Monster in My Closet (5 page)

Without my father to care for anymore, I attracted an army of needy boyfriends. They marched in and out of my life while I nursed them, helped them pass their college courses, counseled them on family problems. My wallet was emptied both willingly and behind my back when I was in the shower. I fed the ones who were hungry and helped others detox.

And I’d still had time to stay up all night with crying girlfriends with broken hearts.

The exception had been Sara. She never asked for anything, really, except for my friendship. She was easy to be around, made no emotional demands, and I never felt exhausted or drained from her company. Now that I understood what being an empath meant, it gave me insight into our friendship. Sara kept her emotions in check the same way she controlled her appearance. She had all her hair appointments strategically booked six months in advance, and if she needed to cry, she’d schedule a half hour in the afternoon, preferably coinciding with her lunch break. She was an ideal best friend for an uncontrolled empath.

She’d tried to save me from myself on a number of occasions. If she judged an all-night crying jag from one of the girls in our dorm had gone on long enough, Sara would come to collect me and drag me back to our room. If I had a bad breakup—and let’s face it, nearly all of them were bad—she’d stop me from drowning myself in cheap beer and frat boys. A lot of my college experience was highlighted by Sara running interference between me and my own self-destruction.

I snorted and let fly another wobbly rock. It all made so much sense now. This empath thing had been running my life for as far back as I could remember. Hindsight is a worthless bitch.

I thought about the phone conversation with Brad and my heart sank. I’d never been so mean before. Sure, he irritated the hell out of me, but I’d been horrible to him.

I took a breath and held it, then let it out slowly the way Andrew had taught me. Something wasn’t right. I probed the walls of my make-believe barrier to check for cracks. It seemed fine. I took several more breaths and went deeper, examining the emotions imprisoned inside my bubble. Anger, frustration, fear. I tasted each one, explored them like a loose tooth. They were familiar, yet new.

My God. These are
my
emotions.

After so many years of harboring the runaway emotions of other people, my own had taken a backseat. Now all I had were what belonged to me, and I was ill prepared to deal with them. It was a terrifying thought.

Could I squash them down like I used to? Probably not the healthiest approach. Could I send them out into the world the way I had learned to do with other people’s garbage? No. I was going to have to deal with them, one by one, just like any other well-adjusted adult. I could see this was going to take some time.

I spent several hours out there, poking and prodding at my emotional self. By the time I was done I had examined my fear and anger with a microscope, turned them over in my mind like shiny stones. I became thoroughly acquainted with them so I could differentiate between what was mine and what was borrowed from somebody else.

Then I put them away on a shelf in my head, brushed the sand off my skirt and went home.

“Wolf man?” I asked Maurice when I came through the door.

“Skunk-ape,” he said. He had a face like a bunny about to bolt.

I sighed. Maybe I didn’t want to know after all. “What’s for dinner? I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

His face brightened, and he darted into the kitchen babbling about tarragon and coriander. I had no idea what I ate that night, but it was delicious.

Meeting my own feelings for the first time in years had restored my emotional stability. I didn’t once feel like gutting anyone with my dessert spoon.

* * *

I was smug that evening, sitting in front of the TV with a belly full of food I hadn’t cooked. My kitchen was clean without my lifting a finger, and the weird wine stain shaped like Phyllis Diller had been magically erased from my living room rug after five years of residence. Best of all, I was confident that I was mostly getting the hang of this emotional rodeo thing.

Things were looking up.

The news drifted over me as white noise. A shark attacked a local surfer off Muir Beach. Somebody’s sweet old granny robbed a San Rafael convenience store. A clerk at a Sausalito grocery was found dead in the storage room.

I sat up.

I’d been in that store the day before. It was next door to Andrew’s herb shop. And I knew the tattooed face of the woman in the photo.

They cut to video footage of the scene. Police and paramedics scurried across the screen like worker ants. An officer brushed aside a microphone when a reporter shoved it up under his nose.

The camera crossed to the ambulance as an EMT slammed the back door shut. I shivered. I had spoken to the dead clerk yesterday. Apparently, I’d been wrong. Selma hadn’t been “better than fine” after all. She was zipped into a body bag and buckled in for a trip to the morgue.

The paramedic turned to face the camera before he realized it was there, and I sat up straighter. The winking, coffee-drinking guy from across the street. And wow, he was really hot. I’m not usually big on uniforms, but he filled his out nicely.

So focused on how edible the emergency guy looked, it wasn’t until ten minutes later that I thought to wonder how the clerk had died.

Chapter Five

Sunday was a much-needed day of calm and normalcy until I decided to give myself a manicure.

Storage space was at a premium in my bathroom, so I stored many of my girly items in the hallway linen closet. I had a metric crap-ton of face creams I didn’t follow through on, bath salts I had no time for, hair removers, hair thickeners, self tanners, skin lighteners and, of course, seven thousand shades of nail polish—many with unused matching lipsticks. Seriously, this was not the ’60s. While I might’ve found a use for orange nail polish, nobody ever looked good with orange lips, no matter what the decade. I had no memory of purchasing it.

On Monday, I had a meeting scheduled with a client, a Goth girl named Spider. Spider’s daddy was footing the bill for a mega wedding the size of Argentina. In the spirit of solidarity, and in the hopes of snagging a bigger share of daddy’s expenses, I decided to darken up a little before I met her. I had black nail polish, but that would be too obvious. I didn’t want to look like a wannabe or a kiss ass. But a nice rich chocolate would be somber enough. I wondered if my spider-web tights would be too much. Probably. Might as well powder my face and draw an ankh on my cheek in eyeliner. Better to undersell it.

I opened the linen closet, shrieked like a little girl and slammed it shut.

In that brief peek into my towels and toiletries, I saw several tiny people scuttling for cover. Had I not recently been attacked by fairies I’d mistaken for dragonflies, I might have thought my closet denizens were mice or rats. My self-preservation skills, however, were waning. Reality, no matter how bizarre, was no longer allowing me to take the easy way out.

I took a deep breath. I took a second deep breath for good measure. Gripping the doorknob, I turned it as quietly as I could, then pulled the door open, peering into the crack. Three—no, four—miniature people huddled in the corner, lit by the shaft of light I let in. A woman stood with one arm wrapped around a little boy, and her hand rested on the head of a smaller girl. A taller boy, I’d say about twelve if he were human, stood in front of them, chest puffed out and one hand on his hip in defiance. His other arm was folded against his chest.

They all looked terrified.

I let the door swing open the rest of the way and regarded the small family in my linen closet. They all had tiny pointed ears and skin the color of milky hot cocoa. The little girl clung to her mother’s skirts, tiny black pigtails bobbing as she hid her face. The younger boy looked frightened, but ready to break out of mom’s headlock if big brother needed an assist. The mom broke my heart.

Her face was beautiful, a miniature, darker version of Audrey Hepburn. There was so much dignity in the way she held herself. However, Audrey Hepburn hadn’t sported a shiner like that. The woman’s eye was swollen nearly shut, and dried blood crusted one side of her perfect face. My eyes moved to the older son and noted again the way he nursed his arm against his body. This family had been through hell.

“Brownies,” Maurice said, making me jump.

“Gah! Would you
please
stop sneaking up on me?”

“Sorry. Zoey, this is Molly Wheatstalk. Molly, this is Zoey.”

She nodded her head once and gave me a smile that was far too weak for my liking.

“It’s nice to meet you, Molly,” I said. I had a passing thought that a brownie family in my linen closet was a preposterous notion and that I was probably lying on a sidewalk somewhere, bleeding after a piano had dropped on my head.

But denial was a luxury I couldn’t indulge. These little people were too real to deny, and I’d never turned anyone away when they needed help. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I also knew I hadn’t bothered to bolster my newly created walls of defense for the day, but I didn’t care. Molly and her children were hurting, sad, frightened, desperate—I felt it all. But I also felt something else.
Love
. It was so thick I could almost see it twisting around them and binding them together, spreading outward into the hallway. There was so much love in my linen closet I wanted to curl up in a pile of fluffy towels and bask in the glow.

This empath thing isn’t all bad.

The smile I gave them was the one I reserved for nervous brides about to bolt—filled with kindness and understanding. “You have a beautiful family, Molly.”

Her smile brightened a bit, and the older son relaxed his defensive stance. The little girl lifted her face and gave me a shy grin, dimples puckering. She popped her thumb in her mouth and stared up at me with round eyes.

The younger son squeezed out from under his mother’s arm and took a bold step toward me. “I’m Aaron,” he said. Just as Maurice’s voice was not low and gravelly as I would expect, Aaron’s voice was not high-pitched and squeaky. His chest was puffed out in imitation of his older brother. “That’s Fred, and my little sister is Abby.”

I cocked my head to the side. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. If you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I’ll see what I can do to make you all more comfortable.” I grabbed Maurice by the wrist and yanked him with me as I turned to go to the kitchen. As an afterthought, I let him go and walked back to the closet.

“And Molly,” I said, bending low to look her in the eye. “Nothing will hurt you here. You and your family are safe and welcome in my home.”

I strode to where Maurice stood waiting. “You,” I said. “Kitchen. Now.”

In the kitchen, I went to the fridge and pulled out the pitcher of strawberry lemonade.

“Zoey, I know how this looks,” Maurice said.

“Sit.” I admit, my tone was a little sharp.

“I was going to tell you.”

“Sit-sit-sit.” He sat, and for one blessed minute was silent. I poured two glasses and brought them to the table. I knew there was more going on than what I was seeing, and I was trying to form the words needed to get him to come clean.

Questions banged against each other in my head. The clues had been coming at me since I’d woken up to find a closet monster in my kitchen several days earlier. Brownies. Skunk-ape. Hag. Fairies.
Helping. She was helping, just like you.
All the questions swirled into one single, simple sentence.

“Maurice, what was my mother doing before she disappeared?”

It was obvious this was not where he expected me to go. He looked startled and slightly pale, even for him.

“She helped.”

“Yeah, I get that. Helped who? And how?”

“She helped the Hidden, mostly.”

“The hidden what?” I frowned, not understanding.

He spread his hands and waved his arms around. “Non-humans. The Hidden. Though I’m pretty sure she helped humans, too. She couldn’t help herself. If someone was in trouble, they came to her, and she never turned them down.”

“Closet monsters and fairies are called the Hidden?”

“And brownies. Really, anything humans aren’t supposed to see. Hidden, get it?”

It was good to know there was a group name for all this nonsense. It was less of a mouthful than “monsters, mythical creatures and urban legends.”

“What was she doing for you, exactly?”

“A house fire took my parents and left me an orphan, so she took me in until she could find me a family. She also made sure meals were sent to Aggie the Hag when she was sick.”

“The fairies?”

He nodded. “Their clearing was being bulldozed for a new Denny’s, so your mom brought them here and planted a garden for them. They were here for years before they found a patch of forest they liked.”

Despite my growing suspicions, I was stunned. With the exception of one terrifying night with Maurice, I’d never seen anything unusual while I was growing up. And even that I’d forgotten until he appeared in my kitchen twenty years later.

“So, all these ‘favors’ you called in to protect me, they were owed to my mother.”

“Everybody loved her, Zo. We all did.”

I thought about the crazy grin and thumbs-up I’d been given by my skunk-ape bodyguard. I couldn’t begin to fathom what she might have done for him, but at least it made sense now.

“I miss her.”

“Me too.” His shoulders slumped. “She taught me to cook, you know. She could turn anything into a pie or a casserole.”

“I don’t remember much about her.” It made me sad that someone who’d only recently come into my life had so many more memories of my mother than I did. I wasn’t jealous, exactly. More like I’d discovered a gaping hole where I hadn’t realized there was one.

He reached his hand out and squeezed my hand. “You know, after she left, I still came back sometimes to visit. I had to honor your mom’s wishes to leave you be, but there were a few times I almost came out of the closet to sit with you. You were so sad. It broke my heart.”

“You watched me?”

“You snore, you know.”

“Creeper.”

“I owed it to your mom to keep an eye on you.”

I took a deep breath, steadying myself for the real question. “Where did she go, Maurice?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea. Sometimes a few months would go by between my visits. When I came back to see her that last time, she was already long gone. Did the police have any clues?”

That was a good question. “I don’t remember any police. There must have been, right? I don’t remember her leaving, and I don’t remember anyone searching for her, but they had to have looked. I only remember after. Months after. Dad didn’t talk about it, but then, we never talked about her much. It hurt him too much to remember.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes, each regarding the ice in our drinks.

“So,” I said. “Molly. What’s the story?”

Maurice frowned into his glass. “Her husband is a drunken asshole.”

“Ah.” That explained everything. “And what was your plan?”

He shrugged. “She knocked on the door just after dawn this morning, and I stashed them in the cupboard. All I could think was to get them inside for safety. The fairies won’t let him in through the ring. They’re okay in here.”

“Safety is good. They also need a better living space and long-term goals. If I’ve got a supernatural halfway house going here, we have to help them get their lives together. Otherwise, I have a feeling folks are going to start stacking up.” I was already making lists in my head, figuring out what I’d need and how to make it happen. After all, that’s what wedding planners do. It’s my livelihood.

“You’re not mad?”

“I’m mad you didn’t tell me. And I really could have used the heads-up on what my mom was up to, especially once it started again behind my back. No secrets, Maurice. Obviously, word is getting around. I can’t help if I don’t know. I probably traumatized that poor woman screaming like that. Quit springing shit on me. One of these days I’ll keel over with a heart attack and then who will you cook for?”

* * *

I was in my element, drawing up a plan of action and multiple to-do lists. I could hear Sara’s voice in my head informing me that I was, once again, avoiding my own problems by focusing on the problems of others, but I brushed the criticism aside. I had no real problems. I had a pretty good life. Okay, maybe I was a little lonely banging around this big house by myself, but hey, now I had plenty of company.

The first thing I did was send Maurice to the linen closet to see about getting them some food. They’d been stuck in the dark, terrified, for hours. The kids, at least, must be starving.

I had to admit, he’d stashed them in a good spot. But I wanted to make it homier and less like, well, like a closet. I’m sure Maurice had seen it as perfect. To him, a closet was ideal. I didn’t know much about brownies, but a family needed more than shelf space and linens. Fortunately, I thought I might have a solution out in the garage.

My father had been a packrat, and I really wasn’t much better. My little Bug was parked in the driveway because the garage was too full for a vehicle, even one that small. I rarely ventured inside. A few times I’d tried to go through some of the boxes to clean it all out, but the memories were too hard. My childhood was packed away in there. My parents’ lives were stored in plastic containers and cardboard boxes.

The door complained when I pulled it open. Cobwebs grabbed at me on the way in, as if attempting to talk me out of wading through all my precious junk. I pushed on. At the back wall, I found several boxes marked “Barbie” and pulled them free.

I had been a complete Barbie junkie when I was little. Every Christmas and birthday brought a new glamorous location for Barbie to spend her time. She had a pool with a cabana, a ballet studio, the dream house, a beauty salon.

I dug through the boxes, shoving past semi-clothed and fully naked dolls with ratty hair. Why is it, the more you brush a Barbie’s hair, the grosser it ends up getting? I pulled out her van and her airplane and set them out of the way. Near the bottom of the second box, I found what I needed. Sofas, chairs, beds, tables—they were all there, and all as close to the right size as I was going to get. In a shoe box tucked under a wardrobe of moldering doll clothes was a collection of cups and dishes. There was also some tiny silverware, only a little bent from years of chubby fingers stabbing at invisible pancakes. Barbies love pancakes.

I piled it all into an empty box and folded the flaps down. Satisfied and more than a little pleased with myself, I turned to go.

Behind me, something sneezed.

I looked over my shoulder, squinting into the shadows. I didn’t see anything. The second sneeze gave me a better idea of where it was coming from, and I moved my gaze to the corner. An animal—small for a dog, but gigantic for a rat—shifted. I moved closer and peered down.

Not a rodent, so that was good news. Not a dog, either. It looked more
reptilian
. At this point, panic probably should have set in. But the sniffly guy didn’t
feel
hostile. In fact, it seemed pretty damn miserable.

And it was pink.

It looked up at me with doe eyes and sneezed again. Tiny sparks shot out of its nostrils.

Though I may have been past the point of doubting my own sanity, surprise was still in my repertoire.

“Hey, buddy,” I said in as soothing a voice as I could muster. “You don’t look so good.” What does a person do for a sick baby dragon? I squatted down next to it and stuck out my hand to be sniffed, hoping it wouldn’t sneeze again and give me third-degree burns. Or lop off my well-intentioned hand.