Night Shift #3

Stephen King
Literary Fiction
Pages 82-117

I'm sure everyones heard of the bogeyman and knows how he comes out of the closet at night to kill little children. Well I've seen the movies, but I never new it was created by Stephen king in a short story. Lester Billings came to Dr. Harper to tell his story of how he lost his three children. Before he starts the story insists that Harper check his closest, nothings inside. He then tells how his three children were murder one by one at night mysteriously. Denny was their first child and when he was two they moved him onto another room. He started crying every night and said he wanted a night light, but Lester never put one in because he thought it would make him soft. The night Denny died he pointed to the closest and said "Bogyman Daddy." Well when he went to check on him later that night Denny was dead on the ground and the closet was a little opened. Then two years later Shirl said the same thing "Bogyman Daddy," but Lester just let her fall asleep again. In the middle of the night he heard a scream and ran into the room and saw a glimpse of a shadow slither back into the closet just barely opened. Shirl died in the same house as Denny. Then he caught the thing strangling his last child after they moved houses. He then heard Andy's poor little neck break as the thing was shaking him and instead of doing something he ran away to an all night dinner. Then Lester leaves the room after finishing his story, then returns to tell him Harper something, but he is gone and the closet is open just a crack.

This is my favorite story so far because it actually scared me. I was reading this at 11:30 at night in my bed an when I tried to go to sleep i kept looking at my closet. I'm not easily scared by horror movies I wasn't even scared by the movie the Bogeyman, but this short story got to me. Maybe it was that i was reading it alone in the dark. The night was quite except for a cold breeze outside. It took me an hour to fall asleep that night.