When we got to his house, my uncle Paul was waiting at the top of the stairs at the entrance of his farmhouse. He had bought that house about 10 years ago, my dad said, when he decided he wanted to live a bit further away from their town so he could hunt without risking shooting anyone accidentally. This was right after he almost got charged with attempted murder because he thought whatever was moving around in the bushes was the deer he had seen earlier. Turns out it was just a kid who, after, accused him of doing it on purpose.
In the end, he was innocent, but my dad said that made him want to go away. We moved to the city, not long after that, but this was my chance to know where my family had lived their entire lives.
My dad picked up my bags and took them around the back of the car, speeding up the stairs towards my uncle, who was holding his arms up to hug my dad, but ended up with half the bags in his hands and a big hug of nothing.
My dad still secretly thought he was to blame for something, and even though he never said it, everyone knew it. My uncle seemed frustrated as I observed him, framed by his big wooden house. Then he lifted his eyes, saw me and opened up a big smile while he dropped his bags and opened his arms in my direction.
“So it’s true what they say, kids grow fast, Robin!”
I’d always liked my uncle, he always seemed really nice on the phone. I smiled back at him, stepped up the stairs and gave him the hug my dad refused to deliver. He laughed and rubbed my back and then we dragged the bags inside.
His house seemed pretty normal for a farmhouse: spent wood walls on the outside, looking old and cold, but warm and cosy on the inside, with an old fireplace in the living room, one big chair in front of it and another one in the corner at a weird angle. Behind that there was a small dining table, and then the kitchen. There was a flight of stairs right in front of the door, and he gestured me up to go have a look at the bedroom I would be staying in.
My dad had some family business to take care of with him, which was mostly why we had come down, but he would have to spend the first three days out because of a work meeting he had to be present at. I insisted on coming to get to know my uncle better, and under my mom’s insistence, my dad didn’t have a choice. For me, it was like a nice, new environment week off.
That night, after my dad left, we had a nice rabbit stew for dinner, which felt more like a heavy soup, but was enough to fill what felt like two stomachs. After that, we played some games, and just as I was getting ready to go onto the next one, he stood up. That surprised me. I thought we were staying in for the night doing stuff together, but he informed me he was going out for his usual poker night with some town friends and would be back in some hours.
I did NOT feel like staying alone in that house I had no idea about, at all. I didn’t know the house, or the area, or anything there! I asked him if maybe I could come with him, and they could teach me poker, but he told me no, sounding a bit harsher, and then explained, in a calmer manner, that they would be smoking and drinking and he didn’t want me to be in that environment. My father wouldn’t like that. I couldn’t argue with him on that, but would my father love the fact that he was ditching me on my first night there?
I didn’t say anything anymore. I thought my books could keep me busy until he returned, so I relaxed and told him I understood.
He left about half an hour later, after getting dressed to go out, but I never expected the house to turn as creepy as it did once I was alone.
When I finally heard the front door close and his car’s engine coughed awake, I went up the stairs to my room, closed the door (just in case) and opened my suitcase. There was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and The First Days by Rhiannon Frater. A zombie book. Probably not the best idea, considering I was already feeling like a zombie could jump out from the creaking closet any moment now.
I took out my romance, looked out the window and saw nothing but darkness, and threw myself onto the bed. Around the house and the land there was nothing but woods, so all the lights were coming from the house, which made it impossible to see past halfway to the treeline.
I must have been half an hour into reading, when I heard an almost silent crack coming from somewhere inside the house. I ignored it, because it seemed like just the house creaking with the wind, until there was a second creak, and a third.
I closed my book and perked my ears up, my heart and breathing stopping for a second to let me identify whatever this was. Could be the house, but it sounded different.
I got up, looked out the window just to check if anything changed. All normal. I tip-toed as slow as I could, so as to avoid the house from creaking too much on my end, opened the door while lifting it to try to avoid any whining, and looked outside of my bedroom.
Everything seemed normal and quiet, until I heard a loud bang coming from somewhere.
At this point, I called out for uncle Paul, but got no answer. I called again, but didn’t get anything, only the house creaking.
Slowly, I made my way downstairs, while calling for my uncle here and there. My heart almost jumped out through my mouth when I was getting to the kitchen and the sink let out a loud bang and released a trickle of water that made a weird creaking noise when it hit the basin.
I let out a loud sigh and felt my shoulders relax, never even realising before how tense they were. I looked around the house, and still called out for my uncle Paul some more times to make sure he wasn’t actually back and forgot I was there, and when I got no answer I rushed up the stairs back into my bedroom and closed the door behind me. I would have locked it if I could!
I read my book for a while more, still hearing the creaking, cracking and banging I heard before, from time to time, and when it stopped and I was already ready to sleep, I drifted off.
When I woke up, in the morning, and went downstairs for breakfast, my uncle was already there, cooking for the both of us. As before, we got to chatting. He told me how he had some hunting planned for the both of us, out in the forest, and told me how I was going to see how real hunting feels and how good it is. I was apprehensive at this, but felt ashamed to say anything, so just accepted what we were going to be doing. When he was done explaining, I asked him how late he had come back the night before, because I fell asleep before he came back.
At this, he seemed to go a bit stiff. Then he paced around putting things away and just said that he took a bit longer because the game went longer than he was expecting. He laughed and told me how surprised he was that I didn’t wake up when he came back, with how noisy his car always was.
Then he reached behind the counter and said he had something for me while he pulled out a small pink backpack decorated with plastic flowers and handed it over to me with a smile.
“Thank you” - I said, before looking at it a bit closer. It seemed too small for me, but I didn’t say anything else, not wanting to be rude.
“I thought you could take it with us today to keep some water and other supplies” - he explained.
I nodded, thinking maybe if I stretched the straps enough I could fit it around my shoulders, and proceeded to pack up everything uncle Paul told me I needed to take.
It was around 7PM when we got back home, and outside was pitch black, only the house seen in the middle of the darkness. Just like the night before, we huddled around the fire and waited for our game to cook while we talked and played some more games. And, once again, after dinner, he picked up his stuff and went out for his game night while I was left alone to get bored to death inside the house. It was really pissing me off that he did this, but in two days my dad would be back. Even though I really liked the hunt and spending the days with him, I wasn’t enjoying the evenings!
I waited in front of the door as he turned his back to me and closed it behind him. I locked the door from the inside, and as I was going up the stairs to barricade myself in my bedroom, my heart jumped a dozen beats and I froze in place my hand gripping the wooden rail so hard it could have cracked.
I looked around, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from when I heard a second one, clearly coming from the kitchen area, and then nothing else… I looked around for about 10 minutes until I gave up, especially because of how freaked out I was.
As I was going up the stairs, I heard another noise, this time like knocking and then a moan. I lost it, ran up the stairs, taking the steps two by two and almost tripping at the end, and slammed the door hard as soon as I was inside the bedroom. There was no doubt in my mind now that the house was haunted. It had to be, or my uncle was around the house somewhere making fun of me.
I looked out of the window, and no car. I stood there for a while, not really knowing what to do, but now lulled by the other usual noises in the house. Eventually, I sat down and lay down while keeping my eyes in the tiny empty line between the door and the floor to make sure nothing was coming close to my bedroom.
I eventually relaxed and my eyes floated onto the small pink backpack my uncle gave me. I picked it up, emptied it and analysed it. Why would he get me something so small? He probably didn’t really know my age, before we got there. The backpack, though, seemed to have some wear that didn’t come from today’s hike. As I was starting to look inside it, a loud, piercing scream sounded around the house, curdling my blood and making me shrink into the corner of the bedroom.
After the shock wore off, I ran to my bedroom door and opened it wide, now thinking I had to find out what the hell was going on, at least as long as I was still standing in the imaginary safety my bedroom provided.
Seeing nothing and hearing nothing else throughout the house, I decided to shrink back into my bedroom, close the door and wait out the night. I dragged my covers to the floor and slept behind my bed out of fear that any stranger coming into the house would see me. I didn’t have a phone, because my dad refused to get me one, and I was not about to step outside of my bedroom to try to find a possible non-existent house phone.
I refused to move until I heard more noises in the house. This time, footsteps and keys dropping. I jumped up from the floor, charged to my bedroom door, opened it and paced to the top of the stairs.
I was expecting to see my uncle at the bottom, getting ready to come up to his bedroom, but… he wasn’t there.
I heard the kitchen sink come alive, so I walked down the stairs and found him, his back turned to the front door and me, taking his shirt off, throwing it in his wood laundry basket and scrubbing his face into the kitchen sink.
“Is this house haunted?” - I shot at him.
He straightened up, looking like I had startled him, and relaxed once he saw me.
“Why do you ask?”
He was starting to piss me off.
“I almost died from fright because of these noises going around the house! And there was a scream! A SCREAM!”
He sighed, dried himself off with one of the kitchen towels I wasn’t going to use anymore, and sat on one of the living room chairs.
He proceeded to tell me how he does hear strange noises around the house at night and how there are some stories from the area, which is why he managed to get this plot of land and why he can stay isolated from everyone else without other people coming around to build in the woods plots around his. How there’s a story about a woman’s tragic life, and that he had heard this scream I mentioned around the house.
“It has been years since I’ve been getting this, so I’m used to it now. Sorry I didn’t tell you about it, but it is harmless!”
“Didn’t sound harmless!” - I shrieked.
He chuckled, told me to calm down, which only pissed me off even more, and before I could say anything else, he stood up, said good night and started to leave me alone there.
I was not about to stay there alone, so I followed him closely, asking him questions about the stories and what had happened there until he just told me good night and closed the door in my face.
By now, I just wanted to get out of there.
The rest of the night was quiet apart from the house noises. No more thumps, no more screams and no more knocks. It must have been really close to morning when I finally fell asleep, because when I woke up it was almost mid-day.
I marched downstairs, ready to let my uncle Paul know that I wasn’t going to take this any longer and I needed to call my dad… but he wasn’t there.
As I looked around, trying to figure out where he would have gone, leaving me by myself again, I heard a wood “thunk”. Then another one, shaking and continuously hitting something else.
I walked towards the kitchen area, hesitantly, and then noticed it.
Under the couch, the carpet was slightly wrinkled, revealing an extra line in the wood. When I approached it to have a look, the wood moved, hitting the couch underneath and making the noise I was hearing.
I lifted the rest of the carpet until it was stuck under the couch, revealing half of a trapdoor underneath it.
My heart started pounding. What was this?
I ran to the door, opened it to look outside.
No car.
I ran back inside, locked the door behind me and rushed to the living room, closing all the curtains on my way. Then I leaned against the couch and pushed as hard as I could. When it was off the door, I stopped and almost without thinking, ripped the door open.
When I did, something seemed to scurry away, just a shadow, and then a door closing somewhere.
I lay on the ground and dropped my head through the trapdoor to be safe. Under me, there was an empty room with a white emergency light over a grey door on the other side and some rope laying around, leading to a fragile looking ladder that ended right in my face.
I looked around again, and still saw no sign of my uncle, so I slowly climbed down the hole until I was on the ground.
I could hear a slight noise coming from the other side of the door. It took me a bit to observe the room and build up the courage to go open the door and find out what was on the other side, but when I eventually did, my levels of stress rose.
In front of me, on the other side of the door, there was a completely dark tunnel. All I could see was the shape of a door on the other end, quite far away. At this point, my curiosity was much bigger than my fear. There was no way that my experiences in the house these past days had nothing to do with this.
Slowly, I stepped into the tunnel. The floor felt moist in certain places. I had my hand to the wall so I didn’t get lost in there and could feel where I was going. Halfway to the door, I looked back to see if I could see the end of the tunnel behind me. It was still there, nothing changed, so I kept walking forward, hearing creaks and knocks and whispers coming from ahead of me.
I hesitated when I touched the door handle, looked behind me and with a deep breath turned the doorknob and pushed.
Inside, it was a horror show. I couldn’t hold back my tears while I held my nose and my mouth to stop the stench from going any deeper into my nose.
In front of me, there was a room looking like a bathroom, with tiles on the floor and walls and a half broken toilet in the corner. In the middle of the room, there was a piece of bloody, rotten meat, with blood around it everywhere and flies circling it mercilessly. There were a few pieces of clothes left and two arms sprawled to the sides. Next to it, there was a bone-skinny child that wasn’t moving, looking like it was sleeping and completely bald, and at the corner of the room, next to a rusty human-sized cage with red marks on the bars, a slightly bigger child was gripping the bars, murmuring something, crying with closed eyes and trembling.
Next to her, there was another door.
As I froze and felt a panic attack hitting me, I heard car tires above me, footsteps and a door closing.
Shit! I didn’t close the trapdoor!
I managed to kick myself out of the shock, rushed inside the room, each step sounding like I was walking on water, bringing chills up my spine. I was more scared to die, though, so I crouched in front of the girl and told her we had to go.
She, however, didn’t move. I stood up again, tried the door and my heart sank.
It was locked. I looked around and there was no other way out. I was determined to leave, so I grabbed the girl by the hand and tried to pull her away. She screamed at me, making me jump away from her, and grabbed onto the cage again.
At this, the light went off.
As I write this down now, my life has been completely turned upside down. My uncle was such a small part of the truth…
One year ago, I had stopped breathing, feeling my stomach dig a hole into me while I heard this strange, traumatized beat up girl’s heavy breathing next to me. Then a candle lit up in the air, behind it was my uncle’s face, completely altered, almost deranged.
He put down the candle.
“You couldn’t hold it for one day. Had to come looking where your nose don’t belong.” He sighed loudly. Then laughed loud and blew the candle out.