Visitor

Sid wasn’t sure what to make of the stranger living in the closet. It’s not like he could ask Mom and Dad what was going on. They were busy screaming at each other and Sid didn’t think they’d have answers for him anyway.

When we’re kids, some mysteries belong to us. Every child experiences at least one thing so odd that they will wonder if it happened at all. It lingers like a bizarre shape swimming below the surface of the water and it tugs on the mind as if caught on fishing wire, hesitant but persistent.

You don’t want an adult to take the rod. You just know they’ll heave it back on forth, dislodging the creature and hauling nothing but an empty hook out of the water. Meanwhile, it waits. It is for you. There is nothing to do but fix your eyes on the murky depths. The stranger in the closet was just such a thing for Sid.

He stood in the cellar. His house was a century old and its foundation assembled from stones and mortar. The place was filled with shelves holding boxes and boxes of things horded rather than discarded. Baby clothes. Musty, half dissolved books. Round slide trays for a broken projector.

It was also very warm, thanks to a giant iron furnace that had once burned coal but now burned oil. Its flame glowed behind the grill at its base and its surface was hot to the touch, throwing off more warmth to this space than what managed to travel to the rest of the house through the radiator pipes. Right now, the room owed its light to two fluorescent tubes hanging in a fixture over a model railroad.

Beyond that was the closet. It looked like an amateur project, set apart with walls made of slats nailed to an uneven frame, like a picket fence that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. The room was under the front porch and had a window at the top no more than six inches high. Though dusk was ending, that window let in enough light for Sid to see the shape inside the closet. It was cut into vertical stripes by the pickets, but there was no mistaking the outline of a seated man with a brimmed hat.

Above the both of them came the sounds of Sid’s parents having it out. His mother had found some money that Dad wouldn’t explain, but that wasn’t the worst of it. She’d also found the letters. Sid and his brother had known about the letters for years and waited with dread for the moment when the truth would come to light.

“Hello?” said the boy.

Its head turned.

“Sid!” his mother called from the top of the stairs. “Sid, get up here right now.”

The light above the model railroad flashed on and off as Mom flicked the switch. Because the trains were his only escape, he had a habit of ignoring his mother until she made it impossible for him to stay down there. She’d resorted to making it impossible right away. The old fluorescent bulbs couldn’t really take strobing and with each flip they struggled with a buzz and a flicker that never quite reached its full strength before the power cut out again. Shadows from model buildings and houses crawled along the table.

And the figure started to stand.

Sid stepped back. There was a moment of wavering light and the man in the closet was on his feet. Then complete darkness. A second later, in the next flash, the man was reaching for the door. Then darkness. A second later, the door creaked and opened. Darkness. Sid stumbled backwards and felt a hard curved surface and enough heat to cook an egg reaching through the layers of his clothes. His heels kicked the glowing grate in the furnace. He screamed and jumped away, falling on the uneven cement floor and breathing in a century’s worth of dust. Footsteps came running down the stairs.

“Sid? What happened?”

His mother was now peering down at him through her thick glasses. He looked over at the closet. There was still something there, though the shape was less distinct and was no longer moving. The line was broken. The strange fish had returned to its home a thousand miles below the surface. Sid didn’t answer as he stood. Mom regarded him in silence with parted lips, as if about to say something but somehow unable to form the words. Sid had seen that before. There were moments when both parent and child realized that the other was a visitor from another country, or perhaps another planet. Mom squeezed her eyes shut and pinched a mound of skin on her forehead between her thumb and forefinger. With the other hand, she pointed to the stairs.

“Sid, just get up there and eat your dinner.”

Three places were set at the table and a bowl of something awful sat in the center. Mom was always throwing casseroles together made of noodles and hot dogs and tuna fish and various ungodly sauces and who knew what else she was able to find. Not a scrap could be wasted. Will, Sid’s older brother, pushed at the food on his plate and didn’t look up. He’d been here for the fight. Dad was in the den listening to the police scanner. A few minutes later, he stood and grabbed his jacket.

“Where are you going?” said Mom.

“There’s a fire on Union Street.”

“Are you a fireman?”

He didn’t answer. He just left.

“I’ll never understand why your father thinks fires are a spectator sport. It’s grotesque. That’s someone’s home their out of.”

She looked at Sid and then Will and when neither responded, she huffed and shoveled her creation into her mouth. The kids were old enough now to recognize when a parent was looking to them to reflect back whatever ire they’d worked up against the other parent. When you’re seven or eight, the power is intoxicating. But Sid was eleven and his brother was thirteen. The game was old. All the power lay in denying their parents the satisfaction of drawing everyone into whatever crazy long con they were cooking up. Mom and Dad’s shit was their business now, as far as Sid was concerned. He had his own business to worry about.