I locked my wife in the closet because she answered my mother’s phone call… but when I opened the door the next morning, what I saw sent shivers down my spine. I swear I never thought something like this could happen.

Chapter 1: Midnight Fury
Nights in the Cascade Highlands are always a deep, dark black. I’m Caleb, an architect who prides himself on order and control. My wife, Elena, is a freelance artist with a free-spirited but sometimes overly curious soul.

My relationship with my mother, Agatha Christie, is forbidden territory. She’s a powerful woman, living alone in an old Boston mansion and only communicating with me through brief, fixed-hour phone calls. My rule is simple: “Never touch my personal phone when my mother calls.”

But that night, the bourbon had caught me off guard. When I emerged from the bathroom, I found Elena holding my old, black phone, her face pale, her eyes wide with horror.

“Caleb… your mother… what did she say?” Elena stammered.

My rage flared up like a wildfire. I didn’t listen to her explanation. I didn’t want to know what she’d heard. Only one thought occupied my mind: She’d broken the rules. She’d trespassed on my last stronghold.

I snatched the phone and shoved Elena into the large walk-in closet next to the bedroom.

“Stay in there and think about what you’ve done!” I yelled, then locked the door.

Elena pounded on the door, screaming, “Caleb, let me out! You don’t understand! Your mother isn’t who you think she is!”

I ignored her. I turned up the volume on my Mahler symphony to drown out her cries for help, downed a bottle of wine, and collapsed onto the bed in a drunken stupor.

Chapter 2: The Eerie Silence
Six o’clock in the morning. The gray dawn light pierced through the thick fog outside the window. I woke up with a pounding headache and a feeling of belated regret.

I’d gone too far. Locking my wife in the closet was a crazy act. I intended to open the door, apologize, and promise to take her on a California vacation to make amends.

But when I stood in front of the dressing room door, a deathly silence enveloped me. No crying, no knocking, not even breathing.

“Elena?” I whispered. No answer.

I inserted the key into the lock, my hands trembling slightly. “Elena, I’m sorry. I was drunk. Come out, we need to talk.”

I opened the door.

What I saw sent shivers down my spine, my knees giving way on the marble floor. I swear I never imagined something like this could happen.

Chapter 3: An Unbelievable Scene
Inside the closet, Elena was gone.

But the only door was locked from the outside, and this room had no windows. It was designed like a safe haven with four thick, reinforced concrete walls.

On the floor lay Elena’s white silk nightgown, neatly pressed and smooth as if she had just vanished from it. Her slippers were also there.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

The walls, once covered with my expensive suits, were now plastered with hundreds of thousands of tiny yellow sticky notes. They were stuck from floor to ceiling. Each note bore a single line in bright red ink, still wet:

“SHE’S COMING. SHE’S ALWAYS HERE.”

In the middle of the room, under the flickering LED light, was my black phone – the one I was sure I’d taken to bed. The phone screen lit up, showing an ongoing call.

Caller ID: MOTHER.

Call time: 08:12:44 – and the numbers were still ticking. The call had lasted all night.

Chapter 4: Voices from the Void
I trembled as I picked up the phone, holding it to my ear.

“Mother… Mother?” my voice faltered.

A shrill, dry laugh came from the other end of the line. It wasn’t the Agatha I knew. It was a multi-layered voice, as if thousands of people were speaking at once.

“Caleb, my good son. You helped me complete the ritual. Her curiosity was the key, and your anger was the lock. Thank you for trapping her in my space.”

I looked around the room. My clothes began to shrink and distort. The darkness in the corners of the room seemed to thicken, condense, and begin to creep across the floor.

I frantically searched for Elena in the pile of clothes, shouting her name, but all I touched were those damned yellow scraps of paper. They began to fall like dry leaves, revealing the pictures behind them.

They were old, black-and-white photographs. In them was me – as a child – but the person standing next to me wasn’t my mother. It was a faceless entity, wearing Agatha Christie’s long black dress. In each picture, that entity was slowly pulling another woman into an old wooden cabinet.

My grandmother. My father’s first wife. And now Elena.

Chapter 5: The Horrifying Truth
My mother, Agatha Christie, had died 20 years ago.

That shocking truth flooded my mind like a torrent. I had buried her in Boston. But somehow, her manipulation, or something disguised as her, made me believe she was still alive, still calling me weekly, still controlling me.

It controlled my life from afar.

The phone was the conduit. And this room – the closet I was so proud of its tidiness – was the monster’s mouth.

Suddenly, the large mirror in the corner of the room cracked. From within the crack, a thin, pale hand reached out. It wasn’t towards me. It was pulling something from behind me.

I turned around. Elena was standing there. But she didn’t see me. Her eyes were blank, and she walked like a sleepwalker towards the crack in the mirror.

“Elena! No!” I rushed forward and hugged her tightly.

But what I touched wasn’t warm flesh. It was icy cold and melted into yellow scraps of paper in my arms.

Chapter 6: The Leftover
The phone rang again. This time it was a voicemail.

I opened it. Elena’s voice, weak and distant, said, “Caleb, don’t open the door. No matter what she says, don’t open it… She doesn’t want me, she wants you. I’m just bait to get you to open this gate from the inside…”

I looked back at the closet door I’d just opened. It no longer led to my bedroom. It led into an endless, dark hallway, reeking of decaying fabrics and my mother’s cheap perfume.

I trembled. I realized I’d never really locked Elena in. I’d locked myself into my mother’s world.

The writing on the wall began to change. It was no longer a warning. It all changed into:

“WELCOME HOME, CALEB.”

I looked down at my hands. My skin was wrinkling, turning the pale yellow of the sticky notes. I tried to scream, but the only sound that came out was the rustling of crumpled paper.

That morning, the house in Cascade Highlands was completely empty. The police arrived a few days later after neighbors reported the unusual silence. They found the bedroom tidy, the bed wrinkle-free.

But when they opened the closet, they found nothing but expensive suits neatly hung. Only a young officer noticed a small yellow note lying under the closet, scrawled with a single word:

“Help me, I’m behind the mirror.”

The officer just laughed and tossed the note into the trash, assuming it was someone’s prank. He had no idea that, inside the mirror, two eyes were staring at him with an intense, desperate desire.

💡 Lesson from the story
Over-control and irrational anger are often manifestations of deep-seated psychological instability. Sometimes, the “wardrobes” in our souls contain secrets we shouldn’t touch. Learn to dialogue and understand before letting anger slam the door to happiness.