The Dark Somnium - "What Waits at the Top of the Stairs?" Creepypasta | Scary Stories from reddit Nosleep

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

This Creepypasta scary story is from the nosleep subreddit, written by FirstBreath1 (Matt Richardsen)--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/darksomnium/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My brother lost his wife and infant daughter on a cold October morning. I was asleep at the time. You know how some moments stick with you? I will always remember that cold rush of reactions upon rolling out of bed and reading that first awful text message. Confusion, anger, disbelief. Rush to the hospital this morning. Lots of bleeding. Angela and Julie passed an hour ago.

The confusion came first. Angie was not due to give birth for weeks. I didn't even know they picked out a name yet. The anger came from the possibility that this could be a prank. But who would joke about such a thing? The disbelief came from the tiny picture that populated my screen, the only one I would ever see of my niece. A tiny, beautiful baby with a pink headband and heavy-litted eyes closed tightly shut.

I was able to spend some time with her, he said. She fought for a while after her mom went, but I think... I think Angela wanted her back. My entire body went numb. My girls are gone, man. I rolled back over to check my own newly pregnant wife. She muttered something small in her sleep. Selfishly, I checked her breathing because I just couldn't help myself.

I wish she could take me too. That was the text that jolted me. I guess you could say it inspired something for me. me to do, something that made me feel a little less than useless. I had to get to him. I had to help him. I jumped out of bed. I shucked on some jeans.

I found a shirt on the floor, ran outside without so much as brushing my teeth, who could think of dental hygiene at a time like this, and hopped into my car. I sped through every red light. I turned left when I should have gone straight. The journey took me about twenty minutes when it should have been five, and I didn't even have the capacity to be upset by time because I just kept repeating over and over again in my head like some sick, demented mantra. How?

How? How? I couldn't get the picture out of my mind. They had the time to put a bow in her hair. She had hair. She was a girl. A beautiful, beautiful girl. Oh God, and what about her mom?

She was so young, too young. Aren't we all? How? How? How? I arrived to find my older brother in a heap on the steps to the hospital. He couldn't stop crying long enough to tell me what happened, but it didn't really matter, I guess, in the end.

Stuff like that never really matters. What's gone is gone. The rest is just details. I won't lie to you and say those first few weeks were anything short of impossible. I have never experienced something so dramatic. in my life. I couldn't begin to imagine how he felt. I couldn't come close to relating, and it would be an embarrassment for me to even try. So all I could really offer was damage control. Protecting my brother from himself became my only priority. I moved in, for the time being,

if nothing else, than to keep an eye out. Some days Anthony refused to eat. Some days he refused to get out of bed at all, and I was all right with that. As weird as it sounds, I couldn't form a definition of normal in this type of situation. Nobody could. Anything that he wanted to do was fine by me, and that included sitting in bed all day and barely taking care of yourself. The only thing that I insisted on was that he attend therapy. There was no pill or medicine to wipe away that kind of grief.

The only thing that can help is time and talking, and if he wasn't going to talk to me, he needed to talk to someone. Thankfully, we agreed on that much. He met with a shrink every other day through video chat. I wouldn't say the turnaround was immediate. It was about a month before Aunt had any interest in the world at all. I thought the pills helped. One month in, he flicked on the TV in his bedroom, started watching the news. Two months in, he started helping with day-to-day chores. Then, one morning, somewhere around the three, month mark, I actually saw him smile about something. A joke, he claimed, something that he saw on the internet. That was a good day. I have a project. He said to me over coffee one morning,

soon after. The therapist wants me to have a project, and I've got one. I didn't ask what it was, and he didn't tell me. That was fine. I learned not to try and pull details from conversations. The therapist insisted it would be better to avoid prying, could erase all of our progress, as she so eloquently put it. So sometimes it's just best to let sleeping dogs lie. Following her advice, I smiled like a stupid dickhead, like the news didn't affect me, like the news didn't concern me, like it was just another day in paradise. That's great, man, happy to hear it.

Maybe I should have done more. No, forget that. I absolutely should have done more. I know that now, but Anthony was excited for once. Excited was a revelation those days. He took my response with a thumbs up and headed out into the garage. His black Tesla zipped out of the driveway and peeled down the road into town, and then he was gone.

I thought about following him, but I wasn't able to escape the guilt of the idea. There was a trust element between the two of us. He trusted me to be there for him. I trusted him to not do anything stupid. I texted my wife for validation and she agreed, so I waited and waited. Anthony came home about two hours later with a truck full of wood. I ran outside to greet him, desperately trying not to look eager. He sort of tried to shrug me off.

That was not abnormal. At building something? I asked. Yep. He answered over his shoulder. What are you building? Something she would have liked. I wanted to ask more.

I should have asked more. But I couldn't force myself to question his confidence. I kept thinking about what the shrink said. I kept thinking that one wrong comment could send us back into hibernation for another three months. I didn't have another three months. I didn't have the heart to tell him. We needed to move on, to rebuild, grow stronger, whatever stupid little cliches keep you We needed to reach that point.

And if building some weird shit in the backyard got us there, so be it. Good luck. I went back inside and heard a hammer connecting with nails soon after. The sound reverberated throughout the day. I kind of forgot about it after a while. It became background noise. I had work and my wife's doctor's appointments at telemedicine for the loss, and quite a few other things to occupy my mind. The hammering still kept up in the background, throughout

the day and into the evening. Power tools joined sometime thereafter. I finally made it out into the backyard sometime around 9 o'clock. That was when I first saw the staircase. I don't know if staircase is even the right word to describe it. He didn't attach a railing. The planks were nothing more than untreated wood slabs. Each step was tied to the others. with loose brackets and supported by cut-length metal poles shoved haphazardly into the ground. No concrete to hold them in place, no weighted support of any kind. I didn't think anybody would be able to put any weight on it whatsoever without the entire thing collapsing. There were over thirty steps at that point. The entire thing had to be ten feet tall. It wrapped back in

on itself like a spiral so as to not enter his neighbor's yard. Aunt pushed a ladder to the side of it to help him build. He was standing somewhere near the top. The therapist be damned, I couldn't hide my judgmental tone any longer. What the... I shouted. What the hell are you doing, man? Give me a sec. Anthony called from somewhere up in the sky. His footsteps reverberated down the shaky ladder. When he finally met me at the bottom, he was ecstatic. Every inch of his body seemed to shake with energy. I hadn't seen anything like it since we were kids. He wasn't even sweating, which I found weird, considering he was overweight and desperately

out of shape. I'm building her staircase. He babbled. It's going to be perfect. It's going to be the staircase. I see that. Angela would have loved the staircase man. You know that.

I barely understood the connection. I did recall a fight between the two of them, years prior, in which Anthony wanted to buy this very house. but almost didn't, because Angie hated the staircase. Beyond that, I had no idea what he was talking about. There was no great infatuation with staircases in our family, to my knowledge. You can't keep this thing here, man. The town.

He cut me off by turning back towards the ladder. Don't worry. He quipped. Almost done. I stared at my brother from the bottom of his ridiculous creation. I thought about calling the therapist. I thought about calling the cops. But it was late, and I knew only one of them would actually answer.

Come on, man, let's go to bed. You can finish it tomorrow. He looked at me like he might have told me to go to hell. A debated trying to force him inside. Instead, he dropped his hammer and nails on the spot. He wordlessly went for the door and grumpily padded over to the couch and collapsed on its rusty springs. I heard him snoring soon after. Somehow, my appeasement worked, at least for a little one.

while. I woke up at two in the morning to the refreshed sound of a hammer and nails in the backyard. I tried to ignore it and did. I shouldn't have. But there's not a lot that can be done about that now. I woke up a second time at 8 a.m. Sharp. This time, somebody was knocking at the door. Assuming it to be my wife, I answered in my boxers. Two uniformed White Valley police officers waited on the other side. Good morning, sir. Are you the homeowner? Uh, no. Sorry. I'm his brother. Are you aware of what's going on in the backyard? I turned around to fully witness the monolith hanging above us.

This thing had to be 60 feet tall at this point. The wood and metal framing swung dangerously in the wind. Somewhere behind a particular cluster of loose boards, a hammer and nail banged away, keeping a flawlessly monotonous rhythm. We also heard whistling. Oh, shit, was all I could manage to say. I guess I thought it would get a laugh. It didn't. The officer did the rest of the talking.

Sir, you have exactly 24 hours to take that thing down before an official complaint is filed with the city. Once the complaint is filed, you have a week before the homeowner risks losing this property via forced foreclosure. Do you understand, and are you capable of relaying this message to your brother? He handed me an official looking piece of paper. I nodded and took it. You have to understand.

My brother is grieving. The officer looked back up at the staircase. We'll be back tomorrow. And with that, they were off. I darted into the backyard and screamed for Anthony to get down from his death trap and talk to me. The hammering stopped. His footsteps shuffled down the steps. When he hopped down to greet me, he looked even happier than before.

Not tired, not angry, not sad, just kiddally happy. It was weird. Have you ever tried to be angry with somebody who is so visibly happy? It's not the easiest thing in the world. What's up, little brother? He asked in a song-like tone. The cops came, I answered indignantly. You're going to forfeit your house if you keep this up.

He laughed. I couldn't understand. Why? Doesn't matter. All done now. He patted me on the back one more time before heading back inside. What's done? I called over his shoulder.

You have to take it down and get rid of all this stuff. We have to get a dumpster. I know a guy. He ignored me and went inside. I followed. Did you hear me? They're going to take the house, Angela's house. He laughed again.

Maybe tomorrow. I've got a week, though, don't I? He flipped the paper back at me and disappeared into his bedroom. Once again, I thought about following and finishing the conversation, but I didn't. Anthony slept through the bedroom. I called my wife. I called our mom. I called our dad.

I even called the useless therapist, and all of them said the same exact thing. Give him a day. Keep an eye on him. If he doesn't take it down tomorrow, we'll do something. But give him till Monday. Just relax. It's the first thing he's enjoyed since they died. The cops can't take his house without a fight.

You've got time." Anthony slept into the night. I went into his room to check on him around ten, then again around midnight. He was fine, snoring soundly. He even knocked my hand away when I went to check his breathing. I went to bed in my sleeping bag by his bed around two. It had been a couple of weeks since I slept in there with him, but it seemed necessary. Between the good mood and the weird sleep patterns, the whole thing made me uncomfortable.

I heard footsteps about an hour later. It was only one at first, but it was loud, loud enough to shake me from the beginnings of a restless sleep. I reached for my glasses and checked my watch. Anthony snored soundly. A second step echoed through the house quietly. The third one shook the nightstand. Then four, five, and six came in a rapid succession, almost like a scurry. Seven, eight, and nine were much more calculated, almost unsure.

The rest of the footsteps came at an outright sprint. I nearly wet my pants. Every hair on my body stood up like a live wire. I shot out of the sleeping bag and rushed to check on ant. There wasn't much time. Everything seemed to happen quickly and slowly at the same time. A final footstep shook the nightstand once again, almost like a jump from a staircase to a landing.

A giggle drifted through the windows. I shook Anthony hard. I slapped his face. I whispered shouted at him. Nothing worked. I want to stress at this point, as I always must, when relaying this part of the story, he wasn't dead. His chest moved up and down steadily.

He just wasn't responding to me. The patio door opened downstairs. stairs. Footsteps followed. An overwhelming feeling came over me, which I can't quite adequately describe, almost like something foreign had entered the house, something that didn't belong, something unnatural. I wanted to fight it, but I didn't have any weapons. I wanted to run from it, but Anthony wouldn't move. And so I did the most cowardly thing, something I still struggle with to this day. I hid in the closet. The footsteps came down the hallway rapidly, confidently, like they seemed to know where they were going. A door creaked open. Between a gap in Anthony's dress shirts, I saw something

impossible, something that still sits in the buried corners of my subconscious today. I saw Angela, only it wasn't. The frame of her body was all there. Her dark brown hair dripped over pallet-gray. skin, but it was almost like staring at an x-ray. Angie's face was faded, but her bones were illuminated. A trail of dirt trailed from the entrance all the way to the bed, her bed. A shape waited at the open door, a brown teddy bear by its side. I couldn't bring myself to look at it. I knew that bear all too well. I bought it the day before the funeral.

Angela, or the figure that could be called Angela, hovered over my brother's bedside. He was babbling sleep talk, random phrases and numbers that didn't make any sense. He had done it since he was a kid. Without warning, she slipped her hand inside his chest. My brother let out a cool gasp, but he didn't seem bothered when Angela pulled out his heart. I tried to scream. I tried to rush them from the closet, but it was like life was moving. in slow motion. I couldn't reach them. I couldn't move at all. Anthony, or the shape that could be

called Anthony, stood up and smiled. His bones were illuminated. His skin was gray. A shape rushed up to greet him. The same shape I couldn't bring myself to look at. He wrapped her up in his arms, and then they were gone. Footsteps painted a picture of their journey, down the hall, through the door. Up the steps without so much as a goodbye. I chased after them. I ran outside, fully expecting to ascend the steps myself, fully prepared to fight. But they were gone. The entire structure was gone.

And so was my brother.