Home Sweet Home

I don’t want it. It needs to get out of my house. I thought it was gone. I had never been so wrong.

It started as a life-changing decision for us. Moving away from our hometown, forgetting friends and starting a new life. The house we moved to was far from where we lived. It was about a three day drive. We moved from New York to Wisconsin. I was the most against it, I had a social life, I was actually pretty popular, I made friends with everyone. My parents were usually isolated in their house. They were the nicest parents anyone could ask for… Sorry I’m getting off topic. They didn’t have many friends and most of our family was in Wisconsin. The ride was fun, I listened to music and text my girlfriend Leah. She was perfect. We had in common almost all of our interests. When we did get to the house… I was stunned. It was a beautiful Victorian style house, two stories, already furnished. At first I was a bit skeptical on how my parents got the money for such an extravagant structure as this.

We spent most of the day unpacking. I took an hour to unpack and then explored. Everything looked so nice and new. It had a nice smell of pine and was smack dab in the middle of a forest. There were a few parks close by with soccer fields, which made me ecstatic. I was on the first floor and rounded a corner when I saw a door. The door was old, and didn’t match the rest of the house. It was a weird shade of maroon or brown, and the handle was rusted. I jiggled it, but it wouldn’t budge. I started to get progressively more and more violent with it, until it flew open with a clunk. An abyss of blackness was all I saw. I stood there for a good five minutes, just staring. Eventually, I started to hear a tapping, it started to get louder and louder. I still stood strong. I started to see figures dancing in the darkness. After that I closed the door and walked back into the kitchen. My first night sleeping there I probably got two solid hours. I kept waking up and hearing the tapping. I wasn’t scared. I mean, what could a tapping possibly do?

My awakening was startling. All I remember is beginning to have an intense nightmare about the blackness. I was staring at it, (in the dream) and I started to hear footsteps up the stairs. It got to the third step from the top and I caught a glimpse of… a THING… it was terrible. I woke up drenched with sweat. I got out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen, where my parents and my one brother, Jordan, were eating breakfast.

“Hello, honey; how did you sleep?” My mother had a nice tone to her voice, it melted all my bad thoughts away.

“Pretty good, better than I thought.” She knew I was lying. You can never lie to your parents.

“Are you sure? I didn’t sleep well either… It’s ok.” I walked up to her and hugged her. I didn’t let go for close to a minute. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the house.

“Mom do we have more waffles?” Jordan said. He is sixteen, two years older than me. He is in tenth grade, I’m in ninth.

“Yes, sweetie; just get a few from the counter.” I let go of my mom and went back to my room to grab clean clothes. I showered for about twenty-five minutes, and I started to hear the tapping again. It was where the basement was, I began to dismiss it as just a pipe or something. Nothing to be worried about. Oh how I’ve never been so wrong in my life.

The second night I didn’t sleep. Third night? Didn’t sleep. Well surely the fourth night? Nope. I began to fall behind in my classes because I was always napping. I didn’t feel comfortable or SAFE closing my eyes in that house. No-one had gone to the basement yet. I pondered that too, but I didn’t stress it. Yet every-time I asked my mom if anything needed to be brought down she would reply with: “Well there’s no need in that is there?”

I began to feel melancholic in the house. I grabbed my laptop and began doing searches such as: “Uncomfortable in new house”, “parents hiding something about new house”, and “tapping in new house”. I achieved no avail. I told my friends about it finally after a month of moving in. All of them had logical explanations. The fear and confusion changed to interest and curiosity. There had to be something down there right? I began to plan in my head. If I could get home early enough or deceive my parents, I would have an excuse to go down there. The thought of walking down there didn’t seem thrilling enough. I looked forward to going to the basement. I CRAVED it. The unsafe feelings went away. I devised that I would say I heard something wrong with the pipes and I learned about repairs on plumbing systems in technology. On the bus ride home I sat thinking about the plan.

I got home and had a snack as usual. My parents got home and I waited until the appropriate moment. My father was secluded. He didn’t like to be social except with us sometimes but his new job has been too tiring for him and he slept most of the day and went to work at night. He continued that routine today, which eliminated a possible reason for me not to go down. I finally told my mom.

“Hey mom, I hear something in the basement. It sounds like a problem with the plumbing which I have been learning about in technology. I figured I could do some hands-on work to broaden the understanding, you know?” I waited for the moment of truth.

“Well okay honey, but don’t be down too long. Dinner will be done in a few minutes.” I held back the excitement until I opened the door. I spent a good minute or so finding the light switch, I had to dig through insulation to find it. It took a second or so to turn on and I saw the floor. It looked wet and clammy. I calmly walked down two steps. My heart began having palpitations. Two turned to four, to six. Then finally, I was down. It mostly consisted of boxes stacked up and a few work-benches. The light was dim so I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight. In terms of square-feet, the basement was almost larger than the house! It was gargantuan! There was the one light-source, hanging from the ceiling. I began smiling. Why wouldn’t my parents want me to go down here? I couldn’t start to wonder when I heard: “DINNERS DONE!”

I turned around to a grotesque sight. It was some creature, it stood there, about fifteen feet away from me. My stomach jumped. It stood upright, on two legs and resembled a humanoid figure, but it couldn’t be! What was it?! It stood there. Not moving, just staring. Staring right down to my core. Then it did it. It made a noise. The noise was a tapping. Loud enough to be heard from the house. My excuse made no reason for my mother or father to wonder what was happening. I started to breath sporadically. My palms got sweaty, I felt weak. The lights turned off. My flashlight was still on and I instinctively shone it where the creature should have been standing. It was a matter of seconds, but it was gone. I looked side to side. I heard tapping right next to my shoulder. I never looked back, and started sprinting towards the stairs. When I got to the top I shut the door and locked it, with three deadbolts. It’s skin was bloodied and ripped, and it had no hair and two pitch black eyes. When you looked into them, you would suddenly begin to experience seeing just a thick mat of darkness where he was standing and also in a big radius. Whimpering and shaking, I asked my mom if dinner was done.

“No, why would you think that?” She said confusingly.

“But, you… you said?” Fear started slowly overcoming me.

“I never said anything. I haven’t started dinner yet.” Over the course of the next two or three months, I began forgetting the thing, and the tapping ended. I started to sleep at night, I didn’t see any darkness. I thought things were better. Jordan was in clubs and often hung out with his friends and girlfriend so he wasn’t around a lot. All of our bedrooms are upstairs. On the night of the twelfth, I heard the tapping again. Immediately I grew uneasy and that night, at about two, I heard my mom from downstairs.

“Noah! Come here!” She wasn’t yelling, but just talking loud enough to make sure I could here. I avoided turning on any lights because Jordan and my dad were sleeping. I took one step downstairs and I heard a whisper from my parents’ bedroom. It was… my mom…

“Don’t go down there. I heard it too.” She whispered. Tears began to roll down my face. I was petrified. I felt I couldn’t move. It made too much sense now. The creature could mimic voices. It was never my mom who called me for dinner, it was it trying to get my attention to push my mind into another place. Where I feared, and the more I feared it, the scarier it started to be. But as I sat there, on the step, I began to weep.

“Mom… I’m scared…” I barely was able to get the words out of my mouth. With that, I heard a screech from downstairs and footsteps. The footsteps began to come up the stairs. I turned around and ran to my bedroom. I locked it. I heard screams from the room of my brother. I cried as I heard the creature terrorizing my family. I stepped out quietly, I saw it from the back. I took my survival hatchet from my shelf and crept slowly behind. It turned around oh so fast. It screeched again, revealing yellow sharp canines all in his mouth. My brother was crying on the ground, it bit him in the arm. I swung the hatchet home and drove it down into his skull. It yelped and I thought it had been defeated. It stood there and looked at me, menacingly. I felt pure terror. And at that moment, it said the only words that have came out of its mouth in its own voice. A voice that made my soul shudder, a voice that made my legs jelly, a voice that froze me to the spot.

“Home…sweet…home…” After saying those words I heard a shotgun pump. My dad took the shot and the twelve gauge buckshot penetrated its chest like butter. It screamed so loud it hurt my ears and ran down the hall and jumped out of the window, and ran away. I watched to make sure that it wouldn’t turn back, and at that moment. Right before it would fade out of sight, I saw the darkness, yet again.