My dad used to tell me a bedtime story when I was a kid, about two dolls named Mr. And Mrs. Hug. I was devastated when he died, but I think it’s even worse now that I’m an adult and can see how strange the story really was.

My dad used to tell me a bedtime story when I was a kid, about two dolls named Mr. And Mrs. Hug. I was devastated when he died, but I think it’s even worse now that I’m an adult and can see how strange the story really was.<br><br>When I was a kid, one of my favorite things to do in the entire world was go to bed. I was very lucky that way – my parents never had to drag me to my room, or battle me for thirty minutes until I finally gave in to sleep. <br><br>Part of it was my father, and the bedtime stories he used to tell me. He wasn’t an imaginative man – I doubt he’d ever have been able to write a story, or come up with anything on his own – but he was very good at retelling old stories and fairy tales he had learned when *he* was a kid. <br><br>My favorite of these, and the one he told me most often, was about Mr. And Mrs. Hug.<br><br>According to my dad, there was a family living in a big house in the forest. They were a wealthy family, and they had a huge house with many rooms. A big family lived there, and they had even more children. One of them was a little girl, about my age whenever my dad told me the story.<br><br>This little girl had no toys or friends, so she spent time making friends with the objects around her. Her room was full of them – a monkey with a porcelain face and a fluffy body, a little wooden dog with a switch on the bottom that made it walk across the floor, and other things I don’t remember.<br><br>The little girl’s favorite friends were dolls – Mr. And Mrs. Hug. They were stitched together out of old socks, and didn’t have faces. But all the same, they were the prettiest dolls in the whole house, because the girl loved them so.<br><br>Every night, the girl would go to sleep, and Mr. And Mrs. Hug would come to life. They would watch over her as she slept; walking around her room to make sure everything was safe, and protecting her from any danger that came their way.<br><br>One night, a fire broke out in the house. The stairs were already gone, and the wooden balcony was beginning to burn. Mr. And Mrs. Hug knew they had to act fast, to get their dear friend out of the house safely. So they picked her up, and threw her out the window.<br><br>She landed safely, and crawled to safety as the dolls burned alive.<br><br>This was always the end of the story – I think we might have had some kind of epilogue about the girl moving to a new house and not being sad, but I don’t remember it very well. My dad always said the same thing at the end. <br><br>“If you ever need someone to watch over you,” he’d say, “just call for Mr. And Mrs. Hug.”<br><br>I never forgot that story. Even after I stopped going to bed early, I still loved it. It felt like a part of me – something that I’d grown up with, and would carry with me forever.<br><br>My dad died a few weeks ago. Old age, but he went quickly. He was definitely in the minority – most of his friends died of strokes or heart attacks, and one even survived a car crash only to die of pneumonia. But not my dad – he just went to sleep, and didn’t wake up.<br><br>Recently, while staying in my childhood bedroom and helping my mom clean out his things, I decided to ask her about the bedtime stories he used to tell me.<br><br>I had always assumed they were just made up, or came from some book – maybe something he’d read himself as a kid, or been told by his parents. So I was shocked when my mom told me she had never heard them.<br><br>“Do you remember any of the details?” She asked me. “I think I’d like to hear them.”<br><br>So I told her. I told her about the story of Mr. And Mrs. Hug, and she listened quietly.<br><br>When I was finished, she looked at me strangely. A mixture of sadness and fear.<br><br>“What’s wrong?” I asked. <br><br>“I think you might be misremembering things,” she said. “Just a little.”<br><br>I was confused, but my mom went on before I could say anything. <br><br>“When you were a kid, you used to sleepwalk. Do you remember that?”<br><br>I shook my head. <br><br>My mom went on. “It was very scary, at first. You were just a little toddler, and you would walk around the house at night – sometimes even when you were sleeping, you’d just get up and wander around.”<br><br>I still didn’t remember it. <br><br>My mom sighed, and went on. “We decided to do something to keep you safe. So every night, we’d lock you in your room before we went to bed. And to keep you from getting scared, we’d put those dolls on your bed.”<br><br>I was starting to remember something, but it was very vague. I think I remembered the feeling of being locked in my room, but I don’t think I’d ever known *why*. I’d just assumed it was some rule my parents had made up – I don’t think I’d ever thought about it very much until now.<br><br>My mom went on. “One night, there really was a fire. I woke up to the smell of it, and stumbled into the hallway to try and put it out. It was an electrical fire – I was very lucky to catch it in time, before it had time to spread. But it was very close. If I hadn’t woken up – ”<br><br>She broke off, and I knew what she was thinking. If she hadn’t woken up, I would have been trapped inside my room. There were bars on my window, to keep me from falling out. And since I was locked in, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get out.<br><br>When my mom came back from her thoughts, she looked at me with a mixture of sadness and fear. <br><br>“You know, I always used to hope that you’d forget about Mr. And Mrs. Hug. I think it’s very sweet, but it also creeps me out. I think it might mean that you knew, even though you were sleeping – that you were trapped in there, and that the fire was coming to kill you.”<br><br>I didn’t ask my mom any more questions. I didn’t ask her where the story of Mr. And Mrs. Hug came from – whether she’d told it to me, or my dad, or if I’d simply made it up on my own. I don’t think I want to know the answer.