Hide and Seek

For a large part of my childhood my family lived in a house that my uncle had rented out to us. It was a fairly nice house; four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large kitchen and an exquisite living room. Since we were family my uncle only charged us very little and we lived there pretty comfortably.

It was a cool summer's night when this happened. A lot of my family lived nearby within walking distance and it became a tradition that during the weekends that my cousins would come over for a sleepover at my house. One of my favorite things to do with my cousins while they slept over was to play hide and go seek. I was seven at the time and was the youngest out of the five of us and would always made to be the seeker. This time however I got them to let me be a hider and my eldest cousin, Quinton was the seeker instead.

We started out in my living room and Quinton grabbed a pillow and covered his eyes and started counting down from one-hundred. As soon as he started counting down, we all started booking it. I saw two of my cousins run up the stairs while another one of my cousins', Tracy past me and into kitchen. I was in the dining room and I could hear Quinton counting down loudly in the other room, "seventy-eight, seventy-seven, seventy-six..."

I was panicking at this point. The time was ticking by faster and faster and I was just standing there like a sitting duck. I scanned the room for a place to hide when I saw our basement door. Bingo.

Out of all the rooms in my house, the basement was the room I dreaded the most. It was dark, damp and eerie and going down there made me feel uneasy. I was so unnerved by it as a kid that I felt uncomfortable going down there even with my parents. However this was a dire situation and I had to man up if it meant I was going to win this game. I opened the door ever so slightly as to not make any noises to alert Quinton. I flicked the light switch and began my descend down the stairs, closing the door quietly as possible behind me. Once I was down there I was already feeling uneasy. Maybe it's with all basements in general but there was just something about my basement itself that didn't feel right.

Our basement was filled with mainly all of our family's junk. Spare beds and bed frames, old knick-knacks and whatnot littered the place. I was looking around quickly, trying to find a somewhat decent place to hide amidst the piles of junk until I spotted a door in the far back of the basement. The door lead to a small room that my mom used as her cooking room and a lot of her spices and oils were kept in there. Seeing as how no one liked going down into the basement in general and no one would think to go back here, I would win this game in a matter of minutes I thought to myself as I walked in, closing the door behind me and locking it. I pull on the string that turns on the light and sat down in a corner, facing the door and waited.

And waited. And waited. For what seemed like hours I sat down there in that room by myself. The longer I sat down the more impatient I got. I wanted to know if I had won yet already and yet a part of me knew that if I opened the door at any moment Quinton would be standing out there laughing at me for being the first to be caught. So I continued sitting there.

After about ten more minutes had passed I heard something from the outside. I walked closer to the door and pressed by ears against it. Thump thump thump it sounded like foot steps were coming down the stairs. Quinton must be coming down here I thought to myself. Thump thump thump the sound continued. What struck me as odd with the noises coming from outside was that it sounded quiet heavy. I think the best way to describe the sound was as if someone that had a larger built was coming down the stairs in a rough boot of some sort. Weird...I thought to myself but brushed it to aside, thinking it was probably Quinton knowing that I was down here and just trying to scare me or something. The nice thing about the door was that there was a tiny keyhole in the doorknob so I leaned down and peaked through it.

Nothing.

There was nothing out there but the same old junk that I had passed on my in the door.

Weird...I thought to myself. I could have sworn I heard footsteps of someone coming down the stairs just a few moments ago. Thinking nothing of it, I turned around and began walking towards the corner I was at when the doorknob started wiggling.

I went silent. I held my breath for a moment as the door knob continued to wiggle around, as if someone was trying to get in from the outside. After a few moments of it wiggling around it just stopped. I waited a few seconds before slowly and quietly creeping towards the door knob and peeping through the keyhole again.

Nothing.

Again, no one was outside.

I was getting a bit scared at this point and just turned around and began walking back when there was a slight knock at the door.

I ran over as fast as possible to the door and peeked through the door knob.

Nothing.

That's not possible I thought to myself. Even though the keyhole was small it still gave a perfect view of the room outside the door. If someone was messing with me there's no possible way for someone to go and hide in the time it took for me to hear the knock on the door to me running and looking through the keyhole.

Feeling very scared at this point I ran back into my corner and huddled up, burying my face into my knees.

THUMP THUMP THUMP

The silence was broken by the deafening sound of the door being banged on from the other side.

I was on the verge of tears at this point. Someone was obviously trying to scare me and it was working. I curled up into a ball on the ground and laid there as the banging on the door continued, this time accompanied by the sound of the door knob being wiggled violently.

The final straw was when I was laying down and crying on that floor I felt someone slowly stroking my hair from behind me. As soon as I felt my hair being touched I jumped right onto my feet and ran towards the door, unlocking it and sprinting out, completely ignoring whatever it was that was out there waiting for me. I ran all the way up the stairs and into the dining room in a matter of seconds and broke down crying. All of my cousins came from the living room and circled around me.

"What's wrong?" one of them asked.

"You guys are all jerks you know that?! Trying to scare me like that?" I yelled back at them through my sobs.

"What are you talking about? We've been trying to look for you for the past twenty minutes." Quinton responded back to.

I stopped crying and a chill ran down my spine.

"Y-you have?"

"Yeah everyone picked pretty easy hiding spots and I found all of them within ten minutes or so and we've been combing the house for you since." Quinton explained.

"Then it wasn't you that was banging on the door downstairs in the basement?" I asked him. All of my cousins were visibly shocked when I told them what had happened to me.

We all ran to my parents in their room and told them what had happened to me. About how all four of them were upstairs looking for me when I ran upstairs crying about someone banging on the door downstairs.

My dad grabbed a metal baseball bat and my mom grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen and they both headed down into the basement, the rest of us following in suit.

I pointed towards the back room that I was hiding in and they slowly approached it. As they were walking up to the door I had explained to them that when I ran from the room I still left the door opened and didn't know why it closed know that we were here.

My dad looked over at my mom and she gave him a small nod before he kicked down the door.

To all of our surprise there was no one behind the door.

My parents searched every inch of that room and the basement itself and found no traces of anyone having been down there except myself.

My mom was very upset and asked all of my cousins if they were trying to pull some sort of prank on me but all of them looked upset too and said no.

"I was hiding upstairs next to Lily when Quinton found us," said Percy my second oldest cousin. "Yeah and I was in your room with you guys when Quinton came in with Percy and Lily," added Tracy while looking at my mom and dad. "Which means that none of us could have done it if all four of us came out of your bedroom when Michael came running into the dining room." Said Quinton.

And while this wasn't the first nor was it the last strange thing to happen to me while I lived in my house, it certainly made a believer out of me.

Submitted January 13, 2017 at 04:53AM by syberbullies http://ift.tt/2jLiCGt