24 May There’s Something Wrong With My Daughter’s Treehouse

It took me nearly three months to build this mansion of a treehouse for my daughter. It had slides and swings, windows and doors, ladders and steps. It had it all. Shit, I even insulated it and had power outlets, heating and cooling. This monstrous structure was a beautiful mix between a full-fledged apartment and a McDonald’s play place. I was incredibly proud of it, but I must say that it fully solidified the truth in her words whenever my wife told me that I sometimes way over-do things. Truth be told, it only made her more right since our daughter was only four years old.

By the time I finished building the treehouse there were only a few nice days left in the fall before the snow hit, and my daughter only got those few days to play outside and in my creation. Even though I did install heating in it my daughter wasn’t a big fan of going outside to play in the snow unless we turned it into a big event to go sledding somewhere. This was slightly disappointing to me but she was only four so I understood.

When the snow melted, and the temperature climbed again she was out there playing in it almost constantly. This made me happy to see how excited she was with what I made for her. For about a week it was even difficult to get her to come back inside to eat and sleep. There had been a couple of nights I had to go out and drag her back in the house for bath time and bed. It was times like these I was happy I had made the treehouse big enough and sturdy enough for me to venture up there. It was plenty big enough that was for sure, I had made the inside twelve feet by sixteen feet with an eight-foot ceiling. I secretly had planned that size so that if for some reason my daughter didn’t like it I could just turn it into a cool sort of man cave.

A month went by with her out there spending nearly every waking moment playing either inside or on the swings and slides. Then, one day, in the middle of the afternoon, my daughter ran screaming out of the treehouse and into the house.

“Daddy! Daddy! I don’t like it!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, little one, what’s wrong?” I said as she barreled into my legs nearly causing my knees to buckle.

“My treehouse! It’s scary!”

“Seriously? It’s been your favorite place for months, why is it all of a sudden scary?” I asked with a little more annoyance in my voice than I intended.

“I saw a scary man in there! He was hurt!” she said.

“Wait? What did you say? Is there some…just stay here.” I commanded as I ran out the door and toward the treehouse.

As my hand touched the doorknob at the top of the steps my heart jumped for a second and the thought of how dumb it was charging inside with no real plan if there truly is someone in there. Still I turned the handle and burst into the room of the treehouse.

Nothing. Various toys and Barbies on the floor, a kiddie couch, and a couple of small beanbag chairs were the only things in the room. I’d like to say that I searched the place, but that was literally it. There wasn’t much searching, as it was all one big room… so, search complete. I saw no man inside hurt or otherwise save for myself. I walked back out the door and back into the house. As I walked through the back door I found my daughter in the next room over sitting patiently just watching the back door with her thumb in her mouth.

“Who is he?” she said to me as soon as she saw me walk through the door.

“Who is who? I didn’t see anyone out there. What did he look like?

“He’s gone?” she replied, completely ignoring my question and running past me back outside.

What the fuck just happened? I thought to myself as I watched her climb the steps and enter the treehouse from the kitchen window.

I mentioned the odd experience to my wife a little later that day. She seemed only slightly concerned, and we both chalked it up to her exceptional imagination. That night as we sat eating around the table my wife began to ask our daughter about what had happened.

“Daddy told me you saw someone in your treehouse today. Did they ever come back?”

“Um, no.”

“What did the man look like? Do you know how he got into your treehouse?”

“He was scary. His mouth looked weird, and looked like he had lots of owwies in it.”

“Do you know how he got in the treehouse?” I chimed in, wondering if I was going to need to upgrade the security around the house.

“I don’t know. I just was playing on the swings and then I came in to play with my toys and he was there.”

“So, he was already hiding in the treehouse?” my wife asked.

“No, he was hiding like in here,” she said, pointing to her head.

My wife and I locked eyes at the sound of this and both let out a sigh of relief assuming that it meant it really had been her imagination. Everything went much more smoothly and calmly the rest of the night.

We went another week without any thought or mention of the situation. Regardless of the lack of hearing anything more about it I still felt uncomfortable and the day after I decided to move the back-yard security camera, pointing it at the treehouse as best I could. Sadly, with how much my daughter played back there I wouldn’t be able to set the motion detection on it without it sending alerts every five minutes.

In the middle of the second week following the unusual afternoon, my daughter again ran into the house screaming about a man in the treehouse again. This time I immediately ran out to the treehouse and bursting through the door I was again met with nothing more than an empty room. Frustrated and annoyed at the situation I turned and began to leave the treehouse. Just as I passed through the doorway, behind me I heard a crack and a thud as if something had been knocked over or broken. I spun around and looking through the doorway from outside the treehouse I saw nothing. I thought to walk back in and check a second time, I really wish I hadn’t.

As my foot crossed the threshold of the door back into the treehouse everything changed. The light from the sun coming through the windows vanished. Rusted steel and concrete surrounded me and everything was bathed in an ominous deep red glow. An overhead light flickered and popped giving me only quick random glimpses of the horror I was now surrounded by. Nearly every surface looked like it had been coated in a thick layer of sticky half coagulated blood. Chains hung from the ceiling and ended with the same hooks you would imagine at a slaughterhouse. A rusted steel table sat against the wall with various crude rusted tools on it. The place sort of looked like an abandoned warehouse or meat locker of some sort.

A clank rang out behind me and I turned around, half expecting to see the doorway out into my back yard. I didn’t see the door I was hoping for, but I did see a massive man, nearly seven feet tall, who looked to be solid muscle. He was shirtless but covered in scars. With the dim and flickering light, I couldn’t tell if he was black or just completely covered head to toe in dried blood. The lips of the goliath were missing and its teeth had been ripped out and replaced with rusted nails, screws, and razor blades crudely inserted at odd angles into its gums, and blood seemed to constantly run from the nightmarish dental work. A giant scar ran down its face and large stitches using what looked like thick yarn or twine drenched in blood held both the scar and one of its eyes closed.

The large man raised its arms out to its sides, and I noticed that huge nails and screws were also sticking out of its skin in random locations. Blood dripped from each place a nail or screw had been protruding from his skin. He lowered his head as his arms became stretched out fully from his shoulders and let out a strained and wheezy attempt at a yell. I guessed that its vocal cords had either been severely damaged or removed. I could see rage rise in its one good eye as it began to run toward me.

“Oh, shit! What the fuck?!” I yelled as I turned and ran as fast as I could.

The dim and flickering light caused me to slip and stumble over hooks and chains lying on the floor that I had not noticed before. The man let out another wheezy yell as it chased after me. I screamed and ran.

Stumble and roll.

Scramble to my feet.

Scream and continue running.

I hit the wall clumsily when I tried to look back to see how much the creature had gained on me.

It was getting closer, and closer.

I ran and felt along the wall just trying to find my way in the nearly perfect dark that I had been surrounded in. the huge behemoth of a man was getting closer and closer. Finally, I found it, a door handle, or a crash bar really. I slammed into it and luckily it burst open and I fell through the doorway.

Quickly I scrambled to my feet and as I stood fully up and began to run, I realized I was outside. I was once again in my back yard.

“Holy shit!” I exclaimed breathlessly, looking back at the treehouse, my heart pounding furiously inside my chest.

My brain had insurmountable trouble in trying to comprehend what had just happened. Was it a hallucination? Some sort of waking stress-induced nightmare? I couldn’t truly grasp what I had seen or what I had just gone through. I walked cautiously back into the house a constant feeling of uneasiness flooded my body. My wife standing at the back door saw the look on my face and asked if I had seen anything in the treehouse. I nervously chuckled at her choice of words but not knowing how to explain I just told her no I hadn’t.

My daughter wanted to go back out the next day and I refused to let her go out there alone. When we got out there, I stepped through the doorway first, telling my daughter to stand back and wait for a second, nothing happened. I stood just inside the doorway and let my daughter enter while I scanned the room looking for anything out of the ordinary. She seemed completely unaffected as she walked in and instantly began playing on the floor with her toys. As I saw this, I decided to merely shrug off my previous experience as my own temporary psychosis.

I try my best to not be an overprotective parent, and I don’t believe in the paranormal, but I can’t get the images of that afternoon out of my head. It makes me wonder if there is any truth to it or if there is truly something wrong.

A few days later I was standing in the kitchen loading the dishwasher and I heard a scream radiate from the back yard. Worried and confused I looked over to confirm that yes, my daughter was still in the next room playing. Nervous, I opened the back door and began to walk toward the treehouse. Not wanting to enter the structure, I called out from the ground.

“H-hey? Is s-someone in there?” I stuttered with anxiety.

No reply.

“Hello? Is there anyone there?”

The only response was another scream. This one was much less woman-in-pain and much more guttural-demonic-beast.

“What the…” I mumbled under my breath but was interrupted by another scream. This one back to sounding more like a woman in pain.

Upset at the idea, I realized I was going to have to go up in there to get any answers. My body trembled as I forced myself up the steps, my brain screaming at me in reluctance to enter. I held my breath and closed my eyes as my hand grasped and turned the handle to the door. I opened the door and after a few seconds, exhaled, and opened my eyes. There was nothing. It was just as my daughter had left it a few days ago.

“Holy shit, I am completely losing my mind,” I said to myself as I stood there looking through the door into the essentially empty room. “I really need to get my shit together; this is getting embarrassing.”

I turned to walk back into the house and the corner of my eye caught something inside the room. I looked back and recognized a small stuffed pink squid lying on the floor next to the couch.

“Dammit child, I told you not to bring your stuffed animals out here,” I said to myself under my breath as I began to walk in to grab it.

Again, as I stepped through the doorway the light faded. The red glow and flickering light returned, and screams bellowed out around me. Excruciating, horrific screams of pain filled the air. I was back in that hellish warehouse once again. My first thought was to run for the door again but looking in that direction it was gone. The place that held my escape was now nothing but flat, blood-covered concrete wall. Anxiety and fear rose in my throat as another scream flooded the room and I looked around to find its source.

On a table in the middle of the room lay a woman, the giant of a man was on top of her straddling her. Her chest and ribs had been cut and ripped from her body exposing her organs. A huge rusted knife was stabbed into the side of her neck and I had no idea how it was possible she was still alive let alone still screaming. The man was taking handfuls of her intestines and pulling them from her body. He was wrapping her organs around himself and stroking himself with them. He looked toward the sky and with his mouth gaping, released a loud, guttural yell that vibrated the room. After a few strokes he would throw the chunk of intestine or other organ across the room. It would splat as it hit the wall or floor and he would grab another handful and rip it from her open chest. Completely frozen in shock at the horrific sight I watched as the woman’s head turned toward me and screamed again, you could already see the vacant look of death in her eyes. Just as she looked toward me, a chunk of stomach flew in my direction and splattered against the ground near my feet. He grabbed her heart and ripped it from her chest, lifting her entire torso off the table before the arteries snapped and her lifeless body slammed back down. He yelled out again as he brought himself to orgasm and shot a black tar into the open blood-filled cavity that had been the woman’s chest.

I nearly passed out from the pure shock and disgust but instead I snapped out of my trance and began to run. Not sure where to go, I just knew I had to get out of there. Again, tripping and stumbling over various things on the ground I found the wall on the opposite side of the room far from the light. I began to feel around in total darkness for a door. I heard a yell and turned back, in the dim light I saw the goliath of a man bite into the woman’s flesh with his rusted screws and nails for teeth then flip the table over. He yelled out again, and just as he looked like he was starting to look for me I found a door. I pressed and slammed against the door, but it just wouldn’t open. The failed medical experiment of a man heard my attempt and started toward me. Panicked, I slammed harder and harder into the door, still to no avail; it just wouldn’t budge. He continued running at me, getting closer and closer. I took a few steps back and threw my body into the door. Still, there was barely any movement. He got to me and tackled me into the door. The door broke free from the impact as we both slammed into it. He disintegrated as we fell through the doorway, while I fell backward down the steps, landing on my back in the grass of my back yard.

My body filled with pain I slowly got up staring at the open door in utter disbelief. I stood staring for what felt like an eternity before my wife came out and asked me what was wrong. I did my best to explain the horrific images as best I could, and once I was done she ran back into the house yelling something about having a plan.

My wife is the much more superstitious one of the two of us, so she decided to call a “friend” that would know what to do. I had no idea what was truly going on so I reluctantly agreed to have this crystal-wielding hippy witchdoctor visit our house.

A few days later she showed up, and I say “showed up” because after pulling into our driveway she refused to get out of her car, opting to call my wife from the driveway. My wife put her phone on speaker so I could hear the conversation.

“Something is very wrong here!” she said. “I feel a presence stronger than I’ve ever felt before.”

“Well, can you come and burn some sage or something to get rid of it?” my wife said.

“No, absolutely not. I’m not leaving my car. I need to go, and you should get a hold of someone else to clear that evil spirit from your property,” she replied.

“Can you come in the house and talk to us? It seems to only be in the treehouse in the back,” I said, trying to get as much time for answers as I could.

“No, it’s not. I’m sorry,” she said just before ending the call, and we watched her drive off, away from our house.

“What was that supposed to mean? What do we do now?” I asked my wife.

“I don’t know. That was the only person I could think of.”

“Well, at least there will be no more playing in the treehouse, okay?” I responded.

“Yeah, I’ll look online for someone else to help,” she said as she walked off toward the office.

“Sure. I’m going to go block the door to the treehouse so she can’t just wander in there,” I said, walking toward the back door and motioning to upstairs where our daughter slept.

Avoiding it all together seemed to work well enough. I was disappointed at not being able to use what I had put so much work into, but it had been a month since we had any problems with it, so… oh, well. During that month, my wife had messaged and called numerous people she found on the internet, trying to get at least an explanation for what was happening in our back yard. In spite of her effort, however, the results were the same. Most of the people never responded, some refused to help or even investigate, and the ones she got to come to the house did the same as the first lady. They either refused to come inside or just drove past without stopping at all.

Finally, I grew weary of it all and told myself that it was all bullshit, and that there was nothing actually wrong. I went out to the treehouse and unblocked the door. I took a deep breath and walked inside.

Nothing.

I was perfectly fine. A few spiders had made some impressive webs inside, but other than that, everything was fine.

“Ha! See? I fucking knew it!” I yelled out.

Just to prove it to myself, I walked over to the doorway and jumped back and forth across the threshold a few times, with no effect. Hell yeah, I was right! It was all in my head, I thought to myself as I walked back inside.

“It’s fine. I told you it would be okay,” I said to my wife as I walked in. I then told her what I had just done out there and she did nothing but give me a concerned look.

“I really don’t think that was a very good idea. What if you just pissed off whatever it is?” she said.

“Oh, whatever, there’s nothing out there. It was all in my head. I’ll prove it!” I replied overconfidently as I began to walk back outside.

When I got back out to the treehouse and up the steps to the door I looked back at my wife standing, staring at me from the back porch.

“See? Nothing!” I said just before walking through the door.

As I stepped through everything changed again. The darkness was back, along with the haunting red glow that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The chains with hooks suspended from the ceiling held decayed, naked bodies this time. A few of them swung back and forth as if someone had just run into them as they walked past. Every one of them had its chest torn open, with their organs either missing or spilled out onto the floor. From the far side of the warehouse room I heard a scream, followed by the groans and yell of the massive demon of a man I had run into the other times.

“Oh, fuck,” I whispered to myself, realizing I had seriously messed up.

The smell of rot and decay was overwhelming. I nearly threw up as I pushed past the bodies, making my way toward a wall and what I hoped was some sort of doorway out of there. Each time I pushed against one of the hanging bodies, something would fall from them. Various body parts and organs fell out or broke off, hitting the floor with thuds and splats. The sound made me flinch every time.

For what felt like an eternity, I slowly made my way through the maze of bodies, before at last coming to an opening. Unfortunately, I had traveled in the wrong direction, straight toward the beast. I could see it between two of the swinging corpses. It looked… different this time, as though it had grown at least a foot taller. It appeared larger in every regard, including all the rusted nails and screws, which seemed to have grown to the size of long, sharp railroad spikes. Its muscles, now completely oversized, bulged and dripped with blood, both his own, where the various wounds where spikes impaled his skin, and that of his victims. His jaw had become more pronounced, and the rusted screws and razor blades he had in place of teeth were much bigger. He also now had large, bloodied, rusted metal horns resembling twisted rebar jutting from the top of his head.

I caught the horrified look from the man lying naked on the table just before the beast grabbed his skin at the top of his chest and ripped it down and away from his body like tearing off a shirt. The beast looked toward the sky and dangled the skin over his face letting the blood drip all over him before dropping the skin into his mouth and swallowing it whole. The man on the table began to scream in pain but his cries were cut short as the beast leaned down and bit into the man’s throat. Somehow still alive and alert all the man could do was sputter blood from the gaping wound where his throat used to be. My heart felt like it was going to burst through my chest it was beating so hard and so fast. I couldn’t have held my eyes open any wider in terror. All I wanted to do was look away and run but the horror of what I was seeing rooted me to the spot and I felt paralyzed.

The beast roared in the man’s face and then began to bellow a deep and haunting sound I could only describe as some sort of demonic laugh. It got louder as it again looked toward the sky and after a few seconds it suddenly snapped its head back down and ripped both arms from the man’s body at once, sending arcs of blood flying through the air. It threw one arm off and into the darkness and took a huge bite out of the other before also throwing it away. The man, now having no way to make any noise, just sputtered more blood from his throat in response to the pain. I watched on in shock knowing I really needed to get the fuck out of there as the beast leaned in and seemed to study the man’s face. The beast’s thick black saliva dripping onto him as he held his gaze mere inches apart.

Another roar exploded from the creature’s mouth and my shock suddenly broke. I began to move as quickly and quietly as I could through the bodies in the opposite direction desperately looking for a wall or door. The sound of ripping came from behind me, and shortly after I was hit in the back by part of a leg with a huge bite taken out. There wasn’t much of the man on the table left, and I knew that meant I was very quickly running out of time before he would be looking for someone else to put on that table next.

Now covered in blood and viscera from pushing through all the corpses I finally made it to a wall. Sadly, I found no door and began to run down the wall, my fingers slid along it hoping to feel a door. In my panic I ran straight into another wall as I came to the corner of the room. As I hit the wall with a loud thud and fell back another roar emitted from the center of the room. I stood back up, and, placing my hand on the new wall, began to run down it, my footsteps making so much noise as I panicked. I heard chains begin to swing and I knew that the beast was on the move.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I mumbled to myself as I ran.

I smashed face-first into another wall, another corner, and still no door. Standing back up again I turned and made my way down the third wall. My face and body hurt so badly from slamming into two walls without even slowing down. As I ached, I ran, my fingers still sliding along the wall. I felt the wall shake and a roar erupted through the air. The beast must have just slammed into the same wall I was running along. Not thinking it was even possible my panic rose even higher. Then I felt it, a door frame, I stopped suddenly and felt all around it. It was another crash bar handle, and I stepped back and kicked with all my might at the bar. My heart raced as I began to just barely make out bodies on chains in the red glow, swinging as something was tossing them aside as it came directly for me. I kicked at the crash bar a third time and the door flew open, as if someone had opened it from the other side before my foot made contact. The force of my kick caused me to fall forward through the suddenly open doorway, and I tumbled down the treehouse steps, landing in the grass.

My wife let out a scream as I flew through the doorway and ran to me as I hit the ground at the bottom of the steps.

“What the fuck just happened?! And why are you covered in blood? Are you okay? Should I call the ambulance?”

I looked down at my body and she was right I was still covered in all of the blood and guts I had picked up pushing through all of the hanging bodies.

“Fuck this!” I exclaimed as my wife helped me to my feet and I hobbled off to the garage.

My wife stood at the bottom of the steps staring up at the door to the treehouse as I returned from the garage carrying a gas can. I told my wife to move out of the way and to grab a lighter as I started pouring gasoline all over the treehouse as best I could without stepping inside again. I poured half of the can everywhere I could reach and threw the other half, can and all, through the doorway and into the treehouse. Still not really knowing what was going on, my wife stood in the grass holding a box of matches, and as I returned to her side, I took them out of her hand.

I struck one match and dropped it back in the box. The rest of the matches lit as I threw it up onto the top of the steps next to the door. We stood next to each other and watched as the treehouse quickly turned into a raging fireball. It was nearly just a pile of ash and scorched earth before the fire department was called and showed up. When they did arrive, I held them back making sure there would be nothing left of the treehouse.

That was nearly a year ago now. In that time, grass has grown back over the charred spot in the yard where the treehouse once stood. The fire marshal had lots of questions about what had happened, but I just told him I must have put in some bad wiring that caused the fire. I don’t think anyone would have believed me anyway if I told them what really happened with it and why I did it.

It’s been peaceful around the house since that all went down, but my daughter ran up to me a few minutes ago. She was yelling about a scary man in her toy room. I’ll buy her new toys, but I’m going to go call the moving company. We’re leaving.