The Nightwalker (short story)

The Basement

There was a repulsive scent of rot in the room, as if a dead body were hidden somewhere nearby. It was terrible, nauseating; I couldn’t breathe. I fought the urge to hurl every ounce of the contents of my stomach up as I ventured farther into the old house. I was a cop, dammit, and I was above this! So why did it bother me so much to smell the rotting flesh?

I pushed open the door to the basement, and the scent emanated from the dark space. The dead body was down there; it had to be down there.

I felt for a light switch, and my stomach twisted, having found none. How had the old[er] owners of this home ever come down here without some source of light? A flashlight. Of course. They’d used a flashlight whenever they came down into the basement.

I grabbed my flashlight from the kitchen counter where I’d lain it temporarily, and I switched it on, making sure the bulb was shining brightly. After all, the last thing I needed to do was hurt myself down there...especially without any backup here.

The basement was freezing, almost like a giant ice chest. My breath came out in small clouds, hardly doing much to warm up the space, but as I moved deeper into the basement, the smell became stronger, disturbingly stronger. As if there…

Were more bodies.

The thought hadn’t occurred to me until just then. There may be multiple bodies down here, all rotting, decaying. Most likely some eaten by maggots, and there were probably flies all over the walls. Suddenly, I stepped in something squishy as if I’d accidentally spilled a bowl of spaghetti and then stepped in it before I could clean it up. I lifted up my foot and shone the light on it revealing something a little more macabre than spaghetti...blood and brains.

My stomach lurched, and I couldn’t help myself as I lost breakfast, lunch, and (even though I hadn’t had it yet) dinner.

I shone my light ahead once I’d finished, determined to do my job. I saw one of the bodies. He was a male, seemingly roughly in his mid-twenties; his face was bashed in and his pants were missing...but so were his genitalia.

Apparently, this crazy person had a desire to steal genitalia or gender-defining parts, because the female bodies had their breasts cut off and…I shuddered. I couldn’t take it; this was entirely disturbing on a new level. Each body had their face bashed in, brains leaking out or eyeballs laying about on the floor. The crazy had taken time with each one of them, I could tell. Then, once he was finished, he had tossed them down here.

But why?

I trudged up the stairs, and, to my horror, the door abruptly slammed shut. A loud, mad cackle rose about as if all around me.

“Shouldn’t have come snooping here, girlie. You’re gonna get yourself hurt awful bad here.”

The voice was maniacal, ridden with an insane pleasure to hurt. It seemed male, but...it was hard to tell.

I heard something behind me. Scratching. A terrible sound of scratching. And there were groans. Groans of people who weren’t here...people who were dead.

I turned around, shining my flashlight down the stairs.

Every single body that had laid, dead and rotting...was alive. All of them were alive and groaning, getting up and walking. Walking toward me. Trapped in here. Trapped for an eternity.

I screamed.

The door was oak, but much more solid and stable than the rest of the house as if it were brand new. I kept screaming, beating on it, praying I could somehow break through the wood and get out of this wretched place.

I reached for my radio and tried it. I screamed into it. “Help me! I’m locked in this fucking basement with the door locked and a shit load of dead bodies around here! The door is stuck, and I can’t get the hell out!”

Static. Nothing but fucking static.

Great...my radio is dead and a ton of zombies are coming at me! I’m as good as dead!

I looked back with my flashlight in time to see some of them at the bottom of the stairs, grabbing onto the railing with their bony hands and looking up at me with their eyeless sockets. Determined. Deceased determined people. Determined to get out of here.

I screamed louder. I just couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to end up the same as them, down here, rotting, decaying! I wanted to live! I beat on the door harder, hearing their footsteps as they ascended the stairs. Zombies were supposed to only be in movies, not in real life. Zombies aren’t real! The deceased can’t come back!

As abruptly as it shut and locked, the door suddenly slammed open just as the zombies were tugging at the back of my uniform. They dropped, and several bodies rolled down the stairs, colliding and becoming one large pileup.

I fell onto the kitchen floor and curled up into a little ball, sobbing with fear. Whoever had awoken them was some monster. It had to be the same monster that murdered them.

A note lay on the floor.

You can’t catch me, girlie. You can’t catch what you can’t see and what isn’t human. You’ll never catch me!

                       - The Nightwalker

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This was a story I wrote a long time ago. There were supposed to be more chapters, but it never went anywhere. I hope it's at least a good skin-crawler for you guys.