 He died two years ago, and it was the worst thing that's ever happened to our family We never recovered from it and honestly it felt like the light of our life had been taken within seconds There were just three of us left now my wife Sally Myself and our younger son James a family of four is like four limbs of a body Without a limb the body is never the same as it was before and it struggles to know how to function again Jonathan was 18. He was a clever kid with a love of libraries science and basketball He never really gave us any trouble and always had a way of making everyone ease up when he walked into a room Just a really personable kid. So when I found his body I knew the final verdict of suicide didn't make sense. He didn't leave a note People trying to suggest that maybe he was struggling at school But John was a straight-A kid and we never put pressure on him to even get A's all the time After his death the family fell apart None of us knew how to start speaking about the grief of his absence And I began to spend more and more time in the garage Pretending to fix things but really I was looking into strange and unexplained Suicides it wasn't until six months later that another kid in John's class one of his friends Sam was found dead by a parent's suicide that I began to spiral Something was happening in this town. It wasn't long before another of John's friends a girl named Lacy was found dead as well It took me over a year to find the courage But I finally went into his room seeing that closet was painful as hell, but I had to look I had to find out what was going on. I Looked everywhere between the clothes the top shelf Desperately hoping for some clue an hour later empty-handed. I got up I was about to close the door when I spotted it a small silver handle in the wooden floorboards I pushed back clothes to reveal what looked like a small wooden door within the floor We'd never built any such thing in the floors of this house Slowly I touched the handle. It was old. How had we missed this? I pulled it open slowly and it lifted with a protesting Creek. I grimaced and Slowly carefully looked down to see what was there What I found shook me right to my core. How had we missed this? There was a ladder that led down the kind you find in a manhole But what unnerved me was that it was so dark. I couldn't see how far down it led And the ladder was covered in bloody handprints I sat back. This shouldn't exist. How was this even possible? The whole seemed to completely ignore the rest of the house's architecture to exist John's room was right above the living room So logically speaking, this should have opened in the middle of the room And it didn't I swear to you right now in this moment that I'm a skeptic I don't believe in afterlives or past lives. I don't believe in ghosts or ghouls or anything like that Never have My first thought was to use my phone's torch to shine a light down there I did and I could see only as far as the ladder's fifth step The crimson of near fresh blood on each stair sickened me. What the hell was this? I looked down there for a moment and I swear to God I heard a growl. It wasn't loud. It was soft Low Like a warning I scrambled back from the hole heart-thudding and considered my options I didn't want to tell my wife and son yet But I also desperately wanted to know what was down there and how it was connected to my son For now, I shut the cover of the hole Instantly a feeling of relief flooded my body I took a step out of the closet and placed my hand against the frame to take a deep breath Heart pounding I left John's room I needed to think Back down in the garage, I considered what I was going to do I had work the next day and I didn't want to wait until after work to see what was down there Sally and James wouldn't be home for at least another three hours My wife had taken our younger son James to the dentist about some cavities After another moment, I took my toolbox out and remove the hammer, nails, the flashlight, and the matches just in case Then I took my backpack out of the car and emptied it on the work table Quickly and efficiently, I began to pack it, arguing with myself the entire time Finally, keeping the blood in mind, I put on a pair of gloves With some hesitation, I hoisted the backpack, took a long slow walk up the stairs I switched the light on in John's room Then I opened his closet I looked down to where I'd found the catch. It was definitely there. I hadn't made it up I opened it up and slowly with the flashlight on in my hand and grimacing slightly as the iron smell of blood hit me I began to take the ladder down one slow step at a time The iron smell got worse as I went down On the tenth or so step, I shone the flashlight around The air was thick with darkness and when I say thick, I mean imagine trying to drive your car through thick fog Only it's pitch black The light of the flashlight couldn't even make it more than three feet ahead of me or behind me I shone it downwards to see how many steps remain to the ladder and it stopped past five steps Clearly, there was a long way yet to go As I went further and farther down, careful not to lose my flashlight, I kept count 20 steps 30 40 It wasn't until I counted the 150th step that my feet finally touched something solid I shone the torch down to see a black substance on the floor I knelt to touch it It was like sand Black sand I coughed a little The smell down here was utterly rancid Old rotten blood. That's what it smelled of Still around me There was this pitch black fog that the light literally bounced off I couldn't see anything I heard a growl again But this time it was louder And then something shifted making the black fog ripple I froze Then very quietly Heart thudding I reached inside my backpack and looked for the hammer The growling got more intense with every shuffle I made And I stopped moving H-hello? I asked, feeling both foolish and afraid Who's there? And what I heard scared the crap out of me In exactly my voice and pitch, I heard a voice inside the darkness say H-hello? Who's there? I should have freaked out and legged it back up I didn't I don't know why I didn't I just stood there frozen Jonathan? I don't even know why or when I said it I guess I was so desperate for it to miraculously be him Jonathan? It mimicked again It seemed as though it was mocking me I could hear it shifting in the dark and still my feet wouldn't move The hair on the back of my neck stood up As ice cold air began to blow against my skin Then I realized that it wasn't air Air didn't change so rhythmically or periodically It was something breathing Right behind me Very slowly I turned to look My flashlight shone on the ground first And the first thing I saw was hands Bloody hands with ragged fingernails They seemed to be flat against the ground My hand shaking I slowly moved the flashlight up To see its arms then shoulders Soaked in blood It was then that I realized it had no head In panic I shone the flashlight in the things direction And I saw it in full A horribly dismembered woman Stitched back together all wrong Her legs were where her arm should be And her head Her head stitched on her upside down torso What made me run What finally made me take those steps up the ladder to at a time Was her face The milk white of her unseeing eyes And her wound of a mouth With far too many teeth As I raced up the ladder I thought I heard skittering under me Faster and faster I raced up And faster the skittering became I was terrified now Not knowing what would happen if the thing caught me My heart was thudding so hard I could barely hear anything else But I knew I knew I couldn't stop And if I did That thing would drag me to wherever it came from I literally threw myself out of the top of the hole And slammed the door shut as hard as I could A slam with force resounded on the other side Then another thud And another one It was trying to get out It was trying to get out I couldn't let it My heart slammed against my chest I put my full weight onto the door As the thudding continued It almost felt like whatever was knocking on the other side Had a hundred hands I grabbed my backpack Finally found my hammer And yanked out the nails from the pocket As soon as I did this The frenzy of hands stopped below me Everything was very quiet suddenly I took this as my opportunity I broke John's desk chair into wooden planks And used them to board the door up After I was satisfied I left the room I never wanted to go in there again A week later, at the anniversary of his death A letter from John arrived in the mail I remember every second of that day so clearly Even though I'd barely slept since my trip down the hole I was sitting and drinking my second cup of coffee after work For the last week I'd noticed I hadn't really stopped shaking And was very seriously considering selling the house But getting Sally to agree was proving difficult Without worrying her about the manhole Too many memories of John lived here for her The last time I asked We got into such an awful fight we didn't speak for two days I heard the mail and on autopilot Stood to go and get it I sifted through this idly Giving my brain something to do And then I nearly dropped the pack There, amongst the letters was clearly John's writing Addressed only to me With frenzied hands I opened the letter Hi, dad I know I'm probably the last person you'd be expecting to hear from I'm addressing this to the old house But, truthfully I hope you've all sold it And that this letter never reaches you If it does and you're reading this Then I hope it isn't too late already Dad, there's a door in the floor of my closet I need you to seal it up tightly And move away Do not open it Don't look in it Please About a year ago My friends and I went hiking on a Friday afternoon And it got so late That we took shelter in a cave from the rain When we woke up the next day We were all caught And one of us was missing Christina I'd ask if you remember her She was one of my best friends But you won't No one does I wanted to report her missing But Sam convinced us that we looked guilty So instead We went home And cleaned ourselves off And tried to forget about what happened We kept expecting someone to call us Or someone to call us Or someone to mention Chris was missing But to our surprise No one did Still My guilt was eating away at me But then something weird happened When we went back to school that Monday It was like other than the three of us No one remembered Christina anymore Her locker was another kid's locker No one in school even talked about her Even her parents Acted as though They only had one child Chris' sister Jess It was as though we'd made her up Two weeks later The doors appeared in our rooms For the last year Whatever is down there torments us It sits on my wall At night It hides under my bed I've tried to nail the door shut But it still gets out It looks like Chris I don't know how It looks like Chris I don't know how much more this I can take I feel like I'm going mad If you're reading this Then something has happened to me I'm sorry dad I know I let you down But please Seal the door Sell the house And get out Tell mom and James I love them Love Always John Did what John asked I sealed the door shut Much to my wife's dismay I sold the house But truly it was for the greater good We couldn't move on living like that Even without the door The memories of John attached to the house Were simply too painful Our new home Is in another state It's smaller and quieter James is happier here And so is Sally It's a long process for us And there are good days And bad days Sally had been nagging me To clean out the basement of the house Since we moved in So today I went into the basement And started moving the dusty old boxes out When I lifted the final box In the corner of the room I froze There Carved into the floor With a silver handle Just like the one in John's room And something Was knocking On the other side