The Red Gaze in the Sliding Door

I was seven years old, living in a cramped two-bedroom apartment in the outskirts of Sacramento, California, in the summer of 2005. The complex was old, with chipped paint and a laundry room that smelled of mildew, but it was home. My bedroom was small, with a closet that had sliding wooden doors that always got stuck halfway, so we left them open most of the time. That open doorway to the dark interior was a constant presence at the edge of my vision, but I never thought much of it until that night.

I was lying in bed, not asleep, not drowsy, just watching the faint glow of my nightlight create patterns on the ceiling. My mind wandered to the orange tree outside my window, the one I climbed every afternoon, and the new girl next door who had a weird laugh. Then, without any reason, I turned my head toward the closet. Inside the shadows, where the darkness seemed to gather like a pool, there were two red points. They were small, like the lights on a stereo, but they were unmistakably eyes. They stared back at me with an intensity that made my skin prickle.

I blinked. I thought, ‘Maybe I’m just seeing something.’ But they didn’t go away. They just floated in the gloom, unmoving. I didn’t scream; I was too frozen, too confused. I remember the air in the room seemed to thicken, and the faint hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen became distant. I don’t know how long I stared, but eventually, I pulled my blanket over my head and whispered a prayer I barely knew. When I peeked out again, the eyes were gone.

I told my mother the next morning, but she just smiled and said it was my imagination, that I had probably seen a reflection from the window. But I knew what I saw. And over the next few weeks, the eyes kept coming back. They would appear at different times: when I was reading, when I was playing with my toys, even when I was eating dinner with my family. I would see them in the closet, always in the closet, never moving, never blinking. I started to keep the closet door shut, but the doors were so warped that they would always slide open on their own by the time I went to bed.

One evening, I decided to confront it. I was tired of being scared, tired of the nightmares that started to plague me. I sat on the floor, cross-legged, facing the closet, and I stared into the darkness. The eyes appeared, and I said out loud, ‘Who are you?’ The eyes blinked, then vanished. A moment later, the closet doors slid open wider, and a cold draft seeped out, smelling of dust and something like burnt toast. I heard a faint whisper, but it was too soft to make out. It sounded like a name—my name—but I wasn’t sure.

From that night on, I started to see other things. Shadows would move just out of the corner of my eye. The whispers became more frequent, always at night, always from the closet. I would wake up to the feeling of being watched, and I swear I saw the outline of a tall figure standing in the doorway, but when I turned on the light, it was gone. My parents thought I was developing anxiety, and they took me to a doctor, but I couldn’t explain it.

Then, the bedroom door started to move on its own. I would close it before sleep, and sometimes I would wake to find it wide open, swinging slightly, as if someone had just stepped out. I began to sleep with the lights on, but even then, I felt something—a presence, heavy and cold—settling on my chest, making it hard to breathe. I would cry out, and my mother would rush in, but she never saw anything.

The breaking point came one night when I was lying in bed, and the closet doors slid open with a loud bang. The red eyes were there, but they were not alone. Beside them, a pale face materialized, gaunt and hollow, with a mouth stretched into a silent scream. I saw the figure step out, and it had long, spindly arms that reached toward me. I didn’t wait; I ran out of my room and into my parents’ bed, shaking. The next day, I refused to go back into that room. I slept on the couch for weeks, and finally, my father, frustrated, called the apartment manager to complain about a possible gas leak or something strange in the walls.

The manager came over, a stout man with sweaty palms, and he listened to my parents’ complaints. He checked the closet, the windows, the vents. Then he paused, looked at me, and said, ‘This unit used to be a storage space for the building. There was a janitor who died here in the ’80s. He hung himself in the closet of this very room. I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything about it.’ My parents were pale, and I knew they didn’t want to believe him, but I could see in their eyes that they did.

We moved out three months later, but I never forgot those eyes. Even now, as an adult, I sometimes catch a glimpse of red in the dark, and I immediately turn on a light. But that encounter was just the beginning of what I would come to understand about my sensitivity. It was as if that first sighting opened a door in my mind, and I could no longer ignore the things that lurked in the shadows. I’ve seen many things since then—in Florida, in other places—but that red gaze in the sliding door is the one that still makes my blood run cold. It was my first proof that the world is not what we think it is, and that there are things that watch us from the dark, waiting to be seen.