Chapter Five

A young woman's life is consumed by terror and tension after encountering a spidery man hidden in the back of her closet.

Fear is a curious thing. It’s like a poison, a parasite that slowly spreads through your veins. There is no escaping from it - at least until your subconscious recognizes that whatever has frightened you no longer poses a threat. But when that fear reaches its height, it becomes a crippling, overpowering sensation. This was the type of fear I felt as I began my search for the ghostly intruder in my bedroom. I looked everywhere. I flattened myself on the floor and peered beneath my bed, only to find dust and gloom. I looked inside my armoire, but there was no one there - just neat, folded clothes. I even looked in the cupboards beneath the bathroom sink.

When I returned to my bedroom, my eyes fell upon the closet. Of course. Of course the intruder was lurking inside there, the very last place I wanted to look. Swallowing my fear and grasping at any last bit of courage, I walked to the closet. I flicked the light switch, but the lamp refused to turn on. Even in the smoky darkness, I could see that cupboard. It yawned, square and black and blooming, in the far wall.

I didn’t know what to make of this. My mind frozen, I walked out of my room and retrieved a flashlight from the garage. When I returned, I slipped inside the dark closet and walked towards the open cupboard. Adrenalin flashed through my veins like electricity as I moved closer, closer. By the time I was only a foot from the square-shaped hole, the only thing I wanted to do was run away. Run down the street, run to my grandfather, run far into Berg Harbor’s green mountains.

The flashlight trembled in my hands as I trained it on the cupboard.

My entire body became a cold clockwork of terror as I stared into the tiny space. My first thought was that I had discovered a corpse, pale and lifeless, in my closet. Thoughts began to race through my head as I wondered how on earth I would explain this to the police as well as my grandfather. But then the body’s foot twitched. The person inside the cupboard was alive.

I gasped and stumbled into the wall behind me. The flashlight slipped from my fingers and landed on the carpet, beam still trained on the cupboard. Illuminated by the yellowish light, the person began to climb out of its dark dwelling with slow, jerky movements comparable only to a spider. First came an alabaster face split horribly ear-to-ear by a long and grisly mouth, followed by a thin torso dripping with a black shirt. A black blindfold obscured his eyes while silvery cobwebs lay cluttered in his black hair. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, though perhaps younger. He settled across from me in a hunched position, back curved and neck drooping. I felt terror rise inside my throat like a firestorm, but I did not scream. I did not even dare to move.

The man lifted his head in my direction and spoke in a raspy, somnolent voice. “About time you found me, Miranda Cooper.” With the movement of his lips, I saw his teeth. They lined his mouth like thin black nails, so ominous that they made my skin erupt in gooseflesh. I could easily imagine those lethal fangs splitting my flesh into pieces with one single bite, and the very thought rendered me speechless. While I did not speak, the black-toothed man didn’t either. I watched him as he pulled a sheet of black paper from his pants pocket and began to read.

Before long, I managed to choke out, “What are you?”

“What do you think I am?”

I did not respond. I stood still, currents of adrenalin rushing through my body. 

And then I ran for it. Because that seemed like the only rational thing to do.

Before I could reach my room, the closet door slammed shut on its own accord. My body rammed into the hard wooden frame at full force; the impact sent me toppling down onto the carpet, a breathless cry bubbling from my lips.

“Don’t flee,” the man said, tilting his head to one side. “No, no, no. Don’t flee. At least give me a chance to do two things. First and foremost, I want to thank you for setting me free from that wretched hole. You don’t know how long I’ve waited to return to the human world. Secondly, I’d like to congratulate you for winning our little game. You’re far more valorous then I’d imagined.”

“Let me out,” I demanded.

“You will stay.”

“I said, let me out,” I repeated.

“And I said that you will stay. I was locked in that cupboard for a hundred years; I think I’m rightfully entitled to a little chat. It’s unfortunate that I can’t have someone more perceptive to converse with, but I suppose you’ll do.”

This caught me off guard. I stared at this monster with his sharp, blackened teeth and bone-white face. “You have been inside there for a hundred years? This house hasn't even been here for that long.”

“I assure you, it has. It’s your family who hasn’t been here for very long.”

“But my great-grandfather lived in this house back in-”

“The summer of 1935. That was eighty years ago, not a century, you foolish girl.”

At this, I fell silent. My body had become as rigid as stone. Something icy snaked its way around my chest as I stared at this man - no, this monster. I considered sliding towards the door, but the fear that he would attack me if I tried to escape filled my mind.

“You know,” the monster said, “I’m surprised at you. I would of thought you’d be screaming your head off by now. But wait - I forgot. You’re not afraid of me. Such courage, Miranda. Or is it all for show? Something tells me it’s the latter.” With that, he neatly pulled another sheet of black paper from his pocket and began to read. Before I could catch a look at the silver writing reflected in the flashlight, he crumpled up the letter and stuffed it into his mouth.

“Why would you do that?” I found myself blurting out.

“Why wouldn’t I?” the monster said, his mouth full. “Letters are delicious.” He chewed, swallowed, and angled his head towards me. He startled me when he pulled another blank sheet of black paper from his pocket. “Would you like one?”

“No, thanks.”

“Come now. Don’t be rude. Eat it.”

In fear of the monster, I bit into the letter. It tasted awful, but I choked down a tiny piece and then handed it back to him.

“What, no more, Miranda?”

“No. How do you know my name?”

“I’ll have you know, I’ve been stuck in that Godforsaken cabinet for years upon years upon years. All those times you came to visit this house in the past - I was right inside there.” He pointed at the cupboard’s dark, encroaching shadows. “Right next to you, listening to you sleep, listening to you sing, listening to you talk to your grandfather, your brothers, and whoever else. What a boring, pitying existence, don’t you think? Don’t answer that. Anyhow, that closet cabinet of yours opens to a prison cell in my homeland, the world of the night. I was trapped there…rotting in a dark prison.”

“Night,” I breathed suddenly. My memories flickered with an image of the skeleton key. “Nocturna.”

“Clever. Finally caught on, have you? Yes, I’m from a place called Nocturnos. My people are called nocturna. We are guardians of the night, the sons and daughters of the shadows. But I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that, with you being so clever and all that.”

Ignoring his slight jibe, I asked, “What were you talking about when you mentioned the prison? Are you some sort of criminal?”

“Criminal? Only a little. Wrongfully-accused? Certainly so.”

Looking from his haunting face to the dark cupboard, I said, “So my closet essentially has a secret door that opens to another dimension - another world?”

“Essentially, yes. Yes, it does.”

“And I’ve released you from your prison.”

The monster smiled, his black teeth glinting. “Much obliged.”

My heart began to pound as I realized the bizarre, unexpected severity of what I had done. Even though my hand had unlocked the cupboard on its own accord, I still felt like I was the one responsible. I wondered what this creature had done to end up imprisoned for a century. But then I assured myself that I definitely didn’t want to know. I probably couldn’t even handle it; hell, I could barely handle the reality that now sat before me. Was there anyway I could make fix my mistake? Could I trick this bizarre humanoid into returning to the cupboard and never returning again?

The monster must have seen something in my face, because his thin gray lips opened to reveal a Cheshire cat’s devil grin. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You’re devising a plan to put me back where I came from, are you not? You can try, Miranda, but quite honestly, I don’t see that happening in the immediate future.” And with an elegant flourish of his bony hand, he withdrew the skeleton key from his sleeve; my eyes glittered at him as I fought to show no emotion to this whatsoever. He wagged the key in front of my face once before lifting it above his head and dropping it into his mouth. When I heard his exaggerated gulp, I knew that there was no way I was getting the key now. I could have lunged at him and taken it - but who’s to say he wouldn’t have used his jagged, nail-thin teeth to puncture my flesh? It was best if I sat silently in the shadows and talked to him until he agreed to let me leave. He said he only wanted to have a chat. That was all.

“Oh, and do excuse me. I haven’t yet introduced myself. But maybe there’s no need. Let’s see if you can guess my name.”

“I don’t want to guess your name,” I said quietly. “I want-”

“I know, I know. You want me to let you leave this closet.” The monster was sneering. “I will let you out, I promise, if you can guess my name - well, nickname, I suppose.”

“Blind Fold,” I prompted dully.

The monster shook his head. “No. Try again.”

“Night. Nightfall.”

“Guess again.”

“Jackass.”

“If that was you trying to be funny, I’m afraid to say that you did not succeed.”

I ignored him. “Dark Night. Black Tooth. Shadow.”

The monster sounded incredulous. “I suppose I’ll have to give you a hint, Miranda. How unfortunate. I know I certainly don’t need a weathervane to tell me which way the wind blows.” Lifting his chin, he said, “I know. I’ll tell you a riddle: Humans need it to survive. Without it, they’d be comparable to slugs. It rides through the human body like a curved pillar made up of segments. People who don’t have it - in a figurative sense - can be called weak, or cowardly. Can you guess it now? Or do you need a weathervane to show you the wind’s way?”

His riddle wasn’t all too difficult: I knew what he was talking about the moment he mentioned the curved pillar. And of course, a weak, cowardly person could be called spineless.

“Your name is Spine,” I said. My voice was a low murmur while my eyes burned into his black blindfold. “Or Backbone, but my guess is Spine.”

“Excellent. You’re correct. It’s Spine. My name is Spine.”

At this, I stood up. My heart fluttered when Spine’s neck snapped upwards, following my movement. “Well…I’m going,” I said vaguely, starting for the door. “I guessed your name, so I’m out.”

“Oh, but don’t you want to know where all that blood came from? Or why that key was inside of you? Or why your little brother seems to believe he has a friend by the name of Bones?”

Before I had been reaching for the door handle, my mind whirling with the desperation to leave the closet. But now I stopped and turned back to the night monster named Spine, who still sat hunched in the flashlight’s glowing beam. My breath caught in my throat while my heartbeat quickened. What else did Spine know about Benjamin’s ‘imaginary friend’? Or was Bones even imaginary at all? Could he be a nocturna, or perhaps something else? And of course Spine was behind all the blood that had come from my eyes and my stomach - that was easy enough to see. But as for how he made it occur, I still did not know. And I didn’t want to know. “I want you to leave me and my family alone,” I said, turning sharply away from him. “And if you come near any of them - Benjamin, Micah, Jack - I swear to you I will not rest until I find some way to kill you, or stuff you back in the prison where you belong.”

“Idle threats,” Spine drawled.

“Trust me, they’re far from idle.”

“By the way, I hope you don’t mind my rearranging of your bedroom. I think it looks far more aesthetically pleasing that way.”

I flung open the closet door without another word and closed my eyes tight when I heard it whisper shut behind me.

Reviews

[The Shark]

Love it. I see that you changed up Spine's persona as well. He was a little more forthcoming than he was in the previous version; telling her almost his whole back story right up front from the beginning. However I'm sure spine is still his manipulative sociopathic self deep down. In the first version, he played many mind games with her and was withdrawn from ever giving her a straight answer, and I'm sure spine will still play mental-chess with our heroine, who knows he might be playing with her now, spouting lies and half truths. Regaurdless I still love the story and wanted to tell you I started writing my screen play. Further down the line I'll explain in more detail how I'm going to represent your characters, but don't worry I would never harm the integrity of your tale. My screenplay is a horror/thriller film after all.