Skeletons.

The girl awoke with wide saucer eyes and dark hair splayed about her in a tangled fan. Her trembling body, slick hair, and gently quivering eyes were all damp with a thin coat of brackish fear. All around, the severed hands – at least twenty in number – clung to her limbs. They gripped her thin, ashen arms and legs so fiercely as death itself, with a crowning single object of such repulsion wrapped around her throat like pale Persephone’s choker. Severed they were, but not bloody; all blood was blanched from those ghostly things. They were more bone than flesh with slim fingers of severe phalanges and metacarpals coming to a wicked peak, and the icy flesh, blindingly white, stretched thin across those bones was hardly flesh at all.1

Then the girl truly awoke. She sat up with a start, suddenly free of her nightmarish specter. Her chest heaved up and down to a steady beat, and the sound of her labored breathing was the only one that came. Silence was in her eyes and head and on her lips. She had nothing left to say now; she was empty as the death she once feared would grip her. Now there was nothing besides that fear – a simple, primal fear that came when it came and went when it went, leaving your heart a dismal void.2

No, there would be no, “Mama, mama, please! Make it go away!” What was the use? Could a word from mama chase out the darkness in her heart? Could it conversely blight a devil? She had learned the answer to this was no. Mama could chase away the imaginary demons, but whether this was a veritable affliction of the paranormal or simply an immersion of her once untainted soul in darkness and her poor mind lost to hysteria, this was more than a boogeyman under the bed. It was a skeleton in the closet.3

Dispassionate eyes lifted to the closet, though she did not bother to incline her head. The door was propped open about a foot, and in the low light the empty black nook was soulless. She did not fear the closet anymore, though she knew perhaps she should have. If anything she feared what could have been – no, what she knew to be in the closet. It was there, somewhere. It wasn’t to be seen with normal eyes. This wasn’t something she could share with others, because they’d still treat her like a child, and if she weren’t a child, they’d treat her like she was mad, all because she saw the things they couldn’t. Perhaps she was mad, but she wasn’t a child. Certainly she was aged beyond her time by this grave matter.4

The girl felt as if she should do something, and so haltingly lifted her hands together in the classic sign of prayer. It was a hollow figurehead of a gesture; she didn’t even know who or what she was praying to. All it added up to was the product of instruction in the rightness of religion which had created, rather than even the feeblest hope of safety or resonation of divine love, the feeling of a duty to be carried out. Her mouth moved in silent, sallow sanctification and then her hands dropped to her sides again.5

She shot another glance at the closet and then allowed her body slump back to the soft coolness of the sheets and pillows. Even though the air around her was cold as blustery December’s breath, she felt feverish, and though the perspiration dampened her from brow to toe and soaked her nightgown, she felt dry. It was easy to entertain thoughts of sleep but in her heart of hearts she didn’t care whether she slept or woke. Fat lot of difference that would make. She just knew she wouldn’t be so offended at the Sandman if he never permitted her to dreamland again. In some ways she hoped he refused her entry.6

These abstract thoughts were sliced by a chilling wind that slashed through the room; suddenly the locked and curtained window was wide open again and looking out upon the same soulless black as was in the depths of her closet. Her body shivered but her mind did not. This was the least of her worries; she waited for it to really begin. Sure enough, a raspy whisper kicked up, then two, and then myriad voices swirled around her ears. Were they calling her name? Was it a mockery of her sin or a song of her praises? Did they order her to do terrible things – to jump out of the window into that wasteland of nothing or even worse? She did not care to know, and covered her ears as best she could. It didn’t effectively block the voices, but she thought it might do to show that she wasn’t listening.7

But it didn’t do. The words grew louder and louder into an unintelligible roar and a crisscross of wind that whipped her gown and hair back and forth. This had never happened before. She was used to things a certain way, having found normalcy in the fierce anomalous and grown familiar with that. If it just kept up the same, she could repeat the familiar pattern just like any other part of her routine. This, however, threw her for a loop. Her eyes widened and her heart beat like a drum. In her disorientation her eyes locked upon the closet door once again.8

With a wild cry echoing through all realms of fantasy, reality, and emotion, she tore through the room at a furious gait. She didn’t stop once but threw the door open, plunging into the darkness. If the fiendish presence wanted to devour her spirit, she’d run straight into its throat and make sure it choked as she went down. Her arms were outstretched and fists balled, ready to communicate her hysteria with full force. They could not stop her from crashing head on into the closet wall. Perception did not stay with her long, but she could feel the blood trickle down her forehead. Even so she opened her mouth and bobbed her head in a soundless laugh, for she could have sworn she heard the shattering and splintering of bone that was not her own.9

They found her leaning against the corner of the closet the next morning. The open wound on her head had matted her hair and dripped onto her face, and either blood loss or concussion was causing her to fade in and out of consciousness. There were little cuts on her face and legs and arms, as if someone had prodded her sharply with fingernails. Cleaned and doctored and stabilized, they asked her what on earth had come to pass. The only answer she would ever give was a wry and eerie smile. She had fought the skeletons in her closet, and she had won.