Forgotten House (Part Nine)

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight

Audio Recording

I had my destination in mind, and I was not going to let anything distract me. I pushed the backdoor open, and hurried along, through the kitchen, through the living room, and through the hall to the basement door, which had closed since I had left. Without pausing, I opened the door and descended to the basement.

I jumped a bit at seeing the corpse on the chair, but did my best to ignore it. I was going through that door, to the floors beneath the basement, to find the answers I knew awaited me there.

My attention did waver for a moment upon seeing the piles of tapes still scattered around in front of the television set. I was curious to see what else was recorded, but I convinced myself that that data was not important at this moment. Sure, they would help complete the puzzle, but they were not crucial to understanding everything.

I reached for the doorknob, and felt a rush of cold air, moving towards the stairs I had just descended. I glanced in that direction and stared for a while. Shaking my head, I turned the knob, and pulled the door open. Switching my flashlight on, I began down those stone stairs. Memories of my previous journey returned, and I thought back, trying to remember how many doors I had passed, and ignored, on that bit of exploration.

Arriving at the bottom of that first flight of stairs, my mind already began imagining all manner of scenario for what I would find, or what would find me. I saw myself being torn apart by formless creatures that could never exist in any degree of sunlight, and I did my best to shake those thoughts away, yet they persisted. Things awaited me, I couldn’t help but think that.

Yet, that was followed by the rational part of my mind demanding to know just what I was doing not only back in this house, but exploring the subbasement floors that I should know better than to ever explore. I had survived that first foray, but again? I knew it was madness, but I had to do it.

Of course, I kept expecting a hand to clamp down on one of my shoulders, or something to break the silenc. I kept walking, shining the flashlight against the walls to either side me, looking for a door. At length, I noticed one, a solitary steel door to my left, closed.

Curiosity got the better of me, as I opened that door. Light flooded a small room, the size of an average closet. It was empty, with no unusual markings on the cinderblock wall. I closed the door.

Hurrying along, I made it to the door at the end of the hallway, the one that I knew opened onto another stairway, leading deeper underground. I stepped carefully down that staircase, following a straight line.

Eventually, I had been descending that particular staircase for about five minutes, when I heard something, a sound not caused by me. It was a voice, cold, soft, distant. I couldn’t determine a gender, and not a lot was said, just a single word, a question. “Who?” I stood there, not moving, listening for something more. There was nothing more.

Landing at the bottom of the stairs, I walked quickly, shivering against the cold air. My guard was up even more at this point. Given that voice, I knew I wasn’t alone, but that only caused my mind to work into even more hectic of a frenzy, as it imagined even more grotesque and terrifying things that could be waiting for me somewhere in this underground abyss.

Light ahead of me flickered, and I shook my flashlight by instinct. Don’t you dare die on me, I thought, realizing just how obvious a thing that be to have happen. Luckily, it didn’t show any further signs of going out.

I eventually found another door, set into the cinderblock wall to my right. I quickly opened this one, and found a vast room, filled with wooden school desks. Some quick investigation of that room showed that the desks were all empty, their surfaces blank. There was nothing of interest in that room. I left, closing the door behind me.

All around me, the air turned to a thin mist, seeping upward to the ceiling, and the stairs well behind me. Whispered voices echoed about the cinderblock walls, not saying anything intelligible, just jumbled sounds. For a few moments, I attempted to count the voices, but I couldn’t manage that. Realizing I was standing still, I ran down the remainder of the hallway.

There was one more door along the wall to my left, before I would reach the end of that hallway, a solitary steel door, closed like the rest. The mist pursued me, winding around the walls. I had a brief moment to decide, and I chose to open the door, dodge inside, and close it.

I thought I had just seen a name, somewhere, but I couldn’t see it now.

Shining my flashlight around, I noticed the room I was about ten-foot by twelve-foot. There were no furnishings, the floor was empty. Yet it was the walls that caught and held my attention, as I wove the flashlight around slowly. There were words, some written tall, others small, yet all in a dark red, nearly brown color, the hue of dried blood. There must have been hundreds of messages on all four walls, messages partially covering others, intersecting, blocking out parts of other messages. I tried following various phrases, to decipher some meaning.

“Always here.” “Can’t you hear ______?” “Where am I?” “Mommy, where ____ you?” “I’m hurt, I’m ____ing, can anyone help me?” “STOP YELLING!” “Don’t look at _____!” “Always here!”

The messages were written in numerous styles, obviously many different people responsible for writing them. By chance, the beam of my flashlight crossed the ceiling, and I noticed more messages had even been scrawled upon that surface, somehow. I then checked the floor, and noticed countless more messages intermingled there.

It was also then that I realized I had closed the door to block out that mist from the hallway. I then faced a mix of relief and worry over that; relief because it hadn’t yet slipped into this room, and worry over those messages.

I pulled open the door and returned to the hallway. The mist had not subsided, but it had ceased growing. At this point, it just rolled lazily around the walls, the floor, and the ceiling far above. Whatever intent had driven it before no longer seemed concerned with my presence. I proceed to the end of the stairs.

What silence there had been was immediately shattered by a clamorous, angry shout, one that continued, yelling things that almost sounded like words, things that you would hear, or maybe say, deep in the darkness of night, mind mostly asleep, images trying to become words, trying to break through to some form of coherence, yet as soon as day shines, those sounds lose all semblance of sense. That voice persisted, drowning me in their low, maddening tones. I ran for the stairs.

I could hear the voice as I descended those narrow stairs, could hear it shouting and echoing around. Its sounds began to form words.

“Tear flesh from those flimsy bones, drain the blood from those foolish forms. Those people don’t deserve to live, ever, never,” the voice screamed on and on, a chant stuck in a tone of shattered insanity. I yearned to shut it up, run away from it, down the stone stairs, further downwards. “Watch them die, burn them alive, why did they ever do that, they shouldn’t, should never have. They don’t know who they were dealing with. ME! ME! MEEEE! Burn this world, watch everything burn to ash, then burn the ashes. Tear everything down, burn it all, melt and burn this very planet.”

I collapsed in front of an open door, and managed to shine my torch to the chamber within. The light fell upon a scattered pile of books and loose leaf pages. I could see notes scribbled over the pages, and I pulled myself across the floor to the material.

I picked up a page, and read it.

“He’s going mad,” read the rather neat script. “I’m afraid he’ll hurt me. I never meant to hurt him. I left him, we weren’t getting along. I just wanted my freedom. I knew I was hurting him by leaving him, I’ve been through that myself, but this…this is only the beginnings of his madness.”

Further down the page, the script had altered. Same hand, just full of panic.

“What’s going on? Why is my place torn apart? What are all of these papers scattered around? They all say the same thing, in different sizes. They just say: ‘Found you.’”

At the bottom of the page, the writing returned to a calm, collected, and neat state, yet the words worried me even more.

“He is wonderful. His actions worry others, but I understand him. I want to make him my religion, I believe in him so much. He is kind to me, he would never hurt me. He hurts others, but there’s logic and truth to it. Praise him.”

I heard a faint, soft cough from behind me. I turned, shining my torch to the door I had just come from. There it stood, that creature I had seen near my bed the night of my sleep paralysis. Some cruel blend of [____________] (delete that description. I still don’t know if what I remember was correct or just my wild imaginings, or if they’ll ever match up to the horror that stood there, staring, not moving, so still, lifeless yet full of foul life at the same time).

The light from my torch was the only light in those catacombs. It stood there, staring, and I felt my terror slowly replaced by reverence. It was not a horror, it was pure and holy. This was not some fell aberrance, as I had at first thought, but my beautiful guardian angel. I had to walk with it, I’d follow it anywhere.

The police had blocked the house off, marking it for investigation. A corpse had been found in front that morning, a rectangular cavity neatly carved from its chest, all ribs removed. A knife was clutched in its right hand, the blood later found to be a match to the victim. The only prints found anywhere on the knife belonged to the victim. His face was forever locked in a masochistic grin.

It was a young man, but few people around town could identify him. He had been found to live by himself at a house just up the hill. He had no family. Research along those lines had found a history of violence. One of two children (he had a sister), he had always been the target of his parents’ anger and fear, though they had separated when he was only five. His father had beaten his mother, until she was brave enough to run away, taking her children with her.

There was nothing much to see in the house, besides the usual litter that collects in places where young delinquets prefer to pass nights away. Someone had been living in the basement, it seemed, if a couch, a chair, and a television set were anything to judge by. Other than the furniture, and an old, beat-up water pump, there was nothing that interesting in the basement. There was a wooden door on the wall near the water pump, but it only led into a closet, which was surprisingly empty.

The body was only identified by a coworker at his place of employment, a local computer repair shop.