The Man Who Stood in the Doorway
The Name Beneath the Bed {Part One}
{This is a work of fiction inspired by accounts of the Hat Man and sleep paralysis. Ian, his family, and the events in this story are imagined. He does not speak. He does not come closer. He only watches. This story imagines what might happen if he is watching something you cannot see. There is no gore, but this story contains sleep paralysis and an unsettling presence in the home. If you wake tonight and see him standing at your door, pay attention to where he’s looking.}
Greetings Whisperers,
The first time Ian saw the man in the hat, he thought someone had come into the house. He woke to the slow creak of his bedroom door opening.
A strip of moonlight lay across the hallway floor. In the doorway stood a tall figure wearing a long black coat and a wide-brimmed hat. The brim hid his face, though Ian could see the pale wall behind him and the shape of every button on his coat.
Ian tried to sit up.
He couldn’t move.
He looked at his clock on his night stand it read 3:13 am. His arms lay beside him, and his legs were tangled in the blanket. He could feel the cool air on his face and hear the old clock ticking downstairs, but even when he strained with all his strength, he could not lift a finger.
The man stood still.
Ian tried to call for his father. Only a thin breath escaped him.
Then the man lowered his head. He seemed to be looking at something near the floor. The clock downstairs stopped ticking.
Ian’s chest tightened, he struggled to breath, certain the figure would come closer now that no one could hear him.
Instead, the man took one step backward into the hall.
Ian gasped and sat upright.
The doorway was empty. The clock was ticking again, and his bedroom door was closed.
He turned on the lamp and stayed awake until morning.
His father listened while Ian described the man, then checked the front door and every window. Nothing had been opened. He said Ian had probably experienced sleep paralysis: waking up before his body was ready to move. Together, they found accounts from other people who had seen shadowy figures in their rooms.
A few described a man in a hat.
His father read one of those accounts twice. Then he shut the laptop.
“Did he come into your room?” his father asked.
“No. He just stood in the doorway.” Ian said.
His father looked toward the stairs. “If it happens again, call me as soon as you can move, son.”
That night, Ian left his bedroom door open and the hall light on.
He woke at 3:13 a.m.
The hall light had gone out. Ian lay facing the wall, unable to turn over. He knew the man was behind him; he could feel the doorway occupied, though he had heard no footsteps.
A long breath sounded from beneath his bed.
Ian held his own breath.
The sound came again.
At the edge of his vision, he could see the man’s coat. His head was tilted down, just as it had been the night before. He was watching the space under the bed.
Something brushed the wooden slats beneath the mattress.
Ian shut his eyes. He listened for his father’s footsteps down the hall, for the clock downstairs, for any ordinary sound. He heard only the breathing beneath him.
When he could finally move, Ian rolled out bed and struck the light switch. he crouched and looked underneath.
His shoes. An old book. Dust gathered along the wall. Nothing else.
In the morning, his father found him asleep on the sofa.
Ian told him about the breathing. His father pulled the sofa blanket higher over Ian’s shoulders, though Ian was no longer cold.
“What did the man do?” his father asked.
“He..he watched the bed.” Ian said.
His father stared at him for a moment. “Did he speak?”
“No.”
“Good…good.” his father said quietly.
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Ian sat up. “Why is that good?”
His father glanced toward the hallway. “It means you didn’t answer him.”
“I told you, he didn’t speak.” Ian said.
“I know.” His father stood and went to the kitchen. He would not say anything more about it.
That evening, Ian found his father in the garage searching through an old metal box. The box had always been kept on the highest shelf, behind jars of screws and paintbrushes stiff with age.
His father closed it as soon as he saw Ian.
“I thought you were upstairs son.” his father said.
“I was.” Ian said.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Then his father carried the box into the house. Ian heard the lock turn on the study door.
Ian did not want to sleep in his bedroom again. He stayed on the sofa with a lamp beside him and a book open in his lap. His father had promised to leave his own door open upstairs.
At 3:13, the lamp dimmed.
Ian looked at the clock across the room. Its second hand moved once, then stopped.
The man in the hat stood at the far end of the living room.
Ian was awake. He could move. He gripped the book and sat up, watching the figure’s shadow stretch across the carpet.
The man raised one hand.
From beneath the sofa, Ian’s own voice whispered, “Don’t let him see you.”
Ian pulled his feet up.
Something moved under the cushions, pressing lightly against their undersides. It traveled the length of the sofa and stopped directly beneath him.
The man took a step forward. At once, the movement below him ceased.
Ian looked from the dark figure to the narrow space beneath the sofa. The man was facing the floor.
“Dad?” Ian called.
Upstairs, a door opened. His father’s footsteps sounded on the landing.
The man crossed the living room and stopped in the doorway that led to the stairs.
“Dad,” Ian said more loudly. “There’s someone here.”
The footsteps stopped.
His father spoke from above. “Ian, stay where you are.”
A soft knock came from beneath the sofa. Then another, nearer its edge.
The man remained in the doorway. He had not turned toward Ian once.
His father started down the stairs.
“No,” Ian said. He did not know which one of them he was warning.
A hand emerged from under the sofa and closed around its wooden leg.
It looked like Ian’s hand. A small pale scar crossed one knuckle, exactly where Ian had cut himself the previous summer.
Upstairs, his father whispered something Ian could not make out.
The hand tightened. Then Ian’s voice came from beneath the cushions, gentle and close.
“Move over, Ian. He can only keep one of us in here.”
The man in the hat turned his head.
Under the brim, Ian saw a faint white glow. It shifted across the darkness where a face should have been, like words being written on a page.
His father reached the bottom stair and stopped.
“Ian,” he said, his voice shaking. “Whatever happens, don’t give him your name.”
Ian stared at him. His father had used his name twice since coming out of his room.
The thing beneath the sofa gave a small, pleased laugh.
“Too late,” it whispered in Ian’s voice. “I already did.”
