I hung up the phone. My delight, my joy, my happiness at having done good was so great that I began to cry. But I quickly regained my composure. I had to plan my actions very carefully. Norma would have to be benefitted later; two of my nieces dying mysteriously could create suspicion. I would have to choose the places where I would act. And also choose other beautiful young women. There are so many, the poor things.
I had to plan, plan, plan. Doing good is harder and more laborious than doing evil.
Copyright © 2012 by Rubem Fonseca; translation Copyright © 2012 by Clifford E. Landers
The Closet
by Jenny Milchman
This is New Jersey suspense writer Jenny Milchman’s first paid professional publication, but it will be quickly followed up (in February of 2013) by the release of her debut novel, Cover of Snow (Ballantine). The author currently serves as chair of the International Thriller Writers’ Debut Authors Program, and she is also the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, which was celebrated, in 2011, in more than 350 bookstores in all 50 U.S. states and four foreign countries.
It seemed to be darkest in the closet at midday. Ellie didn’t know why. Maybe because of how light it was outside, noonday sun glaring, just before she got locked in. The floor of the closet was carpeted, and the door sill shushed against it. Not even one crack of light could enter.
Ellie hated the dark more than anything else. More than the mixed-up jumble of hidden things her mom threw in here, everything that didn’t have a place anywhere else. More than the smell, which reminded her of her grandmother. Or the feel of the hot, wooly coats that sometimes brushed against her. The worst was the pure, unblinking dark.
“David!” she screamed. “Lemme out!”
She could scream until her throat was raw, and had. Till she coughed blood, and couldn’t make one sound more. It didn’t matter. David never let her out till he was ready.
In the bright, safe rest of the house, he was wrestling with his best friend. A loud boy who lived next door, bigger than David. She never heard David make a single grunt when they wrestled, though. He was silent, action only, whipping his body around, freeing himself from an arm or a chest, before flipping Brad onto the ground and pinning him there. Ellie had seen him do it, his eyes both fiery and satisfied, as he lay heaving on top of Brad. It was after David caught Ellie watching that he started locking her in the closet for real.
Turning the latch. Leaving her there for hours at a time. Ellie didn’t have a watch — and she couldn’t have seen it in the dark anyway — but she knew by how low the sun was in the sky when he finally let her out.
When she was very young, as little as five, it hadn’t gone on for as long, and David had stayed close by, keeping watch outside the door. That was three years ago, and their mom didn’t leave them alone in the house yet. All Ellie had to do was start screaming — and she began screaming the second she went in there anyway, so horrible were the back reaches of that closet — and her mom would come and get her out.
“David!” she’d exclaim. “Why was your little sister in the closet?”
Ellie would be hidden in the folds of her mother’s skirt, tears pouring soundlessly out of her. The dark still clutched at her throat, like a glove.
“I dunno,” he always muttered. “We were playing hide-n’-go-seek!” Or sardines. Or Jack and the Beanstalk. It was never true, any of it. David didn’t play games with Ellie.
“Not in the closet,” their mom would reply briskly. “I don’t know what all is in there now. And it could scare her. You know Ellie only stopped having nightmares last year.”
Actually, Ellie hadn’t stopped having them. She’d just stopped calling for her mother after one. She could remember the latest now, some kind of huge winged animal — not a bird — pressing down on her. She woke up smothered, fighting her blankets.
“Okay,” David would say, every time, head hanging. “I’ll tell her to play somewhere else.”
“Don’t look so upset,” their mother replied, chucking David under the chin as she began to walk out. “Little girls do all sorts of silly things. That’s why you have to be the big brother.”
David would look up at their mom, giving her that sunny grin that always made her take a step back and, whatever she might be doing — and their mom was always doing something — stop and smile back.
“Go on, let her out. I can’t stand that noise anymore.”
It was Brad’s voice. Ellie hadn’t realized she’d been screaming, but she must’ve been because her throat was doing that dead thing again. If she tried now, no sound would come out.
Then her brother spoke.
“No,” David said. “This time she isn’t getting out.”
Ellie never moved when she was in the closet. Not an inch. She sat in exactly one spot, the carpet like burrs under her palms.
She didn’t know what she’d find if she moved.
Or, what would find her.
Her mom had lived in this house forever — before David had been born and their dad had left even — and she’d always shoved everything they didn’t need anymore in the closet. On the shelf high above Ellie, boxes and clumped-up things threatened to topple down, which was why she always ducked, trying to protect her head, so that when she was finally let out, her neck would ache for hours.
“Why are you holding your head like that, Elizabeth?” her mom once asked.
“Because David—” Ellie had begun.
“David what?” her mother replied, in a patient, jokey tone, ready to smile at Ellie’s response. But her gaze had already lit on her son, and Ellie knew if she spoke now, her mother wouldn’t even hear.
Behind her in the closet loomed shapes Ellie couldn’t see so much as feel. Ellie never even knew if her eyes were open or shut unless she reached up and felt the lids. The darkness was so solid it filled up her mouth, like dirt.
Once something had roared in the closet, a loud, blustery roar that emitted an actual gust of wind. Ellie had screamed and catapulted herself forward into the door so hard she needed stitches. She didn’t get them — her mom was a nurse and did up the cut on her forehead with a butterfly — but Ellie figured that really hadn’t been enough from the way the cut still seeped for days afterwards.
It turned out that Ellie had fallen — there were times she dozed off while in the closet, which astonished her, but her mind did do this funny splintering thing, stopping only after she’d jerked to with a start — into the Dustbuster. David had hauled her out that time — there was a crack in the door he’d taken pains to repair — laughing at her.
“Scared of a vacuum cleaner,” he’d scoffed.
The Dustbuster was just one of the things that caused Ellie to stay stock still now until her imprisonment was over. The thought of that roar, the feel of its hot, dusty breath on her again made her shudder. But this time David had said it would never be over. He wasn’t going to let her out. Ellie didn’t think she could stay in the dark for much longer. It felt like it already had been hours — long past the longest sentence he’d ever inflicted upon her — and everything outside the closet was quiet. No Brad thumping and huffing, no final thud signaling David’s victory. If Ellie started to scream again, would they even hear her? Her throat was still too raw to produce much of a sound anyway. Ellie opened her mouth and tested it, feeling panic when only a dry whisper came out.
Terror-stricken, Ellie suddenly scampered forward, carpet rasping under her fists. She got onto her knees and began scrabbling around for the closet door, finding the softer streak of putty right at forehead height where she’d hit it that time, and which her mom never detected under the new layer of paint David had added.