My basement has always been my favorite part of my house. The heating wasn't good, but it had all the room that I would ever need. It's where the squad would always meet, and where my band recorded our first releases. It was a great place to hang out with my girlfriend without parental involvement.
The part I never liked, though, was the water softener in the corner. Yes, it sounds strange, but the water softener was the reason I stopped sleeping in the basement. That, and the crawl space. There was a thick blue curtain separating the main basement from the side that had the crawl space, but that's a story for later.
Sometimes, with no provocation, the water softener would emit a loud, screeching noise. It sounded almost like one of the animatronic screams from Five Nights at Freddy's. If you've ever played that, you'll know what I'm talking about. I could never figure out why it did that, and when I asked my dad he said it might have something to do with the motor. I wasn't too sure, since he had never been down there to hear it.
My friends never really commented on the noise. Actually, I'm not sure if they ever did. But it would still wake me up every few nights, when it was particularly loud. Typically I would sleep through it, though. It became normal; not in the way that I had 'learned to accept it,' per se, but in that it didn't directly affect my life, and I never gave it very much thought. Plus, if the screeching ever went on for too long, I could just unplug it from the wall. That was, until a week or so ago.
Five friends were spending the night. It was a Friday, and Fridays are squad days. We were sitting around bitching about our upcoming concert band competition, while simultaneously immersing ourselves in our phones and computers.
“I just hate that our band doesn't know what a piano means. All it is is loud, loud, loud,” Brian said, looking up from his redditing for a moment.
“Yeah,” I said, “I get what you mean. It's almost like they see one-” SCREEECH! The sound of the water softener cut me off, just as a draugr popped into my Skyrim character's frame of view. I cut it down while the water softener did its thing, then started my sentence over.
“I feel like people in our band see one forte, and-”
SCREEEECH!
There it went again, even louder this time. I paused the game and pulled away from the computer. “Sorry,” I said, and walked over to the couch and sat down. There was nothing I could do to make the water softener stop, and it really ruined the immersion of the game for me.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEECH!
After the third time, I started to worry. It never made the noise that frequently. Keaton started to say something to me from the other side of the room, but I couldn't hear him over the noise being made by the softener. When it finally died down, I asked him to repeat himself.
“I said the storm's getting pretty-” The loudest grinding noise that it had ever made erupted in the corner of the room. My hands instinctively went to my ears, and my eyes squeezed shut. I could feel the noise in my bones. When I opened my eyes, I could swear that I saw the curtains rustle. Curtains rustling, and more screeching. It wasn't comforting. I would have to unplug the damn thing. The noise was going to take me to the grave. I got up and began to walk towards the device, when I saw the curtains rustling again. It looked like someone was pushing against them, as if to move them out of the way and come into the room. Yet, everyone was already in here.
SCREEECH!
The water softener wailed again, not as loud as last time, yet... menacing, if that's the word for it. I quickened my pace, and knelt down next to the water softener to unplug it from the power strip.
In one moment, the curtains pulled to opposite sides of the rack, and the power died, taking the screeching with it. I was shaking, and sweat started to form on my forehead. For a moment, I completely lost control of my motor functions.
Because the water softener was already unplugged. And the screeching was behind me now.