The Basement Friend - Poem

The Basement Friend

She dances down the cellar stairs,
Bare feet on weathered wood.
She hums a song none taught to her,
But sings it when she should.

A threadbare doll held in her grip,
One button eye askew,
Its dress is stained, its mouth is torn—
Yet still it feels like new.

Her parents call, “Come back upstairs!
It’s damp and dark below.”
She turns her head and softly says,
“But that’s where best friends go.”

“He tells me stories late at night,
Of tunnels under trees,
Of people who forgot their names,
And houses made of knees.”

They laugh it off, a child’s mind,
Too wild, too full of dreams.
But father locks the basement door—
At least, or so it seems.

She draws strange pictures every day,
Of men without a face.
Of crooked teeth and twisted limbs,
In tight and airless space.

“He lives behind the furnace now,”
She tells them with a smile.
“He only comes if I am good—
He’s waited quite a while.”

Mother’s nerves begin to fray.
The air feels cold and thin.
A rancid smell begins to drift—
Like rot beneath the skin.

They search the dark with flashlight beams,
And call her name with dread.
No man, no hole, no secret space—
Just cobwebs overhead.

“Who is this man?” her mother pleads.
She stares with glassy eyes.
“You can’t see him. You never could.
He hides when grown-ups rise.”

“And what he wants?” her father asks.
She smiles and strokes her doll.
“He says that soon he’ll take me home—
We’re waiting for the call.”

The priest is called, the sage is lit,
The walls are lined with salt.
But still she hums that wicked tune—
And halts at every halt.

One night she’s gone—no window cracked,
No door was left ajar.
Just footprints leading down the stairs,
And none that wander far.

The doll is there, alone, upright,
Its eye now oddly new.
Its torn mouth stitched into a grin—
Its dress no longer blue.

They hear her voice beneath the house,
Though every vent is sealed.
“He said I passed his final test—
My fate has been revealed.”

Now parents lie awake each night,
As silence presses thin.
The furnace breathes like something else
Is waking deep within.

The locks are changed, the lights stay on,
But still the air feels wrong.
And if you stand near basement doors—
You might just hear their song.

So if your child speaks sweet and soft,
Of someone you can’t see…
Look twice, and watch the cellar dark.
Some friends don’t let you flee.