Fear of a Room - Darkness

When I was younger, my sister’s room was in the basement of our three story townhouse. One Halloween we decided to have a mini slumber party and watch, what we had thought at the time, were scary movies on Disney Channel. The first film we watched on the small black television was Don’t Look Under the Bed, a movie in which the Boogie Man lives under a young girl’s bed.

            I got down to the room and hid under the old, work Little Mermaid sheets, sitting as close to the bare white wall as I could, without actually touching it. Kaity followed shortly behind, but first she turned off the flickering lights that hung above on and old chain, and descended the creaky, rotting steps, and crawled next to me on the mattress. Within thirty minutes she was asleep, snoring softly.

            Every once in a while, as I gaped in horror at the fuzzy screen of the TV, the heater would groan and shadows would be thrown across the walls as cars came and went, they’re headlights illuminating the dust and cobwebs outside the small, dirty window. Some of the shadows appeared to be faces, faces that would laugh at me every time the whining heater had made me jump out of the bed like a deer startled by gunfire in a quiet forest.

            At some point I assume, my burning eyes closed and I drifted into a light sleep. When I awoke, it was darker than ever in the clammy basement. Before my adolescent eyes could adjust to the dark, I saw a tall, lean male figure emerge from behind the staircase, where my dad kept his deployment equipment. The man, possibly the ghost of someone my dad encountered in war, I had thought, was wearing a tall Victorian style hat and cape, and carried a large briefcase. He glided across the room and disappeared into the wall, the same wall by which I was sitting, just at the other end of it. Ever since that Halloween night, I cannot be alone in a basement, light or dark, day or night, without hyperventilating, sweat forming on the back of my neck. Since that night, Halloween has been a horrible night, and the darkness of any atmosphere sends chills down my spine, the chills you get from standing out in the snow in jeans and a t-shirt.