Story 27 — Do Not Open the Storage Room

The house wasn’t something you’d call perfect. It was rustic and some of its walls were a bit dirty. Brooke, my sister who was with me when I surveyed the house, even said that the house seemed like a haunted house. But, speaking of the money, that house was the closest to the office that I could afford.
Personally, if you skipped the “haunted” part, and repaint the walls, the house was nice. The neighborhood was quiet, there was quite a distance between houses, and I hardly saw the people there running around the neighborhood.
For a person who wasn’t really into socializing like me, the place was excellent.
It was Saturday morning when I moved in. So I thought it would get me enough time to unpack my stuff and placed them inside the house before I had to get to the office again later on Monday morning.
Mr. Marker, the old man who own and rent the house was… Umm… Strange?
Well, he looked strange. I mean, some of the old men his age probably would. He was short, probably around 156 cm, his face was wrinkled, as you expect from a 72 years old man. And he always looked grumpy. At least everytime I met him, he always looked grumpy. He answered all my questions about the house nicely though, despite his grumpy face.
When he handed me the keys, Mr. Marker informed me everything about it. Which keys belonged to which rooms. Where to find things I might need for my daily activities and such.
“You can do anything you like here, use every room available, except one”, he said, “do not open the storage room.”
“The storage room?” I parroted.
We were standing approximately at the back of the house, and then Mr. Marker turned his head to the left. I followed the direction, where I found a stairway to the basement. I followed Mr. Marker as he walked toward the stairway, so we both could see the door at the bottom of the stairs.
“That room”, he pointed at the door to the room downstairs, which was chained and padlocked.
Chained, and padlocked.
Chained? Wow. That seriously brought up anyone’s curiosity, doesn’t it?
“The key to the storage room isn’t included in the key pack I just handed you, but still”, he looked at me as if he was looking at his son who was just making a trouble for him, “I was young once. I know what young people had in mind.”
“Just don’t even think about it”, he warned me one last time.
I was about to respond, but Mr. Marker immediately spoke again. “If you need a reason to stay off my storage room”, he said, “this is the first time I had to move out and rent this house at the same time. I don’t have any other choice for now. And I can’t bring all my stuff out, which I kept in the storage room, with me yet.”
“Y-Yeah, sure, Mr. Marker”, I said as I tried to show him the friendliest smile I could give.
I followed Mr. Marker walking toward the front door, through the driveway, where there was a car waiting for him. A young man sitting in the driver seat. Either his son or his driver, I thought.
After the grumpy old man got in the car, it immediately drove off.
I walked back into the house, straight into the back of the house. I stared at the door at the bottom of the stairway. I slowly walked downstairs, and take a look at the door, the chain, and the padlock.
Most of the door in the house was rustic, but not that one. The door to the storage room looked new. As if it was just replaced with a new one right before the house rented to me.
I rubbed the chain and the padlock. They were rustic, but not dusty.
I wouldn’t be so curious if the door was just locked. But it was locked, chained and then the chained was padlocked. Triple security system. It tickled me, seriously. If only I had a way to open it, I would, just to satisfy my curiosity.
I turned around and walked back up. I started to unpack my stuff and placed them all over the house.
The house wasn’t big. It considered small, in my opinion. But I lived alone, so there wasn’t a problem. Yet.
The house only had 2 bedrooms and one bathroom. The only bathroom was located right across the main bedroom. The bigger one, which I suspected belonged to Mr. Marker and his wife. The bathroom’s door was placed right next to the stairway to the basement. So, you could tell, all three rooms were sort of interlocked with each other.
The other bedroom was in front of the house. It even had a window straight to the front yard.
The front bedroom was decorated with laces on many parts, like its bed, its closet, and its desk. Mr. Marker didn’t say anything about the rooms when I first surveyed the house weeks earlier. He just showed me the rooms for me to see. So, I assumed it myself, that the front bedroom belonged to Mr. Marker’s daughter.
I, of course, decided to use the main room at the back, as my bedroom. Like I said, I’m not into socializing, and the front bedroom had the window to the front yard which might give the neighbors a chance to talk to me from the street. If there was any.
I don’t hate people. I just don’t like talking to people I don’t know closely. Especially strangers.
After everything was set, I looked around the interior of the house.
Clearly, some dirty walls and rustic doors needed to be repainted. It creeped me out a bit, apart from the fact that it didn’t look nice.
But I decided to do it sometimes later.
I was about to close the door of the front bedroom when I felt the wind blown through the half-opened window. It was comforting. And I was sweating after I work on the house, so, I decided to just lay on the front bedroom’s bed for a while to enjoy the breeze.
I suddenly awakened. I looked at the clock hanging on the wall in the room. It was 10 PM. It looked like I fell asleep. The night breeze that came through the half-opened window was cold. I got up to close the window tight, walked toward the main room at the back and resumed my sleep in there.
Within the next few days, I got back home from the office quite late due to working overtime, and also there was an event at the office. When I reached home, I even got too tired to walk to the main room at the back. The house didn’t have a couch, so I decided to just go to the front bedroom instead and sleep there.
The next weekend, I woke up early. I jogged around the block, haven’t met too many neighbors. Some whom I crossed path with, didn’t even bother to talk to me or ask me something like, if I was new there or anything. Nice. I actually like the neighborhood.
After about an hour, I jogged back home, went to the bathroom and took a bath.
It felt like a refreshing weekend.
When I was about to hang my towel at the back of the house, I walked past the stairway to the storage room in the basement. Something in the basement caught my eyes.
I walked back, turned my head to see the door to the storage room clearly.
The chain and the padlock were gone.
And to be added, the door was partly opened. The door wasn’t locked as well.
Who opened it? I didn’t. I didn’t even have the lock to the door nor the padlock. Was it Mr. Marker? No way. He warned me not to open the storage room. He even triple-locked it. Why would he even opened it and left it unlocked?
Not to mention that there was me living in his house, he should’ve had let me know if he would take a visit and took something from his storage room.
My curiosity got the best of me. I remembered Mr. Marker warned me not to open the storage room, but that day, it was already opened. I guessed it wasn’t wrong if I just take a peek inside. Just to know what he had kept so secretly in that storage room.
I slowly walked downstairs, and carefully opened the door. It was creaking a bit.
The inside of the room was pitch dark. I couldn’t see anything, so I tried to rub the wall near the door, just to look for a light switch. I found one, and when I clicked it, the light turned on.
The room was quite big, about 5 meters by 5 meters, and 3 meters high. Oddly enough, I had skimmed the room, and apart from very few small items of furniture that were placed against the walls, the room was more or less empty. The only thing that stood out in the room was a black metallic box, placed right in the middle of the room.
The black metallic box was about 2 meters by 3 meters and only 1 meters high. The metallic box’s height was just about my waist, but it was large. It was covered by a black metallic cover. I saw something like a button and pushed it. Almost immediately, the cover automatically slid open.
I was shocked to see what was inside the box.
There was a pile of bodies laid inside it. There were like 5 bodies and all of them were lying face downward. They were clothed, but from what I saw, their bodies were still intact.
“Who are these guys?” I thought to myself.
“Was Mr. Marker killed these men and kept their dead bodies inside this metallic box and locked it inside the storage room? But why? For what reason?” as the questions kept flowing inside my head, I tried to shook one of the bodies in the box. Just to make sure whether they were alive or not.
Even if they actually died, I honestly also curious about who they were. So, I pushed one of the body harder so it was flipped and lying face upward.
I instantly regret what I did.
The body that I just turned around was me.
Or at least, he had my face and my physical features.
“What the hell?!”
Consumed by terror and curiosity at the same time, I flipped the other four bodies around so they lied face upward so I could see all of their faces. To my horror, every dead body lying inside that black metallic box were me. Every single one of them.
“What the fuck?!” I froze. My mind was trying to figure out an answer. I just met Mr. Marker a few weeks earlier when I surveyed that house. It took less than half an hour. And then, I lived there for about a week, no contact with Mr. Marker ever since.
So, how did Mr. Marker had copies of my body? And it wasn’t just one. It was five! Who was that old man, really?
A ring that came from the bell on the front door snapped me back to reality.
“Dammit. Who the hell was that?” I immediately ran into the front door. I didn’t invite anyone, and the neighbors didn’t seem like ringing the bell just to interact with me.
I peeked through the peephole and saw that it was Mr. Marker who stood behind the door.
Shit! What do I do? If I act strangely, he might notice that I found the copies of my body inside his storage room. He might kill me before I could realize.
“Mr. Marker? What brings you here?” I opened the front door and asked him, trying to act as natural as possible. If he planned to walk in the house and directly to the storage room, I surely will take him down before he killed me first.
“Ow…,” he startled, and he stared at me with a strange glance, as if he saw something unusual attached to my face.
“Mr. Marker?” I asked again, “is there something you need to take from the house?”
“Oh,” he responded, “No. Nothing like that.”
“I got here as soon as possible when I remember that there was one other thing that I forgot to tell you not to do,” he explained.
“Oh, yeah? What would that be, Mr. Marker?” I asked, my browses furrowed. He told me not to open the storage room, and I just found out why. Then he told me that there was one other thing he should have had told me not to do, I wondered what would it be.
To my surprise, Mr. Marker suddenly turned his back around. “Nevermind”, he said as he walked through the driveway, back to his car.
“Mr. Marker?” I called him, but it looked like he didn’t listen, or didn’t care. Because he just hopped in his car and drove off, back to wherever he came from.
The situation got me even more confused. What was it that Mr. Marker wanted to tell me not to do? But then, why did he decide not to tell me all of a sudden?
I tried to skip the thought for a while. At the very least, I relieved that he wasn’t there to kill me. Or anything horrible. Not saying that finding 5 copies of my body in a house I just rent for a week was less horrifying.
“What do I do now?” I asked myself. I clearly couldn’t ask Mr. Marker about it. I didn’t know what he would do to me by then. He might be old and weak, but who could tell his son to do something to me.
Call the police? That would be the wisest option if what I found in the storage room wasn’t the copies of my body. I could be caught in something I’d regret if I call the police. What if they observe me like a lab rat? It wasn’t my house and it wasn’t me who created the copies of my body, but still, they were copies of my body. It could be far worse if they also happen to not able to find Mr. Marker by then.
Telling my sister and my parents also didn’t seem like a good idea at the time. They could just happen to call the police themselves.
Best option? I guess, at that moment, was just pretend like I never saw what was inside the storage room.
I tried to go back downstairs and locked the door to the storage room, but it couldn’t even be closed. Every time I heard a click that usually explained that they were closed, it clicked back open. Dammit.
For the next two weeks, I tried to live my life like I normally do. I walked past the stairway from time to time. I took a glance at the door, and that was it. I tried so hard to hold the urge to get down the basement and look inside the storage room again.
I mean, what could 5 dead bodies do? If they still alive, they would already climb up that stairs and find me. They didn’t. So, I suppose, everything didn’t get worse, at the very least.
But, no. I was wrong.
2 weeks after the finding, I heard a thumping sound in the storage room. The sound was like a sound made when something heavy was fell to the floor from a desk.
Or a box.
Wait.
No, no, no… They were dead. Dead bodies. And they were kept inside the box. How on earth could they fell off of it to the floor? Okay, I didn’t close the metallic cover again. I left it open when I went to the front door to check on Mr. Marker the last time he visited, I never got back inside the storage room since. But still…
You know what? I really thought I should go and check it. So, I grabbed a baseball bat which I put near the front door just in case there was a threat and went to the storage room in the basement.
When I opened the door and turned on the light, what I found there was a nightmare.
Everything Mr. Marker kept in the room was still there, including the black metallic box in the middle of the room. What was different were the bodies. The number of the copies of my body.
It wasn’t just 5 anymore. It was… A lot.
Dammit.
The bodies were literally piled up until one of them fell from the box to the ground because the box was full. I counted, and I was sure the bodies were numbered up from 5 to twenty-something, out of nowhere. I had checked every single body, and still, all of them were me. All of them!
“What the fuck happened?!” I yelled.
I pulled my hair in distress. I walked back and forth inside the storage room, trying to figure out what actually had happened.
Out of the horror and the panic, I quickly decided to just move out of that house. I looked for a very cheap flat in the middle of the town and moved there immediately that night.
I told my workmate and my family that I moved again, but I didn’t tell them the reason.
One day, after a few weeks of leaving Mr. Marker’s house, I got texts from my friends and families. They told me that they saw the house I rented from Mr. Marker on TV.
I turned on the TV and there I saw a detective interviewed by a bunch of journalists. It looked like the detective was having a press conference. The background clearly showed Mr. Marker’s house, the only difference was it was covered by the police line.
“We still can’t find Mr. Zachary Marker, the person who owns the house,” said the detective. “The identity of the dead bodies isn’t on our database, so we don’t have his name yet, but the medical examiner’s result for the bodies has come out,” the detective explained.
“But, can we see the picture of the victims, detective?” one of the journalists interrupted.
“No, not yet at the time,” the detective answered, “because this is a very strange case, we were told not to tell public yet, except for some things that we may need the public to help on.”
“First of all, we will share the picture of Mr. Zachary Marker,” the detective paused for a while, “sorry, I mean, Dr. Zachary Marker, known as a scientist for private agencies. And we hope for anyone who knows him or ever see him, to report to the contact number that we will also give along with his photo later.”
“As you know,” the detective continued, “one of the neighbors smell a very bad stench from the house a few days ago. He called the police, and upon arriving, we found a pile of dead bodies inside the room in the basement.”
“We already informed you all earlier that the bodies found in the basement were all belonged to one same person. We kept you from the information of the person at the moment for reasons, as you also remember that we put all of the bodies inside separate body bags when we brought them out of the house.”
The detective took a deep breath and continued his speech. “However”, he said, “like I mentioned earlier, the bodies found in the basement were all belonged to one same person. How is that possible?”
The detective paused for a while, staring at the journalist in front of him one by one.
“As far as we know right now, Dr. Zachary Marker is a scientist working on a clone project,” he explained.
“As you know that personal clone project was illegal at the moment, he disguised his clone machine as a bed in the front bedroom.”
What the detective just said hooked me.
“Wait, what?!” I shouted in reflexed.
“He made his house as a personal clone machine mechanism. When someone sleeps on the bed in front bedroom, their bodies will be cloned. However, we didn’t know yet for what reason, the bed will flip and leave the clone on the bed, while the original fell downward, into the system in the basement right under the bed. Before then it was delivered to the storage room.”
“So, everytime someone sleeps on the bed, be it a real person or a clone, they will be cloned all over again.”
“And then,” he continued, “all of the mechanism will bring the original body to the room in a metallic box the basement, where then, it will be stored.”
“The clone machine wasn’t perfect yet, so there was deformation in the DNA on each of the clones,” said the detective, “that was also one of the reasons why they deteriorate much slower than the original body. That’s why no one seemed to smell anything until it was too late.”
“That was also the reason how the medical examiner could figure out for sure that, everything except the original, were clones.”
“But, detective,” another journalist asked a question, “you said that the original body will fell downward and stored in a metallic box in the basement?”
“Yes,” the detective replied.
“But, you also said that all the bodies found in the house were dead?” the journalist asked again.
“Indeed. The mechanism, which is too complex to explain here, made the original killed when creating a clone. At the and of the mechanism, there’s a metallic box that actually functioned as some kind of a shredder. Instead of shredding papers, this box shreds the previous versions of the clones. So, technically speaking, there wouldn’t be 2 same people running around on the street.”
“Unfortunately,” the detective continued, “the metallic box wasn’t activated yet when the victim slept on the bed in the front bedroom, so that was why the bodies of the clones were piled up.”
I froze. Something immediately hooked me. I was consumed by horror. Something horrifying had happened to me, and I just figured that out.
Something that could never be reverted.
“So you mean, along with a pile of dead clones, the original person was also already dead in the house?” the journalist asked again, which was then calmly replied by the detective with just one word.
“Yes.”
