Horror Exploration

      The sound clanged through my head, so loud that I couldn’t quite make out where, or what, it was radiating from. First it was round; curved sound waves blasting into my skull like a circular bullet. Then, the sound sharpened into a devastating point; this bullet morphing into a pointed, angular blade. Each crest and trough of the sound wave pressed closer together, squeezing that thin skin of my eardrums so tightly, I prayed they would burst only if it meant this purgatory would cease. With my hands desperately cupped over my ears, I crouched on the floor, head between my knees, face contorting in anguish.       “What’s the matter? What's going on?” I could barely make out her words as she crouched down at my side, clearly full of worry. Could she not hear this hell-sound?        I stayed like that for what seemed like forever; stuck in time, terrorized by this horrible sound that I couldn’t even identify. Eventually, the sound began to dissipate, but not fully, like smoke in the air. I could hear it more clearly now—Buzzing. This sound was buzzing.      “What’s going on with you? Are you okay?” she repeated.       “Can you not hear that? This buzzing? God, it sounds like a thousand cicadas are all around us!” I said, perhaps a bit too loud thanks to the fact that I couldn’t even hear my own voice.

      Cicadas happened to be native to where we lived, but growing up, I had never heard them much. Colorado offered a wide variety of insects, but cicadas weren’t among the loudest, and certainly never sounded like this. This wasn’t a natural hum of life or a song of the summer nights we once shared; it was harsh, metallic, like an alarm set to a frequency designed to rip apart any sense of calm in my mind.
       “What are you talking about? It's completely silent in here! Keep your voice down, you know we’re not supposed to be in here.” She looked around the spacious room; green wallpaper peeling like strips of fresh skin, moldy trash and food covered the brown carpet, somehow resembling the dirt of a freshly dug grave, pictures rested on the termite-eaten table, the subjects’ faces scratched out and long forgotten. We were never supposed to step foot into an abandoned house like this, and it was becoming increasingly clear as to why. 
        Growing up, our tiny town had been scattered with these husks of lives left behind, and exploring them had become a kind of ritual. My sister and I were drawn to the eerie stillness, the way life seemed to pause in the middle of a breath. Some houses had tables still set for dinner, utensils neatly aligned as if waiting for a warm meal that would never arrive. Laundry hung in ghostly rows on rusted clotheslines, now stiff and faded, like remnants of forgotten routines. Beds were made with care, frozen under layers of dust, as if the families had simply slipped into the night, leaving their lives behind like old molts.
But in this house, something felt different—darker, heavier, like we weren’t alone among the shadows. It was as if the walls were watching us, holding their breath, waiting. I glanced at her, the buzzing still faintly humming in the back of my mind, and suddenly the thrill of our intrusion was overtaken by a deep, gut-twisting fear.
       “Come on, do you want to finish this or not?” She asked as she stood up, arms folded.
Silently, I uncurled from my tight ball and managed to gain footing among the mountains of yellowed newspapers, rat droppings, and sporous take-out boxes. It was obvious that a hoarder of some kind used to live here, and I’m sure the multitude of trespassers over the years added to the disaster. The buzzing still rang in my head, shook my fingertips, and unsettled my core. 

      “I don't know if we should do this anymore. You know we need to get home to see mom soon,” I said, scratching at my arms, trying to cleanse myself of that sinister drone in any way I could. 
      “It’ll be fine. Let's go upstairs,” She said, not bothering with another word before she marched ahead toward the dilapidated staircase, located right outside the sitting room in which we were standing. 
       I followed close behind, fingernails digging into my palms. I wasn’t sure that the stairs were even strong enough to hold the weight of a rat, let alone a human, due to how caved-in and rotted they were. I decided not to say anything; she was going to make me go up, one way or another. My sister was stubborn in that way. 
      Gripping onto what once used to be a handrail, I followed her up the decaying staircase. I could feel termites skitter past my palms, some opting to rest on the back of my hands. Maybe they heard the buzzing, too. Each foot fall was carefully placed, meticulously ensuring that I didn't fall through the wood. Up we went, termites and rats and mold close behind, following us to the second story like relentless, creeping shadows, hungry to claim whatever space we left behind.
Trying to find comfort in this horror house, I instead thought back to simpler days; we’d sit in sunlit pastures watching field mice dart through grass tunnels, waiting patiently to catch a glimpse of their tiny, curious sniffing noses, each armed with a bouquet of long whiskers. Scarlet ladybugs would make their way up long grasses, only to take flight and kiss our freckled shoulders, their tiny wings tickling like summer winds. But this was nothing like our peaceful, personal meadow. Here, the sweet field mice transformed into grotesque rats, their bald tails whipping the soft skin of our ankles. They scurried in the dark, hissing as they darted from left to right. The ladybugs mutated into termites, the soft crimsons of their shells morphing into the yellow-brown vermin. Instead of feeling a sense of wonder, I felt trapped, every creak of the wood and every march of the termite colony pushed us deeper into a place that wanted us gone.
Desperately trying to focus on the task at hand, the termites began nipping at my skin. Their pincers gathered up my epidermis, shoving it into their greedy mouths, only to chomp down and take a chunk out of me. 
      “Hey!” I shouted at the tiny creatures, quickly flinching away from their bites. The buzzing continued in my ears, only amplifying in sound. 
      “Careful! Don’t move so much, you’ll break the flooring!” She said, reaching out her hand to help me onto the landing. 
Ignoring her, I examined the bites on my hands, each one revealing an entrance into my flesh; a warm and inviting haven to the tiny creatures. One by one, I watched in horror as they marched single file into those rifts, feeling their six legs carry their fat bodies through the gates of tissue. I could see their bulging outline as they made their way through my hands and into my arms. They nestled under my ligaments, made homes in my muscle, and laid their offspring in the soft bits of my cartilage. 
       I could feel them everywhere.
       Louder and louder the buzzing went, threatening to overwhelm me as it once had before. I began to scratch at the bites, which only sent a wave of itchiness through my hands, my arms. I scratched harder, causing those entrances to become even more irritated than what they already were; angry red pustules dotted my forearms, sickly oozing ichor. The itchiness settled deep into my bones, beckoning my fingernails to reach deep inside my flesh. The harder I scratched, the itchier it became, the louder the buzzing. 
       “Stop it! You’re hurting yourself!” She said, hands cupping her mouth in disbelief at what I was doing. It's as if she couldn’t see the outline of the insects beneath my skin.
        I couldn't hear her over the vibration within my eardrums. I didn’t care. I dug tunnels within my flesh, tendons catching on my dirty fingernails, thick sappy blood dripping onto my scuffed boots. I began to pluck out the fine ligaments and nerves that resided within my palms, the buzzing guiding me precisely where to pick at. 
       My eyes widened. There. There it was, nestled within my burning flesh, the buzzing. Right before my eyes, I saw a colony of termites and maggots; their tiny bodies squirmed and wriggled as they claimed their territory, feeding on what was once mine. 
       I kept digging. I couldn’t hear anything as I dug, the only sound being that sinister chorus. The bugs sang wretched melodies and odious harmonies not to me, but rather into me. Their song hypnotized me; my body swayed with every vibration that pulsed throughout my being. A rhythmic trance fell over me, and suddenly, I no longer felt that fervent itch. No, these creatures that resided within my person were not enemies, they were not others, they were a part of me. They were me. 
       My bloodied, tattered arms fell to my sides as I dove deeper within the trance, like a pool of sweetness. The sensation was thick and sticky, and continued to pull me further into its depths, where the world was blurred and the pain was distant. I was falling, deeper and deeper into the hum. 
Being so deep within the trance, I could barely register the harsh smack of concrete as my limp body fell through the rotted staircase, crashing through the thin flooring, and into the darkness of the basement below. The cold, damp air closed in as the world spun into a wonderfully dark, twisting blur.
      “Cassidy!” 
      I was wrapped tight within the hypnosis, but like the moon uncovering itself from the mist, I was awakened at the sound of my name. 
      “Cassidy! Oh my god, are you okay?” 
       My sister's words sounded distant and jumbled, but real. She was real, I was real. Opening my eyes only to a slit, I silently observed my surroundings; pieces of jagged, corroded wood surrounded my non-responsive body. The basement was damp, dark, and smelled of mildew. As I forced my eyes open wider, the scene before me mirrored the chaos upstairs, but here, it was suffocating, oppressive. Dust-covered clothes lay in tattered heaps, their fabric stained and matted together. Forgotten notebooks, their pages yellowed and brittle, were scattered in unnatural piles, as if carelessly discarded by an unseen hand. But it was the garbage bags that truly unsettled me—overstuffed, bulging unnaturally, their contents shifting and wriggling, as though something, someone, was trapped inside. A low, almost imperceptible sound came from somewhere beneath the layers, as if the basement itself was alive, breathing with the weight of horrid, forgotten things.
      “Cassidy! Can you hear me?”
      Her voice was closer. She must have made her way down the now-broken staircase and was standing just above the hole that I had created in the flooring. 
      “I’m here,” I croaked, my voice coming out gritty as if the dust had laid itself on my vocal chords. 
I began to push myself up to a sitting position, my arms barking in protest. My skin still hung in ribbons, crimson liquid slowly snaking down my fingertips and forever staining the pile of old bedding that had broken my fall. My head ached, a tight pounding against my temples making it hard to come to a complete sitting position. 
      “Oh my god, Cassidy we need to get you out of here! Can you climb out? Are there stairs?” She asked, her voice shaking with every syllable. 
I could tell that she was on the verge of panicking, if she wasn’t already. But she was right, I had to find a way out of here before I bled out, or worse. Maybe the panic was contagious because I could feel my thoughts beginning to race, adrenalin spreading throughout my numbed limbs. My heart beating faster and faster in erratic and frantic pulses; The sound of it seemed too loud, too insistent, echoing off the walls of the basement as if my own fear was reverberating through the clutter, multiplying on itself. 
      “Tori, I’m scared.” I breathed into the darkness of my surroundings. I wasn’t sure if my sister could even hear me, but admitting my feelings seemed to clarify the situation; I was scared. No, actually, I was beyond terrified. My teeth began to chatter as a blanket of cold fell over my being, sinking into my very core. I was not supposed to be here, and admitting my fear seemed to only feed whatever horror lay within the house. 
     “Cassidy, you need to find a way out. Look around you.” Tori’s voice cut through the haze of panic and fear, a steady anchor pulling me back to reality. Her words grounded me, but the chaos in the basement refused to let go. The piles of debris loomed like silent watchers, their stillness unnerving. I could sense slight movements here and there, likely those hissing rats or skittering roaches, but something deep within me knew it was more than just that. I blinked hard, trying to make sense of my surroundings, but the shadows seemed to shift and twist, mocking me and my damned, dull senses. 
      Slowly, too slowly, I pushed myself up to a standing position. I swayed as I tried to find my footing among the piled of rotted bedsheets, the ancient fabric now slick with my lifeblood. Each step sent waves of dust into the air, thick and choking, swirling around me like a living thing. I coughed, desperately trying to rid my lungs of the stale, vapid air. My eyes stung from the grime, and the more I moved, the worse my vision became—everything around me seemed to blur, to melt into shadows, the edges of the basement warping and twisting. I reached to wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, only to spread gore into my face. 
      “I can’t see, Tori! It’s too dark down here!” I screamed, voice cracking as I shouted up through the hole from which I fell through. The sun must have gone down; while I could see somewhat clearly before, I could see absolutely no semblance of natural light filtering into this hellish void of a basement. My teeth were still chattering, the cold settling deep within my bones. 
      Is it true that people who lose too much blood start getting cold? I wondered.
      I stood atop the rotted blanket mountain, the highest peak among my trash-city. The air felt thinner here, colder, as if I were on the edge of some vast, empty abyss. I could feel the whipping winds and the dropping temperature of the altitude begin to multiply. Dust, or maybe it was snow, began to settle around my boots. I licked my cracked, blue lips, tasting the flakes as they fell silently from the sky. I couldn’t help but close my eyes, feeling the fading warmth of my eyelids against my orbs.
       I wasn’t sure if I prayed atop that mountain, because I had never done so before, but there was something holy about the way my sister’s hand touched my shoulder. I opened my eyes, and slowly turned to face Tori. She embraced me, tucking my beaten, bloody body close to hers. I could smell her vanilla and cinnamon perfume, the one our mother gave her for Christmas last year. Her warmth radiated, the sun resting within her very soul, chasing away any darkness that had found its way into me. Her bright, curly hair brushed against my cheek, soft and alive, tickling my nose as she gathered me up closer. She whispered sweet comforts into my ear, her voice soothing.
       “You’re okay, it’s okay.” She repeated, on and on and on. There we were, a singular sun rising atop a morbidly dark Everest; A flame that burned away the endless void. 
      Too soon, she ripped me out of her grasp, out of the only warmth I had ever known.
“Let’s get out of here. I found some stairs, but they’re covered in junk. You need to be careful going up,” she said, looking over her shoulder. 
      I simply nodded, as it was all I could manage. Tori’s hand found mine, her grip tight, almost desperate. She squeezed my bloody hand, and I winced at the sudden pressure, the rawness of my wounds flaring with pain. But it wasn’t the pain that struck me the most—it was the way she held on, like she didn’t want to let me go, as if she feared that if she did, I might disappear into the darkness forever.
      We began to make our way to the hidden staircase, Tori guiding my every movement, instructing me precisely how to place my steps. The basement stairs were likely only 20 feet away, but the journey there seemed to drag on. As we passed countless heaps of trash and discarded junk, I could have sworn I saw hands reaching out to brush against my skin, their fingers cold and clammy and unknown. A chill went down my spine. 
      Get out, get out, get out! The walls seemed to say as they pressed in, suffocating me with their weight. Tori and I scurried along, hand in bloody hand, desperate to reach the nearing staircase. 
      Finally, I could feel the wood of the first stair beneath my boot. Though it was coated in vile grime and dirt, a faint pathway through the crumpled papers, yellowed newspapers, rotten food, and plastic packaging emerged, just wide enough for us to climb. Each step felt like a fragile victory, and one wrong move could send it crashing down in a wave of broken shards. 
        Just as we began our ascent, like two sinners crawling out of the depths of hell, My sister paused. Her hand tightened around mine, her eyes widening in fear as she stopped dead in her tracks.
       “Do you hear that buzzing?”