Dad Has A Concern I'll Get Scared If I'm Left Unaccompanied In The House

Grandma gives a backhanded wave, "she'll never be alone." I like being alone in my Dad’s childhood bedroom.

I never unpack. I toss my rucksack in front of the built-in closet and belly-flop on the bed to bounce the bed-springs. Each year I hear the adults agree on various rules for me.

Dad’s room never changed. Always the infused eucalyptus scent on the Dutch orange pillowcases. The feather duvet cover always the navy astronauts floating in blue sky. The unvaried beige wallpaper forest had bluish bears in the pattern. It used to cover the closet but it looks like my Dad wanted to strip it off but gave up a third of the way through. The heavy, chalk linen curtains always framed the large rectangular window. I could see the whole backyard.

After Dad has gone, Grandma stands in the doorway and asks me, "do you know Instagram?" I said yes and she waves me, "come, come!" to the room opposite Dad's bedroom. This is where Grandma keeps a huge trunk of costumes. Delicate Venetian masks with ribbon ties. Embroidered silk creations of eccentric colours. Professional wigs stored in empty round biscuit tins.

“We'll do a character every day,” Grandma tells me. I agree and I grab my Samsung phone to set up an Instagram account for her.

One of my favourites is a saint dressed in Egyptian blue. The embroidered hem reads in Arabic ‘God is Great.’Her masked face had a sad smiling expression. It tied in place with a royal purple ribbon over long blonde locks. I post to Instagram with halo and red heart emoji.

Another character is a jovial King. A red diamond painted on his third eye, at the rim of his bronze crown. His medieval tunic is like a chessboard of red and white tiles. The hem hangs at mid-thigh. He would be a fashionable woman in the 1970s. I post with every royal emoji I have.

Then there is Puss-in-Boots. The mask holds the distinct expression of feline craftiness. The silk robes range from Imperial yellow, through to amber, with a pitch-black trim. He wears leather boots and hat fit for a pirate, complete with a bouncing green ostrich plume. I post with ten cat emoji, hashtag crazy cat lady.

By the second weekend, my Grandma had fifteen times more followers than I did. I tried to show her but she waved my Samsung phone away and told me to be her social media manager.

After dinner, but before bedtime, I was in my Dad’s room sitting on the bed and scrolling through all the photos so far. I had a lamplight on and hadn’t yet closed my curtains. When the backyard lights, activated by sensor, flicked on and caught my attention.

I look up to the bedroom window and see my Grandma's final creation. A red smiling man. The red devil emoji.

Delighted, I laughed and stood up to the window. "That's the best so far!" I said. I bring up my phone, careful to have the flash off, to snap some photos.

The superior details of the mask amazed me. Not the usual Venetian style. Masterful painting contoured my Grandma’s moon-face into the long features of an ogre. His smile was tight-lipped but dimpled like a babe. The nostrils flared on each exhale. Hot breath fogging the window between us. He inclined his broad forehead toward me so the glinting feline eyes leered at me. I notice the hood.

My eyes flick between the creation framed by the window, and the creation framed on my screen. I couldn't distinguish how it dressed. It was pitch black. But, not made out of silk.

“I can’t see all of you,” I say, “hold on.”

I’m going to the backyard. When I leave the bedroom I come through the lounge and see Grandma sitting and reading on the couch.

I’m confused, "how did you get here so fast?" I asked.

"Hmm? I’m here for fifteen minutes. I think," she replies.

"I know the joke. I saw the devil costume at my window," I hold up my darkened Samsung, prepared to show the evidence.

"What are you talking about?" Grandma asks. I wave her to follow me, and she puts down her book and walks behind me to Dad's old room. No one was at my window. We can’t see anyone in the dark backyard.

I open the camera app on my phone to the last photos. Grandma watches over my shoulder. But there is nothing but weird exposures of shadow on shadow. I wasn't sure if I was swiping between them, they were all the same.

"Were you asleep?" Grandma asks.

"No. I know I wasn't."

"Do you need to tell your father?" Grandma's tone was so sugary that my suspicious mind made itself up, and I said "yes I do," without thinking about it.

When Dad came to pick me up at the end of my holidays, he asks "you're sure it was a demon?"

My Grandma interrupts, "a devil emoji!"

I nod.

"Did you hear anything?" he asks.

My Grandma interrupts again, "nothing."

I shake my head.

"Nothing from the closet?" my Dad insists.

"What was in the closet?" I ask.

Dad tells me the story of when he and Grandma first moved in.

“When I was four I kept hearing a woman crying in the closet. I’d run into Mama’s room but she never believed me. She told me to stop lying and get back to bed. Then one day-” he trails off and Grandma picks up the narrative, “- one day your Dad is at his dad’s house. And I hear the sobbing woman.”

“I’ve never heard her,” I say, fascinated.

“This is decades ago,” Grandma asserted.

“You haven’t heard her recently?” I ask.

Grandma gives a backhanded wave to sweep away the issue.

This is a fictionalised flash fiction piece of a true story. Here is the inspiration: