The Closet Man

Illustrated by Stephen Taylor

“I hate you!” Ollie screamed, “I hate you and wish you were dead!” 

His chair was on its side against the cracked linoleum floor. He was covered in orange juice, and glared at his sister, Emma. She returned his gaze, but with an amused expression, a brief smug look of victory only he could see. Her expression only fueled his rage. As it happens, his mother didn’t even notice Emma’s devious smirk. She was distracted by the fallen chair and Ollie’s outburst. To make matters worse, Emma gasped with feigned astonishment. Her clumsy bad little brother made a mess and threw a tantrum about it. 

“Bed. Now.” Mother’s voice was not angry but stern. 

Ollie looked pleadingly at his mother, but her face was stone, a statue of resignation that would tolerate no argument. Her arm shot up, face still, index finger pointing up the stairs. 

“It’s not fair,” Ollie pouted. 

He stomped his little feet up the stairs, his socks padded softly on the mismatched carpet, dampening his indignation. His little heart pounded against his ribs and in a resentment-fueled huff, using the full weight of his whole body, such as it was being a 6-year-old, twirled dramatically as he slammed his bedroom door. He then flopped himself onto his bed and cried angrily at his mean sister’s manipulations and his mean mom’s susceptibility to them. Most frustrating is that he didn’t have the words to express his feelings. So they came out in tears. Why did Mommy always have to take Emma’s side? 

After a few minutes. Ollie relaxed and felt himself drifting off to sleep when the floor of the hallway just on the other side of his bedroom door groaned under someone’s weight. The light under the door broke, hinges creaked and the door slowly revealed a dark silhouette in the opening. It was Emma, her face shadowed against the stark light of the hallway. She stood silently for a moment. Ollie pretended he was sleeping, but watched her between his eyelashes.  

“Mom’s still mad, you know,” Emma whispered, her voice cold and heavy. “You know what happens when you go to bed with your mom still mad at you?” 

“Go away,” Ollie hissed, shoving his face into his pillow with a fit. 

“The Closet Man comes for you.” 

“Leave me alone!” Olli screamed shrilly into his pillow so Emma could hear his anger, but mother wouldn’t. He didn’t need to be getting into any more trouble, after all. 

Soft feet thumped closer to Olli’s bed. 

“That’s why mom always shuts the closet door.” Emma’s voice was a low conspiratorial thrum, “To keep him out.” 

Ollie looked at his sister now, her large brown eyes seemed both worried and mischievous at the same time. They were looking at the closed sliding closet doors. The closet didn’t appear any different to Ollie, but somehow looked menacing. Ollie held his breath. 

“He lives in the seams between your clothes. You know, like the coat you snagged on that nail yesterday? Oh wait, didn’t Mom say you ripped the seam? That makes an opening for the Closet Man to get out.” 

“There’s no such thing,” Ollie said meekly. 

Emma leaned closer to Olli now, her eyes wide and unblinking. 

“He doesn’t have a face of his own. He needs yours. He steals your face and with it your soul. He can’t get out unless Mom doesn’t scare him away. That’s why the Closet Man loves when you make Mom mad.” Emma’s voice was taunting now. “If you ever hear thumping in the night, you know he’s there. You better pull your hood tight so he doesn't see you, or else….” 

Emma slowly walked toward his closet door, grabbed the handle and pulled. The skidding panel scraped along the floor and once the closet was completely open, she casually let go of the handle. 

“Goodnight baby brother,” Emma said as she closed his bedroom door behind her, leaving him in almost complete darkness.  

Ollie looked at a dark cavity that used to be his closet. It pulled on him. Was that a pile of dirty laundry, or a crouching beast? Those black empty eyes were just the plastic of stuffed animals and action figures, that’s all. Except those dark plastic eyes, still peered at him, lifeless and unblinking. 

Skittering broke the silence. Or was that laughter? His eyes fixated on the depths. Something moved.  

Ollie leapt out of bed, rushed to the door, and as he pulled it closed his sock slipped on the wood floor. He felt himself tumbling into the depths of his closet. He didn’t stop though, he continued tumbling, as though he was rolling down a large hill. It was completely dark as he fell, his screams muffled in thick fabric. Then at last, he stopped.

Stillness. 

A moist cold air wrapped around Ollie and eels of translucent mist weaved through frigid air smelling of damp mushrooms and rotting leaves. He pulled on his hooded jacket, the one with the tear, it had fallen alongside him when he tried to close the door. He looked behind him. It was gone. The door was gone. His entire bedroom was gone! 

“Mom?” Ollie said, his voice muffled in the thick air. 

He rose and walked into the mist, looking frantically for any signs of familiarity.  

“Emma?” He tried. 

No one responded.  

Ollie didn’t know which way to go, so he went straight ahead. The world turned gray as the mist grew dense. Everything was silent. As Ollie pressed on gray distorted shapes began taking shape in the mist. They looked like skeletal hands reaching for the heavens. Ollie didn’t want to continue, but he didn’t know what else to do. Every direction was scary. 

The hands turned into jagged arms of naked tree branches. They threatened to grab him, but he leaned away, and they never touched him. Still they reached. The trees loomed larger the longer he walked, growing taller and taller, looming over him like slow-paced snares. They grew so tall and narrow that they started leaning inward, until they met in an overhead arch. Gray sky peeking between the trees like a tunnel made from the ribcage of a giant snake. 

 The silence broke. 

At first it sounded like the subtle rustling of dried leaves, but the sound wasn’t coming from the ground. It was coming from everywhere, bleeding out of the very bark of the menacing trees. They were guttural clicking hissing sounds like wet air bubbling from a punctured lung. 

“Hello?” The teary eyed Ollie called out.  

Silence once again filled the air, and Ollie continued walking, looking around, listening, barely breathing. 

A shrill cacophony of shrieks blared through the gray air. They weren’t screams of pain, they were calls. Like the baying of wolves on a hunt, and they were loudest right where Ollie walked.  

Shadows detached themselves from the scene. Fluttering wisps of carbonic flakes lurched from tree to tree, like awkward and broken, barely perceptible skeletal monkeys. They drifted toward him, close to the ground, moving with a jarring patternless grace. Red glowing eyes opened within the wisps of darkness, each giving off a distinct aroma of a recently extinguished match. The little red dots of eyes followed him, watching him as he hesitantly crept through the eerie forest. 

A tight tension pricked the nape of Ollie’s neck. He felt a shiver run down his body, and quickened his pace. 

You better pull your hood tight, The echo of Ollie’s sister rang in his mind. He heeded the warning and pulled his hood over his head. Then he ran. 

The voices grew louder, chasing him, nipping just at his heels. The air shifted behind him. Disembodied voices closed the gap. The haunting voices broke through the gloom in those same gurgling, grating gasps. 

Fumbling, panicking fingers pulled on drawstrings, tightening Ollie's hood, desperately trying to hide himself from the monsters in the gray. He saw the world now through a narrow porthole, just enough to keep on the path. His little hands gripped the drawstrings protectively lest he be revealed by accident.  

If he can’t see me, he can't hurt me. If he can’t see me, he can't hurt me. Ollie chanted in his mind. 

The tunnels stretched and warped. Trees grew closer together. Red eyes peered more frequently. Shadows stretched and darted. Skeletal fingers brushed across the fabric of his coat. Then they stopped. 

Ollied looked around. Red eyes still peered, trees still loomed. The shadows didn't dart though and the guttural bleating had stopped. There was a sudden stillness in the air. It was an eerie waiting stillness, an anticipatory stillness. Like a paramedic awaiting the heartbeat of a corpse. 

Thump. Thump. Thump. 

Heavy footfalls shook the earth from beneath Ollie's feet. The vibrations coursed through him from bottom to top and for a brief moment he was unable to move. 

Ollie ran. He ran until his breaths came in gasping wheezing gulps, until his lungs felt like they were filled with acid. The darkness of the tree-tunnel wrapped over him now, the gray giving way to a wall of black thorns. He tripped over an exposed root. 

His hands left the drawstrings to catch his fall, and his hood opened wide, exposing his face. Ollie scrambled forward, alternating hands from trying to crawl while trying to draw closed his hood. 

Thump. Thump. Thump. 

The footfalls were both casual and menacing, keeping up without effort but remaining just behind him. Just close enough to let him know he was in imminent danger. 

Ollie was tired now, his lungs hurt, his hands hurt, he was cold all over, and it was hard to move. He scrambled to a nook below a fallen giant tree and curled up into a ball. He pulled on his strings to keep his hood closed, shivering and crying, but trying so desperately to remain silent. 

The thumping stopped. 

Ollie held his breath. It sounded like the footfalls were just beside the fallen tree. The air grew even colder. The sulfuric scent of matches was now overwhelmed by a caustic smell of stale ashtrays in an old dusty attic. 

The whine of large rusted hinges ground from behind Ollie’s tree. The creaking grew louder as though the hinges were fighting against an incredible weight. 

Ollie could feel something heavy and dry hovering inches from his face, a certain emptiness that seemed to drink the very life from his skin, leaving him cold and hollow as the shadows around him. He shivered. Uncontrollable shaking reverberated through his whole little body. He held his breath because even breathing could attract the Closet Man.

Rotten and strange warmth that somehow lacked heat washed over Ollie in a wave of nausea. It was the Closet Man’s breath. Though his breath lacked any sense of normal inhalation, like it wasn’t drawn from a nose or mouth, but instead emanated from him like the poisonous air of a long forgotten tomb. The dull tobacco-stained staleness of breath made Ollie’s stomach hurt. He tried not to gag, not to throw up.

A wheezing, papery sound hissed from right beside Ollie’s head. 

“Found You,” it whispered. 

Ollie screamed as he bolted away from his hiding spot. He didn’t look up, didn’t look back. He ran with a renewed vigor fueled by unmitigated fear. Tears flowed freely down his face, his vision blurred, and still he ran.  

Blinded by tears, blinded by fear, Ollie darted down the tunnel. Darkness of tears and tunnels, trees and demons merged into a singular suffocating void. Long spindly fingers caressed at his back, just close enough for him to feel their talon-like nails on the little hairs rising on the nape of his neck. 

“NO!” Ollie shrieked, throwing himself bodily away from the spiderleg hands. 

Suddenly and violently a shift in pressure crashed into Ollie. The smell of pine oil slapped him like a physical blow.  He tumbled out of his closet into his well lit bedroom, and scrambled away from the opening, kicking at the door to slide it shut.  

He sat still, gasping, waiting for the Closet Man to emerge. The door remained closed. 

From out in the hallway, Ollie could hear voices. Adult voices. They weren’t his mother’s voice. Maybe creatures from the tunnel came into his house. They were commanding and stern these voices, and they were approaching his bedroom.  

Ollie scrambled under his bed, where he found a fork left over from a midnight snack. He gripped onto the fork as though it were the difference between life and death. Then he pressed himself as far against the wall as he could.  

He watched his bedroom door open and six feet thudded into his room.  

“Ollie, are you in here?” The voice was a man’s voice, a stranger's voice.  

“Ollie?” His mother’s face appeared in the crack of his bed.

Ollie cried as he scrambled toward his mother. The warmth of the world flooded back into him as his mother embraced him in a tight hug.  

“Where have you been?” Mother asked. 

“He couldn’t have been under there the whole time,” one of the men said. “I looked under the bed twice.” 

The men wore black police uniforms.  

“Where have you been?” Mother asked again, “You’ve been missing for hours.” 

“He smells like he’s been at a camp fire,” the other officer said as he examined the scratched and torn fabric of Ollie’s coat. 

Ollie tried to explain what had happened, but the police and Mother didn’t believe him. They searched the closet and found no holes or tunnels or anything of the sort. There was no physical way for Ollie to have gone running around in the woods. Although they couldn’t explain the dirt cakes on Ollie's socks, or the scrapes covering his jacket. Nor could they explain the sulphur smells.

“The only explanation is somehow he went through his window, tramped through the woods and returned, closing the window behind him,” The younger officer said.

“He’s six,” Mother returned.

The officer, wide eyed, shook his head and put his arms up in exasperation. 

“Nevertheless, there’s nothing really else we can do here, ma'am," The elder, mustached, officer said in a very deep and gravelly voice. “We are glad he’s home safe. Don't hesitate to call us if there's anything else you need.” 

And just like that the officers were gone and Mother drew a bath for her dirty little boy. 

“Did the Closet Man take you through the window?” Mother asked as she scrubbed the mud from his feet.

“He never really got me. He just chased me.”

“He was feeding,” Emma said from the doorway.

“Why aren't you in bed?” Mother demanded. 

“You guys were making too much noise,” Emma replied. “I couldn't sleep.”

“Well, go to bed. I’ll be in, in a sec to tuck you in okay?” Mother said with a comforting smile. 

“Gunnight,” Emma said. Then to Ollie, “Keep your hood up, little brother.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mother shook her head and chuckled. 

Ollie didn’t say anything. 

Mother let Ollie sleep in her bed that night, where it was safe.  As he lay in bed he thought about his experience. He thought about how big the Closet Man was, how long his legs were. He wondered why he wasn't able to catch him. 

He was feeding 

The words lingered in the little boy’s mind, the memory of his fear in that forested tunnel crushed him with the thought. He recalled the spindly hand reaching for his shoulder but never quite catching him, the red eyes that followed him but never emerged from the shadows. Everything was just out of sight, and he was just a little boy. It occurred to Ollie then, that the Closet Man didn’t want to catch him at all. The Closet Man wasn’t a predator, he was a farmer, and his crop was Ollie's fear. He watched the closet door closely while listening to his mother’s slow even breaths. 

“I’ll be waiting,” The closet whispered.