The Little Man in the Closet

Chapter 1

I bought a house in a new subdivision on the outskirts of León, Guanajuato. It wasn’t the best location, but it was what my INFONAVIT credit allowed me to buy. The house was small, completely new, and untouched. I never imagined that in a place with no history, no old tragedies, or walls that had witnessed misfortunes, something strange could lurk. But now I know that the paranormal doesn’t respect time or space. My wife, Carolina, was pregnant with our first child, so despite the inconveniences, we were happy. They handed over the house without protections or finishes, but since I know a bit about construction, I spent several weekends fixing it up. Everything seemed normal; I didn’t find anything out of place or feel any bad vibes. When we finally finished the repairs, we moved in. Every evening we worked on decorating the baby’s room. That’s when the strange things started. One day, while putting up a shelf, the screws disappeared from the toolbox. We looked everywhere, but they were gone. The strange thing was that only my wife and I were in the house, and we had bought them just a few hours earlier. We had to go back to the hardware store. That night, Carolina woke up crying. She had a horrible nightmare: she dreamed that a small man, almost a dwarf, opened her belly and took our baby. She told me she was so scared that even after waking up, she still felt like someone was watching her. I held her until she calmed down, but at that moment we heard a noise in the living room. It was like a purring, low but persistent. I thought maybe a cat had come in through the kitchen window, which we always left open. I went to check, but there was nothing. Just as I turned to go back to the room, the sound changed. It was no longer a purr… it was a voice. A small, shrill voice, muttering something I couldn’t understand. I cursed, and at that moment, one of the sliding windows in the kitchen slammed shut with such force that the glass cracked. It was impossible for the wind to have done it. The next morning, I went to work as usual. At the factory where I work, they don’t allow cell phones, so when I left, I checked my messages. Carolina had written to me several times. First, she said she felt a strange sensation in the house, as if she wasn’t alone. Then she mentioned hearing a little voice inside the kitchen pantry. In her last message, she told me she was going to her mom’s house and asked me to pick her up there because she didn’t want to stay in the house for another minute. That night we slept at my mother-in-law’s house. Carolina was calmer and thought it was all just her imagination due to the pregnancy. I, although trying to rationalize it, couldn’t stop thinking about the broken window and the voice in the kitchen. Before returning home, my mother-in-law gave us a crucifix to hang at the entrance and a rosary to place under Carolina’s pillow. Then, when my wife wasn’t around, she grabbed my arm and said something that chilled me to the bone: —Take good care of your son… there are beings that seek the light of unborn babies. A few weeks passed without incident, except for small disappearances of objects: keys, clothes, even the screws we had bought again. But then something happened that made us realize this wasn’t our imagination. One morning, Carolina woke up with dark bruises on her abdomen. We were very worried and went to the doctor immediately. They ran tests but found no medical explanation. The doctors hinted that they could have been caused by blows, which led to an uncomfortable conversation with the specialists, who wanted to make sure Carolina wasn’t suffering from abuse. Obviously, I would never harm my wife, but we had no logical explanation for what was happening. To calm ourselves, we decided to change the mattress, throw out the sheets, and fumigate the house, thinking that maybe some insect had caused the bruises. This forced us to stay at my mother-in-law’s house again for a few days. It was during those days that I had the same nightmare Carolina had before. In my dream, a little man came in through the kitchen window, walked to the bed, and with a small knife, tried to open my wife’s abdomen. I woke up covered in sweat, with the feeling that something horrible was stalking us. When we finally returned to the house, we found several of the things that had gone missing in the living room: Carolina’s comb, the screws, a couple of baby toys… everything was piled up as if someone had placed it there on purpose. But the worst was seeing the kitchen window. The one I had replaced weeks earlier… was broken again. Carolina turned pale and asked me to leave immediately. To calm her, I changed the locks on the doors and secured all the windows. That was our last night in that house. At one in the morning, the noise in the kitchen woke us up. This time it wasn’t a purr, nor a murmur… it was a racket: banging, high-pitched laughter, and something that froze our blood. A voice that clearly said: —GIVE ME THE BABY!

Chapter 2

The shrill voice kept repeating the same thing: —GIVE ME THE BABY! There were laughs, banging in the kitchen, and a constant murmur I couldn’t make out. My heart was beating so hard I felt like it was going to explode in my chest. Carolina clung to my arm, trembling. I, though terrified, couldn’t just stand there. I gathered my courage, grabbed a knife from the kitchen, and approached the pantry where the voice was coming from. I took a deep breath, counted to three, and yanked the door open. Nothing. Everything was in its place: plates, glasses, some provisions. But the feeling of being watched was so strong that my skin crawled. Then, Carolina screamed. I ran to the room and found her cornered on the bed, her eyes wide open. She pointed with a trembling hand toward the closet. On the other side of the sliding door, there were banging sounds. As if something—or someone—was struggling to get out. At that moment, the air grew thicker. The room felt colder. Summoning what little courage I had left, I grabbed the lamp from the nightstand and turned it on. With my other hand, I slowly slid open the closet door. What I saw inside I will never forget. There it was. A little man less than a meter tall, completely bald, with pale, wrinkled skin like that of an old man. His eyes were small and sunken, but his mouth… his mouth was too big for his face, with sharp, yellow teeth. He wore old, tattered clothes, as if he had come from another era. He looked at us and smiled, showing that grotesque row of teeth. —The baby is mine! —he said in a shrill, mocking voice. Then he started laughing, but not like a normal person. It was a strange sound, almost a screech, like that of an animal. And then he started dancing. Yes… dancing. He spun around, jumped in the air, waved his arms as if mocking us. Carolina, in tears, pulled out the rosary her mother had given her and started praying out loud. The little man stopped abruptly. His expression changed from mockery to anger. He started growling, baring his teeth, and shaking his head from side to side, as if the prayer was hurting him. I, still holding the knife, made the sign of the cross in the air, like I had seen my grandmother do when I was a child. The creature screeched, a high-pitched, painful sound, and with a leap, it went back into the closet, disappearing into the darkness. We were paralyzed. We didn’t know if it had truly disappeared or if it was still there, waiting. We didn’t think twice. We grabbed what we could and ran out of the house. That night we slept at my mother-in-law’s house, but neither of us got any sleep. The next morning, we went to a priest. He listened to us with a furrowed brow but didn’t think we were crazy. He said he had heard similar stories before. He gave us prayers for protection and offered to come bless the house. Still, Carolina refused to go back. My son was born without any issues months later, and we lived with my mother-in-law until I managed to sell the house. I never found out what happened to the new owners. But sometimes I wonder if they also heard the murmurs in the kitchen… if they ever woke up to a broken window… or if in the early hours of the morning, amidst laughter and banging, they heard that shrill voice demanding the same thing: —GIVE ME THE BABY!