The Secret Closet

by Zary Fekete

I’ve always been getting lost. When I was a little girl, I would disappear into a tree for hours, my mom worrying after me and scolding me for my scraped knees. I remember one summer afternoon, the sky thick with the smell of cut grass and distant rain, when she found me curled in the hollow of an old elm, sketching shapes in the dirt with a stick. “You’ll vanish one day and I’ll never find you,” she said, half-laughing, half-crying. I think I liked the idea of being hard to find. It felt like a secret only I could keep.

It hasn’t changed in high school either, which is where this story begins…two weeks before Halloween. You’d imagine if a girl suddenly disappeared from fourth period for over a month, someone would notice. But if you already eat lunch while tucked away in the library behind the poetry section, and wander the halls like a lost autumn leaf, you become easy to forget. Even at home, my mother took to leaving notes on the fridge…“I miss you. Where did you disappear to this time?”…as if she’s writing to a tenant she barely knows.

It started with a detention class I forgot to attend. I meant to. I think I did. But that October day I happened past the auditorium where the flute section was warming up with some Schubert and it was impossible to resist sitting. The music drifted through the cracked door, thin and silver, and I let myself disappear into it.

It must have been truly marvelous music, because I sat there for God knows how long, the notes curling around me as I sat in the shadow of the doorway. At times, when the music swelled, I closed my eyes and the world seemed to tilt with a hidden memory surfacing… the sudden screech of brakes, the shiver that ran through my bones before everything went quiet.

Finally, I stood and let the echoes of the music lead me through the empty halls. The notes curled around corners, seeped under doors, and I followed them, barefoot and unseen. I wandered past classrooms where no one looked up, past lockers that no longer opened for me.

Some of the lockers have notes on them from one student to another. Love notes. Insults. Reminders. They remind me of notes my mother left for me sometimes.

Don’t forget your lunch. Text me when you get home. Love you. The handwriting wobbled, ink smudged as if by tears. Sometimes, when the house is silent, I trace the words with a finger that leaves no mark. Sometimes I watched my mother writing them. I want to tell my her I’m here, that I never left, but the words dissolve like breath on glass.

At school, I drift. Teachers glance through me. Students part around me like water. Once, a boy bumped into me in the hallway, his arm passing straight through my shoulder. He shivered, muttered, “Weird,” and kept walking. I wonder if this is what ghosts feel like…not fear, but a slow unraveling, like a thread pulled loose from a sweater.

Eventually, the Schubert music led me to a door I’d never noticed before, half-hidden behind a rolling cart and a faded map of the world. The knob turned easily in my hand. Inside: dust, the faint scent of chalk and old paper, a single bulb flickering overhead. The hush felt familiar, as if it had been waiting for me.

I stepped inside, closed the door behind me, and sat down among the cables and forgotten trophies. The world outside grew quiet.

It was a long, dark room that smelled of dust and dried paint, with a faint undertone of something metallic…old wires, maybe, or the ghosts of spilled cleaning fluid. The fluorescent light above flickered and lit the ground in slices, the air shimmering with motes that danced whenever I moved. The shelves were tight against each other and they went back in rows, disappearing into the darkness.

I noticed the posters right away. They covered the walls, looked like the kind of thing you might find in a counselor’s office from the 70s. Lots of chirpy slogans: You Matter! Kindness is Contagious! Their edges were yellowed and curled. I reached up and peeled one of them back a bit. There were more posters beneath them. Layers upon layers. I kept peeling and when I reached the wall, my eyes grew wide. Writing. Ballpoint and felt-tip. Deep marks in the drywall like someone was pressing hard, using the pen like a chisel. It said:

You’re not wrong for seeing the cracks.

I kept peeling away at the posters, uncovering more and more words. There were hundreds of messages. Some of the words were warnings. Some were lullabies. Some sounded like spells. I read them aloud, softly:

You’re not lost, even if no one calls your name.

Some doors open only when you stop looking for a way out.

It’s alright to linger…some stories take longer to finish.

I had found my new home.

The first week, I started skipping lunch. Ate crackers in the dim space between the tall shelves. Lay on my back and listened to Schubert coming through the vents up above. Except that day there was no band practice, so I knew the music was just for me…another message from the walls. I would time my breathing to the flicker of the lights, counting the seconds between each buzz and dim.

By the second week, I was spending whole afternoons there, sorting cables with methodical care. I used the old coils of AV cords and made myself a mattress to nap on between the stacks of faded yearbooks. The walls breathed a little when no one else was around. Sometimes, when I pressed my ear against the drywall, I could swear I heard faint whispers…words I couldn’t quite catch, like the memory of a lullaby sung in another room.

I lay on my back, blinking in time with the fluorescents…timing it so my eyes were closed when they were on. The light was red behind my lids.

Red…black……red…black…………red.

That night I slept there. I dreamed I was inside a yearbook. Everyone else was smiling. I was a blank square.

Days blurred. I ran out of crackers. It didn’t seem to matter. My vision was sharper than ever. I crawled through the shelves, finding history and guilt stacked upon itself. Once, I heard my name called over the intercom. But I stayed very still, holding my breath. I wondered if anyone would come looking for me, but no one did.

Then, on Halloween, I found a mirror, dusty with asbestos. I wiped it off with my hoodie sleeve. My hair was a bird’s nest, but my face was alert. My eyes were bright. In the reflection I saw a word behind me on the wall: .elbisiV

I scratched my head. I realized it was reversed in the mirror.

Then I laughed. It sounded like something splitting open. It didn’t echo. It hung in the air like tinsel. Sound didn’t behave normally in that room.

I started pulling down the old posters so I could see all the writing on the walls. I copied them exactly, letter for letter. Some I traced with my finger over the grooves in the drywall. I liked the feel of it. Like Braille, but for secrets.

As I wrote, I slowly moved toward the back, capturing every word. I grew stronger and no longer needed the light. I sat in the dark with my pen glowing between my fingers, the air humming with words and secrets.

There was still a patch of wall behind the last supply shelf I hadn’t reached. I moved in on it, inch by inch.

There was one last message, hidden behind the final poster. I pulled down the poster and read the words behind it. Slowly I smiled.

I took a marker and reached for a stack of yellowed printer paper. I carefully printed on each piece. I didn’t stop until I had over a thousand.

I stuffed them into my backpack and crawled to the top of the last shelf, the one that stood just beneath the ceiling vent. I crawled up, leaving the closet behind. I took a few turns and crept toward an open grate. I looked down. There was an assembly in the gym…for something solemn, I guess. Everyone seemed subdued and still.

Rows of students, teachers, my mother in the front row, hands folded. A photograph of a girl…my face…projected on the wall. I watched as the principal spoke, his words muffled, distant.

I hover above the gym. The principal speaks into a microphone, his voice echoing. Tragic loss… cherished member of our community… The photo of my face beams from the projector screen. It’s the one from last year’s yearbook, my smile stiff, my eyes avoiding the camera.

Students shift in their seats. A girl in the front row cries silently, her shoulders shaking in a way that reminds me of my mother at the funeral, clutching a tissue stained with lipstick.

I opened the vent and reached into my backpack. I grabbed two handfuls of papers and let my arms hang down, enjoying the feel of gravity after being weightless for so long. And then I opened my hands and the papers fell…messages fluttering down like silent voices.

There was a momentary uproar as the papers blanketed the crowd. Then here and there people reached for them. Soon the whole crowd was silent…reading. I watched a girl I’d never spoken to pick up a note and smile. One of the teachers sat down slowly on the bleachers, reading his copy with both hands trembling.

Another student pressed her note to her chest like a folded prayer.

My mother pressed her hand to her mouth. She looked older than I remembered. Smaller.

I lingered above them, unseen. For the first time, I didn’t feel invisible.

I was a message, finally delivered.

Trick…or treat?

BIO: Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella Words on the Page out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky:zaryfekete.bsky.social