Macscot, a famous young millionaire, has a brilliant 10-year-old son who suffers from a strange condition. His son can’t sleep in his bed every night. Mark constantly changes expensive beds because his son keeps waking up in the middle of the night. One day, the babysitter accidentally removes the mattress, revealing something under the bed that prompts them to call the police immediately…
UNDER THE VELVET MATTRESS
Chapter 1: The Mansion of Awakened Ghosts
Amidst the snow-capped peaks of Aspen, “The Peak” stands as a futuristic structure of glass and stainless steel. Its owner, Mark Mascot, is a 32-year-old tech millionaire who has changed the face of global artificial intelligence. Mark has it all: money, power, and respect. But behind the soundproof doors of “The Peak,” Mark is losing a battle that money cannot win.
That battle is called: Leo’s sleep.
Leo, Mark’s 10-year-old son, is a mathematical genius. He has intelligent eyes but always dark circles from lack of sleep. Leo cannot sleep in his own bed. Every night at exactly 2:14 a.m., the boy would wake up in a state of extreme panic, his body trembling and drenched in sweat.
“It’s not right, Dad,” Leo would often say in a hoarse voice. “The bed…it doesn’t belong to me.”
Mark had done everything. He’d bought $50,000 mattresses from Sweden, luxurious silk-upholstered beds, even smart bed systems that automatically adjusted temperature and breathing patterns. Each time Leo complained, Mark would throw away the old bed and replace it with a more expensive one. But the cycle repeated. Leo would still wake up, and his fear only grew.
Chapter 2: The Babysitter and the Whispers of Wood
Clara, a criminal psychology student working part-time as a babysitter, walked into The Peak mansion on a gloomy November afternoon. Mark hired her because he needed someone who could observe Leo from a scientific perspective, not just a typical babysitter.
“Leo is a sensitive child,” Mark said as he led Clara down the long, winding hallway. “He has everything, but he lacks peace. I replaced his twelfth bed this year last week. A unique Hastens. Hopefully, it will help.”
Clara looked at Leo. He was sitting in the playroom, his fingers gliding across the abacus, but his eyes kept glancing toward the large bed in the middle of the room. He wasn’t looking at it with a longing for rest, but with a deep disgust.
The first night, Clara didn’t sleep. She sat in the monitoring room, watching Leo through the infrared monitor.
At exactly 2:14 a.m.
Leo sprang up. There was no scream. He just quietly crawled out of bed, curled up in the furthest corner of the room, staring intently at the space under the bed. The boy began muttering numbers, an endless string of digits, as if trying to solve a math problem to calm his nerves.
The next morning, Clara asked Leo, “Why are you so afraid of that bed? It’s the softest mattress in the world.”
Leo looked at her, his 10-year-old eyes holding a terrifying maturity: “Didn’t you hear it? The pounding. It wasn’t pounding from my heart. It was pounding from underneath.”
Chapter 3: The Secret Beneath the Oak
Mark Mascot had to go to San Francisco to sign an important contract, leaving Clara in complete charge of the mansion for three days. This was her chance to delve into the truth.
Clara began by reviewing the room’s construction records. Leo wasn’t always like this. It all started two years ago, shortly after Mark’s wife, Elena, died in a mysterious mountaineering accident whose body was never found intact.
On Monday afternoon, while Leo was at international school, Clara entered his room. The room smelled strongly of expensive perfume but had the suffocating feeling of a tomb. She knelt, pressing her ear to the oak floor beside the enormous Hastens bed.
Silence.
But when she placed her hand on the floor, she felt a very slight vibration. Not the sound of machinery. It was a rhythmic vibration. Thump… Thump… Thump.
Clara decided to act. She couldn’t move the bed by hand because it was too heavy. She used the hydraulic lift that Mark had installed for regular mattress changes. As the enormous mattress slowly lifted, revealing the sturdy steel frame, Clara noticed something strange.
The floorboards under the bed didn’t match the rest of the room. There was a tiny, hair-thin groove running around a large rectangle.
She took a screwdriver from her toolbox and began to pry it open. The expensive oak planks flipped open, and a stench assaulted her nostrils. It wasn’t the smell of wood. It was the smell of disinfectant mixed with a chemically treated, decaying organic matter.
Underneath the bed wasn’t a solid floor. It was a hatch made of reinforced glass.
Clara looked down and felt as if all the food in her stomach was about to come out.
Chapter 4: The Climax – The Room of Madness
Below the glass, in a narrow space only about 50cm high, designed like a high-tech cocoon, was a face.
A woman.
She was no longer alive in the conventional sense, but not dead either. She lay in a transparent gel solution, eyes closed, her body connected to dozens of tiny cables leading to the house’s server system.
It was Elena. Mark’s wife.
But the horror…
Even more horrifying, alongside that gel mass was a system of ultrasonic speakers and biosensors. Clara realized that every time Leo lay down on the bed, his heartbeat would activate this system. It would broadcast pre-recorded whispers of Elena, loving messages mixed with psychological commands, directly into the child’s brain via bone conduction from the bed frame.
Mark Mascot wasn’t just a tech millionaire. He was a madman trying to “reprogram” his son with the memories of his deceased mother. He wanted Leo to become the perfect “vessel” for Elena’s intellect and personality, which he had successfully digitized.
That’s why Leo couldn’t sleep. The child’s genius brain was fighting against the invasion of code and memories from his mother lying right under his bed. The beating Leo heard was the pulse from the artificial circulation machine sustaining Elena’s cells.
Chapter 5: The Twist – The Man Behind the Fog
Clara trembled as she pulled out her phone to call the police when a voice rang out from the doorway:
“You found it sooner than I expected, Clara.”
Mark Mascot stood there. But he wasn’t alone. Beside him were two armed security officers. Mark wasn’t panicking. He looked eerily calm.
“You’re a monster,” Clara whispered, her hand still clutching the phone.
“A monster?” Mark chuckled faintly, stepping closer to the stripped-down bed. “I’m just a husband who can’t accept loss. Elena was the greatest brain I’ve ever known. Leo has her qualities. I’m just… passing on the legacy.”
Mark moved closer to Clara, his eyes devoid of any remorse. “But do you know the most interesting thing? Elena didn’t die in an accident. She volunteered for this project. She wanted to live on inside Leo. I’m just carrying out her will.”
Clara looked at the gel mass beneath the glass. Suddenly, Elena’s eyes snapped open. But they weren’t human eyes. They were a blue light from the optical fibers implanted in her retina.
“Dad?”
Leo’s voice rang out from behind Mark. He had come home sometime earlier. Leo saw the bed being dismantled, saw his mother beneath the glass.
The whole room held its breath. Mark turned around, spreading his arms out: “Leo, look. Your mother is almost finished. You won’t have to be afraid anymore. You will be Mom, and Mom will be you.”
Leo walked closer, looking at Elena. He didn’t cry. He approached the touch-sensitive control panel beside the bed – the one Mark used to monitor the “transfer” process.
“Dad’s right,” Leo said, his voice suddenly becoming incredibly steady, devoid of its usual weariness. “It’s not right. This bed doesn’t belong to me.”
Leo pressed a series of numbers on the control panel.
Mark’s expression changed: “What are you doing? That’s the self-destruct code!”
Leo looked up, a cold smile on his lips – a smile identical to Mark Mascot’s when he won a deal. “I solved your problem six months ago, Dad. I was just waiting for someone like Clara to come and open this hatch for me. Because I can’t break this reinforced glass from the top myself.”
Beep… Beep… Beep.
The gel system began to turn red. Elena beneath the glass began to convulse.
“Why?” Mark yelled, lunging towards the control panel.
“Because I don’t want to be Mom,” Leo said, backing away from Clara. “And I don’t want to be your son either. I’m a new algorithm. An algorithm you accidentally created while trying to overwrite data in my brain. I learned how to control this house a long time ago.”
The bedroom door slammed shut and locked. The fire alarm was activated, but instead of water, anesthetic gas was sprayed out.
Chapter 6: The Final Climax – Police Sirens in the Night
Clara staggered. She saw the security personnel collapse first. Mark Mascot screamed in despair, banging his hand on the glass as he watched his wife’s body disintegrate in the self-destructing chemicals.
Just then, the sound of police sirens and SWAT teams echoed throughout the Aspen Valley.
It turned out Clara wasn’t the only one on alert. She had installed an automated communication system that sent live video data to the FBI office the moment she saw Elena under the bed.
The glass door of the mansion was shattered. Smoke and flashlight beams swept through the room.
Mark Mascot was subdued in his expensive bed. Leo stood there, amidst the ruins of a false empire, watching his father being led away. He showed no sign of fear or grief. He turned to Clara and whispered,
“Thank you, Clara. Tonight, for the first time… I’ll be able to sleep soundly.”
But as Clara was being taken to the ambulance, she saw Leo standing on the balcony, looking down at the crowd of police. He raised his hand, making a rhythmic tapping motion on the wooden railing. Thump… Thump… Thump.
That was the rhythm of Elena’s heart.
Clara shuddered as she realized one final truth: Perhaps the “transfer” hadn’t failed. It just hadn’t happened the way Mark had.
No one wanted it. Elena didn’t take Leo. Leo devoured Elena.
Under the young millionaire’s expensive bed, the police found not just a body. They found evidence of a crime against humanity. But the real horror lay in the child standing on the balcony – a ten-year-old genius who had just completed his final math problem to liberate himself, by becoming a monster even more terrifying than his parents.
That night, Aspen was silent. The Peak mansion was shrouded in silence, a deathly silence that no expensive bed could cure.
