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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Mr_Outlaw_ on 2024-09-09 04:17:50+00:00.
“Hey man, I don’t know how to tell you this, but there’s people in the basement.”
Chris’s words were in between silence and a whisper.
I sat up in the bed, my eyes adjusting to the frantic figure in front of me.
“What?” I asked him. “What are you talking about?”
“Be quiet dude,” he whispered. “There’s people in the fucking basement. Like six of them, I swear to God,” He paused, taking a few deep breaths. “We should get the fuck out of here.”
I rubbed my eyes, trying to get the fatigue to settle so I could comprehend the magnitude of what he was saying. For context, my friends and I had booked an Airbnb near the mountains for the weekend. Hike and then drink. Get our minds off of work and school. I had been super tired after hiking so I’d taken a nap.
I shook my head. “You went down into the basement?” I asked. “We weren’t supposed to. They told us not to.”
“Yeah dude, I know,” Chris continued. “But I did it anyway and I saw people down there and we need to fucking leave ASAP.”
“What kind of people?” I asked, pretty much fully awake now. “You mean the owners of this place? They came back?”
Chris shook his head. “No. Not them. Weird looking people. Creepy ass fucking people.”
I sat up, thinking that maybe Chris had taken some of the LSD we’d been saving for the next day.
“Fuck dude, relax,” I told him. “Explain exactly what you saw.”
He laid it out pretty concisely. Despite the fact that the people who had posted the listing had explicitly told us not to go down there, Chris had gotten drunk, gotten curious and went down there. To his surprise, the door had been unlocked. He couldn’t find the light switch, but there was just enough of it coming through the windows for him to be able to make his way down the stairs.
Arriving at the bottom, he allowed his eyes a few seconds to adjust. And right in front of him, he could see a small table, with about six people sitting around it, their outlines illustrated by the afternoon light. At first, his brain rationalized it as large dolls or puppets that had been placed there. But he continued looking at them, and eventually one of them turned their heads to face him.
He didn’t stick around after that and shot up the stairs, shutting the door behind him.
As he told me this, I kind of didn’t want to believe him. But there was also absolutely no reason why he’d be lying. He just wasn’t that type of guy. Coupled with the genuine terror on his face, I began leaning towards the idea that he was telling the truth and that that were actually a bunch of people sitting silent at a table in the darkness of the basement.
I got up and looked out the bedroom window, seeing Jay and Paul standing on the front porch, grilling burgers. Then I looked back at Chris.
“If you’re telling the truth, we need to call the people who own the place.”
“I tried,” he said. “They didn’t pick up. I’ve sent them texts as well.”
I shook my head. “So what? You think they’re dangerous? Should we call the cops?”
Chris shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if they’re dangerous but they are as fuck didn’t look right and I want to get out of here.”
For a while, we stared at each other, the general silence of the house becoming progressively more ominous.
After a while I sighed. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”
We grabbed our phones, wallets, the car keys, and moved down the stairs, out of the house as fast as we could.
Jay and Paul were laughing, holding beers as we approached them.
Paul turned around, pointing a greasy spatula towards us. “You guys hungry or what?” he asked.
Chris began telling them what he’d seen but it was obvious that they were more than a few drinks deep and not taking anything he was saying seriously.
“Dude, it sounds like you’re fucking tripping,” Jay said. “Are you sure you’re not tripping?”
“I’m being serious,” Chris said. “I swear to fucking God, I’m serious. We need to get out of here now.”
“Well, I’m about five beers in, so I ain’t driving,” Jay said. “And I sure as hell ain’t letting any of you drive my truck either. Are you sure you just weren’t seeing shit?”
“Fine. I’m walking then,” Chris said. “I’m not staying here.”
“Look, I’ll go down there and talk to them,” Paul said, half-joking. “See what the hell they want.”
Jay laughed as sheer disbelief washed over Chris’s face. “I’m not bullshitting man,” he said. “I’m not.”
“Yeah, Yeah, I believe you,” Paul said dismissively. “I’ll go and see what’s up.”
Chris continued to protest but Paul wouldn’t budge and soon he was inside the house, making his way towards the basement.
Chris shook his head, his eyes wide, nearly bulging out of his head at this point. “Fuck this!” he yelled, seeming to grow more agitated by the second. “I fucking warned you!”
Before we could say anything else, he bolted, sprinting like a bat out of hell towards the woods. We tried chasing after him but couldn’t come close to matching his place. We stopped, panting for air as he watched him disappear into the trees.
“What the fuck?” Jay asked. “Is he being serious? I though it was a joke!”
I shook my head. “Let’s go check on Paul.”
We ran back to the house, entering to see the basement door wide open. The place was completely silent, but before I could call out, I could hear somebody moving up the stairs. I backed up, unsure of what to expect, how to react, when Paul came out of the darkness, looking somewhat bewildered.
He looked at us, shook his head. “This is freaky, man,” he said.
“Was he being for real?” Jay asked. “There’s people down there?”
“Not exactly.”
The three of us went down there, with my nerves yet to be completely settled. We couldn’t find a light switch, but there were enough windows and enough daylight for us to move around.
Turns out, Chris hadn’t been totally correct. But he probably hadn’t been lying either. Planted right in front of the stairs was a table with three chairs. Sitting in those three chairs were some of the most lifelike sculptures I’d ever seen. Two soldiers in what appeared to be old military outfits and a woman in some kind of long, religious dress. They weren’t quite enough to be uncanny. If you looked at them for more than a few seconds, you could tell that they were carved from stone and then meticulously painted, something you could confirm by touching them.
Still… they were exceptionally crafted. Something that could’ve only been achieved by a dedicated professional.
“I mean, I don’t blame him,” Paul said, referring to Chris. “I almost shat bricks when I first saw them. I mean, what the fuck?”
I remembered back to the conversation I’d had with him, how he’d claimed that one of them had actually looked at him and then a shiver ran down my spine.
Jay laughed, a palpable relief in his voice. “How much you think we could sell these for?”
“I’m down to take ‘em and find out.” Paul joked.
On the surface, it made enough sense. The homeowners were in possession of some very valuable items that they stored in the basement, simply forgetting to lock it this time around. Jay and Paul continued looking at them, taking pictures, marveling at how weird it all was. On the other hand, I wasn’t so keen on doing so. I wanted to get the hell out of the basement ASAP. The details just weren’t adding up. I knew Chris well. If the only thing he’d seen had been these statues, he would not have reacted the way he did.
Jay was looking at his phone, smiling at the pictures he’d taken, when suddenly his expression dropped. He put his phone down and looked ahead.
“There’s another one over there,” he said. “In the corner.”
“What do you mean?” Paul asked, looking closely at one of the soldier’s rifles.
“Another statue. In the corner.”
Paul looked up and looked towards where Jay was pointing.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I see it.”
The two of them continued look at it but showed no indication of wanting to explore it. Instead they stood still, their expressions slowly being taken over by a look of deep unease. Eventually I looked as well.
It did appear to be a statue. Something tucked away in one of the very dark corners. It was tall. Extremely so, maybe seven feet, its head well eclipsing the top of one of the bookshelves. Its bottom half was completely obscured, but from what the light was revealing, it was wearing some kind of helmet, like one those steel ones soldiers were equipped with back in ww1.
There came a point as my eyes were adjusting to the darkness where a pit began to form in my stomach. Its features were slowly revealing themselves and it almost looked as if it were… twitching. I thought that maybe it was just the darkness playing tricks until I saw it blink. Clear as day, it blinked.
I guess the other two saw the same thing because we were practically trampling each other running up the stairs. We slammed the door shut behind us before quickly pushing one of the couches in front of it.
Paul and I were halfway out the front door but Jay was still inside the house.
“What the hell are you doing?” Paul yelled at him. “C’mon!”
“I need my laptop,” Jay said, before throwing Paul his keys. “I’ll be quick, start the truck!”
He ran up the stairs while Paul continued to curse at him. “Really dude? Are you fucking serious?”
And then I remembered my own laptop, thinking about how annoying it would be if I were to lose it. I looked at the basement door. Then at the stairs. Then at Paul.
“It’s gonna take five seconds,” I said.
I could hear him cursing behind me as I ran, jumping ...
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