Susurrus

Completely off limits you said. Under absolutely no circumstances you said. But it’s only a basement, and I’ve never lived in a house with a basement before.

I’m pretty sure those noises I keep hearing aren’t normal though. It’s this weird… rustling, every night. Every morning I shuffle into the kitchen and you’re just sitting there, dark brown eyes fixed on the paper and eating a bowl of cereal as though everything is normal. As if you’ve never heard a strange thing in your life.

After living here for a week I think I’ve gotten about eight hours of sleep total, and most of those have been at work.

So tonight? Tonight I push the covers off and go down to investigate because I can’t stand that noise anymore.

It gets louder as I walk down the hall. When I open the door to the basement stairs it seems harder, sharper. Either it’s echoing, the sound doubling and doubling in the stairwell, or whatever’s causing it is massive. With every step there’s a scrape behind every rustle that becomes more and more pronounced. My skin feels hot and ill-fitting, like waking up from a nightmare or a fever dream, but I have to know what’s down there.

At last I reach the carpeted bottom landing and my hand closes around the doorknob. It barely seems attached to me anymore, but it turns the knob and pulls the door open all the same.

It looks like paper. Plain, crumpled white paper, so much that instead of looking into a room I’m just left staring at a wall of it. Miraculously it stays in place, instead of avalanching. For a moment there is complete silence.

Without warning, it begins again. A susurrous of paper on paper as something in there moves. Then it parts. A single, dark brown eye nearly as wide as the door frame stares out as me. Silence descends, or I am too crawling-out-of-my-skin-brain-mind to register any more sound, for a million years or maybe just a few seconds. The iris contracts from half the width of the door to a black pinprick while it looks at me and I know, I know, that if it sees me a second time I will be in such deep shit.

You can keep the safety deposit. I’m moving out tonight.