“Anne had a run-in with a bed monster, once.”

I can’t remember what the weather was doing on that particular night, when Anne met the bed monster.  The events were so horrible, so gruesome, that my mind has erased many of the details.  If I could remember it all, I’m sure that it would have driven me mad by now.

Anne became the unfortunate owner of a Bed Monster.  Bed Monsters are strange creatures.  They live inside the mattresses of children.  Mattresses are warm and snug, and if the Bed Monster is lucky enough to be owned by a bed-wetter, it’s nice and damp, too.

Not only is it nice and warm there, the Bed Monster gets to eat as well.  As the little child sleeps, so little flakes of skin rub off and fall into the mattress.

Now, Bed Monsters don’t eat these flakes of skin, because they are too small.  But the bed bugs do, and then the Bed Monster eats up all the bed bugs.  But by now, naturally, the bed bugs taste of little children.  So the Bed Monster begins to get a taste for little children.

During the day, the child is perfectly safe, because the Bed Monster is inside the dark, warm, moist mattress, and so full of bed bugs that it can’t get out.  But when a child lies down on the bed, and especially if the child bounces up and down on the bed, it squeezes the Bed Monster out of the mattress and onto the floor.

When this happens, heaven help the unwary child.  The Bed Monster becomes irritable, because it has been kicked out of its home.  It becomes angry, because the fluff gets up its nose.  And it becomes very, very hungry.

The Bed Monster is a coward.  It could quite easily jump out from under the bed and devour a child, even if that child was awake.  But it is too scared.  It will never attack a child face to face.  But, if it see an opportunity, that’s different.  If it’s a warm night, or if the nightmare pixies make the sleeping child restless …

Oh, didn’t you know about the evil nightmare pixies?  Well, you do now.

Then, maybe the careless boy or girl will drape an arm over the edge of the bed.  Or perhaps a leg will drop to the floor.  And from under the bed the Bed Monster will see the limb, like a fish sees a worm.  He will lick his lips and listen to the rumble in his tummy.  Slowly he will reach out with both powerful, taloned hands.

And then Snick!  Snock!  Snack!  He has the hapless little child in his grips, under the bed.  Then he swallows them whole, starting at the toes, so that the last thing to disappear is the head.  By the time Mummy and Daddy come to check up on their little darling, the Bed Monster has been absorbed back into the mattress.

There is one, and only one, defence against this evil and cowardly monster.  Never, ever turn your back on it.  All the time you are facing the Bed Monster, it will not, it cannot, attack you.

Anne, being a clever girl, and not at all a baby, recognised the signs.  One night she heard all the sounds that weren’t there, and knew that the noises that weren’t happening were not being made by the Bed Monster.  That’s always a give-away there is a Bed Monster: when you can’t hear it at all.

She told her parents, but grown-ups are stupid, especially Mums and Dads, when it comes to creatures such as the Bed Monster.  They didn’t believe her, and told her to get straight to bed.  So she bravely climbed onto the bed.  As she did so, she could imagine the Bed Monster being squeezed out underneath.

She knelt on the bed, facing the edge.  “I know you’re there, Mr Bed Monster,” she said, for it always pays to be polite to monsters.  “I am facing the edge of the bed, so you can’t come out.  I am going to face the edge all night, and every night, so you had best not think of trying to eat me.”

So she knelt there, facing the edge, defying the evil Bed Monster.  But Anne had forgotten one thing.  One very important thing, that would cost her dear, that would put her very life at risk.

“What?  What had she forgotten?” asked Annabelle, anxiously.

She had forgotten that …