It's natural, and probably healthy, to try and see a strange occurrence with good faith. Even if our gut screams otherwise.
After a long day of finals, I invited a couple of friends over to continue studying. I went to my room upstairs, to quickly look for my geography book. I turned on the lights.
That’s when I saw, for the first time, the man inside my closet.
The vision lasted less than an instant, but just enough to raise every hair on my skin. I became dizzy from the shock. Suddenly the air inside my room seemed latent, and I felt watched.
It’s just your imagination Julieta, I told myself in an effort to calm down.
I snatched my backpack, not even checking if it carried the book I went up for, and dashed out of the bedroom without looking back. I left the lights on.
I should have known, since Mom always nagged me for “wasting energy”, she'd turn them back off, and I would once again find the room in darkness, after my friends went home.
I immediately switched them on again, hoping to erase any trespasser sketched in the shadows by my mind.
But in that fraction of a second, when the luminosity filled every corner of my chamber, and my pupils adjusted to the sudden radiance, I saw that man for the second time. Standing inside my wardrobe.
And just as quick as he manifested himself, he disappeared. As if his presence resembled the nature of a camera flash.
I remained petrified, in the middle of my brightened room. I could hear my parents' TV.
Something told me to try switching the lights on and off again, and so I did a couple of times, intermittently.
In every repetition he’d be there for a fraction of a second. I kept going to make him out in detail, and his appearance was strikingly unremarkable. He was nothing more than a smiling man, bald on top but with hair on the sides. Wearing a polo shirt of red and pink stripes.
His smile was very affectionate.
“Mom! Dad!” I yelled as I dashed to their room, before begging them to witness this with me.
But no matter how many times they flipped the switch, or towards which corner they looked at when doing so, they couldn’t see the man. Nor could I … until they went back to bed.
That’s one of the things that bothered me most about that presence: how selective it was about who it did and didn’t reveal itself to.
After that incident, my room remained unlit for months, except when sunlight shone in during the daytime. I avoided my closet, and stored my clothes in my desk drawers, underneath my bedside table, on my bookshelves. I’d occasionally flip the switch, just to check if the intruder had left, but there he remained: firm in his momentary presence, softly smiling.
Oddly enough, my family never teased me for what I claimed to see. If anything they tried to give it a positive spin.
“Well honey, couldn’t it be that this is the spirit of a good man?” suggested Grandma, as we knitted together. “Maybe this bald gentleman, pink polo and all, just wants to protect you.”
The whole family approved of that interpretation, seeking to alleviate my fears. But the more they stressed this being’s kindness, or insinuated the purity behind his smile, the more aggravated I got. I never saw him as a protector.
Then came a night where I was forced to turn on the lights, to look for a dropped earring. My girlfriend’s sweet sixteen waited for me. I took a deep breath, bracing myself to face the man.
But when the lights came on, he wasn’t there anymore.
I tried again and my closet remained empty, for the first time in months. I teared up, overjoyed.
Little did I care about finding a reason for his disappearance; things were finally back to normal. My father created a hypothesis on what happened.
“Perhap Ramón,” - how Dad jokingly named him - “saw that you are almost a grown woman who doesn’t need to be looked after. Now it’s your turn to protect your little brother.”
That was another positive change in my life: the birth of Sebas. For years, all I wanted was to stop being the youngest child, and to help spoil the newest one. So when my brother was born, my longings came to be. He was a sweetheart, and I was a natural caretaker (something Mom still thanks me for). My parents even decided to move somewhere more spacious, since we “outgrew” our home of twenty years. Things couldn’t be better.
Days before the move I was helping mom bathe my little brother, while we chatted about my plans for college. She asked me to show her the pamphlets I got from the different schools, and as I left the bathroom I turned the lights off. It was late and habit got the best of me.
“Julieta!” she exclaimed while laughing. “Come back!”
I turned the lights back on, and before I could apologize I let out a scream. I saw him, once again for the duration of a terrible instant.
The man, standing inside the shower, wearing his vulgar and deceitful pink polo shirt. With that supposedly warm and tender smile on his face. He watched Sebas splashing water, from behind the steam and running water.
My reaction made my mother jump and the baby started weeping. Without giving it a second thought, I resolved to not leave my brother’s side until we moved out of that house.
No matter what benevolent theories my family held regarding this man, I was not going to grant him a single second alone with the baby.
I spent my last three nights next to his crib, sleeping on a pair of couch cushions on the floor, staring at the wardrobe. Ready to defend him from that which, I knew, was his stalker.
Reminiscing how Dad told me it was my duty to protect my little brother.
Little.
That’s when I realized this thing only spied on me as long as I was the youngest in the household.
And now that Sebas had taken that spot, it was his turn to be spied on.
Would anyone be at peace knowing some strange man was following the most innocent and defenseless member of their family? Regardless of him being dead or alive, a ghost or a person, a guardian or a pervert?
I thank God we left shortly after that realization, leaving behind that vision. The property was also set for demolition.
But even then, I asked Dad to drive me back in the afternoon prior to the destruction. Under the pretext that I couldn’t find my diary, and that perhaps it was left behind. I assured him it wouldn’t take long, so he waited in the car.
All I wanted was to ensure that this presence, regardless of its noble or sinister nature, could never leave the structure soon to become ruble. That it remained trapped inside of it. I locked all doors and shut all windows in each and every room. The sundown’s delicate shadow overtook the place by the time I was finished.
I paused as I was about to leave through the front door, and turned the lights on once again.
And there he was, for the last time and a few feet away from where I stood -- the bald man with the pink polo shirt. Looking at me, the last person in the house, so inevitably the youngest.
Even in the brief second that lasted the flash of his presence I noticed, just above that sweet smile, a stream or tears soaking his cheeks.
I’ll never know if they were from desperation, upon the proximity of his end, or if his sadness was caused by my misunderstanding of him. Perhaps he did mean to protect me.
I only know that we can’t always allow ourselves to see what we don’t comprehend through a charitable lens. Sometimes, it is necessary that we follow our instinct and assume the worst from that which we can’t comprehend.
With that in mind, I turned the lights off and forever abandoned that house, which was levelled not even twenty-four hours later, along with everything that remained inside.
