The Monster in The Closet

“Mom!” Cody tried to scream but his voice just came out in a whisper. Two glowing green eyes peered out at him from around his closet door. It shouldn’t have been open at all, he’d closed it before bed and he had pushed a heavy box of toys in front of it. But there the door was, parted a good six inches from its frame, with those now familiar eyes staring out at him.

He couldn’t see the monster’s face, he never could, the shadows were just too dark on that side of the room. The warmth and safety of his nightlight didn't reach that far. Slowly he started to scoot off his bed, towards the door that led out into the hallway.

The thing in his closet made a grunting sound and pushed against the door again, sliding the toy box another inch across the carpet. A large, green hand with square, yellow nails braced itself on the door frame. Cody tried to scream again, but his voice still wouldn’t work. Fortunately, his legs worked just fine.

With his heart pounding in his chest, Cody leapt from his bed. He skirted around the toy box and dashed out the door and down the hallway to his parents’ room. His shaking hands took a minute to fumble the handle open. He was too terrified to look back, so he just slammed the door behind him.

At the loud noise, Cody’s mom sat straight up in bed, a moment later a lamp clicked on.

“What in the world, Cody?” His mother started to get up, but he rushed to her side and threw himself into her arms.

“The monster! It’s back again!” Cody’s voice was finally working again, but the fear coursing through him and the late night sprint down the hallway had left him panting.

“Oh Cody...” his mother pushed him back so that she could get a good look at him. “It’s just a nightmare, it’s not real.”

Cody’s father, always a heavy sleeper, rolled over and mumbled. “It’s probably more afraid of you, then you are of it.”

“That’s bugs dad.” Cody grumbled, but his father was already snoring again.

Cody’s mom threw a sideways glance at her husband and then got up and started groggily leading her son back to his room. When they got there she flicked on his light.

“Here look, there is nothing...” She started towards the closet, but tripped midway on the toy box, then stumbled over the spilled contents. “Cody! I told you to put this stuff away!”

Cody pointed at the closet. “I did! The monster knocked it over!”

His mother sighed and pushed the closet door closed. “I want this stuff cleaned up first thing in the morning.” She carefully navigated her way around the box and the toys, back to the hallway door. “I’ll leave your light on for tonight, but this has got to stop Cody, you’re almost seven.”

Cody reluctantly got back into bed.

***

Nar sat on his bed carefully balancing the wooden sheep his father had carved for him. They teetered unsteadily on the thick pile of sleeping furs he was pretending was a meadow. The little figures cast long shadows in the faint moonlight from his window. Once he had all five arranged in a neat line, he picked up the toy dragon from his pillow. He whooshed it through the air over the oblivious sheep.

“Baa Baa...Roar!” He whispered, as his hand swooped down with the dragon, scattering the wooden sheep over the furs. One of the fallen sheep wobbled on the edge of his bed and then clattered to the dirt floor. Nar froze in the darkness and listened. He wasn’t supposed to be awake right now.

Everything was completely silent. Too silent. He couldn’t hear his father snoring. Pa always snored, and loudly.

A moment later he heard his father’s bed creak and then the thump of each of his large feet hitting the floor. Nar quickly tossed his toys and himself under the furs. He laid his head on his pillow and squinted his eyes mostly shut.

Nar’s father pushed the hide aside that covered his doorway. He was very tall, even for an orc and he had to hunch down to enter. The candle he carried appeared comically small in his father’s huge, green hands. He crept closer, peering down at his son. Nar continued to feign sleep. His father was about to turn around, satisfied that everything was alright, when he stepped on the fallen sheep.

“Nar!” His father growled around his huge, white tusks.

“What Pa?” Nar sat up, trying to look as sleepy and innocent as possible.

“You’re supposed to be asleep right now, son. Not playing with your toys!” Pa replied, angrily.

“I know Pa...but I don’t want to sleep.” Nar furrowed his brow.

His father picked up the stray sheep and placed it on Nar’s desk. He set the candle down next to it. Then he came and sat down on the edge of his son’s bed, it shifted under his considerable weight. In a gentler tone he asked. “You still having that nightmare?”

“Yeah.” Nar blushed a darker green. His father was so big and strong, how could he ever understand?

Pa patted his knee through the furs and chuckled. “Honestly Nar, if you ever did run into a human, he’d be more afraid of you then you are of him. But that isn’t likely. They don’t live around here anymore.”

“But Pa, you don’t understand. He’s really mean. He keeps trying to trap me in this big wooden box with all this stuff in it. It’s really dark in there and I can never get the side to open.” Nar sat up straighter in bed and the words just tumbled from the young orc in a panicked jumble. “There is this weird...circle thingy on one wall. And then, when I turn it, I can see just a tiny bit of light, but something has it stuck! It always gets stuck! It just won’t budge at all. And then I can’t get out! I can see how to get out, but I can’t escape the human’s box!”

“Ah, so it,s the small space then, yes? Your mother never liked small spaces either.” Pa chuckled, but a slightly sad look came over his face as he reminisced. “She hated the cave we used to live in. That’s why I built this house for her. That was a few years before you were born...”

“I miss Ma.” Nar fought the tears that started to well up in his eyes.

“I miss her too, son.” Nar’s father ruffled his hair, then smiled, changing the subject. “So next time you have that nightmare you just say to yourself ‘This isn’t real!’ and then you tell that human ‘I’m not scared of you!’ and remember, son, it’s just a dream and you will wake up.”

Pa left the candle burning on the desk and eventually Nar fell into a restless sleep.

***

The next night Cody sat in his bed, satisfied that he had a foolproof plan to beat the monster. It always came after he had fallen asleep so, he reasoned, he just wouldn’t sleep anymore. Cody waited until he heard his parents’ door shut for the night, then he crawled out of bed and got his shoe box of metal cars and the flashlight he had swiped from the kitchen junk drawer. He piled his blankets and pillows up into hills and mountains and smoothed out the rest to make roads.

The first couple of hours went well. Cody quietly played with his cars and his parents slept. His closet door remained shut. Earlier, just to be completely safe, Cody had pushed an even larger box of toys against the door.

Around midnight though, Cody started to hear a shuffling sound in his closet. He dropped his cars and picked up his flashlight from where he had left it on his pillow. He clicked it on and trained the beam on his closet door. A few seconds later he watched as the door knob turned back and forth. A grunt came from the closet and the toy box scooted an inch.

Cody felt the familiar fear and panic start to well up in him. His plan wasn’t working. He was wide awake and still the monster had come. He contemplated screaming for his mother or making a beeline for the door, but by the time they got back the monster would just be gone again and she wouldn’t believe him. The monster was never there when she turned on the light.

Which gave him a new idea. Maybe it was the light that got rid of the monster. If he trapped the monster in his closet and then kept his mother from turning on the bedroom light, then he could show it to her and she would have to believe him!

Another loud grunt came from his closet and the door moved again, sliding the heavy toy box a couple of inches this time. Cody held the beam of the flashlight on the door while he quietly scooted off the end of his bed. He kept the light on the door as he fumbled around in his desk for some tape, ripping off a large piece.

Cody crept over to the door that led out into the hallway and felt around on the wall until he found the light switch. The sticky tape clung to his fingers, but he more or less managed to secure the switch into the off position. Then he returned to his desk to grab his chair. He lingered there for a moment in the safety and warmth of the nightlight. The closet door opened another two inches.

This whole plan wouldn’t work if the monster escaped. Cody took a deep, steadying breath and then drug the chair across the room one handed, in his other hand he held up the flashlight both for its light and to use as a potential weapon. The closet door stopped moving as he got closer to it. He let go of the chair and slowly reached out, intending to push the door all the way shut and then block it, but whispering was coming from the other side of the door. Cody’s heart pounded in his chest. He leaned closer.

“This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.” The monster was repeating the same phrase over and over again. Only it didn’t sound like a monster. It sounded like a little boy. Was another little boy trapped in his closet with the monster?!

Cody peered around the door into the crack and shined his flashlight into the closet. Cowering in the corner against his shoe rack was a kid that appeared about his age with very big feet and green skin. The little boy blinked up at him, one large green hand shielding his glowing green eyes from the flashlight beam pointing directly at his face. “I’m not afraid of you!” He whispered shakily.

Cody was momentarily stunned. He looked so much like a little boy, if you didn’t take into account the green skin, the pointy ears, or the weird way two of his bottom teeth jutted out of his mouth. He was even wearing pajamas with little wolf faces stitched onto them. Cody glanced down at his own pajamas which had dogs printed on them.

“Are you the monster in my closet?” Cody asked him.

“I’m not a monster! You’re a monster!” The little boy monster replied, indignantly.

“I’m not a monster. I’m a human.” Cody retorted.

“Exactly!” The monster glared at him. “You’re a mean human who keeps trapping me in this box.”

Cody frowned at the creature. He’d never thought of it that way before. It was true, he had been trying to trap him in his closet. But that was when he thought he was a big, mean monster that wanted to hurt him. He’d never considered how the monster got into his closet in the first place, or how he would get back out again.

“Promise me you won’t hurt me or my family and I will let you out.” Cody bargained.

“I promise.” The monster replied instantly, hope and relief on his face.

Cody ducked back around the door and removed some of the heaviest toys from the toy box, then he pulled the whole box away from the door. He retreated to his bed and waited.

Hesitantly he saw the monster’s hands appear on the door and push it away from the frame. It stepped out and into his bedroom. It was only a little bit taller then Cody and was not at all as frightening as he had imagined it would be before actually meeting it face to face. The creature looked around, eyes widening as it spotted the toy box full of toys in the middle of the floor.

“Oh wow! You have so many toys!” The monster kid plopped himself down on the carpet and began rifling through the box.

“Uh yeah...” Cody set the flashlight down on his bed and then slowly walked over and sat down across from the other little boy. “What’s your name?”

“Nar. What’s your name?”

“I’m Cody.”

Nar had pulled an airplane out of the box and was flying it around. “Your dragon looks weird.”

Cody laughed. “That’s not a dragon, that’s a plane.”

“What’s a plane?”

“Well it flies and it carries people in it.”

Nar dropped the plane and looked terrified. “It eats people?!”

Cody laughed again. “No. It’s not alive...wait, I have a dragon in here somewhere.”

Cody dug around in the toy box and pulled out a plastic dragon and handed it to Nar. The monster kid grinned around his strange teeth.

“Do you have any sheep, Cody?”

“Uh no, but I think I have some horses.” Cody dug around until he found three horses and set them upright on the carpet. Nar gave him another big grin.

“How did you get into my closet anyway?” Cody asked.

Nar shrugged. “I don’t know, it just happens sometimes when I go to sleep. I guess I am dreaming?”

Both boys jumped at the loud knock on his door. Nar quickly scooted back towards the darkness in the corner by the closet as Cody’s mother stuck her head in. She fumbled around for the light switch, but wasn’t able to flip it on because of all the tape.

“Cody, what are you doing in here?” She sounded angry, but also concerned. “Are you talking to yourself?”

“Sorry mom. I couldn’t sleep so I was playing.”

“What is wrong with your light switch?” She asked, yawning.

“I don’t know. But I’ll go back to bed now, and I’ll clean up my toys, I promise.” He glanced at Nar huddled in the corner out of his mother’s line of sight. He was trembling.

“OK, I guess I can have your father fix it in the morning.” She replied sleepily. She shut his door and started back off down the hall mumbling. “I guess an imaginary friend is better than a monster in the closet..”

Nar crawled back over to where Cody was sitting and whispered. “Can we be friends?”

“Of course!” Cody whispered back.

“Promise you won’t lock me in that box anymore?” Nar asked.

Cody chuckled quietly. “I’ll open the door every night before bed!”