The house where I grew up was pretty new - way newer than any of the other houses on the block. A typical one-story ranch house that you might see in any stretch of American suburbia. Likewise, all the furniture in the house was pretty par for the course. My room had a little-kid bed, a nightstand, a table and chairs where I would color - all of these things probably came from the mid-nineties equivalent of IKEA. And then there was the armoire.
The armoire was this massive antique beast of a cabinet made of some sort of dark wood, with these old-fashioned brass fixtures. It literally towered over everything else in the room, including me. It stretched most of the way to the ceiling and took up half the wall. It had a couple of pull-out drawers at the bottom, and then the rest of it consisted of these double doors that pulled open to reveal a vast cavernous space where coats and stuff were supposed to hang.
The armoire had been in my room ever since I could remember. I guess it didn't bother me much when I was a baby, but as I started getting older I started becoming more aware of it. Mostly I was aware of something not being quite right. I started to dread being told to put my toys away, because things I would put in there would come back...wrong. Sometimes they would be filthy, covered in some sort of black dust. Sometimes they would be broken, or ripped up, and some of the pieces would be missing.
One time I put a box of crayons in there, and when I went back to get them later, the box was a cinder and the crayons had all melted into a mosaic at the bottom of the drawer. Another time, I was given a doll that I didn't really like all that much, so I stuck it in a drawer of the armoire and forgot about it. A month or so later, the aunt that gave me the doll came to visit. I was told by my mom to produce the doll and pretend that I liked it. I went to my room and opened the drawer...and it was gone. I ransacked the armoire front to back, but the only thing I could find was one of the doll's shoes. My parents were not impressed by the shoe or the story, and I got in trouble.
I started to resent the armoire. My parents blamed me for the filthy, broken, and missing toys, because of course they did. They wouldn't listen when I tried to tell them that it was the armoire that was ruining everything. My room had a normal dresser, too, a perfectly ordinary three-drawer affair with stickers stuck all over it. I didn't know the word for armoire at the time, so whenever I tried to tell them that "the dresser was bad", they'd go for the normal dresser and attempt to prove to me that it was totally normal, nothing to be scared of. I usually got so frustrated at my inability to explain myself that I'd start crying at this point. Eventually, I resolved to just stop using the untrustworthy thing. My mom never put my clean clothes in there anyway, so all I had to do was stop putting toys in there...and try to ignore it when it would sometimes creak and groan during the night. I got pretty good at pretending it wasn't there, and so I eventually forgot about it.
Fast forward a few years to elementary school. I had a friend over for my first-ever sleepover, and I was SO PSYCHED. Both of us were huge book nerds, and we spent the evening watching the old Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe animated movie from the seventies. We bonded over listing all the ways it was different from the book, which we both loved. When it was time to go to bed, my dad helped her roll out her sleeping bag in my room. As soon as she entered the room, her eyes went huge at the sight of the armoire. After my dad said goodnight and left, she started gushing about how it was just like the one from the book, and what if there was a portal to a magical land in there, and had I ever gone inside? When I told her I hadn't, she insisted that we open it up RIGHT NOW and hop inside to see if we could make it to Narnia.
In my whole life, there is nothing that I've wanted to do less than crawl into that cabinet. I tried hard to distract my friend with other typical sleepover activities, but she was totally adamant that we had to get inside that armoire - and make sure to close the doors, otherwise the magic wouldn't activate. In the end, she got frustrated at my stalling and pulled the doors open herself. Before I could stop her, she leapt inside the big closet-y part and pulled the doors shut behind her.
I tried to play it cool. "Oh, haha, did you find the way to Narnia? Should I grab my winter coat?" But there was no answer. After a minute or so I rapped on the side with my knuckles, like, okay, time to get out now. Still nothing. I noticed the armoire swaying slightly and I figured she was moving around inside, but she still wouldn't answer me. Eventually I got annoyed and, in a show of bravado, flung the doors open.
Fire roared. The inside of the cabinet was an inferno. Burning smoke blasted directly into my face. I could feel all the little hairs on my face withering in the heat of it. I want to be totally clear, here - one second everything was totally normal, and then the next, the world was on fire, no in-between state. I screamed my friend's name, but the thick smoke stung my eyes and I couldn't see anything. In a blind panic, I tried to slam the doors shut and burned my palms severely on the red-hot brass fixtures. The pain was unreal.
I ran out of the room, screaming for my parents. I grabbed my shocked mom by the arm and dragged her back into my room, and....nothing. The armoire doors were closed, there was no smoke, nothing was on fire. My friend was lying in her sleeping bag with her back toward us. As I let go of my mom in confusion, I noticed that even my palms were unburned, though the pain was still searing. My mom gave me a very strange look and hissed at me to be a good host to my guest before leaving the room.
Still reeling, I went to go check on my friend. I found her white and trembling, curled into the fetal position in her sleeping bag. Neither of us said a word. After a few minutes, she got up and left the room to call her mom. Her mom came and picked her up. I tried a few times to talk with her at school, but she never spoke to me again. She moved away later that year.
After that night, I refused to sleep in the same room with that armoire. I closed the door to my bedroom and started sleeping in my parent's bed, way after the age when it was normal to do so. Early childhood experiences with the armoire had taught me that I wouldn't be believed if I told them the truth, so I just sort of...collapsed in on myself. My grades suffered; I chased all my friends away; I started hyperventilating at the smell of smoke. My parents got more and more concerned about my behavior, and bought all sorts of books about dealing with 'problem children'. One of the books told them to stop letting me sleep in their room, which they did. I started sleeping in front of their bedroom door instead.
One day a few months after the sleepover incident, I came home to find my bedroom door ajar. There was new wallpaper and a new rug on the floor, but more importantly, the armoire was gone. I felt like a huge rock that had been in my stomach for years had suddenly vanished. I gave my mom a huge hug and told her I loved the redesign. Things totally turned around for me after that - my grades and my social skills improved dramatically. My mom and dad still like to joke whenever I'm in a bad mood that maybe they should go redecorate my room, since it worked so well the last time.
Sorry that this is getting a little long, but there's one more part to my story. Last week, I was home from college on winter break, doing some research for a Japanese class paper. The subject was "translate a historical article from your hometown". I was clicking randomly through my small town newspaper's online archive when the word FIRE caught my eye. The front page of an issue from November of 1932 had a headline that read "TRAGIC FIRE CLAIMS THREE LIVES AT [ADDRESS]". The photo showed a family posing for a portrait inside their house - a man, a woman, and a little girl. The girl was holding a doll and staring directly at the camera.
The address in the headline was the same as my address. And in the background of the photo was the armoire.
I screamed, and my mom came racing in. I shoved the laptop in her face, jabbing my finger at the armoire in the picture. Even now, as an adult, I tend to struggle with my words when I get upset. My mom, trying to understand my distress, read the headline and looked at the photo. Her eyes widened. "Oh!", she said. "Same address, right? I guess I never told you when you were a kid. The house that used to be on this spot burned down in the thirties, just like the headline says. That poor family. The lot stood vacant for a few decades, until your father and I snapped it up really cheap just before you were born and built this house!" She smiled at me triumphantly, expecting me to be impressed by her savvy bargain-hunting skills.
I finally found my voice. "Not that, Mom. The armoire! The armoire in the picture is the same one that was in my room when I was a kid!"
She frowned, studying the picture again. "What armoire?"
I jabbed my finger at the screen again. "That one, right there! Remember? It's exactly the same!"
She gave me a weird look. I will never forget her next words.
"We didn't have an armoire."
