Chapter 526

The house stood in weary silence. Kamau, all of six years old, played on the living room carpet. A toy truck, dented and missing a wheel, was his sole entertainment for the day.

His mother had gone to the market. A trip that felt longer than any before. He watched a line of ants make their way across a floorboard, and then his mother was no longer with him.

"Be back soon," she'd said, her hand on his head. "You'll be okay alone?"

"Yes, Mama," Kamau had answered, too young to know another way to feel. He felt something was off when his mother left him.

He tried to go back to his truck, but the ants were gone. He saw dust floating, suspended. It was another lazy afternoon.

Footsteps, heavy and slow, sounded from the basement below. A place he was told never to go. His house never made these noises before.

Kamau froze, his small body rigid. The basement door, a dark wooden slab, was slightly ajar. Not how his mother had left it. He wanted to close the door to make the sounds stop.

"Mama?" he called out, his small words barely a sound, lost in the sudden dread that filled the room. His mother would never let this happen.

The footsteps stopped. Then a dragging sound started, like a heavy sack of potatoes being pulled across the floor. Kamau made his way to the window to call out to the neighbors, but it was shut.

He was too small to reach the handle, and a whimper escaped him. He wasn't allowed near the basement. But the noises from before kept going.

The dragging continued, intermittent but close. It stopped close to the door. Kamau did not like it.

Kamau decided that hiding was the best idea, though his mother would probably want him to tell her things like this. The noises continued to make sounds.

Under the sofa, in the dimness, he pressed his hands to his mouth. He held his breath when the dragging grew louder, only breathing when it paused. The living room didn't feel like his own anymore.

Another sound began from the basement—a low, guttural sound. Not quite a groan, not quite a growl. But alive, not human.

Panic clawed at him, a sensation entirely new. He had been warned. Why did his mother have to go? Why him? He wasn't special enough for something like this.

"Mama will be home soon," he whispered, hoping it would become true. But it was already an eternity and she never took that long.

The guttural sounds changed, becoming words. He needed her. How did she forget about him? Why didn't his mama warn him?

"Come..." it urged in a gravelly, wet voice. Kamau had only ever heard one other sound, and it sounded like his older brother, Jomo. Was it his older brother coming for him? He wasn't allowed near his older brother's friends, though. He needed to stop pretending to sleep to catch a look.

Jomo was dead, having succumbed to an illness last month, an illness his mother tried so hard to get help with. What had gone wrong? The reality of it didn't register. It felt different. Kamau did not feel Jomo's loss, it wasn't as he thought it should be.

Tears made their way down his cheeks. If it was Jomo, then how could he be in the basement, and why is the room making sounds? How was he able to make these sounds?

"Little one..." it continued. A chilling intimacy in those words. Intimacy was reserved for family only. Who could this be? He needed his mother.

His tiny body convulsed, his small frame attempting to muffle them. But how long could his body keep crying in silence before it finally became too much to contain? It felt like days now.

Another creak from the floorboards above. This was the way his mother sounded before going down to check on the cellar. She was trying to scare him.

Slowly, cautiously, Kamau crept from his hiding spot. The air was getting hard to breathe. His body would make it clear to the adults in his family if they found him there.

The basement door stood open, a dark hole that filled the hallway. The entrance to it never looked so uninviting. He wondered what could change the way a familiar sight looked.

With a sudden and jarring thud, the floorboards near the door gave way slightly. Kamau stifled a scream, falling to his knees. His mother wouldn't find that amusing.

"Where are you?" the voice asked, no longer just sounds, no longer just from the basement. It sounded like his own room now. Was it his brother coming for him again?

He ran, his small legs carrying him into the relative safety of his parents' bedroom. The window. His only escape now was to use the window and get to the front lawn.

He didn't make it three steps before something made him trip, a cold grip tightening around his ankle. He could see his truck fall out of sight from the corners of his eyes. The one that had the missing wheel that he tried so hard to get it fixed.

"No!" he yelled, kicking and screaming, his fear giving way to desperation. This couldn't be a good person, they wouldn't hold him back so easily.

A hard yank. He was pulled backward toward the basement. The coldness grew closer.

The open door waited, dark and gaping. The entrance was growing with each passing minute. It would consume everything, it would grow past him if it felt it was too small.

He was pulled into the hallway, his fingernails digging into the floorboards, scraping his knees on the ground. What could he do now?

The light from the setting sun in the living room windows offered no hope, as it illuminated the hallway outside of the door. He could not bring himself to scream.

"Mama, please help," he whispered, his eyes searching for a miracle, for anything to appear. The voice wanted something that he was afraid he might end up providing.

Then, the pulling stopped. A sick feeling set itself deep inside Kamau, deep within his guts. The coldness had arrived. He could barely make out the carpet with the few specs of light that he had access to now.

He was lying flat on his stomach, the silence suffocating. His mind started conjuring horrible, unspeakable things. He dared not even think what the thing inside him had imagined to get the same thought across.

Something cold and wet slid against his ear. The breath he did not even realize he was holding stopped entirely. He felt a tug to scream, to try something else.

"Why are you making it so hard, brother?" the wet voice asked, no longer the sounds from his nightmares. He wanted it gone.

Kamau tried to pull his head away from the voice, unable to contain his trembling. He could not stand the thing he tried so hard to become to the boy.

"Jomo," he sobbed. "Please." How can his own flesh and blood do this to him? Why his brother? It made no sense.

Another dragging sound, but now it came from just above him. Something else moved, something wet. He felt cold liquid on him now. He didn't know he was losing control of his bodily functions.

Kamau turned his head, finding a small bit of moonlight hitting a portion of the floor by the basement door. Something was making its way from beneath.

The shape moved slightly, and now the light hit what seemed to be an eye, unblinking. An ungodly creation of sorts, something so foreign yet something so close to his own blood.

He screamed again, this time louder, hoping someone, anyone, would hear him. A prayer that never was returned from whatever else could hear him in that moment.

"Jomo!" he cried again, trying one more time to reason, to bargain. "Let me go." Was this his life? To become something else for a thing in the shadows.

But it wasn't Jomo, not anymore. A dark shape, wet and slick, now emerged, almost growing bigger before him. It took whatever part of his brother it felt necessary.

It moved, a wet, deliberate movement. Now the sounds started to make sense to him. The dripping of old liquid that came out of its form.

Two more eyes emerged from the darkness below, the same eye reflected in the dim light, only this time multiple. They did not blink, nor did they show anything human at all.

It wasn't human, he realized. Whatever Jomo was supposed to be, the thing that made its way to their house replaced it. He cried more for his brother in that moment than he had ever had at any point since he became no more.

The thing let out a wet gurgling sound again, something Kamau could no longer replicate. He felt like giving up.

"Not yet," it said, somehow, words from somewhere within it forming the most unnatural sentences that a mouth ever made. Why is he making it say that word? He had done no such thing before to this creature.

It pulled him again, and Kamau no longer struggled. A new wave of tiredness came to him, something else was overtaking him. He didn't feel cold. He felt tired and weary.

He was being taken closer to the open door. The floor started to descend, almost imperceptibly so. But how did his mind and body perceive this, but did not before?

It smelled like decay, like something long forgotten by any other house. His eyes kept noticing more parts coming out from beneath the door now.

He could feel the wooden door behind him now, and he could almost see its outline if he paid attention enough. He no longer paid enough attention.

In one moment, he felt a strange shift in weight, and realized he was in the doorway, the basement fully exposed beneath him. Why did his home become this way?

Looking down, he saw an abyss, not the wooden floor of his basement he remembered seeing before. Nothing seemed human to him anymore.

The creature pulled him in one more time, but it wasn't just the physical pull of it that affected him, something had entered into his mind as well, urging him to relax, to give in, almost at the end of its horrible actions now. What was the point anymore?

He was lying on his back at the threshold, and the shape shifted and changed again, now forming a grotesque mimicry of his brother's face. His last relative.

"It will be alright, little brother," it spoke in Jomo's voice, low, horrible. "Come." Why didn't his mother stop his older brother before all of this? Why did she have to leave him?

It reached out, and in his final moment, Kamau no longer saw a shape, but Jomo. His only big brother, his one-time protector. The sounds he used to be able to tell was coming from something in the night had gone.

His last bit of energy, that fear that gave him some form of life was gone, and as he gave into his sadness and desperation. Kamau felt as though he could hear his own voice calling out in unison with the thing inside.

As the thing pulled him into the abyss, a single word filled the old house. The same house where Kamau's body remained on the steps in the entryway, the same one where he called out in vain. It was no longer his home.

"Come..." they said together. They kept going together in this house.