CHAPTER 1

ANTICIPATION

To begin with, Seussol is gone. There is no doubt about that. I saw him return to the closet over a month ago with my own eyes. And according to Beardy, my doorknob, he is gone for good. I miss my last visitor.

I am sad he’s gone, but I’m also excited because it’s December 21st, and that means there are only three more days before my closet opens again and the next creature arrives. I never had a heads-up in the past. All five of the creatures who came before were a surprise. But now, thanks to a tool Seussol made me, I’m able to unlock Beardy and see the date of the next arrival. Most people are pumped for the twenty-fifth. Me, I’m stoked for the twenty-fourth.

I’m actually happy about a lot of things right now. It’s not often that I think my life is perfect, but at this exact moment, it’s pretty close to that. For starters, I’m psyched that winter break begins in two days.

I love winter break—two weeks off from school and a couple of holidays mixed in. I’m also happy that Christmas is so close. I’m hopeful I might get some of the things I asked for this year.

Thanks to my closet, my life has become weird and unpredictable, and I have to admit I’ve grown to like the interruptions.

I’m kind of an average height, and I’m sort of an average-looking guy. I have average grades and I’m an average basketball player, but my life is no longer what it used to be. Let me give you the scoop.

My name is Robert Columbo Burnside. I have an older sister named Libby, a younger brother named Tuffin, and a mom and a dad. I have a fat dog named Puck and a pooping bird named Fred. I live on a street near a cul-de-sac. In the center of the cul-de-sac, there is a rock island with three palm trees growing in the middle of it. I have five friends who live in the cul-de-sac, and I hang out with them all the time.

The girl I like lives next door to me. Her name is Janae, and recently we’ve been getting along great. I mean, really great. She’s even admitted to others without being forced that I’m her boyfriend.

If you don’t already know about my closet, I’ll quickly fill you in. When I was little, it had no door and I created a homemade laboratory inside it. It was like my science cave. I would mix mayonnaise and motor oil and spread them over things in an attempt to find a cure for stuff like Older-Sister-Itis.

My potions never really worked. So I stopped trying to invent things, and my closet just got messier and goopier. Then my mom got a part-time job working in a bookstore. She said it was because she wanted to have something to do, but we all knew it was because she had three kids and wanted to get out of the house. She didn’t work at the bookstore for too long, but while she did, she would bring home books for us all to read. I didn’t like reading, so I would just take my books and throw them into my messy closet. I was pretty proud of how disgusting the inside of my closet was.

But then things changed.

My dad found a strange door at a garage sale down the street. He brought it home and hung it on my closet. It’s weird because it fit perfectly. It’s also weird because it’s … weird. It’s a super-heavy closet door that looks older than dirt. It has an embarrassing unicorn sticker on it that I can’t get off and a funny metal doorknob. On the front of the doorknob there’s an engraved face of a bearded man I call Beardy.

His real name is Bartholomew, but if you read Lord of the Hat, you already knew that. Anyhow, soon after the closet door was installed, magical things began to happen. Beardy would lock the door and wouldn’t let me or my friends in. Then the books and the mess behind the door would tumble and mix with the sticky lab supplies and create mashed-up characters.

Beardy is the gatekeeper of the closet and seems to be in control of who gets in and out. He doesn’t talk, but on more than one occasion, he has rolled his eyes or made faces at me. He used to make me uncomfortable because he always seemed to be staring at me.

He doesn’t make me nervous anymore. Now that I’ve learned where Beardy came from and how important he is, I feel privileged to have such an important doorknob.

When I first began writing down and drawing my experiences, I didn’t like to read very much. Books used to be something for other people, but not me. Now, five creatures later, I catch myself reading just for the fun of it.

My closet has made me above average in the odd department. Only me and my five friends know what my closet can do with books. I’ve thought about telling Janae, but it seems like something I should wait to share when our relationship is stronger.

So my closet is a secret few people know about, and I’m okay with that. I like what it’s done so far, and I’m beside myself with excitement knowing that in three days the door will unlock and I will find out who’s next.

Copyright © 2016 by Obert Skye