Under the Rug

       It all started on Saturday morning when Mr. Sullivan was mowing the lawn. His neighbor, Angeline Smith, was outside starting to go for a walk. As she passed Mr. Sullivan, she asked, "Jon, tonight I’m going to a play at the theatre. Would you like to come?"
       "That would be great," responded Jon as he went back to mowing the lawn. Jon was an easy-going person, and ever since their grandson came to live with them, he rarely had a chance to go out. Not that his grandson was trouble, since he kept up on his schoolwork and played on the high school football team. He breezed by in all his classes and was quarterback on the team. Jack was a star player in his freshman year, and a real gifted person. His grandparents loved having him around.
       That night at eight o’clock, Jon and Megan Sullivan headed out to the theatre. "Be good, and don’t stay up too late. You have a game tomorrow," his grandmother reminded.
       "I won’t," he replied, "There’s a movie on tonight that should keep me busy."
       "We will be back by one o’clock," said his grandfather as he left the house. Jack didn’t know that those were the last words he would ever hear again.
       Jack settled into the movie, Star Trek, with his popcorn and soda. Jack had always loved science fiction movies and watched them as often as he could. However, sometimes his imagination would get carried away, and it would play tricks on him. Once when he was watching a movie at home by himself, he thought that there was a giant rat in his bedroom and he refused to go in. Then he had to spend the night in the living room. But this movie was special, as it was his favorite. When he started to watch he didn’t know that this was the last movie he would ever see. After a little over an hour, Jack noticed something moving under the rug. He, however, ignored it, thinking that it was a result of his imagination. The mound under the rug kept getting closer and closer till it was at his feet. Then in seconds the thing was on him, and he was scared to death by the creature. That was the last thing he ever saw, a large green face.
       Later that night, his grandparents came home. They sensed that something was different, but they weren’t sure what it was. Jon walked into the living room and saw that the TV was on. While he went to turn it off, he stumbled on something on the floor. He looked down and saw his grandson’s lifeless body. "Megan, come here. It’s Jack! He’s … dead." Jon shouted. Megan Sullivan rushed into the room with tears in her eyes.
       "He’s gone. He’s really gone," she said between sobs. As she looked at him with tear-filled eyes, she saw a different person behind his green eyes and brown hair. She saw a look of terror on this teenager’s face as if he died of fright. Mr. Sullivan proceeded to call the police, and Jack was brought to the hospital.
       Later that day, when the Sullivans were at the hospital, the doctor asked when they had seen him last, and what he was doing. Then he confirmed their fear, Jack was apparently dead, scared to death. The doctor, however, was suspicious because the only thing that could have frightened him was the TV, or so they thought, and that was very unlikely. They finally left the hospital, with lots of unanswered questions about what happened to their grandson. Although in time, they went back to their everyday lives, their deep loss troubled them greatly.
       Two weeks passed and it happened again. Mr. Sullivan was reading the paper, while Mrs. Sullivan was knitting in a chair. Suddenly, out of the corner of Jon’s eye, he saw movement and heard a noise. Jon told Megan to call the police, and she did so immediately. Mr. Sullivan raised a chair above his head and struck the creature. He probably would not have hit the beast had it known it was a target, but you can’t see through a rug. The creature was pounded to the ground, and it unleashed a savage roar. Mr. Sullivan was puzzled, for he never heard anything like that before. As he began to pick up the rug, it moved. Crawling and slowly edging closer and closer to him, he dropped the rug and yelled as he picked up a book off of the floor. His wife immediately rushed into the room, going to her husband’s aid. Jon hit it again and it ran into a table knocking a lamp to the floor. He threw the book at the creature, and it knocked the creature back to the edge of the rug exposing a patch of green. Megan reached for a broken lamp on the ground and batted the beast with it. Jon ran after the creature and began to stomp on it. Again it let out a noise a mysterious squeal followed by a repulsive shriek. Megan, realizing that it was still alive, threw all of her weight upon it and suddenly it stopped. Then the police arrived, they stormed into the house. The closest officer began to shoot at the lump, and, after a minute, they thought that it had died. One of the officers began to pick up the rug, and saw that it was a supernatural hedgehog.
       The story began to come together, when Jon realized that this was the beast that killed Jack. It must have been what had killed him for nothing else made sense. However, this didn’t even make sense because Jon wasn’t sure where it came from. They checked the floor, but there was no place to enter. Once the hedgehog was disposed of, the Sullivans were finally at peace, until one morning there was movement under the rug.