The Bedtime Man (freewrite story)

Dear little children, please gather 'round. Bring you a pillow and come and sit down.
Th voice thrilled out into the ever-lasting, abysmal darkness, same as it did every night. And just like every night to come before this one, Lettie knew she was the only one who heard it. In that split second before her body registered the call and her scrawny bare legs started their walk down the corridor, she felt certain she was the only one who knew about the man who came at bedtime.
But then, she’d walk all the way to the end of the corridor, through the shadow-filled dark, and to her amazement find the gathering children. Some she knew from playtime, some she’d only ever seen in her dreams. The children of long-before.
The Bedtime Man had told her once about the long-before and what it had been like. He’d even promised to tell her one of his stories from all the way back then, if she was good enough. Only trouble was, she’d never quite been good enough, and that was Lettie’s problem really. If she had, then her mother wouldn’t have seen her way to leaving her standing outside the supermarket that one spring day and never quite coming back.
She’d never told the Bedtime Man about the day her mother had gone away, but by God, she wished she could. Sometimes it seemed like the only thing Lettie cared about was finding the man and talking to him about everything. Except she couldn’t. Here, you were not supposed to feel special or bad about yourself. Here, everyone had suffered just about the same, they had all been abandoned, and so, in this negligence, had forfeited the right to complain.
If she would be heard in the daytime telling tall tales about her mother, then she would get the strap. Again. So Lettie had learned quite early on that the best thing to be done during the daytime was to keep quiet. And in the nighttime, there was no chance of telling someone, certainly not the Bedtime Man, not with all the other children around.
They wouldn’t understand. They couldn’t know that she wasn’t ever supposed to be like them, all rejected and alone. So she hoped for the day when she could catch the Bedtime Man unawares and maybe then, he would take pity on her and ply her into one of his stories.

My eyes sprang wide. The woman's dark brown face was very close...but it seemed there was nothing she could say that I, in turn, could hear. As if the tap of hearing had been turned forever off in my head. And then, she whispered words to me, words of great sorrow and I knew how to breathe again.
The Bedtime Man sat silent, in his cove by the tall window, always ready to leap out should the warden come swinging. He gazed at all the little mesmerized faces and gave a benevolent grin. It was his way, whenever he’d finished a story he knew had no ending. He’d made sure from early on to teach the children there are no such things as endings, that stories never end, and so, the things they’d thought were stories – Snow White, Hansel and Gretel – all those were nothing but fragments.
Often enough, the witch survives inside the oven, and sometimes, she even crawls her way out, back to those mischievous children.
You look serious, my friends, he said, after a long while. The hour was beginning to draw near, the hour when he’d be nothing but dust again. It seemed no matter how many times he tries to prepare the children, they were never willing to let go, or to understand that he couldn’t quite stay a moment longer.
The older ones fussed, while the smaller children pleaded with him that he tell them another. It was always another, never quite content with what they’d got, but he supposed, that was their plight in life, inherited perhaps from their wayward parents.
The Bedtime Man shook his head, stood up, listened to the corridor behind them, until all they could hear was silence. The promise of punishment to come was always enough to make them quiet. Now, little ones, I’m afraid our time is drawing to an end.
Should the next night arrive, and I not be here, fret not, he always hesitated after this bit, though he’d spoken it now hundreds of times, for the reins of story are ever near.
He gave a soft, mournful smile, turned his back upon the children and said, in a much colder voice, You must go now.
One by one, he heard them go, back to their shiver-cold rooms, where no teddies awaited, no favorite blankets, not really children’s bedrooms at all. Just make-shift spaces for make-shift lives.
They went until only one remained. Little Lettie Tremont waited, eyes burrowing into the Bedtime Man’s translucent back. She had a story to tell, he’d felt it coming for some time. And for some reason, she’d decided he was the one to tell it to.
He waited, a brief second, though he could already feel his bones turn to sand inside, but there was no voice behind him, no story being told. Just silence and the scared little breathing of a scared little girl.
Go to your bed now, Miss Tremont.

Lettie found her courage in a bag of groceries, early the next day. It was her turn to care for the kitchen. The orphanage had always been critically understaffed and the truth was, Madame preferred it that way. Too much time on their hands and the little brats might get funny ideas in their heads. Best they help out wherever they could, ‘d be good, teaching them a tangible skill, for a change, not like that non-sense being taught in most schools.
And so it was that Lettie Tremont found herself staring face down into a bag of half-expired carrots, two tins of peas and a cookie box the children would only see at Christmas, in another month’s time. Madame, for all her temper and all her lashing was not, in her own way, unkind.
She picked herself up and remembered the taste of freshly cut peas, like her grandfather used to make, back when she’d still had a grandfather. Now, it often seemed to Lettie that her granddad was the best argument she had in her corner, because that funny old man, buried under his beard and his worked-down hands, he would never stand for his daughter to leave her just like that. Why, he would’ve gotten in his truck and gone out to find Lettie, sure as anything.
But perhaps he didn’t know where to look. Or perhaps something had been done to him, so that he couldn’t quite look, although Lettie preferred not to think about that. Standing tip-toe on the kitchen chair, to put the peas up on the shelf, she thought tonight would be the night, and even though she’d thought that many times before, she knew that this time she meant it.
It wasn’t just the smell of peas she felt that chilly November morning, but the scent of death. The little girl found herself invaded with the idea that maybe her grandfather didn’t have all that much time left in the world.
She would have to dare, this night, and if he told her to go back to her bed again, she would say ‘no’, she would tell him her story and how she wasn’t supposed to be here and how maybe, she’d thought, he could take her with her wherever it was he went when the story was over.

But that night, waiting with all the other children, for the all-too-familiar rallying cry of the Bedtime Man, she found herself waiting in vain. Story hour came and story hour passed, but the Bedtime Man did not.