A Sticky Yellow Place
Half hidden from the eye . . .
shining in the sky.
– William Wordsworth
There was something unsettling in the back of twelve-year-old Sandra’s closet. At times she could actually smell it, but she was the only one who could. She first discovered its presence when looking for the mate to a pair of sneakers. Groping around in the deep recesses of her closet, she touched an object that made her recoil. At first Sandra thought it was a cobweb, but when she looked at her hand she knew better. Whatever she had encountered left a sticky yellow residue on her fingers rather than the delicate threads of a spider’s handiwork.
She reported the incident to her mother, Kerri Giles, who found nothing after removing everything the enclosure contained. Despite this, Sandra remained unconvinced that the space was clear and decided then and there to never again reach that far in. Whatever she had come in contact with could remain there unmolested as far as she was concerned. As time passed, however, with not a day going by that the episode left her thoughts, her resolve began to give way to curiosity. Sandra needed to know if she had just imagined the disturbing event, because she wanted to put her doubt to rest once and for all.
Once Sandra decided to meet the situation head on, it took her awhile to muster the courage to probe the closet’s innards. There was no way she was using her hand again, so she used her mother’s yardstick to do the poking. Since the closet had no light, she also enlisted the aid of a flashlight to illuminate the mystery. When the time came to launch the expedition, Sandra locked the door to her room. She didn’t want to be discovered by her mother, who had declared the whole thing a figment of her daughter’s overactive imagination.
As soon as she opened the closet door, her nostrils were beset by a rancid odor that reminded her of the smell that sometimes rose from the garbage disposal. It caused Sandra to crinkle her nose as she leaned slightly into the closet with the tools of her search. When the yardstick came in contact with something malleable, Sandra thought it was her pair of Uggs, but the beam of the flashlight revealed otherwise. There in the inner sanctum of the closet was a slimy pulsating object attached to the wall. It made Sandra scream and jump backward. When she caught her breath, she slammed the door shut.
* * *
Sandra refused to reopen the closet for several days. When her mother asked why she hadn’t changed her clothes, she tearfully revealed the reason.
“Not that again, honey. There’s nothing in there. I emptied it out and showed you.”
“I know, but there’s really something in there,” protested Sandra.
“What is it that you think is in your closet?” asked Mrs. Giles, attempting to placate her nearly hysterical child.
“I don’t know. It’s a yucky, stinky thing,” answered Sandra.
“We checked it for smells, and we couldn’t detect any. You know that, sweetheart.”
“Please, mom, check it again. There’s something awful in there, and I won’t open the door any more. I don’t care if I have to wear these clothes forever,” stammered Sandra.
“Okay, when your father comes home, we’ll take another look. Maybe it needs to be repainted. I know the walls are chipping and scaling in all the closets. That quake, or whatever it was a few weeks ago, has left this house falling apart,” offered Sandra’s mother.
When Larry Giles arrived from work, his wife informed him of the situation, and he agreed to conduct a thorough renovation of all the house’s closets, starting with Sandra’s.
“Lord knows what else needs attention in this place, but we’ll start in your room and work from there,” observed Mr. Giles, removing his tie.
While her parents emptied it, Sandra stood at a distance behind them fearing what may be discovered. They carefully piled her clothes on her bed, and stacked her shoes atop a chest containing her collection of My Little Pony and Barbie dolls.
“There . . . nothing. Empty as Mother Goose’s cupboards,” declared her father.
“See, Sandra. Come over and look. No yucky, stinky thing,” announced Kerri Giles, smiling at her daughter consolingly.
Sandra moved toward the closet slowly. Indeed, it was empty as her parents claimed. But how could that be? There was a horrible thing in there just a while ago. Where could it be now? she wondered, her apprehension still high.
“I’ll paint it tomorrow. Get rid of all those ugly cracks. Didn’t realize how bad it was inside there. It’s probably what you saw. No boogeyman, honey, just old dried up walls that need some Spackle and Dutch Boy. We’ll leave the door open so it will air out,” said Mr. Giles, exiting the room.
“Let’s move your clothes off your bed, so you have room to sleep tonight, okay? And please put on something clean, Sandra. Maybe what you’ve been smelling is yourself,” said her mother, only half joking.
* * *
Long after Sandra went to bed, she kept her eyes fixed on the open closet. Finally, as she was about to drift off, she thought she heard something coming from it . . . a raspy voice. Sandra pulled the covers over her head until she began to perspire. After several agonizing moments of silence, she heard her name called. When she dared to peek out from under the puff, she saw a soft glow inside the closet and a shadow move against its back wall.
“Sandra . . . Sandra. Come, Sandra,” beckoned the unwelcome intruder.
Sandra leapt from the bed and ran from her room. She took refuge beneath the thick down comforter on the bed in the guest room, where she remained until she heard her mother calling for her in the morning. Sandra slipped from under the protective covers and met her mother in the hall.
“What were you doing in there?”
“I saw . . .” sputtered Sandra, deciding not to say anything about the voice in the closet.
“Saw what?” asked Mrs. Giles.
“Nothing . . . I just couldn’t sleep in my bed, so I tried the one in the guest room,” answered Sandra, her heart racing.
“Was it the closet? It was, wasn’t it? You were afraid, huh? Well, daddy is going to take care of it today. It will be like new tonight, so that should help you get over this.”
After breakfast, Larry Giles went to work on Sandra’s closet filling in the wide cracks and double-coating it with white paint.
“Come in and see your new and improved closet, Sandy,” called her father.
To her profound relief, it did appear new and improved, and most of all it seemed absent of any evidence that something awful had resided in it.
“I was going to paint it yellow, but I thought it would be easier for you to choose an outfit against a more neutral backdrop. How’s that thinking, young lady?” said Mr. Giles, proudly.
“Great, daddy. I hate yellow anyway,” Sandra assured her father.
“Oh, I thought you loved yellow.”
“Not any more,” replied Sandra, giving her father an appreciative hug.
Hey, what’s this?” asked Mr. Giles, holding his daughter’s wrist.
During the past two days, a rash had formed on Sandra’s hand. At first it was small, but it quickly grew to cover most of her forearm, as well as her hand.
“I don’t know,” answered Sandra, scratching at it.
“Better not do that. It could spread. Have mom look at it. Doesn’t look like poison ivy. Odd color . . . mustardy.”
“I will,” said Sandra to her father, as he removed a drop cloth and paint can from the revitalized closet and left her room.
* * *
Later in the afternoon, when the paint had dried, Sandra hung her clothes and carefully organized her shoes in the refurbished closet, but her anxiety had not left her entirely. In fact, the more time she spent in the space, the more she sensed the presence of the unknown entity that had seemingly possessed it. By the time she was finished storing her wardrobe, she was certain the demon––for that is how she now thought of it––had reclaimed the rear wall of the closet.
At supper, Sandra’s parents noticed that the rash on her arm now extended to her neck.
“We’ll take you to the dermatologist tomorrow, Sandy,” said her father, and her mother implored her to stop scratching the rash.
“It’s itchy,” replied Sandra. “And I think it smells, too.”
“I don’t smell anything, honey, but if you keep digging at it, it’ll become infected,” observed Kerri Giles.
Sandra excused herself from the dinner table and returned to her room. As soon as she entered it, she noticed the closet door that had been tightly shut was open. It’s out, she thought, scanning her room, but then the closet door slowly shut. I can’t stay here . . . I can’t stay in this room, she repeated to herself. She turned and dashed to the bedroom door, only to find it locked.
“Sandra . . .,” came the unearthly voice from the closet. “Sandra, there is nothing to fear. Nothing to fear at all.”
As the muffled words continued to flow from behind the closet door, she suddenly felt less afraid, even soothed.
“We are already one. From the moment you touched me we became the same. Our atoms have united, and soon we’ll be able to leave. The transmigration will soon take place. It has taken so long . . . so very long.”
Sandra listened intently and was directed to enter the closet whose door crept open.
“No longer in exile on this wretched planet. My sentence has been served. Liberation is mine. Come, Sandra. The cycle nears completion.”
“Yes,” said Sandra, entering the closet, “the cycle nears completion.”
* * *
After calling her daughter to breakfast three times, Kerri Giles went to her room and tapped on the door. When there was no answer, she entered it.
“Honey, it’s time to get up,” she whispered affectionately as she tugged the covers from her daughter.
Sandra’s father dropped his cup of freshly poured coffee when he heard the horrific scream coming from the second floor. He climbed the stairs three at a time and arrived at his daughter’s bedroom where he found his wife standing over what looked like a giant, flesh colored amoeba.
“Jesus!” he yelled. “What is that?”
As he reached his wife’s side, the stench rising from the quivering mass caused the contents of his stomach to explode past his lips.
“She’s in there!” cried Mrs. Giles. “Look, I can see Sandra’s face!”
As the Gileses leaned into the foreign object, it sprang open ripping them from where they stood and sucking them inside. A moment later, it rose from the bed and swept out of the window, disappearing into the cloudless sky.
