Something woke me up. I still can’t remember if it was a noise that stirred me, or my brain’s unconscious recognition of a threat that willed me awake, but something woke me up.
I opened my eyes to the dim blue light of early morning starting to break through slats in my window shades. I realized with great relief it was still early and turned over in bed to check the time on the clock to calculate how much longer I’d get to sleep.
That’s when I saw it – the chair. The chair from my desk had somehow been moved across my room and was positioned at my bedside. It was facing me.
I turned my attention to my bedroom door to find it was still locked. Despite living alone I always sleep with my door locked; a consequence of spending years living with shitty roommates. Strange.
I rubbed my eyes, took a few gulps from the glass of water I kept on my nightstand and rose from bed, too curious now to return to sleep.
I moved to return the chair back across the room to its usual post, when I noticed a long grey hair stuck in the felt padding of the chair’s backrest.
Again, strange. The hair was longer than mine had ever been and I’m definitely not turning grey.
I spun the chair around and sat down in it to ponder the situation. Instantly, the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention.
The chair was warm. Someone had been sitting here while I slept. For how long? I wasn’t sure, but I was sure enough that they had stood up just before I had woken up. It was probably them that had woken me up in the first place. For all I know, they could still be in the room with me.
My imagination cranked into overdrive and suddenly I was drowning in a wave of terror that I hadn’t felt since I was a child. My breathing became shallow and my eyes darted back and forth across my room looking for the most obvious hiding places.
There were only two hiding spaces that made sense, inside my closet and under my bed.
I pulled my feet up close to my chest suddenly hyper aware of how close they were to my bed skirt and how easily a grey-haired boogeyman would be able to reach out and touch me.
I stood from the chair and put my back against my locked bedroom door and looked around for a weapon. The best I could come up with was a letter opener from my desk. I retrieved it and returned to my post against the bedroom door turning on the bedroom lights in the process.
I breathed deep, trying to summon my courage, then quickly bent down and lifted the bed skirt as I screamed a battle cry.
Nothing.
I cast a glance over to the closet and felt the acid rise in my stomach. It was the only hiding place left. I slowly made my way across the room, my heartbeat racing faster with each step. The letter opener was held in front of me and I grasped it with both hands to keep from shaking.
Eventually, I reached the door and closed my hand around the knob. I raised the letter opener above my head in preparation to attack whatever I would find on the other side of the door. I steeled myself and quickly ripped the door open.
Nothing, again.
I relaxed, but not fully. I performed a full sweep of my house, replacing the letter opener with a knife when I reached the kitchen.
Nothing.
Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe I had sleepwalked and moved the chair myself? Maybe I had brought the grey hair in myself? It could have easily gotten stuck to my back on the crowded bus or train. But why was the chair still warm and what was it that caused me to wake so suddenly?
I couldn’t let it bother me, so I moved on. I spent my Saturday running errands cleaning the house and vacuuming my bedroom.
The next morning, again, I woke up suddenly, pulled from sleep by something I couldn’t quite put a finger on.
Once more the chair had moved. It stood in the same place I found it the morning before – at my bedside, facing me.
Immediately I start scanning the room for clues as to what might be happening when I notice something off with my bed itself.
I sleep in a king-sized bed. It’s huge. Way too big for a single, average-sized woman like myself, but its one of the few luxuries I allow myself. The bed is so massive, I only ever occupy a small corner of it. I don’t even pull the covers back on that side.
What I noticed was the covers on the side of the bed I don’t sleep on had been pulled back, and not only that, but they were ruffled and slightly dirty with small brown specks dotting my white sheets here and there. I reached my hand over and tried to wipe the brown specks away with no luck. Whatever they were now stained my sheets and pillow case.
While attempting to brush the brown specks away my hand encountered something else. Another long, grey hair.
My blood ran cold again as I shot a worried glance at my door – it was still locked. Was someone creeping in here at night? How?
I got up from bed and immediately noticed another clue.
I had vacuumed the night before and as a result someone had left clearly defined footprints in my carpet.
I could see the path I took from my bedroom door, to my dresser, then to my bed, but I could also see another set of footprints.
A larger set of tracks led from my closet door, to my desk where whoever it was picked up my desk chair. The tracks then led from the desk to where the chair was deposited at my bedside. The tracks then led around to the other side of my bed where it looked like whoever it was climbed in bed with me.
My heart sank and a feeling of complete helplessness came over me. I hoped I was overreacting. I hoped that I was hallucinating or sleepwalking or something. “Even if I was sleepwalking, these tracks are way too big” I thought briefly before I pushed the thought out of my mind.
The tracks then moved from my bed and led back to the closet.
I called the police.
They found nothing. The closet somehow was empty which made the police understandably angry with me. They lectured me about wasting police resources then told me to ‘stop watching so many scary movies’ and chalked the whole experience up to an overactive imagination.
I was terrified.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I laid in bed and stared at my closet, wincing as my imagination twisted the shadows into the shapes of strange men.
I didn’t sleep the entire night, so I was wide awake when I heard the closet unlatch and slowly swing open.
In the darkness I couldn’t make out the details, but the shape of a man slowly slid out from the inky-black recess of the closet and made his way quietly across the room.
Paralyzed with fear I momentarily lost the ability to breathe as I watched the figure creep over to my desk, pick up the chair and bring it to my bedside.
I heard the man sit down on the chair just feet away from me blocking the path between me and the door.
I had two options. Fight, in which case I would probably get overpowered fairly quickly or I could pretend to be asleep. I made it through the past two nights unscathed. I had no reason to think this would be any different.
I tried to steady my worried breathing as I listened to the man’s own rhythmic breathing where he was seated at my back. Time seemed to slow as I waited for the man to leave. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours. I must have laid there for an hour listening to the man’s deep rhythmic breaths. Eventually, he stood up and I snapped my eyes closed and listened as his footsteps circled to the other side of the bed.
My mattress shook as the man crawled into bed next to me. Now, with him just inches from my face, I could smell him. A rank odor surrounded him like an invisible cloud. It was a nauseating blend of body odor, unwashed clothes, and the acrid tang of stale alcohol. The aroma was a combination of sour, rancid, and musk. I had to concentrate hard to stop from gagging or cringing my face in rejection.
Then it got worse. The man turned towards me and I could feel his hot breath pouring across my face in waves. His rancid breath stung at my nose. I was thankful my hands were both under my pillow to prevent them from shaking.
Once more, I waited like this. Never daring to move as wave after wave of rotten breath washed over me, then he touched me. His leg brushed against mine under the covers. It took everything in me not to pull away from him, to leap out of bed screaming.
The man must have turned his head at that point because his breath no longer blew into my face. I braced for whatever might come next, then the bed started to lightly shake in measured, rhythmic vibrations accompanied by a soft slapping sound. The man was masturbating.
I was so revolted by this I took a risk – I rolled over in my ‘sleep’ to face the side of the bed with the empty chair and the door beyond it. The man was no longer blocking my exit, I could leap out of bed and try and make my escape. I’d have a head start, especially if the man had his pants near his ankles. The lock on my door would slow me down, I’d have to flip the lock perfectly on the first try or I’d lose my head start. Also, I thought, maybe the man wasn’t wearing pants at all, maybe he was naked. Maybe my head started wouldn’t be as large as I had hoped. I shuddered.
Moments passed and I tried to build up my courage to make an escape when I felt a gentle tug. As if sensing my intentions, man had laid his hand on my hip and grabbed a hold of both the ratty t-shirt I slept in as well as my pajama bottoms. Goosebumps rippled across my entire body. He had me trapped.
So, I waited. I had no other choice and eventually, he finished.
The moment stretched into infinity. I listened as the man’s breathing became regular again, his grip relaxed on my hip, but he still held on. The mattress shook again and all of a sudden, the man’s thick, noxious breath fille my nose, he was leaning over me.
“Your room is almost ready,” he said into my in my ear with a breathy whisper, “Tomorrow, I’ll bring you home.”
My mouth immediately went dry and I broke into a cold sweat. The mattress shifted again as the man stood up. Another moment passed and I heard my closet door open then shut again. I realized then the closing of the closet door was what had been waking me up the past few days.
I laid motionless for quite some time, too afraid to turn over in case the closet door opening and closing was just a ruse to get me to stir from my fake slumber. I quieted my own breathing to listen more intently to the room around me, straining to pick up the sounds of a man breathing, or tip toeing or shifting his weight under his feet. Eventually, I felt confident he was no longer in the room with me and I got out of bed.
I slowly crept to the closet door and put my ear to it. I heard nothing. I wanted to call the police again, but I knew somehow the man was gone and another visit from the law would just open me up to ridicule. I opened my closet door and found nothing but my own clothes.
Whatever was going on, I would have to figure out on my own.
I started by taking all of my clothes out of the closet and searching every square inch of it for fake panels or a false back. Maybe I had bought a house that was riddled with fake passageways and I never knew. Unfortunately, I wasn’t so lucky - my search turned up nothing more than an empty closet.
I had a thought – what if there was a secret passage and the mechanism was triggered by the opening and closing of the door?
I stood inside the cramped space of the small closet and closed the door, entombing myself inside. I ran my hands across the walls and baseboards of the small space, but could feel nothing but the smooth dry wall I had expected. I was about to give up and open the door when an arm reached out from the space behind me and grabbed onto my right wrist.
I started to scream until a second hand emerged from the darkness around me and covered my mouth. Another hand grabbed my other wrist. More hands closed their grips around my ankles. More grabbed onto my shoulders and clothes, restraining me. All of them ice-cold to the touch, their grips were vice-like. I was completely restrained.
I tried to bite the hand that had covered my mouth only for two more hands to emerge from above me somehow and hold my jaw closed.
I started to feel dizzy, how was any of this possible? There must have been two dozen arms in the closet with me. I strained my eyes to see in the small amount of light that filtered under the closet door only to see something that made no sense – the arms were sticking out from the dry wall of the closet and moving around through it like it was liquid.
Two more hands emerged from the walls around me like two long tentacles from deep within the ocean of dry wall. They gently wrapped themselves around my eyes, blinding me. Again, I tried to scream only to have the hands around my mouth and jaw clasp tighter.
Then all at once, they retracted back into the walls.
I immediately reached for the door handle when I stopped. The dim light seeping through the crack in the door was no longer the faint white light of the morning – it was red. The pungent odors of bleach and vinegar stun my nostrils as I took in a very rapid, worried breaths. It was like I had been transported from my closet to a closet in fucking hell.
I took a few more sharp, deep breaths to steady myself and cracked the door open – it creaked on its hinges and I winced, fearful to alert anyone that might be in the room I was entering. I poked my head out and looked around the room that was bathed in red light. It was a darkroom for developing photos. Small polaroid-like photos covered the walls and hung from strings that crisscrossed the room above my head.
I looked at the set of photos that hung from a wire directly above my head. They were 5 photos of the same woman.
The first of the set appeared to have been taken from cover, maybe through the crack in a closet door, only a small portion of the woman was visible, but she was clearly asleep in bed.
The second photo was also of her sleeping, this time the vantage point was from the foot of her bed. She wore different pajamas from the first photo in the set.
The third photo was a close-up of the sleeping woman’s face, she was still asleep but nothing else was visible in the picture.
My heart raced upon seeing the fourth photo. The woman was awake in bed, her hands out in front of her in a defensive posture, a look of pure terror was splashed across her face.
My heart stopped when I saw the final picture. The woman’s face was gone. It was replaced with a gory mass of brain, blood and hair. A Hammer lay in the blood-soaked bed next to her lifeless body.
My blood ran cold as I scanned the room. There must have been close to 100 pictures in there. I saw a picture of myself hanging from a cord above the chemical bath where the photos were developed.
My head started to spin and I felt I might vomit. I placed my hand on a table to keep from falling over. I tried to take in more deep breaths to calm myself but the vapors of bleach and vinegar just made me dizzier.
The edges of my vision started to close in when a burst of adrenaline pulled me back from the edge. A loud crash thundered from the other room followed by a string of curses. I needed to leave. I quickly tip-toed back across the room and into the closet.
The hands emerged once again from the slick, cool dry wall surrounding me and restrained me. Their grip not as strong this time as I wasn’t fighting them. The final two hands settled into place over my eyes and the next second they were gone along with the red light and the noxious smell of chemicals. I was back in my closet.
Immediately I set to work. I found whatever useless junk I could find in my house and I filled that closet to the point of bursting. Old quilts, books, picture frames, a nutcracker, the two bags of trash I had neglected to take out to the curb. I filled that closet until I was confident a person wouldn’t be able to stand in there.
I didn’t know how this fucked-up black magic teleporter thing worked, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I found a hammer and nails and quickly nailed a few planks of wood across the door frame.
I wasn’t sure my solution would work 100%, but at the very least it should buy me some time to get out of the house.
I spent the rest of the day sitting in my bed staring at my closet. I’m not kidding, the entire day. From sun-up to sundown, I sat there. As much as I hated being in that room with the closet, I hated having it out of my sight even more.
That night, true to his word – he came back for me.
I was nodding off when I heard the contents of the closet shift. I sat in the darkness and watched the closet. It was quiet for a few moments, then I heard the junk inside shift again. I stood up and quietly made my way over to the door and listened. The junk inside shifted quietly once more and I took one more step towards the door and pressed my ear to it, which was a mistake.
The door wasn’t secure on its hinges and the pressure I put on the door made it give slightly. The noises from the closet stopped, then a voice spoke to me from behind the door, “You figured it out, huh?”
I took a step back from the door. The contents of the closest shifted much more violently now and the voice made no intention of keeping quiet, “I’m going to fucking kill you!”
The doorknob to the closet started to shake, then once the man realized he was trapped, he started to attack the closet door. The door rattled in its frame as the man, restrained by the massive amount of clutter, tried his hardest to beat the door down. BOOM BOOM BOOM!
I panicked. I didn’t plan this far ahead, other than just “Leave” but that wouldn’t do me any good when the man would just come back the next day or the day after that. I could call the police, but whatever he used the closet to disappear again? They would throw me in a psych ward.
I quickly formulated a plan, I just hoped I had enough time to pull it off.
I sprinted outside and pulled my garden hose out of my storage shed and carried it inside where I used a knife to cut off the end where metal ring connects to the spigot. I carried the hose into my bedroom where the man was still locked in battle with the door. A small hole had been punched through the upper left portion of the door. A hammer was flailing wildly against the door there. It appeared all of the junk in the closet had pinned his hammer-wielding hand up above his head and that was the only area where he could get a decent swing in.
I’d need to get that hammer to but some more time.
Wasting no time, I jumped for it, trying to time his swings with my attempt. My first attempt was horribly timed and the hammer smashed one of my fingers, badly breaking it. My second attempt was better. I grabbed hold of the hammer and pulled. The man screamed as he fought me, but with his arm stuck at such an awkward angle he wasn’t able to use his full strength and I pried it from his grasp.
With the loss of his weapon the man went into a blind rage. A primal scream ripped through the house and he started attacking the door even more violently.
I resumed my plan.
I took the now malleable end of the hose which I had cut the metal connector off and jammed it under the frame of the closet door, hyper aware of the mad man just inches away from me.
I stood up and rushed out of the room, unspooling the house as I went.
Thank God I had a small house because I had just enough length in the hose to make it to my destination – the garage.
I fed the other end of the garden hose into my car’s exhaust pipe, then took shitload of duct tape and quickly sealed it in, making it as airtight as possible.
Then I turned my car on and I ran out the front door.
I ran for miles without stopping.
I’m on a computer at the public library now, waiting for the man in my closet to suffocate. Praying that the man in my closet will suffocate.
I’m not sure how long to wait, or what to do. If he survived, I’m sure he’s either lying in wait for me or will come back to kill me some other night.
If he didn’t…then I just killed someone. What would I even do with the body? Throw it back in the closet and hope those creepy voodoo hands take him back home?
Any and all advice is appreciated.