The Closet

Work proceeds apace on The Secret Room, closing in on 11,000 words. Slower than I'd like, but after a sluggish start I'm starting to feel the same kind of excitement I did throughout most of the writing of House of Shadows, which gives me hope that I might just yet meet some of the elevated expectations of the readers of that latter tome who have said, both to me and in reviews, that they 'cannot wait for the next book in this series'.

Unfortunately, I don't really have a worthwhile snippet to share since my last post (too much spoilerish material), so I don't consider this post to be a true update. That being the case, I thought I would offer my readers, as a gentleman once said, 'something completely different'.

With that in mind, here's a brief tale I wrote for a short story contest for the Fantasy and Vampire Book Club on Goodreads. It won first prize, so I'm hoping you'll like it, and hold off on the torches and pitchforks during your wait.

Enjoy. :)

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The Closet

 

I twisted over in bed and whispered into Sissy's ear, "There's a monster in the closet."

Sissy was a good older sister. She didn't groan, or make fun of me. She just turned over, so we were almost nose to nose. "How do you know, Kelly?" she said.

 

"I keep hearing it," I said. "It waits till you're asleep. Then it scratches at the door."

She lifted up on one elbow and stared at it with me. The door was white, the paint faded and peeling. A huge metal knob perched over a large keyhole, the kind made to fit one of those big old iron keys. It was a heavy, thick door, not flimsy and hollow like the closet door at our old apartment. If you were to somehow get trapped on the other side of this one, you could kick on it all day and never break out.

"I don't hear anything," Sissy said.

That upset me. " I heard it!" I whispered fiercely.

"I believe you." She tilted her head, listening with her good ear, the one that hadn't gotten smashed bad in the Accident. "But I think it's done for the night. Now go to sleep. You start school next week, and you're going to have to start getting up earlier." She rolled over, taking half the covers with her. I jerked them back, then pulled them over my head before squeezing my eyes shut. Much later, I fell asleep.

 

#

The closet had scared me since I first saw it. We'd just moved here, after the Accident. I ran upstairs where Mommy had told I would find my room, and there it was. I cracked the door and looked inside. It was ginormous, and very deep, so deep that shadows hid its back wall. There were huge shelves and cubbyholes and a light bulb high in the ceiling with a chain I couldn't reach, even standing on my tippy toes. And as I stood there, just inside, the door swung shut.

I couldn't breath, couldn't move. I stood in place in the silence, listening. Then I heard something. Not breathing, not 'zackly. More like a rushing, like you hear when you hold a seashell to your ear. And as I stood there, I felt my heart hammering in my chest, like it was frightened of something I couldn't see. The floorboards creaked and I felt the air stir, as though something was moving towards me. I was so scared I was frozen stiff, couldn't make a sound. It came closer, closer still.

Then a burst of light flooded the space, and I could move again. I spun around to see Sissy standing at the open door.

"You shouldn't be in there by yourself," she said, looking past me. "No telling what might be hiding in these rooms."

 #

Nothing was said to our parents, but Sissy and I shared a clear understanding, neither of us was to enter that closet alone if we could help it. If we had no choice, then the door must be propped open. Not with something flimsy, either but with an object of great weight.

I often wondered if our parents sensed it too. Because of its size, the closet got turned  into a junk room, with one half set aside as a wardrobe. Sissy would laugh at me and call me a clothes horse. She didn't care about that stuff, wearing the same thing, faded jeans and a t-shirt, day after day. Always in style, she told me once.

I can't explain why, but the closet never really bothered Sissy, no matter how much it terrified me. I would lie in bed, listening. Sometimes there was nothing to hear. And when there was, usually it was something quiet, almost unnoticeable. A light scratching or a low creak of the floorboards, just enough to make me nervous, but not enough to prompt a scream for Daddy or Mommy. Instead I would reach over and take Sissy's hand, squeezing it tight. She never minded, and would always squeeze back. Eventually, I'd fall asleep.

Of course I told our parents about the closet. And of course they checked it, searching behind the boxes, examining the shelves, never finding anything. Which didn't surprise me, because somehow I knew that whatever lived in the closet, it was only interested in one thing. Me. So it always hid. Very, very well.

Until that one night.

We'd spent the evening watching horror movies on cable television. Daddy had frowned, but Mommy'd pooh-poohed him. "There are real horrors in this world," she had said. "Better to prepare for them now, rather than later."

I can't say how I knew, but I could tell she was talking about the Accident. When she got like this, you could never tell how she'd get, so I excused myself and went upstairs, Sissy on my heels.

We got into bed, and lay next to one another. This time Sissy reached out to me first. She seemed upset, though I couldn't tell why. She curled up against me, her arms and legs as cold as ice. "What's wrong?" I whispered.

Then something slammed against the closet door.

I opened my mouth to scream, and as I did, Sissy covered it with her hand. A second bang, even louder than the first, and in the pale grey light from the curtain less window I saw the door shudder under the impact from the other side.

I twisted, desperately trying to free myself so I could cry out for our parents. Sissy kept holding me close while shaking her head no.

"It's upset," she whispered. "It's angry."

"Whuff?" I said behind her hand. Why?

Finally, after everything was still once more, she released my mouth and pulled me to her chest, burying my face to keep me quiet.

"I don't know."

#

 

"I don't think it would have hurt us," Sissy said the next day when I confronted her. "But it might've hurt Mom or Dad, if they'd come upstairs."

I looked over at our mother, lying on the sofa as she slept, an open pill bottle on the coffee table. Outside I heard the sound of a weed whacker buzzing. The Landlord. Daddy had told Mommy shortly after we moved in that the old guy was too cheap to hire a lawn care service, and that one day the man was going to collapse from heat stroke doing all the work by himself.

"Is she okay?" I asked Sissy. This wasn't the first time Mommy had fallen asleep on the couch after taking her medicine.

Sissy looked as though she was going to start crying. Both of them had done that a lot of that, ever since the Accident. "She'll be okay. Eventually." Then she shook her head and went upstairs.

I sat next to Mommy and picked up the remote for the television, there were always cartoons on this time of day. I didn't even have to turn the volume down, since nothing would wake her up after she'd taken her medicine.

I got settled with SpongeBob Squarepants, then there was a knock at the screen door. It was hot, so the front door itself was open. I looked through the screen and saw the landlord standing there, wiping his face with a bright red bandana.

"Out like a light again, eh?" he said. "Poor woman." He looked down at me. "Your dad told me about what happened. Puts me in mind of the folks who used to live here before you. They had an 'accident' too. Never found the father, though." He leaned against the door frame, as though he could barely stand. "Sweetheart, could you do me a favor? I'm burning up out here. Rain's been heavy, and that fescue grows like crabgrass. Would you fetch me a glass of water?"

I looked over at my mother, then nodded yes and walked back to the kitchen. When I got back with a plastic tumbler I'd filled from the sink, the landlord was standing next to the sofa as he watched the television.

"Thank you, sweetheart," he said as he took the water out of my hands. "They broadcast the commercials a lot louder these days than the programs." He emptied the tumbler in one long draught. "To get the viewer's attention, my son-in-law says." He looked down at my mother. "And she can sleep through all that? Fuck, then she'll sleep through anything. Won't she?"

He set the tumbler down on the coffee table. "Yep, gotta be careful. That's why I put that fence around the pool out back. Course, the gate's only got a simple latch. Gotta watch the kids like a hawk, or else next thing you know, you'll find one of 'em floating face-up, and no idea at all what might have happened." He reached down to stroke my hair. "Kelly, what time is your Dad getting home? It is Kelly, right?"

"Hey!"

I turned. Sissy was standing halfway down the stairs, smiling. She was using her index finger to curl a strand of that yellow gold hair I was so jealous of. (Mine was the color of dirt.)

The landlord looked up at her. "Well, hello Missy. And who might you be?" As so often happened when my sister entered a room, everyone's attention shifted to her, like moths to a porchlight.

Sissy smiled and bent over the rail. "I've got a secret," she whispered.

"Say you do, eh?" The old man left me and strode to the bottom of the stairs. He sounded even more out of breath than he had before. "And what might that be?"

As he took a step up, so did Sissy. "It's a big secret," she said, "But nobody else can know."

"I can keep a secret," he said. And as he smiled, so did my sister.

Then she turned and ran.

The landlord looked confused. He looked down at me, then up the stairs, as though trying to make up his mind about something.

"Better hurry!" my sister called out.

Whatever it was he couldn't decide on, he must have, cuz he turned around and followed after Sissy.

I stood there, confused. Then I followed after them.

I saw the landlord enter our bedroom, and I said, "Excuse me!" But either he didn't hear me, or else he just ignored me. So I went in after him.

Then I froze where I stood.

It was fully open, the closet door. And in the rear, her back to the wall, stood Sissy, with the landlord just inside.

"You're going to have to shut the door," Sissy said, still playing with her hair. "Can't show you the secret with the door open where everybody can see."

The old man turned around and saw me, standing in the middle of the room. "I don't know," he said, as though waking up from a deep sleep. "I don't think. . . . "

Sissy looked from him to me. Then she stepped forward, quickly.

I've thought about that moment many times over the years since. Something lit up in the landlord's face, and I think he might have understood what was happening, because he stirred and reached out. "Wait!"

Then Sissy grabbed the doorknob and pulled.

I have a memory, which I keep hidden deep and never take out after the sun goes down. A memory of a shadow, rising up from the back wall of the closet and moving forward like the wind, engulfing them both as the door slammed shut.

I heard a scream from the old man that cut off, like someone had killed the power to a radio. Then I didn't hear anything at all.

#

Several days later the police came by to ask some questions about the missing Landlord. And when they were done, I asked the police if they wouldn't mind looking for Sissy too.

The one officer, he looked at me, puzzled, then turned back to my parents. My father took him by the arm and led him to the side.

"We lost our oldest daughter in a car accident about a year ago," he said. "Some high school kid, texting on her phone while driving."

I folded my arms. They did not believe, no matter how many times I told them, that Sissy was here.

Or, at least, had been here.

Momma sent me upstairs, and as I left I heard the police talking about evidence they'd found in the landlord's house, and that maybe the family of the previous tenants hadn't been killed by the missing father, who'd never been found.

But I already knew that.

I went into my room and stared at the closet. There weren't any more strange noises late at night from behind its thick wooden door. You could feel the absence of whatever had been living there, and the absence of my sister as well. Though there were times, late at night, when I would get out of bed and lie next to the sill, listening to the faint voice of my sister from the far side, the words too soft and low to understand.

Then years later, as I grew older, not even that.