The basement had always been off-limits for as long as I can remember. My parents were adamant about keeping it locked. Every time I asked them about what was down there they would try to give me a different answer, sometimes Christmas things, sometimes old furniture and other junk. Being quite young I was curious as to what was down there, even if it was just boring old junk.
Whenever I mentioned about me going down there I could see the colour drain from their faces, as though I’d said something awful. They explained that the stairs leading down to it were very temperamental and they didn’t want me to fall and injure myself. They made it expressly clear that I was never to go down there, even if they were present, and they enforced that rule with absolute authority.
One time, when I was about 8, my dad caught me trying the handle on the basement door. I’d not seen him and thought I would finally discover the secrets of the basement for myself. I apologised profusely as soon as I realised I’d been caught, but my dad didn’t listen. He flew into a rage, screaming at me about how stupid I’d been and throwing things around the kitchen. I don’t think I’d ever been beaten as bad as that day.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because today I was sitting in my room, playing my video games as I normally do, when curious thoughts about the basement began to creep into my mind. I got them from time to time, usually, I’d try to shake them off, but today was different. My parents were out of the house, grocery shopping and running errands around town as it was the weekend, and they would still be out for quite a while. I had the house to myself.
The memories of that beating after being caught rocketing to the front of my mind, temporarily quelling those insidious thoughts of the basement. But as I played on they came crawling back, like an itch I was unable to scratch. I tried to shake them off again, thinking about what would happen if I got caught, but they were unrelenting.
This was the best opportunity I’d had, I’d not normally been trusted on my own, but neither of them was here. There was no way they could find out, not if I made sure to leave everything exactly as I found it. It would be the perfect crime. Finally relenting to my curiosity, the allure of the forbidden place became too enticing to resist.
I ran across the hall and into my parent’s room. Scanning around the large room, my eyes locked on my mother’s bedside table. She always kept her keys here, next to her. Pricking my ears, I listened out for any sort of sounds, just in case my parents had finished their errands early and had returned home. I waited for a few seconds and when my ears were still met with silence I was happy that they were still busy in the outside world.
The keys to the basement were sitting there on my mom’s bedside table, just as I expected them to be. Quickly making my way across their room, careful to avoid disturbing anything in my path or any of the piles of dirty laundry on the floor, I made my way to the table. Snatching the key up I made my way downstairs, again avoiding disturbing any of the obstacles in my path.
My heart was beating in my ears and my mind was racing. Was I actually doing this? What could possibly be down there that would mean that I was never allowed in?
I passed through our front room and entered the kitchen, slowing to a halt outside of the large, plain white door that separated it from the basement. As I stood in front of the basement door, there was one last shout of fear in my brain, telling me not to do this, that they’d find out and I’d be in trouble, or worse, beaten again.
I shook the thought off, my determination to find the answers to questions that plagued me since I can remember overpowering it. I needed to know what was down there, there was obviously something. If there wasn’t then why would my parents be so protective of it?
I raised a trembling hand and inserted the key in the lock. It made a satisfying click as I turned the key and the mechanism released. Excitement began to well up within me. This was it! After all these years I would finally find out what was down there, what my parents had fought so hard to hide from me.
I turned the handle, gently pushing the door. It swung slowly opening to reveal the dark passageway into a dark abyss. I tried to make out the bottom of the stairs but it was engulfed in the inky blackness, I could only make out the few steps before me. Still trembling, I reached out and flicked the light switch, ready for whatever gruesome horror may be dwelling down there.
As soon as the switch clicked the darkness was banished by a dim light emanating from further within the basement. I was now able to make out some of the dimly lit room in front of me. Much to my relief, and mild confusion, I was met with the sight of the wooden staircase leading down to the bottom of the basement. There was nothing out of the ordinary at all. It looked perfectly normal.
My parents had said that the stairs were temperamental, but there wasn’t anything wrong with them that I could see. I wondered why they would lie about that, and if they had lied about it, then what the hell was down here? There had to be a reason I wasn’t allowed down here.
I slowly made my way down those creaky wooden stairs, tentatively testing each one with the tip of my foot, just in case any of the steps were loose and my mom was telling the truth. Each creak of the stairs set my teeth on edge. It was stupid but I kept imagining my parents bursting through the basement door as I was halfway down, rage filling their faces.
My heart was pounding with excitement and trepidation, ringing in my ears. All the while I was hyper-alert to any noise, listening for any signs of life from either the basement or, god forbid, my parents.
Finally, I reached the bottom of the basement, setting my feet on the cold, concrete floor. The air felt heavy and old down here, the scent of damp and stale air was overpowering. The dim glow from the old bulb in the centre caused eerie shadows to spread around the room. I suddenly became aware of exactly how vulnerable I was. There was no one else in the house but me, and if there was something down here then I was on my own. No one would hear me shout or come looking for me until my parents came home.
Gingerly, I glanced around, again expecting some great horror or secret to be revealed to me. Something that would make this all worthwhile and would mean that I could go back upstairs to my games.
Much to my dismay, nothing but dusty old boxes and old furniture greeted my eyes, their layers of thick dust betraying their age. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, it just seemed like a regular old messy basement, like you see on TV.
Still, a nagging feeling told me that there was something I needed to find down here. If this is all that was here, then why had I not been allowed down here for years? Why had my dad flown into a rage when I tried to come down here? There must be something I’m missing.
I was determined to find out what my parents thought was so important that I wasn’t allowed to come down here. Making my way to a stack of dusty old boxes, I began to take a look through them for anything that would answer the question that was eating at me.
They varied in age, some of them seemingly falling apart at my touch, as though they had not been moved in years. Others seemed fairly new, containing items that had only recently been placed down here. I recognised my latest year of schoolwork all packed up in one box, and my old games console in another.
As I rummaged through the boxes, I was drawn to an older one near the bottom of the pile. The word “Memories” was scribbled across the front in heavy black marker pen. I started digging through it, finding several items that I recognised. I pulled out things like my first pair of football boots and the Mother’s Day card I’d made for my Mom at school several years before. Lots of things that most parents would keep as a reminder of their child. It warmed my heart slightly to think that my parents had kept all of this. I thought it was just junk but it obviously meant a lot to them.
Continuing to dig through the box, my hand brushed against something that I didn’t recognise. I grabbed a hold of it and pulled it out to reveal an old photo album. Turning it over in my hands, its faded cover read “Memories of Yesterday”.
My curiosity piqued further, I’d not seen too many photos from when I was younger, my parents had told me that they’d been lost in a house fire before we moved here, these must have been some that they saved. I opened it, and to my surprise, it contained several pictures of my parents from before I was born.
The first picture was of them a very long time ago, I’m guessing it was when they first met. They looked so much younger, their smiling faces filling the frame, both youthful and in love sitting on a bench in front of a coffee shop. There were several more from before I was born, from pictures taken around the house while they were going about their day, to pictures taken on their exotic holidays.
It filled me with a sense of happiness and curiosity to see them like this. My parents hardly ever talked about what they were like before I was born so it was nice to have this glimpse into their world. I tried to imagine how much they’d changed since I was born and what kind of things they would have gotten up to before. Gently setting the album back down, I continued my search through the box.
Digging around again I found another photo album. It was a large black album with the words “Light of My Life” sprawled across the front in a curved golden font. Curious, I peeled back the pages. Snapshots of familiar scenes filled the pages, all to do with me. Cherished memories from my childhood, from my second birthday party and photos from when I was in nursery, all the way to photos from last month when we went on our holiday to Italy.
Staring at these windows into the past, memories came flooding back. I could remember my fifth birthday when my parents hired a magician for my party. I’d watched him, amazed at every single trick, eyes filled with childlike wonder. Then there was my first tooth falling out, my first day of school and then my last day of school.
The photos filled me with happiness remembering the memories and the good times that we’d had. The photos were full of smiling faces. But there was something about that album that didn’t sit right with me. An unease that I couldn’t quite shift. My second birthday. The photos only started on my second birthday. Surely there should be some from before that somewhere, some from when I was born? The house fire that destroyed the rest of my parent’s photos had happened before I was born so surely there should have been some from before I was two?
They must just be in another album, I told myself. Digging through the box, there was nothing else, only school creations and other small keepsakes. No more photo albums. Confused, I carried on moving through the boxes nearest to me, looking for any more that might contain any photos of my first days.
After moving a few more boxes, my eyes eventually fell upon a decrepit box with my name written on it in careful handwriting that I didn’t recognise. Intrigued and somewhat anxious, I carefully peeled back the flaps. The damn thing was practically falling apart.
My breath caught in my throat as the contents came into view. Scattered around the box in no particular placement, were several Polaroid photos of myself as a young baby. Time had faded them and they were covered in a thick layer of dust, but it was unmistakably me. I’d never been shown my baby photos before, I was fascinated. Mom and Dad didn’t really talk about me being a baby much, even when I asked them about it, so it was a strange sight to behold.
But there was something eerie about these pictures, something that set my skin on edge. As I flicked through them, taking in the different angles and surroundings, I realised what it was. My parents were nowhere to be seen in any of the photos. Instead, there seemed to always be two other people in the frame. I didn’t recognize either of them. A man and a woman. Come to think about it, they looked kinda like me.
My mind began to swirl with confusion and fear as I tried to make sense of these inexplicable images. Who were these strangers? Were they childminders or babysitters? And where were my parents in all of these pictures?
Anxiety and confusion welled up inside me as I decided to check the rest of the box, to see if there were any clues that could shed some light on this mystery. Sweeping aside several more Polaroids I came across a folder. It was plain black and thick. I pulled it out, brushing away the dust from the cover only to find that there was no title, nothing to identify its contents.
Gently peeling back the cover, I was met with an even more perplexing sight. The contents of the folder appeared to be several newspaper clippings, from several different newspapers, all starting from around 12 years ago, when I was about 1 and a half.
The clippings were all articles detailing a robbery several states over that had seemed to go wrong years ago. The victims were home when the burglars, who were expecting an empty house, broke in. The article went on to detail how the male victim was brutally executed by the burglar, using several of the victim’s kitchen knives. The female victim was also brutally murdered with a shotgun blast to the head, but not before one of the burglars had broken each of their limbs in several different places.
Their 20-month-old child was reported missing after the incident, with no trace of where they may have been taken. The police were investigating and suspected a male and a female were responsible based on descriptions of the suspects fleeing provided by neighbours. However, they had no current leads.
My hands trembled as I read on, each detail seemed troubling and ominous. Why had my parents kept these strange articles? What relevance could they possibly have to the baby pictures?
And then, I saw something that sent a chill down my spine and made my head spin. I nearly dropped the folder there and then. At the bottom of the last newspaper clipping was a picture of the missing 20-month-old child.
It was a picture of me. The same as one of the ones I’d found in the box.
Panic and disbelief consumed me as the pieces of this horrific puzzle started to fit together. The truth unfolded before me like a grotesque painting, shattering my reality in a single blow. I wasn’t their child. They had killed my parents, kidnapped me as a baby and raised me as their own, hiding their heinous crime from the world.
All the memories, the fun times we’d had and the love, it was all a sham. Built on a foundation of lies. They were cold-blooded killers who robbed me of my real parents. It was all a facade. The newspaper articles, the photo album, and the pictures I held in my hands revealed a twisted reality that shattered the life I had known. This was why they didn’t want me to come down here. This is what they didn’t want me to find.
I couldn’t comprehend how the people I thought were my parents had committed such unspeakable acts. My entire life had been a lie, and I had unknowingly lived with my captors for as long as I could remember. The weight of this revelation bore down on my soul, and a deep sense of loss and fear engulfed me.
I couldn’t think straight, fear and rage blinded me. I fled from the basement, up those creaky wooden stairs, longing for the sanctuary of my room to provide at least some comfort. I wrestled with the terrifying thoughts reeling around in my brain.
I hid in my room, crying, alone with my thoughts for what felt like hours. The articles floated over and over in my head, the text of the headlines swimming in my vision. Images of my “parents” swimming through the smog of thoughts. Cherished memories now took on a far more sinister tone as I thought about how my “parents” had been able to act like that to me, let me think they were my mom and dad and accept my love for it, all the while knowing they’d stolen my real family from me.
My consciousness was dragged back into my room by a sound from outside that caused a new wave of terror to wash over me. The crunching of car tyres on the gravel of our driveway. They were back. My “parents” had returned home.
Fear gripped me as I listened to their footsteps coming closer and the opening of the front door. My sanctuary had turned into a prison, and I was too afraid to confront the monsters I had called family. I didn’t want to see them, I wouldn’t be able to look them in the eye knowing what I know. I shakily commanded my legs to stand, planning to lock my bedroom door.
As I stood I heard a noise that made all of the blood drain from my face. The jingling of keys in my pocket. The realisation hit me like a stone and I nearly burst into tears. The basement keys. They were still in my pocket. I was in such a panicked state when I ran out that I had forgotten to put them back on my “mom’s” bedside table. Had I even shut the basement door?
I don’t know how much longer I can stay here, they’re going to know I’ve been down there now. They’ll see the boxes that I’ve looked through and they’ll know I know the truth about them. God knows what they’ll do to me once they find out. I’ve barricaded myself in my room for now but I can’t stay here forever. I’m writing this as I need to let someone know what’s happened to me if I suddenly go missing…..Oh god…I hear footsteps coming up the stairs…..