The Cellar Door

The Cellar Door

In Europe, the house would have been regarded as unusual, at least. Here in Africa, it was unique and so different as to be considered weird. The old man who built it, a New Zealander who had made a fortune as the finder of the richest emerald claim in the country, had built the house for his young wife, a famous beauty who demanded much and usually got it. The house was designed purely to provide the soft water she required for washing her long, dark and silken hair.

This was the reason for the gutters all being fed into a downpipe that emptied into a large reservoir created in the basement of the house. All rainwater that landed on the roof ended up in this tank. A pump in the remaining part of the basement supplied water either to an outside tap for watering the garden, or inside for the lady to attend to her most precious asset, her famous tresses.

For a while, the old man and his bride lived in the house and, by all accounts, were very happy. Tragedy struck when the lady died young from some unknown tropical disease. The New Zealander was devastated and became convinced that he must return to his native land in an attempt to forget the past and restore his soul.

The house stood empty for many years once he was gone. Being so unusual for its location, it proved difficult to sell and, even when offered for rent, there were no takers. Although priced at a steadily decreasing rent as time went on, no one expressed an interest. In the manner of unoccupied buildings, it began to acquire a reputation for mysterious events late at night, a suggestion that it might be haunted or, at the very least, the abode of the long-haired apparition of a lady seen at times on moonlit nights in the neighbourhood.

Aidan Chalmers knew nothing of all this when he viewed the house as a prospective tenant twenty years after it had become empty. It seemed a steal at the rent suggested, a large, two-storey house of stone blasted from the top of a hill to create the hole necessary for a basement. Although full of quirky touches, refrigerators let into the walls as cupboards, scrap iron welded into the windows as decoration, and an old Volkswagen bumper affixed above the fireplace as a mantelpiece, the rooms were tall, airy and spacious, the views of the surrounding countryside were stunning, and the thick stone walls kept the temperature well below that of the African hinterland.

He paid a deposit that very day and moved in within the week.

The house lived up to all of Aidan’s expectations of it. It was comfortable, filled with light from the enormous windows and, on its little hill raised above the neighbourhood, an eyrie of peace and quiet. This last made it an interesting place to be during an African thunderstorm, but its builder had provided it with a very serviceable lightning rod. The new tenant congratulated himself on such an admirable lodging at so low a rental.

If there were a drawback at all to the house, it was the basement. This was a dark, cold place, somewhat constricted by the bulging wall of the underground water tank and its pump, and Aidan had no use for it. The walls and floor were untreated, dusty rock inhabited only by a species of small scorpion that skittered away and hid in holes when he tried to kill them. He kept the door at the top of the stairs closed and forgot the unwanted cellar at most times.

One afternoon, after a shopping expedition to town, Aidan found the basement door ajar. His brow creased in a puzzled frown. He knew that he had not been down to the cellar recently and would certainly have closed the door after leaving it. Had somebody been in the house and gone down into the basement?

He opened the door and peered down into the darkness. There was nothing to be seen. He called out and immediately felt ridiculous. Would anyone reply, even if they were down there? He shut the door and made sure that it had latched properly. The incident drifted from his mind in the days that followed.

And then it happened again. Returning from a walk in the fields, he found the cellar door slightly ajar, just as before.

This time there was no explaining it away. He remembered deliberately testing the door to make sure the latch held. There was no way it could have come open again on its own. Somehow someone or something had opened it. Had he been burgled?

It was unlikely. All the outer doors were locked and the windows protected by their odd burglar bars. Nothing inside the house had been disturbed and nothing taken, as far as he could tell.

He closed the cellar door and locked it.

Two days later it was open again.

Now thoroughly unsettled, Aidan shut the door, locked it and removed the key. This he put into a pocket of his favourite coat that he always wore on leaving the house.

For a week, the door remained closed. Aidan began to feel that there must be some strange physical aspect of the house that shifted and released the doorframe, thereby allowing it to open. Perhaps a minor earthquake, too slight to be noticed.

When he found the door open again, he gave up. He walked past, leaving the thing open. If it wanted to be open, fine, let it be open. A slight draught from the door followed him into the kitchen and tickled his ear as he waited for the kettle to boil. He told himself that it was imagination.

On the way back to the living room, he felt the cold emanating from the basement. Of course it was cold, he reasoned. It was always colder down there than in the rest of the house. He walked on into the living room.

That night he awoke suddenly from a dream. He stared into the blackness, trying to remember the dream but it was slipping away. Something about walking down a long corridor in darkness, the only light escaping from doors left ajar, a sickly, pale moonlight drifting in slivers from the narrow openings. And it was cold, he remembered that. Cold as the draught from the cellar had been.

In fact, it was too cold. He realised now that the cold emanated from one side of him, as though the bedclothes had fallen away in the night. As he moved to pull the blankets back over him, he felt his fingers touch something cold lying next to him. He froze, not daring to investigate further.

A voice emanated from the darkness beside him.

“John…”

A woman’s voice. But this was madness. It must be a dream. He struggled to wake himself but the voice persisted.

“John, John. You’ve been so long away.”

Aidan stared into the dark, needing, but not wanting, to see what was lying next to him. There was a faint glow from that direction but no more than a hint of a body radiating that dreadful cold at his shrinking skin. His hand moved of its own accord and touched the dead, slimy surface of an arm next to his.

“John, I have waited for you in the dark but you shut me out. Have I done wrong, John? Have I pained you in some way?”

Unable to prevent it, Aidan turned to see what addressed him. The glow from the body increased so that now he could see a ghostly face looking at him, the skin puffed and rotting, white with decay and the pallor of long immersion in water. The black strands of long, lank hair cascaded from her head to cover some of her nakedness but still Aidan could see how her body oozed and slithered in rotten vileness.

Her eyes, filthy orbs rolling in their sockets, opened wide as she saw him looking at her.

“Oh, John, am I forgiven? Do you come to me now to retrieve what we have lost? I will comfort you John, I swear this and we will be together again, as one and for evermore.”

A long, ghostly and dripping arm reached over to him as she turned her body to face him. Then she drifted upward until she hovered over him.

“John, you are mine again.”

She dropped down to embrace him.


Word count: 1,422
For Horror Writing Contest, February 2023
Prompt: Just make it scary within the limited word count.