"There could be demons in the closet," she'd say provocatively to us, probably making a reference to one of the many Stephen King books she read. "Trolls too maybe."
Grandma's closet opened up pretty big. It wasn't deep, but cloth and metal shoe racks lined the walls to the left and right. To the right, once I crawled under the hanging cloths and on top of old purses, yarn bags and boxes of fabric, a platform opened up, similar in size to the cooby hole across the hall, but with no doors. I jumped up and was surrounded by more of Grandma's things--older things that hadn't been used in a long time: dusty pairs of slippers, cracked and ripped change purses, and old blankets inside plastic bags.
There was an access panel on the back wall of this area. Four boards made a square around the opening. Behind this was the attic--and the troll cave. It wasn't a stretch for me then to believe that trolls or demons took up residence in this dark corner of the closet--or that Jason and Nick believed the same thing a few years later. I probably would have spent much more time in there if I wasn't afraid of a diminutive green troll poping out and pulling me back into the darkness.
Nancie's closet was even more scary. I think I only saw the inside of it once. In fact, the only time I ever went in her room at all was when she was there. Too many stories about staring ghosts standing at the foot of her bed, shadow people making noises outside her window and flying away, and Bloody Mary in the mirror made me want nothing to do with her room.
"If you say Bloody Mary three times while you look at yourself in the mirror," Aunt Nancie explained. "She'll appear. But don't do it Jonathan."
I often stood in Grandma's room, staring at myself in front of the dresser, saying the name.
"Bloody Mary..." I just had to say it. "Bloody Mary..." The third and final ghost-summoning Mary never came. I was brave, I thought, for saying the name at all.
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