About ten years ago, my grandfather passed away under mysterious circumstances. After his death, I inherited the house and had to relocate it immediately, or my family would face dire consequences. I was just 13 years old at the time, and I had to handle everything on my own while dealing with various monsters that wanted to harm me. Well, in short, I got tired of these creatures and decided to sell the house to someone who could open rifts to other worlds. He probably won’t have any issues taking care of himself.
Let me introduce myself. I’m Dylan Blackwell, and my family is part of a cursed lineage where everyone with the Blackwell name is bound to summon a monster as their familiar. You might be wondering what a familiar is, this is because in my world, things work a bit differently. In our world, everyone would summon their familiar at the age of 15, usually during a significant ceremony on their 15th birthday when the entire family celebrates both the birthday and the ceremony.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to experience such celebrations. My summon, Nyarxis, appeared on my 13th birthday—the same day my grandfather passed away.
It was 2:58 am that night, and my family gathered on the couch, staring at the TV even though it was off, I guess to try and distract ourselves from the horrible sensation at the time. The air felt heavy and cold, and we didn’t understand what was happening, but we could sense that something was wrong. The sense of impending doom we all felt as the grandfather clock we had struck 3am, god, it was suffocating. Its hands froze even though the pendulum was swinging, struggling to move to the next dot. The silence from the outside was suffocating, and the darkness, god, it was right beneath us, beneath the couch that we all sat on, I could feel it desperately trying to claw its way through the light, trying to swallow us as it did my grandfather. Everyone knew something was going to happen to my grandfather, but getting involved would only put us in the same situation.
The next morning, we drove to my grandfather’s house to check on him, though we all knew what awaited us in the bedroom.
The car ride was silent.
We turned off the main road and onto a dirt path, we knew the route to our grandfather’s house like it was the back of our hands, enough so that we could probably walk there ourselves, but now I barely recognized the large oak tree outside of his home.
As we approached, an oppressive sense of dread surrounded the building, my stomach churned as we slowly approached the front door. At first, everything looked normal—typical signs of an old person’s house with a dirty bowl on the table, porridge stains on the carpet below it, grandfather’s favorite hat and cloak hanging at the entrance. But as we got closer to the stairs, the sense of unease grew with each step. Every creak sounded like thunder, each breath I drew, colder. What was My mother’s comforting presence now made my hairs stand, her cold breath on the back of my neck gave me shivers every time I felt it. When we reached the top, the morning sun had now turned a shade of red.
Crimson filled the hallway, and any place it did not reach was now consumed by the same void from last night. The doorway leading to the bathroom was now engulfed by a thick darkness that radiated outward, clawing at anything not covered in the crimson rays of light. The bedroom door was no different, the dark presence could be felt from across the hallway, coming from the small slit under the door. I swear I could hear my grandfather calling out to us, telling us to step into the darkness, just so he could see us one last time.
My father summoned his skinwalker; it carefully approached the door, avoiding any darkness present in the hallway. Its thin, long fingers twisted the doorknob, only to find it locked from the inside. My father then ordered it to try and break down the door. I saw it hesitate, as if weighing its options before letting out an unholy screech and charging wildly at the door. It battered and clawed at the door for minutes before my father ordered it to stop. Not a scratch could be seen on the door.
We tried everything we could, other than entering the void in the bathroom, but even the Skinwalker wouldn’t go near it. So, we started to walk back down the steps to leave this horrid place, after all, curiosity killed the cat. But just as we were about to leave, a voice responded from the other side of the door, it was our grandfather’s.
Even though we knew he was already gone, we continued to listen. He told us to enter the void in the bathroom, assuring us that it was safe and telling us that it was the only way to access the bedroom. His voice sounded wrong, yet so convincing, and as if driven by some mysterious force, I followed his instructions. Desperately I tried to fight back, to regain control of my body, but what could a 13-year-old do against the supernatural? Slowly, I began walking up the stairs, across the hallway, and into the bathroom. My parents didn’t try to stop me, as if they were in a similar trance. As I approached the bathroom, dark tendrils latched onto my skin, pulling me closer until I was fully engulfed by the darkness.
When I woke up, I was in my grandfather’s bedroom, his cold corpse lying next to me. I looked around, expecting to see my grandfather’s room, but instead, I was met with a cold, dark abyss with thousands of creatures staring at me from beyond what I could see.
A voice from my right called my name, the same one that forced me up the stairs.
I could not speak, and only turned toward the voice where I expected to see him in some ethereal form, talking from beyond the grave. However, instead, I was met with a large silhouette who I instinctively backed away from, nearly pushing my grandfather’s corpse into the abyss, but I stopped when I saw its large, ivory-white skull.
Sitting on a stool next to me was my grandfather’s summon, a wendigo he named Whiteface after its ivory-white skull. However, even more surprising was that it was speaking to me with my grandfather’s voice.
It called me just as my grandfather would, with the same gentleness in its voice as if my grandfather was speaking through it. I glanced back at my grandfather; unfortunately, his face was forever locked in an expression of pure anguish, I prayed that he had passed on quickly.
It told me the history of our lineage, why we were cursed to forever summon abominations on our 15th birthday, how he had studied the occult and found ‘Higher Universes’ to contact, and he made a contract with them, one he paid dearly for. Now, someone had to take care of his home, someone who was not of age that could resist going insane from the darkness, and that someone was me.
Before I had enough time to process what was going on, Whiteface began bashing at its ivory skull, shattering its deer skull into smaller fragments before tossing them into the void, sacrificing each part of its body to clear away the darkness. Bit by bit, its ivory white skull cleansed the darkness, as if it was using its own skull to paint over a black canvas, until there was no more.
“Whiteface wait-!” I called out, but it was too late; he had already vanished.
The once suffocating void was now gone, and I found myself back in my grandfather’s bedroom, sitting right next to his cold corpse, still utterly confused. The sun had risen enough that it was no longer crimson, and the first thing I noticed was the person standing by the door leading out to the hallway.
“Took you long enough,” she scoffed as if having to wait hours before I had appeared. “You’re probably incredibly confused right now,” she told me, slowly approaching.
Floating towards me was a fair-skinned girl wearing a bright red hoodie and blue jeans. I imagined that she would be chewing bubblegum, but she wasn’t. She looked not much older than me, perhaps only 18 or so. She wasn’t much taller either, standing only at about 5’4” with jet black hair and fiery red eyes that seemed to burn a hole through me.
“Huh?” I asked, confused. “Who the hell are you?”
She seemed to stop for a moment, before putting her feet on the ground and taking off her hoodie and squinting at me.
“You’re… a kid?” she asked, as if that was the most confusing thing in this room.
“Yes…” I answered sheepishly under the blanket, hiding from the mysterious stranger.
“Oh… uh, I thought you were supposed to be 15… did they mess up?” She looked taken aback. “You are Dylan Blackwell, right?”
I could hear her slowly approaching before an unexplainable force launched the blanket to the side.
Sitting on the stool next to me was the same girl from before, smelling of sulfur and with her palms outstretched, as if to help me up. I took her offer, and I slowly propped myself up on the headboard behind me, though I noticed her hands were extremely warm.
“I-I am,” I stammered, face red, just now realizing how enchanting she looked to my 13-year-old brain.
Her eyebrow seemed to narrow a little as her eyes scanned my body before speaking.
“Well, My name is Skyler White, Yo!”
“Well first, my name is Nyarxis and secondly, according to the deal your grandfather made, I’m supposed to be your ‘familiar’,” she told me just as a floating scroll materialized from thin air. “Thirdly, even though I am your familiar, don’t try anything funny or I’ll leave you to figure out this house on your own. Though, I don’t think a kid like you would try anything that would be inappropriate.”
I nodded in agreement, even though I was half-focused on the small red horns poking out from her hair.
She seemed to continue speaking about the magical floating scroll in front of me, though now I was no longer paying attention to what she was saying, instead I was daydreaming about all the different things that we could be doing together after inheriting the house.
“Now, do you understand the contract? Uh, hey!” she said while waving her hands in front of my face “Are you even paying attention?” she scolded
I jolted upwards, and my left hand pushed onto something cold as I used it to turn to my right. I looked over to see what was causing this sensation, and It was my grandfather’s corpse. A moment of shock hit me as I broke out from my trance. I looked up to his face, now a reminder of what would happen to me if I wasn’t careful.
“Dylan?! Where are you?” my mother’s voice called from behind the door.
Something twisted the doorknob and opened the door, it was the skinwalker. With the void presence now gone, my parents slowly entered the bedroom door, only to be met with me sitting on the bed with a petite young lady next to me. There was a moment of stunned silence as my parents looked between me and Nyarxis.
“Uhm, hi mom.” I waved awkwardly
Fortunately for me, Nyarxis was able to explain the situation in a few minutes, and we moved on to prepare for my grandfather’s funeral.
I just wanted to share something to this subreddit and not be a lurker; sure this story isn’t anything spooky or in the spirit of Halloween (we have Halloween here too), but Nyarxis tells me that it’s fine since I don’t own the house anymore.
Though I guess next post would actually be about the house