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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/JamFranz on 2024-11-02 18:22:48+00:00.

They’ve been down there too long.

I keep telling them they just need them to come upstairs, to leave that cramped, dark room of packed dirt and come into the light. 

We all need to leave this place while we still can.

I’m still clinging to the hope that it’s not already too late.

Did you know that in Connecticut, sellers aren’t required to disclose that a death occurred in a home unless you submit an inquiry in writing? I sure as hell wasn’t aware, not until after we’d already moved in – until it was already too late.

I wonder if whoever buys this place after we’re gone, will think to ask.

I did later learn that the realtor regretted selling to us. That if he had known our ‘situation’, he never would’ve shown us the place.

I can’t help but imagine what our lives would’ve been like if we’d never bought the small fixer upper off of Lakeshore Drive.

That’s all moot now, of course. 

If it weren’t for the price, we’d never have looked at it in the first place – especially since it’d been a foreclosure. 

I hated the feeling of building our lives on the shattered remains of someone else’s, but Gideon and I needed to move, we had to. We couldn’t stay in our old house, its recently vacated bedroom dangerously close to becoming a shrine.

We couldn’t keep going to the same grocery store in our tiny town, where everyone knew and regarded us with looks of pity.

Once we moved to Bridgeport, we were just two more people amongst a hundred thousand.

We could mourn in peace and anonymity, lost in the throngs.

But living in the city doesn’t come cheap. 

So, that’s why Gideon and I were looking at a fixer upper that had sat vacant before the bank eventually reclaimed it.

I should’ve trusted my gut when I thought something about the place was off. The new cheery welcome mat seemed at odds with the rest of the house, which gave off an aura of a deep – almost crushing – sadness. It hit me like a wave when we first walked in – a split second before the scent of rot and decay followed in its wake.

The realtor apologized and said that they’d found fridges full of rotten food from when the prior owners left the place abandoned. He assured us that he’d dealt with something similar before, and with a few windows left open it’d air out in no time.

The house was outdated in parts, yet remodeled beautifully in others. It seemed the prior owners had apparently begun the process of painstakingly restoring it before they abandoned the place – leaving behind a new kitchen, but upstairs bedrooms that were missing flooring and plastered with faded, mildewy wallpaper.

As we approached the door to the basement the smell intensified to eye watering levels.

There was something else that gave me pause, too – something about the basement. 

The space was cramped, all unfinished dirt floor and exposed brick beyond the small area that had been set up for a washer and dryer.

Right at the edge of where the faint light from the single pull-string lamp faded, was a small wooden ladder leading down into a darkness that soon swallowed it up.

Despite the realtor’s best attempts at leading us away from it, I found myself subconsciously drawn to it – unaware I’d even approached until I was standing at the edge.

“What’s down there?” I felt that wave of sorrow and longing the closer I got to the packed dirt floor leading down to the blackness.

“Nobody.” For a brief moment, his salesman’s smile slipped off of his face, and after an awkward silence he quickly added “Just a crawlspace.” The smile was back. “Just a little extra storage space.”

As my husband and I stared at the dark expanse beyond the ladder, we discussed plans to install some lighting to make that space, that took up the majority of the basement, usable. 

We planned a lot of things, back then.

We wanted to place Brie’s belongings in one of the bedrooms like we had at our old home, even though part of us knew that their presence only served to highlight her absence. But the rooms upstairs were a mess – riddled with holes through the subfloors, mold behind the walls – so we reluctantly agreed we needed to complete the renovations before the space would be usable.

It didn’t feel right to put Brie’s things in a storage unit during that time, though. Yes, I knew they were exactly that – just things, just objects, but no matter how many times I told myself that, it felt like we’d be leaving her in a storage locker. 

So, we wrapped up the rocking chair I’d read to her in, in cellophane, lovingly packed the stuffed animals and Barbies, and with the rest of the house being in the state that it was, we tucked them neatly into the only place safe from construction – the crawlspace. 

Close by, and protected while we made a safe, more permanent place for them.

At first, I expected us to spend all of our free time down there, like we used to in her room at our old house, but something about that place alarmed me as much as it called to me.

I think that even before we’d finished placing her belongings down there, we realized that we’d made a mistake. Some part of me knew – maybe it was the look of that place – the black dirt that seemed to swallow up any light we directed at it from headlamps and flashlight beams – or the overpowering smell of lingering rot mixed with old earth. Maybe it was that feeling – the one of emptiness I’d felt when we first moved in had been replaced by something far worse. As we placed the final box, the stale air down there was thick with a sinister sort of excitement.

Even then, I had a vague feeling of no longer being alone.

It didn’t take long for the noises to start.

I was running a load of laundry when I heard it over the rumble of the machine – a prolonged shriek, the sound of something sharp being slowly dragged across cellophane. It was my first time alone in the basement, and to hear that emerging from the claustrophobic space… at first I thought it was Gideon down there, opening the rocking chair and I smiled sadly at the thought of him leaving work early, succumbing to the need to feel close to her again. I too had felt the burning desire to go down there, despite myself.

“Couldn’t resist?” I called down to the space.

The sound abruptly stopped, and I heard shuffling along the hard dirt.

I put a foot on the old wooden ladder, figured I’d join him so he wouldn’t be alone. It felt right, going down into the darkness. No one should have to be alone, especially in a place like that.

That’s when I heard footsteps from upstairs, followed by Gideon’s voice, announcing his arrival home from work.

I sprinted up the basement steps, out of breath and nearly tripping as the only thing running through my mind was that if Gideon was upstairs*, who the hell was in the crawlspace?*

As I was about to describe what I’d heard to Gideon, I suddenly felt silly. I was in a new place, with our past wounds still so fresh – of course I was imagining things.

The next morning, I was working from home when I heard it echo through the previously silent house – a giggle, a familiar sounding one, coming from outside the kitchen window.

I didn’t remember leaving the window open, but when I went in to check, it was closed. Still, the laughter continued. 

That’s when I realized – it wasn’t coming from outside, it was coming from below, floating up through the grate under the stove.

It went on like that – every so often, the sound of her soft laughter would float up from the basement. 

But there was a wrongness to it – it was laughter in name only, hollow and joyless, lacking the light my daughter had always carried.

Gideon never mentioned hearing it, so I never brought it up. At the time I thought maybe I was just losing it due to stress – the stress of losing Brie, of starting over in a new city.

Looking back now, and recalling the circles under my husband’s eyes, the grimness there – he must have been in the same boat.

The first time she spoke to me, I’d been bringing down a box of Christmas decorations.

“Mom?”

I nearly choked on the air I’d been breathing.

I never thought I’d hear Brie’s voice again. For a moment, I thought I’d dreamt it.

“Are you coming?”

The voice, song like, floated up from the dark.

From the crawlspace. 

A dry little cough echoed out. 

I lost my shit. I ran upstairs, and I finally told Gideon.

My husband gave me a look when I did – a look that said he understood, and if what I needed from him in that moment was to go into the basement and duck into that dark little crawlspace so he could tell me everything was okay, then he was going to do it.

The little room was pitch black as I followed him into it. All of our attempts to install lighting down there – temporary and otherwise – had failed – and the dim glow from the single bulb in the basement was swallowed up before even descending the ladder.

We clicked on our flashlights.

I wondered if he too had heard the sound of something moving across the packed dirt that echoed out seconds before we directed our beam towards the darkness.

The sound of…Scurrying?

Gideon gasped, and a moment later turned to reveal what he’d seen.

A blanket has been placed across the hard dirt, one of Brie’s, adorned with smiling characters from her favorite animated movie. Stuffed toys were strewn along it, a single book lay open off to the side. I didn’t even need to see the impression left on the blanket to know that someone had been sleeping down there.

Gide…

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