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Oct 30: There is Something In My Closet

By HognoseSnake (HognoseSnake on AO3, @SnakeHognose on twitter) CW: Gore, Choking There is Something in my closet.

I don’t know what It is, I just know that It’s there. Between the clothes and coats I never wear, there is Something watching me, waiting for me to go to sleep.

I’m curled up under the heavy quilt in the furthest corner of the room from It. I pushed my bed up against the corner of the room a few weeks after I first noticed It. Between me and the closet there is roughly eleven meters of space, plus the laundry hamper and the desk. It makes for some weird interior design, something people invariably comment on. I make up a lie about getting into Feng Shui and then they feel too British to correct me. All’s fair in love and war.

I won’t give It the satisfaction of an easy prey, though. I have taken the knife from the kitchen and put it in my side table drawer, my shoes are right by the bed where I would swing my feet out so I can make a quick escape. I am already clutching my keys in my shaking hand.

I have imagined it a thousand times – how I would hear the creaking of the closet door opening, quiet muffled footsteps over the hardwood floor. Before It can do anything, I’ll grab the knife and embed it deep in Its arm (I don’t know if It will bleed but It must hurt) and scramble from my room, tear down the stairs. It will lumber (or slither or gallop or flutter) after me, down out into the street, as I throw myself against the front door of Mrs. Belchum. Mrs. Belchum, who is quite old but likes me enough, keeps a shotgun by the front door, and will surely Kill the thing before it gets me. She used to be a policewoman, surely she’d not be caught off guard long enough for it to really do me any harm. And then It will be dead, and I will be safe in the knowledge that I’m not completely insane for having done any of this.

A foolproof plan. My heart is pounding in my chest just imagining the helter-skelter retreat in boxers and grandad’s old work-shirt. I’m ready for It. All It needs to do is pounce, is emerge as violently as It likes from the closet. I’ll be ready.

I rest my eyes, just for a moment.

--

In the bravery of the daylight, nursing an enormous mug of coffee, I open the closet. There’s nothing there. I knew there wouldn’t be. There’s nothing in my closet except the winter coats.

--

I don’t know when I first noticed It. A month ago, maybe more, maybe six weeks. My room had been orderly and the night had been dark, and just as I was closing the curtains I thought to myself, there is Something in my closet.

I laughed to myself a little. I’d been living alone for a few weeks by that point and had just stopped jumping at every little sound. The heating coming on, the fridge starting to hum, a car driving past. Living with Maria had made it easy to ignore them (there she is coming home, showering, talking to the fella she brought back from the bar, there she is making time with him, there he goes, that’s his bike peeling away), those random noises an older house makes. But now I was alone, and the settling noises seemed sinister, suddenly. This thing, this fear of the Thing in the closet was an extension of that paranoia. It happens to everyone.

I kept facing the window. Something in the primal part of my brain filled in the gaps – behind me, Something impossibly large was unfolding from the closet, shadowy, dripping. Huge teeth, the eyes of a predator turning on my back, emerging, stalking towards me. Hearing the incessant drumming of my heart, smelling the sweat pooling in my armpits. I could smell its rotten breath, could feel the hot humid snorting of its barely human nose. It was coming for me, it was behind me, in arm’s reach, ready to grab me, ready to-

I forced myself to turn around. The room, of course, was empty. The closet sat across from my bed, housing my winter coats and shirts that you weren’t supposed to fold.

There was nothing in it.

“There’s nothing in it,” I whispered. I crossed to stand in front of it, told myself to open and check if I was so scared. I stood and stared, my hand resting on the handle. I told myself to open and check if I was so scared. I couldn’t make my hand move. Open and check. There’s nothing in your closet.

It took me a long time to get to sleep that night.

--

I consider myself a rational person. I never believed in horoscopes, crystals, auras, any of that new age stuff.

A week later, I was burning sage throughout the house because a woman on the internet with long braids and dangly earrings told me to.

I felt stupid. There wasn’t anything in my closet.

--

It’s an old, nice thing. Made from oak or mahogany or something, one of those nice woods. It was big and heavy, it’d taken my dad and me an age to heave it up the stairs. There was plenty of space in it for all my clothes, and it’d only cost about £20 from the garage sale I’d bought it at.

The man selling it hadn’t said anything ominous. Just that he was moving south, that he couldn’t deal with the Northern winters anymore. I’d laughed and agreed that yes, the winters here are bitter, and wished him well.

Maybe if I’d looked over my shoulder I would have seen relief on the man’s face. Maybe something sinister that spoke to the true nature of the closet. Something that would allude to the Thing that now resided in it. At least a hint about what it was.

Or maybe he would have been deep in conversation with someone else. Maybe he never noticed It. Why would he? There’s nothing in the closet.

--

(There’s Something in the closet.)

--

I have checked the inside of the closet thoroughly. I swear there are big, gaping claw marks in the wood, enormous, bigger than a cat and bigger than a dog and bigger than a bear. I sent pictures of them to my mum. She just said that the woodgrain was nice. I ran my hand over them, searching for the indents the Thing must have made when pacing, when trying to get out, when It dug its claws in and left these marks.

There were none. The woodgrain was nice.

--

A few weeks after the initial thought, I had asked myself what I would do if the Thing in the closet did come for me after all. I told myself that I had made the whole thing up myself, and if it upset me so much I could make up an escape route. I laughed to myself, imagining the run down the stairs and out into the street, followed by a jerkily moving horror movie monster. Overstuffed costume, underfunded stop motion creature following me as I ran off down the street. Drool dripping from its maw, claws tearing up the asphalt as I ran to throw myself against Mr. Hartford – no, Mrs. Belchum, she had a gun – against Mrs. Belchum’s front door, followed by something from the nightmares of a madman. Throwing myself against her door before it grabbed me around my middle, its enormous claws cutting huge gashes into my thick flesh. Its long snout unhinging, a long wet tongue wrapping around my windpipe and compressing, compressing, compressing. Grabbing onto my leg with one of its hands and tugging until it came unstuck from my body, inch by bloodied inch, blood running down and staining Mrs. Belchum’s porch as she loaded her shotgun and aimed it at the creature’s sunken heart. I’d thud to the ground as the corpse of the thing behind me melted into the asphalt, gasping for breath amid the sounds of sirens, and maybe they’d save my leg or maybe they wouldn’t but at least there wouldn’t be anything in the closet any more, at least it’d be done. And then I’d sleep for a week.

I couldn’t do that barefoot, of course. Humouring myself, I started putting my running shoes by the bed, tripping over them every night when I went to sleep, tripping over them when I rolled groggily out of bed the next morning. It was a simple escape plan. Too simple. There was only about three feet of space between the bed and the closet. I moved it to the other corner, awkwardly near my window but far enough away from the Thing that I’d get an advantage. Halfway through the sweaty shoving, I stopped and laughed to myself at the absurdity of the endeavour. Felt the gaze of the closet on my back. Kept pushing. Moved some furniture

After it was done, I stood and examined my work. It seemed absurd. There was nothing in the closet, and even if there was, it wasn’t like I had a weapon in the room to defend myself with. All the obstacles in the room would only deter it so long.

I drew the line at keeping edged weapons in the bedroom. That seemed like the behaviour of someone scared of a monster in their closet.

The next day, after a restless night, after a night of waking up to watch the closet and make sure it wasn’t moving, I put the kitchen knife in my bedside drawer.

--

I tried leaving the doors open one night, just to see if it’d help. All I could think about was that I wouldn’t be able to hear It emerge.

--

I lie and I watch the closet. It must be four in the morning. I need to be awake in two and a half hours. I can’t get myself to fall asleep, as much as I try, and as heavy as my eyelids feel. I have tried music, podcasts, that pretentious meditation app. Nothing worked. Nobody told me what to do about the Thing in my closet.

Every time I shut my eyes, I see it in clear detail. The way the furry/slimy/scaley thing pushes itself out of the closet. Slowly, at first, just enough for me to know what’s coming without getting a clear glimpse of It. Just the moonlight glinting off a line of drool dropping to the ground. Then It would run at me, grab my hand, shove the bedside drawer shut so I can’t get the knife. Grab me by the throat and hold me high in the air, paying no heed to the kicking of my bare feet. It’d slowly lower me down into its huge hungry mouth, unhinging like a snake’s, swallowing my calves and biting right through my bones. The crunching of them as It chews, as my blood falls down onto It, onto the floor, staining the wood, the bedsheets, everything. As It took me apart limb by limb, meticulously, savagely, primally.

I need to pee. I reluctantly push myself up out of bed and pad slowly over towards the door.

As I pass by the closet, I swear my bare foot steps in a warm, thick puddle of something. I sprint for the light switch and slam it on, breathing heavily, pressing my back against the wall and looking frantically around the brightly lit room.

The closet is shut. I hold up the underside of my foot. It’s bone dry.

--

I considered going to the police. I lingered outside the station for hours, trying to muster up the courage to go in, and look an officer in the eye, and say ‘there is Something in my closet’.

I went home.

--

I went to the library, a couple days after I had rearranged my room. I’d asked the librarian for any newspaper articles about the town, just to see if anyone else had known the Thing in the closet, and spent an afternoon. Looked for stories about unsolved murders, unexplained disappearances. The house was old, surely someone had met a grizzly death in it. Someone who died alone and terrified and wanted to make someone else know that same feeling. The ghost of a woman, maybe. Brutally killed and hidden in the closet. I checked for any mentions of my address, or the neighbour’s. I found nothing except a vaguely interesting anecdote about gardening. Someone had bread a new kind of pansy fifty seven years ago.

No monsters, no ghosts, no mysterious murders that had anything to do with my street. No a-ha moment was to be found in the bookshelves.

It was dark by the time I walked home. Maybe I should have been afraid. All I could think about was the Thing in the closet.

That was the first night I failed to sleep. I was too busy watching the doors.

--

Was that sock there when I went to sleep? Has that paper been moved? Have the clothes in the hamper been reshuffled? Was the chair facing the other way? Did I hang up the towel? Were my bedsheets arranged like this? Were the curtains moved? Did I leave the closet door ajar?

--

I contemplated moving it. I’d never be able to do it on my own, and what would I tell dad? There’s Something in this closet, dad, and I have no evidence except that I know It’s there, as sure as I know that the sky is blue and the sun is warm and that I have ten fingers and toes. The sun rises in the east, plants make food through photosynthesis, and there is Something in the closet. November follows October and heralds in the winter and there’s Something in the closet that wants me dead. Sandwiched between the winter coats and the mothballs is a creature, a predator, mouth dripping with drool and enormous powerful claws. How do I know it? I just know it. Move the closet for me, dad, I can’t sleep with it in the room.

I didn’t call dad. There’s nothing in the closet.

--

I haven’t slept in days. There’s something inside me that’s too caught up in the thought that I’ll miss the Thing emerging, like missing the start of a firefight. That after weeks of awful planning, after weeks of accounting for every contingency, I’d be caught off guard anyway. Every time I try, I hear the closet door creak open. The low growl of something radiates through my chest. I can practically feel the thing’s hot, rotting breath across my face. I can practically feel the dripping of its maw.

When I come face to face with It, it will be a relief. An end to the tenson, a confirmation that I was right this whole time, this whole fucking time. And as I feel Its teeth dig into my breast, and hot blood rush out onto the bedsheets, I will know I was right. As Its horrible eyes pin me in place, and It digs Its claws into my stomach and unspools my insides, I will know I was right. As I scream and scream and scream, and as It howls or gurgles or whatever it does, I will know I was right and my neighbours will know I was right too. I will die slowly and painfully, and I will be dissected piece by piece, swallowed and dissolved and turned to nothing, leaving nothing but blood splatters and a ghost story for children, but they will know I was right, that there was a Thing in the closet, and I knew, I had known, I had prepared but it hadn’t been enough, the Thing was too strong, too hungry, too tired of its mahogany chrysalis. But I had known. I had been right.

“I’m only going to say this once,” I say to the silence of the room. My voice is hoarse. “Do it, if you’re going to do it.”

It doesn’t respond.

“Come on,” I say a little louder, and the noise is a relief after weeks of breathless listening. “I’m tired of this game. I’m tired of the waiting. Do it.”

The closet stays silent, and so does the Thing inside it. I slam my hand against the side table, the sound snapping loudly in the quiet room.

“Do it!”

It won’t respond. There is nothing listening. There wasn’t ever anything there.

I put my head in my hands and cry fat, exhausted tears, and ignore the quiet creaking of the closet door opening.

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