The Monsters Hiding in Your Closet

by Elliot Addison

  Bethany stuck her tongue out at me and then smiled.

  “Hey, girls! Over here!” Our mutual friend, Jackie, called out and waved us over to join her and the other kids at the blue and grey table, we usually hung out at lunch.

  We’d just begun eating what we’d brought from home when Judy, the new girl who’d started classes here only a week ago, sat down at the other end of our table from us with her filled red plastic lunch tray. Alone.

  “Psst. Sasha, look who’s here again,” whispered Bethany to me with a grin on her face. “She always reminds me of that dirty-faced Charlie Brown character—what was he called again?”

  “You mean Pigpen? The one that always has a cloud of dirt around him? I could see that,” Jackie interjected in a low voice. Then she and Bethany giggled.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Judy hunch her shoulders. She’d clearly heard us, and knowing that made me feel kind of embarrassed about my friends’ conversation. “I mean, she looked so nice the first day,” Bethany went on. “That cute white sweater shirt and the blue and white flowered pants with the blue ballet shoes.”

  “Didn’t she spill paint on them in art that first day?” Jackie asked.

  “Yeah, she did,” Bethany replied. “The next day, though, she wore clothes that looked like they’d come from her clothes hamper. And as the week’s gone on, her clothes have gotten worse and worse.”

  “And she seems to only have a few different pieces. I mean, look at her—she’s wearing the exact same clothes today that she wore yesterday,” Jackie added.

  I took a quick glance at the new girl. Judy’s purple blouse had deep creases all over it; her blue jeans had some stains and dirt marks scattered on them; her long brown hair tied back in a ponytail had a couple of knots in it; and her worn-looking red sneakers looked like they hurt her feet. I felt bad for her.

  “You know, maybe we should lay off,” I said lightly, looking away. Changing the subject, I said, “Hey, what did you think about problem number three on our science homework last night?”

  “Oh, don’t even get me started,” Bethany said dramatically, and then my two friends started in complaining about Mr. Hanscomb. My diversion was successful, because we spent the rest of the lunch period wondering aloud why he always graded everything so hard. We even got the rest of the table to join in the conversation—except for Judy. I kept looking at her sideways from time to time as I ate and talked, though, and it made me feel a bit better to see that she slowly relaxed her shoulders as she had her lunch.

  When the day ended, I headed for the school library to do some research for a science project before taking the late bus home. I pushed open the wooden door, and except for the librarian behind a closed glass office door, the place was deserted—not a single kid sat at any of the tables or in the multicolored beanbag reading chairs. And there were no librarians around putting away any books, either. It wasn’t really surprising, though, since it was Friday. But as I headed towards the reference section shelving I heard a strange, soft noise being repeated over and over. Curious, I homed in on it.

  I discovered Judy in the back of the library, sitting at one of the long wooden reference tables with a couple of books piled on either side of her. She had her head face down in her arms on the table, and she was crying quietly into them.

  “Ummm. Hi there,” I said awkwardly. “Are you, ummm, okay?”

  Judy stopped crying immediately but didn’t look up. “Go away, Sasha,” she said in a muffled tone before sniffing loudly.

  I dug into my purse and pulled out the small package of tissues I kept in it and put it on the table in front of her. “You can have this if you want. I don’t mind.”

  “Go away.”

  “Ummm, okay, if that’s what you really want,” I said slowly, feeling uncomfortable. I started to turn away, but the title of one of the books, Really Real Riddles, caught my eye and made me stop. “Oh, you like riddles?” I asked in surprise. “Me, too!”

  At that Judy looked up. “No, I hate them!” she blurted out, her face turning red and scrunching up into a ball of hate. “They make my life miserable! Oh, how I WISH we’d never moved here!”

  I couldn’t just walk away after an outburst like that. I slowly drew out the padded wooden chair opposite her and sat down. “I can kind of understand that moving is something to hate, but why do riddles make your life miserable?” I asked. “Me, I love riddles. I’ve always loved riddles and brain teasers and stuff like that. I may not get them right all the time, but I do love trying to pit myself against them.”

  “Oh, sure, it’s all fun and games for you,” Judy scoffed, slumping back in her chair. “But they have real consequences for me when I don’t get them right!”

  “Huh? How?”

  But she just clammed up and sat looking at me, scowling. After about a minute of the silent treatment, I shrugged my shoulders. “Fine. If you don’t want to talk about whatever’s bothering you, then I’ll just leave you to your problem.” I stood up. “Alone.”

  The word “alone” seemed to jolt her. “No, please, wait! I’m—I’m sorry!” she said hurriedly, reaching out a hand towards me.

  I sat back down again. “So, you wanna talk or what?”

  Judy opened her mouth, then shut it again, obviously thinking hard. I waited.

  “You won’t believe me. You can’t believe me. I hardly believe it myself, and it’s happening to me,” she finally said in a miserable-sounding voice.

  “Try me,” I urged.

  “What kind of books do you like to read?”

  I was thrown for a second by the question, but I answered it. “I like reading mysteries and fantasy stories, mostly.”

  “Fantasy? Great! Do you read myths, too?”

  “Yeah,” I said, scrunching my forehead in confusion at her questions. “I’ve read some Egyptian, some Greek—”

  “That’s good enough,” Judy broke in. “You may have trouble swallowing what I’m about to tell you, but I swear to you this is what’s happening at my house.”

  Judy went on to spin a tale worthy of the old-time Greek poet, Homer. She talked about how her father had gotten a promotion at his company and how it had come with the need to move not just to a new town but to a new state. Her parents had shopped over the Internet for a house and settled on one that had belonged to an old scholar of ancient history who’d died not too long before they’d started house hunting. Upon moving into the house, she’d been allowed to pick her own bedroom, which turned out to have been the old scholar’s den. And in that room there was a closet that she discovered, to her regret, was still occupied.

  “What do you mean, ‘occupied’?” I asked, breaking in.

  “There is a,” she hesitated, then said in a rush, “there’s a miniature Sphinx living in my bedroom closet. And it won’t give me my clothes in the morning unless I can answer a riddle!”

  I looked at her in disbelief.

  “It’s true!” she nearly shouted in an angry voice.

  “Shhhhhh!” the librarian said from across the room, having just come out of her office.

  Judy lowered her tone and leaned in towards me. “It’s true. Do you think I like looking like this every day?” She gestured disdainfully to her clothes and hair.

  I had to give her that—I couldn’t imagine wanting to look like that at school even one day. “Huh. So, what, you can’t answer the Sphinx’s riddle?” I asked. “The answer, by the way, is ‘Man,’ you know.”

  “Huh?”

  “The Sphinx’s classic riddle is ‘What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet in the afternoon, and three feet in the evening?’ The answer is ‘Man’ because as a baby he crawls on all fours, walks upright as an adult, and as an old man he leans on a walking stick,” I explained. “It’s in many Greek mythology books.”

  “No, no, no. I knew that one, actually, and that’s why I looked nice for my first day of school. But now it’s a different riddle every day,” Judy replied, sinking back into h
er miserable voice. “And I only get one shot at it. If I don’t get it right, and I haven’t since I answered the first one, I’m shut out of my closet!”

  “Wait a minute. In mythology, if you answered the Sphinx’s riddle, she threw herself off a cliff and died. How is yours still there?”

  “The Sphinx did that. I said ‘a Sphinx.’ Obviously it can’t be the same one, if that one died,” Judy replied, sniffling. “Besides, that one was way bigger than humans, and this one is smaller than me.”

  “Can’t you just push past her, or something, if she’s smaller?”

  “I tried, but there’s some sort of force or something that stops me at my closet door.”

  “Couldn’t you, I don’t know, tell your parents about her or something?” I asked.

  “I did! But they couldn’t see the Sphinx when they opened the door, even though I could! They stood there making a show of looking all around inside when I could see it plain as day not three inches in front of their faces, smirking at us. I’ve begged to change my bedroom to a different room in the house, but my parents think I’m making it all up because of drama over the move and refuse to talk to me about it. They think I’m wearing clothes from my dirty clothes hamper as a form of protest or something. I hadn’t done all my laundry before the move, and it turns out that that was a good thing. Otherwise I really would have nothing to wear!”

  “Why can’t they see her?”

  Judy shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe it has to do with being an adult or something. But I can’t wait that long if that’s the case!”

  “So that’s why you have the riddle books here and why you hate riddles,” I said. “You’re trying to memorize riddles as ammunition against the Sphinx.”

  She nodded. “Do you believe me?” she pleaded suddenly, her face going still.

  I sighed. “Well, it does seem pretty far-fetched, but yeah, I think I do. Although I’d like to see it for myself.”

  “You can come over!” she said eagerly. “It’s Friday! Maybe tomorrow you can help me get clean clothes out for the next week?” But then Judy’s face fell. “Wait, that won’t work. My mom would just hang up anything she finds lying around my room in my closet again, which would mean I wouldn’t be able to get to them.”

  “What about putting stuff from your closet into a bureau or something?” I asked, but Judy shook her head.

  “I have a walk-in closet. So my bureau with my things on it, like my hairbrush and hair clips and stuff, is in there and being guarded by the Sphinx.”

  “How did she get in there to begin with?”

  “I don’t know. It won’t talk to me if I don’t get the riddle right. And I was too flustered getting everything I needed for the first day of school to think about quizzing it about its life,” Judy said defensively.

  I held up my hands. “Whoa, whoa. I’m just asking.”

  “Sorry. So, will you come over tomorrow and help me?” Judy asked, her eyes pleading again.

  “Sure. Let me see about this Sphinx, and we’ll figure out what’s up with her,” I said, pushing back the library chair and standing up.

  * * *

  Saturday morning at 9 a.m., after having first explained to my mother that I was going visiting at a new friend’s house, I knocked on Judy’s front door with an old-fashioned brass lion-headed door knocker mounted on it. The house had turned out to be an old Victorian that had been painted tan and green at some time in the past. From the outside it looked to me like a place an old scholar, and a miniature Sphinx, would live. Judy and her mother answered my knock pretty quickly.

  “You must be Judy’s school friend!” Judy’s mother, who looked remarkably like Judy, said with a pleasant smile.

  “Yes. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Caymot. My name is Sasha Delmon,” I replied politely, shaking her hand.

  “Nice to meet you too,” she started to respond, but Judy, who was dressed in the same clothes as yesterday and the day before, grabbed me and said, “Okay, Mom, we gotta go talk school stuff. We’ll be down for lunch, okay?”

  “O-okay,” said her mother, clearly startled as Judy practically pulled me from her mother’s grip and dragged me up two flights of red-patterned carpeted stairs to her room and shut the door behind us.

  Inside Judy’s white-walled bedroom there were still a few boxes left to be unpacked, but the things that were out were neatly arranged on decorative shelve; her bed with its flowered comforter was carefully made, her homework desk was organized, and the rest of the room was clean. There was such a contrast between Judy’s room and Judy’s appearance that it made me believe her story all the more. She strode over to her brown closet door and threw it open, making sure to stand to one side so I could have a clear view inside. My mouth dropped open at what I saw—there with a large enough body to block the entrance stood a tan- furred lion-bodied animal with white bird wings and a brunette-haired woman’s head. A Sphinx for real!

  “You can see me?” the Sphinx asked me after I gasped.

  “Yes, I can,” I replied in wonder.

  “Hmmm. I’ve never had to deal with more than one person at a time before. Well, the conditions still stand, young ones: Once a day, when you are before me, you must answer a riddle to get by me. No assistance may you be given in answering the riddle. And if you aren’t correct, you will be denied entry. And if you leave before answering, you are conceding defeat for that day.”

  “What is your riddle?” Judy asked with suppressed eagerness.

  “At night they come without being fetched; by day they are lost without being stolen.”

  I smiled, but Judy’s face fell. “I didn’t see that one in any of the books!” she muttered.

  After a few seconds of quiet the mythological creature said, “Answer me, child.”

  “Don’t pressure me! There was never a time limit on answering in mythology!” Judy retorted.

  The Sphinx was silent. Judy stood there for some minutes more, the look on her face slowly going from eagerness to defeat.

  Finally I cleared my throat. “May I?” I asked.

  “Sure!” she said, brightening, followed by the Sphinx’s sharp “No!”

  I looked at Judy and mimed her moving to one side. She did, and I stood in her place in front of the Sphinx, who frowned at me.

  Looking at the creature, I asked with confidence, “Why did you say no? I get one try by the conditions you already laid out. You said nothing about only one person each day answering your riddles. As long as Judy doesn’t help me, I can make my guess.”

  The Sphinx grumbled and then said in an annoyed voice, “Proceed.”

  “‘The stars’ is the answer to your riddle.”

  The creature suddenly shrunk to the size of a teacup Chihuahua and stepped to the side of the closet, looking unhappy.

  “Yippee!” Judy yelled excitedly. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sasha!”

  While Judy rushed into the closet and busied herself getting her hair brush, hair ties, and all sorts of clean clothes and other things, I crouched down and asked the Sphinx, “Why are you even doing this to her?”

  “My long-time companion died recently. I have had no one to talk to since then until this family moved in. But the parents don’t see me, and so I can’t riddle them,” she replied sadly. “The only one who can see me is this girl. And now you.”

  “But the scholar saw you?” I pressed.

  “Yes, his beliefs in his work resonated with my being and allowed me to materialize here. And the girl has beliefs in mythology as well, which is what allows me to be here still. You must have them, too, because you can see me. Anyway, my companion and I had long gotten past the riddle stage, and we were working together on the uncovering of ancient truths of mythologies and how they relate to the present world. But he died before our work was complete, and now I am reduced to riddling this child to keep my spark of material life going.”

  The first part of what she’d said sounded really interesting, but that second part …

&n
bsp; “Without riddles you will die?” I asked, flabbergasted.

  “It’s more like that without belief and purpose I will dematerialize, rather than without riddles.” She shrugged her furred shoulders. “Riddles are just how I’ve always communicated with strangers at first.”

  “You’re talking with us now,” I pointed out.

  “You answered my riddle correctly.”

  Judy, holding an armful of colorful clothes and shoes, exited the closet and said over her shoulder to the Sphinx, “Well, can’t you go somewhere else and bother somebody else instead of me? I hate riddles! I always have!”

  The Sphinx looked sad, and I swear she shrunk a little more in size. “I would, but where would I go?”

  “I don’t care!” Judy said with a huff, laying her booty carefully on her bed. “You’ve made me miserable this whole week, and I don’t want you around! I don’t want to have to fight to get into my own closet every day!” She picked up a pretty orange blouse and paired it with a pair of brown striped pants. I made sure not to look as she changed into clean clothes for the first time in a week. The Sphinx meanwhile lay down on the closet floor looking like the large stone Sphinx does in Egypt and closed her eyes.

  Feeling sorry for both of them, I impulsively said to the creature, “I’ll take you!”

  “What?” the Sphinx said, opening her eyes and looking at me in astonishment.

  “Well, why not?” I replied. “I’ve always loved riddles. And what you just talked about, Sphinx, about uncovering the truths of mythologies? That sounds like something I’d like.”

  Judy came over to me in her fresh clothes, and I saw hope blossom in both sets of eyes.

  “Really?” they both asked at the same time.

  “Yes, really. So, how can I take you with me, Sphinx?”

  “Do you swear upon your honor that you will work with me and believe in me?” she asked in a solemn voice.

  “I swear,” I said, holding up my right hand.

  The Sphinx held up a tiny paw in turn, and we touched palms. I felt a faint shiver go up my arm, and then she shrunk to the size of a sparrow. Before I could get worried about the shrinkage, she flew up and landed on my shoulder. The pleased look on her face reassured me that everything was okay.