The door swung shut behind Stella as she stepped into the basement. The dark consuming her. She didn't believe the stories, the rumors of what was down in that basement. She laughed when her friends told her the dangers. She mocked the spirits that lived down there.
That was her mistake. Laughing. Mocking. They didn't take kindly to bring thought of as a joke.
It wasn't long in the dark before she started to hear them. At first just scratching on the walls. Whispers in the still air around her. Dust that seemed to kick up and scratch at the inside of her throat. She could feel the air thicken as she walked further down the steps and into the darkness. Just the old air. Just dust. Just her imagination. None of that ghost stuff was real. She told herself that. But the longer she stayed submerged in the dark the less she believed it.
Scratch. Scratch.
The sound echoed through the room.
Scratch. Scratch.
Then silence.
She pulled at the light switch hanging from the ceiling. The light flickered on them quickly went out. For that brief moment she saw something, or at least she thought she saw something. A woman's face. Burned and torn apart. But the darkness she was surged back into erased that and the moment of fear she had felt. There was nothing there. She was letting their stories get to her.
The story of a woman who had been locked in that basement by her cheating husband as he set the house on fire. Her screams heard from the neighbors next door but the fire department was too late to save her.
She pulled at the light again, trying to forget the stories. It was just a basement in an old abandoned house. There was no ghosts. The stories were just that. Stories. The light flickered and went out again.
There was no face that appeared this time. But a hand, a long slender white hand with nails like knives. When the darkness washed over again she felt the drag of the nails against her skin. Felt the blood drop down to her fingertips. She reached her hand over her arm to feel the fresh wound that wasn't there.
That hand. She thought about the stories she had heard. The story of a self proclaimed witch with knife like fingernails. Who was eaten alive by her own rats. Found a week later by the milk man when her delivery rotted on the front porch.
Scratch. Scratch.
This time she did jump. She pulled at the light one more time. This time the flash of light scrawled and burnt out but nothing appeared to her. Nothing showed itself in the light.
Scratch. Scratch.
The sound of whispers filled the air around her as the air thickened with dust. She coughed again and turned towards the steps. "Very funny!" She called out into the darkness. No one answered back. The light didn't flicker on. Silence consumed the basement.
She felt the air blow around her, chills followed each gust. For the first time since the door closed she felt a twinge of fear. Someone had to be messing with her. A prank. A cruel joke. None of this was happening.
She started back up the steps. When she reached the halfway point a hand wrapped around her ankle, pulling her leg out from under her and sending her tumbling back down the creaky wooden stairs. Her hand caught the badly sanded down edge and sliced open, she screamed as blood gushed from the wound. "Shit." She held her hand close to her chest, squeezing the wound to try and stop the bleeding but it was so dark she couldn't see how bad it was. She wasn't sure she wanted to see how bad it was.
The whispers that had been rising on the back of the gusts of cold wind turned to laughs. Cackling, ghostly laughs. She pulled herself back to her feet and tried up the stairs again. But she didn't make it far. The steps that had a moment ago been solid wood were now splintered into pieces. Broken and hanging. The only way out was gone.
Her eyes were starting to adjust to the dark and as they did, shapes started to form. No clear images, just shapes. Figures that she would have brushed off as shadows, piles of clothes, floor lights. She couldn't brush them off this time.
The laughs grew louder. Encircling her. She held her hands up to her ears, blood dripping down her cheek as she did. The wound on her palm opening more, the sting forcing her to drop her hand back into her other and grasped it tight once more.
She could make out the figures moving in the dark. She could hear the rustling of clothes. The faint pitter of footsteps started to grow louder. The darkness closed in on her. She turned to run but the stairs were gone. There was no way out. The figures surrounded her.
"Are we real for you now?"
The voices cut through the air around her, sending sharp shooting pain through her head. She screamed as sharp claws ripped at her skin. Her legs collapsed underneath her. She felt everything as they tore through her. As the ground below her opened and pulled her under.
She felt everything as her body was buried underneath the house. She felt the air in her lungs turn to dirt. Felt the burning in her chest as she suffocated. Then, when it was all done, she worms crawl inside of her. Felt them eat at her flesh. She felt her organs as they were consumed. Felt her skin rot. Felt her eyes collapse in on themselves. Felt as the dirt around her made her it's own.
She could still hear the laughing above her as the spirits mocked her. As she became another story. Another rumor. Another victim.
The house went back to normal. The stairs came back together. The door unlocked. Stella was just another ghost story. A cautionary tale. Never laugh at a ghost story or the next one told will be your own.
