I’m sorry for the delay between stories- the recovery process has been long and painful. I’m still not really okay, but I can at least move around enough to type this all out now.
Here’s the link to the previous two parts of my seemingly never-ending nightmare if you haven’t read it.
Part 2:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1b3apfo/the_basement_ii_a_sharp_downturn/
Part 1:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1avhfnl/the_basement/
Ultra quick summary for those who just want to read this: when I was a kid I encountered some kinda awful creature in my grandparent’s basement- 20 years later I went back to their old house to make peace with what happened. Only for it to follow me home and torment my every waking (and unconscious) moment.
I felt like it was constantly watching me from every dark corner… I would constantly see it out of the corner of my eye- just waiting for me to slip up. By that point I wasn’t sure if it was the lack of sleep messing with me or if I was really seeing it in the shadows. I was really starting to lose it. Or maybe it was being blinded by bright light 24/7.
Whenever the light touched the places it touched me it burned and stung horrible, but it was something I’d resigned myself to having to get used to.
Every time I fell asleep it was waiting for me in my dreams. They’d always start off as more or less normal dreams and then suddenly I’d plunged into darkness and it’d start its awful fucking two-toned whisper screaming into my head. It’d happened so many times it was starting to feel almost normal- in a really fucked up way. I knew that when I’d go to sleep it would be there without fail. It’s amazing what humans can get used to given enough time. Or maybe horrible, I’m not sure.
Nonetheless, it still terrified me to my core and I’d wake up drenched in sweat and panting like I just ran a 10k. Every day was starting to feel more like being in Hell. The people around me could tell- everyone was constantly asking what was going on with me and whispering when they thought I wasn’t watching. What could I even say other than, “I’m just tired”?
I suffered in silence as best I could- up until my partner started having nightmares about it too. I knew the second he woke up from one of those dreams what happened. The paleness, the sheer terror on his face, the way he looked at me… I knew.
It’s one thing to relentlessly plague me, but my loved ones? That required action. I started planning. There had to be some way to find out more about this thing. I knew it didn’t like light and seemed to go to great lengths to avoid it, so that was a start.
It was the last thing I wanted, but I did know one place I could find information. My grandparents’ old house. That book was probably still in the basement where we’d left it. I sat in my bed for a long time agonizing over what I should do. I REALLY didn’t want to go back. I punched the wall, I cried, I screamed into pillows, I pleaded with any kind of higher powers to save me, but ultimately… I knew I didn’t really have many other options.
No one was going to come save me from this.
Finally, after hours of going back and forth with pros and cons, I decided to just go before I changed my mind again. I grabbed as many flashlights, lanterns, glow sticks, and anything else that emitted light, as I could fit into my bag.
“Please tell me you’re not doing what I think you’re doing,” I heard a voice from behind me as I was about to leave. It was my partner standing in the hallway looking lost but angry, “You’re just going to walk right into its trap? You know it wants you to go back. Whatever it is, it wants you to interact with it. Please… please don’t do this.”
“I know,” I sighed heavily, “I don’t want to go back there. I know it’ll be waiting for me, but this has to end. I’d rather die fighting than live in fear of this thing for the rest of my life.”
“If you die in there, you will have lived in fear for the rest of your life. This is fucking stupid! I don’t know what the fuck that thing is, but clearly it wants to do terrible things to you, and you’re just going to let it??” He sounded furious but I could tell he was really just scared.
So was I.
“I have to do this. I don’t want to live like this. I’ve spent the past 20 years of my life being scared. It has to stop….. one way or another.”
“Then I’m coming with you. If I can’t stop you, I’m at least not going to let you do this alone.” Now I heard nothing but fear in his voice despite his best attempts to hide it. I begged him to stay and just let me handle this alone… I didn’t want to lose him. I really wasn’t sure this was something I’d survive. But ultimately, I realized I couldn’t really stop him if I tried. Even if I sped off in my own car without him, he’d follow me in his own. He knew where it was.
It was about 4pm when we arrived at the house. It still hadn’t been sold, but since I hadn’t told anyone I was coming it was all locked up. We walked around the perimeter checking to see if any windows were open, but they were all locked too. We were standing in the driveway when we heard a loud crash coming from the back of the house. Before we even got to the source, I knew exactly what it was.
The cellar doors I had scrambled out of so many years ago were wide open. Pieces of the chain that had been on it keeping it shut were scattered around on the ground. We looked at each other with that “fuck, are we really doing this?” face before starting to get ourselves set up.
My partner and I brought our solar powered floodlights and positioned them all around the basement windows and the cellar entrance. I thought at one point I heard a noise coming from the basement as it filled with light, but I pushed past the racing thoughts and kept focused on the task at hand.
I did my best to remain angry at the creature for ruining my life and fucking with my partner to keep from getting scared, but I have to admit it wasn’t really working. I have no words to properly express how deeply terrifying that thing is.
No description could ever truly do it justice, but here’s the best way I can think of to explain the feeling it gives me:
Imagine you’re swimming in deep, murky water and then you see an enormous alligator swimming towards you. Its eyes are locked on you. You realize you’re extremely far from land, and then the alligator vanishes under the water. Imagine how you’d feel at that moment. You know it’s in the water, you know it’s watching you, you know you’re not safe, you just don’t know when the bite is coming and you’ll be dragged under.
That’s been how every day of my life has felt since this creature came into it.
Once the basement was lit up brighter than the New York City skyline, we worked up the courage to go down there. Something was immediately off. The few things that had been left down there when my mom and I visited looked to have been violently thrown around the room. There were torn book pages and broken glass from the lightbulbs scattered everywhere.
My partner gave me a look pleading with me to get the hell out of here, but I pressed on. As I walked past the basement stairs, I saw that same leather journal that had been haunting my dreams sitting in the exact spot as before- open.
I closed my eyes and took a breath before finally picking it up. The way it felt in my hands made me want to throw it- or throw up- but I resisted the urge. It was painfully cold just like the things touch and the leather felt wet and fleshy- nothing even comparable to normal leather. It felt more like holding a cold, wet, bloated corpse than a book.
The page that was open was the page with my childhood drawing of the creature. I angrily ripped it out of the book and shredded it into confetti and stomped on the pieces. “Fuck you!” I yelled as I kicked up the pieces, “I know you can hear me- FUCK YOU!”
I looked back down at the book and under the page I tore out I saw the words “with pleasure”. That made my heart stop dead. “What the FUCK.” I threw the book back onto the ground and began to slowly back away from it.
Just then I heard the front door open above me. My partner gave me a horrified look while inching back towards the cellar stairs. I put my hand up to tell him to stop and be quiet. I heard a voice call out, “Uh, Hello??” from somewhere above us.
“Babe, we’re gonna get arrested for trespassing! God damn it, what the fuck!” My partner whisper yelled at me trying to motion me to follow him, but I kept my hand up, listening. “Uh, Hello??” the voice repeated. I knew it was that thing trying to lure me upstairs away from my lights.
“FUCK. YOU!” I yelled as I slammed my fist against the railing to the stairs, “COME DOWN AND FACE ME IN THE LIGHT YOU PATHETIC LITTLE FUCK”
I heard a loud laugh, “too….. scared to come….. face me yourself?” the voice changed mid-sentence from the human voice it had been using back to its own. I turned to look at my partner who was now standing a few feet from the cellar stairs, wide eyed and pale.
“Please,” he said looking beyond distraught. He extended his hand towards me while continuing to back up closer to the stairs. I shook my head. I wasn’t going to keep running away. I wasn’t willing to keep living in fear anymore despite my heart practically beating out of my chest.
This had to stop.
This was it.
It was time to face this thing or die trying.
“I’m not scared of you,” I walked towards the bottom of the basement stairs and stared up, waiting for it to appear. I heard something resembling a laugh as the entire house began to shake violently. I’d never experienced an earthquake, but I had to imagine this was close to what it was like.
The house made disturbingly strange groans and creeks as dust and debris fell from the ceiling. I saw cracks beginning to shoot down the concrete basement walls. The rumbling was so loud it was deafening. It was so intense it made me involuntarily drop to my knees, covering my ears. All the while I could hear the thing laughing.
As suddenly as it started, it just stopped. I looked back at my partner again who was also kneeling on the floor with his hands over his head. “We need to get the fuck out of here, NOW!” He scrambled over to me, grabbing me firmly by the wrist, and pulling me towards the cellar entrance. I almost tried to resist him, but I really didn’t want to be down there anymore either. The fear was becoming too much to process.
CRUNCH. The floodlight from outside died with the sound of it being crushed violently. CRUNCH. Then the next. This continued all the way around to the ones lighting the cellar steps.
My partner was practically sprinting towards the cellar stairs as it slammed shut forcefully. I started pulling glow sticks out of my bag, snapping them and throwing them everywhere frantically. I grabbed out the brightest flashlights and faced them towards myself and my partner.
He tried with all his strength to push the cellar doors open, but they wouldn’t move. “Help me!”
We pushed with all of our strength, but it didn’t budge.
We kept pushing against the doors. It almost felt like maybe we were starting to get some leverage when something wacked the top of the door so hard it knocked us both backwards down the stairs.
My partner grabbed out his phone and started dialing 911 but his phone immediately shut off. “Fuck! FUCK! I shouldn’t have come down here. What the FUCK are we doing to do!? We’re going to fucking DIE.” He tried several times to get it to turn on, followed by my phone, but they were both completely dead, despite having been fully charged when we arrived.
I heard something moving swiftly above us followed by the sound of the basement door creaking open. I pointed the brightest flashlight at the steps. Nothing was there. My partner went back to struggling to push the cellar doors open but was getting nowhere.
All that effort
With loud pops of the bulbs exploding, the flashlights went out one by one leaving only the dim red-ish glow of the glowsticks scattered on the floor around us.
For nothing
“I am not scared of you,” I tried to say firmly but it came out shaky at best. I could hear my partner still desperately pushing against the door trying to get it open.
You can lie to yourself.
You can’t lie to me.
I can…… taste it on you.
Part of me kept praying I was going to wake up at home in my well-lit bedroom, but that didn’t happen.
I heard it start moving down the stairs, each step creaking loudly as it moved. I saw its long, bony fingers with its hideous rotten black nails caress the railing almost playfully. Every movement of its body making those horrible crackling pops like it was painfully dislocating joints with every movement.
I quickly cracked more glowsticks and shoved them into my partner’s hands. I looked him in the eyes and gave him a knowing look. I tried to take in every detail of him. I had an unbearable pit in my stomach that this would be the last time I ever got to look at him.
As I stood up and turned away from him, I felt him slide something into my back pocket. I knew what it was immediately without having to look. I took another deep breath and stepped forward into the middle of the basement towards it.
As it finished descending down the stairs it slowly turned to face me directly. It seemed bigger than it had before. It was hunched down to keep from hitting the ceiling. As its eyes locked with me, it smiled revealing all its rows upon rows of disgusting needle-like teeth. (If you’ve ever seen the inside of a sea turtles’ mouth, picture that… but… worse).
I’d never seen it smile before and I wish I hadn’t. It made every cell in my body scream at me to run, but there was nowhere to go. It had us trapped and it knew it.
“What the fuck are YOU” I tried to take a step forward again but all I could manage was shifting my legs slightly. I felt like someone had switched Earth’s gravity out for Jupiter’s- like I was being crushed where I stood. It tilted its head slightly but said nothing.
Abruptly all the glow sticks scattered around the floor were flung backwards against the basement walls silhouetting the creature’s outline in the dim red glow. I heard the creature let out a disturbing, loud groan.
Before I could think or do anything else, it was on me.
Its bony hands clasped around my throat tightly as it lifted me off the ground and pulled me centimeters from its face. The searing pain of its icy touch shot through my body like a shotgun at point blank range.
I Am.
Your End.
I felt my body fading again as it had the last time it touched me. I was struggling to breathe and stay conscious. I reached into my back pocket and grabbed out what my partner had placed there- an ultra-bright distress flare we bought for our camping trips.
I heard the click of a lighter from behind me as the flare burst to life. While the creature was fixated on me, my partner had been slowly inching towards us. With the last ounce of my strength I swung my arm up as quickly as I could and shoved the flare directly into the thing’s mouth. It’s horrible teeth shredding my hand as I pulled it back out. I heard a piercing scream come from the thing as I hit the ground.
Then darkness.
I’m not sure how long I was unconscious for exactly, but the next thing I remember is my partner’s terrified face looking down. He was shaking me by the shoulders and pleading with me to wake up.
Once he saw that I was conscious again he pulled me off the floor and hugged me tight. I winced as I painfully lifted my arms to hug him back. My body was in agony, but it didn’t compare to the relief that neither of us were dead. I had really thought I’d seen him for the last time in this life.
“What happened to it?” I said weakly as I tried to scan around the basement. It was still only being lit up by the glowsticks against the walls, but I could see some kind of viscous, black ooze splattered all over the floor.
My partner just kept hugging me for a while before he finally told me, “It made some kind of horrible wailing-screaming noises and started leaking this black shit out of its mouth. That noise is seared into my brain… It was kind of thrashing and flailing around for a second before it… I don’t know. It just burst into these bizarre, white-ish looking flames and vanished. I don’t know if that was it dying or it that’s just how it… left? I don’t know. I really don’t. But please, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
I sat for a few minutes trying to get enough strength back to get on my feet. My throat burned and stung horribly where it grabbed me. I touched it gently and it sent a shockwave of pain through my body almost knocking me out again. Everything hurt.
Once I was finally able to stand, we gathered up our stuff. We debated if we should try to do anything about the black stuff all over the basement floor but decided neither of us were willing to touch it with a 50ft pole. The basement had been pretty fucked up before we ever came down here clearly. We felt bad for whoever’s problem this was, but we decided we should leave before any cops got involved.
Before we left, I looked at the book on the floor again. My partner came over to look at it too and then aggressively kicked in against the wall, landing in one of the puddles of black ooze. He looked back at me and I nodded approvingly.
By the time we finally left, it was dark outside. Hours had past somehow by this point but to us it felt more like a lifetime. As we shut the cellar doors and placed all the broken chain pieces back on top I felt a huge wave of relief wash over me. Even if it wasn’t dead, it felt like my world had changed. I had at least hurt it pretty badly if nothing else.
I was standing in the darkness and although feeling weak and like I’d aged 50 years in those few hours, I wasn’t afraid for the first time in my life.
-—-
It’s been about a week, and I haven’t seen it while awake or in my dreams- neither has my partner. Something deep in my soul feels that it probably isn’t dead, but maybe we hurt it enough to keep it away… at least for a while. I’ll take what I can get. Any amount of time I get to live free of its torment I count as a win.
It’s nice to be able to enjoy the darkness finally… it almost feels…
Comforting.