen to you,” he’d hiss, his voice sounding like dry leaves being dragged across concrete. “They don’t see what I see. They don’t know how special you are. But I do. I will always know.”
As I grew older, around age ten, I started getting scared of him. Not the playful kind of scared anymore. Real fear. His games got rougher. His “ticks” became bruises I couldn’t explain. The whispers turned into instructions.
“Push the glass off the table,” he’d say while I sat at dinner. “Leave the front door unlocked. Don’t tell them I’m here.”
When I tried to tell my parents I didn’t want him around anymore, they just patted my head and said, “Oh, you’re getting too old for imaginary friends now. It’s time to grow up.”
But you don’t just “grow up” something that sleeps under your bed.
The worst nights were when I cried and begged him to go away. He would stretch his long fingers up through the slats of the mattress above me and trail them slowly over my face. He didn’t have eyes, but he could see every tear.
“You can’t get rid of me,” he whispered one night, his cold breath freezing the sweat on my neck. “I’m the friend you made when you were lonely. I’m the shadow you chose. You called me. And best friends… best friends stay together forever.”
One night, when I was twelve, I decided to prove he wasn’t real. I left my bedroom door wide open. I left the hall light on, shining right into my room. I told myself that if he was just in my head, the light would kill him.
I lay there, staring at the open door, breathing hard. For an hour, nothing happened. I felt brave. I felt stupid for being afraid all those years.
Then… I heard it.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
Coming from above me.
I froze. I was on the bottom bunk. Above me was just the mattress of the top bed. I looked up. The underside of the top bunk was in shadow, away from the hall light.
Slowly, painfully slowly, long, pale fingers curled over the edge of the wooden slats. Then another hand. Then, folding itself down like a spider walking on a ceiling, Mr. Scratch lowered himself from the top bunk. He had been there the whole time. Hiding where I never looked.
He hung suspended above my face, his body stretched thin and boneless, dangling inches from my nose. He smelled of dust and old, closed spaces.
“You tried to leave the door open,” he said. His voice was sad, disappointed. “You tried to let them see me. You tried to make me not exist.”
I screamed for my dad. I screamed so loud my throat burned.
My parents burst into the room seconds later, flipping on the main light.
“WHAT? What is it?” my dad yelled, scanning the room.
I pointed, shaking so hard I could barely hold my hand up. “HIM! He’s right there! Mr. Scratch! He was hanging right over me!”
My dad looked. Looked at the empty space above my bed. Looked under the bed. Looked in the closet.
“There’s nobody here, son,” he said, his voice softening into that worried tone adults use when they think you’re losing your mind. “Nobody has been in here. It’s just you.”
I looked back at the spot. He was gone. But on the wooden slats of the top bunk, right where his fingers had been, there were deep gouges. Deep scratches dug into the wood, fresh and splintered.
I grew up. I moved out. I went to college, got a job, lived in apartments with high ceilings and no bunk beds. I told myself it was a childhood delusion, a product of being an anxious kid with too much dark space in his room. I stopped thinking about him entirely.
Until last week.
I was helping my parents clear out the old family home to sell it. The house was empty now, echoing and cold. I went into my old bedroom. The blue bunk bed was still there, pushed against the wall, covered in a sheet.
I pulled the sheet off. The paint was chipped, the wood worn down by years of use. I ran my hand along the side, memories flooding back. I looked up at the bottom of the top bunk. The scratches were still there, deep and dark.
And then I saw something else.
Carved into the frame of the bottom bunk, hidden right where my pillow used to rest, were words. They had been carved deep into the wood, covered over by years of grime and paint that had flaked away. I must have missed them a hundred times as a child.
The letters were uneven, jagged, as if carved by fingers too long and too sharp to hold a pencil properly.
It read:
I never left. I just got smaller. Now I fit in the cracks. Now I fit in the dark behind your eyes.
My blood turned to ice.
I turned around fast, heart hammering, expecting to see him in the doorway.
Nothing. Just the empty hallway.
I left the house immediately. I didn’t help pack the rest. I didn’t say goodbye. I drove away as fast as I could.
Tonight, I am in my new apartment. It’s nice. Modern. No dark corners. No space under the bed because it sits flush against the floor. I locked the door. Double locked it. I checked the closets. I checked under the sink. I checked inside the vents.
I turned off the light to go to sleep.
And just as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I felt it.
A long, thin finger tracing the line of my jaw, cold as a grave.
A whisper right against my ear. familiar, soft, and delighted.
“Remember when we were best friends? I waited so long for you to grow up. Now you’re big enough… to play the final game.”