I have been a birthday entertainer since 2013. The job itself pays well enough, in my case anyway. Today, I got a message from someone on WhatsApp. The name on their account was simply Elena, and they had no profile picture. We exchanged greetings, and as many times before in my career, we started deciding on the price. The first offer they gave me was a staggering 1500 dollars for two hours. I first hesitated, as the highest price I have ever been offered in the last 10 years was 500 per hour for 1 hour. ‘This must be a prank!’ I thought to myself. I sat there, contemplating. The last few months had been quite rough on me, and I was growing more and more desperate for a bit of extra cash. I agreed to the offer, and I asked which character they wanted. They replied “Mickey Mouse” after a 2-minute pause. We agreed to meet on Friday, at two o’clock in the afternoon. They sent me the location, and it was a 2-hour drive from my house. I sighed, and for a second, I just really hoped it wasn’t just a stupid joke, and that I would end up in the middle of the desert or something. But then the number 1500 flew back into my mind, and I decided to start getting ready for the trip there; Friday was tomorrow.
As I started up my Honda Civic, I opened the navigator app on my phone, typed in the address, and slowly rolled out of the driveway. After 1 hour and 30 minutes of driving, I realized that I was driving to a quite isolated place. There were hardly any cars on the streets, and a lot of the houses were abandoned seemingly for decades. I was starting to doubt the offer more with each second. As I drove up to my final destination, I was as doubtful as ever. It looked like a half-abandoned house, the only house on the street. ‘Well, at least it’s not an empty patch of deserted land,’ I tried to reassure myself, failing miserably. I got out of the car and started walking towards the house. I walked up to the door and knocked once, twice, and thrice, but no one answered. I tried the doorbell, but it didn’t ring. I knocked even harder, but there was no answer, again. I rolled my eyes and called the woman with my phone. The voice I heard was not what I had expected. I was the voice of an old woman, it seemed she was 70 or even more by the fragileness of her voice. “Hello,” she said in a heart-warming, sweet voice. I stammered with my answer for a few seconds, not expecting the woman to be elderly. “Uh, hello! Is this Elena” I patiently waited for the woman to answer. “Yes, you are right, I am Elena. “Are you the birthday entertainer?” She said, “Yes, I am. Could you please open the door?” I replied. “Oh yes, of course.” In a few seconds, I heard the lock click, and the door creaked open. “Come on in,” Elena told me. And I followed her into the house.
The first red flag was the strong stench of something, something that smelled quite terrible. It was not the stench of old carpet or mold, but something worse. ‘Did Elena not smell this stench?’ The woman seemed to read my mind; as soon as I thought of the stench, Elena told me “I hope you are not bothered by the smell, I accidentally burned my pie in the oven.” Except the smell was in no way of burnt pie. I asked about the payment, and Elena explained that I would get the money after the birthday. She also said that she had two sons, Martin and Mike. She told me they were playing in their rooms and that they were both 8 years old. ‘Did she adopt the kids?’ I thought. She made tea for me and asked me to put my costume on and wait until she woke the boys up. She went upstairs and I started sipping the tea.
After about 7 minutes had passed, I started getting nervous, and after 12 minutes I was genuinely worried. ‘Had Elena maybe tripped on the stairs, and I hadn’t heard it? Or had something else happened?’ As those thoughts emerged in my mind, Elena finally came down the stairs and told me that the boys will go downstairs in a few minutes. Seeing that I had finished the tea, she asked “You liked the tea, didn’t you? It’s our family recipe.” I thanked her, the tea was quite delicious. Soon, I heard quick and light footsteps on the stairs. ‘Must be the boys.’ I looked at the stairs and saw two very skinny, and malnourished little boys. After them, 2 other similarly skinny boys descended the stairs. “Hello, Mickey!” One of the children said. With the very strange scent, and the malnourishment of these children, something was very wrong here.
As I proceeded to do my best Mickey Mouse impression for the thousandth time, the children seemed to not act on their own, but instead as if somebody forced them to. Every word of excitement was dry and strained. At some point, the old woman, Elena, decided to go to the shower and informed me about it. “I’m going to go for a quick wash, while you continue to entertain my sweet, sweet kids.” As soon as I and the children heard the sound of a shutting door, they started frantically saying things to me, like “Help us please,” and “We don’t want to be here anymore!” Before I thought something was off, but now, with the children apparently pleading with me, everything was definitely, extremely wrong.
I asked the children to slow down and explain everything. One of the kids came forward, he was the skinniest of them all. He started explaining, “That thing… It trapped us in this home and kept us here for months. It only fed us 3 days of the week and beat us if we tried to escape.” I asked the children why they referred to the woman as ‘it’ and not ‘she’, and their reply chilled me to the bone. “It isn’t a person.” After hearing those words, I started thinking about getting these poor kids out of here. The first idea was to try the front and back doors, but before I even got the chance to try, the children said “Doors are always locked.” I thought of a reply and asked them, “What about the windows?” They replied similarly as before, “Windows are always locked too.” I tried to search for the keys, opening every drawer as silently as I could. I took a knife from the kitchen and soon found two newspapers in one of the living room cabinets. The first title read: Four children go missing on Halloween Night, and the second: The four children that went missing in late 2022 still haven’t been found, and families losing hope. As I stood up, thinking about the newspapers, I started feeling drowsy, but more extreme, like seasickness and being on a rollercoaster for 10 times straight combined. Soon after starting to feel sick, I felt a heavy object hit the back of my head, and the last thing I heard before my vision completely blacked out were the shrill screams of the kids.
I woke up tied to a pole with a very tight rope, so tight that my arms felt numb and dull. I was in what appeared to be the basement. Here, that wretched smell was the strongest. It attacked my nostrils almost immediately after opening my eyes. Almost everything was covered in webs, and it was very dark. After struggling against the rope for 10 minutes, I was covered in sweat and realized there was no way to get out of there. I fell asleep after about 2 hours. The sounds that woke me up were sounds of screams, then crying, then steps. Someone was coming down here. I played dead and soon heard the door to the basement opening. I heard the kids crying and mumbling “I’m sorry… so sorry…” and then the door slammed shut. I realized the kids were alone and opened my eyes. The kids seemed happy that I was with them down here and they started explaining that the thing would trap them in here for days without food if they behaved not how it said or if it was just in a bad mood. One of the kids said, “When the thing hit you with the baseball bat, the knife you took fell out of your hand, and when the thing turned around, we quickly picked it up from the floor.” I quickly asked them to carefully cut the rope that kept me tied up to the pole. And after a few minutes of the kids cutting the rope carefully with their fragile hands, it gave away and a rush of blood to my cold hands.
With me now freed, we started thinking of what to do. ‘I can’t stay here for long, Elena… or rather ‘it’ as the kids call her, will hopefully kill me, if not something much worse. The kids told me there was a hatch that led to the bathroom on the first floor, and that they used it only if they had to go to the bathroom, or if it was needed to get out for food or drink. The kids gave me the knife and wished me good luck. I climbed the ladder, opened the hatch and I was in the bathroom. As I quietly listened for the thing, I realized that there was no sound except my breathing. I figured it had gone upstairs, and I very quietly opened the door, knife in hand. I looked around and thought that this was my chance to search for the key. I searched downstairs, the key was nowhere to be found. I convinced myself that the only way out was with the key, so I decided to search upstairs. I scoured every drawer and cabinet. Until finally finding the key in an upstairs room. I breathed a sigh in my mind, and silently sprinted downstairs into the bathroom. I opened the hatch on the floor and quickly descended the ladder. I explained my plan to the kids and we got ready to get out of this hell on earth.
We climbed up the ladder, and hardly fitting in the small bathroom, listened for the thing. it seemed to pass the bathroom and go to the basement door. ‘Now is our chance.’ I thought to myself. I whispered for the kids to get ready, slowly opened the door, and slipped out, running for the front door. I only had one key and I hoped sincerely that it fit the lock. And to my horror, it didn’t. The thing must have heard me trying to open the lock, and fast, loud, heavy, and definitely not made by an elder, footsteps sounded in the air. I exchanged brief glances with the children and we ran to the back door. I only ran for half a second, when I felt a blunt force in my side. I flew into the wall beside me and had a brief glimpse of the apparent ‘thing’. It was not the sweet elderly woman, but her elongated and stretched body, skin torn in some parts. My heart skipped a beat when it reached to grab me, but I thrust the knife into its chest. It produced the loudest sound I’ve ever heard. It was a mixture of a bear’s roar and an injured antelope’s cry. The sound left my ears ringing and I ran towards the door jamming the key in… I don’t know how to describe the feeling of euphoria when the lock clicked. The kids ran outside and followed closely. The thing tripped on the steps as I opened the door of my car. I jammed the keys in with such force I almost broke my hand. I started up the car and floored it, tires screeching
.We drove back to my home, I gave the kids some food and called the police, telling them about how I found the missing kids and so on. The day they investigated, I told them the location of the house, and they told me something strange. The house was apparently abandoned for seven years. They explored the house and found three bloodied rags and an old woman’s decomposing corpse, and they said that they had identified her. Her name was Elena. They had also said that the parents of all of the children… had been found dead in their homes over the past year. All of the deaths were caused by blunt trauma. I had adopted the kids and have been living with them for a month.
Today I wrote this all down. Please do not enter strangers’ houses, even if the people living there seem nice.
They might not be people at all.