The Basement Voice

March 13, 2013

by Citlalli

3 min read

Story Premise 3 min read (492 words)

"In the summer of 2014, I was staying at my cousin’s place in the dusty outskirts of Tucson. My cousin, Marcus, and his wife, Lena, had just moved into an old adobe house with a creaky, unfinished basement. Their friend, Diego, was visiting for the weekend. I was on the sofa upstairs, watching a rerun […]"

In the summer of 2014, I was staying at my cousin’s place in the dusty outskirts of Tucson. My cousin, Marcus, and his wife, Lena, had just moved into an old adobe house with a creaky, unfinished basement. Their friend, Diego, was visiting for the weekend. I was on the sofa upstairs, watching a rerun of some sitcom, when a sudden thud from below made me jump. Then I heard Marcus’s voice, muffled but urgent: ‘Hey, come here. Now.’

I went down the narrow staircase, the air cool and musty. Marcus stood by his gaming console, his face pale. ‘Someone kept calling my name,’ he whispered. ‘From the other side of the basement. I went to check, and I saw you – your exact face – standing in the dark. It smiled and ran up the stairs. I chased it, but when I got to the top, you were just lying there on the couch, bored.’ I told him I hadn’t moved. We exchanged uneasy looks, and for the first time, we both felt the house wasn’t ours alone.

A few months later, I moved to a small apartment in Albuquerque with my dad. Marcus started texting me weird things. At night, he’d see ‘another me’ standing at the foot of his bed, watching him. He said it felt like the devil wearing my face. I tried to laugh it off, but then I started seeing things too – a figure in the hallway mirror that wasn’t me, a voice in the static of my headphones calling my name in his voice.

One evening, I was home alone, talking to my dad on the phone while he was out of state on a business trip. I was making dinner, stirring a pot of chili. The phone was wedged between my ear and shoulder. Dad was telling me about his meeting when I heard a sound behind me – the soft creak of a floorboard. I turned, but there was nothing. I told Dad I had to go. But as I hung up, I saw a flicker of movement in the reflection of the kitchen window. It was me, but standing perfectly still, my mouth stretched into a wide, wrong smile.

I dropped the spoon. The reflection raised a hand and pointed at the basement door – a door I knew didn’t exist. In our apartment, there was no basement. But as I stared, the door became solid, paint peeling, and the reflection opened it. A whisper came from inside, not a voice, but a breathy hiss that formed my name. I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, and I spun around. No one was there. But the phone rang. I answered, and it was Marcus, his voice frantic: ‘It’s here. It’s telling me to look behind you.’ I turned, and the reflection was gone. But in the window, I saw my own terrified face, and behind me, a dark shape with Marcus’s eyes.

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