The Closet in St. Monica’s

Maya had always been a child of vivid mind. At twelve, she’d been diagnosed with ADHD, and her teachers often found her staring at the ceiling, lost in worlds they couldn’t see. By fourteen, she had constructed an entire family in her head: two fathers, Elias and Julian, who were gentle and kind, unlike her real parents who fought over bills and her mother’s drinking. She’d whisper to them at night, and they’d sit on her bed, their presence warm and solid, even though she knew they weren’t real. It was harmless, she thought, a coping mechanism.

One crisp autumn afternoon, Maya was walking home from St. Monica’s Catholic School when her friend, Zoe, a self-proclaimed expert on the paranormal, cornered her. Zoe’s eyes sparkled with mischief as she recounted tales of incubi and succubi, demons that visited sleeping humans, stealing their energy and, worse, their innocence. Maya tried to laugh it off, but her mind, a fertile ground for all things imagined, latched onto the details. That night, as she lay in bed, she couldn’t shake the feeling of a cold presence beside her. She told herself it was just her dads, Elias and Julian, but their forms seemed distorted, their whispers replaced by a low, seductive hum.

Weeks passed, and Maya’s hallucinations grew more intense. She began seeing strange symbols scratched on her bedroom door, though no one else could see them. The air in her room turned clammy, and she often woke with scratches on her arms. Her parents dismissed it as nightmares or a phase. But Maya knew something was wrong. She turned to prayer, clutching her rosary, but the words felt hollow. One evening, she heard a voice, not Elias’s or Julian’s, but a deep, silky voice that promised forbidden secrets. It came from her closet, a narrow, dark space she’d always been wary of. She dared to open it, and for a moment, she saw a tall figure with eyes like burning coals, but then it was gone.

Frightened, Maya confided in Sister Margaret, the school’s gentle, elderly nun. Sister Margaret listened, her face growing grave. She told Maya about the ‘Vigil of the Sevenfold’, a ritual to protect against demonic influences, but she warned it was dangerous. Maya, desperate, agreed. The ritual required her to stay awake for seven nights, each night reciting a specific prayer at midnight, with a candle lit in front of a small wooden cross. If she missed a night, the demon would gain a hold on her. Maya began, her room filled with the scent of melting wax and old incense. On the third night, she heard scratching from the closet, louder and more frantic. On the fifth, the candles blew out on their own, plunging her into darkness. But she relit them, her hands shaking.

The last night arrived. As midnight neared, Maya knelt before the cross, her voice trembling. The closet door creaked open, and a figure emerged—not a demon, but a grotesque caricature of her father, Mr. Harris, his face twisted into a leering grin. It spoke in her father’s voice, but with venom, saying cruel things about her mother and her. Maya closed her eyes, repeating the final prayer, feeling a cold hand on her shoulder. When she opened her eyes, the figure was gone. The closet door was shut. She heard a faint, desperate whisper from inside: ‘You’ll always be mine.’

From that night on, the hallucinations stopped. Her dads no longer visited, and the strange occurrences ceased. But Maya never felt alone. She’d sometimes catch a flicker of movement from the corner of her eye in the closet, and she’d hear the soft, mocking echo of laughter when she was in the bathroom. She took to sleeping with the lights on, but the darkness inside her grew. One night, she found herself standing before the closet, her hand on the knob, her head tilted, listening. A voice, indistinguishable from her own, whispered, ‘Let me in.’ And Maya, who had once found comfort in imaginary friends, was terrified to find that she wanted to open the door.

The school year ended, and Maya transferred to a public school, hoping to escape the memories. But on her first night in her new room, she saw it in the corner: a small, dark stain on the wall that seemed to grow. She tried to scrub it off, but it remained. As she lay in bed, the closet door in her new room—the same kind of narrow, wooden door—creaked open a crack. A chill ran down her spine. She heard her mother’s voice from downstairs, calling her for dinner. But she also heard another voice, familiar and seductive, from the closet: ‘You’ve missed me, haven’t you?’ Maya pulled the covers over her head, her heart pounding. She knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that she had never been haunted by a demon. She had created it. And it was now a part of her, alive and hungry. She would spend the rest of her life trying to keep the closet shut, but somewhere, deep inside, she knew it would always find a way to open.