I slowly lifted my hand and rubbed the sleep form my eyes. Everything was dark and my senses were dull in the shadows of the room. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness… I saw her. Her shady brown eyes illuminated the small room. I didn’t feel scared, the only words that escaped my mouth were, “What time is it?”
Her hand gripped my shoulder, tight, her frozen hand sent chills down my spine as she whispered in an almost inaudible voice, “2:22am, again.”
It felt like my heart dropped inside my aching chest, because right then I knew that this was no joke.
It all started with a game. It was a pretty simple game, someone would be blindfolded or covered with a blanket and the lights would be turned off. The one blindfolded was the ‘ghost’ and he or she would have to try and tag the other players in the room. This was the result of ‘ghost tag’. Easy, right?
Sierra (my friend), my brother, her brother and I were all happily playing ghost tag but there was a door, painted crimson that we were all terrified of. Sierra would tell us that a lady lives beyond that door, but of course we knew she was frivolous.
None of us believed her until the door opened. The hinges of the door were rusty and old, like her house and when it slowly opened there was always a creak that followed it right after. The eerie noise seemed to echo in the room and when I flickered the lights on, the door would be open. This occurred every single time, so we tied it shut with a piece of yarn. But this time was different, Sierra and I observed the string that we connected from the doorknob to a chair. We didn’t talk, we didn’t move, the room was like a graveyard and then the string moved. It looked as if the door was trying to open itself, we rushed out of the room, closing the basement door behind us and leaving the string attached.

That night, I woke up and searched for my iPod, it was 2:22am, I decided not to think much about the time and I let my heavy eyelids fall, letting my mind wander into a deep slumber once more.
The night after that, my eyes shot open. I quickly looked at the time… 2:22am. Strange coincidence, it was all just in my head, so I thought. I looked over my shoulder and saw Sierra on the other side of the room sleeping ever so soundly, her chest rising and falling steadily. I lay my head down on my soft pillow and stared at the wall until sleep took over me. This occurred every night, I would wake up at 2:22am and then fall right back to sleep. When I told Sierra, she wouldn’t believe me, all she said was,
“There’s no way that’s possible. You’re lying.”
So I told her to stay awake and tell me the time when I woke up.
That’s how it happened, but when we were both staking blankly into each other’s eyes thinking of what to do, we heard a noise coming from downstairs. I guess normally people would ignore it and go back to sleep or be too scared to investigate, but we cautiously made our way towards the stairs. By cautiously, we were like ninjas going to assassinate someone, nobody even heard us when I hit my foot and cursed colorfully. We ploddingly descended the stairs, the soft carpet rubbing against the bottoms of our feet. The door to the basement was open, when we were sure we closed it. We heard a woman’s raspy voice call out,
“Come here… I won’t… hurt… you.”
Sierra didn’t hesitate, she made her way down to the basement, my heart was beating rapidly, I didn’t know what would have been scarier; staying on the first floor alone and waiting for Sierra to come back or going to the basement and finding out who was making the noise. The compromise was to trail behind her, holding onto her sleeve with my head buried in her warm, luscious hair. We went down one step at a time (still like ninjas), then suddenly, she made and abrupt halt causing me to stumble into her. We held each other’s hand, sharing our fear and then Sierra turned on the lights.

The crimson door was wide open and the chair was knocked over. The string we tied was limply hanging on the door knob.
Without a word, we both understood what to do, she turned off the lights and I closed the basement door. We left the crimson door untouched and we hastily ran up the stairs and jumped into our beds that still held our warmth from when we left. Sierra and I stared wide-eyed at the bedroom door as if we were expecting it to open. It never did, and that night we talked ourselves to sleep, trying to forget about whatever was in the basement.
The noises kept coming back and haunting us but eventually we fell asleep.

Ghost or not, strange things happened that night. Oh I’m guessing you want an explanation. That voice? Maybe, it was he wind howling on a cold night. The crimson door? Maybe, it was broken, causing it to open over and over again.
Who is capable of mistaking these things, all the imagination and exaggeration? It was all done by two seven year old girls after watching a horror movie.