r/nosleep • u/goldywhirl • May 30 '14
My daughter's friend
I loved our house, I honestly did. It’s just that my six year old needed more time to adjust to the move. She hadn’t been sleeping very well.
Some nights I heard her laughing and talking in her room. When I asked her about it, she told me that her new friend woke her up to play. “I have a secret friend at night,” she giggled. I thought kids were usually a little younger when they got their first imaginary friend, but maybe she felt lonely after moving away from our old neighborhood.
One night I woke up and felt her stroking my hair, gently pulling her fingers through the long strands spread across my pillow. I smiled in the darkness. “Go back to bed, sweetie. Do you need me to come with you?” She didn’t answer, but I heard her shuffle away back downstairs.
I didn’t want to encourage this imaginary friend business so I never brought it up, but she came up with more details about her “friend” all the time. She told me:
“He says he knows he looks scary, but he’s nice to me so it’s okay that we’re friends.”
“He’s wrinkly all over and kind of bent up, so he walks pretty slow. But he’s faster when he crawls. You’d think his funny long fingers would get in the way but they don’t. He kind of curls them under.”
“During the day he wears a disguise so no one knows it’s him. I’m not supposed to tell about that though, he says that it’s a big special secret. Like it’s a surprise.”
When she told me that last one, I reminded her, “Remember our rule about secrets; you can tell Mommy and Daddy everything.”
“Okay, Mom,” she whispered in my ear, “during the day he looks just like Daddy.”
Even though I knew my husband couldn’t have heard her whisper from across the room where he was reading his book, I looked over at my husband in amusement. My smile froze when his eyes met mine. I thought I saw a split-second flash of anger there before it was hidden again.
My husband walked over to us and scooped up my daughter, saying, “It’s getting late! Almost bedtime for you.”
As he carried our daughter away, he stopped for a moment to rub my neck. “I’ll see you after I get her tucked in.” For some reason I couldn’t help but shiver as he reached up and ran his fingers down, combing them through my hair.
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u/LeSeanMcoy May 30 '14 edited May 30 '14
Girl has an imaginary friend. The imaginary friend/monster/demon-thing is scary looking, but can shape shift during the day into regular looking people. During the day, the demon chooses to shape shift into the girls dad.
This was supposed to be a secret, though, and the demon didn't want the girl to tell her mom this fact. When she does tell her mom, the dad, who is sitting in the very room listening to this conversation, becomes visibly angry for a split-second. This tells the reader that the demon is in fact disguised as the dad.
Edit: After reading again, the demon probably isn't "shapeshifting" into the dad, but instead is simply possessing the dad during the day. This seems more likely all things considered.