A Series Of Short Stories

Dad Ghoul (stupid pun)

I remember the first time I encountered those cynical creatures hiding in the basement of my childhood home. Don't get me wrong. I was young and my imagination was probably wild but this is something that keeps on creeping in my nightmares.

My Dad loved to read books from Edgar Allan Poe, Kafka, and other writers who write about death, agony, and horror. He particularly loved Frankensstein in a bizzare way, as if he knew that bringing that dead back to life was not fictitious.

One evening, as I was going to the kitchen for a glass of milk, I saw my Dad coming out of the basement with a peculiar expression, almost nightmarish for a child my age. It looked like he found something out that is not meant for humans. An eerie smile curved on his face. I stopped to wait for my father to leave before I went to the kitchen for the glass of milk but as I was passing through the basement door, I heard a faint scream of agony, almost a shriek from a man whose vocals were torn off.

Out of curiosity, I went down the stairs and slowly approached the door. I smelled a dull scent of rotten meat and formalin as I peered through the doorlock. Before I could see details of what was inside the room, I heard a cry from inside the room and my mind went blank. I ran upstairs and hid in my room, quivering like a child that had seen a ghost, which I think was close to what I almost saw, and as much as I have tried to forget about it, the cry still haunts me.

When I was 18, when I almost forgot about the mysterious dark aura I have discovered in the basement, my Dad disappeared while running for an errand. He left a key on his messy desk that clearly needed some tidying on a bunch of research papers. I tried to deny the fact that I knew where that key goes but my hunger for knowing what haunted my childhood was stronger, so I went to the basement after grabbing a flashlight. As I approached the door, the childhood trauma rushed back in but I stood my ground. I could hear strange noises from the room but I knew those were just my hallucinations. There was no scent, there was no noise. It was just a door between me and the cause of my nightmares. It almost looked towering from where I was, as if I was a child again but I swallowed my fear and trod onward.

I slowly unlocked the door and I could feel my hand getting cold from nervousness. I twisted the key and pushed the door slowly and the room was empty. All there was was another door with scribbles on it. It was from a familioar language, which my Dad taught me when I was a child, but I couldn't comprehend it in my state. I put my feet in front of the other until I reached the second door but before I could touch it, I tripped on a block and accidentally pushed the door open harder than I have intended. I put my arms beneath me and got up from the wooden floor as it creaked and while my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw my Dad in the middle of the room, already dead from what looked like bludgeoning. I turned white as a sheet, basing from what I felt since my heart almost pierced through my chest and ran out the door before me, and something moved from beside me. A dead body rose up and turned its head towards me. It looked like it was asking me for its soul back and it was on my hands so I quickly got up my feet and I saw more dead bodies stir. They let out a nasty cry, tearing their stitched mouth but didn't seem to mind it. I didn't feel my legs in that moment. As if I was running in a dream, my legs felt liquid and wobbly and my brain just had a hard time processing where they were.

When I got out of the room, a hair distance from the grasp of a legless undead, I shut the door immediately and barred it. The room certainly didn't feel empty but I scanned the room to confirm that I was alone. As I was processing everything I saw, I read the writings on the door again and now, it became clearer that I shouldn't have opened it. Letter by letter, it translated itself to me. When I made out the words, I gasped before I fainted from the shock of finally understanding what it was that haunted me. My Dad's most hidden secret: Dad Ghouls.