A few years ago, I wrote about my experiences working overnight at Lowe’s and the downright insanity that I had gone through. I was pretty surprised that so many people actually liked it, so much so that a pretty popular Youtuber wanted to read it for his channel. It’s now one of his top five videos and I am honored by the popularity of it. Hell, I’m not even mad that the vast majority of listeners don’t believe the story. It was crazier than Britney Spears and more unbelievable than Pizza Gate. If you want to check it out, you can find it here.
So, why am I writing again after all this time? Isn’t the story over? Fuck, I wish. Apparently, when you look into the void, the void notices, or something along those lines. All I know is that ever since Lowe’s, my life really hasn’t been the same. Sure, I had a year or two of relative peace. My compensation for saving the world set me and mine up for a good while. I went on a long vacation, paid off all my bills, built a perfect “off the grid” home away from people, outside my family of course, and big cities. I’ve come to understand that i need at least an acre of land between me and my closet neighbor for me to feel at ease and able to stretch my arms. I always hated living in cities anyways, too many people, too close together, no room to breathe, everything smells funny, you guys get it.
“But, Trent, don’t you get bored? Don’t you want things to do?”
I have plenty of things to do around the homestead, and not dealing with asshole city people is my number one priority.
With that said, I won’t lie that I got bored after two years. Yes, I did experience some weird things every now and then during this time. A few shadow people, things getting moved, a sasquatch living in my woods (mating season really sucks, by the way), but fortunately nothing compared to Lowe’s, that experience kind of Overton Windowed me on how I look at things. Funny enough though, my wife and kids never seem to really notice the weird goings on around the house. They just think they’re forgetting things or there’s some animal dying in the woods every rutting season. That’s fine with me, less things to explain.
So, back to the point. Why am I writing again? Well, like I said above, I got bored and decided to get a job, just a part time one, not like I need the money or anything, I just wanted to stay busy. See, unlike our politicians, I have a work ethic, hell, I actually have ethics, so a friend of mine that runs an Extermination business in the town close by, said he needed some help because he was running low on Exterminators, just like every other business running low on workers, and asked if I could work a few days out of the week to give him a hand. He knew that my dad was an Exterminator and knew that I did have a little bit of experience at it, so of course he came to me, and with me being bored out of my mind with the routine of homesteading, I of course, said yes.
It started out fine, for the first month, everything was pretty basic. Treat for crawling insects, treat for stinging insects, treat for German and oriental cockroaches, take care of hornet and yellow jacket nests, lay out bait stations for mice and rats, you know, the basics.
I enjoyed the job, I really did. I delt with people that were actually happy to see me, and I helped people with their problems. Yes, their problems were usually nothing more than them fearing house centipedes or a rambunctious mouse in their attic, but I wanted to give them some peace of mind, and for the most part, I did.
Then came the day that things started to change. The day I went to that damned, abandoned house.
Now, try to understand, before a house is destroyed it must be prepped with some bait and spray to kill the mice, or rats or roaches or whatever might be living there because the city, or the company, that’s demolishing the building doesn’t want the pests to flee and infest nearby homes or businesses around the now ex-building.
As I pulled up to the crumbling, two-story building, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck rise. As I stepped out and looked over the old house, I could feel right away something wasn’t right about it.
I didn’t know what it was, but once you’re touched by the other side you get a sense for these kinds of things, like a mother knowing when their kid is lying to them. My mother was always keenly aware of my lies, the worse part was, when she would inevitably call me out on my lie, she would proceed to commit phycological torture on me and make me walk down my hill to my Grandpa’s yard to pick a switch of his apple tree, with her saying, “pick a good one or I will go get one myself”, and I knew for a fact that her’s wouldn’t be a switch and a full blown branch. Now, keep in mind it wasn’t a long walk, not even close, you could get there and back in under five minutes, I, though, would stretch that short walk out to easily an hour, hoping and praying that she would forget why she was ever angry. It never fucking worked, and I would always end up with a stinging ass. Please, understand, I grew up in a different area then most those that might be reading this, back when your seatbelts were your parent’s arms, the bed of a truck was just extra seating and whipping your kids’ ass wasn’t looked down upon, it was expected, and my mother loved using that form of punishment.
Now, before anyone gets their short and curlys in knots and scream, “that’s child abuse!” or “What an awful woman!” I want you to get through that skull of yours that my mother was a Goddamned saint. I, on the other hand, was a right bastard, she was a divorced mother, raising two kids and doing the best that she could, so chill out before you flip. Fuck, if anything I believe we should bring back some capital punishment. Kids these days seem to need to have some old fashion ass beatings. I think it would fix a lot of the issues we have today, or at least fix them for tomorrow.
Sorry, I kinda went on a tangent there, back to what I was talking about, this house I was standing before was giving off some truly bad mojo that I did not like at all. Let’s just say that I would not shake this poor sinner’s hand, if you get my drift, but I had a job to do and with these feelings I was having, I might be the best one to do it. Some other exterminator would just walk blindly in and not be anywhere close to being aware of any possible danger except for maybe falling through a rotting floor. I, at least, knew there might be danger and, as assistant greenskeeper Carl Spackler once wisely said, “I have that goin’ for me, which is nice”.
I went to the back of my truck and grabbed up my bucket of Contact bait and my B&G and headed in. I knew I would have to go around back to get in, the front door was blocked with a large panel of plywood, but the back door was wide open according to the note in my phone. This, though, wasn’t going as easy as it sounded. The yard looked as though it hadn’t been attended to since the Reagon Administration and now the Amazon was growing next to it (The jungle, not the warehouse for the younger readers). I was eventually able to poke my way through the wild bush and get to the back deck. The corner of the house had collapsed in, and the basement was exposed to the elements. Foul air rose out from that hole; rot, decay, mold, the typical smells, but hidden among the normal scents of abandonments was something else, something I smelt before but just couldn’t place my finger on it.
Anyway, I walked around the breach and into the decaying wood of the old deck. It was a lot more stable than I had thought due to the way it looked. I stepped up to the back door and looked in. If the hairs on my neck could detach and crawl away, they would leave me far behind right at that moment. Past the doorway everything was hard to see, it was almost as if light itself wanted to avoid this place. I reached up and flicked on my headlamp to see if that might help any. It didn’t. Even with my headlamp on the interior of the house still looked darker than it should have been.
“That’s always a good sign.” I said aloud, with such sarcasm, Italians could dip bread into it.
I stepped into the house and proceeded to treat the house. It was a disaster, as to be excepted. Rubish was thrown about everywhere, some caught me off guard, like a box of old water damaged VHS tapes (I think I saw a Blockbuster sticker on a few of them). Some made me sad, like the little pile of children’s clothes and toys in a corner of the living room. Some just freaked me out, like a decomposing possum that lay in the lap of an old, corroding doll whose arms were wrapped around its neck in a tight embrace, all while sitting in the middle of an empty bedroom.
Yeah, I avoided that room. I just tossed in a block of Contact bait and moved on.
Once I treated and baited the house, I had to do the last area. The place I was really kind of avoiding. The basement. This, I wasn’t looking forward to. The rest of the house gave off a creepy vibe, but the basement, shit, the basement just felt wrong.
I stood at the top of the stairs looking down into the semi-darkness. Light from the fallen corner was streaming in. I took a deep breath, choked a bit on the fetid and proceeded to walk down the stairs. I stopped at the bottom and looked around. There was junk everywhere, all of it slowly rotting away. I started tossing blocks about, not really wanting to leave the stair area, because I could feel something watching me, it radiated hatred stronger than the Democratic Party does for Trump.
I turned to toss a block down to the dark back of the basement when I came to a fast stop. In the darkness I could make out an even darker shape. A silhouette of a man standing in an open door that I honestly didn’t see before. The worst thing was, I could see the thing’s eyes.
No, they weren’t glowing. I always hated stories where some monster’s eyes glow in the dark. It’s so stupid and impractical if you really think about it. Not really a good predator if your glowing eyes give away your location, is it? Also, if its eyes glowed then how in the hell could it see? I mean, the only thing its optic nerve would be picking up is the light that its eyes would be giving off. Glowing eyes pretty much means it’s blind.
What I saw wasn’t glowing eyes, but eyeshine, pale, blue, cold and full of hate. Think Riddick from the movies but more pissed off, that was what I was seeing, and it nearly made me pissed myself.
I took a single step back up the stairs and the eyeshine shadow launched itself at me, knocking the junk around the floor up and away from itself as it flew straight at me. I ran up those stairs so fast, Usain Bolt would have been jealous. I scooped up my B&G, which I had left in the kitchen, and scrambled out the door into the warm, welcoming sun. I ran to the edge of the deck and turned around to glance to see if it was still coming after me. I stopped moving as goose bumps ran over my body. From the basement doorway I could see half of a dark, emaciated face and a bone thin hand holding the doorframe. That cold, hateful eyeshine eye stared longingly at me. Then, with a blink, it was gone.
Shaking from the adrenaline rush of such a fright, I got myself together and went back to my truck. I placed all my stuff back in its proper place and went to get into the driver’s seat. I turned back to the loathsome house one last time and in a window, among the sun-rotten curtains, I saw a little, pale girl holding the doll that had held the possum.
I spat out a sour taste that had come to my mouth.
“Fuck this house,” I said as breath finally left my lungs. I climbed into my truck and drove off. I ended up doing my report farther down the road, away from that place. I didn’t add anything that really happened to my notes, it’s not like anyone would believe me, so way bother. I did put in the notes that the house was in extremely bad condition, and I advised no one to enter it. I’m not sure if it did any good, but the sooner they tear down that place the better.
Well, that’s it for me today. I’ll post again if anything weird happens again.