We have this tradition, where every night just before bedtime, I’ll read her a few pages out of her favorite book. Watching my little girl so entranced, so encapsulated in the story; It made my heart glow with a warm light that blanketed my entire being.
On this particular night, we were on chapter 12 of Charlotte’s Web and Charlotte had just rounded up all the barnyard animals. This is around the point in the story where she starts spinning messages into her webs, you know, like, “some pig”, “terrific”, all those subliminal messages to keep the farmer from slaughtering Wilbur.
My daughter had quite the little meltdown, pouting how afraid she was that Wilbur would go on to be sold and butchered.
“Come on, pumpkin,” I plead. “Do you really think Charlotte would let that happen? Look, she’s leaving notes so the farmer knows Wilbur isn’t just ‘some pig.”
“Leaving notes like the man in your closet?” she asked.
I didn’t know what to say to this: a man in my closet? What?
“Haha, yeah, silly… just like the man in my closet.”
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Finishing up, I closed the book and began to tuck my daughter in, giving her a gentle little kiss on the forehead and brushing her golden blonde hair back behind her ear.
“Alright, sweetie, you have sweet dreams for me, okay?”
“You too, daddy,” she cooed.
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Lying in bed that night, I couldn’t shake the unease. Man in my closet, she said. What kinda kid-fear makes her think there’s something in my closet?
I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I checked. I actually, ever so cautiously, made my way over to the closet before sliding the panel open to reveal nothing but darkness before me. Yanking the pull-string and flooding the closet with light, everything seemed to be in order; shoes, shirts, pants, and…a crumpled sticky note tucked under the edge of the drywall.
“Some pig” scribbled in red ink.
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I did everything I could to rationalize it; maybe my daughter left it? Maybe, I don’t know, maybe it’s part of some poorly made grocery list, I don’t know.
No. No, this couldn’t be rationalized; it was too perfectly coincidental. I grabbed a bat and I made my rounds.
“Hello,” I shouted. “Hey, if there’s anyone in here, you better come out now, cause I’m calling the cops!”
I went through every room in my house and didn’t find even a hint of a person. All the yelling had awoken my daughter who was now standing at my side.
“What happened, daddy?” she grumbled, wiping sleep from her eyes.
“Nothing, honey, let’s get back to bed, come on, it’s late.”
“Did you find the man, Daddy?”
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I paused.
“What man? What man are you talking about Roxxy? Tell me now.” I said sternly.
“The man from your closet, daddy, I told you. Don’t you remember?”
“There’s no one in the closet, Roxxy, I checked already. I just, um, I thought I heard something in the garage.”
“So you didn’t find the note?”
My blood ran cold.
“What do you know about a note, baby girl?” I asked playfully to mask the fear.
“He told me he left you one. He said it was like from the story.”
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Sitting my daughter down on her bed, I pulled the crumpled sticky note from my pocket.
“Are you talking about this note, sweetheart?” I asked her.
“Yes! It’s just like from the story, Daddy, look, ‘some pig.” she laughed, clapping like she just saw a magic trick.
Needless to say, we camped out in the car for the remainder of that night.
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The next morning, I sent Roxxy off to school and began my extensive search of the house. I’m talking looking for hollows in the drywall, shining flashlights in the insulation-filled attic, hell, I’m checking under the bathroom sink for Christ’s sake.
Finding nothing and feeling defeated, I plopped down on the couch for some television when the thought hit me: Roxxy said he wanted to leave one “for me”. Could this mean that he’s already left some for Roxxy?
I rushed to her room and began rummaging. Emptying the toy bin, searching the desk and dresser, not a note to be found. However, glancing at her bookshelf, I noticed something that I hadn’t before.
A thin, aged-looking composite notebook, with cracks branching across its spine and yellow pages. It wasn’t the notebook that caught my attention, though. It was the flap of a bright yellow sticky note that stuck out ever so slightly from between the pages.
Opening it up, what I found horrified me. Each page was completely covered in sticky notes from top to bottom and left to right. Like a scrapbook of notes that, according to my daughter, came from a man in my closet.
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None of them were particularly malicious; in fact, it was as though they were all written by a dog that had learned to communicate.
“Hello,” one read.
“Rocksy,” read another.
“Wayting,” “window,” “dadee.”
Just single-word phrases that looked to be written by someone who was mentally challenged.
Who do I even turn to for this? What would the police say if I brought them this and told them my daughter and I have been sleeping in my car because of it? They’d take Roxxy away and declare me an unfit parent; that’s what they’d do.
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So I just waited. I waited until Roxxy got home, and I confronted her about it.
“Roxxy, sweetie. I found this in your room today. Is there anything you wanna tell me about it?”
“Those are the notes, Dad, I told you so many times,” she said, annoyed after a long day of 2nd grade, I guess.
“Yes, I know that, dear, but where did they come from? How did that man give you these?”
“He always leaves them for me after our stories, Daddy, it’s like his thing.”
“Leaves them where?”
She stared at me blankly.
“Ugh, where have I said he lives this whooolee time?” she snarked, rolling her eyes.
“He’s. In. Your. Closet.”
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“Roxanne Edwards, is that absolutely any way to speak to your father?!” I snapped.
“Go to your room right now and fix that attitude you’ve picked up today.”
“Well, SORRY,” She croaked. “It’s not my fault you won’t listen to me.”
“Keep it up, young lady, and so help me I will see to it that you stay in that bedroom all weekend.”
She closed her door without another word.
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I hate to be so hard on her, and it’s not even her fault really. This whole situation has had me on edge for the last couple of days.
About an hour passed, and by this time I’d decided that I should probably start thinking about dinner.
I figured I’d get pizza as a truce for Roxxy, so I called it in and started looking for a movie we could watch together.
Midway through browsing, I heard giggling coming from Roxxy’s room. “That’s odd,” I thought. “What could possibly be so funny?”
Sneaking up as to not disturb whatever moment she was having, the first thing I noticed was the book in her hand. “That’s my girl,” I whispered under my breath. I didn’t raise an iPad kid.
However, pride quickly dissipated when I realized that her eyes were glued to the floor by her bedframe instead of the copy of James and the Giant Peach.
“Uh, hey kiddo,” I chirped.
Her eyes shot up from the floor to meet mine.
“Oh, uh, hi Dad.”
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“What’re you up to in here?” I asked her.
“Oh, you know,” she said, wanderously. “Just readin.”
“Just readin’ huh? I thought I just heard you laughing?”
“Oh yeah, there was just a silly part in the book,” she said, distractedly.
“Well, are you gonna tell me what it was?” I chuckled. “Your old man likes to laugh too, you know.”
“Ehhh, I’ll tell you later. I’m getting kinda sleepy; I kinda wanna go to bed.”
“Go to bed? It’s only 7 o’clock, I just ordered pizza. Come on, pumpkin, I thought we could watch a movie.”
She answered with a long, drawn-out yawn.
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“Okay, fine. Well, at least let me read you some more of that Charlotte’s Web.” I begged, gently.
“I don’t think I want a story tonight,” she said, reserved and stern.
“No story? But I always read you a story? Ah, okay fine, if you’re that tired, I guess I’ll let you have the night off. Sweet dreams, pumpkin.”
This finally drew a smile onto her face.
“You too, Dad,” she said warmly, before getting up to give me a big, tight hug.
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That night, I ate pizza alone in the living room while I watched cops reloaded. I finally called it a night at around 11 when my eyes began to flutter and sound began to morph into dreams.
Crashing out onto my bed, I was just about to fall asleep when the faint sound of scratches made its way into my subconscious. The scribbling, carving sound of pen to paper.
I shot up and rushed to the closet, swinging the door open and yanking the pull-string so hard I thought it’d break.
Lying on the floor, in plain view, were three sticky notes; each one containing a single word scrawled so violently it left small tears in the paper.
“Do”
“Not”
“Yell”
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That was enough for me, all the sleep exited my body at once as I raced to my daughter’s room; car keys in hand.
My heart sank when I found an empty room, and a window left half open.
I screamed my daughter’s name and received no response. Weeks went by, and no trace of Roxxy had been found.
I am a broken man. I’ve thought about suicide multiple times because how, how could I let this happen? My pride and joy, the one thing I swore to protect no matter what; taken right from under me.
The only thing that’s stopped me is that a few nights ago, I heard scribbling from my closet. Less violent this time and more thoughtful, rhythmic strokes.
Hurrying over to the closet and repeating the routine once more, I was greeted with but one note this time. One that simply read in my daughter’s exact handwriting,
“I miss you, daddy.”
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