1
00:00:01,960 --> 00:00:07,360
I get shot at a lot,
but that isn't what scares me about this

2
00:00:07,440 --> 00:00:12,039
job. When I arrive at a
home and see someone burst out of the

3
00:00:12,080 --> 00:00:17,920
front door clutching a rifle, I
know what to expect. They have something

4
00:00:17,960 --> 00:00:22,600
to lose, They're scared, and
they don't know what to do. So

5
00:00:22,879 --> 00:00:28,039
I tell them I give them resources
and fighting back. I refer them to

6
00:00:28,120 --> 00:00:32,960
law firms who do pro bone or
work, government bodies and charities that can

7
00:00:33,039 --> 00:00:37,719
help them get back on their feet. I speak calmly and with empathy,

8
00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:43,920
and people listen. Some even thank
me as they pack their things up and

9
00:00:44,079 --> 00:00:50,960
drive away. People ending themselves are
harder to deal with. I get at

10
00:00:51,039 --> 00:00:54,600
least three or four a year,
and people who do it out of spite

11
00:00:55,159 --> 00:00:59,840
really go all out on the spectacle. The harder it is for the bank

12
00:00:59,840 --> 00:01:03,480
to clean up, the better.
And people assume the bank puts their house

13
00:01:03,480 --> 00:01:07,400
in the market the second it ceased. But a house can sit forgotten for

14
00:01:07,560 --> 00:01:12,959
years before I'm sent to look it
over. Lone bodies swinging in empty living

15
00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:18,799
rooms, flesh like melted candlewax from
all that time left in open air.

16
00:01:19,239 --> 00:01:26,840
I find it profoundly sad. These
people lay themselves out like a spiteful diorama,

17
00:01:26,920 --> 00:01:30,200
and then no one turns up.
They slit their throats while clutching eviction

18
00:01:30,280 --> 00:01:34,439
notices, and by the time I
arrive, the blood is dried and the

19
00:01:34,560 --> 00:01:41,239
ink has faded. The worst ones
don't just hurt themselves, but they're loved

20
00:01:41,239 --> 00:01:47,000
ones too. Packs are more common
with the elderly, but it isn't always

21
00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:53,280
octagenarians families too. It's rare,
but it does happen. A sun baked

22
00:01:53,319 --> 00:01:59,760
house with drawn curtains so much time
passed them dry autumn heat that the skin

23
00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:07,920
and paper thin, receding lips black
toothless gums born in a rictus grin hell

24
00:02:07,959 --> 00:02:13,719
of a thing to see staring out
of a crib. Each house is its

25
00:02:13,759 --> 00:02:19,080
own apocalypse, its own ruined city
for me to wander, whiskey in the

26
00:02:19,120 --> 00:02:24,319
toilet, cistern, ventanel under the
bed, bills past two. And it

27
00:02:24,360 --> 00:02:30,319
doesn't just end with the people we
kick out. These places are empty so

28
00:02:30,360 --> 00:02:37,960
long you will often get squatters,
usually harmless, not always. Some have

29
00:02:38,039 --> 00:02:43,159
the potential to be thoroughly lethal,
stringing men and women with flinty eyes and

30
00:02:43,280 --> 00:02:47,599
missing teeth who come bursting out of
the multi blankets and indoor tents, slashing

31
00:02:47,639 --> 00:02:53,000
box cutters wildly in the air.
You could play tic tac toe on my

32
00:02:53,080 --> 00:02:58,879
forearm from all the defensive wounds.
Even when they moved on. The things

33
00:02:58,879 --> 00:03:05,159
they leave behind aren't exactly safe.
Fumes from homemade labs can rout your lungs

34
00:03:05,639 --> 00:03:09,400
and disease positive needles stuff down the
sides of old sofa cushions way to prick

35
00:03:09,479 --> 00:03:15,199
curious fingers, and the cooks get
real paranoid about being robbed, so they

36
00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:21,439
like to rig their homes with traps. They get inventive with whatever's lying around.

37
00:03:22,159 --> 00:03:25,919
Shots of glass on spring loaded broom
handles, trick floorboards over boxes of

38
00:03:27,039 --> 00:03:32,479
razor blades, infections, smeared knives
hidden beneath false window sills. Every now

39
00:03:32,520 --> 00:03:38,240
and again I find a trap that's
been set off, a baseball back rigged,

40
00:03:38,240 --> 00:03:42,599
a lash out, and anyone entering
the kitchen blood and hair dripping from

41
00:03:42,639 --> 00:03:46,919
the bent nails hammered into the wood. No sign of the poor guy who

42
00:03:46,960 --> 00:03:51,240
set it off, just the grizzly
trail of gore leading out of the house

43
00:03:51,439 --> 00:03:55,360
and into the nearby woods. Most
likely candidate is the guy who set the

44
00:03:55,360 --> 00:04:00,240
trap. These addicts can stay out
for days and pass out, and when

45
00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:03,360
they wake up, the first thing
they do is head for their stash,

46
00:04:03,759 --> 00:04:09,960
not remembering what they left behind.
One time I found the guy lying a

47
00:04:09,960 --> 00:04:14,400
few feet away from his own trap. He kept his money in this old

48
00:04:14,639 --> 00:04:18,160
metal lunchbox at the back of a
cupboard, and he'd rigged it so anyone

49
00:04:18,240 --> 00:04:23,720
reaching in would get a hell of
a surprise. The blade went in at

50
00:04:23,759 --> 00:04:29,199
his elbow and left just below the
knuckle on his thumb. No helping him

51
00:04:29,199 --> 00:04:34,759
after that. He died bleeding out
and his late grandmother's called Lilonium. What

52
00:04:34,879 --> 00:04:41,519
a god awful way to go,
and his little lunchbox on the ground and

53
00:04:41,720 --> 00:04:46,839
empty of everything worth taking. Police
reckoned. Someone was with him when it

54
00:04:46,920 --> 00:04:49,879
happened. Must have gotten scared,
so they took the cash and left him

55
00:04:49,879 --> 00:04:55,639
to die. It'd take a full
month before I found him, and no

56
00:04:55,720 --> 00:05:00,319
one even reported him missing. In
the interim, you think the kid would

57
00:05:00,360 --> 00:05:04,240
be angry, but he wasn't.
He just looked like he was scared.

58
00:05:05,800 --> 00:05:11,600
Nineteen, going through withdrawal and dying
slowly, curled up like a baby,

59
00:05:12,319 --> 00:05:15,879
one hand gripping his open wrist.
You can't trap the ocean in your fist,

60
00:05:16,519 --> 00:05:21,560
it leaks through the fingers. That
kid knew what was coming. I

61
00:05:21,560 --> 00:05:30,120
could see it in his eyes,
terrified. Meth is a hell of a

62
00:05:30,199 --> 00:05:33,399
drug. These poor guys fry their
brains out in the middle of nowhere.

63
00:05:34,560 --> 00:05:39,439
I can't even begin to imagine what
they think they see out there, what

64
00:05:39,680 --> 00:05:44,319
visits them in the dark. Found
this trailer once that had been rigged with

65
00:05:44,439 --> 00:05:49,360
damn near a hundred traps. They
weren't particularly sophisticated, but they were numerous,

66
00:05:49,399 --> 00:05:55,959
and vicious and desperate. They circled
the lone motor home out in the

67
00:05:56,040 --> 00:06:00,600
middle of the desert like an invading
army, made of knives and bear traps

68
00:06:00,639 --> 00:06:05,560
and stolen guns and even a few
hastily made IDs. Took me in a

69
00:06:05,600 --> 00:06:10,319
bomb squad a week just to get
to the front door, and by the

70
00:06:10,399 --> 00:06:14,680
time we opened it, we were
all fairly certain of one simple fact.

71
00:06:15,800 --> 00:06:19,920
This place hadn't been rigged to keep
thieves out. Whoever had said the traps

72
00:06:20,160 --> 00:06:27,040
had been scared of something, leaving
probably just drug fueled paranoia on behalf of

73
00:06:27,079 --> 00:06:31,000
whoever said them. But I think
the idea that something was in there waiting

74
00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:36,920
for us got under our skin anyway. During the operation. We'd sometimes get

75
00:06:36,959 --> 00:06:42,639
shouted reports of someone moving around in
the trailer, and the hall site would

76
00:06:42,639 --> 00:06:46,439
go to hell. Armed men and
women lying in their bellies, iron sights

77
00:06:46,560 --> 00:06:53,439
lined up on the front door,
handshaking. I guess we kept asking ourselves

78
00:06:53,720 --> 00:06:59,279
over and over, what's in there
that had someone so scared? They said,

79
00:06:59,399 --> 00:07:03,639
all these traps. When we finally
got our answer, the first thing

80
00:07:03,759 --> 00:07:10,720
we found was a meth lab,
pretty par for the course, less normal

81
00:07:10,959 --> 00:07:15,879
was a body that had been torn
to pieces, halfway to dust after all

82
00:07:15,920 --> 00:07:19,519
that time in that heated past,
but it was strewn all over the interior

83
00:07:20,519 --> 00:07:26,879
walls, floor, ceiling. Couldn't
argue who was a natural death or a

84
00:07:26,879 --> 00:07:31,600
product of scavengers, not unless coyotes
can work a lock and key. Or

85
00:07:31,759 --> 00:07:35,240
was left of his head? And
torso looked like he'd gone through hell.

86
00:07:36,480 --> 00:07:41,279
I'm hardly a friends of expert,
but it had looked to me like he

87
00:07:41,399 --> 00:07:48,199
died slowly and painfully, missing fingers
teeth when I plucked out torture is what

88
00:07:48,279 --> 00:07:53,399
it made me think of. Even
stranger than all of that, though,

89
00:07:54,199 --> 00:07:58,600
was what we found sat on the
kitchen counter, next to all those broken

90
00:07:58,639 --> 00:08:07,279
beakers and stained chemistry equipment, A
doll not like a kid's doll, porcelain

91
00:08:07,879 --> 00:08:13,759
like a collector's item that had seemed
better days, scared the hell out of

92
00:08:13,800 --> 00:08:18,199
me given the circumstances, and all
couldn't shake the feeling whoever had made all

93
00:08:18,240 --> 00:08:24,160
those traps had done so with that
thing in mind, which begged the question,

94
00:08:24,240 --> 00:08:28,560
who is the poor guy stuck inside
the trailer and what had happened to

95
00:08:28,639 --> 00:08:35,279
him? Cops wrote it off.
Meth is a hell of a drug,

96
00:08:35,519 --> 00:08:41,639
so they say, we all knew
that, Only I wasn't so sure.

97
00:08:43,759 --> 00:08:48,399
I've seen a lot of weird stuff. Who knows what visited that poor guy

98
00:08:48,559 --> 00:08:54,000
out in the wild, so far
from civilization. A lot of life gets

99
00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:58,039
lived out in the world, out
in the plains or in the forests and

100
00:08:58,120 --> 00:09:03,120
amongst hills, far from prying eyes. You get a sense of it in

101
00:09:03,200 --> 00:09:09,200
my job. The sheer quantity of
untold stories, failed dreams, great triumphs,

102
00:09:09,559 --> 00:09:16,799
abandoned canvasses, well worn guitars,
heydays that came and went or simply

103
00:09:16,919 --> 00:09:24,159
never came at all. Most stories
follow rhythm. Most some, like that

104
00:09:24,360 --> 00:09:31,679
doll, raised profound questions. Others
aren't really stories at all, so much

105
00:09:31,720 --> 00:09:37,960
as nightmares, just waiting for the
next victim. This world is full of

106
00:09:37,039 --> 00:09:46,799
hidden needles waiting for probing hands.
There are rare occasions where I'll advise the

107
00:09:46,840 --> 00:09:52,440
bank not to sell a property.
They become part of a kind of Nogo

108
00:09:52,559 --> 00:09:56,159
zone. The government is set up
around the country. I only see bits

109
00:09:56,159 --> 00:10:03,120
of this machinery at work. Whatever
bureaucracy manages it is way over my paygrade.

110
00:10:03,879 --> 00:10:07,759
But there is a system in place
for managing the worst of the worst.

111
00:10:09,559 --> 00:10:13,200
I'm not talking ghosts either. None
of the examples I've given so far

112
00:10:13,279 --> 00:10:18,279
would be candidates. Sounds messed up, I know. Scrub the blood,

113
00:10:18,399 --> 00:10:22,360
scrape the brains, pick the shock
and pellets out of the plaster. If

114
00:10:22,360 --> 00:10:26,960
the next family who move in have
to contend with the ghosts of a few

115
00:10:26,000 --> 00:10:35,200
clumsy methods or disgruntled former owners,
well so be it. No for a

116
00:10:35,279 --> 00:10:39,960
place to be deemed and no go
it has to be beyond recovery and an

117
00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:46,360
active threat to life. I'm talking
factories with bottomless holes that pump out enough

118
00:10:46,480 --> 00:10:52,399
radiation the government has to build a
nuclear dumpsite just to make a convincing cover.

119
00:10:52,559 --> 00:10:56,519
Although that is a bit of an
extreme example. Most of the time

120
00:10:56,679 --> 00:11:03,240
we just blame it on radon or
meth fumes and condemn it. At this

121
00:11:03,320 --> 00:11:07,879
one place, a farmhouse where a
family of five had lived for nearly sixty

122
00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:11,200
years. By the time I got
there, the kids for adults, and

123
00:11:11,240 --> 00:11:16,840
the parents had been dead for a
while. The children had resisted selling the

124
00:11:16,919 --> 00:11:20,679
family home, tried to keep up
with the payments, but they had their

125
00:11:20,679 --> 00:11:26,440
own debts, and in the end
the bank got its pound of flesh.

126
00:11:26,720 --> 00:11:31,919
At a glance, the house didn't
look too bad. A bit run down,

127
00:11:31,080 --> 00:11:37,000
sure, but my standards are low. Cracked in low, windows are

128
00:11:37,000 --> 00:11:43,000
intact, no graffiti, roof hadn't
been stripped, Satellite dish was still up.

129
00:11:43,080 --> 00:11:48,440
From where I sat in my car
gulping down a lukewarm bottle of water

130
00:11:48,480 --> 00:11:52,320
that had spent the drive tunneling around
the passenger footwell, the house was relatively

131
00:11:52,360 --> 00:12:01,039
untouched by anything except nature and time. Something about that gave me pause.

132
00:12:01,120 --> 00:12:05,960
Shame I didn't listen to the good
feeling telling me it was all sorts of

133
00:12:05,000 --> 00:12:11,720
weird that an isolated house had gone
undecayed for so long. I grabbed the

134
00:12:11,799 --> 00:12:16,559
keys the sheriff had given me and
went inside, hoping for an easy gig.

135
00:12:18,399 --> 00:12:22,240
Three hours later, and I was
crawling out a kitchen window. I'd

136
00:12:22,240 --> 00:12:26,840
smashed the shirt and skin in my
back cut to ribbons. I stumbled to

137
00:12:26,919 --> 00:12:31,240
my car, chest near bursting from
the pounding of my heart, and my

138
00:12:31,320 --> 00:12:37,919
eyes fixed on the empty window frame. I had just escaped a lone figure,

139
00:12:37,480 --> 00:12:43,480
barely visible with the bright sun in
my eyes, but still too substantial

140
00:12:43,519 --> 00:12:50,120
to be a mere ghost. My
wounds were a testament to that. Once

141
00:12:50,159 --> 00:12:54,279
the doctor had finished patching me up, I sat in the waiting room and

142
00:12:54,360 --> 00:13:01,440
tried calling the former owners, the
siblings, one after the I wanted to

143
00:13:01,480 --> 00:13:07,159
know what had attacked me. If
anyone knew what I was walking into,

144
00:13:07,200 --> 00:13:13,000
they'd be hell to pay. If
so. The oldest son was the first

145
00:13:13,039 --> 00:13:20,120
to answer. I didn't go all
in straight away. I asked probing questions,

146
00:13:20,679 --> 00:13:24,200
took my time before I mentioned the
basement. The guy laughed when I

147
00:13:24,240 --> 00:13:28,639
brought it up, told me he
hated going down there as a kid because

148
00:13:28,639 --> 00:13:35,200
he'd heard the weirdest noises, like
someone moaning. They all thought a ghost

149
00:13:35,360 --> 00:13:39,279
lived down there in the dark,
and to keep them from hurting themselves or

150
00:13:39,360 --> 00:13:43,600
playing around with stuff they shouldn't,
their father had embellished this ghost given it

151
00:13:43,679 --> 00:13:50,440
a name. Marian lived in the
basement, hiding amongst the crates of old

152
00:13:50,480 --> 00:13:56,600
photos and clothes. She lurked behind
the half disassembled lawnmower, scuttling away to

153
00:13:56,639 --> 00:14:01,120
the dark places at the very edge
of your eyesight. Marian had long fingernails

154
00:14:01,399 --> 00:14:07,240
and a haggard flower sack dress.
She had dark lips and a pointed nose,

155
00:14:07,480 --> 00:14:11,720
and a warp the size of your
thumb. Marion eight children, their

156
00:14:11,799 --> 00:14:16,879
dad had told them with glee.
And if Marian knew there were three bite

157
00:14:16,879 --> 00:14:20,559
sized kids living just above her,
she'd come out of the basement and come

158
00:14:20,639 --> 00:14:26,000
crawling up the stairs with arms as
long as a body, and she'd slink

159
00:14:26,039 --> 00:14:31,480
away into their bedrooms using the shadows
cover, and she'd start by taking tiny

160
00:14:31,519 --> 00:14:37,879
little bites out of any bare feet
that lay dangling in the cold. What

161
00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:41,759
about that freezer did you ever use
her? I asked, Oh God,

162
00:14:41,799 --> 00:14:46,799
no, he said, even now, that basement gives me the creeps.

163
00:14:46,279 --> 00:14:50,600
And that freezer was where Marian lived, or so he figured. As kids,

164
00:14:52,240 --> 00:14:56,559
so we stayed the hell away from
it. It was just always there

165
00:14:56,600 --> 00:15:00,720
in the back, looking old and
forgotten. I think Dad used to go

166
00:15:00,799 --> 00:15:03,559
hunting when we were little, and
that's where he kept the meat. But

167
00:15:03,919 --> 00:15:09,679
he phased all that out before I
turned five. He seems so sincere that

168
00:15:09,799 --> 00:15:13,679
I didn't tell him what I'd found
in that house at the end of my

169
00:15:13,759 --> 00:15:20,759
inspection. He didn't know that behind
that freezer was a false wall, and

170
00:15:20,840 --> 00:15:28,320
behind that false wall basement number two
homemade. God knows how the father managed

171
00:15:28,360 --> 00:15:33,399
it with no one noticing, but
he dug it out and made a private

172
00:15:33,720 --> 00:15:37,799
soundproof space, hollered out a room
about the size of your typical jail cell.

173
00:15:39,840 --> 00:15:45,639
The furniture was threadbare, deliberately so, a single mattress propped up against

174
00:15:45,720 --> 00:15:52,720
one wall, an iron shackle bolted
into the foundation, a dentist's chair modified

175
00:15:52,919 --> 00:15:58,960
with restraints, and a stain,
a vague raw shack blob of ancient brown

176
00:16:00,159 --> 00:16:04,679
in almost greens that pulled outwards from
a patch in the corner. It had

177
00:16:04,759 --> 00:16:12,360
texture. I knew that stain.
I'd seen it before, residue left behind

178
00:16:12,679 --> 00:16:19,600
after the professionals had finished peeling her
desiccated corpse of a hard surface. At

179
00:16:19,600 --> 00:16:25,000
first, I assumed someone had moved
the source of that stain. They were

180
00:16:25,039 --> 00:16:32,240
even footprints, but they didn't look
right. Something about them made me queasy.

181
00:16:33,559 --> 00:16:37,360
They had not been left in the
residue, they were made of it.

182
00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:45,679
Something or someone covered in that stuff
had been stomping around down there until

183
00:16:45,759 --> 00:16:52,159
that moment. The inspection had been
mundane and boring. But it isn't every

184
00:16:52,279 --> 00:16:57,000
day you stumble across a hidden dungeon. Now, I was suddenly presented with

185
00:16:57,120 --> 00:17:02,399
a hell of a family secret,
and one that didn't quite make sense.

186
00:17:03,039 --> 00:17:07,240
I stood there for a good minute, trying to make the piece of that

187
00:17:07,319 --> 00:17:11,920
puzzle fit. Had someone moved a
corpse and got un covered in rotten flesh,

188
00:17:12,039 --> 00:17:18,200
then walked around leaving a trail?
If so, why the hell had

189
00:17:18,240 --> 00:17:22,359
they done it barefoot? And why
not clean up afterwards? And how had

190
00:17:22,359 --> 00:17:29,720
they been so clumsy yet so clean
as well? There were no drag marks.

191
00:17:32,519 --> 00:17:37,200
I took another look of those prints, and something inside my gut soured.

192
00:17:37,880 --> 00:17:45,160
Small feet a woman's We all know
the story. Don't make me go

193
00:17:45,240 --> 00:17:52,119
over it. Basement out in the
middle of nowhere restraints a family man that

194
00:17:52,160 --> 00:18:00,079
no one suspects he'd hunted all right, sicko. So who had died that

195
00:18:00,240 --> 00:18:06,400
basement and who had left those prints? Not all of them were on the

196
00:18:06,440 --> 00:18:11,960
floor either. With an increasingly shaky
hand. I tracked a few to the

197
00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:17,640
wall where they mounted the vertical surface
and continued upwards and onto the ceiling.

198
00:18:18,279 --> 00:18:22,079
Just like that, A cold sweat
gathered on the back of my neck.

199
00:18:22,759 --> 00:18:29,799
In a powerful sense of the uncanny
ran over me like icy water. Somewhere

200
00:18:29,960 --> 00:18:33,440
overhead, the wind blew, and
the bows of trees groaned in the yard,

201
00:18:34,559 --> 00:18:38,839
sounds of another world. I could
see it in my mind, up

202
00:18:38,880 --> 00:18:45,119
there, not far away, my
car sitting in the shade. Those images

203
00:18:45,319 --> 00:18:51,359
felt like they belonged to another world, though I desperately wanted to rejoin it,

204
00:18:51,880 --> 00:18:56,880
to leave the squalid little hole behind. All I had to do was

205
00:18:56,000 --> 00:19:03,640
walk out of that basement and make
it for my are Only I wasn't so

206
00:19:03,720 --> 00:19:08,279
sure I wanted to move at all. I felt like I might break something

207
00:19:08,279 --> 00:19:14,559
brittle. The notion that the creeping
dread I felt was all in my head,

208
00:19:15,400 --> 00:19:22,160
a product of an overactive imagination,
nothing more. And yet I got

209
00:19:22,160 --> 00:19:26,720
this feeling that if I tried to
run, the nightmare would spill out into

210
00:19:26,720 --> 00:19:33,359
the real world and give chase.
I even tried telling myself I didn't know

211
00:19:33,400 --> 00:19:37,599
what happened in that room, not
for sure. It could have been a

212
00:19:37,599 --> 00:19:42,279
game one played between him and the
wife. But then I looked at the

213
00:19:42,359 --> 00:19:49,680
chair again, at the cracked and
frayed leather of ancient straps. There were

214
00:19:49,720 --> 00:19:56,880
teeth marks on some of them.
I took a deep breath and regained control

215
00:19:56,960 --> 00:20:00,279
of my legs. Unless I saw
something alive down there, I had to

216
00:20:00,319 --> 00:20:07,880
assume I really was alone. So
I turned and began to walk, eyes

217
00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:12,200
forward. Mine steeled against the myriad
of little groans and creeks that felt as

218
00:20:12,200 --> 00:20:18,799
if they followed me, going from
shadow to shadow. I couldn't stop myself

219
00:20:18,799 --> 00:20:22,640
from filling in the blanks of that
basement's history, even as I told myself

220
00:20:22,640 --> 00:20:30,119
to stop. Maybe she died first. Maybe he did. Maybe he got

221
00:20:30,119 --> 00:20:33,200
bored and left it the staff,
or maybe he nearly got caught and decided

222
00:20:33,240 --> 00:20:37,160
to put an end to it all. Maybe she snuck something sharp and did

223
00:20:37,160 --> 00:20:41,839
it herself. But she died for
sure, and she stayed dead a long

224
00:20:41,920 --> 00:20:45,400
time, at least a couple of
months. With that kind of liquefaction,

225
00:20:47,599 --> 00:20:52,440
she lost a lot of cohesion,
skin, muscle, blood, like the

226
00:20:52,559 --> 00:20:56,480
plug of mold that forms on top
of forgotten coffee. I could see it

227
00:20:56,519 --> 00:21:02,359
in my head, her collapse,
the claimation, time laps, a riot

228
00:21:02,440 --> 00:21:07,880
of colors. Only somehow the natural
cycle broke. She didn't go away completely,

229
00:21:08,519 --> 00:21:12,960
and no one came to take her
away. Those were her prints on

230
00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:21,799
the floor and walls and ceiling,
weren't they. She laid down, she

231
00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:30,519
died, and then somehow she got
back up. By the time I reached

232
00:21:30,559 --> 00:21:36,240
the top of the basement steps,
I'd scared myself so bad that sweat was

233
00:21:36,319 --> 00:21:41,079
pouring off me. So far,
the only things I'd seen on my way

234
00:21:41,279 --> 00:21:45,680
were just old boxes and crates and
ancient bids of crap weed whackers and leaf

235
00:21:45,680 --> 00:21:52,000
blowers with cobwebs and defunct logos fading
away. But that didn't mean I was

236
00:21:52,039 --> 00:21:59,119
alone. There was something wrong with
that place. I could feel it,

237
00:22:00,039 --> 00:22:04,599
a radiant heat, a palpable aura
of hatred, even in the absence of

238
00:22:04,680 --> 00:22:10,799
anything seemingly real. It was so
bad that as I opened the door,

239
00:22:11,559 --> 00:22:15,880
I actually felt a moment of childlike
relief, a little like how you might

240
00:22:15,960 --> 00:22:19,640
feel racing back to bed after going
to the toilet in the middle of the

241
00:22:19,759 --> 00:22:29,240
night, convinced some ghosts was just
inches behind you. I laughed, and

242
00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:36,039
something cold and hard wrapped around my
uncle. A hand had reached up between

243
00:22:36,039 --> 00:22:40,000
the slats of the stairs, like
it was reaching straight out of the world

244
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:45,480
of make belief and into this one
where things are real. I stared down,

245
00:22:45,960 --> 00:22:49,559
heartbeat like thunder in my ears,
and slowly began to process what I

246
00:22:49,640 --> 00:22:57,279
was seeing in bits and pieces.
First was the hand, gnarled black like

247
00:22:57,359 --> 00:23:03,279
a badly sketched shadow, visible only
because it caught the light coming through the

248
00:23:03,319 --> 00:23:08,799
open door, And then beneath it
in the shadow a face like a skull

249
00:23:08,960 --> 00:23:14,440
wrapped in a garbage bag, the
plastic pulled tight so you could see the

250
00:23:14,480 --> 00:23:22,440
suffocating outline of empty eyes and a
gaping mouth. I'd expected something wetter,

251
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:29,200
something straight out of a bad horror
movie. In reality, whatever was in

252
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:34,319
that basement had undergone a strange transformation. I only ever saw it in parts,

253
00:23:34,880 --> 00:23:38,640
so I can't say for sure what
all of it was like, but

254
00:23:38,759 --> 00:23:44,319
it's sure as hell didn't look like
a ghost or a corpse or anything else

255
00:23:44,359 --> 00:23:51,960
I'd ever seen or thought i'd seen
in life or movies. It looked like

256
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:56,920
a monster, the real deal,
and I reacted like a child seeing the

257
00:23:56,920 --> 00:24:03,160
Buggeyman. I made some weird,
half muffled grown of fear and ripped my

258
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:07,359
leg away so quickly that I surprised
myself and got free. Or whatever was

259
00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:15,400
hiding under the stairs was quick.
Before I had timed had taken another step,

260
00:24:15,759 --> 00:24:18,319
it had left its hiding place,
climbed the stairs. I was already

261
00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:23,039
driving me to the ground. The
last thing I saw before my chintz smashed

262
00:24:23,039 --> 00:24:29,759
into the kitchen floor was that Marian
really did where a flower sacked dress.

263
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:34,519
At the time, this strange detail
passed over me without notice, But in

264
00:24:34,599 --> 00:24:40,440
hindsight, the fact that the sun
would later recount that particular item of clothing

265
00:24:40,839 --> 00:24:45,960
convinced me his father had been the
man responsible for that hidden basement. It

266
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:51,519
was nutlike it had been waiting undiscovered
when the family moved in. And on

267
00:24:51,599 --> 00:24:53,799
top of that, the father must
have been a real piece of crap to

268
00:24:53,839 --> 00:25:00,480
inject that sort of sickening detail into
a story. He told his kids he'd

269
00:25:00,519 --> 00:25:03,640
likely done it so if his prisoner
ever escaped and his kids saw her,

270
00:25:04,279 --> 00:25:11,880
their first instinct would be to screen
for their lives and run. I didn't

271
00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:15,400
know any of this at the time, of course, I had only vague

272
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:21,279
notions of what had attacked me.
Something hateful, for sure, something that

273
00:25:21,359 --> 00:25:26,240
had died in that awful room and
come back to life. God, she

274
00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:33,559
was so angry. She pinned me, knelt at my back, and howled

275
00:25:33,599 --> 00:25:37,599
like a banshee that had been hit
by a car. I was terrified at

276
00:25:37,599 --> 00:25:42,720
the sound, at the feeling of
helplessness, at the realization that this was

277
00:25:42,759 --> 00:25:48,799
a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. She went to work on my back

278
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:53,000
with fingers I couldn't see, but
could feel as white hot tattoo needle pain.

279
00:25:55,359 --> 00:25:59,799
It lasted only a few seconds.
The agony was enough to send me

280
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:04,200
spasms that knocked her off and onto
the floor. The tiny moments of freedom

281
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:08,880
was all I needed. I crawled
to my feet and jumped head first out

282
00:26:08,880 --> 00:26:14,599
the nearest window. I didn't give
a damn about any cuts I might acquire.

283
00:26:15,720 --> 00:26:18,319
If you could have felt what I
felt, you wouldn't have either.

284
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:26,599
These weren't scratches. Doctors compared my
wounds to those left by box jellyfish,

285
00:26:26,759 --> 00:26:32,279
the kind of thing that causes muscles
beneath the wilt and whither after a million

286
00:26:32,279 --> 00:26:37,160
of hypodermic needles have turned the flesh
into porous sponge. I had to get

287
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:41,119
skin grafts. I had to get
rid of my car because they couldn't scrub

288
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:47,000
what I'd left in my skin from
their leather seats. Even now, my

289
00:26:47,039 --> 00:26:51,559
back looks like I got run over
by a mower. Still hurts when I

290
00:26:51,599 --> 00:26:57,200
put my top on each morning.
Somehow, they're not even the worst than

291
00:26:57,240 --> 00:27:03,079
my wounds, just the biggest,
the most visible. At least, those

292
00:27:03,079 --> 00:27:08,160
scars made it easy to convince the
bank not to sell. Normally it takes

293
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:12,559
a lot of effort, but they
took one look of the doctor's reports and

294
00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:19,000
agreed to condemn it thoroughly. Pass
the land onto whatever strange governmental department handles

295
00:27:19,039 --> 00:27:26,559
this kind of thing. That particular
house had been left to crumble. No

296
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:32,079
piece of paper or deed or mortgage
payment is taking it back from Marion.

297
00:27:33,559 --> 00:27:37,319
We can only shut it off.
The land is fenced, and every window

298
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:42,480
has been slapped with so many toxic
gas signs that I can only hope no

299
00:27:42,559 --> 00:27:51,319
one else is stupid enough to ever
go back inside. Looking back, I

300
00:27:51,519 --> 00:28:00,519
really should have listened to my instincts. Squatters don't leave a place alone without

301
00:28:00,559 --> 00:28:00,160
good reason.