The Eleventh Hour

It didn’t use to be like this… I swear. I loved him once. I did. But I can’t anymore. Not after what I saw in that basement. Not after the things he put me through.

The image is still burned into my mind’s eye, like it’s been seared there for good. I see it when I close my eyes. I hear it when the house goes quiet.

Even talking about it now makes my skin crawl. My dog shifts at my feet, sensing it, ears twitching at nothing.

And you, if you were in my shoes you’d understand. You’d run.

So listen. Just listen. Here’s how it all began.

In the beginning…

We met at a car meet in the summer of 2000, right under the rusty red bridge where the air reeked of gasoline and fried food from vendors in folding chairs. The heat from the pavement shimmered, engines revved and rattled, and every laugh or shout bounced off the steel above like thunder. That’s where he found me—leaning against a friend’s car, pretending I belonged there.

He walked up with a grin that was too confident for someone in scuffed sneakers and said, “Are you French? Because Eiffel for you.”

It was stupid. Corny. The kind of one liner you’d groan at. But I laughed anyway. My cheeks flushed, my heart thumped harder than I wanted to admit. “I’ve never heard that one before. Where’s your wheels?”

If I had known then where that laugh would take me, I might’ve swallowed it back.

But I didn’t.

And that’s how this whole stupid show started.

We married after a year. Too fast—everyone said so. We didn’t care. Things snowballed: first the vows, then the little house tucked away in the woods, quiet enough to hear the trees sigh in the wind. Then came the baby. He had his father’s eyes—blue, almost ethereal, like glass that caught and held the light in a way that felt otherworldly.

For a while, it almost looked like a fairytale from the outside. But fairytales rot quick when you start turning the pages.

And now… Here I am. Back where I started. Sitting in my old childhood bed, the one I slept in when I was still innocent, before I ever met him. My son curled against me, breathing soft in his sleep. The dog pressed close, head heavy on my lap.

Everything else is frozen in time. The peeling wallpaper with its faded flowers, the dresser mirror cracked in the corner, the smell of cedar from the old closet that never quite goes away. The posters still thumbtacked crooked on the wall. Nothing touched, nothing changed. Just like the years in between never even happened.

Except they did. God, they did.

Then,

Things were nice for a long time until I started to snoop around. I guess ignorance is bliss, I just let my suspicions get the better of me.

He worked high-paying odd jobs here and there plus he got paid well enough so I didn't have to work a job. The days were chaotic and unorganized. I rolled with it every day because every night religiously without fault even after arguments he'd put our son to bed at nine o'clock every night and me and him would fall asleep on the couch most nights watching TV a little while after our son went to bed. After a few months of this I noticed he would get up out of bed every night at about eleven. Almost like it was his ritual…

Normally,

I'd chalk it up to him using the restroom or getting the midnight munchies. The thing is that it happens every night almost like clockwork, never failing just as the sun never fails to rise and fall.

One night I got curious, I got up to go see what he was doing and when I walked downstairs that's when I saw it. Such a horrid sight.

Clear as day.

He was crouched low on the cement, hunched like an animal over a kill. Dozens of tealights ringed him, their flames flickering and spitting, throwing shadows that crawled up the damp stone walls. Wax hissed as it dripped onto old concrete. The smell hit first. The air infused with the stench of iron and mildew, hot tallow and something sour under it all.

He scratched symbols into the floor with trembling fingers, the runes glistening wet and red his own blood smearing across the concrete like ink. His once-blue, almost ethereal eyes were black now, pupils swallowing everything. They rose to meet mine slowly, as though dragged upward by some unseen weight.

When he finally spoke, his voice was soft, almost kind:

“Every night I need to bleed, it's—it's the only way I can keep whatever ungodly horrors below at bay. Forgive me.”

He opened an old leather-bound book, its edges warped with age, and his mouth fell open on a hinge. Then, with a snap, his head jerked up at an inhuman speed. The noise that came out wasn’t a voice; it was pressure. A vibration. A sound so low and sharp it made my teeth ache and my eardrums feel like they’d split. The chant was wrong, ancient, clawing its way out of him, repeating and repeating like a siren woven with a scream.

Run…

That was the only thought left. I clutched my baby to my chest, whistled for the dog, and bolted. I didn’t dare look back.

The car roared to life beneath my shaking hands, tires spitting gravel as I tore down the dark road. Trees blurred into black shapes clawing at the headlights. The dog whined in the back seat; my son stirred against me, half-asleep. My mind swirled. How long had he been doing this? What exactly was he keeping at bay? And what would happen now that I’d left?

By the time I reached my mother’s house, it was nearly two in the morning. My son slept heavy against me, my dog pressed close, and I sat in silence, every nerve buzzing.

My phone lit up again and again. His name. His messages. His calls.

I never answered.

But even now, when the clock slides toward eleven, I swear I can still hear him.

That chant. Low. Endless.

Carried through the dark like it was meant for me.