Closet Treats

by Paul E. Cooley

  He wondered how soon Kinkaid would come into the room brandishing a sedative and kind words as they drugged him back into a dreamless stupor.

  Tony. That fucker. He'd-- Trey stopped grinding his teeth. The man. The man with the soiled clothes, the foul breath. A man. Just a man.

  "You have to ask permission," the man had said, his fists dangling near his waist, fingers twitching.

  Trey shivered. Permission. He felt something unlock in his mind. Something about Scooby-Doo. A grubby hand reaching out with a plastic lunch box, Scooby-Doo in the foreground, his tongue lolling happily from his mouth, the Mystery Machine in the background. Flashlights. Shaggy. Fred. Wilma. Daphne. The grubby hand was attached to a grubby man who smiled with all his crooked teeth.

  The looming giant offered the lunchbox. Scooby-Doo. Unafraid, laughing, Trey reached for the plastic container.

  The grubby man took a step backwards. "Come get it. Dontcha want it?"

  Still laughing, Trey scampered forward toward it. The man was playing keep away, the same game Daddy always played with him.

  Trey staggered forward from the lawn, heading toward the man. The grubby man opened the door to his car, his white car, and tossed the lunchbox inside. Trey scrambled into the car after the lunchbox, his small hands clutching it to his chest in victory. The door shut with a quiet chunk, the click of electric door locks following close behind.

  The driver side door closed, the giant now inside. The grubby man turned toward him. "I have more," he said softly. "I have more."

  Trey looked up into the man's green eyes. The man turned back to the steering wheel and started the car. Trey held the lunchbox, turning it over and over again. "It's yours," the man said.

  "Show it to Mommy?"

  With a laugh, the man looked at him from the rearview mirror. "We'll show Mommy all your goodies," the man said. "In just a little while." The smile on the face. That face. The long nose. The parched lips. The glittering green eyes.

  "Trey?" He flinched and looked up at the doorway. Kinkaid stood there, notebook in hand, a concerned expression on her face. "You here?"

  Trey opened his mouth and then closed it. He realized a tear had fallen from his eye. He wiped at it and groaned a little as the movement brought the pain in his arm back. He nodded to her and waved her in with his undamaged hand.

  She grabbed a chair and pulled it toward the bed. "Can you talk?" she asked.

  He nodded again.

  She pursed her lips. "Now you're just fucking with me," she whispered.

  A thin smile broke out on his face. "Yes and no," he said in a soft voice.

  "Thought that might make you smile."

  He nodded. "You always know how." He said. He paused for a moment, scanning her face. "Is that asshole okay?"

  "Who, Tony?" Trey nodded. She laughed. "You're not the first patient to deck him, Trey. Not at all." She tapped her pen on the notebook. "I'll bet you won't be the last either."

  Trey shook his head. "What the fuck did he do?"

  She shrugged. "You tell me. What did you see?"

  "I--" Trey closed his mouth again, teeth clicking shut. For a moment

  he tried to string the words together. "I saw him," was all he managed. Kinkaid said nothing. Her pen tapping had stopped, leaving the room silent except for the occasional footstep in the hall and muffled, distant conversation. Words flashed in Trey's mind. Permission. Want. Need. Trey shivered. "I saw the grubby man."

  "Who's the grubby man?"

  He stared at her. "I--" He stopped.

  She nodded to him. "How old were you, Trey?"

  "Four," he said. "I think I was four."

  Four years old. Mommy was on the phone. Trey wanted to play in the front yard. Holding his bright orange Tonka truck under one arm, he swiveled the dead bolt on the door just like he'd seen Mommy and Daddy do so many times in the past. It clicked and he stepped out of the house.

  The smell of the neighbor's freshly mown grass. Trey sat halfway down the lawn, his orange truck rolling over the bright green blades of grass. The sun was rising higher in the sky, the summer morning already warm and muggy. But Trey's truck didn't mind, so Trey didn't either. The sound of a car stopping in front of the curb with a soft squeal of its brakes.

  "Can you tell me what happened?" Kinkaid asked.

  Trey nodded. "I was playing in the front yard. The grubby man--" He paused, staring down at the table. "The grubby man tricked me into his car."

  Kinkaid opened the notebook. She grabbed the edge of a sticky note jutting out and pulled the notebook open to the page. "Can you tell me what happened?" she asked again.

  The drive. The long drive. Trey played with the lunchbox. Something inside rattled as he shook it. Smiling, he asked the grubby man what it was.

  "Open it and find out," the grubby man said.

  Frustration faded into glee as the plastic snaps finally gave under his tiny fingers. The lunchbox lid flipped open. Trey laughed. A Scooby-Doo sippy cup stared back at him, the dog's face screwed up in an expression of fear, a shambling mummy running behind him. He grasped the cup and shook it, listening to the liquid sloshing inside. "What's in it?" he asked the man.

  "Something good," the man said and smiled at him from the rearview mirror.

  Trey laughed and swiveled off the top. He smelled it. Cherry Kool- aid. "I like Kool-aid," Trey muttered and drank.

  "Good boy," the man said from the front seat. Trey put the cap back on the cup and turned toward the front. "But," he said with a snarl, "you didn't ask permission, you little shit."

  Kinkaid leaned in toward him. "The man drugged you?"

  "I fell asleep," Trey whispered. Another tear sprang to the corner of his eye. "And, when I woke--"

  Darkness. A thin slit of light from beneath a door. Trey was cold and his head hurt. He was naked. "Mommy?" Trey asked in the darkness. "Daddy?" Nothing. He started to cry and then heard a sound from outside the door. A sound like-- Like people talking on a radio. "Mommy!" Trey cried out again. "Mommy! Let me out!"

  The voices on the radio quieted. The clomp clomp of work boots. The sound of heavy breathing. Trey's bladder let go and he cried as urine splattered on the floor. Daddy would yell at him for that. Mommy would--

  "Boy," something growled from beyond the door, "you're not allowed to speak."

  "I want my--" Trey started to scream.

  The man behind the door growled again, a sound that shocked Trey into silence. He wrapped his arms around himself, still crying. "You're not allowed to talk without my permission, boy." Something scraped at the door, a sound like nails on a chalkboard. "Or you'll be very fucking sorry." The heavily breathing thing on the other side of the door paused and then growled "Do you understand, you little shit?"

  Trey nodded to himself, but said nothing.

  A harsh chuckle from behind the door. "Good," the man growled.

  "Do you know how long you were there?" Kinkaid asked.

  Trey shook his head and shivered. "I-- I don't remember."

  Kinkaid nodded. "He made you ask permission for everything."

  "Yes," Trey whispered. "Everything."

  She nodded again. "Trey? You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to." She tapped the pen against the notebook once more. "Do you know how you got out of there?"

  The stinging tang of stale urine, sour shit, and vomit. Trey was caked in it. The dark closet had been his home for days. The growling man didn't give him food or drink. The constant darkness had broken something. Voices inside his head whispered. The voices on the radio outside whispered, too.

  The grubby man. He was always in the closet with him. The grubby man with his long arms and long nose and bright, green eyes. The grubby man. The Closet Man.

  Trey couldn't cry anymore, couldn't move anymore. There was nothing left. All spent. Mommy wasn't coming for him. Daddy wasn't coming for him. The grubby man had told him that, and he believed it. There was only the grubby man. The grubby man and darkness.

  H
e didn't even hear the clomping of the boots, or the key in the lock jiggling. The closet door opened and wan light washed in. For Trey, it was like bright sunlight. It stung his eyes, but he was too exhausted to lift a hand to shield them.

  The grubby man stood just outside the closet. His fists clenched and unclenched. The baseball cap on his head shielded his eyes, leaving only his long nose protruding from its shadow. The heavily breathing figure reached around to his back and brought out a hammer, its wooden handle deeply scratched and pitted. "You are a dirty boy," he growled.

  Trey closed his eyes. He wanted to sleep again. Sleep and wake up at home. Not feel this anymore. Not smell this anymore. Just--

  "Dirty, stinking little boy," the grubby man said. The man leaned down toward him, the hammer clutched tightly in one fist.

  "Please," Trey whispered through swollen, chapped lips, "let me go home. Please, let me go home. Please--"

  The man had raised the hammer, his eyes glittering with hate. Trey stared up at the man through his bruised, hurt eyes. "You," he growled, "ask permission?"

  "Please," Trey managed to say once more. His voice was gone now, dehydration locking the words in his throat. His lips continued moving, but no sound emerged.

  The man dropped the hammer to the closet floor. It splattered into a day old pile of shit. He reached down and grabbed Trey by the waist. The grubby man's breath was foul, even when compared to the stench of the closet. The man's face smiled, but his eyes didn't.

  "You," he growled, leaning in closer, nose nearly to Trey's, "will ask my permission for everything you do, you little shit."

  Trey watched as the man's nose grew longer still, fangs sliding out from the misshapen jaw. Saliva fell in ropes from the slavering thing before him. The hands grabbing him by the waist grew talons. Trey tried to scream, but there was no sound.

  "Trey?" Kinkaid's voice said. "Trey?"

  "How long?" he asked, his face set in a mask of fear.

  She cleared her throat. "About five minutes or so."

  Trey nodded. "He became...that thing at the end. The ghoul. The grubby man turned--" He choked back a sob. "Turned," he whispered. "Just, turned." Trey shook his head. "But that's not what happened." He swallowed hard and ran his good hand through his hair. "He became the Closet Man. In my mind."

  Kinkaid closed the notebook with her delicate fingers. She smiled at him. "You don't remember how you got home, do you?"

  Trey shook his head.

  "He let you go, Trey, because you asked permission." She placed a hand on his arm. "He could have killed you. You know that, right?"

  "I think he was going to," Trey whispered. "I think--" Tears flowed from his eyes. "Why did he--" Trey closed his eyes and convulsed, his body shaking with all the stress and fear.

  Kinkaid held his hand for a long time.

  Chapter 36

  The cold felt invigorating. Sitting in one of the benches beneath the hospital's overhang, the winter chill was unchecked by the sun. Trey shivered a little. He was wearing the same clothes as the night he'd been admitted. His shirt still had droplets of blood on it from where he'd smacked into the concrete. As people walked in and out of the hospital, some saw those stains and gawked. He didn't mind. His arm throbbed. The scuffle with Tony hadn't re-broken it or harmed the cast, but it had certainly hurt like hell.

  Carolyn would be there relatively soon. He might have to wait another thirty minutes or so. But again, he didn't mind. The envelope they'd given him with his statement, insurance receipts, prescriptions for pain killers and Dr. Kinkaid's new drug regimen, sat beside him on the bench. Just more stuff to file. More slips of paper to take to the pharmacy.

  He and Kinkaid had talked about the Closet Man, the grubby man. Trey knew they were the same, knew that one was in the past and the other in his mind. The green eyes were nothing more than illusion.

  "I think I'm ready to go home now," Trey had told Kinkaid.

  She'd stared at him, unblinking for a moment. "You want to go home." She sighed. "Are you sure?"

  "I'm not--" His voice broke. He cleared his throat and started again. "I need to get home. I need to see Alan and Carolyn. At home."

  Kinkaid had nodded. "Why are you in such a hurry to get home?"

  "I just," Trey whispered, "have to get home. I," he said, motioning to the room, "don't feel right here. Need to be with my family."

  She bit her lip, the same way Carolyn always did when unsure of something. "I think you should probably stay a while longer."

  He shook his head. "Doc, I promise that if I have any other problems, I'll come right back here." She bit her lip again and he sighed. "I promise. I may be crazy, but I keep my promises."

  "Can I call Carolyn?" Kinkaid had asked.

  That was how they'd left it. Kinkaid had called Carolyn, allowed Trey to check himself out on the grounds that, psycho or no, he kept his promise.

  "Hello, Trey," a voice said from his left. Trey turned. Tony Downs smiled down at him. The man wore a leather duster that hid his long sleeve shirt. "How are you feeling?"

  Trey blinked. A flash of anger rose within him, but he managed to batten it down. This wasn't the man. This wasn't the grubby man. He'd only become the grubby man for a moment.

  Trey cocked his head. "I'm fine. How's your, um--" Trey said rubbing his chin.

  "Oh, that," Tony laughed, "I've had much worse. Much worse."

  "I'm sorry," Trey said.

  Tony waved his hands. "No worries, Trey. It happens." Tony gestured toward the bench. "Mind if I sit for a moment?"

  "Um," Trey stammered, "um, sure."

  "Cool," Tony said. The man walked past him to the empty part of the bench. He blew a sigh between his teeth. "Afraid I hate hospitals. I'd much rather freeze to death than stay in there any longer than I need to."

  Trey turned to him. "Um, then why are you still here?"

  "Because," Tony grinned without looking at him, "I was hoping to have a moment of your time."

  Trey blinked. "Um, okay. But shouldn't you have done that--"

  Tony turned toward him. Tony's deep, brown eyes had no pupils; they had become a sea of color. Trey felt for a moment like he was drowning in them. The concern he'd felt at this man being so close to him evaporated, as did the thoughts of the grubby man.

  "I wanted to speak to you alone, Trey."

  Time seemed to slow, or maybe it was just that his calm, the old calm, was back. As long as he'd been taking meds, the world around him had moved fast. But this was more like what he remembered as a child-- lazy, time to think. "Okay," Trey said.

  "Good," Tony said. He shifted his weight on the bench, turning more to face Trey. "I want you to understand something, Trey." Tony leaned in just the slightest bit. The scent of coffee and cigarettes filled Trey's nostrils as Tony spoke. "The drugs are never going to cure you. The drugs are never going to remove memory. The drugs and therapy are never going to heal you." Tony leaned closer still, his eyes growing large. "You have to face your fears, Trey. And your past."

  Trey felt something click inside his mind and suddenly the world started moving in that rapid-fire manner again. Tony was no longer leaning toward him, but facing outward back toward the circle.

  "They say it's going to get really cold tonight," Tony said with a shiver. "Well," Tony said as he removed a pack of cigarettes from his duster pocket, "I guess I've had enough fresh air." He stood, turning toward Trey. Tony slipped something from the pack of cigarettes and handed it to Trey. "Here's my card, Mr. Leger. Please call me if you need to talk about--" He paused as Trey took the card. "About today." Tony popped open the pack and lifted out a cigarette. He placed it between his index and middle finger, holding it by the filter. "Nice to have met you, Mr. Leger," Tony said. He tipped an imaginary hat and walked away toward the parking lot.

  Still holding the card in his hand, Trey watched as Tony crossed the circle. "What the fuck--" Trey mumbled aloud. He stared at the card. "Tony Downs," Trey said aloud. The face of the grubby man flitt
ed into his mind. He felt cold all over, bone-chilling cold. He opened the envelope and placed the card inside.

  As Kinkaid had been signing Trey's release papers, Trey had asked her who Tony Downs was.

  She'd looked up at him, a smile on her face. "He's a friend of mine."

  "Yeah, I got that," Trey said, "but what does he do?"

  She shrugged. "He's a psychologist. Forensic. He consults for the police department, teaches classes, writes strange papers." She chuckled. "He's just a guy."

  Trey had nodded. "How did he know--"

  "He just does, Trey," Kinkaid said, her eyes glancing back down at the papers. Her pen scratched at it, ticking boxes and writing initials. "What he does is nothing more than a parlor trick, really."

  "What do you mean?"

  Kinkaid tapped her pen against the table. "You told him where to go, Trey. He asked you questions and guessed. When he was wrong, you put him on the right path."

  Trey frowned. "He was never wrong, Doc."

  She shrugged again. "It's nothing, Trey. Do you feel better?"

  He thought for a moment. "Yeah, I guess I do." She smiled at him.

  "But, I, I don't know what to do now."

  Kinkaid nodded, her smile fading a bit. "Yeah, you do, Trey. You live. You cope. You deal." She finished signing the paper work, shuffled the papers into one neat stack, and put the pen back in her valise. "And, of course, you keep coming to see me."

  "Of course," he chuckled.

  "Starting next week, I want you in my office every Tuesday. I'll get Vivian to set it up. But I want to make sure you're doing okay." She turned from the papers, locking eyes with him. "Are you really sure you're ready to go home?"

  He'd smiled at her. "Yes, I'm ready." That was more than an hour earlier. "Doing okay," he mumbled.

  As Carolyn pulled into the circle, the conversations and worries evaporated. Her smile was all he needed to see.

  Chapter 37

  Jimmy wasn't at recess. His three friends didn't bother Alan. Alan was smart enough to know the two were connected. Without their large leader, they were just like the other children they regularly terrorized.