I was twenty-one, third year at Manchester University, completely skint, when Professor Hartley offered me two hundred quid to house-sit for a week. Easy money, you know? Big Victorian house in Didsbury, feed the cat, water the plants. Simple.
“Just one rule,” he said, handing me the keys in his cluttered office. “Don’t open the basement door. It’s locked anyway, but I mean it, Thomas. Don’t even try.”
I laughed it off. “What’ve you got down there, bodies?”
He didn’t laugh back. Just stared at me with these serious grey eyes. “The lock is temperamental. If it opens, the whole mechanism jams and it costs a fortune to fix. Just leave it alone.”
Fair enough, I thought. Not my business.
The house was massive—too big, really. High ceilings, creaky floorboards, that particular silence old houses have. The basement door was in the kitchen, painted dark green, with one of those old-fashioned locks. I gave it a quick glance that first night and forgot about it.
The cat, Dickens, was friendly enough. Big orange tabby who followed me around like a shadow. First two days were fine. I revised for my exams, watched Netflix, ordered takeaway. Living the dream, basically.
Then came the third night.
I was in the living room, around half ten, when I heard it. Scratching. Soft at first, coming from the direction of the kitchen. I muted the telly.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
“Dickens?” I called out.
But Dickens was right there on the sofa next to me, ears perked up, staring toward the kitchen.
My heart started doing that thing where it beats a bit too fast. I got up slowly, grabbed my phone for the torch. The kitchen was dark except for the glow from the microwave clock. The scratching had stopped.
I stood there feeling stupid. Old houses make noises. Pipes. Mice. Whatever.
Then I heard crying.
Muffled, like someone with their face pressed against something. Coming from behind the basement door.
“Hello?” My voice came out higher than I meant it to.
The crying stopped immediately.
I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I should have known then—should have just grabbed my stuff and left. But you don’t want to seem mental, do you? Calling your professor at eleven at night because you heard noises?
I went back to the living room. Dickens wouldn’t settle. He kept pacing, staring at the kitchen doorway.
“It’s nothing,” I told him. Told myself.
I tried to sleep around midnight, but I kept thinking about it. About half one, I heard my phone buzz. Text from an unknown number: Let me out
I sat straight up in bed, hands shaking as I replied: Who is this?
No response.
I barely slept. When I did drift off, I had dreams about the basement door slowly opening, something pale crawling out.
Morning came eventually. I was exhausted, jumpy. I kept checking my phone, but that text had vanished. Like it was never there. I searched my messages three times. Nothing.
Maybe I’d dreamed it. I mean, I was pretty sleep-deprived.
That evening, I ordered Chinese food and tried to pretend everything was normal. I was eating in the living room, some reality show on in the background, when I heard it.
My own voice.
“Help me. Please. I’m so cold down here.”
Coming from the basement.
The fork slipped from my hand, clattered against the plate. Dickens bolted from the room.
“Thomas?” My voice again, but wrong somehow. The inflection was off. “Why won’t you help me?”
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
“THOMAS!” Louder now, desperate. “OPEN THE DOOR!”
I ran. Grabbed my backpack, my coat, my keys. Didn’t even shut off the lights. I was halfway to the front door when I heard the scratching again—frantic now, violent. Like nails scraping wood, over and over.
Then the crying started. Not just one voice. Multiple voices, overlapping, some of them children.
And underneath it all, still my voice: “Please. Please. It’s so dark. I’ve been here so long. Just open it. Just for a second.”
I fumbled with the front door lock, fingers clumsy with panic. Behind me, the scratching grew louder. Faster.
The lock clicked. I yanked the door open and stumbled out into the cold November air. Ran down the street without looking back, didn’t stop until I reached the bus stop three blocks away.
I called Professor Hartley from my flat. Told him I had a family emergency, I was sorry, I’d leave the keys in the mailbox.
“You didn’t open it, did you?” His voice was sharp. “Thomas. Tell me you didn’t open the basement door.”
“No,” I said. “No, I swear I didn’t.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “Good. That’s good.”
He came back two days early. I heard about it from a mutual friend later—apparently they found the house fine, everything locked up tight. Except the basement door was standing wide open.
They never found me in the house, obviously. Because I left. But here’s the thing that keeps me up at night: my backpack was in the basement. The one I grabbed on my way out. It was sitting on the basement stairs, right inside that open door.
I’m looking at my backpack right now, on my desk. I’ve been using it every day since.
To this day, I still don’t know what that means. I don’t know what I actually grabbed that night. What I brought back with me.
And sometimes, late at night, I hear scratching inside the walls of my flat.
