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(Series) My Dad Told Me to Never Go Into The Basement

My Dad told me to never go into the basement.

"Don't go into the basement."
Those are the words my Dad told me every night before I went to sleep. He would tuck the sheets around my body, kiss my forehead and tell me he loves me. Then as he stood up and went to close the door, he would whisper "Don't go into the basement". I remember looking at him, his massive frame cutting a silhouette in the doorway as the light from the hallway went past him and died in the darkness of my bedroom. "Don't go into the basement."
The first time he said it, I wasn't even sure I heard him right. I thought maybe I was already asleep, dreaming words that had never been spoken. I asked him the next morning at the table. My mother, standing at the sink washing dishes. My brother, furiously finishing his homework. My father, leering at me with his dark blue eyes, his brow furrowed. He would just shake his head.
I was in no hurry to go into the basement before he ever told me not to. The basement stairs were inside the house, the dark wooden steps cut deep into the guts of our living room. One side of the staircase was concrete and rock, the part of earth it had tore into. Cobwebs littered various corners of the stairs. There were many days where I would stand on top of those stairs, looking down. I remember seeing a piece on television about underwater cave divers. I saw one diver squeeze into a pitch black crevasse, one so tight he had to take the oxygen tank off his back. I could only imagine the intense pressure, the suffocating cold and darkness. I stood on the top of those stairs, feeling like the diver. Staring into a dark abyss, shivering.
There was no door on the bottom of the stairs, only darkness. The kind of complete and utter blackness where your eyes would struggle and fail to find anything they could cling on to. I knew there were no windows in the basement since none could be found on the outside of the house, but this darkness had always felt different. I would stare into it for what seemed like hours. Sometimes my Dad would find me, swaying back and forth on the top of the stairs. He wouldn't say anything, just take my hand and lead me away.
One night I had the most intense dream. I was rock climbing, scaling a mountain wall. Except, it wasn't really climbing. I was being thrown upwards into the wall, smashed against the cliff face.I was scraping my skin, blood being thrown against the mountain side. My bones were breaking as they started to burst out from underneath my muscle. I looked up and screamed with horror when I saw that the mountain never ended. It just jutted up into the sky as far as I could see. The next morning my Dad told me he had caught me sleepwalking. I was halfway down the basement stairs when he found me and started shaking me viciously on my shoulders, slapping my face; anything to wake me up. Eventually he had to carry me back to bed and hold me down for an hour before I fell asleep again.
"Don't go into the basement."
He started saying it in the mornings too. Over the running faucet in the kitchen sink. He would whisper into my ear, "Don't go into the basement". I would look back at him, expecting a grin. A wink. A nod. Anything. He would just look away and go back to reading his newspaper, milk dripping out of his mouth as he took big slobbering mouthfuls of cereal. Like he hadn't said anything.
I was in the house alone when I went into the basement. My Father was out, not expected to be back until the morning. My brother was gone, off into the real world. I hadn't seen my mother for years. I had been watching television, hitting the mute button to cut off a commercial. In the silence that followed someone called out my name. From inside the house.
I dismissed it at first, laughing to myself at my wild imagination. I put the sound back on and pumped up the volume. Everything was fine for a few seconds. Then the power cut off.
The day's light had only just begun to fade, so I wasn't plunged into total darkness. I ran upstairs to grab a flashlight. By the time I came back down the whole house was nearly pitch black. Living off the main road I couldn't rely on street lights for illumination, so within minutes I was forced to turn on the battery powered maglite my Dad had given me for my birthday that year. I peaked out a window and saw my neighbor's lights on, so I knew the power was only out at our house. I sat down on a kitchen chair and did the math in my head. My Dad wasn't going to be home until the morning, at least twelve hours from now. The batteries in my flashlight were small and unlikely to last for more than a few of those hours. I could live without the light. My concern was the fridge and freezer. If I didn't open the door to either I could keep the cold air in, but they were old appliances and poorly insulated. The food probably had five or six hours before it spoiled in the hot summer air.
I was going to have to get the power back on myself by going to the circuit breaker. I knew enough that I figured one of the breakers had been flipped, so it was simply a matter of finding it and flipping the switch back on. Easy enough. I had never done it before, but I knew the theory behind it. And if that didn't solve the problem, clearly there was a bigger issue that needed professional help. As I stood up, I realized I had missed one important detail and my blood ran cold. The circuit breaker was in the basement.
My knees became wobbly. I was short of breath. In a span of a few seconds my mind was fighting a civil war between the side that knew I had to get the power back on and the side that was screaming at me to never go into the basement.
Before I could stop myself I was at the top of the basement stairs. The beam of my flashlight cut through the black and revealed each worn out staircase, but no light could penetrate past the doorway. Curiosity and rebellion took over momentarily. Why couldn't I go down there? I put my foot down on the first step and stopped. Physically couldn't move any further, frozen in perpetual fear. Profuse amounts of sweat was dripping off my forehead, some hitting the top of my flashlight and casting small shadows across the beam. I shook my head and decided there and then that food be damned, there was no way I was going down there. Then from out of the basement someone called my name.
I think I fainted. I say think because the next thing I remember was the taste of dust. The feel of cold concrete. Utter and total darkness. Throbbing pain coming from my knees and head and neck. Only a few seconds were needed in order for me to realize I had fallen down the stairs. My flashlight had turned off or had broken in the fall. I tried to push down the panic and fear that was quickly rising in my chest. I was on my stomach, so I moved my arms and hands methodically around my body in case my flashlight was near me, but to no avail.
I panicked more.
I tried to will my eyes to reveal something to me. A shape, a wall, anything. I pushed myself slowly off of the cold floor, holding my breath and listening for even the slightest movement. An eternal few seconds passed while I tried to quiet the ringing in my head, courtesy of my tumble down the stairs. I mustered the courage to lift my arm and began the agonizing search for the only light available to me, a solitary light bulb with a hanging chain that I had to pull to turn on. I knew it was battery powered, I'd seen my Dad do it a few times when the power cut out during a storm. I would watch him from the top of the stairs as he walked down. He disappeared from sight, and I would count the seconds it took him to turn the light on.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.
The air tasted cold and musty, like rotted cardboard. I waved my arms a foot above my head, slowly circling outwards into the room. I had just brushed against something that felt like metal when I heard quick and ragged noises, like wind escaping a tunnel. I froze. Somebody was breathing.
One Mississippi.
I dared to whisper. Some semblance of a voice escaped my lips, so quiet the sound died a few feet in front of me in the cold air. "Hello?"
Two Mississippi.
The breathing noises stopped and I was swallowed in the silence.
Three Mississippi.
My arm was right above my head, stuck since fear had cut my brain and body from each other. Then something hard and cool touched my hand. I was too scared to scream. My hand reflexively shrunk back, my fingers tightening around a light bulb chain. I pulled down hard and quickly. The light that came on was brilliant and overwhelming, blindly me momentarily. As my eyes closed, somebody laughed.
I screamed then. Opened my eyes and screamed harder.
There were dozens of people in the basement with pale, featureless skin. They were standing completely still, and I kept screaming. I was waiting for something to happen. In my nightmares, the people in the basement simply open their arms and I'm sucked into a black abyss, my bones crushed and my skin ripped apart. I must have screamed for a minute or two. Nothing happened. Not a sound in the air except my wails. I stopped screaming. Took a few deep breaths. Focused my eyes and looked at the people closer.
I would have laughed if my heart and lungs didn't feel like they had been torn out of my body. Mannequins. And statues. Most had been covered with a white sheet. There had to be almost twenty of them in the one square room. They were scattered amongst a few shelves that were carrying lumber. There was one statue in front of a small desk that was my Dad's workshop. A few mannequins had been squeezed between a furnace and a water heater. There were about five in front of the circuit breaker.
I let out a small sigh of relief when I saw it. I could see one switch had been flipped off, causing the power outage. I took one step towards the breaker and I saw one of the white sheets move, turning a head towards me.
I screamed again and in my panic ripped the sheet off. Breathed out when it was only a statue. Fear and panic were causing me to see things, hear things. Just my overactive imagination. Cursing to myself, I took a deep breath and flipped the switch on the breaker. I saw the lights go on upstairs, and smiled for the first time all night. Then I heard someone whisper into my ear. Felt hot breath. "Don't come into the basement."
The next thing I remember was my Dad, shaking me. I was sprawled out on the basement floor. I looked into my Dad's eyes. He seemed older than the last time I saw him. Weathered, like a stone in the desert that has been chipped away by the winds of a thousand years. I started to cry. He didn't say anything, he just picked me up in his strong arms and took me to bed.
When I woke up the next morning my Dad was sitting on the end of the bed. He might have been sitting there all night for all I knew. He just looked at me for what felt like hours. I stared right back at him. I couldn't wrap my head about what happened down in the basement. A long time passed before he spoke. He took my hand, looked into my eyes. I had never seen him look so sad. Even when Mom left he held it together. Maybe not in private, but in front of my brother and I he was as stoic as they come. In front of me on the bed that morning, my Dad cried. Then he told me we were moving.
That was ten years ago. My Dad and I never talked about that night. In fact my Dad and I rarely talk these days. He doesn't like email or cell phones, and I live very far from where he is now. Years have gone by since the last time I saw him. Today, however, I received an envelope from him. My name and address were handwritten by him on the front. I opened it, and a letter fell out. There were only a few words on a single sheet of paper. I read them over and over again, hands shaking.
"Meet me in the basement."

Credit to "mikerich15" of Reddit