I don’t want it. It needs to get out of my house. I thought it was gone. I had never been so wrong.
It started as a life-changing decision for us. Moving away from our hometown, forgetting friends and starting a new life. The house we moved to was far from where we lived. It was about a three day drive. We moved from New York to Wisconsin. I was the most against it, I had a social life, I was actually pretty popular, I made friends with everyone. My parents were usually isolated in their house. They were the nicest parents anyone could ask for… Sorry I’m getting off topic. They didn’t have many friends and most of our family was in Wisconsin. The ride was fun, I listened to music and text my girlfriend Leah. She was perfect. We had in common almost all of our interests. When we did get to the house… I was stunned. It was a beautiful Victorian style house, two stories, already furnished. At first I was a bit skeptical on how my parents got the money for such an extravagant structure as this.
We spent most of the day unpacking. I took an hour to unpack and then explored. Everything looked so nice and new. It had a nice smell of pine and was smack dab in the middle of a forest. There were a few parks close by with soccer fields, which made me ecstatic. I was on the first floor and rounded a corner when I saw a door. The door was old, and didn’t match the rest of the house. It was a weird shade of maroon or brown, and the handle was rusted. I jiggled it, but it wouldn’t budge. I started to get progressively more and more violent with it, until it flew open with a clunk. An abyss of blackness was all I saw. I stood there for a good five minutes, just staring. Eventually, I started to hear a tapping, it started to get louder and louder. I still stood strong. I started to see figures dancing in the darkness. After that I closed the door and walked back into the kitchen. My first night sleeping there I probably got two solid hours. I kept waking up and hearing the tapping. I wasn’t scared. I mean, what could a tapping possibly do?
My awakening was startling. All I remember is beginning to have an intense nightmare about the blackness. I was staring at it, (in the dream) and I started to hear footsteps up the stairs. It got to the third step from the top and I caught a glimpse of… a THING… it was terrible. I woke up drenched with sweat. I got out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen, where my parents and my one brother, Jordan, were eating breakfast.
“Hello, honey; how did you sleep?” My mother had a nice tone to her voice, it melted all my bad thoughts away.
“Pretty good, better than I thought.” She knew I was lying. You can never lie to your parents.
“Are you sure? I didn’t sleep well either… It’s ok.” I walked up to her and hugged her. I didn’t let go for close to a minute. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the house.
“Mom do we have more waffles?” Jordan said. He is sixteen, two years older than me. He is in tenth grade, I’m in ninth.
“Yes, sweetie; just get a few from the counter.” I let go of my mom and went back to my room to grab clean clothes. I showered for about twenty-five minutes, and I started to hear the tapping again. It was where the basement was, I began to dismiss it as just a pipe or something. Nothing to be worried about. Oh how I’ve never been so wrong in my life.
The second night I didn’t sleep. Third night? Didn’t sleep. Well surely the fourth night? Nope. I began to fall behind in my classes because I was always napping. I didn’t feel comfortable or SAFE closing my eyes in that house. No-one had gone to the basement yet. I pondered that too, but I didn’t stress it. Yet every-time I asked my mom if anything needed to be brought down she would reply with: “Well there’s no need in that is there?”
I began to feel melancholic in the house. I grabbed my laptop and began doing searches such as: “Uncomfortable in new house”, “parents hiding something about new house”, and “tapping in new house”. I achieved no avail. I told my friends about it finally after a month of moving in. All of them had logical explanations. The fear and confusion changed to interest and curiosity. There had to be something down there right? I began to plan in my head. If I could get home early enough or deceive my parents, I would have an excuse to go down there. The thought of walking down there didn’t seem thrilling enough. I looked forward to going to the basement. I CRAVED it. The unsafe feelings went away. I devised that I would say I heard something wrong with the pipes and I learned about repairs on plumbing systems in technology. On the bus ride home I sat thinking about the plan.
