The Darkness

This is a story from my childhood, one which I have not told anyone except for my wife; just thinking about it still sends shivers down my spine. I grew up in a small house with just my mother. It was a nice little house with two bedrooms upstairs, a small living room and kitchen on the main floor, and a basement where I kept all of my toys. The basement had a small storage room in the back, lit by a single light bulb. It wasn’t until I was seven years old that I started to get scared to go down there.

It was a dark, rainy night as I played with my Lego’s in the basement. Rain water slowly dripped through the window and down the cement wall. It was cold down there that night, more so than usual; I was wrapped up in my hoodie and a blanket as I played. While attempting to build an airplane out of my Lego’s, I suddenly got a chill down my spine followed by the overwhelming feeling of being watched. I turned and looked behind me toward the dark storage room. Something drew my attention to the room, but I couldn’t see what it was. It seemed darker than usual; I didn’t think a room could get that dark, especially with the lights on in the room adjacent to it. It almost seemed like there was something in there drawing away all of the light, sucking it in like a black hole. I stared into the darkness at seemingly nothing, until I saw something move. I didn’t know what it was, but it seemed even darker than the room. I saw it for just a second before it disappeared; as it did, I could see light slowly start to trickle into the room. This terrified me, so I ran upstairs to the living room to seek comfort from my mother. When I told her what I had seen, she just told me that it was my mind playing tricks on me because of the heavy rain outside.

I went to bed that night not thinking much about what had happened in the basement. I lay back in my bed and closed my eyes just like on any other night, and I fell asleep rather quickly. Although I fell asleep like it was a normal night, the night was less than normal; I woke up that night with the feeling of being watched. I opened my eyes to see nothing but darkness; I couldn’t even see the light from the street light outside of my window. Thinking that maybe my blinds were closed, I looked across my room for the soft, green glow of my alarm clock, but it wasn’t there. At that moment, I realized that this was a lot like the darkness I had seen in the basement and that scared me. My fear doubled in an instant when I thought I saw movement in the darkness. In my terror from seeing that there was something in my room, I pulled my blankets over my head and screamed. In the midst of my screams I heard my door open, and the soft call from my mother. As she sat down on my bed, I slowly pulled my blankets off from over my head and looked around my room. The light had returned to my room and I could now see the soft glow of my clock blinking at 2:17am, and the light from the street light outside my window with my blinds fully open. My mother asked me what was wrong, and I told her what had happened; reassuringly, she told me that it was just a nightmare and to go back to sleep. She gently kissed my forehead and left my room, closing the door behind her. It was hard for me to fall asleep after that, so I just watched my clock slowly tick away the minutes.

This went on for about two or three months, staying at this level of activity; nothing more than the feeling of being watched in the darkness, however, that all changed on Halloween night. It was a typical Ontario Halloween night; cold, windy and rainy. I had returned home that night from trick-or-treating with my mom at about eight o’clock and went down to the basement to play with my toys for a bit before bed. I could hear the rain tap against the basement window, and the wind whistling as it blew between my house and my neighbour’s house. Something was unsettling in the basement that night, more so than usual. As I played I thought I heard sounds coming from the storage room, but every time I looked there was nothing; this was nothing strange to me as it’s been happening for the last few months, so I continued to play. I played for about ten minutes when the power suddenly went out, and that’s when everything changed. As soon as the power went out, I heard more movement from the storage room behind me. I immediately looked behind me to see a quick flash of red light, and then darkness. As I stared, I could hear footsteps from the dark room, but I could see nothing. The footsteps slowly made their way toward me, the darkness somehow getting darker as they approached, until they suddenly stopped. I moved my eyes around the room, careful not to move any other part of my body in fear that whatever this was would see me. I looked around the room, trying to see what this thing was, but I could see nothing; it was so dark I couldn’t even see my feet. I wanted to run upstairs to the safety of my mother, but I was frozen in fear so I didn’t move a muscle or even breathe.

I sat in silence, listening for whatever was in the room with me. I couldn’t hear a sound, not even the rain on the window or the wind between the houses. As I listened, the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up on edge, and I got chills down my spine, and that’s when I heard it; a deep voice whispered into my right ear “You will be mine, Robert.” I instantly screamed and ran to the stairs, tripping on toys along the way. I made my way up the stairs and through the door to the living room, slamming the door behind me. I ran to my mother, crying and she held me not knowing what was going on. I told her what had happened, but she just told me that my mind was just playing tricks on me again; what I had heard was just the wind, but my mind exaggerated it because of the darkness. From that moment in the basement, no matter what my mother said, I knew that whatever this thing was, it was real.

From then on, I refused to go into the basement alone; in fact I didn’t like going into the basement at all! The activity in the basement itself settled down a little bit because I was never alone down there after that incident, but I still had trouble sleeping. I would wake up at night with the feeling of being watched to see nothing in my room but darkness. I would lay there staring into the darkness with my blankets pulled up to my neck, hoping there was nothing there, but after a few minutes I would hear that same voice again; “You’re mine, Robert.” The second I would hear that voice, I would pull my blankets over my head and scream, causing my mother to run into my room and every time she would say it was just a bad dream. This sequence would go on at least twice per week until August of 1998 when the activity escalated yet again.

My mother had been dating her now husband for a while now and we were preparing to move into his house. I was going to be on vacation for two weeks in Quebec with my grandparents as my mom moved our things into the new house, but what happened my last night in that house still terrifies me to this day. I had fallen asleep easily that night, excited to be leaving on vacation the next morning, but the rest of the night would not be so easy. I woke up again that night, this time to the sound of breathing; I opened my eyes to see nothing but darkness yet again. Thinking that my mother was in my room with me, I called out to her: “Mom?” but what answered was definitely not my mother. It was that deep voice yet again; “Your mother is not here, she can’t help you Robert. You’re finally mine!” I continued to stare into the darkness thinking that it was my imagination, but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could see the silhouette of that dark figure standing at the end of my bed. I immediately pulled my blankets over my head and screamed, but my mother didn’t come. I felt pressure on the end of my bed, as if someone was sitting on it; I screamed again. Suddenly, I felt something grab onto my ankle under the blankets and pull. I somehow managed to turn onto my stomach and grab the end of my mattress, but it only gave me a few seconds before it shifted and I was pulled right out of my bed. I continued to scream, louder than I had ever screamed before. Finally I could hear my mother get out of bed and make her way to the door, only this time when she reached it, the door did not open. The entity continued to drag me toward the door as I continued to scream; I could hear my mother pushing against the door trying to get it open without success. As it dragged me across the carpet, I tried to grab onto anything that I could, but the only thing that seemed to work was the foot of my bed. I stopped as I took hold and I finally stopped moving toward the door. I could feel the entity begin to pull harder, hard enough to lift my body off of the carpet, but I managed to hold on. As I fought the entity, I could here my mother struggle with the door. It took my mother a good two or three minutes to finally get the door open.

As the door finally opened, light returned to my room and I no longer felt the grip on my ankles and I fell back to the carpet. I looked around the room, terrified. My room was a disaster; the sheets were in a ball on the floor, by mattress was half off of my bed frame, and my bed was no longer sitting flush with the wall but pulled off about three feet. I looked around for the entity, but it was no longer there. My mother held me tight as I cried on the floor, not knowing what happened only thinking that it was a really intense nightmare.

I spent the rest of that night in my mother’s bed, but did not sleep. The next morning, I could see the rug burn on my arms and elbows from being dragged across the carpet. I looked at my ankles to see they were red and swollen, but harder to see were the little scratches along the top of my feet. That was my last night in that house, and I’m glad that it was.

To this day, I do not know what this thing was or what it wanted of me, but thinking of it still scares me. In my adolescent years, and even now that I’m in my mid twenties, I have what my doctor has only described as night terrors; I wake up in the middle of the night to see nothing but darkness and as I stare into the darkness I see a figure, even darker than the darkness around it. I still scream when I see the silhouette the darkness. Now that I’m older though, I have more control over my actions; I take a flashlight and shine it through my room, or I’ll turn on the light switch. Many times I’ll just wake up screaming, sometimes even running out of my room, with no idea why. I do not know if what I see is the same entity that stalked me as a child or if it’s just my imagination digging deep into my subconscious, but the entity still haunts me to this day. I just pray that whatever this is does not start going after my wife or our future kids.