Today was the day that I have been dreading ever since my parents broke the news to me. I’d be spending a whole week with Aunt Andrea in her cabin. Aunt Andrea is a strange and isolated woman. She lives in a small cabin in Maine with her cat, Moose, and has only said about five words to me in my life, which were “can you pass the salt?”. When I arrived at her house, she greeted me with a frown and a shrug. She held the door open for me then briskly walked into her kitchen and scribbled quickly onto a napkin. A list of rules, which included to never let Moose out of the house and never go into the basement. Simple enough, or so I thought.
That night, we ate boxed macaroni and cheese in silence as Moose also licked at her own spoonful Aunt Andrea gave her. The silence remained until a loud thud came from somewhere in the house. The basement. I looked at Aunt Andrea and she didn’t seem to notice, at least not until it happened again. She immediately jumped from her seat at the table, banging her knees in the process, and headed straight for the basement door. As intrigued and weirded out as any person would be, I tried to follow her, but she stopped me. Well, she stared me down harshly until I awkwardly stepped back from the door. She reached the handle and slammed the door shut. She was down there for the rest of the night.
The next morning, Aunt Andrea made eggs and toast for breakfast. To my surprise, she was acting completely normal. Well, normal for Aunt Andrea who has a mysterious basement and never speaks. She smiled at me this morning.
“I have to go out tonight” she stated quite matter-of-factly. “I will need you to be here to feed Moose and make yourself dinner”
“Oh sure, I can definitely do that!”
Was this a real conversation with Aunt Andrea? No, because she never said anything after that.
The rest of the day seemed to drag on for hours. I spoke to my parents on the phone and continued to read my Harry Potter book. To make the time go by quicker I decided to relax and try to sleep as I didn’t get much the night before.
Aunt Andrea came into the kitchen and nodded to me her odd goodbye. On the other side of the door, I could hear the door bolt lock and the screen door shut. I made myself a PB&J for dinner and poured Moose a cup full of cat food. I walked over to the window as I ate my sandwich and realized that I had never really looked around the outside of the cabin. She had lots of land, at least from what I could see up until the shadows of the forest. I decided that I would go outside and walk around, look for some fun in this year-long day. I put my plate in the sink and went to the front door. Click. The bolt unlocked and I opened the door to a nice autumn breeze. As I held the door open, a small brown animal snuck by me and made a run for it. Moose. Panicked, I ran as fast as I could after the small creature, through the back yard, and into the forest. I had to stop and catch my breath, where was that cat? For a second, I feared that Aunt Andrea would actually kill me if I never found Moose. I slowly advanced through the forest, keeping my eyes out for the cat. After two minutes, a slight movement caught my eye. I quickened my pace until I realized it wasn’t Moose. It looked like a man but had features of some wild animal, and it had no eyes. Its teeth were sharp and covered with blood. The blood of Moose, who lay dead on the ground, torn to shreds. Completely and utterly horrified, I ran as fast as I could back towards the house. I could hear the creature chasing me, its feet crushing on the path I made, scraping its claws along the trees it passed. I turned to see how close it was, but it was gone. Disappeared in plain sight. My eyes could not focus as they flooded with tears. I circle around, looking everywhere for the creature. Soft noises of nature are now horrid sounds of something coming to kill me as it did to Moose. As I turn again, I face a tree smeared with blood. Slowly, the creature creeped out from behind the tree, showing off the biggest, bloodiest smile, literally from ear to ear. It takes slow steps towards me, but I run. I don’t hear it’s steps coming after me, but it keeps the same horrifying pace, walking straight towards the house. I bolted through the front door and ran for my phone.
“No! Where is my phone?”
I tried looking for a clock to see when Aunt Andrea would return home, but she had not a single clock in the house. The window behind me smashed. First I saw the bloody hand clasp onto the window sill, then the creature crawled through the window like a spider. Panicking, I grabbed a chair from the table and thrust it at the creature. It made a horrible shrieking noise and fell back. I ran to the first door I saw, the basement door. I put my hands on the knob and tried to open the door, but the sweat from my hands made it almost impossible. When the knob turned, I thrust open the door. When had I not noticed the creature made it to the other side? It grabbed me by the legs and dragged me into darkness as I screamed bloody murder.
“Hey! Wake up Sam I have to leave. Sam?”
Aunt Andrea shook me awake.
