The Thing Beneath The Stairs

I
The night lay heavy on the land,
No star dared pierce the swollen sky,
The forest watched on every hand
As if it knew what wandered by.
A house stood crooked, old and gray,
Its windows blind with dust and years,
And something in its halls would stay
To feed upon forgotten fears.

II
A traveler lost within the rain
Approached that house with weary tread,
The wind repeated like a pain
A tale the frightened villagers said.
“Do not remain when darkness wakes,
Do not disturb the lower floor,
For something old beneath it takes
The souls that knock upon the door.”

III
He laughed at tales of shadowed dread
And pushed the swollen door inside,
The hinges groaned like things long dead
That mourned the day they slowly died.
The air was thick with dust and mold,
The rooms were cold as buried stone,
And through the beams so dark and old
A distant breathing seemed to moan.

IV
He climbed the stairs and searched each room,
Yet none would warm his trembling skin,
The silence grew a deeper gloom
That pressed against his bones within.
Then from below the wooden stair
A scraping sound began to rise,
Like claws that dragged through ancient air
Toward something living it despised.

V
He bent beside the narrow space
That yawned beneath the crooked stair,
A hollow dark, a silent place
That seemed to swallow light and air.
He raised his lamp to pierce the black,
Its trembling glow fell pale and weak,
And in the void that stared him back
He saw a shape begin to speak.

VI
Two eyes appeared like dying coals,
A mouth of cracks within the night,
A face composed of broken souls
That shifted slowly in the light.
Its voice was thin as winter bone,
A whisper buried deep in clay:
“Why wake the hunger long alone
That waits beneath your kind each day?”

VII
The traveler froze with choking breath,
His lamp fell shaking to the floor,
The thing beneath exhaled its death
And stretched a hand from out the door.
Its fingers long as twisted roots
Reached upward through the crawling gloom,
As if the earth in tattered suits
Had grown a hand inside the room.

VIII
He fled the hall with frantic cries
But every door had sealed its frame,
The shadows moved with watching eyes
And softly murmured out his name.
The house itself began to groan
As if its bones were drawing near,
And from beneath the stairs alone
Rose laughter cold enough for fear.

IX
The lamp had died; the dark grew vast,
The floorboards bent beneath unseen,
The thing below crept up at last
Through cracks where trembling light had been.
Its breath rolled out like winter graves,
Its eyes like wounds that would not close,
And in its chest the silence waves
Of ancient hunger slowly rose.

X
It spoke again in hollow tone
That seemed to shake the broken beams:
“All flesh that walks is partly bone,
All bone returns to deeper dreams.”
The traveler screamed against the night,
But walls devoured every cry,
And something moved beyond the sight
That made the living wish to die.

XI
At dawn the storm had cleared away,
The forest stood in silent peace,
The house remained in pale decay
Where creeping ivy would not cease.
Yet on the stair a mark was found
Where claws had carved the ancient wood,
And in the dust along the ground
No single human footprint stood.

XII
So wander not where shadows keep
Their patient watch beneath the stairs,
For something in the earth’s dark sleep
Still waits to hear unguarded prayers.
And if you hear a scraping sound
Where empty silence ought to be,
Pray quickly for the holy ground—
For it may soon be calling thee.