Boots in the Basement

I want to say first off that I tend not to remember alot from my childhood. I find that as I have gotten older, my fondest memories wittle away like the sea erodes the shoreline. However, there is one story that always pops up, one memory that I cant seem to shake.

I know I was about eight or nine years old at the time. The house I had grown up in was a two story ranch style home, three bedrooms and two and half bath. Due to the size of my family (I had a household of six), directly off the left side of the stairs was this den of sorts that branched off to the third bedroom. This den was shared by the three youngest, my brother, myself and my sister. The stairs leading to the basement, which had the washer and dryer, was unfinished, flooded quiet frequently and had a door that led to the backyard. This door was also locked by a padlock at all times, to which my siblings tried constantly to open or find the key, but we never could. Which makes this story all the more creepy.

It was a cool summers night. The A/C made our hardwood floors frozen to the touch of our feet. I woke up with a start. I remember having frequent nightmares at that age as my siblings often watched sci-fi movies and I thought I could handle it. I figured that maybe a glass of water could help my nerves so I went down to the kitchen to grab a glass. I was rather drowsy so I sleepily made my way down the stairs and around to the kitchen. I was about to grab a glass when a sound occurred that made my mind freeze and caused my whole body to shiver violently.

THUMP..... THUMP.... THUMP.....

It was then that I had noticed that the door to the basement was ajar. Each breath I took felt like labored and no noise made it out of my mouth. I could feel myself frozen to the laminate floor of the kitchen as I could hear, what I thought, was heavy boots coming from the basement.

THUMP....THUMP....THUMP....

I don't know what drove me to investigate. I was never brave, I always ran or froze when it came to difficult situations but maybe in my mind I felt like if I could just identify the noise, maybe it was one of my siblings in the middle of the night...

I slowly moved to the basement door, peered around the corner to stare down into the pitch black of the basement. Only a few stairs were visible, so I tried to reach for the drawstring that lit the stairway.

THUMP.....THUMP.....THUMP

As I was about to turn on the light, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, I could just make out a pair of eyes, staring at me from the bottom of the stairs. For a moment, our eyes met and it felt like hours that I stared.

The eyes were manic, boring deep into me like I was the last scrap of meat in the middle of the desert.

THUMP..THUMP..THUMP..THUMP..

The figure starting moving up the stairs toward me. I did the only thing I could think of and book it back up the stairs and into my bed, blanket over my head and shivering madly.

THUMP......THUMP...............

And there was no sound. Nothing. No creak, no peep, no sound came from downstairs. There weren't even any crickets chirping in the pale moonlight. I listened hard for what felt like an eternity.

"I must have imagined it", I thought to myself, "There was no one there, my eyes were just playing tricks on me." I mean, I just had a nightmare.

As I tried to calm my breath, a sound appeared so close to my ears I felt like I was plunged into ice water.

"GO TO SLEEP, LITTLE ONE....."

The voice was raspy, like its throat was hoarse. I had never felt more terror in my entire life than at that moment. I tried to scream but it was as if a switch in my throat was clicked off, for no noise emerged from my dry mouth. I shut my eyes in terror and I counted...

1.....2......3.......4........

And all of a sudden, it was as if the whole world came to life. I could hear the faint sounds of the A/C moaning, which I only then noticed had not been running. Crickets chirped merrily outside my bedroom window and the heavy snoring of my older brother was heard from the bedroom next door. I pulled my covers off my head to find that the room was exactly as I had left it before I went to bed that evening.

To this day, I have no idea what I had heard, what I had seen. Looking back, I can't think of any moment that scared me more, that shook me to the bone, than that night.