Part 4 — The Visitor After Midnight
(Part 1) ➡️ https://storiesworld.us/archives/10280
Kelly hesitated with one hand resting on the basement doorknob.
The scraping sound had stopped the moment she reached the door, leaving the house wrapped in an uneasy silence. She told herself there had to be a reasonable explanation. Old houses settled during the night, pipes expanded and contracted, and the furnace often made strange noises.
That had to be all it was.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled the door open.
The basement staircase disappeared into darkness.
Only a single pull-chain light hung from the ceiling below, casting a faint yellow glow across part of the room. Shadows stretched into every corner, making the unfinished basement appear much larger than it really was.
Kelly slowly descended the steps.
Each wooden stair creaked beneath her weight.
Halfway down, she stopped.
The smell reached her first.
It was the same smell she had noticed when hugging her uncle.
Faint…
But unmistakable.
The odour of something rotten.
Her heartbeat quickened.
She tried convincing herself that perhaps an animal had found its way into the basement and died somewhere behind the storage shelves. It wouldn’t have been the first time something like that had happened in an old house.
Still, the coincidence unsettled her.
She continued downward until her feet touched the concrete floor.
The basement was cluttered with old furniture, cardboard boxes, and shelves filled with holiday decorations collected over decades. Everything looked exactly as it always had.
Nothing appeared disturbed.
“Hello?” she called softly.
No answer.
Feeling slightly embarrassed, Kelly smiled to herself.
She had let her imagination get the better of her.
She turned toward the staircase.
Then she heard it again.
Chewing.
Not loud.
Not frantic.
Slow.
Methodical.
The sound came from behind the furnace.
Kelly froze.
The noise continued for several seconds before stopping altogether.
Gathering every ounce of courage she had, she stepped cautiously around the side of the furnace.
At first, she couldn’t understand what she was seeing.
Someone was crouched on the floor with their back turned toward her.
The figure remained perfectly still.
Dark clothing.
Broad shoulders.
A familiar build.
For one brief moment, relief washed over her.
“Uncle?”
The figure didn’t answer.
Instead, its shoulders moved slightly.
As though it were chewing.
Kelly took another cautious step forward.
“Uncle…?”
The figure slowly turned.
What she saw would stay with her for the rest of her life.
According to Kelly, it looked like her uncle.
But only enough to fool someone at a distance.
Up close, everything felt wrong.
His skin looked unnaturally pale, stretched tightly across his face as though it didn’t quite fit. His eyes reflected the dim basement light in a way she had never seen before, and his mouth…
His mouth was filled with blood.
Between his teeth hung a piece of raw meat.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Kelly couldn’t breathe.
The figure simply stared back at her.
Then…
It smiled.
Not the warm smile of a relative happy to see his family.
Not even the awkward smile she had noticed earlier that evening.
This smile spread far too slowly, revealing bloodstained teeth that seemed sharper than they should have been.
Only then did Kelly scream.
The sound echoed through the basement and into the rest of the house.
Within seconds she heard footsteps pounding across the floor above as her grandmother rushed toward the basement door.
“What happened?” her grandmother shouted.
Kelly never took her eyes off the figure.
She pointed toward the corner of the basement.
“My uncle…”
Her grandmother reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Kelly!”
“He was right there!”
The older woman looked exactly where Kelly was pointing.
There was nothing there.
The corner stood completely empty.
The smell had vanished.
The chewing sounds were gone.
Only the shelves and storage boxes remained.
Her grandmother hurried through the basement, checking behind the furnace, around the shelves, and beneath the staircase.
No one.
The small basement windows were locked from the inside.
The back door remained bolted.
The only entrance was the staircase where they were standing.
No one could have left without passing them.
Still shaking, Kelly ran upstairs and checked the front door.
It was locked.
Every window remained closed.
There was simply no way anyone had entered—or left—the house.
Yet she knew what she had seen.
She spent the rest of the night unable to sleep.
Every creak of the house made her flinch.
Every shadow seemed to move.
When morning finally arrived, sunlight filled the rooms and made everything feel ordinary again.
Her grandmother tried reassuring her that the stress of the evening had probably caused a nightmare or a waking hallucination.
Kelly wanted to believe her.
She truly did.
But one detail refused to leave her mind.
The smell.
She could still remember it perfectly.
The same rotten odour she had noticed while hugging her uncle only hours earlier.
According to Kelly, that Thanksgiving was the last time anyone in the family ever saw him.
He never called.
He never visited again.
It was as though he had disappeared for a second time.
Years later, relatives still spoke about the mysterious Thanksgiving when he unexpectedly returned after being missing for so long. Most remembered it as an emotional reunion that ended too quickly.
Kelly remembered something very different.
She remembered a man who looked like her uncle but no longer behaved like him.
A man who barely spoke.
Barely ate.
Watched her all evening without explanation.
And somehow carried the icy touch and unmistakable smell of decay.
To this day, Kelly has never claimed to know what happened during the years her uncle was missing.
She doesn’t know where he went.
She doesn’t know who—or what—came back.
She only knows that, according to her, the last thing she saw before her grandmother reached the basement was a figure that wore her uncle’s face…
…while calmly chewing a piece of raw meat.
And after that night—
he was never seen again.