Page 18 of Ghost in the Cupboard

He was pleading. The look in his eyes having changed from the accusatory look of someone encountering a fraud to that of a wounded boy who desperately wanted proof his father was safe in the afterlife nearly had me losing my resolve.

“Ghosts can’t come in my house anyway,” I said, then continued before he could suggest alternative locations. “And talking to your dad won’t bring you the closure you think it will.”

“But—”

“It never does, Danny,” I shook my head slowly at him. “I’ve done this enough to know that there’s no such thing as closure.”

“What does that even mean?” Danny pleaded, though the anger was seeping back into his voice as he loomed before me.

“People find out grandpa really was murdered. Then they become obsessed with finding the murderer, even though it happened fifty years ago. People find out their best friend did kill themselves and wonder if they could have said or done something differently. Reached out more often. Gotten them help. They find out that Mom hid the jewels at a relative’s house to keep them from getting them and they begin to question their entire relationship with Mom before she died. Knowing what goes on over there on the other side only brings up more questions. Sometimes it’s best to let the dead rest.”

Danny was glowering at me.

“One day, hopefully far in the future, you can ask him all your questions yourself,” I said quietly. “I promise you it’s highly possible.”

“But you won’t summon him and ask him one question, right now, to prove I’m not sleeping with a fraud who’s swindling my mother?”

I shook my head, lowering my eyes to look at the floor. Danny breathed out slowly, heatedly, and glowered down at me a moment longer. Then, he stepped around me and headed to the front door. I waited for the inevitable opening of the door, the slamming, the sound of angry footsteps out to his truck. Instead, Danny suddenly stopped behind me.

“You know what?” he asked angrily. “Here’s the money.”

His hand was suddenly in my hip pocket, stuffing the twenties into it.

“You’re going to need it,” he said, cryptically.

“Screw this cupboard,” Danny growled.

I looked up to see Danny stomping towards the cupboard and I immediately realized what he had in mind. My head whipped around to the cupboard, mourning its impending destruction. However, in those few moments I had to stare at it, dreading the destruction that was to come, my eyes landed on the weird raised numbs at the corners of all of the doors and drawers. Something at the corner of each had been painted over when the cupboard had been redone.

Danny was already swinging his fist at the top cupboard door when I realized what I had spotted. Attempting to put myself between Danny and the cupboard was an exercise in futility. My brain had been too slow for me to stop the inevitable. Opening my mouth to shout at Danny to stop, I watched in terror as his fist seemed to fly through the air in slow motion towards the top doors of the cabinet.

“STOOOOOOOOP!” I heard myself scream as Danny’s fist connected with the wood.

Desperately, in the split second I had to pray, I hoped that Danny’s fist would be no match for the solid wood. Unfortunately, a lifetime of sports and construction work had given Danny the strength he needed to achieve his goal in one try. As his fist went solidly through the right door of the cabinet, my eyes went wide. All time seemed to stop as I stared at his fist sticking through the splintered wood of the cabinet. Danny, red-faced and huffing, was readying to pull his fist back to deliver a blow to the other door.

Before he could extract his arm from the interior of the cabinet, the shimmery white fog peeked out from the hole his arm had created. Staring into the eyes of the ghost in the cupboard, I started to scream again. However, before my mouth could open, the ghost, in a wintry gust of cold air, zipped out of the cupboard, whirled around Danny, and disappeared around the wall into the kitchen.

Danny’s arm came out of the cupboard and he stumbled backwards, landing in a heap on the floor. With wide eyes, I looked down at the tangle of arms and legs on the floor before me. My eyes darted from the wrecked cupboard door, towards the kitchen, then down at Danny, over and over again.

On the floor, Danny shivered.

“What in the heck was that?” Danny asked, his face nearly as pale as the ghost that now had unfettered access to my home.