They Come at Night

The Stairs

What was that sound? I heard it from downstairs, but it's the middle of the night. It had awoken me from the first peaceful sleep I'd had in days. It can't be mom or dad. They went to sleep hours ago. If I wake them they might think I'm a crazy insomniac and start sending me to some sleep doctor. I've been restless most nights, and I told mom about it. She must've told dad because he made a joke that seemed almost serious.

"You're a bit jumpy these days, Carson. I'll call the shrink if you need me to," he said with a slight smile and a chuckle. That was a month ago. He looks at me weird sometimes. It always when I'm yelling for mom to kill those bugs and he follows 5 seconds behind her, never saying anything.

"I won't call for mom this time," I said to myself. Why couldn't I just muster up the courage to see what was going. Tonight is the night. I'm going to go downstairs and find out what made that sound. Mom and dad deserve to get a good night's rest.

I made my way down the stairs and rounded the corner to the kitchen. There were pest control sprays lying on the floor, and the sink cabinet was sitting wide open. The extra bottles of dish detergent, hand soap, and drain clog releasers were still standing perfectly. Nothing else had been touched. The stuff wasn't line up in some special order, so there's no way they just fell out that way.

I looked around to find evidence of an intruder, although this would've been an odd intrusion. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary aside from those spray cans.

CRASH

"What the hell was that," I yelled. I looked around the other side of the kitchen island and saw a small, shadowy figure skittering across the floor to the basement door. The broom was nearby, so I grabbed it and ran in the same direction to the basement door. I opened the door slowly. It was dark leading down the basement stairway. This was the kind of darkness that made you wonder if you were alone or if some other presence was in the room with you.

As I stepped down, I felt a crunch underneath my foot. I remembered that my phone was in my pocket, so I took it out to turn on my flashlight to see what the crunch was. As I turned on the phone light, I felt something crawl up my pajama pant leg. I quickly flashed it toward my right leg and saw a large, black cricket with a fat body crawling up my thigh. I struggled to hold in my screams while I violently shook my leg to get it off of me. I moved the light to shine on the step I'd previously heard the crunch sound on. A disintegrating femur bone... but how? ...And for damn sure, WHY?

I don't think I want to go further down tonight. When everyone wakes in the morning, I'll bring it up so we can all investigate it together.