by JL Bryan
“Is that what you do?” I asked.
“Over at St. Joseph’s.” Alicia nodded. “They’ve been putting me on afternoon shifts, so I come home late and don’t get to see my kids much, which makes all this even harder on everybody...”
“What exactly did your daughter see? How does she describe the Closet Man?” I asked.
“She said he was a man with no face. He’d watch her from the closet while she was in bed. She always wants the closet doors pulled tight, with no gap in between. But she says he opens the doors sometimes—just a little bit, just enough to watch her.”
“Creepy,” Stacey said, shivering.
“Have you ever seen that happen?” I asked.
“No, but I’ve had a few nights where I closed the doors for her, then later she screams,” Alicia said. “I’ll come in and the doors will be open just a little bit. She always swore she hadn’t done it herself, but of course I didn’t believe her, or I thought her brother must have done it. I don’t believe in ghosts. Well, I didn’t before all this.”
“When did Mia start seeing him?” I asked.
“A few months after we moved in. I understood she was scared—she’d just lost her father. We were all having nightmares. I thought that was all...” She shook her head. “For a long time, all he did was open the closet and look at her. Then it changed. She started saying he’d open the doors all the way and stare at her. Then he started coming into her room—by then, he wasn’t Closet Man anymore. He was Fleshface.”
“Like the horror movies?” Stacey asked.
“Just like those,” Alicia said. “One night, Kalil smuggled home his friend’s DVD of Fleshface II: Flesh and Bones. Kalil’s not allowed to watch scary movies, he gets enough bad dreams as it is. And he’s one hundred percent not allowed to show anything scary to his little sister. And don’t you know that boy not only watched the movie in his room, but he let his sister see it, too? My aunt was in town watching them, and she’d fallen asleep downstairs. I was ready to smack that boy when I found out.” Alicia shook her head. “Since then, it hasn’t been Closet Man, it’s been Fleshface. And Fleshface comes all the way into her room, sometimes. She’s even woken up with him standing by her bed.”
“And he looks just like the movie monster?” I asked. I had serious crawling-flesh feelings now. Was the old monster finally back? I tried to push aside thoughts of that old case, but I couldn’t help it. The house was right next door—well, catty-corner, anyway, the back corners of the two lots just touching each other.
“That’s what she says,” Alicia told me. “Just like Fleshface.”
“That must be scary.” I hadn’t seen Fleshface II (or Fleshface I, for that matter) but I’d seen the movie poster at the theater. It looked like your basic knock-off of Friday the 13th or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a serial killer guy in front of an old cabin in the woods. He wore a mask that was apparently made of strips of skin glued together mummy-fashion, leaving only his eyes bare, and he wielded a chainsaw, in a clear stroke of complete unoriginality by the filmmakers. “Has he ever hurt Mia? Ever touched her?”
“He’s pulled the blankets off her,” Alicia said. “Just one more thing I didn’t believe was supernatural. She screams, I run upstairs to check on her, and she says Fleshface pulled the blankets and sheets and threw them on the floor. Of course, when that started, I still didn’t believe her. I thought she just had a nightmare and kicked off her own blankets.”
“Of course,” I said. “How often does she see him? How many times a month?”
“It was only every once in a while, at first,” Alicia said. She hugged herself as if cold. “Gotten a lot worse lately.”
“And he always comes out of this closet?” I asked.
Alicia nodded. “That’s what Mia says. Kalil has seen it from his closet and from his bathroom door, too. One time he saw it looking in his window.” Alicia opened another door, opposite from Mia’s closet, and led us into a connecting bathroom. Again, it was spotless and gleaming. Even the toothbrushes, Aquafresh Kids pump, floss, and so on were arranged in a perfectly straight row on the marble counter. I wondered whether Alicia kept the house this immaculate every day. It seemed like a ton of work.
The bathroom led into the boy’s room, decorated with posters of the solar system and the Milky Way. An autographed photo of Neil DeGrasse Tyson hung in a frame on the wall, next to family photos, and a few math and science trophies adorned the dresser. A model space shuttle was partially constructed on the desk. She told me the boy was away at some kind of math day camp.
“You said Kalil sees Fleshface watching him from this door, too?” I asked, swinging the bathroom door open and closed, as if that were going to tell me something.
“That door and the closet,” Alicia said, and Stacey panned her camera around toward the closet door. Unlike the one in Mia’s room, this seemed like a normal hinged door. Alicia opened it, showing us a phone-booth-sized closet crammed full of winter clothes.
“Boys don’t need as much closet space,” Stacey said, and Alicia nodded.
“How long has he been seeing the monster?” I asked. My Mel Meter again showed a spike of activity right at the closet door.
“I don’t know. For months,” Alicia said. She took a breath, hesitated, then let out a sigh, as if coming to a decision. “Kalil doesn’t see Fleshface, though.”
“What does he see?”
“He sees...little men. With big black eyes.” She shook her head. “Aliens. He sees aliens in his closet.”
“Whoa, like little gray guys?” Stacey asked.
“Those. I told him to stop watching those alien-abduction shows on the History Channel, because I thought they were giving him nightmares. I know it doesn’t make any sense. I believe in aliens even less than I believe in ghosts, but he’s terrified of them.” She shook her head. “I’m not saying they’re really Martians or anything. That’s just what he sees.”
“So he sees his own fears personified,” I said, feeling myself tremble. This was sounding more and more like the Wilson case. “It certainly fits with his interest in outer space.”
“Oh, he loves astronomy. I’m hoping to save up and get him a good telescope for Christmas, but...” Alicia shrugged. “We’ll see how that one crumbles.”
“What do the aliens do?” I asked.
“He says they usually just watch him from the closet, or they crack open the bathroom door and watch through there. Or he wakes up and one is standing over his bed, like it’s studying him. It sounds like all those alien-abduction stories, which is why I thought he was just watching too much TV...”
“What changed your mind?”
“He woke up with scratches on his arm,” Alicia said. “I still thought he’d done it in his sleep, but he kept talking about the gray aliens. Now I thought it was something serious, you know, a mental health issue. I had him evaluated, and they diagnosed him with ADHD and sleep disorder. He’s on Ritalin and melatonin, but it hasn’t helped with the monsters. Now I understand why.”
Alicia led us out into the short hallway and fell silent, staring at another door near the end. It was round at the top, set into a decorative archway trimmed in tiny engraved geometric patterns.
“What’s through there?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said, hugging her arms close against her again.
“An empty room?” Stacey asked.
“Not even that. That’s where I’ve seen him come and go. Three times, now.” Alicia shivered. The hallway did feel a bit colder now, despite the light from the tall windows trimmed in smaller colored-glass panes. “The first time, I was downstairs in my room, sleeping, and I heard Mia scream. I thought, ‘Oh, Lord, here goes another nightmare.’ It was late—one-thirty-seven in the morning, I remember looking at my clock. So I went upstairs to check on her.
“The house felt so cold that night. I thought I’d check the thermostat once I got Mia settled, make sure we weren’t blowing up the electric bill. This was just a couple o
f months ago, near the end of May.
“So I’m barefoot and wearing my summer nightdress, and I’m freezing by the time I get to the top of the stairs. That’s when I saw him. He came out through Mia’s door.” Alicia pointed to the girl’s room.
“Was the door open or closed?” I asked.
“Open a little bit. Kalil, he won’t sleep with any doors open—the closet, bathroom, and hallway door all have to be shut tight. Mia likes to keep her hallway door open so she can yell for me. Sleeps with a nightlight, but it burns out or just goes off for no reason, almost every night. It’s not natural.”
“Ghosts don’t like too much light,” I said. “A surge of photons messes with their electromagnetic fields. That’s why they mostly come out at night.”
Alicia nodded. “If you say so. It was dark that night, the hall lights were off, and I don’t even think there was much moonlight. I couldn’t see him very well, and he was like a heavy dark shadow, with no face, just like Mia used to say. The Closet Man.” She looked up at the crown molding and light-and-dark patterned wood ceiling over the girl’s door.
“What did he do?” I asked.
“He climbed up out the top of Mia’s door.” Alicia pointed to the top of the door frame. “He scrambled up the wall and along the ceiling. He was shaped like a man, I mean two arms, two legs, but he didn’t move like any man. He crawled like a spider. His arms and legs kind of bent the wrong way. He was upside down, moving fast, and of course he gave me a bad feeling. I was horrified and felt sick all through my body. I knew I was looking at something evil, something that shouldn’t be in this world.” She wiped sweat from her forehead with trembling fingers.
“It sounds disturbing,” I said.
“It was a long way beyond disturbing,” she said. “He climbed on down the hall, and then he slipped into that door.” She again nodded at the mysterious closed door nested in its ornate archway.
“Do you mind if I open it?” I asked. I still wasn’t clear what she meant when she said there was nothing beyond the door.
“Go ahead.” She backed away toward the steps, arms crossed. “It doesn’t usually come out during the day.”
“That’s reassuring,” I said. The door handle was a curved brass lever placed high on the door, about shoulder-height to me. I gripped it and turned, trying to prepare myself for the nameless cosmic horrors that lay beyond.
The door opened onto nothing. By that, I mean a smooth, flat piece of wall, painted a stark white, with none of the paneled wainscoting that adorned the rest of the hallway.
I blinked at it. The sheer blankness of it made me stupid, somehow, like my brain stopped functioning for a few seconds to focus its entire attention on processing what I was seeing.
“Yeah,” I finally said. “Nothing.”
“They must have left it here when they split the house into apartments,” Alicia said. “I don’t know why they would just leave a useless door like that.”
“Maybe because of this sweet arch around it.” Stacey pointed to the intricate hardwood trim. “They left it for decoration.”
“Maybe,” Alicia said. “I sure wish they hadn’t. Would you mind closing that when you’re done?”
“Sure.” I shut the door. “Was it open or shut when he crawled inside it?”
“Shut.”
“What did you do next?”
“I ran to check on Mia. My baby was so scared. Talking about Fleshface again.”
“Did you come back and check the door?” I asked.
“After I got her calmed down, I made myself come out here and open it. There wasn’t anything to see. I took Mia downstairs to sleep with me that night. By the morning, I told myself I’d just let my imagination get away with me. I was probably still half-dreaming when I went up those stairs.”
“Do you have any idea what’s on the other side of this wall?”
“Apartment B. The Fieldings. That’s all I know.”
“You said you encountered the entity again?” I asked.
“Come on downstairs,” Alicia said, wasting no time descending the steps. “I’ll show you.”
Stacey and I shared a worried look. This was no simple nuisance ghost or residual haunting. The entire household was living in fear of a very creepy-sounding entity.
I couldn’t wait to find it and eliminate it. Ghosts who threaten children have a special place in my heart—a place filled with malice and hate.
We followed Alicia down the stairs.
Chapter Two
“The second time, I saw him right here. Another late night.” Alicia pointed over the railing as we descended. “He crawled alongside the bannister. He looked the same way. No face, shaped like the shadow of a man. His arms and limbs bending strangely. He climbed about halfway down the stairs, then he turned and went straight down the wall.”
Alicia led us to the hallway that ran across the back of the entrance hall. It was really more of an open arcade, supported by a row of cherry-wood archways. One side of the hall opened into a kitchen with a large bay window, a row of throw pillows arranged neatly on the window seat.
The other end of the hall terminated at three doors—left, right, and center.
Alicia pointed to the left. “This one leads to the hallway we all share, because it has the only staircase to the basement. The laundry machines are down there. At one time, I thought that was the main reason the rent was so cheap, because everybody has to go and do their laundry in the basement.” Alicia let out a little humorless laugh.
“That one leads to my bathroom,” she continued. “My bedroom used to be the front parlor, I think, back when it was all one big house with one rich family. But now, this door...” She pointed to the one on our right. “That’s where I think he really goes.”
“His lair?” I asked.
“Yeah. That’s a good word for it,” Alicia said. She opened the door, revealing a flight of stairs that ran underneath the main staircase. It was blocked off by cardboard boxes about halfway down.
“Where do those stairs lead?” I asked.
“I guess they used to go to the basement, but they’re sealed off now,” Alicia said. “That’s Mr. Gray’s apartment down there. We just use this stairwell for a storage closet.”
I peered down the dead-end basement steps, illuminating them with my flashlight. My Mel Meter found yet another spike of energy right at the doorway.
“When I saw him climbing down the wall, he left through here,” Alicia continued. “First he looked at me, though. He froze, like a cockroach when you flick on the lights, like he didn’t expect to see me. His head turned sideways at me, and his neck twisted in a way...a living person couldn’t do that. He kind of stared at me with that blank shadow face. Then he scuttled away inside, even though the door was closed.”
“He goes from closet to closet,” I said.
“Another night, I woke up from a bad dream and went to the kitchen for some water. When I was coming back, I saw him right here, crawling toward this door again. Well, he jumped right off the wall, right at me...and right through me,” Alicia said. “I felt so sick I thought I would die. I got dizzy and nauseated and almost fell over.
“He slipped right through that door and out of sight,” she said. “It was a minute before I saw my dress was torn and bloody. They say piranhas can eat your fingers so surgically you won’t even know they’re missing until you see the blood. That’s what this was like.” Alicia lifted the front of her shirt, showing us three long, scabby scratch marks across her stomach. “I was bleeding all over and didn’t even know it. I can’t tell you how scared I was. I work the ER, I’m used to blood, but there was no reason for me to be cut up like that. It meant the ghost was real, not just in our heads.
“I looked in on the kids—good thing they were sleeping and didn’t see me like that. I cleaned up, and I just sat out here on the couch, shaking, for the rest of the night. I was scared it would come back and hurt the kids. I was too scared to open the door and go after it, an
d what could I have done?” Tears glistened in her eyes and she wiped them away. “That’s when I knew I had to do something. Bring in some experts. And now you’re here. So can you get rid of it?”
“We usually can remove unwanted entities,” I said. Stacey gave me a look, either hearing the tremble in my voice or noticing something about the expression on my face. My confidence was crumbling fast.
I kept to my usual script with Alicia, though, mainly because it was the best way to keep myself composed.
“We’re going to need to study your situation a little more,” I said. “Have you told us everything you’ve experienced?”
“That’s all we’ve seen so far,” she said.
“You mentioned a laundry room in the basement. Have you ever seen or heard anything strange down there?”
“I never liked the basement,” she said. “Always feels like somebody’s watching you. At first, I thought it was just because it’s such a dim, ugly place. It’s also right next to Mr. Gray’s apartment, so maybe that had something to do with it—Mr. Gray could just walk through the door at any time. I always thought it was just my nerves or my imagination bothering me, but I never went down there during the day. And after this...” She gestured at her stomach. “I trust my instincts more. Could be something there. I’ll show you.”
Alicia unlocked the door across from the dead-end basement stairs. She led us into a short, paneled side hall. An ornate Victorian door, trimmed in panes of colored glass and surrounded by windows, looked out on the side portion of the wraparound porch. The hallway had three interior doors, including the one from Alicia’s apartment and another directly across the hall, which led to another apartment, labeled with a big brass “B.”
“Here it is.” Alicia opened the third door, the one to the basement. Old wooden stairs led down into a dark, humid brick chamber with a row of three coin-operated washing machines facing three dryers. One dryer chugged and rattled, with an occasional hard thumping sound like there was a shoe inside. A couple of hanging fluorescent bars cast weak, sour light that left much of the room in shadow.
