The Basement

The old door creaked open as Mom dragged Grandpa’s body upstairs. He had fallen asleep in his chair again, or so we thought. After dinner, Grandpa would always go into the basement and watch Hogan’s Heroes. He would watch the show so frequently that Mom and I eventually started counting how many times he started watching it again from the beginning. I don’t remember exactly what the total came out to be but it was in the hundreds. My Mom always said that it was the only show he could watch after the war.

He died on a calm night. I remember that the house was so still I could almost feel the breeze as my grandfather died. I felt something brush against my arm as I worked on algebra and I knew that something was wrong. I tried to stand but every part of my body screamed “no!” My body wanted me to stay put, even if I didn’t want to. After a few minutes, the feeling passed. I got up calmly and went downstairs. Sure enough, my grandpa was slumped back in his chair. I assumed that he was sleeping, because that’s what he always looked like. Before we left to go back home, my mom and I would always find him asleep, slumped over. When I went back upstairs, my mom asked me how grandpa was. I told her that he was asleep. For a split second I saw true fear, but she quickly regained her composure. I went back to studying as she calmly walked downstairs. Her sniffles startled me as I turned and saw her carrying him up the stairs. She took him into his bedroom and closed the door. I could hear her calling my uncle. I went back to work, but the door continued to creak. It sounded as if someone kept opening and closing it. I decided to look. When I peered down into the cool darkness, I just saw the door gently swinging back and forth, as if in a breeze. I wanted to close it, but that feeling came over me again. I tried to move but my body was locked in place. I wasn’t scared, but I knew that fear and dread were paralyzing me. As if in response, the door began to stop swinging.

Once I was free again I went back to studying, but I couldn’t focus. I wanted to go downstairs, but I knew that something was down there. No matter how silly I made it sound in order to dissuade my fear, I knew that something was down there, the same something that was playing with the door. After a few minutes of internal debate, I crept downstairs. I took a steak knife from the kitchen because I figured that if something was down there, a steak knife would somehow be enough. The TV was still on. I sat down on the couch. Nothing happened. I waited a few minutes, but again, nothing happened. Satisfied, I shut the TV off and went upstairs. Of course as soon as I sat down and started working on algebra again, I realized that I had left the steak knife downstairs. Knowing that Mom would be angry, I went downstairs to grab it. As soon as I had put it back in its place, I heard laughter. I went downstairs again and found that the TV had been turned on. Confused, I looked for the remote. But no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find it, even though I had seen it a few minutes ago.

Then I saw it lying on the floor, next to the couch. I just figured that I must have stepped on it when I got up to leave or when I came back down. The TV takes a few minutes to turn on since it’s so old so it seemed plausible. I shut the TV off again and went back upstairs. Once I sat down to work on my homework, I heard the laughter again. Sure enough, the TV was back on when I got downstairs. This time I saw something. It was difficult to see, but I swear that I saw some shadow-thing lounging on the couch. I rubbed my eyes and it was gone, I think, granted it was there in the first place. As I opened my eyes, I felt as if the entire basement had grown darker. I rubbed my eyes again and observed that the basement had grown even darker. I did this again and again and the same thing happened. At that point the paralysis came back. My heart began to race as my eyes darted around the room, trying to find something. I knew that I shouldn’t find anything but I also knew that I would. Finally, I found myself staring at the couch. Slowly but surely, two red pinpricks began to appear. They were eye-level with me. I knew that this was why I couldn’t move. I began taking deep breaths. In and out. In and out. I was hallucinating; plain and simple. After a minute, the red pinpricks dissipated and I ran upstairs. I tried to banish fear from my mind but it still enveloped me. When I was upstairs again, I packed up my homework. I heard the TV turn on again but I didn’t care. I went down to Grandpa’s room, but when I got to the hallway, I saw the pinpricks again. I blinked and they were gone. I fought against every urge and walked down to his room. I knocked and told Mom that I was going home.

As I was about to leave, I decided to look down the steps. I saw a handprint, clear as day, on the door. I want to say that it looked as if a man had just pushed the door closed, but if so, that man had some abnormally long fingers and equally long fingernails. A chill reverberated throughout my body.

On the way home, I felt paranoid. Every red light was those two pinpricks. There was something lurking in every shadow. I haven’t been afraid of the dark for a long, long time. The darkness itself is nothing to fear; what’s truly scary is what lurks within that darkness.

Dad was surprised that I had come home so early; he often doesn’t expect me or Mom until after 8 and it was only 5. He knew about Grandpa, but he figured that we would be later if anything.

I just gave him some excuse about studying for a big test tomorrow and I wanted to come home. I was happy to be alone in my room. But sill, I couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling that I was being watched. I walked over to my bedroom window and looked out. I saw a jogger taking a break across the street. He was breathing heavily, but still, something seemed off. He looked up and continued on his way. Satisfied, I went back to studying at my desk. When I sat down, I noticed a small note tucked into my physics textbook. I took it out, but it was written in some indecipherable scribbles. I dismissed it as having just been put inside my book as a joke by one of my friends, but it still felt off. I picked the paper up and turned it over. On the back was another note, and this one I could read. It was simple and straightforward: “RUN” written by a shaky hand using a red sharpie. I crumpled the note up and threw it in my trashcan.

I was tired, so I decided to take a quick powernap. When I woke up, it was 2:30 A.M. I was mad at myself, because my sleeping schedule was skewed enough already and something like this would only make it worse. I went downstairs to get myself some tea. When I looked outside, I noticed that Mom’s car wasn’t back yet. I figured that she was just staying at Grandpa’s house for the night, but that still didn’t seem right to me. When I looked out again, I noticed that Dad’s car also wasn’t there. This surprised me a lot, but I just figured that he went over to Grandpa’s to help Mom. As I was taking my tea up to my room, I decided to peek into Mom and Dad’s room just to make sure that they were in there. When I looked in, I saw someone sleeping under the covers. Confused, I wanted to walk over and see who it was, but the debilitating terror and paralysis returned. I couldn’t move, but the person in the bed could. Sensing my presence, it sat up. It turned towards me and I saw the two red pinpricks again. I tried to run, but it told me not to in a raspy voice.

I asked why and it told me not to worry, there were far worse things lurking in the shadows. It continued to speak cryptically; all the while my unease was growing. Soon, the pinpricks began to slowly fade away. Once they were gone, I ran into my room and locked the door. My heart was racing. In order to calm my nerves, I decided to watch some YouTube videos on my laptop. After a few videos, I quickly reviewed Coulomb’s Law and electric fields before going back to sleep.

I woke up at 7:20. In a panic, I threw my clothes on and quickly ate a few granola bars for breakfast. Sure enough, neither of my parents were home yet, so I had to either walk or bike to school since I didn’t have a car of my own yet. When I opened the garage to grab my bike, the uneasiness returned. I grabbed my bike, but it wouldn’t move; it felt as if it was glued to its spot. I tried to pry it free, but it refused to budge. Confused, I looked to see why it was stuck. A red substance was gluing the bike to the ground. I wiped a little off and smelled it. It was blood. Shocked, I stumbled back into the wall. Then I noticed that my bike was covered in blood. Slowly, I looked up to the ceiling. I saw three cats hanging a short distance from the celling, twirling in the morning breeze. When they turned towards me, I could see that their stomachs had been ripped open and the blood was dripping down onto my bike. Disturbed, I closed the garage door and began walking to school. I arrived late, but I didn’t care; I was too preoccupied with all of the strange events of yesterday.

When I got home, neither of my parents were back yet. This surprised me more than anything, so I decided to go back to Grandpa’s to find them. When I got there, I saw a lot of cars in the driveway. I knew that my family had gathered to plan the funeral. When I walked in, they paid no attention to me. I heard the TV downstairs, so I went down to turn it off. When I got down there, I found my three little cousins running around in the dark with the TV blasting Grandpa’s shows. I gathered them all together and sent them upstairs to play; I just wanted to think a little bit and that’s all but impossible with small children running around. I turned the TV off before going into the bathroom.

As soon as I had sat down to do my business, I heard the TV turn back on. I yelled at my cousins to get out of the basement but there was no response. When I was done and came outside, I turned the TV off again. As I absent-mindedly sat in the chair, the TV turned on right in front of me.

“So,” a raspy voiced hissed in my ear, “you will be my company from now on?”

I have never moved faster in my life. When I reached the top of the stairs, I looked down to the bottom. All I saw as the door slowly swung open were the two red pinpricks. I ran home as quickly as I could. When I got home, I started doing research to find out what I could have seen. The Internet revealed absolutely nothing to me.

Angrily, I shut my laptop and went into the bathroom. I could feel my heart beating faster than it had ever beaten before, dread filling my body as I remembered the two pinpricks that were forever burned into my memory. I began to shake. I tried to stop, but no matter what, the eyes haunted me. I tried to splash water on my face but I felt nothing on that frozen mirror. Slowly, I opened the cabinet and took out Mom’s anxiety medication. Ever since Grandma passed and she started taking care of Grandpa she had to take a pill a day or she would have a debilitating panic attack. I swallowed the pill whole.

After that brief spout of insanity, I sat down on my bed and began fiddling with some old action figure. The figure was a character from one of my favorite shows when I was younger, but I had forgotten its name long ago. While fiddling with it, I accidentally hit the button on the back that caused the eyes to light up while it said some voice line from the show. It said: “You make good company.” I tried to throw the toy away, but the paralysis had returned. I could do nothing as the toy’s glowing red eyes stared into my soul. Then it smiled. It sounds insane, but I remember it clear as day; as soon as the voice line had finished, the indifferent mouth twisted into a smile. This time I was able to throw the toy across the room.

I opened up my textbook and removed my algebra textbook. I smashed the toy’s head until nothing was left but plastic fragments and twisted metal. As it died, the toy croaked, “Until we meet again.” I scooped up the toy as best I could and threw it in the trash. I knew what I had to do. I went into the garage and took my bike out. It felt sticky, but I didn’t care. When I got to Grandpa’s house, everyone had left. Gone off to dinner or someone’s house most likely. I tried the side door, but it was locked. I walked around the house a few times, trying to find the easiest point of entrance, before I found myself standing at the side door again. I heard a click. Uneasily, I reached forward and opened the door. Sure enough, I could hear Hogan’s Heroesblasting on the TV in the basement. Each step echoed and reverberated throughout the house.

“What are you?” I asked the darkness around me.

“Nothing.” The invisible voice hissed.

Then it hit me: every so often, I would hear my Grandpa talking to himself, or so I presumed. When I asked him about it, he would always just say, “Oh it’s nothing.” He had been talking to this thing, this nothing.

“Ok Nothing.” I replied, “So why are you here?”

“You know my name.” The voice murmured, evidently impressed. “I do not know how or why I am here; that is something that I forgot long ago.”

“What is your name Nothing? What are you?”

“I have many names. Some call me Death, the Reaper, Thanatos, Hel, Samael, Azrael, Shinigami, Anubis, Xolotl, Angra Mainyu, the list goes on indefinitely. But the name I have grown to prefer is ‘The Nothing’, at least that is what so many of your ‘scholars’ refer to me as nowadays.”

“So you’re the literal incarnation of Death, and you’re living in my Grandpa’s basement, watching an old sitcom with him.”

The voice laughed. “Even the Devil himself needs a day off every so often. When you’re a timeless entity, time means nothing. Your grandfather was an interesting man and my best friend. It was a shame that I had to kill him.”

“And why is that?” my voice began to crack as a tear rolled down my cheek.

“It was his time, simple as that. I can see when each person will die and it is my job to make sure that they do. Every single one of my kind watches from outside the boundaries of your existence, carefully monitoring that every person dies when they ought to.”

“And what if they don’t? What if you let someone live until they were ready to die instead of when they were supposed to?”

“So you think that some people should be exempt from the powers of death, is that correct?” the voice was growing deadly serious.

“Yes.” I stammered.

In response the two red pinpricks appeared. “If I do not do my job then I will lose it. Ever since the Fall of Man, we were tasked with monitoring you and leading you on into the next world. We don’t control death like that; we are simply its harbingers. Though if you were so inclined, I could steal your soul right now. So, do you accept?”

“What are you?” I whispered under my breath.

“I’ve already told you; I am the Envoy of Oblivion, I am the Incarnation of Death, I am The Nothing. So I’ll ask you one more time, should I steal your soul this instant?”

“No…” I tried to run but the terror held me in place. I tried to scream, but I felt as if the shadows were choking me.

“Wrong answer.” The voice rasped in my ear. I watched in terror as the darkness around me became more and more opaque. “Run.”

When I woke up in the emergency room, my parents began to cry.

“Impossible,” the doctor said, “this is impossible.”

“What?” I asked.

His reply shook me to the core: “You have no heartbeat.”