Chapter 4: Staying Close to the Light

I tried my best to act normal. When Ethan told me I was a seeker now, I nodded and started counting. I laughed when other kids laughed. I even yelled, "Ready or not, here I come!" like nothing had happened. But my knees felt like jelly the whole time, and I kept flinching at every creak in the walls.

For the rest of the game, I played it smart. I never wandered into the dark upstairs rooms again. When it was my turn to hide, I picked spots close to other people, like behind the couch near the kitchen door, where I could hear the parents talking, or under the dining table, where the light from the hall spilled across the floor. Tyler found me in about ten seconds and thought it was hilarious. I let him laugh. I honestly didn't care about winning anymore.

Ethan noticed, of course. "Why are you hiding so close to everybody?" he asked as we crouched behind a chair together. "You're being weird."

"I'm not being weird," I said. "I'm being strategic."

He gave me a long look, and then he shrugged. Ethan wasn't the type to worry about things. To him, the house was a giant playground, and nothing in it could ever be scary. I envied that about him more than I can explain.

Around ten o'clock, the parents began collecting their kids. Coats got zipped, car doors slammed, and headlights swung across the field as one family after another drove away down the long gravel driveway. Each pair of taillights that disappeared into the trees made the house feel a little bigger and a little emptier.

By eleven, it was just us. Aunt Linda and Mark said goodnight and disappeared into their bedroom, the one with the paper taped on the door. Ethan climbed the stairs, brushed his teeth, and was asleep within five minutes. That was another thing I envied about him.

I did not go to bed.

I stood in the doorway of Ethan's room and looked at the bed by the closet, the one that was supposed to be mine. The closet door was shut. It was always shut when I looked at it, and I was starting to hate that. I could not make myself walk over to it. Instead, I carried my blanket and pillow back downstairs, sat in front of the big television in the living room, and turned on a video game.

The house around me was black and silent. The only light came from the screen, which painted the walls in flickering blues and greens. I turned the volume down low, so low that I could still hear the rest of the house. That was on purpose. I wanted to know if anything moved.

For a while, nothing did. I played level after level, and every few minutes I looked up at the dark hallway leading to the stairs. It was just a hallway. It had a coat rack, a bench, and a picture of a lighthouse. Old houses make noises, I reminded myself. That was all.

The clock on the cable box said 2:10. Then 2:45. Then 3:05. My eyelids felt like sandpaper. I fought to stay awake, because I had a feeling that if I fell asleep, something would come and stand over me.

At exactly 3:20 in the morning, I heard it.

I will never forget that time. It was a slow, long creak from somewhere upstairs, the sound of an old hinge moving. I stopped playing. My thumbs froze on the controller. I listened, and the creak came again.

I knew that sound. I had heard it twice already, once in the dark on Friday night and once in a coat closet. It was a closet door opening.

I told myself not to go up there. I told myself very clearly. But my legs stood up anyway, as if somebody else were pulling the strings. I set down the controller and walked up the staircase one step at a time, keeping my hand on the wall. The higher I climbed, the colder the air felt, until I could see my own breath in the hallway, a thin white puff in front of my face. In July.

Ethan's bedroom door stood open. His computer glowed blue in the corner. Ethan himself was a lump under his blanket, fast asleep.

And the closet door was slowly, slowly swinging wide.

I stood in the hallway and watched it. There was no wind and no hand pulling it. It stopped when it was fully open. Inside was only darkness, thick and deep. I couldn't see the back wall or the floor. I couldn't see anything at all.

Then I heard breathing.

It was the same slow, heavy breathing I had heard outside the office closet, but now it was louder. It was almost too loud, the way you breathe when you want someone to know you're there. It filled the whole room. In and out. In and out.

I backed up until I bumped into Ethan's bed, and then I slid down to the floor beside it. I didn't scream, and I didn't run. I couldn't have if I wanted to. I just sat there, hugging my knees, and stared at that black rectangle for the rest of the night, waiting for something to jump out.

Nothing ever did.