I looked down at the creaky basement stairs trailing off into a void of darkness. I tried to swallow but my throat wouldn’t let me. I was too afraid. My grandmom’s house was a mostly pleasant place to me- all except the basement, that is.
The basement was old and smelled of mildew and dust. The stairs leading down were the wooden ones that have gaps behind each stair which only amplified the feeling that when you walked down them something would grab you from underneath. The were 3 singular lights down there that had to be turned on with pull cords so you had to go down into the near complete darkness to turn them on.
I stood at the top of the stairs, my childhood imagination running wild with thoughts of monsters in the darkness. I knew I had to go down.
Both my grandparents were disabled so it had to be me to go bring up the things from the freezer my grandmom needed. I knew the very real risk of one of them injuring themselves down there greatly outweighed my fear of things that lurk in the dark. I took a deep shaky breath and ran down the stairs as fast as I could and sprinted towards the first light.
Click.
The dim light buzzed softly with electricity as it came to life. It only illuminated about a 4ft circle around me. I looked around at the old work bench and all the random stuff that was down there which did nothing but creep me out even more. There were so many dark corners for things to lurk and the dim ring of light around me only made the rest of the darkness seem more oppressive.
As I was preparing myself to run to the next light near the old fridge suddenly I was plunged into darkness. I didn’t hear a click or that distinct popping noise of a bulb dying. It was just silent. Waves of fear washed over me as my mind raced. I had to do something. I ran towards the next light feeling invisible hands reaching for me as I moved.
Click.
Nothing.
The lights weren’t working. I pulled the chain again keeping my eyes shut tight just praying that when I pulled it again I’d see a flash of light through my eyelids. But I didn’t. It was dark. The only light in the basement was the subtle glow of the streetlights coming through the tiny basement windows. I told myself on repeat there was nothing there and monsters weren’t real, trying to find any shred of bravery left in me.
I took a deep breath as I flung the door of the freezer open and grabbed the things my grandmom had asked me to bring up. I started turning to run back to the stairs when I heard the worst noise I could have imagined at that moment. The basement door slammed shut loudly and forcefully. WACK.
“No, no, no, no, no! Please no!” I scrambled up the stairs as fast as my body would carry me and tried desperately to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. The door didn’t have a lock on it, but it did stick in the frame sometimes and was hard for even a grown adult to open…. let alone a young girl. My grandparents never closed it for exactly that reason. “Grandmom? Grandpa?? Someone PLEASE. PLEASE open the door!” I dropped everything I was holding and violently shook the door handle as hard as I could. I yanked and pulled on it desperately, but it didn’t move.
The door opened in towards the basement so ramming myself into wasn’t an option. But truthfully, I wasn’t strong enough to unstick the door, let alone bash my way through it. Then a horrible thought crept into my mind. The door faced inward. There was no draft at all, let alone one strong enough to have done that. Someone had to have slammed it like that… from inside the basement.
Then I remembered just to the left of the fridge was the cellar door that led to the outside… but I’d have to go all the way across the basement to get there. I sat for a moment with my head against the door and my back scrunched tightly against the wall trying to figure out what to do when I heard a noise from below.
Shhhhrrhhhhh.
It was just a quiet little scuffle like someone dragging something across the concrete floor but it sounded like it was directly below me. I froze as I listened. There it was again.
Shhrrrhhkkhhh.
It sounded like it was moving out from under the stairs towards the bottom step. I was shaking so violently if someone had seen me they probably would have thought I was having a seizure. Maybe I was, I don’t really know.
“GRANDMOM!? GRANDPA!!?! PLEASE. PLEASE OPEN THE DOOR! PLEASE!” I slammed my fists as hard as I could against the door. From below me I heard the same sound, growing closer.
Ssshhhhhrrrrhhhh.
“PLEASE!” I slammed my fists so hard I had long, colorful bruises on them for over a week after. I’m truthfully amazed I didn’t break any bones in my hands. As I heard the noise again I turned my head towards the bottom of the stairs. I thought for a second I could make out the outline of some tall, lanky, dark figure hunched over just past the stairs, just beginning to stand up in the darkness below.
In that moment the purest form of fight or flight took over my body, it was almost like being possessed by someone else.. someone far braver and smarter than me. Before I could have any more thoughts, I launched myself through the gap in the railing onto the concrete floor. I hit the ground hard but I had too much adrenaline to care.
I heard some kind of deep, raspy, inhuman groan coming from behind me as I got back onto my feet and started running towards the cellar doors. I could hear whatever it was joints crackling and popping as it shuffled towards me making that awful dragging noise. I didn’t dare turn around to see it.
As I finally reached the little stairs leading to freedom I rammed my shoulder as hard as I could against the cellar doors. They were heavy and barely moved at all when I slammed into them, but I knew this was life or death. I wedged myself between the top step and one side of the doors and pushed myself and the door up with all the strength I had in me. I heard the raspy groan growing closer and louder. I pushed the door as hard as I could until finally I could see the back yard. I felt something unnaturally cold and bony swipe against my leg as I fell out onto the ground.
“GatorSwampWitch?” I heard my grandmom say in a completely confused voice from over by the pond, “honey.. what are you doing?”
“I.. the… basement… the door….. slammed shut,” I panted, my mind still racing. As the comfort of adults being with me again started to melt the fear off me, I gained enough courage to look down the cellar steps. For just a moment, I saw something slink away back into the darkness. It looked pale and bony and just… wrong. I saw a singular bloodshot eye that was far too big and wide with no iris as it vanished into the darkness. As soon as that eye connected sight with mine the fear returned and I slammed the door shut aggressively.
“Baby, what are you doing? Are you okay?” My grandmom started to make her way over to me with a look of grave concern on her face. “What happened to you?” I look down at myself. I was covered in dust and dirt, bleeding in a few places. The side of my body that hit the basement floor when I jumped off the stairs was covered in scraps with purple bruises beginning to form underneath. The sides of my fists were swollen and already beginning to change colors from banging so hard against the door.
After I gained my composure for a moment I looked at my grandmom’s sweet, concerned face. “The basement door slammed shut on me and I thought I heard… saw… I thought. Something else was down there. I was yelling for you guys but no one answered me.” I knew as I was saying it she wasn’t going to believe me that something was down there. I shook my head and covered my face in my hands.
“I’m so sorry, honey, we came outside to feed the fish when you went down. Can’t hear anything from out here.. Not at our age, anyway.” She smiled playfully but dropped her smile once she realized how shaken up I really was, “The dark can play tricks on your mind sometimes. That’s probably all it was” She smiled again and rubbed her hand against my back gently, “why don’t you go inside and get yourself washed up and we’ll watch a movie when we’re done out here, maybe some ice cream?”
I walked inside from the back of the house so I wouldn’t have to go past the basement. As I was washing all the dirt off myself and cleaning up my scrapes I heard the distinct pop of the basement door unsticking followed by the slow creak of the hinges. I froze in place, listening for every possible sound. It was quiet. I peeked my head out the little window to see both of my grandparents were still outside by the pond. The bathroom was in the same hallway as basement door so I got on the ground and looked under the crack of the door.
I couldn’t see much, but I could see that the basement door was wide open now and a few of the things I had dropped sitting on the steps. I didn’t see movement and I couldn’t hear the grotesque raspy groans or crackling of that… thing moving. I opened the door slowly trying not to make a sound and stepped into the hallway. I inched closer towards the steps keeping my eyes fixed on the black void of the basement.
Nothing was there.
I slid my way past the open basement door into the kitchen to grab a flashlight. I grabbed the flashlight and pointed it all around into the dark basement. Still nothing. By some miracle, none of the things I dropped fell off the stairs and were all still between the first and third steps. “It’s all in your head. Grandmom is right. Nothing was there. You’re okay” I told myself keeping the flashlight fixed towards the steps.
I knelt down as far back from the actual basement as I could to grab the things I dropped. Just as I was about to grab the last item I heard a dishearteningly familiar sound. A slow, dragging shuffle combined with popping and crackling.
Not from the basement.
From behind me.
I turned my head towards the hallway and then felt the life force drain out of me as my eyes once again met those horrible, iris-less, bloodshot eyes.
Whatever it was… was tall and thin, covered in semi-translucent pale flesh that seemed like it was draped over the thing’s “skeleton”. It didn’t seem like it was attached in any meaningful way. Its arms and torso were both too long and skinny.. so were its horrible bony fingers with black, rotten nails. And its face.
Its fucking face…
Two bulging, bloodshot eyes that were too close together with tiny black dots in the middle… a long, thin mouth with no lips that were just parted enough to reveal what seemed to be rows of thin, yellow-orange, needle-like teeth. It seemed to have no expression on its face, but looking at it pierced through my soul with hopelessness. It looked like the result of a mad scientist trying to combine an emaciated human-alien hybrid with an angler fish or something horrible like that.
Fear once again took over. I tried to scream but instead my mouth just hung open silently. I wanted to run, but my body betrayed me. I was paralyzed kneeling on the floor just staring at this thing. It slowly began to move towards me making those horrible fucking noises.
The way it moved was unnatural. It was almost like when you’re watching someone move in a strobe light. Disjointed, like it was teleporting a few inches at a time more than walking with its legs.. despite the noises it made as it moved.
It was within a few feet of me as it began reaching out towards me with its horrible, twisted fingers. As it reached out to touch me, my body abruptly released me from fear paralysis and I screamed at the top of my lungs. I didn’t know I was capable of making a noise that loud. I screamed so loud I seemed to startle the thing for a second. It paused before turning its head 180 degrees with a sickening crunch to face the back door.
I heard the door fly open and my grandparents both calling my name with almost as much fear as I had. The thing let out a wailing, groaning scream for lack of a better word and fled back into the basement. As I sat there shaking like a leaf I saw my grandparents standing at the end of the hallway.
“What… a-th-wha-?” I’d never seen my grandparents look scared before. My grandmom rushed towards me with a quickness I didn’t know she was capable of. She quickly ushered me out of the house as she yelled to my grandfather directing him to go back out the door, “Call the police. NOW.”
I don’t remember most of the rest of the night. My grandparents rushed me outside and we all stood in their driveway and waited for them to arrive. It felt like hours to me but it was probably less than 10-20 minutes before they arrived. They searched the whole house and yard but they found nothing.
When they asked us all for details about what we saw, my grandparents said it was a tall, skinny, naked, hairless man they’d seen run down into the basement… but I knew it wasn’t a man. It wasn’t human. I didn’t tell the police that, though. I knew no adult would really take me seriously if I explained the full extent of everything. I didn’t want this to just be dismissed as a child’s overactive imagination, even if my grandparents had seen it too. I just told the police the basement door slammed shut, I thought I heard someone down there, and then saw someone in the hallway when I went to pick the things back up. I think some part of me just didn’t really want to relive the whole thing again either.
They did a full investigation of the basement, the house, searched the surrounding neighborhood and woods, but nothing ever came of it as far as anyone told me.
Thankfully, less than 6 months later my grandparents ended up moving to a retirement home that was closer to our house and I never had to go down into that basement again… but I will never forget what happened that night.
I still sleep with the lights on a lot of the time and I do everything in my power to avoid having any dark or open spaces behind me. I hate to admit that, but I’d rather people think I’m a pussy than ever have to see that thing again. I don’t think I’ll ever feel truly safe again for the rest of my life.
It’s been more than 15 years since it happened, but some part of me will always be on edge… waiting for my gaze to meet those horrible eyes again.
Unfortunately here’s the link to Part II
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1b3apfo/the_basement_ii_a_sharp_downturn/