Anna couldn’t pinpoint when things got quite so out of hand. One day, she was a load or two behind on the laundry, and the next there was a laundry monster growing in the laundry room which quickly spread to the children’s bedrooms. She tried to catch up, she really did, but nothing seemed to work. She taught the older children (who were certainly old enough to be useful) to do their own laundry, and gave everyone a laundry day. She herself did load after load, but the darn mountain of laundry just kept growing. She sorted through and gave away all the outgrown clothes and the things no one would wear because they didn’t like them, and she threw away all the clothes and linens with holes and stains. She pared everyone’s wardrobe down to the bare bones. The pile still grew.
She broke down, withdrew a considerable chunk of cash from the ATM and had her husband take the whole lot to the laundromat one Saturday. (He got black looks from the students who were regulars when he monopolized most of the machines.) The next day, the pile was back and she saw some cloth arms and legs sneaking out from under the children’s beds.
Now, Anna was a practical, down to earth sort of woman. She believed in what she could see and touch, and didn’t indulge herself in fantasy. But even she could see that something strange was going on here. There was no way that pile could be back without some kind of uncanny help.
She went out into the laundry room and plunged her arm into the middle of the pile, pulling out an item at random. It appeared to be a stained, outgrown shirt that had belonged to the oldest child when he was a toddler. She grabbed at another. It was a skirt that she knew she had put in the Salvation Army box because her daughter refused to wear it. She grabbed a basket and put these things in it and grabbed a few more. Every thing was old, outgrown, or given away. There were even a few things she didn’t recognize at all, including some single socks that were unlike anything she had ever purchased. (She would never buy chartreuse socks with little pink bunnies on them- not in this life time, anyway.) Anna piled all of her evidence in the laundry basket behind her.
When she thought she had a basket full, she turned around to grab it and take it – somewhere, maybe to the garbage- and the basket was empty. There was nothing in it, not even the pair of pale pink size 44 boxer shorts she had just put in it. Anna looked slowly back to the pile, which was the same size as ever (or was it bigger?) and then back at the now empty basket again. Then she slowly backed out of the room, shut the door tight and then ran to her bedroom. She spent the rest of the day in bed, with the pillows over her head. When the children came home from school, they tried to get her to tell them what was wrong, but all she did was moan quietly. The children tiptoed around for the rest of the afternoon and made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for supper. When their dad came home, they made him one, too.
The next day, Anna had recovered. She decided that the day before had been a figment of her imagination. She marched back out to the laundry room with not one, but three baskets in her hands – one for darks, one for lights, and one for bleach whites. She had an uneasy moment when she first saw the pile- was is bigger?- but she steeled herself and started grabbing clothing off the top and sorting them into baskets. She didn’t even examine the things she found- they were probably just hand me downs from friends anyway- she just put them into baskets to wash. When she turned back around, the baskets were all full. She smiled contentedly and put the first load in the washer. “There, now, that was easy, wasn’t it,” she told herself reassuringly.
That load went into the dryer and the next went into the washer and all was still going properly. She folded up the first load, reloaded both washer and dryer and things were still going along swimmingly.
Anna was humming to herself when she put the clean clothes away. These were all things she recognized, all clothes the children had worn over the last week. All was well.
All was well, that is, until she went to start the fourth load. That was when the trouble started.
Anna had just started to fill another set of three baskets. Again, she wasn’t watching what went into them too carefully, but some of it seemed pretty strange, even if the items were hand me downs from the neighbors. She filled the three baskets and turned around to grab the first one. The one with lights in it was empty. The one with darks in it was half empty. Only the one with bleach whites had the proper amount of laundry in it. And as she watched, the level of laundry in the basket of darks slowly dropped, like water in a tub when someone has pulled the plug.
With Anna standing there staring at it, the basket emptied, and the basket of bleach whites began to do the same thing. Anna’s eyes were like saucers. She gulped, and finally realized she could move. She took a deep breath and screamed. Loudly. Then she ran from the laundry room, slammed the door, locked it and ran to the garage for some two-by-fours. Five minutes later, the door to the laundry room was nailed shut.
She called her husband at work. As soon as he picked up the phone, she said, without preamble, “The laundry room is haunted.”
Her husband replied, “What?”
“It’s haunted. The laundry room is haunted. That’s why we can’t seem to make headway against the laundry. It’s haunted and whatever is in there is sucking in the laundry and keeping it there. Some of it isn’t even ours. I mean, you don’t wear size 44 pink boxers. And certainly the boys don’t. They’re way too little.”
“Uh-huh. What was that you said? Sorry, I was in the middle of something. Now tell me again. I could have sworn you said the laundry room was haunted.”
Anna snarled incoherently, slammed the phone down and stormed off to the bedroom, where she spent the rest of the day watching old movies on TV and mumbling to herself. When the children came home from school, she took them straight back out again, first to the park and then to their favorite fast food burger place.
When they came home several hours later, they found her husband in front of the laundry room door. The boards that Anna had put up were pried off, but a new set had been nailed up, and a cross was hung on the door, too.
“I came home early,” he explained. “You sounded so upset on the phone, I thought I’d better see what was going on. I took down the boards you had up, and went out there myself. I tried to start a load of laundry, but the basket was empty before I could put it into the washer. Then I watched the pile- grow.” He turned pale and gulped. “It grew, right in front of my eyes.” He turned to his wife with an earnest look. “I am so sorry. I thought, well, I thought that you were imagining things. But you weren’t. There’s something out there.” He looked at the door and shuddered.
Anna shook her head and said, “No, I don’t blame you. I thought it was my imagination, too. But what are we going to DO!?”
The children had been watching the exchange with interest. The oldest one said, “A haunted room, COOL! But does it have to be the laundry room? That’s kind of lame. It would be better if it was the attic or something!”
The next one down wasn’t so sure. “I don’t like ghosts,” he said.
The littlest one said, “It’s probably the monster under my bed. He hasn’t been there lately. He must have moved to the laundry room.”
Anna started to say something and stopped. Her husband started to say something and stopped. The older children looked thoughtful. Finally Anna said, “If we accept the idea that there’s something – strange – in the laundry room, then maybe a monster under the bed isn’t such a far-fetched idea after all.”
She handed her husband the bag containing the burger and fries they had brought home for him (they were cold now) and looked at the door. Then she turned to the littlest one and said, “Honey, you need to tell us everything you know about the monster under your bed.”
For the rest of the evening, they picked the brains of the littlest one about the monster under her bed and got some information from the older ones, too. By bedtime, at least they weren’t panicking any more. They took down the boards (but left the cross) so they could get at the soap and a few new clothes on the top of the heap. Then they shut the door tight again.
That night, the littlest one came out of her bedroom complaining that the monster under her bed was back. “”Well, I guess it wasn’t the monster from under her bed,” Anna said to her husband.
For the rest of the week, Anna simply shuttled the dirty clothes to the laundromat. She found that if she grabbed them quickly enough, the clothes did not migrate out to the laundry room. She was making daily laundry runs.
On Tuesday, she took a drill and made a peephole in the laundry room door so she could keep track of what was happening in there. She really wished she hadn’t, because the pile was larger than ever
On Wednesday, Edna Reynolds from across the street came over. “I’ve noticed you’ve been going to the laundromat an awful lot lately, my dear. Is your machine out? Can I help in any way?” If it had been anyone else, Anna would have jumped at the offer of help. Edna, however, was the sort of person who came over, made remarks that weren’t nearly as nice as they sounded, and then went and told the whole neighborhood bad things about your housekeeping. Her house, of course, was always immaculate. Anna took refuge in the knowledge that Edna’s children were horrible little brats.
Anna smiled quietly and just said, “We’re waiting on parts.”
On her way out, Edna managed to walk by the laundry room. A sleeve was crawling out from under the door, clearly trying to escape the horror within. Edna reached over and open the door to push the shirt back in. Anna cringed, but it was too late. The huge pile, towering over the washer and dryer was displayed in all its glory. Edna simply raised her eyebrows, smiled slightly, and said, “As I said, dear, if you need help, just let me know,” and walked away with a triumphant swish in her step.
At dinner that night, Anna told her family about Edna. The littlest one was sympathetic- the Reynolds children had been picking on her on the playground again. The older children looked at each when they heard that and the oldest one simply said, “Don’t worry, I think they’ll stop soon,” and then they all burst into giggles. Anna was suspicious, but couldn’t get anything else out of them. She and her husband spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out what to do about the laundry.
By Friday, she had had enough of everything. At dinner that night, she told her family, “Enough is enough. Tomorrow we are taking back our laundry room.”
At eight o’clock on Saturday morning, they all gathered by the laundry room door. They had basket upon basket and the oldest child had a big butterfly net. They marched into the laundry room and everyone began filling baskets as quickly as they could. The baskets were emptying, but not as quickly as everyone working together could clear the pile.
Gradually, they neared the bottom. The oldest child, with the butterfly net at the ready, got on one side of the pile, and everyone else grabbed the last few pieces of laundry. At the bottom was a tiny animated figure, still covered by a sheet. They couldn’t see much, but it clearly had long arms and a tiny body. The oldest child quickly slammed the butterfly net down on top of the figure and scooped it up. The bundle in the net squirmed and wriggled, and several more pieces of laundry expanded the net, but the laundry monster did not escape.
Quickly, Anna’s husband took the lid off a five gallon bucket he had ready for just this purpose and the oldest child dipped the net into the bucket. His father slammed the lid down as Anna clipped the net from the handle. The bucket bounced a little and then settled down. They all looked at the laundry pile expectantly, but nothing changed. It didn’t grow any larger. Anna hefted the bucket experimentally. It wiggled a little bit. Whatever had been in the laundry pile was definitely in the bucket now. Anna’s husband grabbed some duct tape and taped the lid down securely – just in time, too, because several items of clothing vanished from the floor and the lid to the bucket began to bulge.
“Well, it looks like it can bring things to it, but not get out itself,” said Anna. “Hopefully.”
“What are you going to do with it?” asked the middle child.
“I don’t know yet,” answered his father. “Let’s go get some breakfast and think about it.”
Later that morning, Anna went out to the laundry room and the bucket was gone. She was moving things around, looking for it, when the oldest child came along and said, “Oh, don’t worry. I took care of it. It won’t bother you anymore!” and then ran away laughing. She couldn’t get anything else out of him.
At lunch, Anna said to the youngest one, “I guess the monster under your bed is next.”
The littlest one answered, “Oh, it’s gone now. We got rid of it.” Again the children laughed.
The next afternoon while they were getting in the car to go to the park, Anna and the children saw Edna Reynolds, looking very cross, coming out of her house with a full laundry basket on her hip and a crying child following her. Anna heard her saying, “I don’t want to hear anything about monsters under your bed. I want to know where all this laundry came from! Have you been hiding it somewhere? I’m going to have to go to the laundromat to catch this stuff up!” Anna looked back at her children, who sat there with their hands stuffed in their mouths, trying not to laugh out loud. She started to say something, and then shook her head and stopped. Instead, she stuck her head out of the car window, smiled, and called sweetly, “Can I help with anything, Edna?”
