I fell completely in love with the old Victorian house with the gingerbread trim the first time I laid eyes on it.  When I saw the "for rent" sign, I just knew I had to live there until my new apartment was ready.  Knocking on the front door, I was greeted by an old arthritic gentleman who kept telling me to speak louder.

"I'd like to rent your room for a couple of months," I requested in a raised voice. "I'm starting a new job and I'm waiting for my place to become ready."

"Under one condition," the elderly man intoned,  "The basement is completely off limits!"

I agreed to his condition and moved into the historic house, wondering if it harbored any secrets,  Soon, I began to realize that something was off kilter in this ancient place. "Eleven, eleven, eleven,"  the harsh chants emanated from the basement.  I racked my brain to figure out was 'eleven' meant with no success.  I wondered if it referred to the number of rooms in the old house which totaled exactly eleven.  Maybe a previous owner had had eleven children.  Perhaps the basement had eleven boxes of antiquated clothes belonging to a past owner.  I looked at my calendar and realized it was October eleventh so I took this as an omen that I should explore the voice from the basement that night while the owner was asleep.

I was surprised to find the basement door unlocked and crept stealthily down the stairs to the basement.  It was empty except for an old furnace and some boxes of books.  While I was in the far corner, I heard, once again, the voice moaning from under the darkened stairs, "eleven, eleven, eleven."  I was petrified because I knew I had to use the stairs to go back upstairs. I crept over to the stairs to peek under the risers before chancing going up the steps.  All of a sudden, a long arm reached up and pulled me under the stairs which were scattered with bones and torn clothing.  An invisible force compelled me to stay there where I, too, soon became skeletonized remains.

"Twelve, twelve, twelve," droned the disembodied voice.  I did not hear it!

So, 500 bucks a month and the basement’s off limits, okay?” he asked.

“Sure,” she answered. She felt bad for the old guy in dirty corduroys. He was awkward and way too thin.

The room, though, was full of hazy morning light. She fell in love immediately.

“This is great!” she said, shocked.

“Yeah,” he said. His mustache twitched as if he wanted to say “but…” Then he made a prim “look around” motion with his hand.

She didn’t need to. She started, “This is probably a stupid thing to say but….”

“Why is it so cheap?” he finished. His eyebrows sagged giving him a puppy-dog expression.

He dropped the hand holding the rental agreement, “Look, there’s stuff in the basement. It makes noise.”

Curious, she pulled the gauzy curtain through two fingers and asked, “What stuff?”

Sounding rehearsed, he answered, “Crackheads? A ghost? Who knows?” She pretended to laugh, but frowned.

She did consider walking out. She should have. But the place was cheap and gorgeous. Instead, she signed on mustache man’s skeletal back as he stood hunched over, hands on knees.

A steady “thump, thump, zhinnng…thump, thump, zhinnng…” noise awoke her night after night. It sounded like a washing machine loaded off-center. She tried ignoring it and failed.

It was louder in the hallway. A placard on the basement door read, “Private Property. Enter at Your Own Risk.” Someone added “Kids eat free” in crayon. For some reason that gave her the chills.

She tried the push handle, expecting it to be locked, but it gave. The noise was unbearable now. Reaching for the light switch she fell, breaking her neck on the way down. Shock descended, stealing her pain.

A single lamp, no shade, lit the space under the stairs. Squinting, she saw the mustache man. Full on nude, he was jumping up and down on what used to be a couch. He held an impossibly long knife in his hands.

He jumped twice. “Thump, thump”. Then, the blade crashed down, slicing the couch. “Zhinnng”. Couch stuffing stuck to his sweaty chest and thighs. He froze when he saw her, fire dancing in his eyes, blade glinting.

She stared back at him in the sudden silence, head bent at that extraordinarily wrong angle. Then he jumped off the couch with both feet like a child and shouted, “Oh goody, look what I’ve got to play with next!!”

Rented room for me, a storyteller,

Said my landlord, don’t go in the cellar,

Each night I heard some inhuman yeller,

So I snuck downstairs to find this dweller.

Lo and behold, a basement full of guys,

Let me tell you, this was quite a surprise,

Torture chamber where they did agonize,

Some missing limbs, others, ears, tongues, and eyes.

Attached to the wall, in shackles and chains,

Blood-filled tubes running in and out of veins,

Some cracked-open skulls and jars full of brains,

A horrific scene, these human remains.

This had to be some kind of sick study,

As evidenced by the ground all muddy,

Completely soaked and awfully bloody,

I turned quickly, feeling rather cruddy.

And there sat my landlord in a bathrobe,

Happily dissecting a frontal lobe,

Lighting areas with some sort of strobe,

Blissfully occupied by her sick probe. 

I cautiously snuck by her with no sound,

Attempting to blend into the background,

I bolted as my feet touched solid ground,

No way in hell I was hanging around.

San Francisco is a moldy, dank town.  No one tells you this, you just inevitably find it out when you go apartment-hunting.  I'd had enough of mildew, of damp, of shitty windows that don't close.  The woman who met me at the door was posh--tall, lithe, expensive hair.  In a low voice she ran through the details--lots of light, storage in the attic, but do not, repeat, do not descend to the basement.  I was so grateful for a warm, dry bedroom that I nodded mutely, willing to agree to anything.  She seemed unsurprised at my lack of curiosity, only raising a sculpted eyebrow as I hastily wrote a check.  The rent was shockingly low.  The keys felt good in my hand as I left.  I could not have been happier.

That is, until about 2am, when I awoke, disoriented, my air mattress sighing angrily as I jumped up from the floor.  WHISTLE.  CRACK.  Over, and over.  Maybe an old furnace?  WHISTLE.  CRACK.  Nervous, I turned back to bed.  What the hell could that be?  I tried to apply a rational answer--probably old plumbing, shifting as the temperature dropped overnight.  Yeah.  Plumbing.  I fell into fitful sleep.

Every night, at the same time.  A thin whistling sound, and then a sharp crack.  Sometimes haunting moans.  Finally I mustered up my meager courage and 

tiptoed out into the shared hallway.  Louder here.  It sounded like it was coming from downstairs.  Worried, I hesitated.  The landlady's words reverberated.  But I couldn't take it anymore.  The stairs were steep, dark.  My footsteps were muffled in plush carpeting, and I watched my hand reach for the knob on the door, my heart thundering in my ears.  WHISTLE.  CRACK.

I pushed the door open a few inches with tingling fingers.  Low music, soft lights.  In the middle of the room stood the landlady, thigh-high boots and red lips, flicking a whip expertly in one hand.  WHISTLE.  CRACK.  At a sleek bar behind her, several women lounged, cat-like, watching her with heavily made-up eyes as a young man removed his shirt.  Her eyes met mine as she raised an eyebrow. "What took you so long?", she purred.

Don't go in the basement.

That was what Mr. Saunders told me when I moved in.   When I asked why, he muttered something about mold spores, but I got the feeling he was hiding something from me.

It nagged at me, that padlocked basement door, waiting to be explored.   He might have bodies down there, or treasure, or just a stack of porno magazines, but I had to know.   Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.

He'd gone to bed early, so the house was quiet.   I deftly picked the lock on the door and made my way down.

I stood on the threshold, breathing in the freezing basement air, staring into the darkness.   I don't think I've ever been so frightened in my life.   I felt around for the light switch, but the bulb was burned out.   I took the phone out of my pocket and turned on my flashlight app, and stepped onto the stairs, slowly making my way down into the darkness.

Suddenly, my foot slipped on the damp stairs and I threw out my arm to catch myself, dropping my phone into the darkness.   I hit the stairs hard, and after lying there for a few moments, I managed to heave myself into a sitting position, and looked down to see if I could find my phone, but the light had disappeared.  

I supposed I had better go look for it, so I got up and continued down the stairs, but to my infinite shock, there were no more stairs to go down.   I stood there for a moment, frantically trying to stabilize myself, and finally I pitched forward into the darkness.   I was falling, falling, falling.   I kept waiting to stop, to come crashing to a bitter end, but I never did.

I fell for days, and having no water, I began to die from dehydration.   Finally, I passed on.   My body began to disintegrate, rotting, until finally only my bones remained.   Months passed, until finally, the fall ended, and I came popping out the other side.   My lifeless skeleton eyes briefly beheld a room full of Chinese decorations.   I had fallen all the way through the Earth to the other side.   I hung in the air for a moment, then fell back down the hole.   This was years ago, but as far as the world still knows, my bones are still falling to this day.

Completely off limits you said. Under absolutely no circumstances you said. But it’s only a basement, and I’ve never lived in a house with a basement before.

I’m pretty sure those noises I keep hearing aren’t normal though. It’s this weird… rustling, every night. Every morning I shuffle into the kitchen and you’re just sitting there, dark brown eyes fixed on the paper and eating a bowl of cereal as though everything is normal. As if you’ve never heard a strange thing in your life.

After living here for a week I think I’ve gotten about eight hours of sleep total, and most of those have been at work.

So tonight? Tonight I push the covers off and go down to investigate because I can’t stand that noise anymore.

It gets louder as I walk down the hall. When I open the door to the basement stairs it seems harder, sharper. Either it’s echoing, the sound doubling and doubling in the stairwell, or whatever’s causing it is massive. With every step there’s a scrape behind every rustle that becomes more and more pronounced. My skin feels hot and ill-fitting, like waking up from a nightmare or a fever dream, but I have to know what’s down there.

At last I reach the carpeted bottom landing and my hand closes around the doorknob. It barely seems attached to me anymore, but it turns the knob and pulls the door open all the same.

It looks like paper. Plain, crumpled white paper, so much that instead of looking into a room I’m just left staring at a wall of it. Miraculously it stays in place, instead of avalanching. For a moment there is complete silence.

Without warning, it begins again. A susurrous of paper on paper as something in there moves. Then it parts. A single, dark brown eye nearly as wide as the door frame stares out as me. Silence descends, or I am too crawling-out-of-my-skin-brain-mind to register any more sound, for a million years or maybe just a few seconds. The iris contracts from half the width of the door to a black pinprick while it looks at me and I know, I know, that if it sees me a second time I will be in such deep shit.

You can keep the safety deposit. I’m moving out tonight. 

Sometime ago now I rented an apartment. The landlord a strange man said “Never go down into the basement”.

I never did even though I heard noises, bangs and movement.

But one night I was watching a tv show of paranormal tales and I suddenly got the urge to disobey what I´d been told so adamantly not to do.

So I took a torch from the kitchen cupboard and a knife from the draw. Taking a deep reassuring breathe I turned the knob on the basement door. Quietly I opened it as gently as I could, but with an old squeak it gave my stealth away.

I pointed my torch to the stairs and began to make my way down them, as I did I saw

another pair of feet in front of me.

Jumping, letting out a squeal, I ran back up the few stairs closing the door behind me.

The door then opened slowly, I froze and stared.

A small hand gripped the side of the door then a woman came out timidly.

Looking at one another, torches in hand we both said “Oh my God you scared me”.

The woman then asked “Do you live up here?” and I replied “Yes”.

I asked “Do you live in the basement?”

To which she answered “Yes I´ve been renting it for a while now”.

“Oh Jesus I thought you was some sort of axe murderer or a ghost” I explained.

Laughing she said “And I thought you was too!”

We sat and had a cup of tea, seems we´d been neighbours for quite a while and that night we´d also been watching the same tv show.

The basement was not a dark, damp and scary place, it was actually a very modern well lit gorgeous place, far nicer than mine…the lady named Emily was paying a $160 less a month for it than I was my own dreary apartment.

Our landlord had either been playing a joke on us all this time or he just did not want us to meet in case we compared rents!

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© M.Withers/M.Strudwick . All rights reserved.

Both the name The EriduSerpent/EriduSerpent

and any written material is owned solely by the above named.

Permission granted for all written material to be shared but not for profit.

Printing or publishing is prohibited without seeking permission first from said owner.

Everyone come with me

I'm going to break my decree

My landlord's asleep in his bed

Those noises aren't all in my head

Slowly we descend the stair

So we can see what he's got down there

Maybe it's just his mother

With his dead sister and brother!

Maybe it's where he takes ladies

Ones that disappeared in the 80s!

Perhaps he has hidden treasure

Or items for some morbid pleasure!

He's a secretive little man

I wonder what he has planned

My imagination's running wild

Haven't been scared since I was a child

Let's turn on the flashlight

Illuminate what's hidden from sight

I'm slowly reaching for the door

I hear something creaking the floor

Maybe I should turn and run

But that wouldn't be any fun!

Here we go everybody

I hope it isn't really bloody

Slowly I swing the door wide

To see what's on the other side

I shine the light all around

There is nothing to be found

Suddenly his voice comes through

'Hey, I thought I told you!

You don't go down in there

It's dangerous, you aren't aware

These stairs are not very safe

The light there I need to replace

There's so much that needs done

You're so curious so the job you've won!'

For the third night in a row, right on time, it woke me. That sound of the rattling and something impacting hard against something else. It wasn't regular, stopping and starting, so it couldn't be a machine. It was living. I rolled over and pulled the duvet up over my head. My left hand under my pillow, squeezing it against my ear. Still it got through, the percussive sound, reverberating inside my skull. I sat up, throwing off the duvet and fumbling around in the dark for the jeans I'd discarded by the bed the night before. I slipped them on and fought my way, blearily, into the t-shirt slung over the desk chair. I opened the door, being careful to release the catch as gently and silently as possible. I crept out on to the landing, swiping at my phone screen to turn on the torch and then began to descend, one stair at a time. At the front door, the light of the moon illuminated the hallway through the stained glass panel in the centre, casting unafmiliar, angular shadows. I felt my way along the wall and found the entrance to the basement. I felt my heart rate surge, my breathing getting shallower and forced myself to count to ten. Deep breaths. When I felt just a little calmer, I turned the old fashioned, iron key and opened the latch.

As soon as I opened the door it hit me. The smell of something rancid. Stale. Then the wealth of possibilities started flashing through my mind. Rats. Maybe even maltreated dogs. I put my foot on the first step, felt the slippery texture of some kind of dust beneath the thin sole of my slippers. I grasped the wall beside me, almost no light as I descended. Then I heard it. A voice.

"Hello?" it said. "There's a light. On the right, near the bottom of the stairs. He uses it when he feeds me."

I switched on the light and the brightness stung my eyes, who knows how it felt for him. Now I could see him, he was wearing a suit, but it was tatty, and hanging off him. He'd been here a while. I was just about to unfasten the catch when I saw his breifcase and documents strewn across the floor. He was a window salesman. I locked the door as I left.

@sandflea68

Once the noise was too much that I got up in the mid of my sleep. I went down to check the mystery. My heart beat was very fast. Though I was affraid, got up guts and went there. The site shocked me. There were many rags of clothes tored into bits. The basement also had a bad odour. I saw some black balls there. Then I took my lamp and went a little forward. I felt some thing on my feet and shouted with a horror. On this the noise stopped and I saw a little mouse runing away of my feet. Now I got my answer, thus I bought a cat and also made pest control with the permission of my freind, who needed my rent even for a little food.