For the last 7 years, I’ve had a monster in my closet. I’ve never seen its face, but I know it has sickly pale hands with dirt underneath its long chipped fingernails. For a while that was the only information I had on the being, as I would wake up some nights to see its long slender arm reaching for my nightstand. There wasn’t much on there at the time, just my lamp, whatever Harry Potter book I was reading at the time, maybe a glass of water or a bag of chips. I remember one night hearing a clatter, my eyes shooting open fast enough to see the hand slinking back into the closet and seeing my water glass shattered on the floor. I thought it was a dream, waking up the next morning to see no glass shards on the floor. There was no glass on my nightstand either, so I was convinced I made the whole thing up until I stepped in a huge puddle of water next to my bed. I moved my nightstand to the other side of my bed that day.
That was when I was 11. I’m 18 now, and for the past 7 years I’ve had many sightings of the monster. There was even one night I saw it out of the closet. I’m guessing it was very early in the morning, the sun peeking through my shades. It was walking around my room, looking at the photos on my desk and the drawings in my sketchbook. It’s not super tall, maybe only 5’3 in height, but it was really skinny. It had long dark hair, going past its thighs and it was very greasy. I think it heard me wake up though, as I was only looking at it for a few seconds before it silently crept out of my room.
I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t I tell my parents. Well at first, I did. After the first incident with the water glass, I asked my mom if she cleaned up the glass shards next to my bed. She was confused, so I told her what I saw, and she just chalked it up to a combination of me dreaming and knocking it over accidentally. While that didn’t explain the missing glass, I figured I wasn’t going to get very far with her.
When I asked my step-dad to move my nightstand later that day, he asked me why. I told him the same thing I told my mother, saying that it was something that was living in my closet. My step-dad chuckled, telling me I needed to stop watching so many horror movies.
He was right, for an 11 year old I was very well versed in the genre of horror. Maybe that was why I wasn’t all that scared every time I saw or heard the monster. After the first two years, I kind of got used to sharing my room with the monster. And it wasn’t always there, it really only showed up during the winter months. When I was younger, I used to think that whatever monster realm it spawned from had a really nasty winter and it came to my closet to get warm. At the time, I didn’t realize how close to the truth I actually was.
Before I get to today’s events, I should mention one more thing about the monster. I wouldn’t really interact with it directly, it wouldn’t ever touch me or speak to me, but there was one time where it contacted me.
This was when I was 15, I had just moved my nightstand to the other side of my bed so it was closer to the outlet where I would charge my phone. Consequently, it was also next to the closet again, and I thought about what had happened that night with the water. The monster was clearly just trying to get something to drink, even being nice enough to partially clean their mess up. In a moment of quick thinking, I grabbed a plastic water bottle and a sleeve of Ritz crackers from the kitchen and left them on my nightstand.
I fell asleep rather quickly that night, and to my surprise I didn’t wake up once. When I did wake up however, I glanced over to my nightstand. The plastic water bottle was gone, and the sleeve of Ritz crackers was mostly empty. Something else was different too, I noticed it as I began to pack my backpack for school that day. I grabbed my copy of The Shining that was sitting on my nightstand, and I noticed that there was a yellow smiley face sticker smack dab in the middle of the cover.
I guessed that was the monster’s way of saying “thanks”, but it never did anything like that again. It would just take the food and water that I would leave on there, disappearing as soon as it became the morning.
I’m leaving for college in a month, and I know that once I leave here, I’ll probably never see the monster again. What had been bothering me for weeks was the fact that the monster hadn’t left my closet once it became the summer like it usually did. It also hadn’t been drinking or eating much in the past month. One day when I was picking out a sweater, a pungent and repulsive smell filled my nose as I opened the closet. I found the source of it, my new favorite sweatshirt now with a huge stain on the front of it. I blamed it on the dog and put it in the laundry room, but I knew something was changing with this monster.
Today I did something that I wasn’t ever planning on doing, and I confronted it. I left out my usual snack and water and lied awake, waiting until I heard the knob turn and the door creak open. As I watched the monster’s arm fumble around in the darkness to grab the bowl of grapes I left for it, I quickly leapt up and swung the door open all the way.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. Was I expecting to see nothing but my clothes, the monster being a figment of my imagination the whole time? Or maybe a ghastly figure with devilish red eyes and a large mouth full of jagged teeth. Either way, I wasn’t expecting to be faced with something that was more frightened of me than I was scared of it.
Looking up at me, crouched on my pile of crewneck sweatshirts, was what looked like a young woman, a few years older than me presumably. Her hazel eyes were bloodshot with large purple bags beneath them and her face was sunken in. Her lips were chapped and I saw a full set of yellow teeth behind them. Her skin was pale, as I already knew, and her long hair was more of a dark brown, very knotted and tangled.
Almost instantly she tried to shut the closet again, but I was clearly stronger than her and kept it open. Her eyes darted from me to my bedroom door, seeming to be weighing the options of running for it.
“What are you?” I questioned, my voice coming out shaky because honestly I couldn’t believe what was happening. Almost immediately after I asked the question I knew I shouldn’t have worded it like that, she was a “who”, not a “what”.
She began to tear up, and whispered, “Please don’t tell anyone,”. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but for some reason I felt that I had the upper hand on this monster who I had been wary of for the past few years.
I asked my question again, saying “who” this time, and blocking her exit until I would get an answer. She reached into the pocket of the tattered gray sweatpants she was wearing and handed me a piece of paper folded into quarters.
I unfolded it, and what I saw had me dumbfounded. It depicted my mother and her late ex-husband, but much younger, taking what looked like a family photo, but it wasn’t with me. It was with a young girl who had a wide smile on her face, her hazel eyes complimented nicely with her burgundy dress. Her dark brown hair was in a nice braid with a bow on the end. I looked up at the woman sitting in my closet, the eyes exactly the same as the girl in the photo.
“My name is Emily, that’s me with my parents. Your mother,” she pointed over to my desk, where there was a photo of my mother and I at my most recent art show. I looked at the woman with confusion, as my mom never mentioned having another daughter.
“Something happened to my dad, t-there was an argument or something. I heard a lot of shouting,” Emily was looking at me with her eyes wide, “I was supposed to be sleeping over my neighbor’s but I got homesick. I let myself in, and then I saw…” she trailed off, beginning to choke up, “I saw my dad, he was on the ground, a-and there was so much blood!” Emily started sobbing, and in her eyes I could see that she was reliving the moment as if it had just happened.
I didn’t want to believe her. The woman in her story, her mom, my mom? It couldn’t be my mom, she was a normal mom, a boring mom!
“I screamed, and then I just ran. I kept running, I don’t even remember where I ended up. All I know is that my mom heard me, and she ran after me for a while. But I never went back, I didn’t want to think about it. Until I learned about you.” She looked up at me, tears still in her eyes. She reached deeper into her pocket and pulled out a newspaper clipping, faded but the picture was still somewhat visible. I recognized it immediately, it was me and my mom when I won my first award for my work. I was only 7 years old, so the Times had done a big story on it.
“You tracked me down?” I asked Emily, becoming more and more concerned with how sane she truly was.
Emily nodded. “I originally wanted to warn you, but one day I saw how she interacted with you, and it was like she was a completely different person, I couldn’t just rip you away from a mom that loved you,” her eyes narrowed, “but I had found her, I had to make sure she was different. I was only planning on staying in your shed for a few nights, but it just got so cold–” the both of us stopped, we both heard the same thing.
The sound of footsteps coming downstairs, coming down to my room. Emily’s eyes widened, whispering “it’s her!” She quickly retreated back into the closet, something I had assumed she’d done hundreds of times over.
The footsteps stopped in front of my door and I heard a soft tapping. “Honey? Are you awake?”
I froze, managing to croak out a “yeah” before quickly moving away from the closet. The door slowly opened and my mom peeked her head in, a soft smile on her face.
“What are you doing up hon, it’s late?” she inquired, turning the lamp on beside my door. I wished she hadn’t done that, because as soon as she did, her eyes darted down to my right hand, which was still clutching the family photo of Emily.
I’m not sure what emotion passed over her face for a fleeting second, whether it was worry or something more sinister, but it only happened for a moment. “I thought I heard voices…you shouldn’t be up watching shows this late.” She looked over at my computer, something I’m usually binging The Office on, but it was closed and plugged in for the night.
She looked back at me as I quickly shoved the photo and the newspaper clipping in my pocket, and her smile dropped. “Go to sleep sweetie.” She turned off the lamp and shut the door, and I heard the sound of her footsteps walking away from my room.
But she didn’t go back upstairs. It’s like she was just standing at the end of the hallway, like she was waiting for something.
I didn’t open the closet again, I don’t know what to do. I came on here wondering if anyone has any advice, the monster in my closet is apparently my half-sister and I still have a month left in this house with my mother, someone who’s been lying to me and my step father my whole life.
What on Earth am I supposed to do?