The door to our basement was white. It had a painting of a cherry blossom tree covering its lower right corner. My parents have told me it used to be a splendid burgundy, the branches a black almost as dark as midnight. Time, obviously, wasn’t extremely lenient and despite the fact that it was once lively and loaded with life, it held none of that now. A faded pink splotch, that’s what it looked like.
The door was situated in our kitchen, a little box with a tiny half circle molded window serving as ventilation. The door was covered by our fridge, an overwhelming turquoise-coloured box too enormous to be placed in such a little room. In the center of the room was our dining table. It was square shaped with five chairs encompassing it, two sets of cutlery sat on it.
The stove was put specifically parallel to the fridge, the table isolating them. There was a smoke alarm beside it, a grayish circle which probably didn’t work anymore. The cabinets were made of plastic, although as old as the rest of the house, they showed no signs of aging.
There used to be a screen door leading to the backyard right beside the stove. It creaked every time we opened it, the rusty metal crying out. It wasn’t a very sturdy door, anyone could unhinge it with enough force. This was unsafe and so my father removed the door and cemented the opening, promising my mother he would paint it the same mustard yellow as the rest of the kitchen. He never did. And now the uneven gray concrete floats like an apparition in our kitchen, a rectangular stain on our kitchen wall.
Some nights, I would hear the creaking of the now gone screen door. And some nights it would be banging, right on the basement door. The fridge kept it closed but heavy objects can only block the way and not the sounds. My mother says there’s a ghost downstairs. Well, she tells me so.
My mother has been pretty superstitious as of late. I guess that’s the effect on her. You see, just earlier that year we had lost two of my siblings. The police couldn’t find any evidence and my mother couldn’t find any closure. She believes they’ll come home. She even sets the table up for them. Two sets of cutlery, a tray of bread and some jam. Those were their favourites. She wasn’t always a caring woman but the loss of two of her children has caused her to turn all her love and affection to me.
I gladly accepted. She would buy me more toys and clothes. She even let me have sleepovers from time to time. And although the loss of my siblings saddened me, the attention it has brought me dulled it to an extent where I could forget about it for a significant period of time. And my mother, aside from showering me with care, turned to cleaning our home.
My mother had always liked cleaning. She liked to keep everything tidy to the point of it being considered an obsession. She cleaned, all day, every day. Dust, clothes, cutlery, doors, dust, clothes, cutlery, doors, dust and clothes and knives and doors. She cleaned. Even as my dad disappeared, she cleaned. And when the banging on the door started, she cleaned. Our house was always clean. But cleaning can only take away physical marks and the smell still lingers. Rotten, out of place, like that gray apparition staining our kitchen wall.
And then there’s the ghost in our basement, lately, it’s been making a lot of noises. Lots of sounds. Louder voices.
The weird thing with sound is that you can’t write it down. Sure, you can mimic the way it sounds but you can never fully represent it once it’s in words. Some people might read it wrong, some may read it with too much emphasis on certain syllables. There’s a lot of ways to get the sound wrong once it’s written.
Do you know the sound of ripping flesh? That’s what it sounded like. It was slow, meticulous. Like tearing a cloth and seeing the threads unravel, slowly, one by one. It sounded like breaking a snickers in half. Meaty, resisting, like it’s not meant to be ripped. That’s what it sounded like.
And then there was the dripping, matching the ticks of the grandfather clock right outside my bedroom. Like milk spilling onto the floor, bursting at first and slowly dissipating.
The cracking is the loudest. It’s a slow pattern you see, you can practically hear the cracks forming. You can hear the webs start forming, the more the louder. And then it snaps, a thundering sound. Like a tree falling down after it has been sawn off. Clean and crisp, even with the basement door barricading us.
The door to our basement was white. It had a painting of a cherry blossom tree covering its lower right corner. My parents have told me it used to be a splendid burgundy, the branches a black almost as dark as midnight. Time, obviously, wasn’t extremely lenient and despite the fact that it was once lively and loaded with life, it held none of that now. A faded pink splotch, that’s what it looked like.
The door was situated in our kitchen, a little box with a tiny half circle molded window serving as ventilation. It took cover behind our fridge, an overwhelming turquoise-coloured box too enormous to be placed in such a little room. In the center of the room was our dining table. It was square shaped with five chairs encompassing it, three sets of cutlery placed carefully on it.