I am the Skeleton in the Closet

The Untold Secret

 Our basement was unfinished. We had accumulated a lot of costumes throughout the years. Alex enjoyed playing dress up with them a lot. Not a normal kind of dress up, like fantasy dress up? She liked anime, though I'm still baffled as to how she got away with watching it at our house. We would often invite our neighbor, Stella, to come play with us. They were both two years older than me. I'd always wear this massive cloak and a black witches hat. Alex would dress in a bunch of old furs we had inherited when my grandpa had died when I was a baby. Our neighbor Stella would always wear whatever was left and never really picked on ensemble. We had a few weapons down there too. Alex would use the big walking stick, me the small, and Stella would use some coat hangers like ninja stars. I never quite knew what we were playing. Half the time I'd just play dead and say I had just fought off this big monster thing. I expected them to run in later like in any movie I'd seen and try to come to my rescue. Often times they would just completely ignore me all together, until they wanted to scare me.

I was young and gullible. Frequently the parents would take Lucy out on a walk in the evening and use it as time to chat with the neighbors. Mom was always a good friend to most of the neighbors. She was the typical suburban mom with the same suburban attitude. At one point she was a makeup sales lady so she had gotten to know everyone fairly well. They must have left around six that night for their walk. We lived in a big neighborhood. It had a sidewalk that lined the two roads that cornered it with a white picket fence separating the roads from the neighborhood that lay just over a bluff. That's where everyone took their dogs for walking and also where the adrenaline junkies would get their run in. In total the path took about a half hour to walk around and make it back home.

Alex, Stella and I had decided to build a massive fort in the basement a few days prior. The basement was mainly used for storage and mom had a thing for refurnishing. We had a whole kitchen table, giant cradle, a train table my grandpa had made us, two sets of dining room chairs, a full toy kitchen set, a couch, a few cabinets, and a few dozen end tables. We stacked them all together with the kitchen shoved into the back corner, a foot in front of it was the train table. On top of that we set up all the chairs, a few end tables, and to finish it off we threw some of the dozens of blankets we'd accumulated on top of it so we had a roof.

A few days later when the parents had taken this walk I heard something. We were all under the train table when suddenly there was a loud pounding of footsteps.

"It's coming from upstairs!" Exclaimed Alex in a feigned fit of terror.

"I hear it too!!" Stella exclaimed much in the same way.

"What are we gonna do?" I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Alex got out of the fort and the bang happened again. I knew it was her banging, but I couldn't get the feeling out of my head. There was an actual possibility of there being someone here. I knew they never locked the doors when they took Lucy out. Just across the road was a trailer park that was full of thieves that would break into houses and steal valuables. We'd had that happen before a few times as did our neighbors. Just last week someone broke into a neighbor's house while they were watching TV and stole two laptops, back when it was a less common thing to own. A few months before that they had gone into our laundry room and taken the snowboard Alex had just gotten diamond waxed.

"If we get a phone we can call the parents." I rationalized.

"Ok then you go get the phone." Stella responded pulling the blanket down a little further to block my view of the basement.

"No I can't get the phone! I'm too little, I can't even really reach it. Plus I don't know any numbers. 911?"

"NO! No. We're not calling that. Let me just see what I can do." Alex ran up the stairs. Suddenly, I heard footsteps scrambling in the kitchen just above us..