This is the story of what happened to me –well, and to my older siblings Susan and Peter as well- years ago, when I was a child, inside the closet.
They had been forcing me to play hide and seek again.
I hated hide and seek, because that was when the really vicious side of Peter and Susan’s bullying came out. They made a point of jump-scaring me and reaching out from their hiding places and grabbing and pinching me. I had told Mom about it, and she told me to stop being a snitch and a wuss, and be grateful that my older siblings wanted to play with me at all.
However, Mom wasn’t with us when that particular game was going on. As the pandemic raged on in the big city, we had been sent to live in the country with a relative, whom we called Auntie. I am not even sure, thinking back to it, if she really was a relative or not. Ed, my second brother, was immunocompromised, and we couldn’t risk staying in the city. Here, at Auntie’s place, the nearest neighbour was five acres away.
It was a small house. The boys had to bunk in the basement, and Susan and I were given the only spare room. I could write so many more nosleep stories just about what Susan said and did during those nights we had to share. But this is the one special story where I was able to get away from her.
Auntie was a “writer” and although part of the agreement with my parents was that she provide bare minimum homeschooling for us, she was remarkably unenthusiastic about it. We were left mostly to our own devices, running feral around the property. At least, Susan and Peter did. Ed was a nerd and mostly had his nose stuck in his laptop. And so I was left alone to deal with Peter and Susan. For some reason, they didn’t bother Ed much.
“Lucy! We’re coooooming!” hooted Susan “Ready or not” yelled Peter. Auntie was out for the day, which made them extra loud, and I desperately wanted them not to find me.
The house was still unfamiliar to me, and I couldn’t think of a good hiding place. Hide and seek in a new place is actually awful. I found myself standing outside Auntie’s bedroom door, and I went inside, my heart beating fast as I could hear the pounding of Susan and Peter’s feet on the stairs, coming up to this floor.
Auntie’s closet was an obvious place to hide, and as the sound of their feet grew closer, I realised I had no other choice. I pulled open the closet-door and slipped in among the musty-smelling dresses and scarves hanging in there. I held the closet door close but I was very careful not to fully shut it, as I knew how foolish it would be shut myself inside a closet.
And yet the hanging dresses and scarves, which felt luxuriously silky seemed to draw me into the closet. I took a small step further in, my other hand reaching out to feel the back of the closet.
The bedroom door opened and I heard Susan cackling “Lucy, you stupid bitch, you might have tried. You’re in the closet, aren’t you?”
I took a step back deeper into the closet, still not touching the back. Wow this must be an enormous closet. “You’re no fun Lucy!” I heard Peter say in a low threatening voice, far more menacing than Susan’s shrill cackles. “You have to do better than this.”
I let go of the closet door and took a couple of more steps inside the closet.
A cold draft swept around me, and a soft white light was shining in the wrong direction.
Although I was confused, I was more scared of what was waiting outside the closet for me than whatever was happening inside. I stepped deliberately towards the light.
“We’re coming to get you Luuuuucy!” they both sang, and the closet door began slowly opening.
I felt something cold and crunchy beneath my feet, and with two more steps, I was standing in a snow-covered forest of dark evergreens. A creature with a friendly smile and kind brown eyes stopped and looked at me curiously. “Are you lost, Daughter of Eve?”
I looked back over my shoulder. I could make out the gleaming silky dresses and scarves through the branches. It looked like they were moving, wrapping themselves around Susan and Peter- and I could see their arms and legs flailing around. Almost- as if the dresses and scarves were attacking them. She could hear the sounds of them shrieking, but I couldn’t tell if it was from pain or anger. The snow-covered trees muffled the sound.
My feet were getting wet. I blinked. I glimpsed a bright red sequined scarf wrap itself around Susan’s neck and pull, her eyes bulged horribly and her fingers scrabbled at the scarf. A shiny black dress lay on Peter’s back, the sleeves wrapping around his arms and pulling them backward sharply, his mouth was open and he was screaming, but the noise was becoming fainter and fainter, and the snow-covered branches were moving, obscuring the scene.
I shook my head, I didn’t want to watch anymore. I turned towards the creature, who was still waiting politely for my response.
“I…I’m not lost” I stuttered. And then I couldn’t help bursting out “But I am starving! Peter took my breakfast. And my feet are soaked.”
“Oh dear,” said the creature. “That won’t do, will it. Come with me, I have absolutely tons of the yummiest brunch you could imagine, strawberries and waffles and loads of maple syrup, and we’ll have a lovely time together. And I can get you fresh dry socks and boots- I don’t believe your feet are that much smaller than mine. And then I’ll bring you back right here, so you can go home.” It held out its furry paw to me.
I reached out, took its paw, and smiled at the kind creature. “Ok! Let’s go.”
And we trotted off together, under the snowy trees, chatting away like old friends.