The Tall Man in the Utility Closet

I’ve carried two encounters with me like splinters under the skin, each one festering in a different corner of my memory. The first happened in the autumn of 1987, when I was six, in a cramped two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a peeling stucco building in Bakersfield. The place had a narrow, windowless corridor that connected the living room to the back rooms, and the single bathroom sat at the end of that hall, its door always ajar because the latch was broken.

It was a Tuesday, I think, because the garbage trucks rumbled past at dawn and the smell of crushed grapefruit hung in the air. My father, a quiet man who worked nights at a packing plant, was asleep on the sofa, his chest rising and falling under a thin blanket. My mother was in the kitchen, running water and clinking dishes. I was supposed to be napping, but I’d woken from a bad dream and wanted a glass of water. I padded down that hallway, my feet slapping the worn linoleum, and as I passed the bathroom, I glanced in—just a reflex, because the door was open.

He was standing in the far corner, behind the door, pressed against the wall where the shower curtain hung. His figure was impossibly tall, taller than my father, whose head nearly touched the doorframe when he stood on tiptoes. This man’s head brushed the ceiling, his shoulders scraping the walls on either side, and he was angled slightly, as if he’d folded himself into that corner to hide. His skin was the color of old newspaper, and his eyes—when they found mine—were like chips of black glass. He didn’t move. He just watched me, his mouth a thin, dark line.

I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. I stood frozen, my bladder starting to ache, and I remember thinking, If I close my eyes, he’ll go away. But I didn’t close them. I backed away, one step, then two, and when I reached the living room, I ran to my mother and buried my face in her apron. She asked what was wrong, and I said, ‘The man in the bathroom.’ She laughed and said it was just my reflection in the mirror—but my reflection wasn’t that tall, and the mirror was on the medicine cabinet door, not in the corner. I didn’t sleep in that apartment again without the light on.

Years later, when I was seventeen, the second one came. I was staying at my aunt’s farmhouse in the Missouri Ozarks, helping her clean out the attic before she sold the place. The house was old, with brittle wallpaper and a staircase that moaned underfoot, and the attic itself was a cavernous space lit by a single bare bulb. I was sorting through a trunk of my grandfather’s tools when I saw him again—the same tall figure, this time standing in the shadowy gap between two stacks of boxes near the eaves. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat that obscured his face, but I knew it was him by the way he filled the space, by the slight tilt of his head. He didn’t move; he just stood there, and the air around him felt colder.

I dropped a rusty wrench, and the clatter echoed. When I looked back, he was gone, but the spot where he’d stood was darker than the surrounding shadows, as if the light refused to enter it. My aunt, hearing the noise, called up, ‘Everything all right?’ I said yes, but my voice cracked. I didn’t go back into that attic, and I never told her why. I just said I found a mouse.

I’ve spent decades trying to rationalize both sightings. The first was a trick of the light in a dim hallway, a child’s imagination sharpened by too many cartoons. The second was a hallucination brought on by dust and exhaustion. But I know what I saw. The tall man never threatens, never speaks, never approaches. He just watches, patient as a spider, as if he’s waiting for something—maybe for me to acknowledge that he’s real, maybe for me to step closer. And I’ve always wondered: if I had closed my eyes that day in the hallway, would I have opened them to find him standing at the foot of my bed, or would I have found nothing at all? I still see him sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, tall and silent, in places where no one should be. And the worst part is, I’m starting to believe he’s not watching me for any reason I can understand. He’s just there, like a crack in the wall, waiting for the house to settle enough to swallow me whole.