It was three in the morning. I stumbled into my apartment, wasted, starving, carrying a bag of greasy takeout boxes filled with ginger beef, BBQ pork fried rice. I wolfed it down and then passed out. Typical Saturday night.
Wake up the next morning with little memory of the night before and the kitchen’s a mess, dirty plates in the sink, grains of rice scattered across the counter. Feel nauseous and head to the washroom and puke out everything in my stomach. Typical Sunday morning. Start cleaning up and notice a half-eaten fortune cookie sitting on the table with that thin strip of paper right beside it.
I walk over, eat the other half of the cookie, and prepare to throw the paper out. But before I do that, I decide to give it a read. For shits and giggles, you know?
“The people in the basement remember you.”
I almost laughed at first, because it seemed like something that I would do. Some cheeky young hire at the fortune cookie company slipping in a few creepy messages as a joke. I could appreciate it. It was funny enough.
Then I turned it around, and in place of the usual row of lucky numbers was what appeared to be an address. Now this was strange. The first thing I thought was that maybe it was the address for the factory the cookie was produced in.
That made sense. But did it really? If it was supposed to be an extension of the first joke, then it didn't quite track. But it also could’ve been an oversight, a mistake in the print.
Whatever, I thought. I tossed the paper into the trash and got ready for the gym, my way of feeling like less of a piece of shit after a night of heavy drinking.
Predictably it wasn’t the best workout, but that wasn’t entirely due to the hangover. I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the address. It hadn’t quite registered the first time I’d read it, but as I thought about it on the treadmill, I was pretty sure that I knew it from somewhere. It was familiar.
Finish with free weights, take a shower and then sit in a coffee shop with a sandwich and an espresso. And I’m still thinking about where I’d seen it before.
After getting home, I tried to resist the urge to fish the fortune out of the trash. I asked myself what the point was. Even if I did recognize it from somewhere, how was the effort worth it?
In retrospect, that was more of a cope. The source of my apprehension had been deeper than that, though it was something I couldn’t quite understand at the time. I felt nervous and I couldn’t justify why, which only served to make me even more nervous.
Eventually I caved and began digging through the trash. I held the paper up, looking at the address for a long time before a vague recognition slowly began to sink in.
Then I sat down at the computer and searched it up on google maps and as soon as the images loaded up, the memories began to flood in. The street I grew up on. The woods behind the cul-de-sac. The house that sat right across from ours.
I stared at the screen until it started not to feel real. Then I rechecked the address four or five times but there was no mistaking it. That was it. One of the houses I grew up next to.
Immediately I tried to rationalize it. What if somebody who's associated with the company lives there? Maybe something got mixed up and his data ended up in a fortune cookie.
No, I thought. That couldn’t be right.
Because that house had burned down years ago.
I tried to think back to that time but found that my memories of it were strangely distant, hard to recall. I must have sat there for hours, thinking, failing to recall anything of note. All I knew for sure was that for the vast majority of my childhood up to the beginning of high school, I lived right across from that house. And then something happened that caused it burned down and I moved away.
I couldn’t for the life of me remember what that event was, if anybody had died. Hell, I couldn’t even remember who had lived there. We must have met at least a few times, I thought. But I came up with nothing. It wasn’t even the case that I’d been too young, since I had memories from before we’d moved there. This just didn’t sit right.
For it to be a coincidence would be crazy. There was literally no chance.
So then what was this? It was a paralyzing thing to have on your mind, and it turns into all you can think about, all you can focus on.
Answers. I needed answers. Now there were a few options, the first being to go back to the takeout place in order to ask questions. Problem was, I’d pretty much blacked out that night and had only the haziest recollection of even ordering.
The other option was obvious enough. I had the address, after all.
It wasn’t too far away, maybe a forty-five-minute drive out of the city. As far as safety, I couldn’t imagine there being an issue. It was a suburban community, and it wasn’t like I was planning on breaking into the place or anything.
So I settled on it and made the drive over the next morning, and the house was exactly like I had thought. Completely burnt down, a blackened shell of a place. I thought seeing it in person might cause the memories to flood back in but that didn’t happen.
I sat there in my car for ten, maybe fifteen minutes and at no point did I ever see anybody else outside. So I decided to go in. I know that I said I wasn't planning to, but there was no way I was just going to leave it like that. There was no police tape, no signs telling me to stay out, and if there was anybody squatting, I’d just leave the way I came.
So I walk into the house and immediately my senses are assailed by dust and the smell of old, burnt wood. It’s darker than I had expected, and I use the flashlight on my phone to navigate. Look around the living room and then I remember the fortune, the supposed people in the basement. The hairs on the back of my neck stick up. I stop, listen carefully. Nothing but a light breeze outside and this gives me enough confidence to approach the basement door.
It’s closed, and the area around it seems to have taken less damage than the rest of the place. It almost looked untouched.
Reach out and grab the knob and push open the door. A wall of gloom. Shine the light down and it becomes smothered after the first few steps.
Stand there for a while, listening to nothing but my own breaths.
And then I hear something else, something faint. Maybe a footstep but I can’t be sure of it. Then I hear it again. And then again as it gets closer. Definitely a footstep. Probably a squatter, I think. It has to be. I want to call out and say something but can’t bring myself to do so. The air seems heavy and there’s an electric feel to it. It’s unnatural. I don’t like it at all.
I hear some more footsteps. And then it’s joined by another pair. And then suddenly it sounds like a dozen feet are stomping in unison, all of them getting closer to the base of the stairs. I slam the door shut and run out of there.
Afterwards I was sitting in my car, breathing heavy, trying to reconcile what the hell had just happened. I looked over at the house, almost expecting something to burst out the front door, a horde of emaciated ghouls or something. But nothing came and so I calmed myself down and drove away.
If I went looking for answers, I obviously didn’t find any. After arriving back in the city, I pulled over by the side of the road and took out my phone and looked through my search history, finding the bar that I’d gone out to that night. I drove over there and searched around the area and sure enough there was a small takeout place tucked into the far corner of a dingy strip mall.
I stared at it, trying to see if I could rouse up some memories of what had happened that night. It didn’t work, but I was still sure that this was the right place.
I got out of my car and walked in, practically storming up to the counter while the woman behind it stared at me with confusion on her face that was palpable even behind the forced smile.
“What can I get for you sir?” she asked.
Suddenly I felt the biggest idiot alive. What the hell was I supposed to say? What was I doing here?
Then I remembered that I had the fortune in my pocket and so I took it out and held it up.
“I was just wondering… about… this fortune I got… you see, there’s an address on it and I… it…”
Stammering through the sentence, I watched as the woman’s smile began to fade, slowly at first, until it morphed into a scowl, something malicious. But just as soon as it does, it’s back to the smile, causing me to question whether or not I had really just seen that.
“Just wait there for a minute sir,” she says to me, before disappearing into the kitchen. I look around. Nobody else in the restaurant but me. The place was blanketed by a creeping silence, the kind where you’re just waiting for it to be broken.
My eyes begin to wander, and I look up at a big, framed analog clock. Its hands aren’t moving. Then I look down and pick up one of the paper menus sitting in a stack on the counter. Open it up and every single item is just the same line of gibberish copied over and over and over.
I tense up, feeling like I’ve just walked into some obscure trap. I put the menu down and prepare to leave, taking one last glance back to make sure that nobody’s following me and right before I’m about to turn around, I see it.
A face staring at me through the kitchen window. It was pale and had a dead stare, and there was something off about it, something not quite human. But I didn’t look at it for long enough to figure it out.
I backed out through the doors and once in the parking lot, I turned and sprinted to my car. From there I sped back to my apartment, my heartbeat elevated dangerously high the entire drive.
I started to get a bit paranoid. Maybe something had followed me. Maybe something was hiding inside my bathroom. Thoughts like that.
After a while, I was able to calm down and I started to do some research on the restaurant.
Nothing came up.
No website, no telephone listing, nothing. A google map view of the street shows only the store that had presumably existed before it.
None of this shit is tracking and so I resort to looking for answers from a source I wouldn’t have gone to otherwise.
My father.
Now you need to understand that I have something of a strained relationship with the man. In other words, I haven’t made contact with him in over a decade. I don’t know where he lives, or what he’s done with his life, or if he’s even alive. I guess a relative would have told me if he had died, but I can’t even be sure of that.
The strangest thing is, as I sit here thinking about it now, I can’t even pin down why this would be the case, where my apparent resentment towards the man would be coming from. The memories I have of him are decent enough. I can’t recall him ever beating or screaming at me, nothing like that.
The more that I think about it, the more I get the feeling that it all has something to do with that house.
But I still had his number and so I decided to give him a call, just to ask some questions. I was almost certain that he would’ve changed it by now, but he ended up answering.
Of course, the call started out awkward. I was stumbling over my words, trying to find the right things to say, which was something that seemed next to impossible. Despite this, he sounded strangely calm about the whole thing, almost as if he’d been expecting the call.
I went ahead and told him everything that happened. The fortune cookie, the house, the footsteps in the basement, all of it. I wasn’t sure what kind of response I was expecting. That he’d call me insane, maybe? Ask me what in the hell I was even talking about? Why, after all these years of zero communication I’d be coming to him with some shit like this?
But surprisingly, he seemed to be understanding about it. He seemed to be taking me seriously. He told me to calm down, that he had something he needed to tell me, something he should’ve divulged years ago.
But he needed to do it in person. He told me that he was living in a town a few hours away, that he’d drive over and meet me at 3 PM tomorrow. I asked him where. His response?
The house. The fucking house. I asked him why it had to be there, if we could meet anywhere else. For obvious reasons, I had reservations about going back to the place. All he said was that I shouldn’t worry, that he’d explain everything once we were there.
The conversation certainly left a lot to be desired, but I've decided to go anyway. I'll sleep on it first, though. Maybe I'll change my mind in the morning.
But I don't think I'll be satisfied until I get some answers.
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Credits
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