Haunted MTL Original – Skeletons in the Closet – Jennifer Weigel
“Skeletons in the Closet” by Jennifer Weigel
It started in March. That was the beginning of the collapse. The effects supposedly hadn’t made it here yet. Online there were bats and rats and pangolins and other fantastical creatures haunting Wuhan’s inhabitants because of open air markets and various nonsensical cultural misunderstandings cast straight out of a Dr. Seuss story warning against the dangers of eating them with a fox or in a box or with some lox or something to that effect… Online people were shuttering their houses… But that was all distant and far away. Life continued as usual. Or so it seemed.
I fell ill before I was supposed to. My boss was sick before me. We’d gone to a conference. But that was before all of this really got going, and it was just a city away and didn’t extend to anyone out of state, not that we knew of anyway. My boss’s symptoms were spot on, with the 104-degree fever, chest congestion and difficulty breathing. But she hadn’t been in contact with anyone from the wrong places that she knew of, so she couldn’t possibly have it. Nonetheless, it was recommended she stay home, just in case. And she did so because you can never be too sure and there were no tests available unless you’d been in contact with the wrong person who got off the wrong train from the wrong city at the wrong time.
I got it about a week or a week and a half after. I didn’t fever. I never do; the only times I have fevered in my adult life were when I’d eaten something off and it was rushing out both ends at once with only one toilet to accommodate it and me finding myself blacked out in a puddle on the floor like a bad college un-memory. In fact, I thought it was just the milder flu that was going around and overpowering the flu shot. I was a bit lightheaded and felt faint, and I slept a lot and had a minor scratch at the back of the throat, but nothing of any real significance. I stayed home regardless. I wasn’t sure if I did or didn’t have it and work was in this weird in-between state of not knowing what we were doing so I wasn’t really sure I wanted to go in anyway. Things were beginning to shut down and I just felt in the way.
There was one night, after I thought it had passed, in which I woke with a start unable to breathe feeling constrained and tight and like a nightmare demon of medieval lore was sitting there camped out on my chest. I thought I was having a heart attack (they manifest differently in women). So I stayed up until 2 AM so that I wouldn’t chance going back to sleep and not waking up again as if I’d know the difference. The next day it was obvious that it was my throat so I wrote it off because it didn’t seem as bad being my throat rather than my heart. I waited it out and it got better. I continued to stay home. By then, everyone was told to stay home, unless they were essential, or needed something essential, whatever that was supposed to mean with the subsequent blow to our collective egos as we once again realized that we were just more insignificant flecks of dust on a half-baked planet floating around a mid-range star in a void of nothingness.
Things were pretty uneventful at home. I dared not go out for fear that I was contagious. I must have washed my hands 187 times a day. I think I lost count though, I may not have taken note of 3 or 5 or 16 or 29 more times, 187 seemed like I was lowballing it… I cooked. I washed the dishes. I dried them and put them away. I cooked again and the cycle repeated. I tried Zoom. But there are only so many online conferences you can attend before all of the words that you hear spill out of your ears and soil the sofa with that kind of questionable stain that makes you drape a sheet over it when you know you’re having company, in the hopes that they don’t notice or say anything or create awkward silence. I tried Facebook. But there was only so much hopeful dissent about how to express joy and celebrate opportunity and make the most of the situation in the prescribed flavor-of-the-day popular vote meme responses that I could choke down, even before people became more openly discordant and polarized again. I tried watching YouTube live-feed videos of zoo animals. The bear just sat, head against the wall… Ah, but there is comfort there, sitting with one’s head against the wall. I shall have to do so more often.
I opened the closet late one morning to put on a jacket. Not that I was going anywhere, mind you. Just to put one on and remember what it feels like to do so. Besides which, it was a little chilly downstairs. That was when I first noticed. There were leaves in the hall closet, under the stairs, dusting my faux fur pretending-to-be-mink coat and dropping onto the floor. Maybe they were leaves, or maybe they were tattered bits of very very old paper. They were dry and crumbly and crackled into stiff brittle sheets like old vellum, somewhat transparent and yet browned with age so that you can’t really tell if they are clear or yellow or brown anymore. I brushed them off the coat, gathered them up, and threw them away. I recorded the experience in the back of my mind, closed the closet door, and returned to my deep consideration over what to have for dinner and how to minimize the number of dishes and utensils I would need to do so.
The next day, I opened the closet again. There were more leaves, trailing like stale Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs down the faux fur coat and onto the floor. I felt around but it’s a cramped space. I don’t know what I was feeling around for, but whatever it was I didn’t find it. I tried looking up “closet leaves” online but that just brought me to the care and maintenance of peace lily plants. Did you know that the peace lily plant is also known as the closet plant? Neither did I; I guess it’s because they need so little light… And I still wasn’t going anywhere, so I knew I wasn’t bringing the leaves in myself. Though, even if I were to go out, I wouldn’t have worn a fully lined faux fur pretending-to-be-mink coat in April to do so, not here in Kansas anyway. It’s almost never cold enough for that, even in February. But I had to be sure that the closet was not self-generating leaves or held some inter-dimensional portal to some unknown exotic place which I had long known to be there and suspected led to Narnia or an endless bag of potatoes or an almost indistinguishable clone of the closet in a similar but different time space continuum or somesuch.
The next day, when I opened the closet and found more leaves, I took out all of the coats and everything and piled it all over the dining room and into the living room. Coats, jackets, and sweater vest linings were draped over the backs of all of the chairs and the cat’s loveseat. Luggage and extra purses for when my current one wears out and spare hats and mittens and the cat’s carrier and all of the other randomly stored goods I had stashed under the stairs were piled on and in front of the sofa, television and bookcases. This time I got into the closet and looked around. There was a small gap between the ceiling paneling and the wall right above where the leaves were coming from. Actually, it would have been a big gap if I were a mouse, reminding me once again why I have a cat even if he has proven a lousy hunter. The leaves must have been coming from there. I poked at it hesitantly, just in case there was a mouse. I thought about calling someone out to look at the house but how essential is that really? It just didn’t seem truly necessary to seek the counsel of a house inspector because there are leaves in a closet, even if it is an interior closet, even in the best of circumstances… though there was a hole…
That was when I noticed the wall was peeling, just a little bit. I pulled at it a little more. Brittle old wallpaper sloughed off in sheets, flaking off at the edges. Wall repair tape and wallpaper covered in rubbery paint revealed yet more wallpaper beneath. A poorly-executed minor archaeological excavation by myself revealed three distinct layers of wallpaper. The outer layer under the paint was yellow or had once been another color that faded to yellow in that sickly sour sense. The layer beneath that was speckled dusty brownish gray green blue that may not have actually been a color and may have instead been the remains of a long forgotten mold that lay dormant and decayed for decades. Under that was either the wheat paste backing from that wallpaper with pockets of antique dirt nestled between layers to emerge again as a fine mist of dust falling from the recently peeled off paper, or what may have been the wall surface itself. Areas were crumbled to dust where objects had collided with them in the tight closet space behind layers of paper and paint holding the façade in place so that it was not obvious at a glance to the casual observer merely hanging up a coat. I closed the closet door and went on about my day, occasionally feeling the drifting itch of dust mites or tiny spiders or unknown grit that I perceived crawling about my skin until I took a shower.
I returned to the closet the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. I had to continue my excavation. I just couldn’t leave it be until I could have someone out to look at it. Maybe I could fix it myself. Maybe I could figure out where the leaves were coming from and put a stop to it once and for all. I had to get as much of the wallpaper off as possible, to get to a surface I might be able to sand or primer or paint or even just board over. I wondered just how much expanding house foam I would need to fill everything in. The smell of dust and old mold started to become a recognizable friend, a long-understood knowledge that was bringing me into a closer relationship to the house itself. I could feel the house breathing all around me from the closet, securing me in its embrace. Every day, I lingered longer until I eventually just stopped visiting the rest of the house. The closet became more and more comfortable and was my constant companion. I don’t know what happened to everything else. Eventually, the rest of the world fell away to rot. What remained was still and quiet, imbued with a musty yellow wallpaper smell.
About the Artist: Jennifer Weigel is a multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist. Weigel utilizes a wide range of media to convey her ideas, including assemblage, drawing, fibers, installation, jewelry, painting, performance, photography and video. Much of her work touches on themes of beauty, identity (especially gender identity), memory & forgetting, and institutional critique. Weigel’s art has been exhibited nationally in all 50 states and has won numerous awards.
What if ours weren’t the only reality? What if the past paths converged, if those moments that led to our current circumstances got tangled together with their alternates and we found ourselves caught up in the threads?
Marla returned home after the funeral and wake. She drew the key in the lock and opened the door slowly, the looming dread of coming back to an empty house finally sinking in. Everyone else had gone home with their loved ones. They had all said, “goodbye,” and moved along.
Her daughter Misty and son-in-law Joel had caught a flight to Springfield so he could be at work the next day for the big meeting. Her brother Darcy was on his way back to Montreal. Emmett and Ruth were at home next door, probably washing dishes from the big meal they had helped to provide afterward, seeing as their kitchen light was on. Marla remembered there being food but couldn’t recall what exactly as she hadn’t felt like eating. Sandwiches probably… she’d have to thank them later.
Marla had felt supported up until she turned the key in the lock after the services, but then the realization sank deep in her throat like acid reflux, hanging heavy on her heart – everyone else had other lives to return to except for her. She sighed and stepped through the threshold onto the outdated beige linoleum tile and the braided rag rug that stretched across it. She closed the door behind herself and sighed again. She wiped her shoes reflexively on the mat before just kicking them off to land in a haphazard heap in the entryway.
The still silence of the house enveloped her, its oppressive emptiness palpable – she could feel it on her skin, taste it on her tongue. It was bitter. She sighed and walked purposefully to the living room, the large rust-orange sofa waiting to greet her. She flopped into its empty embrace, dropping her purse at her side as she did so.
A familiar, husky voice greeted her from deeper within the large, empty house. “Where have you been?”
Marla looked up and glanced around. Her husband Frank was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, drying a bowl. Marla gasped, her hand shooting to her mouth. Her clutched appendage took on a life of its own, slowly relinquishing itself of her gaping jaw and extending a first finger to point at the specter.
“Frank?” she spoke hesitantly.
“Yeah,” the man replied, holding the now-dry bowl nestled in the faded blue-and-white-checkered kitchen towel in both hands. “Who else would you expect?”
“But you’re dead,” Marla spat, the words falling limply from her mouth of their own accord.
The 66-year old man looked around confusedly and turned to face Marla, his silver hair sparkling in the light from the kitchen, illuminated from behind like a halo. “What are you talking about? I’m just here washing up after lunch. You were gone so I made myself some soup. Where have you been?”
“No, I just got home from your funeral,” Marla spoke quietly. “You are dead. After the boating accident… You drowned. I went along to the hospital – they pronounced you dead on arrival.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frank said. “What boating accident?”
“The sailboat… You were going to take me out,” Marla coughed, her brown eyes glossed over with tears.
“We don’t own a sailboat,” Frank said bluntly. “Sure, I’d thought about it – it seems like a cool retirement hobby – but it’s just too expensive. We’ve talked about this, we can’t afford it.”
Marla glanced out the bay window towards the driveway where the small sailboat sat on its trailer, its orange hull reminiscent of the Florida citrus industry, and also of the life jacket Frank should have been wearing when he’d been pulled under. Marla cringed and turned back toward the kitchen. She sighed and spoke again, “But the boat’s out front. The guys at the marina helped to bring it back… after you… drowned.”
Frank had retreated to the kitchen to put away the bowl. Marla followed. She stood in the doorway and studied the man intently. He was unmistakably her husband, there was no denying it even despite her having just witnessed his waxen lifeless body in the coffin at the wake before the burial, though this Frank was a slight bit more overweight than she remembered.
“Well, that’s not possible. Because I’m still here,” Frank grumbled. He turned to face her, his blue eyes edged with worry. “There now, it was probably just a dream. You knew I wanted a boat and your anxiety just formulated the worst-case scenario…”
“See for yourself,” Marla said, her voice lilting with every syllable.
Frank strode into the living room and stared out the bay window. The driveway was vacant save for some bits of Spanish moss strewn over the concrete from the neighboring live oak tree. He turned towards his wife.
“But there’s no boat,” he sighed. “You must have had a bad dream. Did you fall asleep in the car in the garage again?” Concern was written all over his face, deepening every crease and wrinkle. “Is that where you were? The garage?”
Marla glanced again at the boat, plain as day, and turned to face Frank. Her voice grew stubborn. “It’s right here. How can you miss it?” she said, pointing at the orange behemoth.
“Honey, there’s nothing there,” Frank exclaimed, exasperation creeping into his voice.
Marla huffed and strode to the entryway, gathering her shoes from where they waited in their haphazard heap alongside the braided rag run on the worn linoleum floor. She marched out the door as Frank took vigil in its open frame, still staring at her. She stomped out to the boat and slapped her hand on the fiberglass surface with a resounding smack. The boat was warm to the touch, having baked in the Florida sun. She turned back towards the front door.
“See!” she bellowed.
The door stood open, empty. No one was there, watching. Marla sighed again and walked back inside. The vacant house once again enveloped her in its oppressive emptiness. Frank was nowhere to be found.
So I guess it’s goodbye for now. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Today on Nightmarish Nature we’re gonna revisit The Blob and jiggle our way to terror. Why? ‘Cause we’re just jellies – looking at those gelatinous denizens of the deep, as well as some snot-like land-bound monstrosities, and wishing we could ooze on down for some snoozy booze schmoozing action. Or something.
Honestly, I don’t know what exactly it is that jellyfish and slime molds do but whatever it is they do it well, which is why they’re still around despite being among the more ancient organism templates still in common use.
Jellyfish are on the rise.
Yeah, yeah, some species like moon jellies will hang out in huge blooms near the surface feeding, but that’s not what I meant. Jellyfish populations are up. They’re honing in on the open over-fished ocean and making themselves at home. Again.
And, although this makes the sea turtles happy since jellies are a favorite food staple of theirs, not much else is excited about the development. Except for those fish that like to hide out inside of their bells, assuming they don’t accidentally get eaten hanging out in there. But that’s a risk you gotta take when you’re trying to escape predation by surrounding yourself in a bubble of danger that itself wants to eat you. Be eaten or be eaten. Oh, wait…
So what makes jellies so scary?
Jellyfish pack some mighty venom. Despite obvious differences in mobility, they are related to anemones and corals. But not the Man o’ War which looks similar but is actually a community of microorganisms that function together as a whole, not one creature. Not that it matters when you’re on the wrong end of a nematocyst, really. Because regardless what it’s attached to, that stings.
Box jellies are among the most venomous creatures in the world and can move of their own accord rather than just drifting about like many smaller jellyfish do. And even if they aren’t deadly, the venom from many jellyfish species will cause blisters and lesions that can take a long time to heal. So even if they do resemble free-floating plastic grocery bags, you’d do best to steer clear. Because those are some dangerous curves.
But what does this have to do with slime molds?
Absolutely nothing. I honestly don’t know enough about jellyfish or slime molds to devote the whole of a Nightmarish Nature segment to either, so they had to share. Essentially, this bit is what happened when I decided to toast a bagel before coming up with something to write about and spent a tad too much time in contemplation of my breakfast. I guess we’re lucky I didn’t have any cream cheese or clotted cream…
Oh, and also thinking about gelatinous cubes and oozes in the role-playing game sense – because those sort of seem like a weird hybrid between jellies and slime molds, as does The Blob. Any of those amoeba influenced creatures are horrific by their very nature – they don’t even need to be souped up, just ask anyone who’s had dysentery.
And one of the most interesting thing about slime molds is that they can take the shortest path to food even when confronted with very complex barriers. They are maze masterminds and would give the Minotaur more than a run for his money, especially if he had or was food. They have even proven capable of determining the most efficient paths for water lines or railways in metropolitan regions, which is kind of crazy when you really think about it. Check it out in Scientific American here. So, if we assume that this is essentially the model upon which The Blob was built, then it’s kind of a miracle anything got away. And slime molds are coming under closer scrutiny and study as alternative means of creating computer components are being explored.
Jellies are the Wave of the Future.
We are learning that there may be a myriad of uses for jellyfish from foodstuffs to cosmetic products as we rethink how we interact with them. They are even proving useful in cleaning up plastic pollution. I don’t know how I feel about the foodstuff angle for all that they’ve been a part of various recipes for a long time. From what I’ve seen of the jellyfish cookbook recipes, they just don’t look that appealing. But then again I hate boba with a passion, so I’m probably not the best candidate to consider the possibility.
So it seems that jellies are kind of the wave of the future as we find that they can help solve our problems. That’s pretty impressive for some brainless millions of years old critter condiments. Past – present – perpetuity! Who knows what else we’d have found if evolution hadn’t cleaned out the fridge every so often?
Feel free to check out more Nightmarish Nature here.
Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous St. Patrick’s Days… though technically he’s more of a wolfwere but wolfwhatever. Anyway, here are Part 1 from 2022, Part 2 from 2023 and Part 3 from 2024 if you want to catch up.
Yeah I don’t know how you managed to find me after all this time. We haven’t been the easiest to track down, Monty and I, and we like it that way. Though actually, you’ve managed to find me every St. Patrick’s Day since 2022 despite me being someplace else every single time. It’s a little disconcerting, like I’m starting to wonder if I was microchipped way back in the day in 2021 when I was out lollygagging around and blacked out behind that taco hut…
Anyway as I’d mentioned before, that Scratchers was a winner. And I’d already moved in with Monty come last St. Patrick’s Day. Hell, he’d already begun the process of cashing in the Scratchers, and what a process that was. It made my head spin, like too many squirrels chirping at you from three different trees at once. We did get the money eventually though.
Since I saw you last, we were kicked out of Monty’s crap apartment and had gone to live with his parents while we sorted things out. Thank goodness that was short-lived; his mother is a nosy one for sure, and Monty didn’t want to let on he was sitting on a gold mine as he knew they’d want a cut even though they had it made already. She did make a mean brisket though, and it sure beat living with Sal. Just sayin.
Anyway, we finally got a better beater car and headed west. I was livin’ the dream. We were seeing the country, driving out along old Route 66, for the most part. At least until our car broke down just outside of Roswell near the mountains and we decided to just shack it up there. (Boy, Monty sure can pick ‘em. It’s like he has radar for bad cars. Calling them lemons would be generous. At least it’s not high maintenance women who won’t toss you table scraps or let you up on the sofa.)
We found ourselves the perfect little cabin in the woods. And it turns out we were in the heart of Bigfoot Country, depending on who you ask. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen one. But it seems that Monty was all into all of those supernatural things: aliens, Bigfoot, even werewolves. And finding out his instincts on me were legit only added fuel to that fire. So now he sees himself as some sort of paranormal investigator.
Whatever. I keep telling him this werewolf gig isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and it doesn’t work like in the movies. I wasn’t bitten, and I generally don’t bite unless provoked. He says technically I’m a wolfwere, to which I just reply “Where?” and smile. Whatever. It’s the little things I guess. I just wish everything didn’t come out as a bark most of the time, though Monty’s gotten pretty good at interpreting… As long as he doesn’t get the government involved, and considering his take on the government himself that would seem to be a long stretch. We both prefer the down low.
So here we are, still livin’ the dream. There aren’t all that many rabbits out here but it’s quiet and the locals don’t seem to notice me all that much. And Monty can run around and make like he’s gonna have some kind of sighting of Bigfoot or aliens or the like. As long as the pantry’s stocked it’s no hair off my back. Sure, there are scads of tourists, but they can be fun to mess around with, especially at that time of the month if I happen to catch them out and about.
Speaking of tourists, I even ran into that misspent youth from way back in 2021 at the convenience store; I spotted him at the Quickie Mart along the highway here. I guess he and his girlfriend were apparently on walkabout (or car-about) perhaps making their way to California or something. He even bought me another cookie. Small world. But we all knew that already…
If you enjoyed this werewolf wolfwere wolfwhatever saga, feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.