The Fourth Closet by Scott Cawthon

Author:Scott Cawthon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2018-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

A hand was stroking her hair. The sun was going down over a field of grain. A cluster of birds were fluttering overhead, their calls echoing out over the landscape. “I’m so happy to be here with you,” a kind voice said. She looked up and nestled against him; her father smiled down at her, but there were tears in his eyes. Don’t cry, Daddy, she wanted to say, but when she tried to speak, the words did not come. She reached up to touch his face, but her hand passed through empty air: he was gone, and she was alone in the grass. Overhead the birds began to wail, and their calls sounded like human voices, breaking with despair. “Daddy!” Charlie screamed, but there was no answer, only the birds’ lamentation as the sun vanished beyond the horizon.

It was dark, and he had not come back; all the birds were gone but one, and that one sounded more human with every cry. Charlie stood unsteadily; by some trick of time she was no longer a child, but a teenage girl, and the fields around her had turned to rubble; she stood in the midst of a ruined place, but there was a single wall standing in front of her, and a door at the center of it. The birds were silent, but someone was crying on the other side of the door, crying alone in a small, cramped space. She ran to it, banging her fists on the metal surface. “Let me in!” she cried. “Let me in! I have to get inside!”

I have to get inside! Charlie sat bolt upright with a ragged gasp, inhaling like she’d just escaped from drowning. The doors—the closet. She threw off the gray wool blanket and sheets, tangling herself in the process before she managed to get free. She was so hot she could barely stand it, and the wool had been scratching where it touched her chin. She felt strange, more alert: the world was in sharp focus, and it was jarring, as if she had been drifting in some kind of shadowy, half-conscious state for days. Everything hurts, she’d managed to whisper to John, but it had been somehow detached from her, there was some buffer between her body and her mind. Now, her mind clear, the buffer was gone, and she ached all over, a dull, constant pain that seemed to be everywhere at once. She leaned back against the wall. She had not woken to sleepy disorientation—she knew exactly where she was. She was in John’s apartment, behind the couch. She was behind the couch, because …

“Someone is impersonating me,” she said uncertainly, and the sound of her own voice was startling in the empty room.

She got to her knees, not quite trusting her legs, then steadied herself on the back of the couch, getting to her feet with effort. She straightened, and was instantly dizzy, her head swimming as her knees threatened to buckle under her. Charlie

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