Hello, I’m posting this here because I need help understanding my circumstances, because I’m not sure how I’ll ever be able to understand it. I’m scared it may be too late.
For context: I recently graduated from college, and have started a new full time job. I moved into a new house with my girlfriend of two years (who I’ll call Alice) in a big city. The house is small but cosy. It’s a bit old but it’s been renovated to some degree, except for the basement which has not been finished.
While touring the house with the realtor before we purchased it I was apprehensive due to the basement. The basement is small, grey, dusty and windowless, like most are and it comes with a washer and dryer for free (which is great, Alice and I aren’t very wealthy). The problem is, in the wall on the opposite side from the washer and dryer, there’s a gargantuan hole. The hole stretches the entire length of the wall and takes up the entire upper half of it as well (though the wall is relatively small). The hole is full of debris and chunks of wall and there’s no end to it in sight. It seems almost never ending due to how deep it goes. The realtor says he doesn’t know where it came from, it’s been in the house since before the last owners but it should easily be fixed and it shouldn’t cause us any issue. This reassured Alice and I, so we bought the house.
We moved in without a hiccup, and life went on as usual. Alice and I both worked out menial jobs, and did our chores, while making time for dates in between. We even had our third anniversary while living at this house. We alternated laundry duty weekly, and we both dreaded the job because of the hole. In all honesty it was pretty creepy because it’s so large, dark, and deep. As months went by I noticed a few things about the hole while washing and drying our clothes.
First off, there is quite a bit of material that should not be there. The wall is made of cement, yet the debris in the hole include brick, glass, and splintered wood as well as crushed cement. There are also some forms of trash, such as bottle caps and bits of shredded paper. These materials have no logical reason to be there, which makes me wonder about the previous owner and if they were throwing trash into the hole.
Second off, I cannot see the end of the hole, even with a flashlight. I’ve tried a myriad of times, but there’s just more darkness. I know it’s illogical to say it goes on forever, but it really feels like it does. I’m an extremely logical person so I know that’s not possible. I never believe in the paranormal, it’s just that sometimes I just want to jump into the hole and crawl my way through it to see how far it goes.
Lastly, the hole has a distinct smell that I feel has slowly gotten stronger we have lived in this house. It smells acidic, like lemon and vinegar. The basement reeks of dust and age, but when you get near the hole the acidic smell begins to overpower it. The smell often induces headaches for both me and Alice, and it’s something we’ve been complaining about often after we walk past it as we do the laundry. This is the most confusing part of this whole ordeal, the smell. It’s illogical, and I don’t understand it. Often you start to smell something rotting in a hole like that and find a dead animal, but it’s so odd to smell scents so often associated with cleanliness wafting out a gaping hole.
Now we’re getting to the reason I’m writing this post. My girlfriend Alice has gone missing.
It was her turn to do the laundry and she went down to put clothes in the washer while we were watching TV. She just never came back up. I went down there to check on her after about ten minutes, concerned that something happened with the washer and she was trying to deal with it alone. Alice was often independent to a fault, rarely if ever accepting help from anyone. That was most likely a side effect of her time in the foster system as a teen.
The room was completely empty, Alice was nowhere to be seen. The washer was loaded with clothes and on, but Alice had not pushed the button to wash them yet. There was an acidic smell around the washer and dryer which made my skin crawl. It was so odd due to the typical dusty smell always being so strong. I noticed something even weirder after checking the inside of the washer. Along with our dirty laundry, the clothes Alice was wearing just minutes previous were at the top of the pile.
That catches us up to now, that whole ordeal was about twenty minutes ago. I’m about to call the cops so they can look for Alice. I know I’m going to be suspect number one when they get here but I don’t care. I just want my girlfriend to be here, I want to know she’s still alive. Where did she go? What happened? Why were her clothes in the washer?
I’m not a superstitious person, I don’t believe anything science can’t prove, yet for some reason I feel like the hole took Alice. I’m scared, and as I’ve been writing this the entire house has started to smell like lemon and vinegar.