The Constant in the Cellar

In the autumn of 2019, my wife and I bought our first house: a narrow, two-story Victorian on the edge of the old industrial district of Meridian, Mississippi. It was a fixer-upper, but the woodwork was intact, and the bay window in the parlor overlooked a line of dying oaks. We were charmed, despite the smell of damp plaster and the sagging porch.

The house had two floors and a cellar that ran under only the kitchen and dining room, accessible by a hatch in the pantry floor. The walls in the cellar were old brick, and a brick fireplace chimney ran up through the center, sharing flues with the parlor fireplace above. The previous owner, an elderly man who had moved to a nursing home, had left behind a few oddities: a child’s rocking chair, a stack of yellowed newspapers, and a locked wooden chest with no key.

We moved in on a Saturday. The final trip was just our car and a few bags of groceries. As I carried a box of books up the front steps, I noticed a draft from the cellar door, even though it was shut. My wife, Cora, laughed at my shiver, blaming the autumn chill. That night, we heard a rhythmic thumping from below, like a fist hitting the underside of the floor. Cora thought it was the furnace. We didn’t have a furnace.

The next morning, I opened the hatch to check the cellar. The air was cold and stale. The fireplace was clean, but there was a faint odor of burnt sugar. I chalked it up to old residue. Over the following weeks, we noticed small things: the rocking chair would be facing a different direction, the papers would be stacked differently, and once, Cora found a small, hand-printed note tucked into a book: ‘HE SEES THROUGH THE FLOOR.’ We dismissed it as a prank from neighborhood kids.

By November, the encounters grew bolder. One night, I woke to the sound of slow, heavy footsteps in the cellar, moving from the chimney to the hatch. I grabbed a flashlight and opened the hatch, but the cellar was empty. The next day, Cora found the chest open. Inside was a child’s cloth doll, its button eyes sewn on upside down, and a leather journal with pages that were mostly blank except for one entry: ‘The constant is in the cellar. It never leaves. It only makes copies.’

That evening, we heard a voice from the cellar—a low, guttural murmur, like a man clearing his throat. It said, ‘I see you.’ We decided to leave the next morning. As we packed, the thumping started again, faster, desperate. Cora opened the hatch to see if something was stuck. Below, in the dim light, she saw a figure—tall, thin, with skin like old leather—standing perfectly still, staring up at her. It wore a tattered suit, and its face was featureless, except for a wide, lipless mouth that stretched ear to ear. It spoke, not with a voice but with a vibration that rattled the floorboards: ‘I have waited for new eyes.’

I slammed the hatch shut and we ran. As we drove away, I looked back. It was standing at the kitchen window, its featureless face pressed against the glass, and its mouth was smiling. We sold the house to a young couple a month later. I still think about the journal entry. I believe it meant that the cellar copies whatever is placed inside it—memories, fear, even people. And the constant is that it always needs more.nnSometimes, late at night, I feel a thumping from under our new apartment. I fear it’s not the water pipes.

We never stayed to find out what it copied from us. But I know it has our eyes now. And it’s still waiting, in that cellar, for the hatch to open again. The new owners think they’re renovating a charming Victorian. They don’t know the constant in the cellar is patient.