This is a bit of a long story, so I'll need to tell it in a few parts.
In September of 1998, our family moved from New York City to a more rural setting in Coolbaugh Township, Pennsylvania. Our new house was a quaint 1960s-era ranch-style rambler that bore an uncanny resemblance to Hank Hill's own. It was a charming home; well-kept, complete with old furnishings that fit its era and had seemingly never aged a day. Its former owner was a retired Army engineer; he had wandered off his property one day, perhaps amidst a cloud of Alzheimer's disease, and was struck by a passing truck. Its inheritors later gave us a killer deal on a property they simply wanted to be rid of. My dad often boasted of the price he paid; twenty-five percent below market value, a true steal.
On the surface, everything looked sweet and innocent. But later that year, I would discover the basement concealed a terrible secret, one that would torture me for the next fifteen years. I first became aware of the evil machine living in our basement in November of that year. My parents had set up a play area in the corner of the basement, mainly a bucket of dolls and my video game console connected to the big-screen television. It was the cusp of dusk, a mere one or two hours before my childhood bedtime, when my parents announced they needed to run up the street for a quick errand at the bank. I continued to play my video game, hypnotically, as they announced they would be right back and shut the door at the top of the stairs.
My attention span was rather short at the age of six; I soon tired of the game and turned it off. It was this moment that I had seen the machine for the first time with my very own eyes. Standing behind me, in the reflection of the TV's black screen, was a toy-like apparition I never, ever remembered my mom or dad buying. It was a small robot-like figure; about the size of a melon in height and width. In fact, he looked exactly like a walking, grey, plastic melon. With steel arms and steel legs, all mounted on what looked like a grey plastic sphere with a thick slanted crease separating a top portion from its bottom. The sphere had a screw on both sides, allowing a rectangular bracket across its top to mount its legs, its arms....and that face.
I can remember few things as terrifying as the face of the basement apparition. On the front of the machine, mounted to the short edge of its rectangular frame, were three ovals in the inverted-triangular shape of an eyes and mouth. Its eyes, my God, its eyes were a window to a universe of everything unholy. Its horrible eyes were made of glass and pitch-black underneath; yet as it moved, you could see red, green, and blue shimmering within what must have been its retina. Its "mouth", if you could call it that, was the same size of its eyes. It had two plastic arches forming its "lips". And when they opened, you could hear what surely must have been the electronically-modulated screams of the eternally damned. This bizarre unknown was menacing by its very sight, and its terrible appearance froze me right in my tracks.
How unexpected its presence had been; I had frozen in place as I felt my heart shift into high-gear. Shortly, I gasped, but I dare not made a sound. Eye to eye, we stared at each other indirectly through the reflection in the dark television glass. It would seem an eternity until I felt compelled to turn around and face it in person.
In our basement.
Alone.
And the worst part of it all; it had stood solidly between me and the steps to brightly-lit safety upstairs. For the first time in my life, seeming danger had stared me in the face, and mom and dad were not around to save me. How I wished I was simply seeing things as soon as I had turned around and seen it directly! How horrible it was, directly to look at. At first, the tiny machine did nothing as we stared at each other. Where did it come from? Why was it here? All these questions raced through my terrified mind, but none were as prominent as the question: What WAS it? I had felt the brief respite of a stalemate between us as we continued to make eye-contact, my natural eyes beaming directly into its shimmering, coldly artificial soul, all while it made no sound or movement. But then...
whizzclomp
Instantly, I could feel the sun's own fiery corona lick the front of my face.
whizzclomp
It had moved another step closer to me!
whizz
Its leg had risen again, but this time it had not fallen to the ground.
rehrehreh-kk-kk-k
Its head pivoted up further to continue looking at me. All of a sudden, those grey plastic lips on its mouth had separated; underneath I could see the dotted perforation of a speaker grill. It was going to speak.
However, this time, it had not made a sound.
I glanced to my left and then to my right in an uncontrollable reflex. The patio door! Of course! I had suddenly realised there was a way to safety! I bolted. In three seconds, I refused to look behind me as I made my way to the door, opened it, and slammed it behind me before running toward the woods.
For now, I was safe. I looked down at the ground, where I could be sure no machine apparitions resided. Eventually, I mustered the courage to look back toward the house, into the patio door. It wasn't there. Did it try to follow me?
"ASHLEY!!" cried out an angry voice from behind me. Its familiarity provided me with the first source of comfort in five minutes.
"ASHLEY, GET IN THE HOUSE!!" It was my mother calling out from the very patio door I escaped from. She was not pleased I had ran into the woods. With the assurance of my parents' presence, or just another living being's presence, I returned to the house. Frightened.
"Ashley, what are you doing outside?!" she asked.
"MOMMY," I cried. "MOMMY, THERE'S A MONSTER IN THE BASEMENT, AND IT, AND IT...IT..."
"Ashley, you're not to go outside without my permission, do you understan..." She looked down at my legs. "...oh, for the love of, look what you did! You stained your good-"
"MOMMY, THAT THING SCARED ME!"
"What thing?"
"IT WAS OVER THERE, AND..." I took a breath amid my tears. "...AND IT LOOKED AT ME AND WALKED TOWARD ME AND I-I-UH-AHHHHH!!"
"Ashley, ashley, honey, calm down. Where?"
"OVER THERE!" I pointed toward the steps.
My mom went over to investigate. She looked under the steps, across from where I pointed, even dug under a pile of boxes that lay near. But she found nothing.
"Ashley, honey, there's nothing here. Were you watching anything on TV?"
"MOMMY, I'M SCARED!" was all I could utter.
"Sweetie, there's nothing here, c'mon, let's go upstairs. It's time for bed."
Mom had picked me up, and for that brief moment, I was carried upstairs to certain safety.
From that point forward, you would need to kill me before I ever reentered the basement. Months had passed since I had seen the contraption try to approach me alone in the basement. My dad would often ask me to get him beers out of the refrigerator, but I stalwartly refused. My mom would ask me to take a small laundry basket downstairs to the washer; wouldn't do it. To reenter that basement would mean another chance at seeing.....the robot. My parents had certainly taken notice of my aversion to the basement, but chalked it up to childhood imagination, and simply indulged my fears by moving my games and toys upstairs.
It would be two years before I saw the apparition again. The same two years it took for me to be forced back into the basement. One night, in July of 2000, my parents hired a babysitter to keep watch after me. Her name was Kara, and to this day, she is the meanest, most vile bitch I have ever met. Unbeknowst to my parents, under the three times I was watched by Kara, I was neglected and beaten. But still, no action was as bad as her third and last.
On the third and last time she watched me...Kara had taken notice of my fear of the basement, and as punishment for being a needy child in her presence, she had locked me downstairs.
"C'mon!" she said, dragging me by my legs. "Downstairs!"
I screamed at the top of my lungs as I dug my hands into the kitchen tile, not even saying anything coherent. One after another, my once-finished nails broke as they desperately tried to latch onto anything that would keep me upstairs. I knew that if I was forced downstairs, I would once again see the machine. I knew I would be injured. I knew I would die a death unmatched in horror by anything imaginable.
"DON'T TAKE ME DOWNSTAIRS!!," I screamed. "THE ROBOT! I DON'T WANT TO SEE THE ROBOT!"
The babysitter had prevailed over my tiny size, and had shoved me through the doorway onto the steps. I slid down the first three wooden stairs, and heard the door slam behind me. With the intensity of my survival instinct, I rose in the dark and ran back up the steps toward the door. I turned the knob, but it did not budge. I kicked, and screamed, and pleaded. But after three minutes, it occurred to me I was now stuck in the lion's den. I clung as close as I could to the door, as close as I could to that thin sliver of light that was the safety of the kitchen.
For a little bit, nothing happened. I merely leaned against the door with my eyes closed, my heart beating, every fibre of my being shaking.
And then I heard it.
whizzclomp
"UGHHHH!", I enunciated.
whizzclomp
...
whizzclomp
God help me, it was making its way up the stairs!!
whizzclomp
It was but three steps away from me! Crawling up with its arms, dragging its feet behind it, looking up at me with those awful, awful eyes, all shimmering with that muddied red, green, and blue! It was even worse than I had remembered it!
whizzzzzclomp
It had frozen in place three steps before me, in the ray of the streetlight peering through the window. Those plastic lips opened up once again. And this time, it had spoken. Or, it had tried to. The noise it made was almost as awful as its eyes!
g'nshhhhhn--nnnn'ieshhhhh--
The sound it made. It was identical to every toy I've had with dying batteries. Guttural, incoherent static. What was it trying to say to me?
Woof! WHOOOOO-OOO-OO! WOOF! WOOF!
Checkers! CHECKERS WAS IN THE BASEMENT WITH ME! My dalmnation had suddenly skittered around the corner of the steps and looked up at us. The robot now stood between me and my dog. I quickly realised that Checkers was not looking at me, but rather the robot.
"Grrrrrrr!", he rumbled. Quickly, he came up the steps after us. My heart nearly gave out as the apparition instantly darted in my direction!
Oh my god, I'm going to die!!
In a flash, the robot had skittered up three more steps, stopping just before my own. Checkers was in hot pursuit, and aimed right for the machine. With nowhere else to go, the machine darted between the space that lay between the step I sat on and the step below me. For a second, I felt its left arm brush up against my right leg as it fled. One of its joints had even ripped my stockings. I heard a PLOP! below me. Checkers stopped where the robot was before me, poked his head in the space it had escaped in, and barked thunderously. The step I sat on vibrated with every bark.
Finally, it was over. Checkers poked back up from under the steps, and then sniffed my face. I was crying hysterically. Checkers had sniffed my face again, then licked my tears away. Shaking, I gave him a big hug. My dog had saved my life. And for the rest of the hours I spent on that top step, Checkers sat with me, keeping me safe.
The door opened behind me, and with it, my furious parents. Not at me of course, but at the babysitter. They had seen my ripped stockings and the dog nearby, protecting me. I heard much screaming about how I was thrown down the stairs, how my stockings were ripped, my nails broken across the kitchen floor.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY CHILD?! WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?!! I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!!!"
I don't remember much about what happened to Kara after that, but I do remember she narrowly escaped jail, and didn't quite avoid a life-ruining lawsuit.
It would be far from the last time I had seen the machine in the basement. However, thanks to Checkers, I was never afraid to re-enter the basement for the remainder of my childhood. My mom never believed me. My dad never believed me. Only Checkers and I have seen the small robot living in our basement. For years, I told family, I told friends, I told everyone I knew about the robot in the basement. Nobody believed me.
It wouldn't be until I made a grisly discovery in my teen years, that I would come closer to finally proving the robot's existence to all of the doubters.
Submitted August 20, 2015 at 04:03AM by katsukitty http://ift.tt/1E51Jvp nosleep
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