Each night when he got into bed he thought that another day was gone and Christmas had moved a little closer. He was happy and excited. Sleep did not come easily.
Sixteen days before Christmas he had a terrifying nightmare.
He was walking with his brother Gary on the way to school. Gary was telling him how well he had done in the long jump the previous day. “I managed this tremendous leap—must have been nearly ten feet—I thought I was flying.”
The two of them stepped through the doors leading to the classrooms. But they were suddenly in Andrew’s bedroom.
Gary seemed unaware of the transformation, he continued walking. He stopped at the wardrobe with his back towards it. The doors swung slowly and silently open. Andrew tried to speak, but his mouth seemed as if it were filled with a wad of cotton, and fear crushed his ribs. In his arms there was suddenly a great slab of cold granite, a gravestone. It’s inscription weathered and worn into an unreadable shadow. The stone was covered with lichen and damp earth . . . and something else. Wriggling maggots, fat and white, writhed blindly towards his fingers.
With a shuddering moan of loathing, Andrew threw the thing away from him. Gary’s eyes went wide with horror as the heavy stone sailed towards him. It thudded into his chest. He fell backwards into the gaping blackness of the wardrobe, where something waited . . . The doors slapped shut.
Andrew woke up. The door of the wardrobe swung shut with a soft click that seemed to echo like a gun shot. Terror returned like a cat pouncing on its prey. He almost screamed, but his body was rigid, constricted by a breath that couldn’t escape.
After long minutes had passed he found the courage to slide his hand out from under the protective covering of the blankets and switch on the lamp. He wanted to call for his mother, but he remembered what his father had said to him. He knew that he would have to remain silent. Andrew lay in his bed, staring at the wardrobe for a long time before uneasy sleep at last came to him.
In the comforting light of a bright, cold day, Andrew brooded on his nightmare, going over it again and again. Had it happened? Had the wardrobe doors swung shut when he had woken? He was certain the doors had been closed when he had gone to bed, and they were obviously closed now. The only possible answer was that he had still been half asleep after the nightmare had ended. One second asleep and dreaming the doors swinging shut, the next awake, and seeing the dark shape of the wardrobe in the beam of moonlight streaming through the gap in the curtains.
That afternoon he found Gary in the garden with his bicycle upside down. Gary was standing on the handlebars in an attempt to straighten them. Andrew rested his back against the fence and watched his brother.
Gary turned round and saw his brother shivering and watching. “You wouldn’t feel cold if you were doing something instead of just watching. Stand on the other end of the bars and bounce up and down. With both of us together there might be enough weight to straighten it.”
The two of them grunted and gasped, and eventually the metal bent back.
“Phew! That was hard work. How’d you manage to bend it like that?”
“I’d just finished delivering the papers and was on my way home, then I hit a patch of ice on the corner of Bell’s Lane. I went halfway across the road before I could grab the brakes and the bike went straight over and I landed on the handlebars.”
He rubbed his chest.
“It doesn’t half hurt. I bet I’ve got a great big bruise.”
Andrew stared at his brother for a long time. “Gaz. I had a bad dream last night.”
“That’s nice. Get chased by a Dalek? Or was it a lump of man-eating purple jelly with fangs?” He made a face, showing his teeth.
“It wasn’t anything like that. I dreamt that you fell inside the wardrobe in my bedroom . . .”
“Sounds really frightening,” interrupted Gary.
“There was something in there . . . waiting. I don’t know what, I never saw it, but it killed you,” he finished lamely, unable to convey the sense of horror he felt.
“But you didn’t fall into the wardrobe. I had this gravestone, it was all covered in maggots. I threw it away and it hit you . . . in the chest.”
The laughter vanished from Gary’s face. “You’re lying. You made it up, didn’t you? You’re trying to scare me just like you scare mum, with all that rubbish about the wardrobe. Well I’m not going to listen!” Fear was in his eyes, and he turned away, lest Andrew should see it. “I’m going in the house!”
Andrew stood watching as his elder brother walked away. He wondered if Gary would tell his mother and father. He doubted it. Gary wouldn’t admit his fear even to Andrew, much less their parents. Andrew wondered if he should say something himself, but what could he say that wouldn’t frighten his mother and enrage his father? Nothing. The only thing he could do was to forget all about the matter.
When Andrew was eleven, his bedroom changed. New carpet and curtains and wallpaper in mute pastel shades were exchanged for the bright, boisterous colors of childhood. Books and records replaced the toys. The electric train was long gone, broken and discarded, but the wardrobe was still there . . . unchanged.
The wardrobe now filled Andrew with terror whenever he was alone in his room. He began putting a chair in front of the doors each night, to make certain they could never come open while he was asleep. Gary never mentioned the nightmare again, not even to ridicule Andrew with it. In fact, it seemed to Andrew that all the family made a special point of not mentioning the wardrobe in any way at all.
He picked a moment when his father was alone. Gary was out with his friends and his mother in town doing some shopping. He went into the lounge where his father sat in an armchair reading the newspaper.
Peter looked up as Andrew came in, saw by the look on his son’s face that he wanted to ask something, and put his newspaper on the floor after carefully folding it in half.
“Dad, I wanted to ask you if I could have a desk in my room, so I’ll have somewhere quiet to sit and do my homework.”
“A desk? Well, I don’t know. Your room’s not very big to start with. Where are you going to put a desk?”
“It could go by the wall, between the door and the window.”
Peter considered this for a moment, mentally measuring the length of the wall. “But what about the old wardrobe? It just about fills the space along that wall?”
“We could have it taken out and put a proper fitted wardrobe in the alcove. That’s what Darren Slater’s got. He’s got a desk and his room’s a bit smaller than mine.”
“Oh! I see it now,” Andrew’s father laughed. “But a desk would be useful, especially as you get older and have to do a lot more serious studying. I’ll see what I can do about it. And with a bit of luck, you’ll get a desk like Darren’s or maybe better.”
“Thanks, Dad!” said Andrew as he turned and all but swaggered out of the room.
Three days later, Peter went up to his youngest son’s room. He found Andrew sitting on the bed, half-heartedly reading through his notes on the French Revolution for a coming exam.
Peter walked over to the wardrobe and stood with one hand resting on the polished wood. Andrew lifted his eyes from his book and nodded.
“There’s a young bloke at the factory who’s just got married and moved into a house in Waverley Road.”
Andrew nodded.
“Well he’s a bit short of money at the moment, not surprisingly, and he’s looking around for furniture on the cheap. So I told him we’d got an old wardrobe he could have, if he collected it himself.”
“What did he say, Dad?” Andrew asked, pushing his book under the bed.
“Oh. He said he’d have it. Said he’d be round Sunday afternoon with a mate of his who’s got a Transit van.”
Andrew swung round until he could see the wardrobe properly. At last it was going. But still he had to suppress a shudder.
The next day was Friday, and that afternoon when school was over, Andrew and his mother took all t
he clothes out of the wardrobe and hung them in the white fitted wardrobe in his parents’ room.
“It’s a bit of a squeeze,” said his mother, as she pushed her husband’s gray three-piece suit along the rail in order to slide Andrew’s duffle coat into the narrow space. “But we’ll manage until we get you a new one.”
After tea, Andrew and his father spent an hour wrestling the heavy wardrobe from its place against the wall and downstairs. The staircase was narrow and curved back on itself, so there was a lot of pushing and pulling and shouted instructions before they got the wardrobe out into the back garden.
Andrew’s father brushed his hair out of his eyes with a dust hand. “We could have done with Gary to give us a hand. This bloody thing’s heavy enough to give me a hernia!”
Andrew rubbed his hands down the front of his jeans; there were two red lines across his palms where the edge of the wardrobe had dug into the soft flesh. But again they each took one end of the wardrobe. Like some ungainly giant crab they made their way into the shed with short, wobbly steps.
“That should do it,” gasped Andrew, blowing air through his teeth with a soft whistling sound.
“Yep. You’re right,” his father said, as he tucked his shirt into his trousers. “It’ll be okay in here, ready for Harry when he comes to collect it. Nice and close to the gate. I expect it’d rain if we left it outside. Come on then, let’s go and see if your mother’s got any orange juice in the fridge.”
Andrew didn’t follow him back indoors immediately. He lingered in the shed, studying the wardrobe. Suddenly, it seemed as dark and evil to him as when he had been a little boy. It was almost as if it were a living thing. Now that it was in the shed it was like a dangerous animal in a cage, trapped, but not nearly as deadly. He had the urge to taunt it.
“So you’re going at last. After all these years of turning round with a gasp when I thought some hideous creature was going to leap out from inside you. I won’t wake up in the middle of the night and see you looming there like the Gates of Hell!”
He raised his fist in a gesture of triumph . . . And the wardrobe gave a squealing creak, almost as if it were giving voice to its impotent fury.
Andrew’s courage deserted him then. He ran out of the shed, slammed the door behind him and shot the bolt. He rushed indoors, his heart thundering madly against his ribs.
That night he experienced his nightmare again; the same nightmare that had chilled his soul countless times before. But this time it was much worse. This time there were faces on the sides of the wardrobe, born from the patterning of the wood. They were demon faces, tattered and ragged, as if they had been sculpted in the wood but had run before drying, like candle wax. When Gary fell inside and the doors closed, awful crunching sounds could be heard, along with Gary’s screams. They rose to a squealing howl which made Andrew’s stomach and bladder convulse.
From the demon mouths blood began to pour, running down the sides of the wardrobe.
Andrew awoke, almost mad with fear. He scrambled out of bed making a low moaning noise. After long agonizing seconds of fumbling, his fingers found the light switch. He stood in the harsh brightness feeling ill. He felt a cold dampness and found that he had wet himself in his terror.
Andrew was sick as soon as he reached the bathroom. He made certain some of the vomit went down the front of his pyjamas, hiding the stain of urine. His mother came running out of her bedroom and fussed over him.
“There, there, my poppet. Feeling better now?”
Andrew nodded, his face was pale and sweat-streaked.
She wiped his face with a wet flannel and gave him a glass of water to drink. Andrew held the glass in his trembling hands, and the rim clinked against his teeth.
After he had changed, Andrew went back to his room and got into bed, but only after his mother had agreed to stay with him. She sat on a chair beside his bed and held his hand. A few minutes later his father came in. He stifled a yawn.
“Two o’clock in the morning, you pick the best time to be sick,” he said, tying the belt of a faded red dressing gown around his waist. “What have you been up to?”
Andrew’s fear made him reckless. He began telling his parents about his nightmare. When he had finished, his father stared at him with an angry look on his face.
“Don’t you think it’s about bloody time you forgot about that thing? You’re not a little kid anymore! I swear to God, you must be barmy.”
“Peter!” cried Madeleine, shocked by her husband’s harsh words. “You’re not helping him by shouting at him like this.”
Peter said nothing, but stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Madeleine put her hand on Andrew’s brow and said gently, “You mustn’t worry about what your father says. He doesn’t really mean it, you know. He’s just worried about you, because he loves you. Everything will be better when that wretched wardrobe’s taken away.”
Andrew nodded, and buried his head in the pillow. He felt wretched.
The next morning Andrew got up early, glad to be out of the confines of his bedroom. Though the wardrobe was no longer there its presence seemed stronger. He gingerly stepped round the dark patch of carpet with the dirty line around it, the spot where the wardrobe had stood.
He went into the lounge and switched on the television. It was the Banana Splits Show, a repeat, but he didn’t mind.
From the other room he could hear the sound of his mother and Gary talking. He couldn’t quite catch what they said, but he somehow felt they were discussing him.
Gary came in and sat down on the arm of the settee. He began to twist himself from side to side, causing the settee to lift off the ground.
“Hey! Stop that, I’ll tell Dad!” Andrew snapped indignantly as he lurched forward.
“Dad’s not here. He’s gone fishing. He couldn’t bear to be in the same house as his barmy kid.”
Andrew said nothing.
“I heard everything last night. You still believe all that rubbish about the wardrobe, don’t you? I remember when you tried to scare me with your stupid story. ‘Oooh! Gary, there’s something in the wardrobe, Gary! It must be the bogeyman, Gary! I’m scared Gary!” he pitched his voice high and child-like.
Andrew still didn’t answer, but he began to turn red with embarrassment.
Sensing his brother’s discomfort, Gary went on, “I bet you were so scared you wet yourself!”
“Course I didn’t! And anyway, I was only scared of it when I was a little kid. It’ll be gone for good soon.” He couldn’t disguise the sense of relief he felt. Gary saw the fear he was trying to hide and said, “Come on outside, baby brother, and I’ll show you there’s no monster in the wardrobe waiting to get you. That’s if you’re not too frightened.”
He left the challenge hanging in mid-air like a noose.
“Let’s not bother, Gaz. I’m watching the telly.” Andrew tried to turn his brother’s thoughts to something else, but Gary was determined to extract the fullest enjoyment from his brother’s phobia.
“You’re scared! Chicken! You’re shit-scared!” He began slapping the back of Andrew’s head in time to his chanting.
Andrew lost his temper. He swung a fist at his brother, but Gary easily blocked the wild swing and pulled Andrew onto the floor. He held him down with his knees on Andrew’s shoulders.
“I’m telling you, you haven’t got the bottle to go out there!” He slammed Andrew’s head against the floor.
“Yes I have!” screamed Andrew, almost crying.
“Okay then, let’s go!” Gary let go of his younger brother. Andrew stood up, rubbing the back of his head. Reluctantly, he followed Gary out into the back garden.
They halted in front of the shed, but only for a moment. Gary slid the bolt back, opened the door and stepped inside. Andrew stood outside peering in. Gary strode up to the wardrobe and pulled open the doors.
It seemed to Andrew that the interior was filled with smokey darkness. He couldn’t see the back of the wardrobe.
>
“See, I told you there was nothing to be frightened of. It’s empty,” Gary called. Then he stepped inside.
Andrew was certain that Gary did nothing more than pull the door easily, yet it slammed shut with a bang that made his heart leap.
“Hey, Andy, open the door!” Gary’s voice was muffled and strangely distant. “Come on. It’s dark in here. I feel like I’m gonna suffocate.”
“I never touched it, Gaz! I never touched it!” Andrew rushed in and tugged at the door handles as hard as he could. They refused to move. “Please come out, Gaz. I’m scared.”
Slowly, so slowly, faces began to appear in the gleaming carvings of the wardrobe. They seemed to stare at Andrew, malevolent and hideous, tattered horrors from the darkest corners of his mind.
Andrew screamed as horrible scrabbling sounds came from inside. Gary’s cry rose to a high-pitched howl.
Again Andrew tried to open the doors, but they were jammed impossibly tight. All the while the faces grinned at him, mocking his efforts.
Almost out of his mind with terror, Andrew looked wildly around the shed for something to open the doors with. His eyes briefly touched on the wooden mallet, the cold chisels with their red plastic handles, a claw hammer with one claw broken off. All seemed small and ineffectual.
Then he saw the axe propped up in one corner. He picked it up, heaved it onto his shoulder, and brought it down on the side of the wardrobe with all of his strength.
He smashed it again and again. The strength of madness pushed his young body to its limits. Wood splintered and cracked. From the mouths of the demon faces, blood poured, puddling on the floor.
“Andrew!”
His mother’s scream from the doorway behind him brought him back to reality.
The doors of the wardrobe swung slowly open, and Gary’s body fell out. It was gashed and covered in blood. His face was all but unrecognizable.
The faces laughed gleefully.
“God in Heaven!” screamed his mother, “What have you done?” She rushed to Gary’s side, lifted his head and cradled it in her arms.
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