Page 49 - Where the Dream Ends ebook

Where the Dream Ends

One of the unique features of the apartment was that in the
entrance hall between the kitchen and the living room, there
was a closet as big as a room. The closet was always something
of a mystery to Harry, filled with the remnants of his family’s
past. Tucked away in its corners were old furs, boxes of letters,
photographs and photo albums, event some remnants of his
father’s brief tenure in World War I, including a gas mask. No
one ever thought of putting a light in the closet, and on days
when he was home alone, the closet became Harry’s attic, a
place of magic and mystery. Whenever he read stories about
children locked away in rooms, all Harry had to do was imag-
ine that closet and he knew just what it would be like.

Harry approached the closet door with the same trepida-
tion as he did when he was a child, perhaps more now, know-
ing that he was trespassing among someone else’s secrets.

He opened the door and waited, but the monster he expect-
ed never materialized. Instead, he was confronted by a scene so
ordinary, so dull, it confused him. The clothes rack was stuffed
with dresses, blouses, skirts, and jackets; the shelves were filled
with shoes and other paraphernalia of a woman’s life. But what
was so extraordinary, so ordinary, was the fact that where the
closet once seemed so immense, it now appeared quite small.
It was larger than most closets, but nothing near the room size
he imagined. He closed the door quickly, not so much for fear
that he was peering into someone else’s life, but because he
was afraid that by looking into the closet, in discovering that
it wasn’t big enough to hold his monsters, he had uncovered
a secret that was more powerful than anything the closet con-
tained. In one instant he had nullified an entire segment of his

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