The Closet
By Vera Searles
One door in the old house couldn’t be opened. Addie Lemmon was determined to find out the secret of what lurked there . . .
Addie Lemon inherited the house on Main Street from a distant relative whom she remembered from her childhood only as Cousin Elwood.
“What’d he leave it to me for?” she snapped at the man who said he was Elwood’s lawyer.
“He had no family. You’re his only kin,” Mr. Davis replied.
“Something wrong with it then? Mortgage due? Back taxes?”
“No, there are no debts,” the lawyer assured her.
“Falling down? Needs a new roof or a furnace?”
“No, Miss Lemon. It’s an old house, but very well kept.”
“I bet,” said Addie. “Plaster’ll come crashing down on me while I’m asleep.”
Mr. Davis sighed. “Would you like me to drive you into town to see it, Miss Lemon?”
“All right. But I’m not giving up this apartment till I know there ain’t no catch to it.”
Addie Lemon’s ferret gaze twitched about the kitchen. She turned on both faucets in the sink, tried every burner on the stove, as well as the oven, and peered long and hard into the inside of the refrigerator.
Upstairs were two bedrooms and a bath. Addie turned on the shower, hot and cold, and flushed the toilet twice. In the hallway she lifted the rug to check for roaches and banged her fist on the wall to test for soundness.
Mr. Davis handed her a folder. “Here’s the inspection certificate, Miss Lemon, from a certified county inspector.”
“Tiddlywinks,” Addie said. “Where’s the basement? I want to see the furnace.”
Satisfied that it was large enough to heat the entire place, Addie Lemon accepted the fact that she owned the house on Main Street.
The night she moved in, she noticed a door in the upstairs hallway that she hadn’t seen before. “Must be a closet,” she said to herself. “For linens, maybe.” She twisted the knob, tugged, wrenched, wrung. The door wouldn’t budge. “I knew it,” she said. “Stuck. Have to hire somebody to pry it open. Well, I ain’t spending no money on that. Don’t need no linen closet. Plenty of dresser drawers here for my towels and stuff.”
Once she had her belongings arranged to her satisfaction, Addie went to bed. And in the middle of the night, was awakened by the noise. First, little tippy-tap sounds, then slightly louder: bunk, clunk, thump!
“I knew it,” she said, sitting up in the darkness. “Bad pipes. Got air in them. Well, they can bang all they want. I ain’t spending no money on no plumber.” And the noise stopped.
The following night, the sounds were different — almost like little feet — scritchy-scratchy feet, somewhere in the hallway, near the stuck closet door. Or behind it.
Mice? Rats? “I knew it! I’m not paying for no exterminator.” Addie got out of bed to go downstairs for the broom. And the little feet were silent.
She went back to bed, mad. She could feel her cheeks flushing. “Elwood, you old bugger, you left me a rat-infested, rusty-piped old shack.” She shook her fist at the ceiling. And from the hallway closet, heard a long, low growl.
Addie Lemon’s heart galloped up into her throat. A dog? Doberman? Pit Bull? She reached for the telephone to dial 911. And the growling ceased. For the first time in her life, Addie Lemon slept with the light on and the telephone nestled against her breast.
In the morning, she stood in her bedroom doorway, listening. There were no noises — not a clunk or a scratch or a growl. The house was still, but — something wasn’t right, somehow. Addie glared across the hall at the closet door. Hadn’t that been on the other side of the spare room doorway?
“Tiddlywinks,” Addie said. Closets couldn’t jump across a doorway or change position. It hadn’t moved, it was simply that she had been mistaken about its location. Nevertheless, for some reason, Addie Lemon inched her way along the wall on this side, to go take her shower.
“Mr. Davis? This is Addie Lemon. You didn’t tell me the house is haunted. I hear noises all the time. There’s bad pipes. There’s rats as big as dogs. Plus the linen closet door is stuck shut. I think you should pay for an exterminator, a plumber, and a carpenter to fix that door.”
“Miss Lemon, I’m terribly sorry you’ve been having problems, but I assure you that the house has never been haunted before. As the owner, you are fully responsible for the plumbing repairs and so forth, but I can give you the name of a reliable exterminator –”
Addie Lemon hung up.
When she went upstairs to bed that night, she took the broom, a mousetrap, and a large mallet she found in the basement.
It rained for three days. Addie wandered murkily around the house, knitting a few stitches on her afghan, then putting it down again; flipping through some pages of her Julia Child cookbook; watching a few minutes here and there of a game or a talk show. The sound of rain against her windows and on the roof drowned out the bad pipes and the mouse scritchings. Foggy whistles came from the attic, but she knew it was only the wind, blowing across the old, splintered beams.
The morning that it finally cleared, with the sun bursting into her room, Addie woke re-energized and re-spirited. There was furniture to be polished, an oven to be scrubbed clean, and a whole house to be vacuumed. “You old tiddlywink,” she told herself, “Get out of bed. March! There’s work to be done.”
Coming out of her bedroom, she expected to see the closet door on the opposite wall. It wasn’t there. Addie closed her eyes and shook her head to clear out the cobwebs of the past three days. There. She opened her eyes. In front of them was a solid wall, papered in the same posy pattern as the rest of the hallway. No door? No closet? Addie felt a giddy terror that her mind was wilting. And then, from the farthest corner of her eye, she noticed a doorknob on this side of the hallway, next to her room. She stepped out and glowered at it. “No. You don’t belong on this side. You jumped again? Why?” Perhaps it was a different door — a different closet, one that she hadn’t noticed before. Haltingly, she reached out and tried the knob. It wouldn’t turn.
She pulled and tugged and grunted, but the door was stuck. Well, that settled it. The closet had been over on this side of the hallway all along. She had forgotten its location, that was all. A faint whisper of Alzheimer’s blew into her mind, but she quickly annihilated it. “Tiddlywinks! Idle hands is all. Rain and fog and no sun to keep a person alert. Well, today, sun’s out bright. March, you old tiddlywink!”
After a day of vicious activity, Addie Lemon was ready for bed. Drowsily she dragged her weary body up the stairs, past the closet door, and into her bedroom. She fell asleep immediately.
Scritch and scratch. Thump! Growl, gnash, snarl. Bump!
Rats? Doberman? Wolf? Moving around. Hurling itself against the wall.
Whatever it was, it was in the closet right next to her room, and sounded like it might smash through any minute. With her heart flopping wildly, she sat up and put on the lamp, reached for her mallet with one hand and grabbed the phone with the other. And the house was silent.
Dreamed it. She sighed heavily and went back to sleep.
The morning sun again dazzled her awake and into action. Horrid dream last night. What was it anyway? She couldn’t recall. Oh, well. Bed to be made, laundry to be done, casserole to be baked.
And that night, Addie stood in the hallway, looking at her bedroom door. She couldn’t remember closing it. She had never closed it before. She peered down at the doorknob. It looked just like the one on the closet door. The closet? Where was it? Had it jumped again? Then where was her bedroom? Tiddlywinks! Couldn’t jump. Must be this.
Her hand reached for the knob, turned it. The door squeaked free. Inside, it was pitch dark. Where was the light switch? Addie Lemon stepped across the threshold.
Thump! Growl, snarl! Something moved, with gnashings and wheezings that befouled the air. Wolf? Huge rat? In her bedroom? The nerve! It was bad enough to be nesting in her closet, but now it had invaded her private place. Enough! She would no longer put up with this brazen behavior. Her body aflame with rage, Addie kept feeling for the light switch. Not there.
The low growling came closer. Quickly slipping off one shoe, she lashed out with it. “Aargh!” she cried. Advancing, she swept her arm in wider and wider arcs in front of her. She connected with something that whimpered and scuttled away. “Aargh!” she yelled again and again, until she reached the other side of the room and almost tripped over her night table.
She fumbled for the lamp. On. No animal in the room. Addie went down on her hands and knees to peer beneath the bed. Nothing.
She took the mallet, the telephone, and both her shoes to bed with her. And in the morning, the closet door was back in its correct place across the hallway, slightly ajar. She looked in. On the floor were bits of fur, two small jagged teeth, and the tippy end of a hairy tail.
“Elwood?” she asked.
Addie Lemon closed the door tightly and went down for breakfast. And in the kitchen, heard, from behind the pantry door, a long, rattling hiss.
“The Closet” first appeared in Calliope for April 2000 and is reprinted here with the author’s permission.
Short fiction by Vera Searles appeared recently in Dark Energy, Lily, The Taj Mahal Review, and Black Satellite. Her fantasy novel — Tales of the Witchlings — will be available on Amazon soon.
