At the end of the bed

When I was five years old (1971) my parents decided to take in two foster boys.

Tim and I were the same age and almost everything together.

Our bedrooms upstairs were open. You could see through my room from the stairway landing and into Tim's room. There were no doors.

Tim kept complaining about not sleeping because there was a man standing at the foot of bed every night and it scared him.

One day Tim told me that the man was there and asked if I wanted to see him.

We very quietly crept up the stairs until we could just see over the floor and sure enough there was a man standing at the end of his bed.

This man had black hair just past his shoulders, a bandana like wrapped around his head like a head scarf. Dirty white peasant shirt with a sash tied around the waist. He also had a scar running down the left side of his face. He was holding a bloody knife up like he was going to stab someone.

Then suddenly he disappeared, Tim asked me why I did that.

I said did what and he said "you scared him away".

I never even made a sound but after that Tim never saw the man at the end of his bed again.