The Man With the Hat

When your little sister tells you she sees a face in her closet, you ignore her.

When she insists it is staring at her, you tell her to shut up, and maybe furrow your brow a bit.

As she drags you to her closet by the arm you laugh, but hope you don't see anything. 

She points and you look. You are ready to tell her she is being a baby...but there it is. Just a bit beyond the bottom of her hanging clothes...you reach out to move them aside and there he is...

A boy--a boy with big, light blue eyes. And he's smiling. Does he have fangs?? He's glowing...

Your stomach falls to the floor and your heart stops because this is not your imagination. His over sized eyes are staring, unblinking, right into yours.

Your sister has her face buried in your back, and she quietly asks if you can see him...and you quietly answer back.

Yes.

And you both scream. You scream because the nightmare came true, and you can't unsee those eyes...

But as you move your hand away from the clothes, you see the boy is no longer glowing. He is just a faint outline behind the shoes. So you peek in again, and reach past the sneakers and clogs and grab for the face, and pull out a Fangoria magazine.

You and your sister laugh and feel relief and disappointed at the same time. For a moment, the supernatural was REAL. All those things you were told were make-believe were honest to goodness, genuinely TRUE. But at least you did not have to worry about a vampire.

But what about the other things that you've seen or heard? 

Night after night I would lie in my bed, sleepless, and wonder and worry about the things kids worry about. Boys, clothes, school, etc. I would look at the closets in my bedroom, and wonder if my sister was asleep. The wood grains formed shapes: a bird, the profile of a thin woman, a bear, and the face of a werewolf. 

If the closets were closed, all was well, but if I was forgetful and left my door opened a bit, I would see the man with the hat.

He was tall and thin, and I could never see his face. Somehow I knew he was looking at me. His hat was an odd mixture of fedora and bowler. He never moved, and he would be there as I fell asleep. He was partly benign and partly menacing, and I would almost forget about him by morning...until I saw him again.

After several visits, I told my sister, and her eyes got big and filled with tears that never fell. She had seen the man with the hat too.

We didn't talk about him much for some reason, but we kept our closets closed every night.

Recently, I was reading a story about the black eyed children, and something seemed familiar. At the end of the article, it said some are unlucky enough to be visited by the children, and many others have seen a shadowy man with a hat.

I was floored. I thought this was a personal terror that was only shared by my sister and me. I have not told her that others have seen our man with the hat--and I'm wondering how she will feel when she reads this blog. I think I may have been visited by the black eyed children too, but that story is for another post. 

If you have any of these experiences, I'd love to know.

Sorry Tinya ;)

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