It isn't much of a secret, but it's the only one. The trick is ...

Don't Think About It

By WILLIAM W. STUART

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, November 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Tommy wasn't really a timid child. Sometimes he didn't understand things and was puzzled. More often, grown-ups couldn't or wouldn't understand things that were perfectly clear to him and he was more puzzled. Occasionally such things worried and even upset him a little. Then Momma and sometimes Daddy would translate bafflement into silly adult terms and think that he was afraid.

It was that way about the hole in the closet when Tommy was just a bit over three. Tommy wasn't really afraid. Mr. Bear was afraid and the thing did puzzle Tommy. So he asked about it, but he never did get any sensible or satisfactory answers, and that did worry and perhaps even upset him a little.

But he wasn't afraid, even before Daddy finally told him, "Now, Tommy, boy. Don't think about it and it won't scare you. Really, there is nothing there to hurt you, if you just don't think about it. So don't you think about it any more—there's Daddy's big boy."

This certainly was not any sort of explanation. But still Tommy did try hard not to think about it, as Daddy said. And now he really doesn't think about it at all any more. Or about Aunt Martha, either.

The hole was in the closet in Tommy's room. Tommy and Momma and Daddy lived in a not very big, not very new frame house on the edge of the city and Aunt Martha lived with them. Tommy didn't—at least not yet, although there were promises—have any brothers or sisters. But he did have his own room and a family of his own, too. It was the extra bedroom and it had a closet that was cramped and with no light. Tommy liked his room. It was small, with a small bed, and it belonged to him, along with his family of Mr. Bear and Old Rabbit and Kokey Koala. It was also in easy crying range of Momma and Daddy's room and Aunt Martha's room, so if Mr. Bear, who was the timid one, got frightened in the night, Tommy could cry—purely in Mr. Bear's behalf—to bring help. Or at least company.

Tommy and his family all liked the closet well enough too, except for the shelf that was out of reach even from the "don't 

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