Keeping Joel out of the way of her parents was not particularly difficult. He leaped stealthily into her closet whenever they popped a head in her room, and even the most grown-up nine-year-olds still play with their toys, so the voices floating down the hallway from Sarah’s room were never taken for anything more than Sarah playing with her dolls. Lizzy’s mind was completely wrapped up in her own social universe to notice any subtle change at home.
Thus, Sarah and Joel lived quite happily together in her room for some time. He would sneak food from the kitchen, and she would sneak food for him, and he would tell her stories of his own childhood as a young monster, and he seemed content. Sarah had offered to take him to school with her, but he had declined, saying that it would get terribly stuffy in her backpack, and should someone discover him…
“But why did you come out of the closet at all, if you just want to hide away from people?”
Joel gave her a sly look. “I needed a breath of air. It gets stuffy in closets as well, you know.” But he wouldn’t say anything else about it.
It was about a week after Joel had made his first appearance to Sarah that stranger things began happening. (You see, to Sarah, living with a monster in her room had become quite normal). If you can think back to the day that Sarah first met Joel, I mentioned that Sarah had detention that day in school, for hitting a boy named Tyler. Tyler was, in fact, Sarah’s cousin, and generally a very nasty little boy. He had become very good and figuring out exactly what to do that would drive you absolutely mad, and he would do it just enough to push you over the edge. As a result, Sarah, who sometimes had trouble keeping her temper subdued, had detention quite a lot.
In any case, being cousins, they saw each other quite a bit. On this particular evening, Tyler and his parents had come over for dinner. Tyler’s parents, Sarah’s Aunt Ruth and Uncle Paul, were nice enough people, but had far too much money than was good for them. The two were rather ruthless business people, and had few qualms about shortchanging their clients, but spared no expense when it came to their son. The best toys, the best clothes, the best vacation, the best tutors. When the school called, wanting to speak about how terribly Tyler was treating his classmates, his parents would hear none of it. “There must be some mistake!” Aunt Ruth exclaimed, horror-struck, and “How dare you suggest that my son would do such a thing!” Uncle Paul fumed to the telephone. In fact, they were planning on moving Tyler to a private school the next year, where hopefully the other students would not be so heartless to their poor Tyler, and would not make up such horrible lies to get him into trouble.
Tyler himself, simply put, was a bully. His parents had spoiled him with anything and everything he had wanted growing up, which included food. He was not overly fat, exactly, but he was quite large both in height and girth for his age. He had a mess of brown hair, which at least started out the day neatly combed by his mother (but it never seemed to stay, much to the dismay of his mother), brown eyes, and a smile which could be sweet or menacing, depending on what Tyler was up to. He was smart, though; not a big stupid kid picking on others because he had nothing better to do. Tyler saw and understood more than most children his age, which made him a particularly dangerous.
Dinner was as most dinners are with a table full of grown-ups – you eat your food while they talk about horribly boring things. And of course, you can’t go right when you finish, because they aren’t nearly done with your food, and they want to ask you all about school, and art class, and swimming lessons, and whatever else you might be doing. And as grown up as Sarah was, she could not stand grown-up table talk.
So of course she got out of there as soon as she could. Tyler followed her to her room, and Sarah turned around with her arms crossed over her chest.
“What?” he said, with a hint of a smile.
“I didn’t say you could come in my room.”
“You gonna make me leave?”
Sarah stared at him, seething. He was bigger than she was. A lot bigger. (Or so it seemed to her). She couldn’t make him do anything.
Just then there was a noise from the closet. A sort of crash, like something falling off a shelf. Sarah turned, her body tense, toward the closet. Tyler’s eyes darted from the closet to Sarah and back, and a menacing smile stretched itself across his face. “What’ve you got in there?” he asked.
“Tyler don’t – I’ll show you where the computer is, come on – ” Sarah grabbed his arm and tried to lead him out of the room. But this was too much for Tyler: he knew there was something in the closet that Sarah didn’t want him to see. Oh, what fun he could have if he could just find the thing she was hiding…
Tyler took a step toward the closet, and Sarah took in a breath, preparing herself to lunge toward him and pull him back. But she never had the chance. Just then the closet door opened of its own accord, not slowly and purposefully, as it had when Joel had first revealed himself to Sarah, but all the way at once, with a bang and a crash, and there stood before them something that neither of them had expected.
It was a man.
He was tall – very tall. He wore a long, deep purple coat which would have looked ridiculous except that the man looked too terrifying for anything about him to be ridiculous. He had wild white hair and a long white beard, and piercing blue eyes set in the old, wrinkled skin of his face. He stood in the doorway, shoulders back, head held high, eyes darting about the room, taking in every detail, and falling to rest, finally, on the two children. Then he smiled.
Oh, but it was a terrible smile, and there were lies behind it.
A voice came, muffled, from downstairs. “Sarah! Everything alright up there?” Silence. “Sarah!”
The adults had heard the door crash, of course. Sarah heard muffled voices, and then footsteps on the stairs.
The old man took a step toward Sarah, and she took a step back. Tyler was the first to gather his courage and speak: “Who are you?”
The old man chuckled. “A friend of a friend, shall we say.” He turned to Sarah. “Where is Joel?”
Sarah swallowed hard. “Who’s Joel?” she said. She was a terrible liar.
The old man smiled his terrible smile again. “I know he’s been here; I can see it in your eyes, my dear. Now tell me where he is – don’t make me convince you.”
“Now see here, leave her alone,” Tyler said, to his own surprise, as well as Sarah’s. It was one thing if he was bullying, but Sarah was his cousin after all, and he was beginning to be afraid this strange man would actually hurt her.
But there was no time for a response. Joel suddenly appeared, leaping from beneath Sarah’s bed to her side. He growled, a sound so low and powerful it seemed to come from the earth itself.
“Sarah?” came the voice of Sarah’s mother. There were footsteps outside the door, and for a moment the attention of all four of them was at the slowly turning doorknob.
Then Joel lept, with a surprising amount of force for something so small, knocking the old man back into the closet. There was a clash and bang, and Sarah ran to the closet after them, followed by Tyler. Sarah’s mother entered the room to find both children staring into the empty closet. “Everything alright in here? What’s all this noise?”
“Something fell down…we were looking for something,” Sarah said weakly.
There was no trace of Joel or the old man.
