I need to quit my job. But I don’t think Ill make it out alive.
Over the summer, I injured my knee and it completely ended my volleyball career (I say career, but I was a benchwarmer at best). To save my mental state, I decided to move on from sports. This left me with a lot of free time on the weekends, and I’ve been meaning to redo my bedroom, so I needed some extra cash. I became a housekeeper for the neighbors. They were The Rich People™ in the neighborhood. Everyone knew them as a little… eccentric. The type of people to collect spoons and garden statues. But they were a seemingly sweet little old couple and they were offering to pay well. I took the job before anyone else could.
It was a big house, so they couldn’t keep up with cleaning all of it. They had a landscaper and another housekeeper who did the top floor already, and they just needed someone to clean the ground floor and basement. They often rented out the place to other rich people who wanted to have parties without worrying about their collectors items getting broken or whatever. It wasn’t the most relaxing job ever, but I just turned on a podcast (my favorite is The Magnus Archives) and worked for a couple hours every other weekend.
I’ve been cleaning here since the beginning of the school year in August, so a couple months now. Nothing has been out of the ordinary up until a couple weeks ago, at the beginning of October. I have a specific schedule I like to abide by when I’m cleaning. First, I do the entryway, then the dining room, then the sitting room, then the kitchen, then the hallway, then the bathrooms. I’m not allowed to go in the office. Next I do the basement. I start the laundry, dust some of the corners, and clean the bathroom down there. Surprisingly, it’s not too big of a basement compared to the rest of the house. I followed this schedule religiously, it was the quickest and most efficient way I’ve found.
I went about my life following this routine every weekend, and so far I’ve earned about $200. This felt like a pretty permanent job, I wanted to keep it until I move out and go to college. Unfortunately, the first weekend of October is when things started to feel… off. It started small, with some of my cleaning supplies not being where they should have been in the closet. The upstairs housekeeper used the cleaning supplies upstairs so it would be easier, so I’m the only one who uses the downstairs closet. The supplies were rearranged, sometimes completely off the shelves, even the ones that were never needed. We don’t get earthquakes where I live, so it can’t be that. These incidents gradually became more and more concerning. For example, I would throw away a wad of paper towels and they would appear in the closet. I would stand in the hallway and look through the kitchen and the door to the office would be blown open despite being locked and the windows all being closed, papers and documents blowing around like a tornado passed through. They were all resignation letters. I read them. I know that is wrong of me, but I was curious. They had names, but no dates. What was the most concerning though, was a strange stain that showed up three weekends ago.
The stain started out small. I assumed it was water damage or something, so I sent a text to the couple and thought nothing of it. Why was it concerning? Well, it grew. And grew. And grew. It was dripping an inky black liquid by the next weekend. One week ago, I lost my patience. The couple hadn’t gotten back to me and I’ve never seen that upstairs housekeeper even when our schedules must have lined up. I did something for the first and last time while working there. I went upstairs to find the source of that stain.
There was a landing upstairs that stretched all the way to the back of the house. Dusty furniture and lint covered carpets covered the place. It makes sense now that I’m thinking about it. The closet was in the back left corner, so I made my way to the room above it. It was hard to breathe in the musty air, to be honest. I was coughing a lot, and the smell was awful. What’s strange is that the room above the closet didn’t have any dust on the knob. And the air was significantly clearer as I got closer to the room. I find that incredibly strange, considering what was in it.
This next part is hard. Not hard to remember, just hard to think about. They were… horrific. I hate it, but it’s true. Five people. All dead. All unrecognizable. They were grotesque husks of what should have been their former selves. But they aren’t who they used to be. They were pinned to the walls by their wrists like handcuffs. Some of them were midair, some slumped against the walls. A black, inky substance that should have been blood was leaking from the wounds, eyes, mouth, and nose of a girl that was a couple years older than me. The stuff was dried and crusted to the others. I found the source of the stain. And I walked calmly through the landing. Down the stairs. Out the door. And to my house.
What’s funny is that I didn’t feel anything until I was in my room. The feeling was fear mixed with morbid curiosity. I looked up the names from those resignation forms along with my town name. I tried the surrounding towns too. I couldn’t find anything. It was like they never existed in the first place. For some reason, I’m still going back there, for some reason. I looked in the office, there wasn’t anything else in there besides the five forms from the people in the room. All I know about them is their names.
I want to quit, believe me. I need to quit. But I don’t think I can. Something tells me that if I try, I’ll end up in the room. The old couple have been around a lot more, and they’ve been watching me. Me and my every move. If I so much as glance up those stairs, they appear in a doorway, staring. I texted them when the stain appeared. Now it’s gone. I’m planning on quitting on New Years. If I don’t turn in a letter, maybe they won’t get me. They can’t kill me if I stop showing up, right?