The Wardrobe

The first time Jane heard the voices was unsettling, for it was a child shouting for his mother. She stood before the wardrobe, one hand wielding a fireplace poker and other trembling as it reached forward. She took a deep breath in to quiet her mind before she swung open the door and came face to face with…nothing. Nothing was there, just the clothes she had hung up earlier that day. Chuckling with relief, she blamed the incident on lack of sleep. It had to be the exhaustion. It had to be.

The second voice, heard only a few days later, was a woman sobbing and begging for help. Jane once again picked up the fireplace poker as well as a lantern and stepped towards the wardrobe. Her legs trembled as if the room itself was shaking. As she got closer, the cries mutated into horrific screams. The noise was disorientating as Jane ran towards the wardrobe and pulled the door open.

The screams stopped. And standing before her was just a normal wardrobe. Jane collapsed onto her knees and vomited onto the wooden floor. She frantically left her bedroom and walked downstairs into the living room to sleep. But as soon as she got to the living room, the screams started again. She could hear them from downstairs. They continued all night as Jane shivered in the corner, sobbing and unable to fall asleep.

Over the next few weeks, the voices haunted her again and again. Finally, delirious from the lack of sleep, Jane decided to put an end to the torture. She took her fireplace poker and stabbed herself in both ears. The mental anguish she had felt was an anesthetic for the physical pain, as she thought she could stop hearing those horrible sounds and finally sleep. As she laid down on the floor and was just about to pass out from exhaustion, a piercing scream rang through the room. The voices she heard only became louder, for they were never in the wardrobe to begin with.