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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Smart-Bus3973 on 2024-10-08 14:22:14+00:00.

I don’t remember hearing it right away. I think, at first, I convinced myself it was nothing more than the natural sounds of an old house.

 Houses make noise—creaks, groans, the wind lashing against the windows, the floorboards settling. That’s what I told myself when I first heard the dripping. 

But now, standing here in the basement, the sound dominates my senses. The steady drip of water hitting a surface fills my head, growing louder with each passing moment. I’ve followed it, searched for it, but no matter where I go, it remains just out of reach.

My eyes scan the aged stone walls of the basement, meticulously searching for the elusive source of the disturbance. The air hangs heavy and thick, each breath feeling laborious as I struggle to draw in enough air.

It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when this place felt like home—quaint and charming, a bit rough around the edges sure, but full of potential.

Sarah and I had fallen in love with the house at first sight.

The realtor had given us a brief tour, and when we reached the basement, he quickly brushed past it, barely mentioning the fact that it existed at all. It seemed odd at the time, but we didn’t think much of it. Old basements are creepy; everyone knows that. 

Now I wish we had listened to our instincts. I wish we had never set foot down here.

The dripping had started about two weeks after we moved in. I remember Sarah complaining about it while we were eating breakfast one morning. 

“Tom, do you hear that?” she’d asked, her brow furrowed in that way she does when she’s frustrated. “It’s driving me insane.” 

I hadn’t noticed it until she pointed it out. And that’s when I heard it for the first time.

A faint, rhythmic drip was coming from somewhere beneath us. I dismissed it—probably a leaky pipe, I thought. It’s an old house; these things happen, I reasoned.

That very night however, the sound, it seemed to get louder. As I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, I could hear it clearly.  

 drip… drip… drip… 

It sounded close, too close.

I tried to block it out, but the more I focused on it, the louder it became. Sarah turned over next to me, restless, and I knew she was hearing it too. I could sense the tension in air as she was trying her very best to ignore and sleep through it.

“Can you check it out tomorrow?” she finally whispered to me, her voice barely audible over the steady drip. 

“Yeah, I’ll look into it,” I replied, though I was already dreading the idea of going down into the basement. Something about it felt off—like a cold weight settling over my chest.

The next day, I made my way down the narrow stairs to the basement. It was dimly lit, a single bulb hanging from the ceiling casting weak shadows across the space.

Boxes were still piled up against the walls, remnants from the move we hadn’t bothered to unpack yet. The air smelled musty, like old earth and damp concrete. 

The dripping echoed all around me, but I couldn’t pinpoint its source.

The pipes along the ceiling looked fine—no signs of leaks or condensation. I checked the corners, the floor, the walls. Nothing.

I even crouched down near the floor drains, but they were bone dry. The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. 

Frustrated, I climbed back upstairs and told Sarah I couldn’t find anything. She wasn’t convinced.

“You didn’t look hard enough,” she said, her eyes dark with concern. “That sound is getting louder.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Over the next few days, the dripping grew more insistent. It followed us from room to room, a constant, maddening noise we couldn’t escape.

And it wasn’t just the sound. The smell started shortly after—faint at first, like damp wood, but soon it became overpowering, rancid. It clung to everything, seeping into the walls, the floors, our clothes. It chased us around like a shadow.  

I called a plumber, thinking it had to be a hidden leak, maybe a burst pipe we couldn’t see. He came, checked the entire house top to bottom, and found nothing. Not a single drop of water out of place.

Oddly enough, the dripping ceased the moment he set foot in the house. The rancid smell we had grown accustomed to, seemed to vanish in his presence. As we watched him go through every room, running his checks, we could hardly believe our senses.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said, scratching his head. “Everything looks fine to me. Are you sure it’s not just in your head?”

I wish it had been in our heads.

That night, the smell grew worse. Sarah was coughing, gagging from the stench, and I wasn’t much better.

We couldn’t sleep, not with that goddamn dripping and the rotten, cloying odor. Desperate, I grabbed a flashlight and headed back down to the basement, determined to find the source. 

This time, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

In the farthest corner, behind a stack of old furniture the previous owners had left behind, there was something odd—a patch of the wall that looked different. The bricks were older, crumbling, almost as if they didn’t belong to the rest of the foundation. 

The dripping seemed to be coming from that direction.

I cleared away the furniture, heart pounding in my chest, and there it was—a sealed well, hidden behind the wall.

It was small, barely large enough to fit a person, with a rusted metal cover and bricks haphazardly piled around it as if someone had tried to seal it off quickly.

My stomach turned as the rancid smell hit me full force. I gagged, pulling my shirt over my nose, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. 

The dripping had stopped.

I called Sarah down to see, and her reaction was much like mine—horror and disgust. We debated what to do, but the smell had become unbearable. We needed to open the well, air it out, get rid of whatever was causing the stench. 

The moment I pried the cover off, a wave of cold air rushed out, thick and stale, like something had been trapped down there for decades.

I peered inside, shining the flashlight into the well, but there was no water. It was dry—bone dry. 

That’s when I saw them. Wet, slick handprints on the stone walls, leading up from the bottom of the well. My heart skipped a beat. There were only handprints and nothing else.

“What the hell is this?” Sarah whispered, her voice trembling. 

“I don’t know,” I replied, stepping back, my legs weak. “We need to seal it back up.”

We hastily put the cover back on, but the damage was already done. That night, the dripping returned, louder than ever. To make matters worse, it was accompanied by footprints.

At first, they were subtle—small, damp marks near the basement stairs, as if someone had walked through water. But as the days passed, the footprints grew more frequent and larger, appearing in places they shouldn’t: on the walls, the ceiling, and even in our bedroom. They materialized out of nowhere and slowly dissolved on their own, leaving me unsettled.

I suggested to Sarah that perhaps it would be best to move into another place, but she shot me down immediately. We had poured all our life savings into buying this property, and abandoning it now felt unthinkable to her.

“This is our home, Adam,” she insisted, her voice firm. “I’m sure we can get to the bottom of this. Let’s just give it a few more days, and I’m certain something will turn up.”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to trust that we could fix whatever was wrong with the place, but all I heard was drip… drip… drip.

What made me truly paranoid was when I began hearing whispers. It happened during dinner with Sarah.

At first, the voices were faint, barely noticeable beneath the sound of the dripping. It was like listening to an echo.

But soon, they grew louder, more distinct—like voices calling out from the depths of the well.

“Adam… please… let me out… please,” a raspy voice echoed in my mind.

I tried to ignore it at first, convincing myself that stress and exhaustion were playing tricks on my mind. But then I noticed Sarah’s face pale as she looked away, unable to deny what we were both hearing.

Finally, I put my foot down and told her we were moving out. If it meant spending a few nights in a cheap motel, so be it; but we were leaving first thing in the morning.

To my surprise, she didn’t protest this time.

As I watched her lay on the bed, relief washed over me, and I drifted into a fitful sleep.

But when I woke in the middle of the night, I found her missing from the bed. She wasn’t in the bathroom, either. My heart raced as I passed the kitchen and noticed the basement door standing ajar.

I gasped as I slowly descended the stairs and found Sarah standing near the foot of the well.

She had already removed the lid and appeared to be in some sort of trance. A full moon from a nearby window illuminated the mouth of the well, casting an eerie glow around its edges.

“Sarah?” I whispered, my throat dry as I slowly approached her from behind.

She didn’t respond. Her eyes were glazed, her face ashen white, and staring into the abyss.

 And then I saw it. A figure, pale and gaunt, slowly lifted its head over the edge of the well, its eyes glinting in the moonlight. The creature’s mottled skin stretched taut over its bones, lending it an unsettlingly fragile appearance.

Strands of dark, matted hair clung to its scalp, casting eerie shadows across its hollow features. It extended its bony hand at Sarah with palm outreached, silently beckoning her to respond in kind.

I screamed, pulling Sarah back,…

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