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Something is Wrong



Estimated reading time — 9 minutes

It had been a while since I had visited my cousins. Believe it or not, it had been five years since I saw any of their faces.

The last time I saw them I was eight years old and had not yet learned that the world had no consequences. I skipped gaily around their two-story ramshackle house joyously, singing my favorite songs and playing with the six-year-old twins. This playtime, however, was constantly tainted by my Aunt Clarissa.

My Aunt Clarissa was always that one person with which everything had to be just right, perfect, or as close to perfect as possible.

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Whenever I would try to play tag, hide and seek, or anything of the sort really, she would be hovering over us, her dark grey eyes flashing. She would always say, “Now Jared, don’t you ever play too rough with Simon or Eloise. If anything ever were to happen to them, I’d wear you out.”

Aunt Clarissa always used to scare me as a child, with her sharp chin and stormy eyes, she reminded me of a witch. I did not dare do anything she wouldn’t approve of with Simon and Eloise, even when she wasn’t around; because I knew that she would stay true to her word and beat me black and blue if I ever harmed either one of them.

Her precious little twins had to be perfect and untouched.

We used to visit her all the time back at my old house. We only lived about thirty minutes away from each other. Then my dad got a job offer up in Michigan, and it was a long time before I ever stepped foot in Illinois.

I do remember feeling happy, at the very least, for my Aunt Clarissa as we left, despite my disliking her. She was about to have another child, and she was joyful as could be. Her eyes weren’t as stormy as they usually were the last time we went to visit to say goodbye, and she seemed as content and relaxed as ever with the growing bulge in her stomach. Three was the perfect number, three perfect children in a wonderful family; this was all Aunt Clarissa had ever wanted.

We all moved to Detroit and eight months later, the big news came. Aunt Clarissa had had her baby. She sent us a letter with several exclamation points telling us how happy she was for her newborn child, who she had named Mallory. Even now, when I’m seventeen years old, I still remember thinking that it was odd she had not sent a photograph of her infant child.

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The years whisked by like sand in wind, and the more time went by, the less contact we had with our cousins, Aunt Clarissa, and my Uncle Wayne. Then, finally, we were invited over to her house for the holidays.

My mother, who missed her older sister dreadfully, readily agreed to visit, and my father, seeing how eager my mother was, complied with her wishes.

After a two day car trip, we finally got to the familiar old residence of my aunt, uncle, and their three children.

We all approached the steps, laughing and talking to each other before reaching the door and knocking. A full minute later we were still standing there, fidgeting and stealing glances at each other. The door suddenly opened about a foot. The face of an eleven year old boy appeared at the door, his white blond hair hung down over his baggy green eyes, which flitted around at us, taking in our every detail. His jaw finally quivered slightly before he said to us, “Come in, please, it’s so nice to see you all.”

After five years Simon had definitely changed. He was more solemn, as if he had been consistently bullied, and expected contempt from everyone.

My mother wasted no time, smiling and gushing, “Why Simon, come here and give me a hug!” Simon allowed himself to be hugged before taking us all inside, where we were greeted by Aunt Clarissa.

She smiled, saying, “It’s so nice to see you all again!” before spreading her arms and coming in to give us all hugs. She commented on how much I had grown up and asked me if I’d taken care of my parents. I smiled uneasily and replied that I had done the best I could, I looked hard at Aunt Clarissa, taking in how she had changed.

She really had not changed very much. There were gray streaks in her otherwise blond hair, but that appeared to be it.

I asked where her Uncle Wayne was, and she responded that he was on a business trip and wouldn’t be back in some time. She led us into the dining room, where Mallory and Eloise had already sat down. My mother crooned over Mallory and introduced herself while dad commented on how much Eloise had changed. Mallory didn’t look at all like the rest of the family. Her hair was a dirty blond and her eyes were not green or gray, but instead a light blue.

I did not really talk to her, but instead focused on Eloise, who had grown much older and prettier than I had last seen her. She barely remembered me, but I was able to make small talk with her. I noticed she had grown to be wary and suspicious of others, as if someone might try to stab her in the back.

The only members of the family that seemed normal were Aunt Clarissa and Mallory. Mallory was happily eating away at steamed carrots and Aunt Clarissa was sat on her chair with a pleased look on her face, as if proud of her perfect children.

There was definitely tension in the air, as if there had recently been a fight between Aunt Clarissa and her kids. I decided that I would ask Eloise about it after dinner.

I met up with her in the living room and sat down. She was engrossed in a teenage magazine I had never even heard of, but looked up sharply as soon as the question was out of my mouth.

“Eloise, is there anything wrong in this house?”

Her sea green eyes flitted to two different places somewhere behind me before meeting my own. I made a mental note of this.

“There’s nothing wrong here, why would you say that?” she answered, forcing a smile onto her face.

I shook my head. “Never mind, I thought Simon was acting unusual.” I saw a split second of relief cross her face before she managed to hide it.

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about him, he gets bullied sometimes by older kids.”

I nodded and continued to talk to Eloise, but my mind was elsewhere. I swiftly concluded our conversation and got up, turning around as I did so. I quickly surveyed the living room, looking for the places Eloise had been glancing at.

Those two places were the coat closet and the stairwell.

I knew that something was wrong with this family, inside this house. It was something that kept eluding me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was definitely frustrating.

I decided that I would find out tonight, after everyone had gone to bed. I was to be sharing a room with Simon, and mom and dad would be taking the spare room upstairs. I did my best to act normal and socialize with everyone, given the unsettling atmosphere of the house.

My parents did not appear to notice anything; they were oblivious to how strange our cousins were acting. I think my mom was just glad to finally be talking to her sister for after five years of not seeing each other, and my dad just seemed to be happy for my mother.

Finally it was time to go to bed, and we all brushed our teeth and changed into pajamas. Simon had allowed me to use his bed, and he plopped down on the floor. The moonlight streaming in through the window illuminated his face.

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I relaxed my breathing, pretending to fall asleep, while watching Simon, waiting for him to nod off. But he did not. I stared at him for hours as he lay there on the ground, his eyes never closing. Every muscle in his body was pulled taut, as if he were expecting someone to break into the room and attack him.

At one in the morning his breathing relaxed and he became limp. I crept out of the room and headed for the coat closet, a small flashlight in hand that I had stolen from Simon’s drawer.

I tiptoed silently over the hardwood floor, wincing every time it creaked. I finally made it to the coat closet and opened the door. Turning on the flashlight, I stepped inside. It looked like a regular coat closet, nothing special or extraordinary about it. I began rummaging around, checking in coat pockets and even Aunt Clarissa’s purse, but all I came across was a Swiss army knife in Simon’s pocket and some scented Germ-X in Eloise’s jeans jacket, but nothing more.

I began to search in the more unusual places, checking in dark corners and even in the shoe rack, but didn’t find anything of interest. I started looking underneath the baskets in which various gloves and hats were kept on a shelf above the coat rack.

To my surprise, a newspaper article fluttered down to the floor.

I bent over and picked it up. The article read: “Female Infant Stolen From Orphanage.”

My curiosity increased. Why would Aunt Clarissa have something like this in her coat closet? I tucked the article into my back pocket and went onto the second thing I had seen Eloise looking at… the stairs.

I remembered when I was little, Simon and Eloise had a hide and seek place that beat me every time. They would simply hide in the cupboard underneath the stairs. Every time I passed the cupboard I would stop, not wanting to go inside to the darkness of the cupboard where unspeakable monsters surely awaited me. I would search every other nook and cranny of the house, hoping they would be somewhere else before eventually giving up, even though I really knew where my cousins were.

Using that method they had beat me time and time again until I eventually tired of hide and seek and proclaimed that we should play tag instead.

They had rearranged the furniture so the couch now blocked the cupboard under the stairs, but I knew for sure it was still there. I looked down on the ground and noticed something strange. There were scuff marks on the ground, as if the couch had been pulled away from the stairs often.

I knew that whatever was under those stairs was the answer to why everyone in the house was so tense, and I was eager to find out the secret.

I pushed the couch away from the staircase and stepped over to the cupboard beneath the stairs. To my surprise, the cupboard was secured with a thick padlock. I went back to the coat closet and retrieved Simon’s small knife. I inserted the thin blade into the handle and jiggled it around until the lock clicked open.

My heart began to pound feverishly in my chest as I unhooked the padlock and swung the small door open. I shone the flashlight in the dark area beneath the stairs. My flashlight passed over a chain dangling from the low ceiling of the right hand end of the small space provided by the cupboard, and I moved my flashlight down to discover a human hand in a manacle.

A shocked little gasp escaped my throat and my blood ran cold. I reached up and flicked the switch to the small light bulb dangling from the ceiling.

Something Is Wrong

Before me, a girl no less than nine years old was hanging from the manacles on the ceiling, clad in nothing but a pair of dirty undershorts.

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Her head lolled to one side, A rag was stuffed in her mouth and her ankles were tied in thick rope. Her wrists and skin around her feet were red and sore from being bound, and I could tell from the length of her face and how small her eyes were that she suffered from Down syndrome. Her skin was seemingly pulled over her bones and her ribs stuck out.

For a horrible moment I thought that she was dead, but then her head raised and a horrible moaning escaped her throat through the rag in her mouth.

Looking to the other side of the cupboard, revulsion welled in the pit of my stomach.

Sprawled out in the other corner was the half eaten corpse of my uncle. His stomach had been ripped open and his innards were spilled all over the floor. The skin on his face had been peeled away by greedy hands to reveal his white skull.

I looked back at the girl and noticed for the first time that her hands and face were stained with gore.

I couldn’t take it; I keeled over and threw up before catching my balance on the door frame and trembling.

I realized what had happened in this house.

Aunt Clarissa, the perfectionist she was, would never have allowed her child to have Down syndrome. So she stole a new baby from a nearby orphanage. She stole the child I knew to be Mallory. But Aunt Clarissa didn’t have the heart to kill her own child, even if the baby was marred. So she kept the child hidden away under the stairs whilst being with her perfect family. However, my uncle had opposed my Aunt Clarissa. So she had gotten rid of him out and used him to feed her hungry little secret under the stairs.

I had to do something. I knew that I should immediately call the police; I ran upstairs and grabbed the handset that was sitting on a nearby table. I quickly punched in the numbers 9-1-1, only to look down and discover the phone lines had been cut.

Aunt Clarissa kept her family under close tabs. Simon and Eloise’s home was also their prison.

All of a sudden I heard a shriek from downstairs.

That’s when I realized I had left the door under the stairs open and the light on. I then heard someone running, and the front door being slammed shut. I scrambled to my room and used my cell phone to call the police.

I later found out that Aunt Clarissa had fled the house when she discovered her secret was out. Thankfully, the girl under the stairs turned out to be okay, but the police never found Aunt Clarissa.

Even now she is probably on the streets, maybe with a new name or face, searching for another perfect child.


Credit: Nelson Smith (a.k.a. SnakeTongue237 / SnakeTongue)

This story was submitted to Creepypasta.com by a fellow reader. To submit your own creepypasta tale for consideration and publication to this site, visit our submissions page today.

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Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.

42 thoughts on “Something is Wrong”

  1. Great story! 9/10. I liked the suspense while he was trying to figure out what was going on, but the ending was pretty obvious and you could have done something more with it. I honestly though aunt clarissa had killed the main character’s parents and was looking for him to kill him, that would explain why she cut the phone lines and simon was waiting for something to burst into the room, you could have even extended the story making it sort of a cat vs mouse kinda of thing. But great story!

  2. Have you checked out CreepsMcPasta’s narration of your story? That’s how I found out about this, and my gosh was he right about this being ‘disturbing’. As said in previous reply, this, unlike other creepypastas I’ve constant bugged my mother about, I’ve avoided at least detailing what’s ‘wrong’ with the child … although I’m sure she’d agree the factors into what makes your story somewhat sad too. Overall, this is great work and shall plan to check out your other stories as well!

  3. Good concept, but the ending was definitely rushed. Also it was kind of unnecessary to spell out what happened – we all would’ve made that connection on our own.

  4. I liked it, but I definitely don’t think that the aunt would’ve fled. I would’ve thought that she would just turn off the light and close the door like normal, and then either find the person who found out her secret and take care of her, or take care of the whole family. That would’ve been more interesting than the aunt fleeing because one person knew. I don’t think that she’d leave all that she’s worked for.

    1. I agree. It would’ve been a lot scarier if the aunt had tied up/hid away the rest of the family too at the end, rather than just fleeing and leaving everyone else to have a happy ending.

  5. This story had decent buildup, but a very rushed and overall poorly-executed payoff. The writing wasn’t too bad, no grammar errors were apparent to me, although the dialect felt less-than-genuine and could have been written slightly differently. As far as the ending is concerned, aspiring writers need to learn to show, not tell. It is so incredibly implausible (and frankly, infuriating) when a character just flat-out says what happened in the story from a singular piece of evidence. No one could come to that kind of conclusion about anything so suddenly, that’s an inanely ridiculous and common flaw among aspiring writers on this site that needs to stop. It’s stupid. Part of writing is taking a lot of time to plan out your story and progress it in a logical, credible way for the reader. Other than that, this pasta didn’t hurt all that much to read. 4/10.

    PS: Seriously, never wrap up your story so sloppily and unbelievably ever again. That sort of thing where the protagonist essentially gives the synopsis is terrible. I understand you’re basically new to writing, and I don’t want to discourage you from keeping it up, but geez.

  6. My daughter has Down Syndrome and to me she is the perfect child ☺,.
    Great story!!!! Would love to hear more from you!!

  7. This was going so well but it gives the impression that you couldn’t be bothered to give it a proper ending, as the end was pretty abrupt and bereft of details. A shame, because it was pretty well written up until that point.

  8. Good story. Just a little picky thing – You start by saying that five years had passed since the narrator had seen their cousins. Then at the end, the little girl in the cupboard was “No less than nine years old”. In keeping with what you’d already said, she’d have to be no more than five years old.

  9. Ilyssa DeHerrera

    I kinda wish that the ending was a little better, I was hoping aunt Clarissa would have stayed and blah blah blah…

  10. Well everyone… it seems this pasta of mine has gotten some decent feedback, and with this I am very pleased. One of the complaints I keep hearing, however, is that the ending needs to be fixed. Is this in any way possible? My apologies for not knowing this beforehand, but I am used to the creepypasta wikia, in which everything is easily edited.

      1. Honestly, unlike other creepypastas I’ve told my mother about … this one I avoid going into detail about. Personally, I don’t find it offensive (I know you were referring to @lauriebrott:disqus), but it’s bloody disturbing for sure!

  11. There was no need to spell it out for us. Would have been much creepier had you left us to our own devices with figuring out what was happening, though that was fairly obvious without The Paragraph That Explains Everything. Good premise though. I was genuinely saddened by the thought of a girl with challenges kept in a cupboard. Would have been merciful to exchange her with the blue-eyed kid. Also, stupid aunt Clarissa. Taking a blue-eyed kid.

      1. What is your website? i very much enjoyed this story. It had me on edge at the part when the boy was sneaking around the house. I would love to read more of your work.

  12. I really liked the idea, it had a lot of potential. The writing was a bit hasty though, especially the ending.
    I still enjoyed reading this, keep up the good work!

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