u/CaptainJoeCletus

My 18th birthday.

For most people, turning 18 is exciting, a monumental milestone. You're finally an adult, after all. For me however, it was the end.

While everyone else is throwing parties, getting gifts, and celebrating, my 18th birthday meant only one thing. I finally had to go into the basement.

A little context, my family has lived in our house for generations. My dad grew up here. So did my grandpa before him. The house was built when my grandfather was just a child. Back then, it was a perfectly normal, single-story, two-bedroom home with no basement.

That changed during the second week of my grandpa’s family living there.

One night, my grandfather got up out of bed for a glass of water. As he walked to the kitchen, he noticed something strange, a door he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t like the other doors in the house. This one looked old. Very old. The wood was dry and splintered and smelled like the inside of an old empty cabinet. The handle was tarnished like it hadn’t been touched in decades.

Unsure of what to do, he went and woke up my great-grandfather.

When he came out and saw the door, his face went pale. He just stood there, frozen, staring at it.

“Dad, are you okay?” my grandpa whispered.

That seemed to knock him out of his trance. “Ye–yes, I’m alright,” he stammered hoarsely.

Then his gaze dropped to the floor. “It’s just that... I thought we had escaped it.”

Tears welled in his eyes. His face contorted with rage. “I thought we escaped from this goddamned curse!” he shouted, slamming his fist against the door.

The sound echoed unnaturally, reverberating downward into whatever was waiting behind it.

He collapsed to the floor and began to sob.

Then a voice or something like multiple voices speaking in unison replied from behind the door.

“Don’t cry. We will be good to him.”
“We will take good care of him.”

The voices giggled softly.

My grandpa’s blood ran cold.

“Please don’t make me send him,” my great-grandfather whispered.

No reply came from the door.

That was always where my grandpa ended the story.

He never told me what my great-grandfather said afterward. Never explained where the door came from. All I knew was that when each of us turned 18, we had to go through that door.

We always called it the basement, but I didn’t even know if that’s what it really was.

I used to wonder what was down there. Obsessed over it. I tried to imagine it, monsters, Hell, a different planet. Or maybe we were just a family of schizophrenics and there was no door at all. Nothing ever made sense.

My mother pretended the door didn’t exist. Anytime I asked, she’d just say, “Ask your father,” even though she knew he wouldn't tell me anything.

Every time I asked him, he would just shrug. “It’s hard to explain.” Or even worse, “You have to experience it for yourself.”

That brings us to the day of my birthday.

I opened my eyes expecting to be met with the beautiful songs from the birds outside of my window. Instead silence. No birds. Just an eerie stillness, like the world itself was dreading what was about to happen.

I walked down the hallway. The floorboards groaned beneath each step. Warning me.

I thought I heard whispers. Raspy, harsh whispers. Voices I’d never heard before, yet somehow familiar.

When I reached the kitchen, I expected my mother’s usual cheerful hug.

Not this time.

Instead, my dad and grandpa sat silently at the table. They were waiting for me.

“You ready?” my dad asked, sporting a strange, forced smile.

“Well... I guess so. Doesn’t seem like I have a choice.”

“No, you don’t,” my grandpa replied quickly. Too quickly.

We walked to the door. Panic crawled up my chest like spiders.

“I don’t want to do this,” I whispered.

My dad put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. There is nothing to be afraid of. We all did it. Just trust us.”

Then for the first time in my entire life he hugged me.

“Now you go ahead, we will be here when you get back”.

I reached for the knob, before I even touched it I could feel the cold radiating off the metal knob as if it was pure ice.

My hand went numb as I turned the frozen handle, and the door swung open.

A blast of ice-cold air hit me. Dust stung my eyes.

“Dad, was it this cold when you—”

I turned. They were already gone.

Ahead of me, what once was a pitch black void now glowed faintly with candlelight at the end of a long tunnel.

I stepped in, my legs shaking with anticipation.

The loud crash as the door behind me slams shut almost makes me lose my balance.

The air was freezing and still. The tunnel felt more like a cave. Only the sound of my breath and the echo of my footsteps kept me company.

As I walked it only got colder, and the air got heavier.

Breathing was no longer involuntary, I had to fight for each gasp.

Finally after what seemed like an eternity, I reached another door. This door was ornate, seemingly ancient and made of gold. Written upon it “finis est novum initium”.

I once again went to open the door but I was stopped by a sound.

Voices. Giggling, whispering voices.

A fear unlike I ever felt leapt into my throat. I felt tears well up in my eyes. I just want to go home.

I turned around to leave but my heart sank. The path I came from was gone. In its stead was a cave wall. I now had only one path forward and it was through that door.

With a deep breath I opened it.

The room inside was lit by candles. A long table sat in the center.

Suddenly they appeared around the table.

Grotesque shapes. Some vaguely human, some animal-like, all wrong. Faces shifting like melting wax, eyes like black suns. A palpable hatred filled the air.

I did not scream or yell, I was paralyzed by fear. Expecting my death at any moment.

After what felt like an eternity, finally the creatures broke the silence.

“We won’t harm you,” they said in layered voices. “We only have... a proposition.”

Then they told me a story. How one of my ancestors needed money desperately and turned to them for help. He offered up his first born son as payment for their services. However the soul must be given willingly. Because of this when the son turned 18 the beings came to him to take his soul, However he could not do it, instead he offered up his own first born and thus the cycle began.

“Each generation,” one of them whispered, from a mouth stitched across its chest, “a promise passed like inheritance. Each man too cowardly to die... but willing to condemn his own child.”

It was then that I realized that every man before me had failed.

Cowards.

Someone had to end it.

I grit my teeth, and agreed. I would be the one to finally end the cycle of cowardice and betrayal.

The beings smiled, “Let us begin!” They chanted

In what felt like an instant I felt the floor drop out beneath me. My soul slipped free like water from a cracked vase. It’s not like the movies, it was not drawn out. It was not ethereal. It was terrifying and quick.

But I didn’t fall into death.

I fell into something worse.

Purgatory.

Cold. Silent. Black.

And I am not alone.

They’re all here. My father. My grandfather. My great-grandfather. Every man before me. Each thinking they’d be the one to end it.

Each one damned.

They don’t speak.

They just watch.

While the monsters wear our skin.

And now

I wait too.