Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/15omvee/my_uncles_darkest_secret/
When the candle light went out, my thoughts were completely jumbled. All I could think was how dead I was.
I could hear my uncle’s steps walking my way slowly. He was between me and my way out and I couldn’t think of any options left apart from crying in the corner.
Suddenly, at the same time as I felt a little hand hold onto my arm and a small voice crying against me, I thought I heard my uncle trip. His shadow dropped to the side, and suddenly I could see a small, faint white light shining somewhere in front of me. Somehow, I regained my courage. I could feel my heart pumping like it was just jump started.
I grabbed the girl’s little hand, pulled her up with me and just trusted my legs while we both ran against the light and heard my uncle grunt somewhere in the room. I slammed the door behind us and kept running until we finally reached the cold but welcoming white light in the room under the kitchen, the trapdoor still open.
I pushed the girl up the stairs, feeling her bones in my hands like all her flesh was gone and I wondered how long she had been in there, locked away. When she reached the top, I heard the door at the end of the hallways open with a bang and a deranged scream coming from the darkness.
I panicked and started up the ladder, feeling my hands and legs so shaky that I thought I wouldn’t be able to make it.
As I sit here, writing this, I will never forget his face of madness and rage, mixed with what seemed to be fear when I finally threw the trap door in his face and sat on top of it to stop him from opening it. I pulled anything that was in my range on top of that door and didn’t stop sitting there until he stopped pounding, the girl still in shock, shaking and crying behind the sofa.
When he finally stopped, I stood, pushed the sofa back to its original place and we ran.
I had no idea what the next step was. I was now caring for a random stranger girl that had been my uncle’s prisoner and there was nowhere I could think of that would be safe to go. The first thing that came to mind was to get her something to eat from the fridge. I stumbled through the kitchen and tried everything I could find in there. For some reason, she refused everything I tried to give her.
At some point, I gave up and had given my brain enough time to collect its own thoughts. I knew what to do. I had no idea what time it was, but my dad was due to come back, so my best bet, I thought, would be to find some hiding spot somewhere in the woods where we could still see the house and wait. My uncle was stuck inside the basement, so we should be safe.
We came outside, the driveway bearing only my uncle’s car, but no keys inside. The girl must have been inside for ages, because when we ran outside she recoiled, trying to stay away from the sun with her poor eyes closed. I picked her up, threw her on my back and ran as fast as the extra weight would allow me towards the closest woods line.
Inside, it was like a completely different world. The wind made constant noise on the trees, but somehow it felt a lot quieter and the girl seemed to have an easier time with the trees shade.
I sat her down on a log while I tried to find some place for us to hide for as long as possible. I could still see the house from where we were right now, so we could keep an eye out for my dad arriving.
Suddenly, as I tried to ask her what her name was and what happened for her to end up there with her refusing to answer and forcing her eyes shut, I felt a hand come down on my shoulder and almost got my ear burst from a scream right next to me.
When I finally managed to look around, as I contorted to try to get away from this grip and we came out of the treeline, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Somehow, my uncle was outside, dragging us back to the house, mumbling to himself, his pants and part of his face full of smeared blood.
As I kicked the floor and screamed to no avail, I thought a miracle was happening. In the distance, I could hear the sound of tires coming. He seemed to be able to hear them as well, and stopped in the middle of the driveway about 5 steps away from the steps, holding us both like two dead chickens ready for the stew.
When a car came around the turn at the start of the driveway, all my hope evaporated. This was not my dad’s car. Instead, driving straight towards us, an old and rusty-looking station wagon spread dust around itself to a stop. My uncle stood still for a bit right in front of the car, me and the little girl both coughing from the dust coming from the wheels.
The car’s door opened suddenly, like whoever was inside kicked it open, and my uncle screamed right above us that it was about time!
From inside the car, my dad stretched up, looking even taller than usual because I was only on my knees. I thought I was saved. I thought we were saved!
My dad advanced onto my uncle, and suddenly shouted in his face what the hell did he think he was doing.
Somehow, instead of a fight breaking out or my dad punching my uncle in the face and taking me out of there straight, my dad shoved my uncle while my uncle tried to explain himself, dropping us both and saying how he was sorry, but that I wouldn’t stop snooping when he was out getting ready. He kept saying how I was a nosy bitch and wouldn’t just go to bed instead of roaming around at night.
For some reason, my dad didn’t shut him up. Instead, he said what was unexpected for me.
He started shouting at my uncle how he knew I was going to be his responsibility while he was out getting more supplies and equipment and that all he had to do was keep me safe and away from everything while he was gone.
I was starting to shiver, thinking that all this was wrong and feeling myself tremble inside, when my dad turned on his heels and looked straight at me, my uncle with his arms open like he was trying to climb the stairs to the house on his back while staying the furthest away possible from my dad.
Thinking to himself, while fixated on me, he asked himself what the f he was going to do now.
Then he reached out, grabbed me by the arm, ignoring my squirming and kicking and asking him what the hell he was doing and why he was doing this to me. I couldn’t stop my heart from throbbing, and couldn’t stop my eyes from crying. I was dead, and for some reason my dad would be involved in my killing. It’s strange, the turns life takes. Every day I think about this more and more, especially when I write this story, now that I’m back home safe. Here, now, sitting at the computer and typing seems like a tiny luxury.
Suddenly, the girl screamed and stood up, her whole demeanour changing, her eyes mad at my dad and my uncle and her whole body ready to revolt.
My dad looked at her from top to bottom, then smacked her hard enough to throw her back on the ground. I couldn’t believe this, my sobbing going from bad to worse. Then, my dad grabbed me by the arm, threw me to my uncle, who grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around, and told him to take me inside to the basement, saying I would be fine in the cage. The cage with two dead bodies next to it.
As I was being dragged away, I saw my dad smack this little girl square in the face, lift her up in the air by the neck and throw her into the back of this station wagon, which had the back part split from the passengers part with a metal net and a bunch of leather covers inside. As he closed the trunk’s door, my uncle slammed the house door in my face.
He dragged me around as he pushed the sofa out of the way again and, while ignoring my pleading screams, threw me down the hatch. I dropped one floor down head first on the concrete ground. My head felt like it was near an explosion, my ears rang and my vision blurred, the walls around the room going out of focus. I could hear my own breath better inside myself.
He dropped down the ladder next to me, grabbed me again by the neck and dragged me through the corridor while constantly repeating to himself how this was it, this was the moment. I almost threw up when he turned on the light in the room and the same image was before my eyes - one part of a body, mauled and bloody and a small girl looking like the life was just sucked out of her holding the remains of what was likely her mom’s body.
I could feel my legs sliding on top of the slimy blood and bits of flesh. Then he threw me inside the cage and closed it almost at the same time, telling me to stay in there and not move until they were back for me. He called me honey so much that I started feeling like ripping the tongue out of his mouth.
Then, I felt like the stupidest person on earth.
Before my eyes, he pulled a key ring out of his pocket full of old-looking keys of all different shapes and sizes, locked me inside the cage, and then reached towards the second door in the room that was right next to the cage, and simply locked it. Then he looked at me, standing still for a few seconds, smiled and just said how this was for the best.
He stepped over the two bodies towards the door, pushing the stench around the room and renewing it in my nostrils, turned off the light, said he’d see me in a little bit and clicked the door closed, locking it from the outside and leaving me in absolute darkness while I heard car tires overhead speeding off.
It’s strange, how in the darkness and with no way out, a sense of calm took over me. I had just accepted my fate, at this point. I never thought I would be the kind of person who would, one day, come to realise she never really knew her own father.
I have no idea how long it was until I heard car tires coming back and stopping somewhere over me again. I was close to passing out from exhaustion with claustrofobia settling in more every second, when I heard screeching, then a door slamming in the distance, noises from what I guessed was the house. Someone was running around and the noises were echoing through the tunnel, coming faintly all the way over to me.
When the door across the room, leading to the tunnel and back to the house, slammed open and the light came back on, I shuddered and tried to shrink into the cage walls, hoping they would just leave me alone. Hoping that I wouldn’t be next.
With blood all over his face and a manic, terrified expression on his face, my dad just stood there for half a minute. Then he ran up to the cage, unlocked the door and yanked me out, making me trip and fall over the pooled blood on the floor. He reached for something inside the cage, punched whatever it was into his jacket’s pocket and took one big stride closer to me.
When I got the courage to look at him, finally accepting the disgust I was feeling, his jacket… It was completely ripped to shreds.
“We have to go” - he said in an urgent voice, while he grabbed my arm so hard it bruised for a month, turned the light off again and hauled me into the dark tunnel with a small, weak white light at the end.