Creek
What was that? Caleb wondered, lying comfortably in his bed. Crickets audibly chirping from outside. Caleb swore he heard a creeking sound, but it was probably just his childish imagination making it all up. Either way, he had woken up from his sleep.
Creek
There was the noise again. A faint creek, underneath Caleb’s bedroom. Most definitely coming from the basement. As the young boy Caleb sat up in his bed, he closed his eyes and listened carefully, focusing on the noise. The noise was sharp and quick, only lasting about a second each, with a 15 second pause between each time he heard it.
Creek
The noise was much too faint to make out, so Caleb shifted through his sheets and got out of his bed, the alarm clock on his dresser drawer read “2:32 AM”, he should have been sleeping if it weren’t for the disturbance of the noise. The moon illuminated a small portion of his room from an opened window, and a draft of cold autumn air sent a shiver down Caleb’s spine, accompanied by the eerily mysterious noise from below him.
Creek
Caleb then got down on his hands and knees, pressing his ear against the floorboards, hoping to hear the noise in greater detail. As he closed his eyes, a million thoughts buzzed around in his head, as to what the sound even was, he was fearful, for he was not too sure.
Creek
As the noise happened, Caleb could almost make out what it was, it almost sounded like the iron door of a dog cage, swinging in the wind. At least, that’s what it sounded like to him. Caleb was scared stiff, the visceral fear of hearing the sound up close frightened him like never before. He got up from the floor, and grabbed a flashlight in his small hands, trembling with fear, sweat forming on his forehead.
Creek
He decided to investigate, to find out what the source of the noise was. Caleb left his bedroom and marched down the twisted hallways of his house, making sure not to wake up his mother and father, who were in the midst of a deep slumber. His flashlight shone down the darkened chasms.
Creek
As Caleb approached the basement door, the feeling of uneasiness washed over him. Caleb grabbed a hold of the door knob, and swung open the door rapidly, like a hand on a hot stove. It revealed the stairs protruding into the pitch-black basement, and as Caleb stared off into the darkness, it seemed like the darkness stared back at him.
Creek
Caleb eased down the steps, using his light to show the path ahead of him. That’s when he saw it, the source of the noise. His prediction was right, the sound was in-fact a dog cage, with the door swinging to and fro. His dog must have escaped from the cage in the middle of the night, and left the door open there to swing and create the loud creaking noise. Caleb smiled with relief, as the outcome could have been so much worse.
Caleb closed the dog cage, so the god awful sound wouldn’t happen any longer, and he analyzed the dog cage for a moment, because something about it seemed off. The size. The dog cage was so big that it looked like it could fit an adult man inside of it. The size of the dog cage was unreasonably large, and that unsettled Caleb. He then turned back to head up the stairs to go back to bed.
But that’s when Caleb remembered something…
He doesn’t have a dog.
The monster that Caleb’s parents never told him about had escaped its enclosure, and as the beastly growl echoed from behind him, that’s when he knew he was about to meet his terrible demise.