Housing prices are a nightmare. And renting can be worst with some apartments. I never understood paying over a grand to stay at a place per month if I could put that towards a mortgage. If only the banks saw things my way as well. I needed to find a place I could afford, and got so desperate to buy a house no one with any kind of sense would even consider. I found myself standing in an unfinished basement with a nervous real estate agent. His professional suit looked out of place in a dark and creepy basement like this.
“So, uh… you think I can paint over this?” I asked him trying to break the ice.
We both stared at a pentagram carved into the stained cement. It also was painted over with red spray paint with odd writing around the circle. The stains in the middle of the gruesome symbol were blood, but confirmed from a chicken. The house I was thinking about buying had been foreclosed five years ago. It stood empty and a group of edgy teens took it over. They used the basement to try and summon demons or got drunk. A couch sat off in the corner and if I bought this house, I needed to pay someone to take the couch and burn it. I had no idea what the stains were on the cushions and I never wanted to find out. Besides the basement, the rest of the house really wasn’t that bad.
We went over the rest of the house for the next few minutes. The structure had no issues and the water heater still worked. The house lacked heat right now but I could get a small space heater if needed. I lived in a hotter part of the country so some sweaters and two pairs of socks would work until I could afford to install heat.
My plan was to buy the house at a rock bottom price and then work on it over the next few years. I could afford to buy it. Who really cared about a crappy pentagram in the basement? It’s not as if those things actually did anything. My real estate agent looked very happy to get the property off his hand in such a pain free way. At least no murders happened in the house and no one claimed it was haunted.
I bought the house, changed the locks and put in a security camera at the front and back doors in case those kids think about coming back. I moved in my few items and got trying to work on the house.
I got rid of the couch first thing. I found an old T.V and DVD player hooked up downstairs and dread came over my body when I found an old box of horror movies. I sold the T.V and DVD player for a little bit of cash and I tossed the horror DVD’s. I had very bad memories associated with most of them. They weren’t even good movies either. All low budget with plots that made no sense. The one was borderline pornographic and it held most of my worst memories. I burned that disc and forced myself to forget about it.
I found out that the pentagram would take some work to remove. They carved it into the cement flooring. I had no idea how to fix it. I needed to talk to some of my contacts I made through work and see if they could do something for me. I mean, I could mix my own cement and fill it in, right? But what if I didn’t use the right cement and it chipped off after I painted? No, best to let someone who knew what they were doing fix it. I didn’t have a time limit and wasn’t worried. I just removed the paint and got rid of the chicken blood the best I could.
The first month was uneventful. I contacted someone to do the basement flooring but he couldn’t get to it for another month or so. I showed some co-workers photos of the basement before I cleaned it and the jerks started to call my house the Murder House. I kept telling them no one ever died in the basement but they refused to drop it. I do some work relating to low budge horror movies. A director said he would pay me a hundred bucks if I would let him repaint the pentagram and let him use the basement for a set. I refused. I didn’t want a small crew coming through my place for a month or so for shooting and he was the kind of director who picked up side projects. He worked with some girls producing homemade adult orientated horror content. I didn’t judge him for that but didn’t want my basement to be recognized because those sorts of videos going around online. He found someone else with an even creepier unfinished basement fine with a pentagram and props added so it was a no loss on his part.
I kept telling myself I wouldn’t let the look of the basement start freaking me out. No murders in the house. It wasn’t haunted. I had nothing to worry about. Then, odd things started to happen no matter how much I wanted to dismiss them.
First, I started to hear noises at night. I woke up needing to go to the washroom at two AM. My body was on a timer I’ve never been able to fix. No matter when I drank last, I needed to pee at two in the morning. I struggled getting out of bed and braced myself for the cold darkness. I needed to pull out my sweaters soon. A scratching noise made me stop. I strained my ears listening and even brought my feet back under my blankets in case a bug or rodent was moving around under my bed. After a few minutes the sound went away. I tried to place what I heard. I slowly went out into the hallway and turned on every light and looked for any traces of a what the noise could have been. After thirty minutes of looking, I heard a tree branch tapping against a window in a spare room. It was close enough to the sound I thought I heard. The next day I trimmed back the branches thinking the nightly noises would be solved. Either way, the branches needed to be cut.
I’d forgotten about the noise until I came home late one night. The sun already set and I came inside to get ready to crash for the rest of the night. My job kept me for too long and I just wanted to shower then sleep. I walked pass the living room and noticed a box had fallen over. I owned a lot of horror moves. And I mean a lot. I tended to get a few copies from other people I worked with. I sometimes had doubles of the same movie and stored them in boxes. It felt wrong donating gifts so I kept them to slowly give them to others who may enjoy the movies more. With people getting into streaming services, it got harder dumping DVDs on fans. I knew if I didn’t put them away now, I wouldn’t do it for another week. I didn’t know how the box fell over in the first place. I thought the small stack was stable.
I packed them away but one case wasn’t fully closed. I noticed when I picked it up and grimaced at the title. It was the worst movie I worked on and the one I already burned a copy of. A friend signed this one so I had to keep it. I shut the case but realized it was empty after handling it. The disc should be rattling around in the cheap plastic case. I looked around for the DVD wondering if I forgot it in the move. No loss if I did. I saw the DVD player was on. I hadn’t touched that thing in over a year besides moving it. Actually, I didn’t remember plugging it in.
I reached over and pressed the button for it to open the tray and saw the missing DVD resting on it. I then went around to double check the locks to try and figure out if someone got inside the house or not. My cameras didn’t pick up anyone breaking in and nothing besides the DVD had been moved. I must have done this while getting a snack in the morning. I once fell asleep in the middle of eating a piece of bread at three in the morning after I got up to use the washroom. If I passed out eating it was possible I put the movie on in the middle of the night and forgot all about it. The only other options were someone broke in without my cameras seeing and only messed with one thing, or my house was haunted. A ghost knew about how to use a DVD player and wanting to watch some bad horror movies? Not likely.
I told my co-workers the next day and they laughed it off with me. Some were starting to give me some spiritual protection stuff as a joke. Some sage, some table salt and one got me one of those salt lamps. I dumped all of their thoughtful gifts beside the front door ready to forget about them.
A month went by and I started to get uneasy. I was either sleeping walking a lot or going crazy. I heard small noises in the night but they all had an explanation to them. From the wind, to a mouse I caught and set free outside. I started to notice missing food. Not much, just enough for me to question it. I added another camera just in case a homeless person broke in somehow and was living inside my cupboards. I checked over the house a few times seeing no signs of anyone living in the walls or the attic.
Then something else happened I couldn’t ignore. I got done working on repainting the God-awful kitchen cabinets and came into the living room to eat when I noticed something. The box to the DVDs was open. The cardboard flap sticking straight up. I went over to check on it and found a few spaces of missing DVDs. That was weird but the weirder thing was I finally noticed my DVD player was missing. I barely ever used it so I didn’t even see the empty space on the shelf until I stared directly at it. It was one that opened up with a very small screen but you could also plug it into your TV. I looked all over for that damn thing and to see if I saw any signs of someone breaking in. I still wasn’t sure if I had a very crafty person secretly living with me or if I was walking around moving things asleep at night.
The last place I looked was the basement. I hated it down there and did laundry as little as possible to avoid it. I found the DVD player hidden away in a dark corner, plugged in with the missing movies half hidden under an old sheet I’ve been meaning to throw out. I collected the items and booked it upstairs freaked out. I barely slept that night even after putting a chair under my door knob in case someone was getting into my place.
I didn’t want to go to the cops just yet. I didn’t have proof so I set up some cameras inside my house. Just a few to catch me sleep walking or whatever else was happening. I caved and hired someone to bless the house feeling stupid over the entire thing. It didn’t cost too much and what was the harm? If they were going around blessing houses instead of a real job, they clearly needed the cash.
I spoke with a friend of mine who suggested I might have pissed off one of the actors we’ve worked with and they started to mess with me. They could know a person who can hack into my camera feeds and make it seem like they weren’t breaking into my place and moving things around. He suggested setting up some that weren’t hooked up on Wi-Fi and recorded to a cloud storage but directly into an internal storage to be reviewed later.
I took his advice and kept a camera hidden pointing towards the front door under some coats. The noises in the night were starting to get to me. I even put a line of salt over the bathroom and my bedroom doorway. It couldn’t hurt, right? And ghosts didn’t like salt, right? With how little I slept, it wasn’t likely I was behind moving things around wile sleepwalking. I needed to get to the bottom of this.
When my friend cemented over the pentagram, I finally got a full eight hours of rest. I didn’t realize what kind of affect that thing had on me until I was gone.
The second night after the basement was returned to normal, all hell broke loose. Noises above my head woke me from a deep sleep. I jumped out bed listening to something moving around in the attic. I wrapped the blankets around me, heart racing. I listening trying to gather the courage to go and see what the hell was up there. My teeth clamped tightly together from the fear of hearing rustling and moving above my head. A chattering came from the attic and my fear faded a bit. I thought I knew that kind of sound. I needed to open the pull-out ladder in the hallway to double check though. I would be pissed at myself if I got this scared at something I suspected to be up there.
I grabbed some gloves, an old mask from one of the movies for protection. I pulled on the string to the ladder and dust came drifting down. I very slowly brought the ladder down, not wanting the thing in the attic to realize a new opening appeared and fled into the house. I took the steps one by one, careful not to make any noise. I only put my head through enough to look around. The attic cramped and smelled like years of dust build up. I switched the flashlight on. The chattering came again and I directed the light towards it. Two eyes reflected back in the darkness. We both froze in fear seeing each other.
More of the warning chatters came and I sighed seeing a very scared raccoon looking back at me. This house been closed up for five years. I should have checked out the roof first to see if any animals could get in. I wasn’t in the mood to get a rabies shot, so I slowly backed down. I closed the attic ready to call someone to deal with my new roommate in the morning. At least it didn’t go for my face. This cheap mask wouldn’t really do much to protect me.
I didn’t think I could sleep that night. I left the house giving the raccoon some space. I spent the rest of the night getting food at any places still open and driving around until I felt tired. I got back home before the sun rose. I hoped my new friend already left. Feeling tired as hell, I climbed the stairs ready for bed.
Even knowing all my issues had perfectly reasonable explanation, I never cleaned up the salt lines. I felt foolish putting them down and even bothering burning the gifted sage. Now with the raccoon, I’ve been able to explain away nearly every strange event in the house. The salt been useless and disappearing over time from me stepping on them by accident. Or I assumed that’s what happened to the salt. I must have been very quiet getting home and going up the stairs because the other mystery roommate of mine didn’t hear me. I wished it was just another raccoon roaming my house. I could have dealt with that.
I reached the top of the stairs in mid yawn and didn’t see what waited for me for at first. At the bathroom doorway was a shape that made me freeze. My body refused to move no matter how much I wanted to scream. Something was hunched over, face against the floor licking up the remaining salt with a long tube-like tongue. It sensed me looking at it and the head raised up, tangled black hair covering most of its face. The part of the face I saw nearly made me faint. I’d been stepping towards my bedroom and instead of trying to escape by running down the stairs. I only took a single step forward when the creature moved. It crawling up the walls and along the ceiling on six arms that were hidden under the long black hair. It dropped on top of me, pinning my body to the ground. The long and crooked fingers dug into my arms trying to keep me still. I kicked trying to get away. In my struggle I only moved upwards by a few inches that made my sweater slip up to expose my stomach like and invitation for the monster to dig right in. The face drew back, and to my horror started to open up into sections. I’ve worked on horror movies and since they were so low budge, we never could manage a creature like this. All the monsters I’ve seen were terrible CGI or craft work splashed with a gallon of fake blood. The real thing was so much more terrifying I screamed louder than I ever did before. I kept screaming unable to do anything as that mouth filled with pointed teeth travelling down into a pitch-black hole of a throat got closer.
My lungs empties and I found myself coughing with tears in my eyes. The mouth so close, and yet it didn’t take my face off. It slowly started to close back up to a more almost human face. The nose a bit flat and eyes wide and dark. It stared down and I gasped for air, mind blank from fear.
“Michael… Mills…?” The monster spoke in a low and raspy voice.
I stayed still stunned. It knew my name? Well, of course, if it been inside the house for a while, it could have figured my name out easy enough. When it spoke again it explained why it knew my name, I felt fear but for an entirely different reason.
“Teen Scream Body Killers Part Three?” Raspy voice the same as any random horror fan I’ve come across in public.
I started to shake my head. I would rather be eaten than anyone talk about that damn movie. It was the first one I agreed to be in and it ruined my life. I needed the money in collage. I needed the cash really bad; I cannot understate that fact. My dorm mate asked me to be an extra in a low budget movie and I ended up being the lead role after the other actor backed out. I got me a few hundred bucks and I thought doing an adult scene wouldn’t be too bad. I mean, it wasn’t real, right? I wasn’t actually doing the deed on film; it was just shot as if I was. I did my job and tried to move on with my life. When the movie was released, a few other directors called me for other smaller parts. It changed the course of my life to be doing minor acting parts, but thankfully with no scenes and graphic as the first one. When I didn’t find parts I was offered to work on set and got pretty good at apply zombie or ghost makeup. I didn’t even want to work on low budget films like this. I had no chance of actually becoming a real actor and no one would ever hire me for something decent due to the movies I’d agreed to be in. I went to school for account for God’s sake. I thought through all of this to put off the mortification of the monster somehow seeing that movie and recognizing me from it.
“Please just kill me.” I begged and half meant it.
The monster let go of my arms and backed up. We both sat in the hallway, it sitting like a dog. All the arms moving around unsure of what to do. The creature wearing some torn up and stitched together clothing of mine I thought I lost in the move around its waist. The chest flat so I assumed it to be a guy. This all begged the question of what this thing was, and why it watched horror movies.
“Have you been the one behind all the noises and things moving around?” I asked, arms sore from where he grabbed me.
He kept looking everywhere but my direction. When I pulled down my sweater he was finally able to make eye contact.
“I tried some food too. Not great. Like the floor stuff.” He commented in that creepy raspy voice.
Salt worked great for demons and ghosts my ass. I wondered why the salt lamp looked a bit thin on one side. He must have been licking at that too. I reasonably wanted to be pissed off at this monster but got lucky that he wasn’t eating my face off.
“Can you… Leave? And not kill me? And what even are you and what are you doing in my house to start with?” I asked hoping for good answers.
“I came through from far away with the spell made in the ground. I’m stuck in this building. Cannot leave. You ruined the way back when I slept. No way of getting home. What I am… not sure. Just me. What are you? Besides food and a story man?” He asked, eyes unblinking in my direction.
God damn goth kids. They did bring a creature through their pentagram. They either didn’t know they did, or saw this creature and bolted to not come back again. I ignored being food comment. I understood him not knowing what I was, or what to call himself. He wasn’t human and was from a different world. I got extremely lucky I wasn’t dealing with something that had more teeth. He must have been inside this house alone long enough to figure out how to work the TV and DVD player to watch the movies left behind. What were the chances I bought the house that a monster who was a fan of that trash was trapped inside?
“Can’t I remake the pentagram and send you back?” I offered.
“Not likely. You can try. May I request information?” He asked suddenly and I backed up seeing a mouth full of sharp teeth after he smiled.
I nodded and tensed up ready for him to attack again.
“Do you know of a part four?” He asked, ignoring my personal space and got up close to my face.
I crawled back trying to get away only to have that ghastly face get closer and closer. Our noses nearly touching and I lost my balance, falling backwards. The monster got out a pair of arms to catch me before I hit the ground.
“Uh, yes. There is one but my character died in the first two minutes so I never watched it or got a copy.” I admitted, heart beating from fear staring at those endless pitch-black eyes.
“Oh…” He sounded really disappointed.
The face pulled away and he lifted me back up so I was sitting again and not bending my back trying to get away from him. Again, I considered if death might be better. When he spoke again, I decided, yes, I wanted to die instead of suffering through our next conversation.
“Screams taste good as flesh. The part of the story with you and the girl screaming tasted the best out of all those stories. I do not know why it took so long of you stabbing her for her to die, but it was very enjoyable.”
I really wanted to die. I buried my face in my hands not wanting to see that nightmare of a face looking so innocent. He really misunderstood that part. He brought of my traumatic dark past as if it was nothing. In the movie I did stab the character after the terribly embarrassing act ended but that was not all that happened in that scene.
“We weren’t… I only stabbed her once.” I corrected feeling like I wanted to cry from embarrassment.
An awkward silence came over us for a solid minute that felt like ten years. He broke it by a small sound that made it clear he clued into why I felt so mortified.
“I am… unsure of my current emotion.” He admitted and I didn’t want to hear that either.
“You should have just eaten me.” I commented and pulled my hands from my face. “Getting back on track, I need to get rid of you. How can I do that?”
To my sheer horror, the monster shrugged all his arms. This had been the worst night of my life. He looked over towards my room and then got back on all fours. After a big stretch the creature yawned. I could see the darkness in the hallway getting brighter showing the sun would be rising soon.
“I must sleep. We talk later, right, fine? Later?”
I sat dumbfounded. This thing was going to stay inside my house. I opened my mouth to ask it again how to remove him from my house when the monsters body started to sink into the hardwood floor. He told me again we would speak later and disappeared before my eyes.
I was stuck with a creature because I bought a place thinking a pentagram in the basement wasn’t a big deal. A noise made me jump showing the raccoon was still in the attic. At least I could deal with one freeloader.
I went to work dead tired but needed to take my mind off what happened. The bruises on my arms proving the encounter happened, or I really lost my mind and did it to myself. I didn’t really tell my co-workers what I saw that night worried about their responses. I arrived home expecting to see that creature the moment I walked inside the door. I considering renting out a hotel room but my wallet said otherwise. The cost of safely removing the raccoon hurt my savings.
Somehow, I passed out on the couch only to be rudely awoken but a pale face inches away from my own. I screamed and pushed the monster off, yelling he needed to not scare me like that. When my heart slowed down, we had a short talk about him hanging around. We both doubted I could figure out the right spell to send him home, even if I could find an object he claimed to have enough magic to send him back. He was stuck there for good it seemed. I could move but where would I go? The money I would make from selling the place wouldn’t cover anything decent. I was as stuck as the monster.
The upside was, he agreed to not eat me. Yet. His words hid a threat of not being able to hold back from taking a pound of flesh if I didn’t provide him with a different food source. He could eat the terror in screams and other meat like raw beef or pork. I was a bad actor so my fake screams didn’t do the job. I needed to let him jump scare me at least once every two days or so to keep him pleasant enough to live with. He also said that he could eat the fear from a recorded scream if a different creature hadn’t gotten to it first. I handed over an old iPad with headphones for him to look through YouTube videos at night trying to find a meal or two. Most nights he didn’t have much luck making me extremely nervous over just how many monsters there might be out on the world.
I don’t know how my life got to this point. I got stuck in a job I felt embarrassed doing for the most part and with a house I can’t move out of. The threat of not providing enough food made me scared enough to give my new roommate a meal or two a week. I hated living in dread of him jumping out from a dark corner at any second. The waiting for it to happen really the worst part of the deal. After a few weeks of being forced to live with each other the monster that crawled around in the darkness of the hallway to announced he decided on the name Teddy and then crawled over the ceiling to do who knows what.
I think he’s really out to kill me. How on Earth can I be that scared of him when he pulls that kind of crap? Teddy? Really? I better land a really good acting job that can pay for me to move out of this place or else I’m going to be eaten because this roommate of mine is really growing on me…