The Door in the Attic Floor

“Are you ok!?” Rachel yelled out as she ran toward me through the storm, trying not to laugh.

It figures that moving day would find lightning, thunder, and rain attacking us from above, but it had been completely clear when we headed this way with a truckload of all our worldly possessions.

“I’m good,” I called out, chuckling to myself as I lay on the ground with thick raindrops splashing me in the face.

Honestly, I had no idea how I ended up there on the flat of my back. I volunteered to brave the storm to get the door to our new home unlocked, to save my wife from getting overly soaked. I planned to get the lights turned on too, as the sky had grown quite dark when the bottom fell out only minutes before we arrived.

Rachel was five months pregnant, and I was hoping to make things as convenient as possible. Her back had been throbbing pretty badly lately, and the move was taking quite a toll on her.

The new house was massive! My wife and I had decided it was time for us to move out of our apartment in the city, and upgrade to a house in a more peaceful environment as soon as we found out we were expecting.

We had been married for a little over a year, but it was a surprise to both of us when the test showed positive. We had been talking a lot about trying to conceive but hadn’t planned on taking the plunge just yet. While we had hoped to be a little more financially stable by the time we brought a new member into our little family, I can’t say we weren’t excited about it.

After looking at a handful of houses for a few months, we instantly fell in love with this one. We did not doubt that there would be an ice cube’s chance in the depths of Satan’s asshole that we could afford it, but we asked for more details regardless.

The price we paid was a little higher than our budget, but it was a remarkable deal for the size of this place. Rachel and I made a decent living between the two of us, but we couldn’t have dreamt of owning a house like this, even with our combined income.

Given the incredible and somewhat bewildering price tag, I made sure to do my research before we signed off on it. I’m sure we’ve all heard the tales of the surprisingly priced houses that just happen to have been the location of a brutal and bloody massacre.

As it turned out, our new home had only been built a few months back, making us its first owners. No history, no tragedies, and no skeletons in the closet. I even looked up the land it was built on, halfway expecting to find it sat upon an ancient burial ground, but there was nothing much to speak of on that front either.

Given the storm raging outside, we decided to hold off on unloading anything until the weather cleared up. I had called in a few favors to help us with the move, but they had headed out to grab some food before meeting back up with us.

By the time our friends arrived, things had simmered down substantially outside, so we began the tedious and back-breaking process of unloading the truck. It took some time, but we had everything inside by around ten.

We were all pretty beat by the time the whole ordeal was done with, so we decided to just crash for the night and worry about setting everything up the following day. We bid our friends’ goodnight, with a healthy amount of gratitude, before we turned in for the night.

It was probably around three in the morning when the knocking woke me up. It almost sounded like someone was jerking on the door handle, trying to get in.

“You hear that?” I asked Rachel before turning to see she was still in a deep sleep.

I gently slid out of the bed, attempting to make my way through the new and unfamiliar house in the dark. It took some groping around the walls to make my way downstairs, almost causing me to bust my ass a few times over our shoddily stacked boxes, but I finally arrived at the foot of the stairs.

Our new home stood alone on about four acres. There wasn’t much life around, and the absence of any streetlights outside, left the vast living room hidden behind the shadows of the night.

I stood on the ground floor landing, just listening for a few moments. Only silence; not so much as a creak or two from the house settling down for the night. Giving up on my fruitless search for answers, I shook my head before yawning widely.

“Yep, I’m going nuts,” I whispered to myself as I made my way back up to the bedroom.

The next day was mostly taken up by arranging our furniture and pushing aside the boxes we would be storing between the loft and the basement. That would be a task for another day, as our priorities were on getting the house to feel like a home.

After another few days, we were feeling pretty cozy, and it was time for the grueling process of packing away the non-essentials.

As I was awkwardly carrying boxes up the ladder to store them in the attic, I found myself impressed by the size of the room. It appeared twice, or even three times the size of the storage area in my parents’ house.

Having moved from an apartment, we didn’t have much experience with rooms such as these. I couldn’t speak to whether this was an unusual size for a loft, but I was not surprised given the size of the house itself.

“Goddamnit!” I yelled out after tripping over an uneven floorboard with both arms gripped around the base of the boxes.

“You ok, babe?” Rachel called out from the opening behind me.

“Yeah, nothing hurt but my dignity” I laughed while rolling to the side and gathering up the boxes that now lay splayed open on the floor.

She was giggling pretty well when she caught sight of me after ascending the ladder to the room I now knelt in, gathering spilled memories off the floor.

“What did you trip over?” Rachel asked, still chuckling.

“I have no idea,” I replied, still reloading the boxes.

“Looks like a loose floorboard,” she said, nudging the raised edge with her foot.

After gathering myself back up from the floor, I took a look at the slight lip that had tripped me onto my ass. It looked like a long and wide, single sheet of plywood. The rest of the floor in this room was made up of two-by-fours, so the large chunk of thin wood seemed quite out of place.

I climbed back down the ladder to the second floor below and dug a long screwdriver out of my tool bag, which would be headed to the basement later that day. After returning to where my wife still crouched beside the unusual section of flooring, I jammed the flathead driver into the seam and pried up the sheet of wood.

“What the hell?” Rachel said, looking down at the floor.

“Beats me,” I shrugged, staring at the door that was recessed into the floor of the attic.

We were puzzled over the reasoning behind installing a second opening in the loft, besides the one that had the fold-out ladder we had scaled in the first place.

Though it was a far bigger room than I had expected to see when we climbed the steps, I couldn’t understand why a second entryway would be provided, especially in the form of a wooden door that would normally stand upright.

Upon closer inspection, and a quick jaunt back downstairs to compare, it could not be denied that this was of the same style as the front door that led into our new home.

“Open it up,” Rachel suggested while I just looked at it, scratching my head.

“Stand back then,” I suggested.

The last thing I wanted was for either of us to fall to the floor below, especially my very pregnant wife.

The door had a regular knob with a deadbolt lock above it. I unlatched them both and pulled the door ajar.

“Huh?” I said, looking at my wife, then back to the floor.

“What the hell is the point of that?” Rachel replied, staring down at the wooden floorboards beneath the open door.

It wasn’t until I closed the strange door back shut, and began to slide the plywood back over it, that I noticed the small text written on the top, right corner of the door.

“For when they come -Booper” I read out loud, after leaning over to make out what it read.

“When they come?” Rachel asked.

“No clue.”

As we headed back to the functional attic door, I noticed another unusual aspect of this room. There was a thick metal bar attached to the brackets on the ceiling. It had a heavy-looking chain hanging from it, that was looped back around it with a hefty hook.

On top of that, when I was descending the ladder to exit the storage space, there was a steel hoop protruding from the backside of the door that hung down behind the ladder, currently.

“Safe room maybe?” Rachel suggested.

“Attic seems a strange place for a safe room,” I chuckled.

Shrugging off the chain, and assuming the bizarre door to nowhere to be some kind of bizarre practical joke on the part of those who constructed the building, I went back to gathering up boxes for storage.

On my second trip, I gave another glance at the oddly located door, sliding the plywood back over it. I just nudged the screwdriver to the side for the time being, before turning my attention back to the task at hand.

My wife and I went on about the rest of our day stashing things between the basement and the attic, but I could not shake the image of the strange door. My mind kept wandering back to it whenever I found myself sitting still for a moment.

As we approached the end of our first week in the enormous, five-bedroom house, the majority of our settling-in was over. Sure, we’d rearrange things here and there should we feel the urge, but our grueling and busy move was finally done with.

Rachel and I had both taken two weeks off from our respective jobs, so we had plenty of time to enjoy some peace before we had to get back on any manner of schedule.

As much as I loved our new home, there was one aspect of living here that did trouble me. Every night since being here, I still occasionally found myself awakened by the same knocking sounds that jerked me awake on our first night.

It wasn’t every night, mind you. Just here and there, but always around three in the morning. It could be that it would still occur every night. Maybe I was lucky enough to be in a deep enough sleep most nights to not be forced into waking up, but I was growing concerned about what could be causing it.

The fourth time it pulled me from my sleep, I fully investigated the strange noises. I flipped on all of the lights in the living room and even strolled around outside with a flashlight for thirty minutes or so. I still found nothing. No trees brushing up against the house. No signs of any wildlife that could be bumping off the exterior walls at the night. Nothing.

It sounded like it was coming from inside the house as much as outside. It was almost as if it echoed from all around me if that makes any sense.

It wasn’t until the tenth night that I finally got my answers to the shuddering and knocking sounds in the night. It was sometime after midnight in the early morning of October 5th, 2018, when the events that almost broke my weary mind occurred.

“What was that!?” Rachel asked, sitting straight up in the bed beside me, shaking my arm.

“Huh?” I replied, still half asleep.

“I think there’s someone in the house!” She said with her voice trembling.

“It’s probably just the knocking I’ve been telling you about,” I replied.

She believed that I was overreacting to the noises that awoke me in the middle of the night. I even tried to wake her up last time, as she asked me to. She had assumed that I was just hearing things, but she asked me to let her know next time, and she’d come to check it out with me.

“This isn’t knocking, babe,” Rachel said, wrapping her fingers around my arm.

It wasn’t until then that I looked at the time. It was creeping up on two, and the knocking always happened closer to three.

I sat up beside my wife, suddenly thrust back to awareness. We stayed still to make out anything going on beyond our bedroom door; as still as I could with my fingers beginning to tremble, anyway. Sure enough, I could lightly make out the sounds of multiple footsteps and whispering voices.

“Stay here,” I told my wife as I crept out of the bed.

“No,” she said, “Don’t go out there, babe!”

“I’m sure it’s nothing. Besides, you don’t need to get worked up in your condition,” I smiled, giving her a wink.

Truthfully, I was pretty nervous about seeing what was going on out there. We don’t own any type of weapons, but I hoped the old baseball bat I grabbed would be enough to get a good wallop on anyone who may be intruding.

I slowly opened the door, leaning out to see if I could make out anything. As soon as my head poked out of the door, I felt a tight grip around my neck, and I was pulled out of my bedroom.

“Well, lookie what we got here!” the large man wearing a ski mask said.

I tried to swing at him with the bat, but he just snatched it out of my grip with the hand that was not currently pinched around my throat.

“What the hell do you want!?”

The man just smiled, while another came charging up the steps.

The one who was holding me by the neck shoved me into the other man’s arms before pushing through my bedroom door.

“NO!” I screamed out, fighting tooth and nail against the thick arms holding me in place, “DON’T TOUCH HER!”

I heard my wife scream from inside the bedroom, causing my heart to damn near leap from my chest.

Moments later, the man came strolling out of the bedroom, holding Rachel by the hair with her arms gripped behind her back.

She was cussing and kicking while she fought against the man who was easily twice her size.

“LET HER GO!” I yelled, still struggling to get free.

The two men remained quiet as they dragged us kicking and screaming down the steps before throwing us to our living room floor.

Both of them were huge; something so much more exaggerated from my view on the carpet. The one closest to us was a good head taller than the other, but they both wore matching black masks, thick, woolen jackets, and cargo pants, all in black, likely to better remain hidden in the shadows, though that was not exactly a factor anymore.

The other guy wasn’t quite as beefy as the one who pulled my us from the bedroom, but they were both stocky, with hands as wide as my head. I could make out a reddish beard peeking through the mask of the bigger of the two, but only the dark eyes and almost nervous look on the less hefty guy.

The eyes of the one who glared directly into mine, though, were a wide and manic, hazel brown. Though there were only aspects of their faces I could make out through the cloth, I could tell this one wasn’t of sound mind. No, he was enjoying this part, far more than his friend.

I started to get back up onto my feet until the one who had pulled me from the room pulled a gun from his coat.

“You’re gonna wanna keep quiet, or I’m gonna plug the both of you.”

The other one began rummaging through drawers, presumably looking for anything of value, while the big guy with the crazy eyes just kept waving the barrel of his pistol from side to side.

“Ain’t never had a pregnant girl before,” he said casually as he drifted his aim from left to right between the two of us, “You’re pretty damn cute at that.”

“Don’t even think about it, you piece of sh…”

“I know you ain’t tryin’ to start nothin’, bud!”

He strolled to where I was sitting. I tried to slide my body in front of Rachel before he crouched down to look me right in the eyes.

“Tell you what, big man,” he said, forcing the barrel of the gun under my chin, “how about you sit there and shut your damn mouth, while I have a bit of fun with your little lady,”

My muscles began to twitch and spasm at the thought of what he was planning to do. I couldn’t allow this. I wasn’t about to sit here and watch him have his way with the woman I loved. I was never a violent person, but this was not a matter of what I was more comfortable with. I would not permit this; not while I still had blood racing through my veins.

“I know what yer thinkin’, bud,” he said, burying the gun deeper, “give it a shot if you got the balls.”

Before I knew it, my arm seemed to act independently from my mind as I swatted his gun away from me and my wife. Being a fully unexpected turn of events to both of us, the weapon slipped from his grasp; a bullet firing into the staircase as it connected with the hardwood floor, skidding into the darkness. Wasting no time, I jumped the hulking man, pushing him onto the floor.

“RACHEL, RUN!”

Immediately, she got up and ran for the front door, as the big guy swatted me off him, as though I was nothing more than a playful puppy.

“GET THE BITCH!” he cried out to his partner, who quickly began running after my wife.

He was on me before I could even hope to gather my bearings, launching his fist into my gut. The guy hit like a damn wrecking ball, causing me to gag while attempting to catch my breath.

He reared back up, pounding his knuckles to my face so hard that my senses began to fade as my ears rang from the concussion. I heard Rachel screaming as her pursuer dragged her back through the door, convincing me to not give in to my dwindling consciousness.

“Stop!” I whimpered, punching my attacker in the midsection.

When he struck me again, I felt my body fall limp, while my head spun. I was still awake, but incredibly dazed.

“Now, I’ll show you whatcha get for pullin’ that shit!” the man who still wore my blood on his knuckles said, getting back to his feet while his partner tossed Rachel into his arms.

He tossed her to the floor, kneeling to pin her beneath him. He began tearing at her pajamas, while she fought to break free, her screams blending with the sounds of ripping fabric.

“No..,” I said, barely holding on.

When Rachel screamed at the top of her lungs against the events that were sure to occur if I didn’t do something, I finally managed to battle against the floor and my dizzy head, pushing myself back to my trembling legs.

“GET THE FUCK OFF HER!!” I screamed out as I charged at the man who was so focused on attempting to disrobe my wife, he didn’t see it coming until it was too late.

“JESUS CHRIST!” his friend yelled out as the big guy turned to face me, just in time for his teeth to shatter across my fist.

The hit must have knocked him out cold; he just dropped, limp onto Rachel as the other guy came at me.

I quickly ducked in anticipation of his attack, ramming my elbow into his midsection. When he fell to the floor, clutching at his gut, I wasted no time in making sure he wasn’t getting back up anytime soon. I felt my toes crack as they bent forward from the force of my kick, but I would register that pain later.

I reached a hand to Rachel after tumbling the heavy beast upon her to the floor.

“You okay?” I asked, trembling from the pounding in my chest.

“Yeah,” she said with a nod, pulling her torn top shut, “you?”

I just gave a nod, attempting to push the pulsing pain in my swelling face to the side for the time being.

While I glanced around the room in search of something to tie the men up with, before they could reawaken, I noticed the gun laying on the floor, by the steps.

“Get to the car,” I said, glancing from the discarded weapon to my still-shivering wife.

“Where are the keys?”

“Shit! In the bedroom. Head out there, I’ll grab them and…”

“No!” I’m not leaving you. I’ll grab the keys and call the police, you grab…that,” she said, gesturing to the gun, “then we’ll get away from here together, okay?”

“Just be quick, yeah?”

While Rachel headed upstairs, I retrieved the pistol and began searching for something to bind the unconscious men. While I still planned to get the hell away from here after my wife returned, I hoped to have the intruders wrapped up like a Christmas present for the police.

Regardless of any of that, my only priority was getting us to safety. Though I kept looking back at where the men lay on the floor as I continued my search, my thoughts were all over the place.

Everything since leaving the invaders unconscious had taken place over minutes at most. I was so scatterbrained and focused on the task at hand, I didn’t even notice the stealthy maneuvering of the larger of the two men while he got back to his feet, seemingly right after my last check.

When I turned to see him charging at me, finally catching the sound of his heavy feet pounding as he sped toward me, I barely had time to react. Even with the bullets I fired into his chest, he was on me before I knew it, slamming me hard against the wall.

“Didn’t have to be this way, bud,” he said, once more thrusting his fist into my gut, “now, I’m gonna kill you, and have some fun with your lil lady. Then, I’m gonna kill her too, and there ain’t nothin’ you can…”

Though the bullets I drilled into what I could now tell was some sort of protective padding covering his torso had barely affected him, the knee I slammed into his crotch cut his words short. His grasp on me faltered as he fell to the ground once more, allowing me to push the barrel of his gun right against his temple.

“Is your skull as bulletproof as your chest,” I asked, allowing a touch of arrogance to accompany the smirk on my face.

“Oh, my God!” Rachel said as she reluctantly began to walk down the steps, “are you…JAMES…”

As my wife’s tone took a dramatic shift, I only managed to narrowly avoid the firearm discharging from the hand of the other man. I felt the bullet tear into my shoulder, which would have surely been a kill shot without the warning I barely had time to register.

“RUN!” I screamed out as the big guy took me to the ground again, “GET TO THE ATTIC!”

Though I had no idea of knowing if the chain we had noticed hanging from the ceiling would be enough to stop either of these men, I knew she had no chance of reaching the front door from her current location, not with her path blocked at the time.

“No!” she yelled, as I fought to keep the gun from my attacker’s hand.

“What do I do, Carl?” his friend asked, seemingly attempting to get a clear shot.

“Get her! I got this son of a bitch.”

“No!” I shrieked in a near primal warcry, battling harder than I had yet.

Whether it was from the stranger’s demands to his associate or the fact that my wife was running down the stairs to help me, holding the bat I had inadvertently discarded earlier, I don’t know. All I knew was that I had to get her to safety, no matter what it cost me in the process.

I slammed the butt of the pistol against the big guy’s skull; something that finally caused the bastard to bleed. As I attempted to strike again, I was momentarily paralyzed by the other gun firing for the second time.

When I turned to see Rachel tumbling down the steps, I couldn’t tell if she had been hit by the shot, but the fear almost crippled me. The man who was now oozing blood from his scalp grabbed me by the throat, pulling my attention away from my wife, but not before I saw her getting back to her feet.

I was pushed back to the floor, that wide mitt squeezing the life from me. As more gunfire echoed through the house, I just knew our fight for freedom was reaching its end. That was until I heard a sound that brought an unexpected smile to my face.

How my very pregnant wife had avoided the erratic gunfire and still reached her target, I will never know, but when the bat she swung made contact with his face, even the one choking me lost his focus for a second.

As he released his grip on me, lifting himself up to prepare himself for Rachel’s next attempt at a home run, I rammed the butt of the gun against his temple, leaving him unable to prevent the bat from crushing the nose beneath his mask, flat against his face.

“Are you alright?” I began to ask, before the bullet tore into my flesh.

The shock momentarily blinding me, it wasn’t until the echoing sound of gunfire repeated, that I saw the blood spilling from Rachel’s lips, blending with the oozing wound on her chest. I joined her as she fell to the floor, her legs lifeless beneath her.

‘This is it,’ I thought, feeling the hopelessness consume me.

When the knocking began; that nightly visitor I had yet to track down, I winced at first, believing it to be more gunfire at first.

“What is that?” Rachel asked in a strained voice.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, “I gotta get you to safety. You with me?”

“Always,” she said, smiling through the blood trickling from her mouth.

With our captors momentarily distracted by the knocking sounds, I uppercut the balls of the one right next to me, snatching the gun and emptying the clip into his friend. Choosing to not waste a drop of my second wind by investigating neither where I had been hit, nor where the bullets I fired had landed, I pulled Rachel from the floor.

I could hear the men grunting from somewhere behind me as I ran up the stairs, with my wife in my arms. I knew time was short, but the attic was our best chance to get out of this alive. I could only hope that it was as I had previously assumed: a safe room.

You’re…dead…mother fucker!” one of the men yelled out, coughing in between words, as I pulled down the ladder from the ceiling.

Rachel still had some strength, but I couldn’t risk her condition worsening even more, so I lifted us both up the ladder, pushing her the rest of the way in upon reaching the top. The second she was inside, I heard the footsteps charging from behind me, followed by the echoing reverberation of more gunfire.

The bizarre knocking sounded more like an incoming storm, practically shuddering the entire house. I couldn’t tell if it was just the shock and fear of everything, or if something about it was more agitated now.

I cleared the opening and reached back down to pull the ladder up, along with the door. The gun blasted two more times before I sealed the entrance behind me. Not allowing anything else to register, I reached up for the hooked chain and latched it onto the loop on the back of the entry flap.

As the adrenaline that had spiked began to fade, while the walls around me shuddered so violently, I thought the house may collapse any moment, I finally began to register the pain. Looking down to see the blood oozing from my stomach and left leg, I was uncertain which had happened first.

“Babe,” My wife said in a weak and shaky voice.

Rachel was just laying on the floorboards, still gripping at her chest as blood spewed between her fingers. I hadn’t taken note of either of our injuries when I sped us from the living room to the attic, but I feared the worst, seeing the gaping wound my beloved had.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” I said, fully disbelieving my words, “we’re gonna get through this.”

I could hear the invaders pounding and pulling on the door, while the near deafening knocking and shuddering were echoing from behind the plywood that lay across the floor some feet from us.

Bullets fired off beneath me, but none seemed able to penetrate the floor we lay on.

I yelled out in fear and anguish as the love of my life coughed out thick blood before falling silent beside me.

I pounded my fists on the wooden floorboards, my tears blending with the blood soaking my shirt, while the pain in my stomach threatened to push me past my breaking point.

The yelling duo still fought to get in, as the shuddering around me somehow became more focused. While it had felt like an earthquake before, like the ground may have opened up, to swallow the building whole, it now shook from below the oddly placed sheet of plywood on the floor.

While the curiosity of it all bounced around in my mind, the only thing I could focus on at the time was my beloved, who I feared had already left the room. I laid my head on her still bleeding chest, wailing out against the pain in my gut and my heart.

“For when they come,” my wife said softly.

I jerked my head up and looked at her face. She was still alive, but only barely.

“Don’t speak, babe,” I said as tears rolled freely down my face.

“The door,” she whispered.

“Don’t worry about that. It doesn’t matter. Just try…”

“For when they come,” she repeated.

I was stunned for a moment. Surely these men were not ‘they’. An oddly placed door could never predict such a thing, right?

I jumped to my feet, running a few feet toward the shuddering plywood. I grabbed the screwdriver that still lay off to the side, once again prying up the sheet, sliding it away from the opening.

The door shook violently from the floor. I turned back to look at my wife, my heart sinking as I gazed at her struggling so hard to hold onto life.

“You…have to go,” she said, coughing more blood to the side, “go through.”

“I won’t leave you!”

I slid back to her side, gazing into her eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, “not without you.”

“Baby,” she said, lifting her weakening hand to my face, gently caressing my cheek, “you have to. I think…I think I’m about to go somewhere without you…after all.”

The smile she offered me was genuine and beautiful, even through the blood lining her face. I knew she would not survive this; I couldn’t deny that. If there was something behind that door, I knew it would be gone any minute.

Maybe, whatever may lay on the other side, could offer some manner of assistance. If there was a way to save her; to save us both, I would have to make this trip alone, but it would have to be soon before it is goinwas too late for both of us.

“Just hang in there a little longer, okay,” I said, inching back to the door, “I’ll be back. Just please…don’t go anywhere…I’ll be back.”

With her strained smile, I reached my trembling hand out towards the shuddering doorknob that stood erect from the door that faced me. I turned my hand, lifting the door open. It was not a row of two-by-four floorboards anymore that lay beyond the second exit on the attic floor.

Heavy droplets of water pelted at me as a storm appeared to rage from behind the open door. I became distracted from the strange sight when the entrance behind me was finally pulled open after the metal loop separated from the attic door.

“YOU’RE DEAD NOW, YOU SON OF A BITCH!” The large man yelled out as I heard him thundering up the ladder.

“NO!” I screamed out, fully aware of the fact that Rachel was in no shape to defend herself.

Before I had a hope of reaching out to her, I felt some sort of force pulling me back; pulling me into the waiting entrance. I fought against it, peeling fingernails back as they gripped into the planks, but it was too strong.

As soon as my body cleared the opening, I felt gravity shift from below me to behind, causing my back to slam hard against the firm ground. I lay there dazed for a moment, while thick raindrops splashed into my face before the door slammed shut behind my head.

“Are you ok!?” Rachel yelled out as she ran toward me through the storm, trying not to laugh.

•

It took some time for me to put together what happened that night, and how the bullet holes in my gut and leg were no longer present as I lay with my back on the wet concrete, dressed in the same clothes I wore on the day we arrived.

My wife had a hard time believing my account of the events that had occurred, but all I cared about was that she was alive and in my arms again.

I took her up to the attic and showed her the unusual door that still lay behind the long and wide sheet of plywood. She still wasn’t convinced about the story I had told her, but she couldn’t argue that this was quite a bizarre thing.

It wasn’t until time passed by and brought us back to the early morning of October fifth, that she couldn’t deny the tale I spun after I picked myself up from the wet concrete had to be true.

A few days back, I purchased a rifle and a pistol of my own to prepare for the events that I had already lived through once. I sat in the darkness, staring out of the second-floor window with a gun in one hand, and my phone in the other.

I wasn’t entirely sure at which time our late-night visitors would arrive, but I made damn sure I would see them coming this time. Rachel still didn’t take my ‘prediction’ seriously, but she began to reconsider when we saw the headlights approaching from a distance.

“No. Fucking. Way!” She said when the lights cut off as the truck drew closer.

I had called the police as soon as I saw the vehicle approaching, and I carried my rifle to the top of the stairs and trained it on the front door. I wasn’t exactly familiar with shooting, but I was ready to fire if the bastards crossed the threshold.

The truck stayed parked out front for some time before I saw the internal light flick on as the vehicle’s door swung open outside the wide living room window.

Almost as soon as the door swung open and my heart began to race, I saw the flickering blue lights strobing from the road.

After a failed attempt to escape, the police had the sizable men in handcuffs. Once the duo had been loaded up, the officers commended my quick reflexes in placing the 911 call before the two could break-in

Both of the men, who were planning on robbing and potentially killing us, had quite a checkered past, and a handful of warrants sworn out for them. Likely, they would not be causing any trouble for at least a good fifteen to twenty years.

After a few months, my wife gave birth to our beautiful daughter, Samantha. She quickly became the light of our lives and gave me more reasons to smile than I ever could have imagined.

It was a little after her second birthday, only a few months ago, that she found a fondness for poking everything in sight, including Rachel and me, with her cute little pointer finger. With every single poke, she would say:

“Boop!”

One day, after she had successfully ‘booped’ my wife on the nose around ten times in a row, Rachel, attempting to hold back laughter, said:

“Ok, that’s enough, Booper!”

As the realization of what she just called our daughter hit, we both looked at each other, lost for words.

To this day, the door in the attic floor still shudders around three in the morning. Strangely, the sound that used to wake me up in the middle of the night only serves to make me sleep easier now.

I can’t predict what the future holds for my adorable baby girl, but I have a feeling her new nickname is going to stick.

Credit: William Rayne

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