"The Closet"

 

"What was that?" Danielle whispered. She was sure that she had turned the front door's deadbolt before heading upstairs.

"What was what?" Ruth mumbled into her pillow.

"That sound. Like a doorknob turning." Danielle could hear the long creak of old hinges. "Fuck," she said as she got out of bed and reached for the pair of scissors on top of the dresser.

She opened the bedroom door slowly, with her breath matching pace, and reached for the hallway light switch while still standing inside the door frame. Much to her relief, a quick glance down the stairs to her left gave her the answer she needed: the coat closet door had popped open.

Danielle stomped downstairs and shoved all of the puffy down coats, still holding their breaths for winter, toward the back of the closet. She shut the door by turning around and throwing her back against it. When she did that, she saw the skeleton, sitting on the second stair from the bottom.

It had short bones all throughout its body, and tiny hands and feet; its skull was disproportionately large, like a full moon tilted close and curious toward the Earth. "I kept trying and trying to get out," the skeleton said in a child's voice, "but I was stuck for a long time." The radial bone of its lower right arm bore the marble tracings of several hairline fractures. "Hi," the skeleton said, tilting its skull so that Danielle could see all the way back into the hollows that should have held its eyes.