TEN FEET UNDER
Synopsis by Marie Lopez
The only thing this large African American family wanted was a change of environment and more room for their rapidly growing household; they never thought this move would come with a lot more than just extra storage space.
Five-year-old Mimi ran towards the new house excited about not having to share one room with 5 other siblings. The comfort of knowing there would be more privacy and extra yard space to play hide & seek gave her unlimited levels of excitement. Mimi rushed to the pickup truck and grabbed one of her favorite toys, a small yellow Tonka Truck. When Mimi attempted to roll her ragged yellow Tonka truck into the new garage, she realized she wasn’t alone in her house adventures.
It was in that moment, Mimi had made her first encounter with the dark shadowy figure. Being so young and unfamiliar with this form of darkness, she dismissed what she saw and continued with her adventures around their new home.
Two weeks into the move, the dark shadow resurfaces, this time, making itself visible to Mimi’s mother, Constance.
Constance was organizing the kitchen with the help of her daughter Mimi when she started noticing things being shifted around and misplaced. Constance and Mimi walked in the back bedroom to retrieve some items and heard what sounded like a train running through their house. The sound lasted maybe 5 seconds and stopped as they returned to the kitchen with the additional items; to their surprise, the entire kitchen was in disarray. Everything had been pulled from the cabinets, refrigerator and shelves, spread across the kitchen floor. Constance and Mimi looked to the side of the kitchen and saw a black shadowy figure dissolve into the wall. This was just the beginning of the terror activity caused by the entity who preyed upon the family.
Barely two months into the move, another severe encounter with the dark shadow figure surfaces from Mimi’s oldest brother, Wolf. Wolf was a few years older than Mimi and was known to be tough and fearless when it came to situations; This day, his fear was overpowered and heavily felt by this force. Wolf rushed into the bathroom late in the evening as there was only one restroom in the home. Finding the bathroom empty was rare considering how many people lived in the home. Wolf sat on the toilet relieving himself singing songs as he handled his business. A few minutes into his bathroom serenade the family heard a loud scream come from the bathroom and Wolf was seen running out of the bathroom with his pants half on saying “There’s a monster in the window, There’s a black monster in the window”
The family’s terror continued and became more frequent. Mimi’s father Edwin didn’t want to believe what his family was experiencing so he continued to dismiss the encounters as jokes and pranks set up by the kids. He didn’t want to believe he moved his family into a new home that came with a dark presence. He felt pride in the move and refused to relocate and acknowledge that the darkness would cease to attack his family from every angle. The family’s terror and attacks continued, until one day, Constance decided she could no longer bare seeing her children being levitated in the air, physically harmed and forcing themselves to suppress extreme nightmares. She awakened the children at 4am on a Sunday morning, rounded them up with the clothes they had on their backs; no shoes no coats no additional belongings, tapped her husband Edwin on the head and said
“you can come with us or you can stay here but the kids and I are leaving.”
Mimi walks out the house holding the hands of her other siblings, stepping on gravel as she was being rushed into the backseat of the car; she looked back at the house as her mother pulled away from the driveway. In that moment, she felt relief and could actually sleep comfortably without having another nightmare. Was this a new beginning for the family, or just the beginning of a new end?