The Bottoms [Part 2] nosleep

Part 1

By the time I entered high school, I was completely convinced that there was something eerie with our area. While the only thing that had happened while I'd been alive was my own venturing toward that forbidden area, I was certain that the neighborhood was haunted or cursed or something. I could only convince one other teenager of this and he had already believed it the same as me.

Marcus was only a year younger than me. He lived on the other end on Dead Man's Curb about two houses down from the small house with the well. He used to tell me how he always got the creeps just walking past the place to the point that he'd go to the other side of the road and run past it. Then there was my older cousin, Scott, who was about two years older than Chris, so he was already out of high school. The three of us, lead by me... the far more morbidly curious and eager among us, decided to launch an investigation.

Marcus came up with the first idea we decided to ride on. Interviewing the oldest people in the neighborhood. Seemed simple really, but my mind was focused on The Bottoms and why me and Chris and that girl had gotten up in the middle of the night to walk down there.

We went around trying to confirm the old stories and maybe see if we could pry out any new information, especially names. The internet may have been new to us at the time but we knew we could go through old local news articles on it. Alas, nothing ever substantial came to light.

The only new information we got was from Mrs. Gable, 92 years old at the time. She told us that the murder suicide with the well happened sometime after the Watergate scandal. She also told us that the old man in the two story house didn't just die one day from old age or liver failure or something like that. According to her, he had hung himself. I didn't bother with what this new information would imply with the man's dog having ate part of his body. She was, however, sure to reaffirm that every now and then you can still hear the old man going into a fit of wild anger in the house. Of course... So, we went with Scott's idea next... we decided to break into the house.

We all snuck out the next night and Scott brought a tool box so we could break in through the back door. Really, all we needed was a crowbar. Once inside, a smell slapped our senses so hard that Marcus and I started to gag. It was a mixture of that old musty smell in any old home, mold, and something else we couldn't quite place. We turned our flashlights on and took a look around, covering our mouths and noses.

The place was an absolute wreck. We were in a dining room that was connected to a kitchen and a bathroom. The floor boards leading into the bathroom were all torn up and scattered. The refrigerator seemed out of place and the freezer door was torn off, exposing the what was once frozen food now coated in black mold. There were broken trinkets all over the floor and table looked like a dust collector.

The hallway leading to the staircase and the living room looked clear, so we headed toward the living room. While I started examining the living room, looking over the furniture and the old dial operated tube television, my cousin spotted the thing that should've made us run straight out the door.

The staircase was stained with had to be blood, it looked like it had dripped all down the staircase and dried up... how could this place be left in this condition? We stood there perplexed by it. By the time Marcus got over to us, whispering and asking what was wrong, he gasped immediately once he saw. Suddenly something made of glass from upstairs fell and hauled ass out the back door and didn't even take a second to shut it back.

The next thing we did, we didn't do for another week or so. We were still pretty shook up by what we had presumed to be the ghost of the old man destroying more of his home. We eventually determined that it had to be an animal that Marcus had spooked which in turn spooked us.

The next endeavor was far more ambitious than the last, we decided to take my parent's digital camcorder, pry open the well, and see if the bodies were still down there. This was ambitious because the well was right there in the front yard... with houses on either side. Including a good view of the well from Marcus' house.

Nevertheless, we snuck back out, Scott brought his crowbar again and I brought the camcorder which I had already sealed up in a ziplock bag and plastic shrink wrap and then tied to a long yellow rope. As paranoid as we were, we were certain no one would be up at one o'clock in the morning.

We pried up two of the boards with unsurprising ease, the wood was already falling apart. I turned the camcorder on and set it to night vision. We gently lowered it down.

A minute or so had passed by before the rope slackened. We gently brought it back up and attempted to twirl the camcorder around to try to get a 360 degree view of the bottom of the well. We slowly brought it back up, making sure not to knock against the walls or one of the untouched boards.

To our dismay... water had gotten into the camcorder anyways. However, it still worked. I sheathed my hands with rubber gloves before I touched the camcorder... who knows what's really been in that water down there.

I rewinded the video and watched as it was being lowered in. The walls of the well looked like they moss or algae growing inside. It touched the water without any sign of any corpses. It apparently had sunk a bit before we started pulling it back up... once it was spinning we got a clear view of what was down there. No bodies. Just a bunch of bugs. As it was being tugged back up, the lens jerked down momentarily.

We ran as fast as we could back to Marcus' house. The thing we saw. Right there. On film. Was a foot. A decayed human foot. Bones with rotted bits of flesh dangling from it. We had gotten what we were looking for. It wasn't just some old story to creep the kids out. It happened and we had proof.

We got to Marcus' back porch and decide to look just one more time. When I tried to turn the camcorder on... nothing. It had taken too much water damage. It was gone. We had just had it. It was on film.

I would spend the next several months trying to fix that camcorder... and to my parents immeasurable displeasure... nothing ever worked.

A couple of days went by with us being angry at ourselves for not taking more precautions. But, we were now more convinced than ever that all the stories were real. We confirmed two of them already, why would all the others be completely made up? I'm sure a more rational mind could think of some reasons. But I lusted for there to be more. I wanted to believe so badly that everything else that had occurred in our little secluded neighborhood was real. These aren't just stupid stories, it's all real. Dammit... maybe if I hadn't wished or wanted so fucking badly...

It was finally my turn to come up with next course of action, so next time... we'd head straight to The Bottoms.

Submitted June 01, 2017 at 06:03AM by tealcoloredeye http://ift.tt/2sfp5KF nosleep