The room behind the bathroom

Before I start telling this story, I would like to point out that this is 100 percent true. I never told this to anyone, I never write something about it before. This is my first time posting here. It all started a couple of years ago.

I was around the age of 11 – 12 years old when one day, like any other day, I came home from school. I live in a little town in Belgium so I go to school alone and come back alone. Normally my 3 year older brother is already home but today he had an extra lesson so he was later. This meant that I would be home alone for like an hour until my mother and father returned from work.

It was a sunny day. I came home and set my bike in the garage. We have a nice house with a pretty big garage behind the house. When you stand in front of my house (street-side) you’d see a door with the doorbell, left on the house is the driveway to the back of the house where also the garage is. I tell you all this because it’s relevant for the story. My family, we always go to the backside of the house and we enter the house from the ‘backdoor’. The front door, with the doorbell, can’t be opened from the outside. Only from the inside and it’s always locked with the keys hanging in the lock.

I have a habit of always yelling ‘I’M HOME’ when I enter, because normally my brother would be home and watching tv or something in the living room. So as any other day I yelled but of course no one answers. I was like ‘huh’ but then I realized I was home alone. No problem, that happened before.

I put my backpack in the kitchen and went to the living room. I was about to turn the tv on when I heard some noises. We have a room behind our bathroom upstairs, it’s used to stuff some old shit, old books, old computer material, boxes from tvs and stuff…., that room is separated from the bathroom by a door with a magnetic closing system. The sound you hear when you close the door is like 2 magnets clicking ‘into’ each other.

Like I said, it was a sunny day, so all the doors inside were open. I hadn’t put the tv on so it was kinda quiet. That was when I heard the clicking from the door. It scared the shit out of me. I was a 12 – or so – year old boy alone in the house. It was daytime but still I was scared as fuck. I knew the sound of the door clicking like no other so I was sure it came from there. The pussy as I was, I never went upstairs to check it out. I just sat shocked in my seat. Trying to listen more focused. I heard it again. I heard 2 dudes mumbling to each other. They were hurried, guess because they heard me yelling ‘I’M HOME’. Then I heard the creepiest thing. The sound of 2 people coming down the stair. We have an old wooden stairs here. Everyone knows the sound of it, when you go up late in the night because you don’t want to wake your parents, but when you step on the stairs there is a little crackle you’ll always hear.

THAT SOUND.

I freaked out. I heard 2 fucking dudes coming down. They moved slow. I jumped up, took the homephone (wireless thingy) and ran outside. I locked the door behind me and I just stood there. We have a big window in the back so I could see the whole living room through it. I was trilling, almost crying. I called my grandma (who lives in the same town, like 2 min from my house) because I knew my parents were at work and my brother in school. I told her I heard something, I heard someone, I heard 2 people, I’m scared. She came over right away. The time I was waiting for her I just stood outside with the phone in my hand, looking into the living room. I didn’t hear a thing. I was just standing there, frozen to the ground when I saw something I’ll never forget.

One of the dudes arm coming out of the dooropening. He pointed at me. Then the other one pulled his arm back. A 10 seconds later I see 2 guys running over the street, carrying 2 big carton boxes.

One minute later my grandma’s car comes on the driveway. She runs towards me and asked what’s going on. I tell her everything, except the thing I saw with the arm/hand pointing at me. Now, I have no idea why I didn’t tell her anything about what I saw. I just think she would declare me retarded or something, I don’t know.

She calmed me. She said I must’ve been watching too much movies or reading too much stories. She went inside, looked around but didn’t see anything. We waited together for my parents and brother to come home.

They also looked around in the house, there were no signs of burglary. Everything was still in its place. All the laptops, all the money,… I told my parents I heard them coming from the room behind the bathroom and that they carried 2 boxes. They told me that there was nothing to find there in that room. They weren’t worried at all because they kept nothing important up there and there weren’t any signs of a break-in, the only weird thing was that the frontdoor wasn’t locked. Like I said, normally the door is always locked with the keys hanging in the lock. It wasn’t this time. The door was unlocked but the keys were still hanging in the lock. My parents always said they just forgot to lock it, but it wouldn’t matter because no one could enter from the outside. We never contacted the police. We never spoke of it again.

Although, to make me feel safe, my mom always leaves the radio on from that day. It made me feel safer, I don’t know why, it just did. Also we got a little dog a year later. So I was never alone in the house when I came back from school. We mostly forgot all the shit that happened and just went on. Never really thought about it, until something else happened…

So here we are, about 4 years after the break-in, no one believed actually happened.

After a lot of sleepless nights, thinking about who the dudes were, what they took, why they even were here, I got over it. At one point I even said to myself I pictured it. I made it up, I was young and stupid to believe I actually heard and saw something, someone.

Years went by, I grew older. I totally forgot about what happened. I didn’t even ask myself questions anymore. Everything was back to normal. At least, that was what I thought…

By this time I was around 16 years old. It was winter time, so that meant cold, rain and snow. But that also meant that it would be dark around 6 pm. Like almost every other day I went skating with some friends – Yes, I was that cool - We would always go after school until 7 or 8 pm. This time my mom asked me to be home earlier because it was getting dark real soon and she was worried.

The skatepark was 5 streets away from my home. My friends lived at the other side of the town so I always went there alone and came back alone. Nothing wrong with that, I was a 16 old boy. So that particularly evening I came back from skating. I took the same route as always. I was on my bike and it was cold so I rode as fast as I could. But one thing stopped me and got my attention.

I stopped at a house, I’m not even sure why. There was something odd about this place. I came by the house almost every single day so I noticed something I never saw before. There was a big van standing in the driveway. It got my attention so I looked a bit closer. Of course this fucking house wasn’t near a lantern. I stepped off my bike and tried to focus my eyes to see more clearly in the almost breathtaking (this time in not a positive way) dark.

It was a very old house, but except the weird van, I noticed that the door was open. You really had to look focused because if you didn’t pay attention, you wouldn’t notice. So I stood there, in the dark looking at a random house with an odd van and the door open. I said to myself: ‘be a man, don’t just run off, you pussy’. That’s when I recognized some glass shatters on the ground.

SOMEONE BROKE IN.

There was a big window next to the door but I connected the dots and saw the glass shatters came from the door and not from the window. It was smashed in and then opened from the inside.

As I was about to run off to tell my parents what I just saw and to call the police, the light inside the house went on. There was someone standing behind the fucking window. I didn’t saw his face, he just stood there. He saw that I saw him. With fear in my eyes I stood nailed to the ground. I wanted to run, I wanted to scream, but I didn’t. The man turned his head several times. He pointed at me and yelled something.

That was the point I was like “NO NO NOPE NOPE NOPE I’M OUT!!” I took my bike and I think I never rode home as fast as I did that day. I came home, I was out of breath and shaking. My mother grabbed and calmed me. I told her what happened. She called my dad. After I told my dad everything, they decided to go and take a look themselves. I waited at home with my brother.

That’s when it all came back. I knew that man, I’ve saw him before, I just couldn’t say when or where. But then it hit me and ooh boy I hit me hard.

THE MAN I SAW 4 YEARS AGO.

I remember how he pointed at me, it felt so similar. It was the same dude who pointed at me when he was in my own house. I was so sure about it. But how can I bring something up that happened 4 years ago to my parents? Something that even I thought never happened. Well, I didn’t. I kept it all to myself. Not my family, not my friends, no one needs to know this happened and I was damn sure, it DID happen!

My parents came back after 5 minutes. They didn’t see anything. The door wasn’t open, there was no glass on the ground and there wasn’t even a van. My dad was slightly annoyed. He got mad and told me I should stop playing scary videogames and watching horror movies. I didn’t go in a discussion with him. I knew what I saw. I knew it was real. And I was going to find out what it all meant.

That day changed everything. At first I was scared as hell but I didn’t want to tell anyone about it. Days, even weeks went by. It was January already. My parents were off to a two week vacation. My brother was in high school, studying for his exams. My parents arranged something with my grandparents. I could choose, staying with them for 2 weeks of staying alone. I don’t know why, but I decided to stay home alone, my grandparents would check up on me every day. That was the time it became fucked up. I was nervous all day. I didn’t eat much, I didn’t speak much. I was home alone so no one noticed my different behavior. When my grandparents would come by I acted as normal as possible. I told my friends I was feeling sick, so I could stay home all day thinking about what happened, then the dreams began.

At night I had dreams. It started out with me just wandering in a dark place. But it escalated, I was still wandering around but I heard stuff. Heard talking but I couldn’t make up what they were saying. After a couple of night I dreamt I was walking around and I saw the man I saw in the house. A dark figure, looking at me, turning his head sideways. I would wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and shaking. The next period I would just lie in bed. Staring in front of me, scared to close my eyes for a second.

It happened every night, but it got worse every night too. The man came back. Another man appeared. Pointing at me, just looking. Just observing me. But was it me? I started to think more about what I dreamt. Was it me who was wandering around? Was I myself? I couldn’t answer these questions, I had to dream more. At that point I wasn't afraid of dreaming anymore. I wanted to know.

I needed to know what was going on.

And so I did. I stayed in bed for days, just trying to sleep and dream. It didn't work at first. I was concentrating too much. I just had to let it go and let my dreams take over. One night I had a dream again. I was walking in the same dark place I walked in before. Then the men showed up again. I knew I was dreaming, this was what I was hoping for. I didn't want to wake up, I needed to find some answers about what’s happening to me. I kept walking towards the men. As always they were dark and I couldn't see a face. They both did the usual stuff. They pointed at me, looked at me again. Then something happened that didn't happen before. They smiled, I could hear them laughing. It wasn't an evil 'Joker'-laugh or anything. Just a small laugh. They stopped. I wanted to move but I couldn't. They looked at me one more time and then they waved. It wasn't a nice 'hey buddy, hope to see you again’ - wave, ooh hell no. It was a 'Farewell' - wave. It got dark, I heard sounds everywhere. I didn't see what was happening. BOOM. No sounds. I was in my bathroom. I was looking at the door, the door that separated the rooms. There was nothing else in my bathroom. No bath, no shower, no toilet. My eyes were pointed at the door, then I woke up.

I was sitting in my bed, sweating like hell. As soon as it became clear what I just dreamt, I jumped up and hit the lights. I watched around me, checked under my bed, behind my closet, nothing, just me.

My cellphone lit up. 1 pm already. I rushed out of bed into the bathroom. I think I stood in front of the door leading the room behind the bathroom for like 10 minutes. I wasn’t moving, I just stared. This dream meant something. I knew it.

When I’m watching horror movies or something, I never really get the people. They never call someone to come, they never call the police, they always want to see for themselves. I always thought it was just stupid, but in that moment, I felt exactly the same. Who would I call? My parents? No they don’t believe me! My friends? They would just laugh at me! The police? No of course not the police, those dudes just laugh at your face and they would call my parents! I didn’t want anybody to know what I was going through. I had to solve this alone, I had to.

I opened the door and pressed the lights. It just smelled old; old books, boxes, and a lot of broken stuff we never threw away. Something was here, somehow I knew.

I started looking, I would move everything. I moved all the books, all the boxes to the bathroom. I searched every corner. I didn’t find a thing. Then, when I was giving up all hope, I saw my dad’s old camera. He used to film me and my brother when we were growing up. I felt a moment of happiness, knowing my parents wanted to make a lot of memories. As soon as I wanted to put the camera back in its place I noticed a small box. I never saw it before, it took it and I read ‘The kids: part 3’. When I opened the box I found tapes, a lot of videotapes.

I looked at them, even smiling a little. But the thing that bothered me was that I didn’t find part 1 and 2. I searched the whole room and put everything back in its place. I took the box with the tapes into my room. That’s when I heard the bell ringing. I went downstairs to see who was there. I wanted to unlock the door and open it, when I noticed that the front door was already unlocked, once again. I opened the door but there was no one. ‘Meh fucking kids with their stupid games’ I thought to myself. I went into the kitchen for a drink, and went back upstairs.

When I entered my room, the box was gone. Even worse, there were 2 other boxes sitting on my bed. I panicked. – I didn’t put those there, or did I? -. I turned over the boxes and I read ‘The kid: Part 1’ and ‘The kid: Part 2’.

I was surrounded by fear. How did those boxes came here? Why was the S crossed? Someone took the boxes and just crossed the ‘S’, so that ‘kids’ became ‘kid’. I just looked at the videotapes in the boxes. I picked some up and put ‘em back.

I needed to see those, I had to see those.

I took a random video tape and slid it into my television. I had an old fashioned television with a build in Video Player.

The video started playing, it was my second birthday. My dad was filming my brother and my mom playing socces. Then he turned to camera to me, but there wasn’t a me. The moment when I should come in the video the screen just went black.

I heard all the sounds, except my own voice. I looked at the black screen, hearing my dad, my mom, my brother and some other kids. But I never heard my voice. When my dad turned the camera again to film my brother and my mom, everything was back normal. The film just went on, the screen wasn’t black anymore. I never saw myself on the tape, I never heard myself.

It was like I was deleted. Erased. Not even existing anymore.