Recently my girlfriend Audrey and I moved into a new house. This is the story of the following week that led us to where we are now.
It was Saturday when we finally made the big move.
Having had a late start to the day, as the movers had a previous appointment to ours, it took longer than expected. We didn’t end up at our new house until five in the afternoon.
Our house is surrounded by woods and the sun had started to dip below the treeline, casting our house into the shadows of the late afternoon light, in the hours just before twilight.
It’s your basic country home, two stories with a basement, very square, six rooms, two bathrooms, a little porch, and set back in the woods on a road far from town.
Owing to its age, the basement has hot air vents that blow directly into the first floor, but no direct connection to the second floor.
There are grates set into the floor of the second floor rooms, about ten by ten inches across through which the air comes in from the floors below.
While bringing a box up to the master bedroom, I noticed you could see straight through them to the floor below you. I could hear footsteps from the movers in the living room.
I dropped off the box I was carrying and headed back downstairs.
Arriving in the kitchen, I noticed the movers were already back outside getting the next box.
I headed to the front door, and as I opened it the movers were just heading back in with new boxes.
They must really be hustling to have just been in the living room, and already be coming back with more boxes!
I headed out to the truck to grab another box. I really just wanted to get everything unloaded so we could have time for dinner and a shower before bed.
Audrey was standing in the yard where the sidewalk met the driveway, directing the movers on where all the boxes and furniture went. I shot her a smile and a pompous flex of my muscles before grabbing another box, to which she laughed.
“Where’s this one go, hun?” I asked.
“Second bedroom!” She shouted back, and I headed into the house, up the stairs, and into the second bedroom.
As I entered, one of the movers finished dropping off a box and headed out the door past me and down the stairs.
I dropped off my box and passed by another floor grate. I could hear the mover stomping down the stairs, then his footsteps echoed up through the grate as he seemed to be walking towards the back of the house.
I thought that was a bit weird, and headed downstairs, turned right toward the spare room where I heard him heading, but no one was there.
I assumed there must be something weird in the way sound echoes through the house.
After another forty minutes, the truck was empty, and the movers left.
Audrey and I stood outside in the dying light of the sun and admired our new home. Mentally and physically exhausted, we weren’t overjoyed to go back inside and face the mess that awaited us.
We threw some frozen dinners in the microwave, sat down on the plastic-wrapped couch and ate in quiet contentment, just happy to finally be done.
“Can you believe it? We finally have our own home.” I smiled at her.
“It still doesn’t seem real, like the realtor is going to walk through the door and tell us the mortgage company made a mistake and is cancelling our loan.” She replied.
“Oh, they won’t find the mistake, I made sure it was very well hidden!” I joked.
She smiled and poked at the last of her mac and cheese.
“We really should get the bed set up before we’re both too tired.” I told her.
“Right!” She agreed, and we tossed our dinner platters in the trash and headed upstairs.
I pulled out all the pieces of the bed and we started lining them up where they would go, then got all the screws ready.
Audrey grabbed the drill from the next room and I started screwing the pieces back together while she held them in place for me.
As I was lining up a screw on the left side, it slipped out of my fingers and bounced along the floor, falling through the grate.
“Son of a bitch.” I swore softly.
“Did you see where it went?” Audrey asked me.
“Yeah, it fell in the vent. It should be in the living room, hold on, I’ll go grab it.” I groaned as I stood, then headed downstairs and into the living room.
I looked around on the floor just below the vent, but the screw was nowhere in sight.
Looking up at the grate, I wondered if the screw hadn’t fallen all the way through, but had landed on something inside the vent?
“Hey, hun, come back up, we have extras!” I heard Audrey yell from the stairs.
Maybe it’s just me but I get weirdly annoyed when I can’t find something I’m looking for, even if I don’t need it. It bothered me that I couldn’t find the screw on a bare, hardwood floor. There were only boxes around the perimeter of the room, it had nowhere to go.
I sighed and headed back up to finish making the bed.
Once we finished, we showered and were more excited to get cozy in bed and sleep than I’ve ever felt before.
I got my pajamas on and walked over to the bed then groaned.
“What’s wrong?” Audrey asked.
“I left the light on downstairs.” I could see the light from the living room through the vent in the floor.
Begrudgingly, I headed downstairs and into the living room, only to find a completely dark room.
“What the heck…” I whispered.
I looked up through the vent and could see the light of the bedroom through it.
I walked around the house, checking all the rooms downstairs, but all the lights were out.
I wondered if I was just seeing things because I was so tired.
With lingering uncertainty, I headed back upstairs to the bedroom.
I must have looked confused because Audrey asked, “What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing, I must have been mistaken, because the lights are all off downstairs.” I looked at the vent, and it was completely dark now.
I crawled into bed and fell asleep with little effort.
The next three days passed by uneventfully. Our new home was amazing, and we were very happy, albeit exhausted as we opened boxes, unpacked, sorted through our belongings, moved furniture around, installed appliances, and all the other troubles that come with moving into a new house.
The third night, Audrey woke me up with a hand on my shoulder.
“What’s up?” I asked in a groggy voice.
“I think I heard something or someone moving around downstairs.” She replied, her voice a shaking whisper.
I sat up and listened quietly.
There was silence.
And then, a sound like swishing clothes came up from the vent, like someone walking around quietly.
“Fuck…” I hissed.
I wondered if maybe the former homeowner got drunk and came home to the wrong place.
I grabbed the extra shower curtain rod from the closet and headed toward the bedroom door.
“Should we call the cops?” Audrey asked.
I raised one finger to my lips, opened the door and tip-toed out onto the stairs.
It was pitch black all the way down. If anyone was down there, they would have to have a flashlight, unless they’re seriously rigged up with night vision.
I grabbed the hand railing, as I still wasn’t used to the stairs, and started slowly walking down as quietly as I could, but the old steps groaned with each footfall.
My heart started beating faster in my chest, and I could feel a cold sweat on my neck as I descended into the blackness of the first floor, completely blind.
I reached the landing and turned right into the spare room.
I could switch on the light to look, but then I’m also vulnerable to being seen.
What should I do?
I stopped and listened quietly, trying not to breathe.
There was no sound other than the thunder of blood pulsing in my ears.
I reached my hand out into the darkness of the room and flipped the light switch.
In the room was nothing but boxes, so many that they covered all the windows.
I stepped inside and turned to face the door, the curtain rod in front of me, and started walking towards the darkness of the hall, still listening intently.
As I walked into the hallway I flipped the light switch, and continued toward the kitchen.
Room ahead held a slight natural glow from the moonlight outside, and I could see the blue luminescence of the windows.
I kept expecting to see a shadow pass in front of one as I slowly stepped down the hall.
Reaching the kitchen, I flipped on that light, then turned left toward the living room, and walked forward.
“Is someone here? The cops are on their way. You’re making a big mistake. I… I have a gun!” I shouted.
I stood just before the doorway from the kitchen into the livingroom and peered into the darkness. The room ran far to the left of the light radiating in from the kitchen, and I wouldn’t be able to see all of it without sticking my head in and turning on the light.
“Announce yourself, or I’m shooting when I come in there!” I yelled into the living room, then waited, listening in silence.
Nothing…
I stepped into the doorway, my heart racing, I was waiting to be attacked, shot, stabbed. My body braced in expectation of sudden pain.
My hand reached out into the darkness and found the light switch, then flipped it on.
The living room was aglow, and empty, save for boxes, some tables and the couch.
I proceeded to walk the whole room, checking every corner and behind the boxes.
Only the basement was left…
I headed to the top of the basement and stood outside the door.
Looking at the curtain rod, I realized I had a better option, then walked back into the living room and threw it on the couch, grabbing the fire poker from next to the fireplace before heading back to the basement door.
Throwing the door open, I shouted, “If you’re down there, it’s ass whooping time!”
I knew I sounded like an idiot. I am incapable of sounding threatening, but it was more for me than them.
There was no light switch at the top of the stairs, and the stairs that descended into the basement were open in the back.
I took a deep breath, steadied myself, and stepped down onto the first step. The wood shifted and creaked beneath my foot.
And another step, followed by a third.
With each step, I waited, expecting to feel a cold hand wrap around my bare ankle and pull, sending me tumbling down the stairs.
But no hand came.
I took another step, and another, until I reached the string for the lightbulb and pulled.
The warm, yellow light from the single bulb dimly lit the square room. The washer and dryer sat in the corner beside the oil tanks, and the hatchway was still locked.
There was no one.
I headed back upstairs, leaving the basement light on, and locking the door behind me.
I checked the locks on the front and back door, and both were secure, then all the windows, which were also locked before heading back up to the bedroom.
“Nothing there.” I sighed, and sat on the side of the bed, placing the fire poker against the dresser.
“Nothing? But you heard it, right?” She asked me.
“Maybe it’s just the house. It’s new, we don’t know what kinds of noises it makes.” I reasoned.
“But it sounded so much like a person walking, you could hear their clothes moving!” She argued.
“I know, I heard it too, but I promise, there’s nothing. Do you want to go look with me?” I asked.
“No…” she replied.
I got up and locked the bedroom door.
“Better?” I asked.
“A little. Maybe we should get an alarm or something?” She suggested.
“We can look into it, but I think we’re okay, let’s get some sleep.”
It took me a long time to calm down and fall asleep, but I was very happy to see the morning light.
Audrey left to run some errands and I decided to do a little investigation while she was gone to assuage my own fears.
I grabbed the fire poker and headed to the attic door. I knew there wasn’t, reasonably, a way in and out of the attic from downstairs, so the “person hiding in the walls” thing was highly unlikely, but it didn’t hurt to check.
Standing under the attic, I pulled on the string, lowering the stairs.
I looked up at the hatchway above me and took a deep breath, my flashlight in one hand, fire poker in the other.
I was ready.
I stepped on the ladder and used the fire poker to push the door open, then started climbing, using my flashlight hand for balance while holding the fire poker at the ready.
I poked my head up into the attic and shone the flashlight in.
The beam was caught in a heavy cloud of dust, but lit up the long, dark attic.
At both ends, a little light filtered in through the vents, but not enough to reveal all the corners of the shadowed room.
I scanned the walls with the flashlight, sweeping from left to right, until I finally had to commit to coming fully into the attic to check the opposite side of the room which the hatch blinded me to.
I stepped up into the attic and quickly turned, flashing the light across the opposite end of the attic, but saw nothing.
I breathed a sigh of relief, confirming there was nothing there.
I left the attic, closing the hatch and headed down the ladder, then pushed it back into the ceiling.
That night I headed up into the bedroom to find Audrey in a state of undress, lying in bed, looking very inviting.
“We haven’t broken in the new house yet.” She said in a lascivious tone.
“You’re right, we haven’t. Would you like to?” I replied with innuendo.
“I would love to.” She beckoned me over.
I walked towards the bed slowly, performing an awkward, faux-sensual dance as I got closer. She laughed at my silly attempt to be sexy.
“There’s no neighbors to hear us scream!” I joked.
“No there isn’t!” She smiled and crawled to the edge of the bed on her knees.
I don’t know what compelled me, but I looked down at the vent as I walked by and froze.
“What’s wrong?” Audrey asked. She must have seen it on my face, because I felt like it had drained of blood.
I grabbed the fire poker and ran to the stairs.
“WHAT DID YOU SEE? IS SOMEONE HERE?” She screamed after me, but I was already thundering down into the living room.
I turned on lights as I went until I ran into the living room, the fire poker out in front of me like a rapier, “WHERE ARE YOU? WHEN I FIND YOU I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!” I screamed into the empty room, spinning around.
It was either get mad, or be crippled by fear, and I chose anger.
But there was nothing here to release that anger on.
“Hun, are you okay?” I heard Audrey calling from the stairs.
“Yes, I’m okay.” I yelled back up
I thought, that’s weird, I should hear her from the vent…
I looked up at the vent, the light in the bedroom was off.
But I was just there, the light was definitely on, and there’s no reason Audrey would have turned them off.
I headed back to the stairs and looked up to see Audrey standing at the top, looking terrified, the light from the bedroom to her back.
“There’s something wrong with this house, babe.” I called up to her.
“What do you mean?” She asked, I could tell she was on the verge of tears.
“I saw someone through the vent. There was someone in the living room standing right under the vent. But then, they were just gone. And from downstairs, the light in the bedroom is off.” I explained.
“W-what does that even mean?” She stammered, tears on her cheeks.
“I… I don’t know.” I replied.
I stormed up into the bedroom and ripped open the drawer to the dresser and started putting on clothes.
“What are you doing?” Audrey asked.
“Get dressed, we’re going to stay in a hotel until I can figure this out.” I told her.
“We can’t afford to just run away to a hotel!” She argued through tears.
“Just for a night or two, I need to get away from this and think, please. I promise we will come back, but I just need time.”
She went to her dresser and got some clothes, and we headed down to the car, and left with nothing but our phones and wallets, and found a hotel to stay in that night.
The next day, we decided to come home during the daytime and check on the house.
For some reason, I expected to find the house in disarray, as if some stranger had gone through and destroyed everything, but it was exactly as we left it, all the lights still on.
Slowly I headed upstairs into the bedroom.
“I need you to do something. Go down into the living room, stand under the vent, and call me.” I told her.
Audrey walked downstairs, and a few seconds later, my phone rang.
I picked it up and put it to my ear.
“Okay, now just look up at the vent and wait a minute.” I instructed her, then slowly lowered a shoelace through the holes in the vent until it came through the other side.
“Do you see the shoelace?” I asked.
“What shoelace?” She asked.
Something inside me was breaking, I didn’t know what it was, “Can you walk around and see if there’s any other vents in the ceiling, one with a shoelace hanging through it? It should be at least eight inches down.” I explained calmly as I could.
She began walking, I could hear her breathing heavily into the phone as she walked around downstairs looking.
“No, no other vents in the living room.” She told me.
“Are you sure? I haven’t seen you through the vent. You should be right under me. Am I confused, is this leading to another room?” I asked.
“I don’t think so…” she replied, walking into the kitchen, then the spare room.
“Is there a room we don’t know about?” I asked her.
“Where? The wall between rooms is barely a foot thick, there’s no place to hide a whole-ass room!” She answered.
“Well how else do you explain that I’m looking straight down through the vent and I haven’t seen you, but I’ve seen other people!” I yelled, more angrily than I intended.
“I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know!” She was sobbing now.
I should have been comforting her, but I couldn’t, I didn’t have the emotional fortitude right now.
I walked into the second bedroom and grabbed the electric drill off the dresser, then came back to the master.
“What are you doing?” Audrey asked on the phone.
“I need to try something. I’m hanging up.” I ended the call, put the phone in my pocket and put the drill to the first screw on the metal grate, and backed it out.
Then the next screw.
A third, and finally the last.
I lifted the grate off the floor, revealing the second one that was attached to the ceiling below.
I lowered my face to the hole to look closer.
As my face got closer, I could see the hardwood floor in the room below, and a single screw sitting in the middle of it.
I couldn’t get to the screws on the other side from here…
I needed to see more …
I grabbed the fire poker and started slamming it into the grate until it ripped out of the ceiling and plummeted onto the floor below with a loud crash.
“Audrey!” I shouted into the hole, “Can you hear me?”
“Is that you hun?” I heard her yell from the doorway behind me.
“Go into the living room and yell!” I called out to her.
I heard her footsteps heading into the living room, but I couldn’t see her below me.
She started to yell, “CAN YOU HEAR ME?!”
I could hear her voice from the doorway behind me, but not from the hole in the floor.
I grabbed my phone, and switched it to video, then slowly lowered it down into the room below me, and rotated it in a circle while recording, then lifted it back up.
I flipped it over and hit play, and watched as the phone circled on a room that looked mostly like our living room, but I couldn’t see much as I had just lowered it an inch or two past the hole.
I took a deep breath, and sank down into the hole up to my shoulder, hit record, and began rotating the phone back and forth inside the hole.
I sat back up, but as I did, my phone caught on the edge of the ceiling and fell from my shaking hand to the floor below.
“FUCK!” I screamed.
“Are you alright?” Audrey called up the stairs.
“Yeah, can you come here?” I called out to her.
Audrey’s footsteps ascended the stairs behind me.
“I need your phone, I accidentally dropped mine.” I explained.
She approached slowly, seeing me next to the open hole in the floor seemed to fill her with dread.
“I was just down there, if you had dropped it … if you had opened the vent … I should have seen…” she whimpered.
“Please, can I just see your phone?” I repeated my request.
“I don’t like this. I don’t like this. Maybe we shouldn’t…” she stammered.
“It’s fine, I just need to see your phone.” I repeated.
“We should just cover it up, just put a big board over it and forget all about it. We can put in a new vent.” She argued.
“Audrey, please, I just want to see your phone, so I can see if this is some kind of hidden room.” I explained.
“Look! It has fucking daylight! It has windows! If it was hidden we would have seen it from outside! It’s not a fucking hidden room! This isn’t right! We shouldn’t be fucking around with it!” Her face was red with tears now.
“Audrey, please I just …” I stopped when I heard it.
She heard it too.
Footsteps.
Coming from the vent.
“There’s someone there.” Audrey whispered through tears.
“Shh.” I hushed her shortly.
The footsteps continued to grow louder.
“We should close it.” She whispered.
“Yeah…” I agreed, and grabbed the grate, and started lining up the screw holes. The footsteps were slow, but growing louder.
“Shit, where did I put them…” I looked around the floor, stood and checked on the nearby dressers and tables.
“It’s getting closer!” She yelled.
“I know, I have to find the fucking screws!” I shouted.
Then I patted my pocket and felt the outline of a few small objects, then stuck my hand inside to find the screws.
I grabbed the drill, lined up the first hole and started drilling the screw in.
“Holy shit holy shit holy shit.” I repeated, lining up the second hole, I placed the screw in the hole, but it was crooked. I placed the drill bit tip to the screw, intending to reposition it with the magnetic tip, but instead I accidentally slapped it back into the vent hole.
“FUCK!” I screamed, grabbing another screw, I lined it up carefully, shaking and sweating, and drilled it in. It was crooked, and cross-threaded but it sank.
I grabbed the third screw and dropped it in a hole and sunk it into the floor, then stood and backed away from the vent.
We both stood on the landing of the stairs and watched the vent. The footsteps continued until they stopped just below the vent, and I could hear breathing from below.
“What do we do?” Audrey whispered into my ear.
“I don’t know. I wanted so bad to see who it was before… but now it’s there I’m terrified.” I answered.
“Maybe they’re friendly?” She suggested.
“Yeah, maybe…” I blew air out my nose at the joke.
BANG, something slammed against the grate, and it popped up at the corner missing the screw before slapping back down.
BANG.
I ran into the room and slid the dresser over the grate, then walked back to the staircase landing with Audrey.
The banging against the grate continued for several minutes, then calmed.
We stood, watching and listening, our hearts thundering.
Then a soft noise came from below the dresser, a crying noise, but not one that sounded normal.
It didn’t sound human.
Nor like any animal I had ever heard.
It was bizarre, the way it hauntingly reverberated in the empty living room below.
I walked over to the dresser and put my hands on it.
“Don’t!” Audrey hissed.
I looked up at her, I was scared too, but I had to know more.
I pushed the dresser, then looked down.
The floor grate was bent out of shape and no longer sat flush to the floor, and the two outer screws had mostly ripped free of their holes.
I looked through the holes in the grate, but there was nothing directly below me.
I started to circle the hole, trying to see further into the room when I caught a glimpse of something in the corner.
It looked like a pile of dirty white rags, but it was heaving.
Pulsating.
Breathing.
I stepped back and slid the dresser back into place.
I didn’t know how to fix it, or close whatever this hole was, but I didn’t have a choice, we just spent all of our savings moving into this house.
We had nowhere to go.
I knew I needed to find a way…
“Should we call the cops?” Audrey asked.
“And tell them what? There’s a hole in our bedroom that leads to a room that doesn’t fucking exist? Oh yeah, and there’s a THING in there trying to get out.”
“Please, stop yelling at me.” She cried.
“I’m sorry! I just feel like I have to have the answers and I don’t know what to say!” I replied.
“You don’t have to. I’m sorry, I’m just scared and don’t know what to do.” She sobbed.
“Me either.” I put my arm around her and rubbed her back.
We returned to the hotel for another night we couldn’t really afford. I stayed up on my phone googling everything I could about portals, and doorways to other worlds, but it was all bullshit mysticism and folk stories.
There were no stories or instructions on closing holes in your floors leading to places that shouldn’t exist.
“What if we burn it?” I suggested.
“Burn our house down?” Audrey asked.
“Well it’s not really our house, is it? If we light the other house on fire and cover the hole, maybe that will do something?” I replied.
“It might be able to burn ours too, we don’t really know.” She cautioned.
“True, but at this point, I’m wondering if burning the whole thing down isn’t the best answer. It’ll be hard to accuse us of insurance fraud if the evidence of how the fire started is all in another dimension or something.” I explained.
“True, but I think the fact we’ve only lived here less than a week is going to raise a red flag.” Audrey postulated.
I covered my face with my hands, completely unable to come up with a solution, and began crying.
We had finally made it, our house, our own place, after all these years, only to have it stolen from us by some unexplainable phenomenon.
What kind of sick joke was this universe playing?
Anyway, this has been my story.
We can’t afford another night at the hotel, so tomorrow I’m going to Lowe’s, and I’m going to get a bunch of wood, cement and tools and try to patch up that hole. Hopefully I will seal away whatever is on the other side.