Mean Man

A young couple,Angela and Jim have a small six year old daughter,Claire.Since they brought her back to this still fairly empty house they now live in,as a baby, relatives and neighbors,gas men and plumbers have been commenting on how stark and uncomfortable seeming her bedroom is,but years of advice,polite and otherwise have done nothing but add to the mishmash,starkly unwelcoming oddity of the room.

Claires bedroom is super creepy,nearly everyone who goes in ends up trying to help to improve it,brighten it up,shelves,pictures,dolls and teddy bears are donated to the not well off couple,but it goes much deeper than thrown together bad decor,there is an atmosphere that cannot be ignored, can only be described best as "bad".

Claire is scared of room,she cannot sleep,lays awake trembling and trying not to look at anything in the darkness,although the naked light of the lightbulb is barely an improvement and she is often too scared to reach for it.She is plagued by nightmares,screams out most nights and is often too terrified to sleep.

The shadows move in horrible unnatural ways,partially disguised by the busy rushing headlights from the vehicles on the motorway next to the house.Some shadows move too slowly.The lights that dash across the walls mix with dark shadows,these dark shadows move too and are more like the darkness itself.This constantly shifting ephemeral mess of darkness and un-illuminating light is never anything less than chaos and when those dark shadows do seem to be something that might make sense,they will not allow her to look at them,they will not be clearly seen.

As she grows older she only learns to recognize more what the shadows sometimes seem to become and fear what they might hide.

On one occasion Claire issues a scream so sharp,so loud,so terrifying people from all over the street they live on start visiting.On other nights police are called.Throughout,Claire`s father remains steadfast that she will grow out of it.

Jim hides his lack of sympathy or concern for her behind humor and when she cannot get the door open at night she assumes this is his doing and waits hopefully and in vain to get the joke.Often they cannot get the door open from either side,but Jim and Angela just laugh at the door as if it is a trick door.

He holds that she will grow out of it,insisting they ignore Claire`s shout and screams for help,to be let out,to sleep anywhere but i the room,he puts her back in her bed when he finds her asleep downstairs or on the landing.

Donated shelves repeatedly fall to the floor,shelves she is too small to reach.On one occasion Claire puts a window through in a bid to get out on another night she barely escapes a tumbling wardrobe and her parents fail to laugh it off because she could not in any way have moved it.

Finally they swap,her father sleeping in her bed and Claire sharing with her mother.Not long into the night Jim starts hammering on the door,he cannot get out.As Angela gets up to help him she asks "why do you get up to help him and not me?".

Jim comes back into his bedroom shaken and scared yet he orders Claire back into the room saying "rather you than me"But the girl realizes now she has something in common with whatever is in the room that does not want not just her but anyone in there.She does not want her in there either, her father does.If anyone aught to pay for her presence in there, it is him."I am going to tell them about you"she tells him as she leaves in the realization that whatever it is could scarcely be less sympathetic to her than her father.

The next few days are quiet as if a debate is taking place.Against all odds her father finally does something He finds a priest and has him perform an exorcism which remarkably works for several weeks and when its effect wears off, he is recalled.Claire is in the kitchen when her father and the priest start shouting at her to open her bedroom door,"She`s down here you nutcase"Angela jokingly calls up and her father tries to laugh it off but the door had slammed shut on them,the priest could not even get in and refused to return.

Finally when Claire is 7 years old they move house.The new house is everything the old one was not-warm light and after massive renovation and redecoration,quite homely.

One year later the father is dead, he has not passed on he has been returned to the house to haunt the room he would not let his daughter leave.She had reasoned with them when she could not reason with him and now her fate was swapped for his.

The room that was built over a fault ,too dangerous for the living.Perhaps as a replacement or perhaps to join the dead who spent so many years there warning people it was harmful.

There had to be someone there to warn people,to keep them away.It was just the human thing to do.It was only decent and right.

Unless you were a mean man.