Closet Terrors

By Karen Avizur

Penelope, Leona, and Eliza all came into the world of closet monster hunting in different, terrifying ways. Now they’ve worked together for two years destroying the creatures and protecting the children that they psychically prey on for the fear they emit.

But something is making waves in the monster hunting community. Something unprecedented and dangerous that will need hunters all around the world to work together to overcome it, and things are worsening by the minute. And losing is not an option, because the alternative is too terrifying to imagine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karen Avizur
• Release date: Oct 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215371671

Karen Avizur

Karen Avizur grew up on Long Island, New York and ended up in Orlando, Florida, with stops in Connecticut, West Virginia, and Los Angeles along the way. She's been writing stories since she was twelve years old. In those early days, she discovered it was impossible to keep up with her thoughts by writing longhand, and ended up borrowing a 7-pound laptop from her dad, quickly honing her typing skills. After graduating film school, Karen moved to Los Angeles, where she worked as a film editor for several years while also pursuing her writing. She now lives in Florida with her dogs Malcolm and Kaylee, and spends altogether too much time either scrolling through memes or with her nose in a book.

Book preview

Closet Terrors

Karen Avizur

Closet Terrors

Copyright © 2023 by Karen Avizur All rights reserved.

First Edition: July 2023

Cover and Formatting:

Streetlight Graphics

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Acknowledgments

Firstly, many thanks to everyone at /r/writingprompts. User WorldOfSilver posted a prompt that grabbed my imagination and wouldn’t let go, and this book happened because of them, and the encouragement I received made me believe in the story. Special thanks to beta readers AnnD12, JellyBeanzYo, HoTxBiT, and AJ Champagne.

Thank you to all my knowledgeable friends, who are always generous in taking time to give a lesson in information they are fluent in. Especially Mark Barrett. If it explodes, catches fire, or has anything to do with science, it’s likely he had a part in it. (In this book, to be clear, not out in the real world. Well…at least since his days as a physicist.)

Also, shout-out to Sunset Yacht Rentals for their website. Thanks for the specs on things it would take me months of rent to borrow for a day!

Chapter 1

Twenty-two years ago

T he monster’s still coming every night.

Penelope Burnell forced the words out. She needed to say them. Even though she knew what her mother would say, which was the same thing she’d been saying for weeks. This monster she’d ‘concocted’ was invisible to her parents. She realized this when they’d finally come quick enough to catch it before it vanished and yet still hadn’t seen it. Just as she’d expected, her mother’s expression turned weary.

Penelope, she sighed, putting the ten-year-old’s bowl of cereal in front of her. Dr. Fischer said you shouldn’t talk about it like that. What did he say?

The young girl clenched her fists under the kitchen table. I need to talk about it like it’s not real.

Because it isn’t, her mother reminded her, as if she’d needed reminding.

Sitting there for a long moment, Penelope finally took a spoonful of her cereal, chewing slowly, the silence stretching. It’s the third doctor, she said quietly. Don’t you think that…maybe it’s real? If they can’t figure it out, that maybe they’re wrong?

There’s no such thing as monsters, Penelope, and all three of the psychologists we’ve seen so far have said that it will disappear on its own in time. Dr. Fischer said you were making progress in your sessions, talking about things that scare you, troubles in school… Her mother turned around from the kitchen sink, leaning back against it. Please, sweetie. I know it’s scary, but it’s just a nightmare.

Penelope met her mother’s gaze for a long moment before looking back to her cereal, shifting all her attention back to the bowl, and after a moment her mother turned back to the dishes in the sink.

Fine, she thought, if you won’t help me, then I’ll find someone who will.

It came every night, waiting until her parents had gone to sleep. First, her closet door opening would wake her up, sending her under her covers, curling her fists around her quilt until the fabric was damp under her fingers. Eventually she wasn’t able to sleep at all. She would keep hold of a rapidly dwindling thread of hope that this was the night it would stop, that she’d make it all the way to morning and nothing would happen. But, inevitably, that hope slipped from her grasp and she now felt the thing would never leave her alone.

It was a presence she could feel when it arrived, lurking for a while as Penelope’s heart started racing, her lower lip started trembling. Waiting as her fear built, as she appealed to her instinct to freeze, not even wanting to see it, a creature of pure, inky black that made her own dark skin seem tan by comparison. But when it crept over and slid a smooth appendage around her neck, draining something from her mind that felt like a tangible theft, in that moment it seemed as if it would never stop.

At first, she had started sleeping in her parents’ bed, but that didn’t last long. She was ten, not four, and they quickly decided it was unhealthy, not to mention too much for them to do it every night. Also, of course, the doctors discouraged it, since it completely failed to address the problem, the problem being that the monster was imaginary and would go away on its own, of course. But it never did.

It took a good bit of research and poking around online, but that evening, when she was meant to be doing homework, Penelope used the computer in the basement to look for information on closet monsters online. Whether by luck or by fate, she received a comment on one of her posts in from someone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about.

They said that they’d written her a thorough reply because of how she’d described the monster, giving them the impression that she actually was being stalked by something real. They linked her to a website that brought her to the first promise of relief she’d encountered.

It was a spell, the person explained. It was something extremely basic that could be done by anyone, even someone that didn’t even have any magical ability. It drew from something else, some other power, though that part confused her. It seemed irrelevant, though; all that mattered to Penelope was that it would work. She took all the cash from her piggy bank, not sure of what it would cost, told her parents she was going to go down the block for a hot dog, and instead went to an herbal shop two blocks over.

The woman there seemed concerned at the young girl’s shopping list but, surprising  Penelope, she also seemed confident that even a child could carry out the spell correctly and effectively. The ingredients and process were basic, the woman said, though the spell was unusual enough that she’d never heard tell of it. Penelope didn’t tell the woman about the monster itself, not wanting to risk another skeptical look from an adult that would just send her on her way, empty handed.

After her parents went to bed that night, Penelope got the ingredients from her desk drawer, already prepared and in a little sachet, and the lighter she’d swiped from the kitchen junk drawer. Taking her metal trash can and dumping the sparse contents on the floor, she put it in the middle of her closet, flicking the switch on the lighter to create a flame. It didn’t work and her eyes narrowed, having never done this before but knowing the procedure, and she tried again. She made a noise of frustration, knowing her parents could do this with barely a thought, trying again and again as her thumb started to grow sore, but her eyes widened as something finally caught in the right way and a flame appeared.

Keeping her thumb tightly over the tab, she let the flame lick up the sides of the sachet, setting it alight, and let it drop into the bin to burn itself to cinders.

It seemed anticlimactic and, actually, made Penelope feel like she’d been had, that someone was having a laugh at her expense, or maybe they thought some made-up solution would help her. Trick her mind into thinking it was a real fix when it was just some random invention of the person on the other end of the internet. The doctors had already tried things like that, of course.

But with nothing left to do, she poured the cup of water she’d fetched in advance over the smoldering remains, put the rest of the trash back into the bin, and got back into bed.

Later that night, she felt the presence again. It was familiar in the worst, most terrifying way, hitting her square in the chest. Her heart sunk. Convinced the spell hadn’t worked, tears came to her eyes, feeling exhaustion overtake her and wondering how long this would keep happening. Having to silently cry herself to sleep every night, being tormented like this over and over.

But after a minute or so, something seemed different. Sliding her eyes in the direction of her closet, tentatively sitting up in bed and peeking over her covers, Penelope looked to her closet door, still wide open. The monster stared at her. Narrowing her eyes at it, she gazed warily around her room before looking back to it. Goosebumps prickled over her skin, itchy with dread, but it didn’t move. It just stared. She sat like that for ages, waiting for the inevitable attack. Waiting for it to enter her room from whatever rock it crawled out from under to sinisterly, menacingly, approach her bed. But it just stood there, its presence a shadow of what it usually was.

It’s trapped, she thought.

The thought came to her head, unbidden, and she was hesitant to accept it. At the same time, another part of her was desperate for it to be true. She sat, locked in a staring contest with a shadow, for ages before the darkness that it emerged from reappeared, and it retreated back through it. Then, she was alone. Blessedly, wonderfully, alone. Her room was her own and she was finally safe.

Tears came to her eyes, of disbelief and joy this time. Of victory. A fragile smile came to her face as she slid back under her covers, for warmth this time instead of an attempt at feeling protected. For the first time in a long time, Penelope drifted peacefully off to sleep.

Chapter 2

Present Day

The office Penelope worked out of was, like that of many psychologists, in a section of a building with several other doctors that shared a lobby. Thick walls ensured privacy, able to muffle sobs or angry shouts, and a large window in each room ensured the patient didn’t feel claustrophobic. Penelope’s office was decorated with several paintings that were bright and yet calming and she had numerous figurines on her desk from various children’s shows.

Of course, there were also the diplomas that hung on the wall and the obligatory plants on bookshelves among a decent collection of children’s stories. There were board games, for play therapy, and an assortment of dolls. It was the office Penelope had worked out of for four years now, and she always felt at home there.

After experiencing a monster problem and being unable to find any real assistance, she had been drawn to a major in psychology. Many children had nightmares of monsters, but Penelope felt driven to help both them and those who truly were alone in their torment, unable to find someone who even believed them. The doctors had done their best, but of course their best involved treating the monster as a hallucination.

Penelope had come to learn that monster had been a lower-level tormenter, lucky for her. The spell hadn’t been to expel it from her home, that being a step beyond what she could do herself. It trapped the creature behind her closet’s threshold, held back it and all of its fear-inducing abilities. It became a harmless being whose greatest weapon was a glare, and after several days of attempting to invade the girl’s room again, it had vanished forever.

It had taken Penelope a few months to truly believe the spell was permanent and that the creature was gone, and she spent years getting over her fear of closets and what demons might be hiding in their darkness. Luckily this resolved itself as the years passed by and she grew older and more confident, never needing to confront another invader. By the time she was in her teens, the creature’s existence still sat heavy in the back of her mind, but not as a pathological fear.

The current patient in Penelope’s office was Kenny, accompanied by his father Richard. They were seated on the couch in her office, which was comfy, but she knew may as well have been made of sheetrock for all the comfort it provided the child. They were the latest of many that came to her for what