A Friends Story

Back in high school, a friend of mine showed me this story a friend of hers had told her, and honestly I thought it was bullshit at first.

The person who told her said this happened when he was around sixteen.

His parents had a basement that nobody really used. It was mostly boxes, old furniture, Christmas decorations, that kind of stuff. There was also a small room at the very back that had been locked for years.

One night, he was home alone.

Around 2 in the morning, he heard someone walking downstairs.

He thought his parents had come home early, so he went to check.

Nobody was there.

He walked around the basement for a minute and then heard his mother's voice from behind the locked door.

"Come open the door."

He froze.

He knew his mother wasn't home.

He called her upstairs.

No answer.

Then the voice came again.

"Please, I'm cold."

It sounded exactly like her.

Same voice.

Same way she talked.

He almost opened it.

Then his phone rang.

It was his mother.

She was calling from work.

He answered and immediately asked her if she had come home.

She said no.

Then she asked why he was whispering.

He didn't tell her.

He just went upstairs and locked himself in his room.

The next morning, he checked the basement again.

The door was still locked.

But there were muddy footprints in front of it.

They started at the stairs.

Walked directly to the door.

And stopped.

His parents thought maybe an animal had gotten inside somehow, so they called someone to inspect the basement.

The guy checked the windows.

Nothing.

He checked the walls.

Nothing.

Then he noticed something strange about the locked room.

The door had an old vent near the bottom.

He crouched down and looked through it.

There was another room behind it.

A tiny room.

And inside was a mattress.

A blanket.

Empty food cans.

And dozens of scratches covering the walls.

The police were called.

They eventually found an old access tunnel connecting the basement to an abandoned house behind the neighborhood.

Nobody knew how long it had been there.

Nobody knew who had been using it.

But the creepiest part was what they found written on the wall inside that hidden room.

There were names.

Dozens of them.

Some were crossed out.

Some had dates beside them.

And the newest name had been written only a few days earlier.

It was the boy's name.

He told my friend that after that night, his family moved out.

Years later, he went back to the house.

The basement had been renovated.

The hidden room was gone.

The tunnel had been filled with concrete.

But before leaving, he noticed something carved into the new basement wall.

Four words.

"YOU SHOULD HAVE OPENED."