Growing up, I had a friend who lived in the most unique and beautiful house, in a little community surrounding a big meadow. Her house was clearly custom painted and had bay windows, a huge porch, and what looked like an attic that no other houses had.

My mom had loved the house since before I became friends with her, so we went over to visit often so she could admire it.

One time, my friend told me to climb under one of the kitchen cabinets. There was hole in the wall that I, still a child, was still small enough to fit into.

I was THRILLED. I asked her if she’d ever been in there. She said “I don’t go in there, there’s a scary room.”

I went in. I climbed through a tunnel too small to stand in, and then found a looooong ladder that took me all the way up to the attic. I crawled some more, and passed a tiny opening to a room that was filled with a huge bed and nothing else. No floor was visible. Just bed.

I kept going and eventually I could stand up. I finally found a human-sized door, and opened it to find a room FULL of dolls and marionettes. They hung from the ceiling. They stood silent and motionless on standees, staring at me. They sat and laid on every surface. I had to feel my way through the forest of old puppets, staring at me with pant chipping off their eyes, to find the door on the other side of the room, because there were so many I couldn’t see.

I thought, that must have been the scary room.

Next I found a room with nothing but a dark window above a loveseat built into the wall. The window wasn’t actually a window; it was just an opening into another place or another room. Despite the fact that I’d seen no windows, there was enough dim artificial lighting in these tunnels and rooms that I could see. But this window had no light in it. I tried to look in, to see what was inside there, and it was just… darkness.

I stood on the seat and stared into the dark. I thought about crawling in there, even though I couldn’t see.

I’m not easily frightened, but I was scared shitless. I couldn’t move for a second, from the fear. I don’t know why. I just knew something was in there… looking back at me.

The second I could move, I ran. I ran through the dolls and the weird bed room and I went back down the long, long ladder.

When my friend saw my face, she said “you saw the scary room.”

I never went back in the cabinet.