Them Devils

        With some difficulty Rebecca turned the key of her mother’s old home.  The past few weeks had been difficult and coming back into the house gave her chills.  

        Her mother had always kept a clean home, but since Rebecca’s father died she seemed to have lost her initiative and pride in her home.  Dust covered nearly every surface and the house was stuffy and stifling.  Rebecca set down her purse in the nearest chair and went back to her car to bring in some boxes.  Sorting through the entire home was going to be chore because her mother had loved to collect clutter, years and years of clutter.  

She decided to start in her mother’s bedroom, thinking that would be the most difficult place to begin and perhaps packing up her mother’s most personal belongings would aid in closure.  The sunlight shone into the bedroom through the dirty windows and the lacy curtains.  She remembered her mother decorating her bedroom with care.  The sunlight bounced off of the pale yellow walls and made the room feel welcoming. 

Rebecca opened her mother’s jewelry box and regretting doing so because it was the sight of her mother’s favorite earrings that caused her to burst into tears.  It’s not that her mother’s death was unexpected but the manner of her death was the hardest part to get over.

Rebecca sat on her mother’s unmade bed and sobbed for a half an hour, grieving that her poor mother had suffered so much in death.  She knew that coming back to the place where her mother had died so violently hadn’t been a good idea but she just couldn’t force herself to bring anyone else here with her.  

Opening the nearest nightstand table she found a leather bound book, wrinkled with age yet barely written in.  She had never seen it before and knew that her mother had never kept a diary but she flipped through the yellowed pages anyway.  In the middle of the journal were a series of pages dated a few weeks before her mother’s death written in her mother’s old fashioned cursive writing.

April 17 9:46 a.m.

I have never kept a record of my life and I never thought at the age of seventy-five that I would start.  But there are things that are happening that I feel there should be a record of in case something happens to me.  And I think that something will happen soon.

They have been getting restless for days.  As I sit here right now I can hear Them downstairs, banging on pipes, knocking over my boxes, and screaming every once and a while.  I’m not sure why They’ve started up again.  They were quiet after I got back from my husband’s funeral for about a month, but now they carry on like They never have before.  I used to hear them sometimes but since George was here I learned to ignore it and he never mentioned hearing Them.  But now, I try not to go down in the basement anymore because They scare me so.  They hide while I do my laundry, I don’t think They like when I turn the light on.  Maybe that’s why they hide.  After I get done with my laundry I carry the basket upstairs and I can feel them nipping at my heals as I go up the steps!  It’s quite painful but I look when I get up to the top and They haven’t broken the skin, yet.  I also think They want my Tabby cat.  She doesn’t go down there much.  I hope I can keep her from going down there.  She’s my only friend since George died and I don’t want Them to get her and hurt her. 

April 20 10:49 p.m.

I am exhausted, They keep me up all night with the noise.  It’s starting to really frighten me.  Tabby seems frightened too, she’s never home and always outside.  I think They get louder when she’s home.

April 22 6:35 a.m. 

Over the last few days I have stopped doing laundry because Them devils in the basement have gotten worse.  Even when I turn the light on I see Their little black fingers reaching for me from the shadows.  The noise in the house has become deafening and sounds like a constant swarm of bees.  My basement door no longer holds the sound and I can’t sleep for the noise.  It’s almost like the sounds are in my brain now. There’s got to be a way to get Them to leave, to stop.  I have no one to call and no one comes to see me now.  I am alone in this.  Just me and Tabby cat. 

April 23 2:53 p.m.

They have never actually talked to me before but I can hear them coming up the stairs and scratching at the basement door.  And today, they started talking to me!  When I first heard Them I screamed and ran out into the backyard.  I didn’t want to come back inside.  What if they find out how to open the door?  I have stopped doing laundry and haven’t been down there in a week so maybe they are getting more advantageous.  They haven’t really said much besides, “blood.”  I am scared out of my mind and I try to spend all of my time in my bedroom, as far from the basement as possible. What could they mean by saying “blood”?

April 26 4:10 a.m. 

I snuck downstairs for a glass of water and of course they were still carrying on.  And then, I saw them sticking their dirty, black, ashen fingers through the crack at the bottom of the door!  I ran up the stairs as fast as my old legs could take me and I’m sitting here crying.  I don’t want Them to get me.  What do they want from me?  Are they here to take me to Hell?  What have I done?