The Monster in the Basement

A short fiction on the subject of fear.

The monster lives in the basement. We always heard it on cold nights, shuffling and singing, dragging its claws against the ceiling and occasionally hurling itself against the walls. Then it howled its way back to sleep.

We always kept the door to the basement locked and hoped the monster would go away. We knew that was impossible, of course. After all, where would it go? There was no way out of its lair, or prison, if you prefer the word.

But then, we would hear it lumber up the stairs. Made of old wood that no longer holds together, they would tremble beneath its weight. The claws on its feet would tear into the wood, wrenching out chunks and splinters. Then, it would let out a deafening howl and smash its fists against the kitchen door. We would hear it shake and shudder, but the door always remained intact. The monster never quite managed to break through, but we remained uncertain how long it would hold.

We knew that the monster didn’t like us. We didn’t know precisely why. But we knew that, if the monster escaped, it wouldn’t be pleasant. Not for us.

At times, we heard the monster cursing through the floor very late at night. It cursed in a strange language, perhaps not a language at all, but sometimes, we could hear our names, and we knew that the monster knew who we were and was cursing us.

We went about our business all the same. We had no choice. Everyone has to make a living, after all. We never spoke of the monster, out there, in the world. But it was in the back of our minds, all the time. We never didn’t think about it. This was a kind of torture, wasn’t it? A kind of victory for the monster. He must have known that. Even if he didn’t, it doesn’t matter. It was what it was.

Sometimes, the monster went silent. For days, we heard nothing through the floors. There was no cracking and tearing on the stair and the door did not shake. At times, we wondered if the monster had escaped. Was it out there wandering the world, moving through the dark streets, maybe tearing animals and eating them, maybe hunting men and women who were simply trying to get home? Or perhaps just watching? And for what? We didn’t know.

But a few days later, we would hear it again. It raged and cursed, the stairs cracked and the doors shook. We would try to sleep. We had gotten very good at sleeping through anything. Sometimes, we even managed to sleep through the night. It isn’t hard to get used to things.

It started to change in late winter. It must have been late winter because it was extremely cold. Our house is old and chilly. There are gaps and cracks that allow the cold to seep in, so we always have fires burning. But it’s not always practical to keep a fire burning all night. You don’t want to burn the house down. Although it would have burned up the monster too. Nonetheless, we didn’t want it. So, we would wake up shivering and covered in frost. Then we would light the fire and wait until we stopped shivering and the day began. We always assumed the monster did the same, but we never knew for sure.

Late one night, my sister was ravenously hungry. This happened to her from time to time, and she would stumble through the dark rooms to the kitchen in search of something to eat. This time, she found something in the kitchen. We never found out what it was, because she cleaned the room immediately and wouldn’t speak of it again. But she told us that it was unpleasant and ominous, and we believed her. We knew that we didn’t do it, she swore that she didn’t do it, and we believed her about that too.

We were somewhat reassured when my sister said she had checked and found the door to the basement locked with no signs of damage. Moreover, the house was eerily silent. Not a single sound emanated from the basement or anywhere else. This implied that, whatever had happened, it might have been the monster, but it might not. We never discussed another possibility: that the silence was deliberate. If it were, the monster might be more intelligent than we thought. That was not something we were prepared to accept.

Our worst fear was the possibility of another monster. That something might have entered the kitchen not to escape but rather to enter. Perhaps it knew that its mate was trapped in the basement and sought to liberate it. We quickly dismissed this possibility. What choice did we have? You would have done the same.

In the end, we forgot about it. You’d be surprised how easy it was. It’s easy to forget things when you want to forget them. It isn’t hard. We simply went about our business, our other life, the life outside with its small worries and labors and sufferings. That was enough for several days of peace, but only several days of peace were given to us.

The claw marks were discovered on a Thursday, if I recall correctly, though I’m not entirely certain. I woke up in the middle of the night from troubled dreams and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face, which sometimes calms me. As I made my way back to my room, I saw the marks in the dim light from the hallway.

The marks had been made by a hand or paw with six digits. This alone terrified me, because six digits meant that the perpetrator could not be human.

But there was nothing human about the things anyway. Humans do not have claws of any kind, and the marks had been made by formidable claws—talons, one might say. They had torn great rents in the wall, revealing the bare wood beneath. I wondered if, perhaps, even that had been ripped through at certain places, allowing whatever dwelled within the walls to enter our house and do whatever it pleased.

I was terrified for a moment, wondering if whatever had done it might still be in the room. The thought was unsettling, but strangely, it gave me a small measure of courage. I searched every dark corner, but found only shadows. This didn’t reassure me, but it did give me a sense of determination. I approached the marks in the wall, ran my fingers along their jagged edges, and even peered through them, trying to discern their depth and breadth. Finally, I retrieved some towels from the closet and stuffed them inside, knowing that they wouldn’t keep out anything that wanted to get in. I returned to bed and spent a sleepless night.

None of us ever mentioned the marks. The towels remained there, growing stiff and filthy over time, and we passed by them regularly on our way in and out of our outside lives. Occasionally, we would give them an anxious glance, but eventually, we stopped noticing them altogether. Since no one ever visited the house, there was no one to inquire about them. Eventually, we became accustomed to them. In a strange way, they were a source of comfort, reminding us that we were at home.

Three days later, the monster began to stomp. I say stomp even though I don’t really know if that’s what it was. It’s only speculation. But it sounded like something was slamming one of its feet, if it had feet, against the basement floor, causing a great booming noise that shook the entire house to its foundations. This monstrous vibration rattled the windows and doors, and sometimes things fell from the shelves or tabletops as a result.

The first time it happened, we all jumped out of our beds, convinced it was an earthquake or some other natural disaster—Mother Earth striking out at random. But as we huddled in the hallway, hearing the booms and feeling the walls and floors vibrate, we each realized what it was.

We didn’t say a word to each other. Perhaps we knew each other’s thoughts, or perhaps we didn’t want to admit to fear. It took some time—minutes or even hours spent in terror (none of us could remember afterward)—but finally, the booms grew fainter and then disappeared altogether. For a while, we didn’t move. Then each of us simultaneously concluded that it was safe enough to return to our beds. Perhaps, one or two of us even slept through the rest of the night.

For two days, the nights were calm and silent. We slept soundly. But on the third day, the booms began again. We huddled in the hallway once more and waited until they subsided. Then we returned to bed. So it went on: Every three days, there was the thundering noise; the shaking of the house; the obligatory run to the hallway, huddled together in silence; and the return to something resembling sleep, though I wonder if we ever dreamt again.

We never discussed any of this. Instead, it became a silent, ominous presence between us, a third day that always arrived. Finally, we grew weary of the long, sleepless nights and ceased bothering to leave our beds and gather in the hallway. My sister put folded tissue in her ears and slept through the night. As for my brother, I don’t know quite what he did. I simply lay there in the darkness, my hands tightly gripping the sheets, enduring the terrifying noise. When it finally subsided, I waited until I could breathe again and, miraculously, always managed to drift back to sleep. We gradually grew accustomed to this too.

Then the inevitable night came when we could no longer grow accustomed. The crashing was so loud that it woke even my sister despite the plugs in her ears. We all rushed to the kitchen, where we found the scene of utter destruction. The table had been overturned and smashed to pieces, the chairs had been dismantled with incredible force, and the shelves had been ripped from the walls and hurled around the room. Water was leaking from the demolished sink, the oven had been pounded into a ball of twisted steel, and the windows had all been smashed, the glass piled up beneath. Even the lights had been torn from their fixtures, leaving wires hanging down, riven and dilapidated, like the rigging of a ghost ship.

There was no doubt about what had done it, because there was chilling confirmation: the door hung slightly ajar, its black sheath plunging into the abyssal and obsidian depths of the basement. The monster had made no attempt to conceal its entrance and exit, and perhaps there was no way it could. As I closed the door, I noticed faint claw marks around the lock. Terror gripped me when I realized it hadn’t locked the door behind it because it didn’t know how.

It won’t come as a surprise to hear that we live in constant fear. At night, we must sleep, so we keep our doors locked and chairs thrust under the knobs. We have baseball bats and knives nearby, just in case the monster, with its immense strength, manages to break through. We’ve drawn up a plan of escape if there is no hope of overpowering it. Thus, we live a half-life, but it is enough to get us through our days. At night, we hope we are, in some way, still safe. But we all know that we are not safe.

Sometimes, I stay up nights wondering what the monster wants. It doesn’t seem to desire our deaths, at least not yet. Its depredations continue, but they haven’t proven fatal. They provoke terrible fear and trembling, but no one has been hurt. However, there is a horrible death in the heart of terror. A life lived in fear is a life, but it is unfinished, incomplete, truncated. Perhaps this is all the monster wants. Or, perhaps, it doesn’t want anything at all. Perhaps it simply is. A phenomenon of life itself. Perhaps everyone has a monster in the basement, and they also stay up nights, wondering as I do.

At least, we have begun to speak of it. Each of us has their own ideas. My sister is in favor of violence. Go down there, she always says, go down there and kill it—but we are far too frightened for that. My brother does not much care, because he has his opium, and hides away in his room, dreaming dreams of castles and elephants and tigers. I sometimes wonder if he is the only one of us who truly knows how to live, or at least how to live like this.

Because this is how we live now. Perhaps we have made peace with it. It is who we are. We are not sure who we might be without it. Although we complain and consider taking action, I believe that each of us, in our deepest selves, knows that we will do nothing.