That was Thursday night. The next day Rachel had to go into the clinic and be a therapist. I had to make a lot of phone calls trying to find witnesses who’d talk about several incidents of sexual harassment alleged committed by a CEO. I found two people who were willing to give me information, so I went to visit one at her new job and the other at a Starbucks.
Rachel got home at 6:30. It was my night to cook dinner, and I was finishing up some vegetable curry with rice when she sauntered into the kitchen after changing from work. She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge.
“I’m going to have to call her.” She sat down and took a swig. “Mom.”
I nodded. “Before dinner or after?”
“I had to skip lunch for a meeting.” She picked up her fork. “So I’m starving. And, yeah, delaying. A little. Later.”
“Let’s eat.” I set out the meal and grabbed a beer for myself.
Afterward Rachel cleaned up, taking her time with the dishwasher to put off the phone call a little more. Finally she dried her hands, sighed, sat down, and pulled out her phone.
“You okay?”
Rachel shook her head. “No. But Lily was really scared. You didn’t see it. None of you could feel it. I have to do . . . something.” She scrolled to her mother’s number and hit “call.”
Two buzzes, then: “Rachel?”
“Hi, mom. How are you?”
“Good.” She sounded surprised. “I didn’t expect—how are you?”
“I’m fine. Tom’s here with me.” She looked up at me.
“Hi, Tobie,” I said as cheerfully as I could manage.
“Hello, Tom. What’s up?”
Rachel took a deep breath. “Does that thing—with Lily and the monster—does that happen when she’s at Mike’s ex’s house?”
“What?” Now she was confused. “I don’t—Mike! Just a second.”
“Uh, hi,” Mike said a moment later. “What’s going on?”
Rachel repeated her question. “I don’t think so,” Mike said. “But she might not have told me. I can get Lily—”
“No, not now,” Rachel said quickly.
“Why are you worried about this?” Tobie asked.
Rachel paused. “Mike, let me talk to mom alone, okay?”
“Uh, sure.”
“Rachel, what’s going on?” Now Tobie was irritated.
Another deep breath. “Mom, do you remember when I was 16—I think it was 16—and I told you that that guy, Roy, was having an affair? Remember that?”
“What does that have to do with anything? That was—”
“And then you caught him? With that blond girl who was barely older than me? Do you remember that?”
“Of course I remember! But what does that have . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Yeah, I remember now. You made it sound like you were reading his mind or something.”
“Yeah. I wasn’t exactly hearing his thoughts, but I could—feel it. Strong enough to get the details, like she was blond and young. I tried to tell you—”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember, I remember!” Tobie was close to shouting now. “What’s your point, Rachel? What does this have to do with Lily?”
“I’m psychic, mom.” Rachel kept her voice quiet. “I have been since I was about 14. I tried to tell you lots of times, but you never listened. But it’s true. I see things, I sense things. And there’s something bad inside that closet.”
Tobie was silent for a long time. Finally she whispered, “I don’t believe it. This is crazy”
“It’s true, mom.” Rachel closed her eyes. “It’s true.”
“Well, what—this is crazy! There’s nothing in my house—this is insane! What do you think, that the bogeyman or something is hiding in the closet, invisible or something? That you’re the only person who can see it? Is this a joke? You’re, what, a ghost whisperer?”
Rachel was trying to breathe calmly, but her face was taut and red.
“Tobie,” I said, “I don’t always understand it, but Rachel is very sensitive to these things. She can pick up things I can’t, that no one else can. She knows what she’s talking about. It’s hard to believe, I know, but—it’s true. I’ve seen it. I’ve been seeing it for years.”
“I never met you before last night.” Her voice rasped. “I don’t know anything about you. Rachel kept you away, she stayed away, she cut me off, for years she doesn’t speak to me, and now she’s got this wonderful husband and she’s telling me about what’s going on in my house, with my husband, and I’m supposed to—what? Call an exorcist? Banish the evil spirits that no one can see? Because an eight-year-old girl is scared of her closet?”
I looked at Rachel, but she looked away from me. We were all silent for a long moment.
Finally Tobie broke the silence with a loud sigh. “Mike’s got her until Sunday night. Do you want to come out here tomorrow and—and, I don’t know, take a look at the closet or something?
Rachel bit her lip. “Yeah. And talk to her. Would that be all right?”
“I’ll ask Mike. But yeah, I’m sure it is. He liked you. And Tom, too.”
“All right. Thank you.”
They hung up.
Rachel looked at the floor for a long time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry, and she didn’t now, but sniffed and wiped her eyes. “That—went better than I expected, actually.”
I reached for her hand. “You all right?”
She nodded. “When I left to go to college, I didn’t ever want to come back. I didn’t come home for the summer. I saw her maybe, I don’t know, three times before I graduated. I didn’t go to the ceremony, so she didn’t have to come to that. But I don’t know what I would have said if she did.” She grabbed a napkin to blow her nose. “It’s just—weird now. Talking to her. Seeing her. Oh God.” She shivered. “I have to see her tomorrow.
Rachel is usually the one telling me what to do. It felt strange and confusing to see her so fearful and so vulnerable. “I’ll be there, if that’s any help. And Mike likes you.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s a lot better than any of her boyfriends when I was growing up.” Then she stood up. “So are you.”
I shrugged, modest. “I try.”
“Shut up.” She squeezed my hand and then stood up. “Let’s see what’s on TV.”
So the next day we were back at her mother’s house.
We sat in the kitchen. Tobie poured coffee. “Cream? Sugar?” Mike and Lily were in the back yard.
“Neither,” I said.
She sat down. “So what do we do?”
Rachel and I looked at each other. I waited for her, as we’d agreed in the car. She would do the talking. I was there for backup and emotional support.
Rachel took a sip of her coffee. “This is better than you make,” she told me. Then she stood up. “Let’s take a look at that closet.”
Tobie led us upstairs. At the end of the hall she pointed through an open doorway. “You’ve been here before,” she said to Rachel. “It’s a mess, but I have to let Mike take care of things like that. Anyway—” She shook her head. “Do you have to be alone or something?”
“Tom can come.” She took a step inside. “I mean, you can come too, if you want—”
“I’ll be downstairs.” Tobie turned and headed back down the hall.
We went in. Stuffed animals lay on an unmade bed. Textbooks and empty soda cans were stacked on a small desk in the corner. A small bookcase held volumes of Harry Potter, The Hobbit, the Hunger Games books and others I’d never heard of, not being an eight-year-old girl. Clothes were scattered in the general direction of a hamper next to a chest of drawers. A sliding closet door was closed.
“This is a mess?” I stepped over a sweater. “She should see our bedroom.”
“Or your side of the office.”
“Hey, I clean up once a week—”
“Ssh.” Rachel slid open the closet doors. “Give me a minute.”
She crossed her arms and closed her eyes. I stood behind her, my eyes on the closet in case its burst into flames or suddenly exploded outward in some sort of demonic fury. But nothing happened. I perched on the edge of Lily’s bed, waiting.
Rachel let her arms drop. “It’s in there. But not like the other night. Like it’s hiding, or asleep.” She stepped forward. “Let’s take a look.”
Dresses , shirts, and pants hung across the narrow space. More clothes were piled on the floor. Boxes of puzzles and games sat on a shelf.
Rachel backed away. “Check it out.”
“Me? What am I, the redshirt who gets killed before the first commercial?”
She smirked. “I’m in charge of psychic stuff. This time you’re my assistant instead of the other way around.”
“Associate. I never called you an assistant. Hardly ever.” But I crouched down and started sifting through the clothes. “Tell me if you sense any invisible terrors about to rush out.”
Nothing, though, just piles of tops and jeans and shoes, and an empty box of crackers. Then in the back corner I found a dusty cardboard box, the top just folded shut. I lifted it—
—And a shriek shattered the air, almost splitting my eardrums. I dropped the box and fell back, clamping my hands over my ears. I looked up at Rachel, stepping back, covering her ears like me. The scream rocked the room, and for a moment I thought it would knock the bookcase over.
Then the scream went silent. Rachel blinked, rubbing her ears. “Okay . . .”
With a deep breath, I crept toward the box again. Instead of lifting it I gently pulled it across the carpet, over the sliding track, and at let it sit at Rachel’s feet.
She kneeled. Together we unfolded the flaps of the box and carefully pulled them up. No more shrieks erupted from the closet.
Inside the box lay a doll.
Not a Barbie doll. It had a long dress, a painted face, and dark red hair. Rachel cocked her head, narrowed her eyes, and reached down slowly to take it in her hands. I tensed, expecting another scream.
Rachel lifted the doll. All I could hear was my breathing. Then I heard footsteps outside in the hall. “Rachel? What was that?”
Tobie. I looked over at her. “We might have found something.”
“How did this get here?” Rachel stood up[. “You kept this? You held onto all this time, mom?”
Tobie was confused. “What? What is that?”
“This is mine.” Rachel held it out. “My doll, from when I was, I don’t know, seven or eight. Anastasia.” She looked down at the doll. “How did it get here?”
Thinking of Rachel, even a young Rachel, playing with a doll— it felt strange. I looked inside the box. It held some old crumpled newspapers, nothing else. I unfolded a page and found a date: Jan. 24, 1985.
“Did you bring it here?” Rachel was still staring at the doll. “I mean, how many places did we move before I even went to college? You carried this around everywhere?”
Tobie shook her head. “I didn’t. I don’t remember seeing that. I mean, it’s just a box, maybe—”
“When did you move in here?” I asked.
“A year ago. Ten months. Right after Mike and I—well, we got married a few months later.”
From the bottom of the stairs we heard a call. “Tobie?” It was Mike. “You okay up there?”
“F-fine, Mike,” Tobie called back. “Just give me a minute. I’ll be right down.”
“Are you okay?” I asked Rachel.
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. This is just—weird.”
“Yeah.” I glanced at the open closet. “Is this the monster?”
Rachel looked up. She peered into the closet, then down at the doll, and then she shook her head.
“No,” she said, almost a whisper. “No. It’s still there.”
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