The Basement Demon
There’s something waiting for me in my father’s basement. Something that makes my spine shiver whenever I spend too long thinking about having to confront it. A part of me thinks that’s inevitable, that I’ll have to venture down into that great beyond and take care of it once and for all, and then another part of me wonders if I’m fucking crazy. I guess I can say with just about absolute certainty that I don’t plan to. I’m no action hero, believe me. I struggle to finish five push ups whenever I force myself to go to the gym at the end of every week. But the damn thing, whatever it is, it keeps me up at night.
I haven’t had a healthy night of sleep in over three months, when I first moved into what used to be one of my father’s real estate properties. My old man was an oil tycoon, one of the most successful to ever do it in the glorious state of Texas, and before I inherited and moved into what’s now my own spacious, single story house, I received a letter that was left to me, written by him. Covered in coffee stains and cigarette burns, my wife, Leanne, told me to make sure to read it before we settled in, but I put it off. Whatever he had to say from beyond the grave could wait. I had no idea how much of a mistake that was at the time.
I was expected to follow in my father’s footsteps and take over our family’s oil business before I met my wife. But instead, I settled down with her, had a little girl, and took up a job as an electrician; it pays decently enough and, most importantly, my family doesn’t want for anything. Before he died my old man used to tell me, “A man ain’t a man unless he can take care of his flesh and blood,” so maybe, even though I’ve never set foot within a stone’s throw of an oil rig, he’s smiling down on me from heaven because of that. I’m taking care of my flesh and blood, and doing it well. Well, as well enough as a middle class man can in a world where everyone wants to have it all.
I’m thinking all of this at two o’clock in the morning, only a few minutes into the latest bit of disturbing racket that’s going to keep me up for another long night. My wife always sleeps just fine when the noises start. She’s even told me once that she doesn’t think the noises exist at all, that whatever’s in the basement is a figment of my imagination, some kind of self-torment that I’m putting myself through because I didn’t get to see my old man before he died.
“You travel too much,” she says sometimes. “I know that you want to take care of me and Samantha, but you travel way too much, Earl. If you travel anymore, I don’t know if my little girl’s gonna be able to tell any of her friends that she even has a dad.”
That hurts me, when she says things like that.
It really does.
Especially because she forgets to use the word “our” when talking about our daughter. She says “my little girl,” as if I have no claim on the child because I’m supposedly never around. She gets mighty close to driving me crazy, she really does. But it’s only because I’m so proud of all the work I do. I’m so proud to be able to buy my little girl her latest pair of designer sneakers, or her own robot unicorn, the kind that she can ride around on in the backyard whenever she wants. I’m proud that she’ll never go hungry, like those folks in Manila, the capital of the Philippines.
Have you ever heard of a pag pag? It’s slop. Rotten, leftover meat that’s been dumped into a bottomless tank for the poor to scavenge out of. In Manila, that’s what the Filipino’s eat. They scoop out heaps of that rancid, discolored stuff and re-cook it, washing it in filthy water that has the color and consistency of a toilet bowl full of diarrhea, before dropping it on top of a cup of steamed rice to call it lunch. That’s normal life for those people. They eat each other’s rotten left-overs and they have to be thankful for that. Well, not my family. Not my little girl. My little girl’s never getting anywhere near a pag pag, I can guaran-damn-tee that. So I do whatever I can to make sure that her belly’s the fullest and healthiest it can be.
The digital clock at my bedside reads two twenty-nine, and I’m hearing scratches. Frantic scratches, the kind that sound like they’re being made by some kind of massive, starving, drooling dog. And what’s worse, they sound like they’re coming up right from underneath our bed. As if that thing in the basement below’s been trying to claw its way out for an eternity…just hoping that tonight’ll be the night that it busts through the concrete and the dirt, lays its crusted fingernails on a few rows of wooden floorboards and goes to town. I can’t help but smile as the scratches get a bit louder. It’s only too bad that nothing’s coming up from underneath the bed. I thoroughly saw to that. After the first few weeks of those scratches bothering me to hell and back, I went out and bought steel boards, thick, rigid boards, the kind that can withstand automatic rifle fire, and installed them right underneath our bed frame, directly on the floor. Leanne called me insane, but I told her that she’d thank me later. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is getting through those sheets anytime soon. Hell, not for as long as I’m gonna be alive. So scratch all you want, whatever the hell you are, scratch away, scratch away. You ain’t getting near me or my family. I’ll lay awake all night and listen to you tear those nine inch nails into that steel if I have to, but you ain’t gettin’ shit.
I’ll guaran-damn-tee that.
***
Last night was rough, but today is my little girl’s birthday. The fourth Saturday of June, the 29th. She turned eleven this year. I was happy that it landed on a weekend; weekends mean play time, and play time is all that kids live for when they’re as young as she is. Well, most kids…I ended up doing more wishing for playtime than actually playing when I was a youngster. My old man wasn’t much of a hugger and a kisser…he didn’t like to use the words I love you, or congratulate me on anything that I did well enough at. Matter of fact, he wasn’t much of anything at all in the way of support. The only thing he cared about was that I learned how to take care of the family business whenever it was his time to die, and you already know that I didn’t do too much of that. Leanna says that I ended up becoming an electrician out of spite for my old man, that I wanted to show him, even beyond the grave, that I didn’t care much for anything that he treasured in the world. I don’t know about all that, but I did used to ask myself one question, over and over again whenever I watched him leave the house for work far away in the city.
How can you love your wealth more than you love your own son?
I even asked him that question on occasion, mostly whenever I got so lonely that even an argument with him would sate my desire for company, but my old man, he had a devil’s tongue on him. He could talk the colors off a chameleon if he had to, I’m sure of it. He’d just frown at me and tell me that everything he did was for my own good, that I was always going to be taken care of, no matter what. If only he could’ve understood that all I wanted was for him to be around, that his presence meant more to me that any amount of money he could’ve ever earned. It’s too late now for all of that, I guess. He’s not thinking anything anymore. Or maybe he is. He also used to say that “don’t nobody knows what’s gonna happen when you die.”
I’d be lying to you if I said that I didn’t ever wish he was burning in hell.
Leanne told me that little Samantha loved her birthday, even though I wasn’t around. I couldn’t stay too long for the celebration, I had a job to take care of in San Antonio, and if I was gonna leave, drive to my client, fix his electrical system, and make it back home in time for dinner my scheduling had to be right on the money. I got to see a video of my little girl opening her presents in front of all of her friends though, on the holographic display in my windshield on the way into the city, and she gushed over what I got her; a miniature hovering drum set, glistening symbols and all. I saw her watching some rock band on TV a few weeks ago and thought, why the hell not? Maybe my little girl wants to be a rockstar? Everyone was all smiles, dancing to music and eating up all of our food. It was my little girl’s special day, and from where I was seated in my cargo van, it looked like she had everything she wanted. I was a proud papa on my way back home.
But getting there, a little after ten o’clock in the evening, and actually seeing my family again was a different story all together. Leanne was angry at me because I wasn’t home to spend the day with her daughter (again, she called Samantha hers) on her birthday, and even after telling her that everything I did was for our little girl’s own good, she just turned away and told me not to come to bed. I was sleeping on the couch, she yelled over her shoulder. I could hear her stomps as she slammed our bedroom door shut in the back of the house. And so that was that, and here I am now. I don’t do too well with sleeping on a couch. There hasn’t been a man or woman alive who could build a couch that was more comfortable than a bed, and ours is no exception. So I’m just sitting here, with a bowl of steaming kettle corn in front of a muted eighty inch television in our living room, waiting for the sun to shine through our kitchen windows to let me know that I can go back to my wife in the morning.
The digital clock next to the television reads eleven forty-seven. Curiously, I haven’t heard any noises yet. Not a growl, or shriek, or even one single scratch. I’m closer to the basement now, the door that leads down into that pitch black pit is at the end of the kitchen, which is directly in front of me, on the opposite side of the wall the television’s on. I should be able to hear something. Anything. But I’m wrapped in a blanket of silence. Maybe I was hearing all of those sounds only when I was sleeping in bed with Leanne. Maybe she brought all of that weirdness out of me. Or maybe…maybe there were never any noises at all. Maybe I was just hearing things, maybe it was all a projection of what I was feeling towards my old man, like Leanne said. Maybe…
No, wait.
There.
There was something, just now. Coming from…coming from the kitchen.
I can’t see anything from where I’m seated, and the kitchen opens up into the living room from both sides, so I sit still and wait for something to walk out into the light of the television.
But nothing does, even though I can still hear something. It’s…that scratching, not loud enough to confirm that whatever’s making the noise is in the house, but clear enough to tell me that it might be getting close.
There it is, there it goes again. It sounds like it’s coming from…the kitchen.
I get up from the couch, mentally trying to murder my nearly paralyzing fear, and take a few careful steps towards the left side of the kitchen. The door to the basement is on the right side, so if I peek into the kitchen and something plans to ambush me by creeping into the living room at the same time, all I have to do is step back out and I’ll see everything. But the thought is quickly cast away…as I angle myself to look down the kitchen towards the basement door, I’m horrified to see that the door…is open.
Wide open.
I can see the first step of the wooden stairs leading down into that hellish domain, and the blackness that threatens to consume anything that comes near. And then I hear the scratching again. It sounded so clear to me…not because whatever was making it managed to get into the house, but because it opened the door. For whatever reason, the thing making that terrifying noise is standing just inside of the blackness of the basement, possibly on the first few steps.
I can only stare, because at this point I’m truly paralyzed, not only because I don’t want to get any closer to that open door, but because I also don’t want to run away. I’m trapped, and almost as if the thing can read my mind, the scratching gets more violent. My hands are clutching the wall so tightly that they’ve gone cold, and I can hear my heartbeat booming in my ears. And then, as if straight from out of a twisted dream, a shrunken head slowly peeks out of the basement.
I hold my breath and stare in disbelief as it hovers in the air at the end of a long, tubelike neck. There are no shoulders, no arms, no chest. All I can see is that horrible head, staring at me as the scratching continues from inside the basement. It has no eyes, and its lips and nose look like they’ve been lazily cut off with a knife. It opens its mouth and blood, chunky with what looks to be chopped up pieces of a heart, pools out and falls to the floor in sickening clumps. Its voice, something that I can only describe as a whisper, echoes out and suddenly makes me sleepy.
“This is my house,” the thing says. “This is my house, and no one but the dead may live inside of it.”
It repeats the sentence over and over, and my vision goes hazy as my legs give out and I fall to the floor. I can’t help but close my eyes. I’m so sleepy, so tired…
“This is my house,” the voice continues. It sounds like it’s getting closer. “This is my house, and no one but the dead may live inside of it.”
An image of my little girl, crying desperately in the corner of her room, flashes in my mind, and then I see my wife, Leanne, getting ripped to pieces by the rest of the hideous creature attached to the shrunken head. The voice is getting closer, and I’m getting sleepier. But I refuse to fall asleep. I can’t let what I’m seeing in my head come true, so I struggle, with all of my might, to tear open my eyes, and I’m successful, only to come face to face with the hovering head.
It’s mouth is stretched open, so impossibly wide that it could swallow me whole, and I can smell its insides, a putrid combination of blood and feces. But it’s not my time to die, so, with every last bit of strength inside of me, as the shrunken head’s mouth almost wraps around my shoulders, I reach out and punch its tube-like throat. It chokes, and blood splatters all over my drowsy face as I grit my teeth and punch again.
I’m not letting my family die, I say to myself as I punch a third time, and suddenly I’m not sleepy anymore. The head is trembling uncontrollably in the air as it lets out an ear-piercing shriek. I cover my ears as it screams into the air at the top of its lungs, and then, as if something yanked on it as hard as it could, the head is pulled back into the basement.
I leap up off the floor, covered in sweat and praying to god that everything is over, and sprint towards the open basement door, grabbing onto the frame and slamming it shut. I can still hear the creature wailing deep into the basement as I reach up with shaking hands and lock the door, not ready to let my body fall away from holding it closed as tightly as I can. I’m struggling to hold back tears as everything goes quiet. My wife doesn’t rush from our bedroom to check up on what just happened. My daughter stays in bed. Everything is silent then, as if I was the only one who heard anything at all. And so I stay alone on the tile floor of the kitchen, sobbing to myself as I lean against the basement door and wait until morning.
***
I’m living far away from Texas now. I took the family and everything that we were sure we needed out of the house the very next day and moved into an apartment until we found another place to live. Leanne was confused about the whole situation, but decided to go along with it after I started crying while explaining to her what happened that night. We never told our little Samantha why we moved.
After settling into our new home, Leanne managed to find the letter that I was supposed to read. The one that my old man left just for me. So I read it, word for word, and in anger, burnt it on one of our electric stoves. If only I’d read the damn letter all those months ago, maybe we would’ve never moved into that doomed house in the first place.
To my only son,
I don’t need to tell you how much of a disappointment you were to me when I was alive. Watching you grow was like watching a cancer get fatter each and every day. Something inside of me told me that you were never going to be cut out for the oil business, and I was right. The shame that I felt at watching you marry that ugly hag Leanne and taking up that worthless job as an electrician should’ve killed me long before I actually died, but it’s of no consequence anymore. I’ll keep this brief, I can barely write anymore. You’ll be inheriting a number of real estate properties after I’m gone. Consider them a blood gift, a passing trinket of affection from a father to his son.
All but one of them is available on the market, a single story house with a basement. I was told by the man who owned the house before me that a grisly murder took place at the property, some cult who sacrificed their leader in the search for eternal paradise, or some nonsense like that. Regardless, I was warned to never sell the house to anyone, on the grounds that it was haunted. You know how I feel about that. The occult is nothing more than a method of control, a way to convince cowards to stay away from places where they should go. But I never did sell the property, it wasn’t up to code, and I had it scheduled to be condemned right up until I learned of my terminal illness. It’s up to you now to decide what to do with it. I trust, or rather…I hope, that you’ll do whatever will be best for you and your family.
Until we meet again,
Francis, your father
Did you like this article? Comment below.
Share your nightmare or horror story HERE!
Join the Conversation