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Hi, I’m Gabriel. Two weeks ago, my family and I bought a new house. It was fairly cheap, so we didn’t expect much from it, but it was big. Too big to be as cheap as it was, but it was available immediately if my parents paid in cash. I knew something was off. Especially since the realtor said the basement was off limits. He also acted really weird. He kept stuttering, and he was really fidgety. Every time we walked past the basement door, he would stare at it as if he were making sure of something… checking for something… The more time that passed during the tour, the more eager I was to find out why the realtor was so unsettled. After the realtor left, I wandered towards the basement door. As I got there, my parents noticed me and reminded me of what the realtor said. “Don’t go down there until we figure out why the realtor said that!” my mom said. That night, whenever I walked past the door, my parents would glance over at me to make sure I wasn’t going down there, but I was determined to find a way. During lunch the next day, I asked why we couldn’t go down there, and my mom replied “It doesn’t matter why, yet. There is plenty of space for us up here, and the house was cheap so we shouldn’t question it.” After lunch, my mom went back to unpacking. My sister snuck to the basement door and slowly opened it. I walked over, and she walked down a few steps before saying “It’s so dark down here!” My mom heard her and made her come back upstairs, saying “There might be nails or screws laying around down there, or maybe cleaning chemicals! We don’t want to risk you getting hurt.” I had seen a bit of what the basement looked like, and now I had a general idea, but it wasn’t enough for me… I needed to see more. I needed a plan. Over the next few days, I observed everyone’s schedules. I found out when everyone was at school, work, sleeping, or running errands. By my fifth day of observation, I was ready. My parents usually went to bed around eleven. My dad would fall asleep almost right away, while my mom stayed up for about another hour watching TV in their room. That gave me a small window of time before I needed to be asleep to get my full 8 hours before my mom made me my bowl of Lucky Duckies and I watched my daily episode of Blues Clues… With my sister, of course… It was her favorite. Anyway, I waited until the house was completely quiet, and then at 11:47 PM, I slowly opened my bedroom door and stepped into the hallway. Then I heard a creak. Thinking someone heard me, I froze. Nothing. I waited a few seconds before slowly walking to the basement door and opening it. I couldn’t see past the first few steps, and I most definitely could not see the bottom. There was no light switch by the door, so I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. It didn’t look like there was anything there, just an empty room. As I was walking down, I noticed something weird. The basement looked different from what I had seen through the doorway earlier. The walls seemed farther apart, and the ceiling looked higher. As I walked further down, I began to feel uneasy. This whole thing felt strange. Why was I sneaking down here so late? I should’ve just pressured my parents to ask the realtor why the basement was off limits. The closer to the bottom I got, the colder I felt. I finally reached the bottom, and the floor was freezing. I wandered deeper into the darkness, and then I heard a voice. My sister’s voice. I saw her and she ran towards me. She tripped and scraped her knee, but got right back up. “Gabe! You’re here!” But it sounded slightly off. I looked at her more closely, and her eyes were dull and gray. Her breathing was strange too… It was too loud. My eyes darted to the scrape on her knee… the blood was clear. Not translucent, but completely clear. It was still there, but it most definitely wasn’t blood. What was that stuff? Better yet, who– no. What was this entity? I knew one thing, and that was that this was not my sister. I needed to leave this place, and fast. I ran towards the stairs, and skipped steps all the way up. I opened the door, and ran through, but quickly slowed down, just in time to carefully and quietly shut it behind me. I tiptoed back to my room and closed my door. As I looked at the clock, it read 11:48 PM. How? I knew I was down there for more than a minute, but I had bigger problems to solve. What just happened? Why was I ice-cold? And how was something learning to mimic my sister, when she had never stepped foot down there? I decided to try again the next night. 12:03 AM (a little late for my 8 hours, but I was determined), I stepped into the hallway. Crept to the basement door; opened it slowly; down the arctic stairs; dark room; different shape; gray-eyed, loud-breathing sister; run; leap; shut the door; 11:48 PM… now I was confused… but at least I was going to get my 8 hours now… The next day, I decided to privately tell my sister what I had seen. We both decided that only one of us should go down at a time, to prevent us getting each other mixed up with the mimics. My sister went down this time, and when she came up, she claimed that she saw a mimic of the realtor that had sold us this house. “Should we tell mom and dad?” I asked, but she said that they’d never believe us. Breakfast was quiet that day. Whether it was the stress of having a new house, or concern of the basement, I’ll never know. When breakfast ended, my parents said that they had to go to the store, and would leave me and my sister home alone if we didn’t want to come. Yes! The perfect opportunity to visit the basement again. As my parents pulled out of the garage, I crept toward the basement door. As I opened it, I noticed something new. It was lit up, the walls were a different color than before, and the concrete floor was now carpeted. This proved my theory that the basement changed every time I went down. I walked down the steps, and I began to see more of the room. It wasn’t giant like before. Instead, it was about the size of the average living room. It was also noticeably warmer. I thought that maybe the changing wasn’t bad after all. But I was wrong. As soon as I reached the bottom of the stairs, a metal door shut behind me and several wooden doors appeared in the room. I decided to go through one of the doors, as it could be my only way out of the basement. As I stepped through the first door, I found myself standing in a hallway. It looked like the hallway in my house. I thought I had somehow teleported back upstairs. The basement was weird, and it being able to teleport me didn’t seem too far off. It was the same wooden floor as upstairs, the same wallpaper, and the same picture frames hanging on the walls. Then I noticed something was wrong. Every picture frame was empty. I walked closer to one of them and looked inside. There was no glass, no photograph, no nothing. Just a black rectangle where the picture should be. I turned around, and the basement door was gone. “Great.” I pulled out my phone and checked the time, and it was 11:48 AM. That couldn’t be right. I entered the basement almost 20 minutes ago. My parents had just left for the store. It should have been sometime in the morning. I tried calling my sister, but there was no signal. I tried again, and the call connected. “Gabe?” My sister’s voice. “Where are you? I’m in the basement.” I heard footsteps approaching me. They were light footsteps, but they were slow. If my sister was really down here, then she would be trying to find me quickly. Then her voice came back. “Gabe, where are you?” I didn’t answer, and the footsteps stopped. “Gabe?” I slowly lowered my phone. Something had just changed. The hallway wasn’t the same anymore. There were now pictures in the frames. Pictures of me. One showed me eating breakfast, one showed me sitting at my desk, and one showed me walking down the stairs into the basement. I stepped closer to the last one. It showed me standing in the exact hallway I was standing in now. Then, I heard something move behind me. It sounded like a person. I turned around. Nothing. I looked back at the pictures of me, but all of the frames were empty again. Then, I noticed something. My sister doesn’t have a phone. That meant that I was on the phone with a mimic. I immediately started running through the hallway. I didn’t care where it led. I just needed to find a way out. After a few seconds of running, I saw a door. I opened it, and it was the same hallway. Except this time, there were way more floorboards than before, and there weren’t any picture frames this time. I heard creaking behind me, and I stopped. Then I heard my sister. “Gabe?” I didn’t turn around. “Gabe, wait!” I kept running. “Gabe!” The voice still sounded about 2 feet behind me. I knew my sister couldn’t keep up with my running. Therefore, this wasn’t my sister. The voice became louder, then quieter, Then it sounded like my dad. “Gabriel, come back.” I kept running. Then my mom. “Gabe, honey, it’s okay.” Then I stopped. Not because I believed them, but because I heard something else. My own voice. “Don’t turn around.” I looked at the wall beside me, and there was a mirror standing there. I hadn’t noticed it before, and it probably wasn’t even there before. My reflection was staring straight ahead. I wasn’t. I was looking at the mirror. But my reflection turned its head toward me. Then it smiled. It had too many teeth. I slowly walked backward. The reflection raised its hand and pointed behind me. I didn’t stay to watch what it was trying to tell me. Instead, I ran. The hallway stretched farther with every step. Doors appeared along the walls, and then they disappeared. The floor changed from wood, to carpet, then tile, then concrete. And through all of it, I could hear footsteps following me. Eventually, I reached another door. This one had a piece of paper taped to it. I stopped. It read “this one is real” in squiggly red letters. Then I heard my sister behind me. “Gabe?” I grabbed the doorknob. “Please.” I closed my eyes. “I know you’re scared.” My hand tightened around the knob. Then she said something that made my blood run cold. “I’m not the one you should be scared of.” Then everything went black