The Closet Game

The Closet Game, Pt. 1

The heavy front door slowly creaked open. Annie stepped onto the threshold. She blinked at the dimness inside. The big old house was all shadows and dust and cobwebs. She didn’t like it much. Neither did Peter and Mommy—but they were gone now.

That left her and Daddy.

And she really didn’t like it when she came back and there was no sign of Daddy.

“Dadddyyyyyyy!”

The house answered with cold silence.

“Daddy?” Her voice rolled around all the empty rooms. She refused to cry. She was a big girl, six and a half years old. She took a quick little breath and steadied herself. Because she knew where he was.

He was playing the closet game.

Annie shivered.

Daddy began playing the closet game soon after they moved into the house. Well, they didn’t really move move, they were returning to New York after the summer. Mommy hated the house. She said it was too big and bleak and dark. All it was missing was a gargle, or something like that, she said. They had no neighbors, and she didn’t like that either.

But Daddy just went on and on about the fields and woods and wildflowers. He even found a brook nearby. One day he caught four trout down there. They were small, but he made a big fuss over them and fried them up. Annie pretended to like the piece she tried. She pretended to like the house, too, because Daddy did.

The only thing she couldn’t pretend to like was the closet game.

The creaky old house had about a hundred closets. One day, when everyone else went out to pick wild strawberries, Daddy hid inside one. When they got back, he jumped out and shouted, “Boo!” Mommy shrieked and Peter spun around with a really scared look on his face. Daddy laughed and laughed.

After that, he started to play the closet game a lot. Lately he wasn’t leaping out and saying “boo.” He would just wait until someone found him.

Annie gnawed on her lower lip. She had picked some bright-yellow buttercups that were starting to droop. She wanted to put them in a pretty green glass vase that Mommy found in a cupboard. Then she and Daddy could eat lunch. That morning he promised to make grilled-cheese sandwiches.

But Daddy had disappeared.

“Are you hiding, Daddy?”

The wind banged a loose shutter somewhere, and her eyes widened. Her fingers twisted the front of the pink pinafore dress that Daddy helped her choose that morning. The middle of the house was wide open in a way that made Annie a little dizzy. She could see right up the long staircase to the second-story landing. On her left, two faded purple sofas squatted near a fireplace almost big enough for her to crawl inside.

Her small, thin nose sniffed at the air. She liked being outdoors, and watching the huge, fluffy clouds that threw down moving shadows as big as mountains. She shrieked with delight when she found the buttercups. But indoors, the air smelled bad, like people who lived here many years ago died on the furniture and just decayed into it.

Mommy noticed the smell too. Peter couldn’t stand it. Only Daddy didn’t seem to mind.

She approached the closet beyond the fireplace. Her little pink sneakers scuffed the wood floor. The doorknob was a bronze color, but with funny dull spots. It was pretty old. Everything in the house was pretty old.

“Daddy?” Her heart began to pound louder in her chest. She drew the door open, shrinking back as she did.