I never wanted a house with a basement. Something about all that space underground, dark and untouched, made me uneasy. But when we moved into this old place—a fixer-upper on the outskirts of town—the basement was just another project on my long to-do list.
My wife, Sarah, loved the house. Our daughter, Emily, was thrilled to have a bigger room.
And I told myself that I was just being ridiculous. Basements were just basements.
Until the symbols started appearing.
It was Emily who found them first.
“Dad, come look at this!” she called one morning, standing at the basement door.
I sighed, still half-asleep. “What is it?”
“There’s something on the wall.”
The basement was cold, the cement floor chilling my bare feet. I flicked on the light. And there, on the far wall, were symbols—etched, drawn, or burned into the stone. I had no idea how they got there.
“Sarah?” I called up. “Did you mess with the basement?”
She peeked down, coffee in hand. “What are you talking about?”
I turned back to the symbols. They hadn’t been there yesterday. But there they were.
And the next morning, new ones had joined them.
“It’s some kind of prank,” I told myself. Maybe neighborhood kids sneaking in. Maybe some weird chemical reaction in the old stone. Something rational.
I set up a camera. Locked the basement door. Checked everything twice.
But every morning, the symbols were different. And the camera? It never recorded a thing. Just static between 2:37 AM and 2:45 AM.
Emily stopped going near the basement. Sarah suggested we call someone—an expert, a priest, anyone. I laughed it off. Until the symbols showed up in Emily’s room.
That night, I stayed up. Sat in the hallway outside Emily’s door. Watched the basement.
2:36 AM. The house was silent.
2:37 AM. A whisper. Not words—just movement, like something shifting against the walls. Then, a low hum, almost musical, rising and falling.
2:38 AM. The basement door clicked open. I knew I had locked it.
2:39 AM. The temperature dropped. My breath came in white clouds. A shadow stretched along the floor—not from me, not from anything I could see.
2:40 AM. I ran.
The next morning, Emily wouldn’t speak. Just stared at the symbols on her wall, hands clenched in her lap. When I finally convinced her to tell me what was wrong, her face turned pale.
“Dad… it’s a name. It spells a name.”
I swallowed. “Whose name?”
She hesitated. Then whispered, “Mine.”
I called a specialist. He came in, examined the symbols, asked about our family history. He told us to leave. “Some things,” he said, “aren’t meant to be understood.”
We packed up that night. Checked into a motel. But when I pulled back the covers on the motel bed, my stomach turned to ice.
There, etched into the sheets, was another symbol.
The last one I ever saw in that house.
Emily’s name.
And beneath it, a single word.
Welcome.
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