FICTIONS: The Girl in the Cupboard
Rachel Holkner
Briony chose the room. There were three similar upstairs, but this was the smallest and did not even come with a decent view. Her mother had intended it for storage. The room was slightly longer than it was wide, with wooden floorboards, pale yellow walls, one small square window and a cupboard built in to one wall.
“Briony,” her mother said, “You’ll never fit anything in that tiny cupboard. It doesn’t even have shelves.”
But Briony had insisted and the movers had lugged a solid wardrobe, bed and dresser set up the narrow staircase, twisted it through the door and the room was furnished.
“You’ll want a rug on that floor,” her dad said, “Cold feet otherwise.” And then off he went to sort out the kitchen.
The first time Briony got into the cupboard was after school one Tuesday. She’d had a particularly shitty day, forgotten to complete one banal assignment, fallen for a childish stunt by one of the more handsome guys in her chemistry class and had squashed her lunch under a dictionary.
She walked into her room, tossed her bag onto the bed, opened the door of the cupboard and stepped in.
Later she couldn’t have said why. She wanted somewhere dark and alone. Somewhere small. It was a half-wardrobe with a single door and a rail exactly at head height. She’d had to duck behind it in order to stand comfortably.
Her mother found Briony in there, hours later, on the floor giggling. When she had asked what the matter was and gotten no response, Tess rolled her eyes and, leaving the door of the cupboard open, left.
By dinner time Briony had appeared, complained about her homework and behaved sufficiently normally for her mother to forget the cupboard incident.
Three days later it happened again. This time it was her father who found her, and, being one to panic, had dragged her out by her left arm and demanded to know what she had taken. Briony had ceased laughing immediately she was out of the cupboard and raised one eyebrow in sarcastic disbelief. Alun backed off and went in search of his wife.
“You’re right,” Tess said, “She is behaving oddly. Exactly like a teenage girl.” But Alun still worried. Sufficiently so that after two more cupboard incidents he insisted that she see a psychologist.
“Well, she’s not taking anything,” the psychologist said, “She’s not hurting herself or anyone else, so I suggest we let it run its course.”
“That’s it?” Alun half stood up, “That’s all you’re going to tell us?”
“I can’t tell you anything else. That would be a breach of confidentiality. Your daughter is bright and intelligent and just looking for an escape from the day-to-day drama of being a teenager. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.”
“She’s climbing into a cupboard for God’s sake!”
“She’s climbing into a perfectly safe cupboard in your own home. Consider what she might be doing instead.”
“No, Alun,” Tess spoke up, “Don’t consider that.” She turned to the psychologist, “My husband worries, you may have noticed.”
He smiled, “It’s understandable.”
The only time Briony worried about the cupboard were the times she woke up inside it. Aside from a terrible crick in her neck and a bruised hip it didn’t seem to affect her, but the thing was, she couldn’t remember getting inside. She didn’t have a history of sleepwalking, but the safest approach seemed to be to ignore it. After all, the psychologist had said it wouldn’t hurt. So she went along pretending there was nothing the matter.
Inside the cupboard she would sit facing the closed door. She would press the backs of her hands to the cool plaster either side of her until, when she let them go, her hands would float up of their own accord. She would watch the changing colour of light around the edge of the door. From bright white to pale yellow, the golden orange of sunset reflected from the shop windows across the street, all shades of grey and, at night, the purest black. And sometimes that’s all there was to it. Somewhere to sit and gather her thoughts and let them go again. And sometimes she couldn’t remember even opening the cupboard door, but there she would wake cold and stiff from lying on the floor for, what? Hours?
Briony sat at her desk in front of the window with homework spread out before her. “Aren’t you going to invite any of your friends to the new house?” Tess asked from the doorway. “I thought Rebecca was keen to help decorate your room.” Briony shrugged without turning around. Not even her mother was referring to it as home yet. It wasn’t that she disliked her old friends, she just felt like her head was too full to take on any more conversations.
She heard her mother walk back down the stairs and found herself staring at the cupboard. The four boards of the door were worn away at the bottom from scraping on the floor, scratched and scuffed. The small metal handle that had to be held in just the right way or it wouldn’t turn at all.
She stood up and took two steps towards it. The dents in the handle fitted her hand exactly. She turned it slowly. No, she told herself. She didn’t need to open the door. She sat back at her desk and picked up her pen. Tapping it on the page, making a series of black dots, she tried to concentrate on the next problem. The cupboard was in the corner of her vision. It seemed to be growing, expanding. It inhaled and its chest filled out. There was nothing else to see in the room but that cupboard door. Her hand looked tiny now as she clutched the doorknob. The handle turned her wrist as it opened. The door pushed her backward and the cupboard urged her inside.
“It’s too much, Tess,” Alun was slicing onions at great speed.
“I know,” Tess sipped at a glass of red. She leaned on the kitchen bench watching the knife hit the chopping board, tok, tok, tok. “That cupboard is really starting to creep me out. Maybe we should move her into another room.”
“Can we do that?” Alun’s eyes were shining as the onion fumes touched them.
“Oh, probably not,” Tess drained her glass, “She’s nearly sixteen. I don’t think we can micro-manage her bedroom arrangements.”
Alun paused with the knife in mid-air. “We’ll put something in it,” he smiled with the simplicity of his plan. “We’ll just put something in the cupboard so she can’t get in it anymore.”
Alun and Tess stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway of Briony’s bedroom. Scattered all over the floor were boxes of paperwork, tennis racquets, sleeping bags and a bag of old baby clothes. Snorts of laughter came from inside the cupboard.
They installed a lock on the door. A sliding bolt with a padlock. Alun attached the key to the ring with his house and car keys. It seemed to work. The cupboard door stayed locked, Briony said nothing about it and Tess pretended everything had gone back to normal.
But Briony was looking tired. She stumbled down the stairs one morning and wrenched her wrist as she caught herself on the banister. The dark circles under her eyes crept around until they encircled them completely. She looked like a perpetually surprised raccoon. Worst of all, Tess thought, was the way she jumped at everything. Any sudden sound or quick movement set Briony off, until she quivered all the time.
Alun assumed it was some kind of withdrawal. Briony knew different.
Every night the cupboard drew her in. It just wanted her to sit there, in the clean patch on the floor her backside had made. It closed itself gently around her. Shut out all the sounds of traffic, all the lights that shone through her bedroom window, all of everything. It was just her and the cupboard together.
Alun arrived home from work after midnight. He was quiet in taking his boots off, and was just creeping up the stairs to bed when he heard a sound from Briony’s room. A scraping of wood on wood. He opened the door slowly and looked around. The bedcovers were tossed back. The room was empty. The headlights of a passing car glinted on the lock in its place on the cupboard door. He was just going to check the bathroom when he heard it. A muffled snicker. “Jesus Christ!” He tore back down the stairs and grabbed his keys off the counter.
As Alun paced around the double bed, his wife stroked the sweaty hair on Briony’s forehead. Briony was more unconscious than asleep. “Now what?” Tess asked.
“I’m going to finish this,” Alun said, and he walked out the door.
“What? What are you going to do?” Tess whispered furiously after him, but he did not respond. She heard him a few minutes later, bashing around behind the house. Unable to make any sense of his actions, Tess curled up beside Briony and, still holding her hand, fell asleep.
Briony paused at the sound of hammering from upstairs,”What’s Dad doing?”
“It’s a surprise,” Tess teased, “Now come on, an extravagant breakfast awaits!” Briony frowned as she followed her mother out the front door.
It was not until late afternoon that Alun let them back upstairs. He arranged them side by side in Briony’s room facing the cupboard. He had been working in the room all day and had not yet turned on the lights. A golden sunset flooded in, lighting the room like a stage.
“When is a cupboard not a cupboard?” Alun gestured like a game show model. “When it’s a door!” He opened it with a flourish. Briony and Tess could see straight through into the next room. Alun had removed the back wall of the cupboard so it formed a tiny passage. The spare room had been filled with odds and ends, the material history of three lives, but now they could see most of it had been neatened up into plastic crates along one wall.
“How many of your friends have two bedrooms?” Tess turned to her daughter.
“Go on, try it out.” Alun closed the door again and ushered Briony towards it.
Briony opened the door gingerly and stepped through. The door swung gently behind her and closed with a tap.
“What do you think?” Alun yelled through the wall. “Room enough for a dance party, yeah?”
“Bry?” Tess said. She took two quick steps to the door and yanked it open. The room was empty. Alun ran out to the hall and around into the opposite room. He and his wife faced each other through the cupboard. There was nobody there.
—/—
Copyright © Rachel Holkner 2009
Rachel Holkner shares a patch of ground in Melbourne with husband, daughter, cats, fish, possums, magpies and some wretched common mynas. She reviews occasionally for ASiF and was published in the premier issue of Midnight Echo. Rachel enjoys starting things, has grand plans and prefers a matt finish. She keeps her website at http://www.mechanicalcat.net/rachel
About “The Girl in the Cupboard” The cupboard in this story derives from the built-in wardrobe that was in my childhood bedroom. It had a secret space off to one side that I would play, hide and even sleep in sometimes. I also wanted to explore a little the effect adolescence can have on innocent bystanders, now that I have some distance from it.
