I grew up in a haunted house.
The whole family knew the house was haunted. We’d all experienced paranormal events together and apart within the house.
It was never a constant everyday thing. There would be periods of inactivity and periods of activity. There were “hot spots” you could avoid to try and keep from having a pants shitting experience, but there were no guarantees.
My mom believed the ghosts were there to help her. I have no idea what gave her that idea. None of what they did was the slightest bit friendly. It wasn’t unusual to be in real physical danger.
Humans are very adaptable. They can live in just about any environment if given the time to adjust. I had adjusted.
I was 13 years old and waking up for school. The house hadn’t made a peep in months. The morning was peaceful. The scent of tea and toast. My grandmother waiting to take me to school.
There was nothing to indicate something was wrong. The temperature hadn’t dropped. No unusual noises. No glass flying across the rooms. Still, my stomach was in knots.
Usually, when I’d get a bad feeling, I couldn’t wait to leave the house. This time, I dreaded the thought. I asked my grandma to let me stay home. That was a hard no. You didn’t miss school unless you were dying. Not on Grams watch. Besides, she’d come just to ready me and get me to school. Mom was passed out in bed as usual.
She was a drunk. It wouldn’t be til noon or later that she’d rise out of bed for some coffee and smokes.
At school, I was a wreck. I just knew something sinister was happening at home. My school wasn’t far. I could easily walk there and back. I couldn’t tell you why Gram always insisted on dropping me off and picking me up. I decided to bail.
I walked off the school property and in the direction of home. The closer I got, the sicker I felt. More than once, I was overcome with nausea and forced to sit down.
When I finally made it to my house, I was chilled to the bone. There, it stood dark and unforgiving. More menacing than it had ever felt before. I felt physically repelled away from it.
Everything in me screamed not to go in. The thought of my mother passed out inside forced me up the front steps.
When I walked in, the house was dark and cold. My grandmother always opened up all the curtains to let the sunshine in every morning. They had all been closed. Not a single light was on. My teeth were chattering. It had been warm just outside.
I called for my mom and headed for her bedroom. Her usual spot in bed was empty. Next, I headed for the garage; her smoking spot. She wasn’t there either. She wasn’t responding to me. I searched the entire upstairs; no mom.
The house was “upside down.” Meaning you were upstairs when you entered. The downstairs was the spookiest area of the whole house. No one ever went down there. I stared down the steps and called for mom again. No answer.
With a heavy heart, I descended the steps.
The downstairs had a living room and a master bedroom. Despite many attempts to make it a livable space, its issues stopped it from becoming anything but a no man’s land. Electricity hardly worked down there. When it did choose to work, you could count on it only lighting a single lamp. The master bedroom would have been beautiful. But its accompanied master bath had been left in unfinished ruins. The master bath was the one room you could always count on something paranormal happening. It was a room full of dirt, rats, and wooden support beams. The only fully constructed thing in there was a small door. It was at the back of the room, no taller than that of a 4 year old child. The door was ornate. Carvings were etched in with gold trim and a golden handle. It led to a secret entrance/exit at the side of the home. My mother (and father before he left) had spent thousands attempting to finish that bathroom. Construction workers frequently quit. Anything that did get built fell apart, and like the rest of the downstairs, electricity refused its job.
Mom kept that door bolted up, and we all knew why.
I was in the living room and turned to find the bedroom door open. Even worse, inside the bedroom, the master bath door was also wide open. A deep dread filled me.
At this point, I was sobbing. I was begging my mother to answer me. I could see she wasn’t in the living room or the bedroom. I did not want to check the closets or the “bathroom.”
I walked to the open doorway of what would’ve been the master bath. It was just as I’d remembered. Pitch Black. Cold. Horrifying. I called my mother’s name into the darkness, and this time, I got a reply.
“Tamsin? Help, I’ve hurt my ankle!”
I rushed inside. The door swung closed behind me. I swung around to try and open it, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried not to panic. The little door was there in the darkness. I would have to cross the expanse of the room to get to it, but I knew it would open. I don’t know how, but I’d always inherently known that the door was an escape hatch. For situations such as these.
“Mom?”
Nothing. My eyes were slowly adjusting to the dark. It was a dangerous room to explore blind. It was unfinished, and it didn’t even have a floor. Nails and other tools had been discarded by construction workers over the many years of the houses life. Mom hadn’t been the only owner to try and fail with that cursed room. Though I could always hear rats from the room, I never saw a single one.
“Mom!!!!!!!!!”
Nothing. My eyes explored the shapes of the room. The beams. A blue tarp. No mom. In the distance, I could see a doorknob. My way out.
I continued to call for my mother as I carefully maneuvered my way to the door. If this ever had been made a bathroom, it would’ve been huge.
Relief flooded me like a drug when I finally reached the little door. Its golden handle was warm in my hand, seemingly unaffected by the chill of the room.
“Tamsin? I’m over here! You’re going the wrong way!” My ankle…”
Mom’s voice. It was coming all the way back from where I’d started. The door in the bedroom.
I opened the little door to let the sunshine in. Maybe it would let me see through the darkness.
“TAMSIN NO DONT LEAVE ME IN HERE”
She was practically shrieking. The sunlight illuminated very little of the room. I couldn’t see all the way across to the voices origin.
I stood by the sunlight, unwilling to leave the safety of its warmth.
“Mom? You weren’t answering me…”
“I’m sorry I’m in so much pain… I think- I think it’s broken. Please, please come get me.”
“I’m going to go call 911.”
“NO!!!!!!!! DONT LEAVE ME IN HERE PLEASE”
She sounded desperate. The situation was far too strange. I was hesitant to leave her in the room and hesitant to believe she was there at all. It did make sense to me why she’d want so badly to leave that room. But I still hadn’t seen her, and I wanted out of that room myself.
“Can you move? Try to come towards the light.”
“I can’t! I can’t move! You need to come get me!”
“Why were you down here?”
“I thought the cat had gotten in here, I heard noises.”
This, too, was plausible. The cat would occasionally meow from inside the room. With both doors leading inside still locked up tight. We never did figure out how she got in there.
“Mom, I’m scared, I’m going to call 911 you need help”
“NO DONT LEAVE ME ALONE DOWN HERE”
It sounded like she had begun to cry. Tears rolled down my face as well.
“I couldn’t lift you even if I found you. We need help!”
“I could get up with your help just come and get me”
“Where are you? I wasn’t able to find you when I came in.”
“I’m right by the door! Now come get me!”
I was still hesitant. My instinct told me not to leave the safety of the little door. My logic told me she couldn’t be right by the door or I would have seen her when I’d come in. She claimed she couldn’t move. She couldn’t have moved spots then could she? Despite all this, the voice of my mother begging me to stay kept me in place. I told myself I was being silly. That she was hurt. She needed my help. I had to go get her.
Suddenly, there was a commotion at the front of the house. I could hear it from the little doors opening. Sirens. Voices. I was thrilled. I didn’t know how help had come, but it had.
“Mom! I can hear sirens in the front! I’ll lead them to you!”
Inhuman screaming came from “mom.” Whatever was there in the darkness hovered just outside the sunlight pouring in. It screamed at the sunlights edge, blowing dust and dirt everywhere.
I couldn’t see it clearly. Its eyes glowed a pale white, but the glow was dim. By where the eyes were located; this thing was huge. I could only judge its appearance by the movement in the dark. It stood a great height, and when it’s arms flew out, they extended the expanse of the room. It never crossed the threshold into the sunlight.
I scurried through the doorway and ran to the voices I heard in the backyard.
That’s when I first saw her. Mom was on the ground of the backyard. Blood had pooled underneath her. She was bent in ways no human ever should be. Paramedics were working on her. They didn’t even notice me until I started screaming.
The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a truck wrapped in a blanket. Grammy drove in and held me in her arms.
Turns out mom had gone out onto the deck that morning after we left. She’d hoisted herself up on the wooden railing and took a swan dive onto the cement patch below. She had remained there broken and unconscious until our neighbor saw her from her own back deck.
It took months to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Still, she survived. She spent the rest of her life in agony from the injuries. She walked with a hunched back, unable to stand straight up, and she limped from a broken leg and shattered ankle.
She was never able to climb the stairs of the house again.
She never said a thing to me about what happened. Why she had done it. But I did learn from Grammy that when she finally came to, she told the doctors that a demon had chased her onto and over the ledge.