What is all the way down there?

Jones Sander's decides to visit his childhood home, hoping to see his mother. However, he shockingly uncovers the truths of the house.

The thick fog suffocated the stars as darkness consumed the area. Jones Sanders, jaw trembled causing a clicking sound to reverbrate across the abyss. He managed to navigate himself to a gate in which its sides lit up as if expecting him.Jones retrieved his keychain from the pockets of his trousers and felt for the correct key. After many struggling attempts he managed to open the gate. He then proceeded up the familiar steps leading up to the house with caution of his footing as ice had plastered the steps.

‘What would I say, what if she’s not home’, Jones thought. The metal door knocker depicting a ferocious dog seemed to stare back at him, intimidating him. He reached into his pockets and yet again retrieved his trusty keychain and with less struggle than before opened the door with ease. The interior of the house was oddly clean, but instead of giving off an inviting atmosphere as one would think cleanliness would do, it caused Jones to feel a sense of unease. ‘Mom’, he said as if he was still a little kid. ‘Mom’, he yelled a second time with a sense of worry and unease in his voice. He felt for the light switch, having lived here he was able to find it quite quickly, and the house began to become alive. ‘Nothing’s changed’, he thought to himself. The house was small, to the left was the kitchen and further down the corridor would have led you to Jone’s room which he had shared with his siblings, opposite was his mom’s room.

When he reached his mother’s door he noticed that it was the only room in the house with a closed door. The absence of light seen through the slit between the floor and door made it even more odd for Jones, ‘for it was only eight pm, his mother had never slept this early’ he thought. By a slight twist of the doorknob he pushed the door ever so slightly with intent not to disturb his mum who he assumed was sleeping. This however caused the door to make a high pitch squeak, as if stepping on a loose floorboard. ‘Oops sorry’, Jones whispered in hopes that her mother was still sleeping.

He looked around the room, and panic settled in. He was expecting to see the outline of his mother in the bed yet it was all neat and made. He turned on the lights, ‘maybe mhy eyes are deceiving me he thought’. But sure enough she wasn’t there. As a detective would, he scoured the room for anything to relate to his mom’s whereabouts. He felt weird snooping in his mother’s room without her here. After minutes of searching, he began to feel defeated and was about to leave when he heard the sound of knocking. The first knock was equally as loud as the second, as well as the third. He put his ear to the wooden floor but all he could hear was the diminishing vibrations from the knocks. When he paced back he could feel the wood flex at a certain part on the floor. 

Cautiously using his feet he tried to search for an opening but failed to find anything of convenience. The wind began to whisper through the window as if warning him, when he began to feel something he couldn’t explain, he could just tell that something bad was under this house, in which the floor was the only thing protecting him and as he raised his foot and smashed it on the wood causing wooden sharpnels to migrates to all corners of the very room it was then he began to feel a tinge of regret. 

He had seen a small opening in the floor just enough to put a fist through, in the place his foot had impacted. Jones, now curious, continued to smash the wood until there was now a  hole just bigger than human sized. He then grabbed one of his mom’s fake led candles which lay conveniently on her desk. Shining it above the dark abyss he could make out a ladder which looked as if it never ended surrounded with circular concrete walls made up of what Jones had thought was over a 1000 concrete slabs. 

Skillfully climbing down the ladder with one hand holding a candle he began to notice a foul smell which intensified the lower he got. ‘Who would build this here’, Jones thought to himself, as his breaths began to get heavier. After around 5 minutes of climbing he could see the bottom which was made out of the same concrete material of the walls. As he was nearing the last few steps he slipped back and managed to rotate himself so his hands could protect his head from impacting the ground, causing small lacerations on his hand in which thick red blood oozed out slowly. ‘S**t’, he whispered in a tone as if he was yelling.

The foul smell was overpowering now, to compensate for this he started to breathe through his mouth which came unnaturaly to him at first but after a while the smell bothered him less. As he ventured down the one way corridor it led him to a room. ‘Wow a room inside a room, inside another room whoever made this place must love rooms’, he mocked. When he entered it, his face turned pale and he backed away. ‘No no no’, he said meekly. 

It wasn’t only the rotten headless corpse, which he could only hope was not his mom which caused him to back away. It was as if there was something inside there which had pushed him away, some sort of invisible force. The laceration on his palm had now dried up and looked like a red mess. He couldn’t take it, a green substance spewed out from his mouth, he beated his chest hoping to make it stop. Once it had subsided, he then entered the room again keeping his eyes off the corpse however he knew deep inside who that was. The candlelight was weak, and he could only see about a couple meters in front of him. As if possessed he kept walking until becoming faced with another door’. Jones raised his foot and kicked and punched it screaming at the top of his lungs cursing. 

As he continued his onslaught of attacks on the doors, he could hear something metallic underfoot. He shone the candle at his feet and saw a key. ‘Oh what you want me to open it’, he screamed, slapping the door causing the cut on his palm to reopen. ‘Just great’, he growled. He slapped the door again causing more blood to burst out his palm as he slowly fell to his knees, causing a line of blood on the door. Droplets rained from his eyes which he wiped off using his hand staining his face. 

Jones, now broken, mustered all his strength to pick up the key with his good hand and opened the door. He walked through it without any regard for his own safety. The door closed behind him as if it had a life of its own. He saw a lightswitch to his left and flicked it on.

This interior looked identical to the one of the house. This couldn’t be, how is this even possible he thought. ‘Jones, your home’, said a familiar voice. His mother’s room door opened and a woman to whom Jone’s denied his mother appeared. ‘Who are you?’said Jone’s, backing away from the women. He turned around and tried to open the door from which he came in but it would no longer open. ‘There’s no use’, she camly said. ‘Where are we, Jones yelled’. ‘I needed a sacrifice, the house needed a sacrifice’, she replied. ‘Bollocks tell me the truth, women’, Jones retorted. ‘Son please listen to me, I only have little time to talk to you but the house needs someone to live off or my very own kids would cease to exist, this very house promised me with three beautiful kids but at a cost’, she replied with tears in her eyes and hoped he would believe her. ‘Your not my mother’, he said quietly and with that the woman closed her eyes while Jones  grabbed a chair smashing repeatedly over her head until she stopped moving. The door unlocked behind him. 

The door to Jones’s room opened, ‘mommy’, cried a little boy followed by two kids who ran to their mother with tears welled in their eyes. ‘This is not your mom’, Jones said. But they couldn’t hear him or see him and continued to weep in his mother’s lifeless body.

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry’, he weeped. He wished to go to his mother’s body and embrace it but he couldn’t bear to look at the damage he had done to the person he had loved so much. He couldn’t bear to think about it, just thinking about it wanted to make him want to torture himself in the worse way possible, smash his head against the hardest closest thing near him. The unison of the cries of the kids and his own cries made him cry even harder. The kids' innocent prodding of their mom’s lifeless body, and their cries of ‘mommy, mommy wake up’, made him get up and run his head through the door. But nothing broke, he fell right through it.

“Jones’, said a voice. He turned around, and ran towards her hugging her with tears in her eyes. ‘It's ok you're with me bye Jones I love you’. A bright light covered everything and when he opened his eyes, he was outside the house, and there lay the tomb of Lucy Sanders. ‘Why am I here’, he thought, and with that he strided back to his car, confused as to why he had even entered the house , ‘for my mom was murdeded twenty years ago’.

Author's Note

Can be insensitive.

Reviews

[Micah Orchid]

Hello, I enjoy this. You have some minor spelling errors, and are missing some function words and punctuation. Making it a bit difficult to read the first time, but that is just me being nitpicky. It's a short but nice horror story. However, I wish you alluded to the twist at the end more, especially in the beginning. Maybe go into why he decides to visit his mother in the first place.