Chapter 5: Going Home

When the first pale light crept through the curtains, the closet door was closed again. I hadn't seen it move. I had blinked, or maybe I had dozed for a second, and somewhere in that second the door had shut itself. Its brass handle gleamed politely in the morning sun, as though nothing had happened.

I didn't wait for breakfast. I crept downstairs, found the house phone in the kitchen, and called my mom. My hands were shaking so badly that I dialed the wrong number twice. When she finally answered, sleepy and confused, I said I didn't feel good and asked her to come pick me up. It wasn't a lie. I felt terrible. My stomach hurt, my eyes burned, and my whole body felt like it had been wrung out like a wet towel.

"Are you sure, sweetie?" she asked. "You had such a good time planned."

"Please, Mom. I just want to go home."

She was there in less than an hour. Ethan was disappointed, and he didn't hide it. "But we were supposed to have the whole weekend," he said, standing on the porch with his arms crossed. "We haven't even finished the game."

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry. I'll come back another time."

That was a lie, and I think part of me knew it.

Aunt Linda gave me a hug and told me to feel better. Mark waved from the kitchen window with a coffee mug in his hand. I climbed into the passenger seat, and Mom pulled away from the house. I twisted around and watched it shrink behind us, the gray walls and the dark windows, until the trees closed over it like a curtain.

For the first ten minutes, neither of us said anything. Mom kept glancing at me. She wasn't a nosy person, but she could always tell when something was wrong.

"So," she said finally, in her gentle voice. "How was the weekend, really?"

I stared at my hands. Then I decided to tell her the truth, or at least part of it. "I didn't like it there," I said. "I know Ethan loves it. But I had this horrible feeling the whole time, like somebody was watching me."

Mom's face changed. It was a small change, just a quick tightening around her eyes, but I saw it. She gripped the steering wheel a little harder.

"Did Aunt Linda or Mark ever say anything to you about the house?" she asked slowly. "About how they got it so cheap?"

"No. Why?"

She was quiet for a second. A truck passed us, and the rumble filled the car. Then she shook her head, forcing a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Never mind. It's nothing. Forget I said it."

I wanted to push. I really did. But I was so tired, and that smile looked so fake, that I leaned my head against the window and let it go. The sun climbed higher over the fields. The road curved back toward the busy part of town, where the houses were close together and every window had a light on inside.

I told myself I was safe now. I told myself the weekend was over, and I would never have to think about it again.

I was wrong. For years afterward, I saw that closet in my dreams. I would be standing in a dark room, and the door would open by itself, and something would whisper my name, and I would wake up with my heart pounding and my sheets stuck to my back. I stopped sleeping over at friends' houses. I stopped playing hide-and-seek. Eventually, I grew up and got busy, and the dreams got farther apart, but I never forgot the way Mom's face looked when she said the words never mind.

Ethan and I stayed close. That was one thing the weekend didn't ruin. We hung out at my house, at parks, at the mall, at movie theatres, and once in a while at his house, but only during the day. I always found some excuse to leave before dark. Ethan never seemed to notice. I asked him carefully, once or twice, if he had ever seen or heard anything weird at his place. He'd laugh and shake his head. "Nope. It's just an old house, man."

To this day, as far as I know, he never experienced a single strange thing. Either that, or he never told me.

But the house remembered me. I could feel it; in that way you feel someone staring at the back of your head. Every time I drove by the long gravel driveway, I felt the closet door open somewhere deep inside my chest.