The Wardrobe’s Hunger

The house on Cedar Lane had always been a little off, but no one spoke of it above a whisper. We moved there when I was six, into a sprawling Victorian that had stood empty for a decade. The town said it was because of the fire, but the fire had only touched the east wing. We never went to the east wing. My mother, ever the pragmatist, dismissed the tales of restless spirits and flickering lights. ‘Just old wood and drafty corridors,’ she’d say, but I saw her fingers trace the rosary in her pocket whenever she passed the portrait of the previous owner, a stern-faced man with hollow eyes.

Our maids came and went with alarming frequency. First, it was Luz, a stout woman from Batangas, who quit after four nights, claiming she saw a child’s face pressed against the window of the library, a room we never used because the door was always locked from the inside. Then came Rosa, younger and more timid, who swore she heard the heavy chime of a grandfather clock at midnight, though we owned none. She left a note: ‘There is a man sitting in the study, turning the pages of a book that is not there.’

By my eighth birthday, my parents had given up on live-in help. That Saturday, we held a small party to celebrate. My cousins from the province came, and after the cake and games, we decided to play hide-and-seek. I knew the best hiding spot: the walk-in closet in my parents’ master bedroom. It had a sliding mirrored door, and if you pushed it closed until just a crack remained, you could see anyone approaching from the hallway.

I slipped inside, heart pounding with the thrill of the game. The closet was dark, smelling of mothballs and old leather. I pressed my eye to the crack, watching my cousin Maria count down in the hallway. A draft slithered through the gap, colder than it should be, raising goosebumps on my arms. I waited, listening to footsteps echo on the hardwood. Then I heard it—a sound like a breath, slow and deliberate, coming from the back of the closet. I froze, my own breath catching in my throat.

Slowly, I turned my head. There, at the far end of the closet, between the winter coats and a forgotten suitcase, stood a man. He was tall, gaunt, with skin the color of old parchment. His eyes were sunken and black, and he wore a suit that seemed to absorb the light. He was not looking at me; he was staring through the mirrored door, as if he could see the party beyond. I wanted to scream, but my voice had fled. He began to raise a finger to his cracked lips, a gesture of silence, and then he vanished—not like a trick of the light, but like a curtain dropping, and the cold air rushed back into the space.

I stumbled out of the closet, gasping. My cousin found me a minute later, but I couldn’t speak. I ran to my mother, who was in the kitchen, and told her everything through sobs. She knelt, wiped my tears, and said, ‘It’s just your imagination, sweetheart. Maybe you fell asleep in there.’ But I hadn’t. And that night, as I lay in my bed, I noticed something on my arm. A thin, bruise-like mark, in the shape of fingers, as if someone had gripped me. I tried to ignore it, but it stayed for days, a permanent reminder.

The next week, the house began to change. Doors that were sealed shut would open on their own in the middle of the night. The portrait of the stern-faced man seemed to follow me with his gaze. And in the master bedroom, the mirror on the closet door grew cloudy from the inside, as if a cold breath had fogged it. My parents dismissed it as humidity, but I knew better. The man in the closet had been waiting. And now that he knew I could see him, he wanted me to play again.

Years later, after we moved away, I learned the history of the house. The man in the portrait was Elias Vance, a reclusive clockmaker who had built the house and later died in the fire—but not before hiding his prized collection of antique clocks in the east wing. They were never found. Some say he still guards them. But I know the truth. He doesn’t guard clocks. He guards the closet, waiting for children who hide too well, waiting to pull them into a game that never ends.