My dad had a second family living in our basement when I was a kid.

I thought everyone had a second family in their basement when I was a kid. Now that I think about it, that sounds really silly... but I had only ever known that.

It was a habit for my dad to cover the dinner scraps with foil, leave the room, and take the plate to the basement every night. From my room, I'd hold my breath and listen as he stumbled down the creaky stairs. I could barely make out his greetings.

He would always go downstairs in the morning to say goodbye to his second family before work. As he left, he would kiss me on the top of the head and pat my hair.

Every Christmas, I knew he'd come downstairs in a Santa suit with a bag full of wrapped gifts.

Being so used to it, I thought everyone else knew that my dad had a second family in the basement.

I will always remember the first time I asked my mum about them. "Mommy, why can't I play with the people in the basement?" I finally asked when I was about five years old.

My mum was a living example of frantic energy; she was a biological perpetual motion machine. Every time you walk, clean, or stir a pot. She always had a lit cigarette between her skin-colored fingers.

I'll never forget the first time she stopped talking because of that question. I don't know how to explain how disturbing it was that she was so still.

"We don't talk about them," she quickly said, taking a long drag off her cigarette afterward. She opened the window and blew a cloud of smoke out. Then she leaned down to meet me face-to-face, her bloodshot eyes just inches from mine. "The kids need Daddy, not you to play with them."

She stopped again, and the eerie picture of her standing still will always be in my mind. She finally said, "Daddy needs them too."

I heard my mum yelling at my dad in their bedroom that night. It shocked and scared me more that they didn't want me to know, especially since they didn't know that I did. Most of all, they didn't want me to tell anyone at school, or really anyone.

Things were different after that night. When I went to bed, my dad didn't bring the food downstairs until after dinner, when I was already asleep. He stopped going to see them in the mornings for good. My mom also began to act differently. I had always noticed that she was...not close to my dad. I saw how she reacted when he touched her and how she would sneak off to the other side of the room whenever he came in. But things got worse after that. I felt very guilty as a child. I thought I had hurt my folks' marriage.

But I was only a kid, and I was interested. When my mum tried to stop me from asking more questions, she accidentally told me that the family downstairs had kids, maybe kids my age to play with. This made me even more interested.

I really wanted to know more about them, like how little kids need to understand all the weird things going on in the world so they can make sense of the everyday nonsense. The silly things we don't think twice about as adults but had a terrible time with as kids, like a maths test word problem or a puzzle about buying 80 watermelons.

After that important night, another change was made: a strong lock was added to the downstairs door. However, I still needed to know... it's awful to learn that there is a second family living in the basement, and it's even worse not knowing who or why. By the time I was seven, I was determined to find out what was going on.

So I wouldn't get in trouble, I could only look into it when I got home from school, my dad wasn't at work yet, and my mom wasn't around to catch me. Usually, these things didn't happen at the same time, but the first time I got home from school and saw that my dad's car wasn't in the garage and my mom was too tired to move, I took off my shoes and quietly crept to the basement door.

After that, I knocked.

I didn't say much because I didn't want to wake my mum up from her nap, but there was a knock. It wasn't just a knock, either. It was an introduction, a request, and a face-to-face with the biggest and scariest secret of my life.

When I heard a soft knock again from the other side, I jumped. Nearly right away, it felt like the other person had been waiting for me. I stood still for a moment because of the thought, but I knew I didn't have time to waste.

I suddenly tasted like sandpaper and chalk in my mouth, but I leaned against the door to say "hi."

"Hi."

It was a girl, and her voice was soft and shy. Making the keys on a piano sound good for the first time.

"Hi, my name is Rymon." "What is your name?"

A very long break.

"Lisa. The name of my brother is Alex, but he doesn't talk very well. He's still little, though. "He'll talk when he's ready, mommy says."

"Are there three of you down there?"

"Mhmm," was her simple answer. She was on the other side of the basement door, but it seemed like the whole thing was just fine with her. "But dad comes to visit sometimes, so I guess that makes four."

I had a lot of questions in my head, but I heard my mum moving around in her room. My eyes got bigger. I ran down the hall and into the playroom very quickly. Even though I was playing with my toys, my mind was somewhere else. The questions kept popping up quickly and soon took over my thoughts like a weedy patch.

And the questions wouldn't go away, like bugs. The situation and what it meant started to fall apart, and I felt it all over my body. When I had to face the fact that I might not have known my dad or my family very well, fear set in. What did it mean to me that my dad was also Lisa's dad? For my household?

Another question is why she couldn't leave the basement.

Over the next few years, when I had a moment of freedom, I would sneak to the basement door. I got to know Lisa, liked her, and then fell in love with her. She became my best friend. As a child, I was pretty lonely. For some reason I couldn't quite figure out, my friends avoided me like the plague. It was like something about me naturally turned them off. I only had one friend in school.

I also had Lisa at home.

As we talked more, with back-and-forth questions crammed into the shortest gaps of time, we both learned how our lives and situations were different. What seemed like small differences at first became bigger, scary, and sharper than either of us could understand.

It became impossible to ignore how unfair everything was.

Lisa was upset that she couldn't go to school and that she couldn't play outside, make friends, or ride her bike around the cul-de-sac in the summer until the streetlights came on and the cicadas began to sing. She even wanted the things I hated the most, like doing my chores, washing my dishes after dinner, and cleaning my room every Sunday morning.

She said she had lived in that basement her whole life and may have even been born there. Before being locked up in the cold, musty room, she couldn't remember anything else.

I feel bad saying this, but in the end... In my mind, Lisa never had a life that I was living, and I felt guilty for living it. I was so young and innocent... I did what I thought was best because I had lost all ideas on how to handle the problem.

I gave up trying.

I stopped going to see Lisa. Don't whisper or whisper in her ear anymore. Don't quickly knock on the door to let her know I was there or that anyone was there for her. The days, weeks, months, and years went by, but Lisa never really left my mind. Instead, her presence was... separated.

Held back in the basement of my own mind.

It was tougher to keep thoughts of her hidden at home. When my dad brought her food hours after it was time for me to go to bed, I stayed in bed to stay warm. I could hear her scream sometimes. I would sometimes hear the tray slam into the floor and the plate break when it hit. I could sometimes hear her terrible, painful sobs while I put together new Lego sets in the playroom.

She would sometimes call my name. This is something I will never forgive myself for. I hate myself for it, and I should. But I ignored her every time.

However, it was the worst when she began to knock.

When the first knock came, I was almost done with my science homework for the day.

It was a quiet knock, but it was still a knock. An opening, a request, or a fight.

As I thought about where and who it was coming from, my blood ran cold.

I rode my bike home and didn't get back until dinner was ready.

That night was the first time I heard my dad scream back at Lisa. yelled at her to stop knocking so much. He took care of her, her mom, her little brother, and her. But he could only do that if she stayed quiet and in the basement.

She didn't change her mind, though, and her knocking got louder and more frequent. Since I was about ten years old at the time, I had a little more freedom—all the freedom in the world—than Lisa. I tried to stay away from my house at all costs and would only go back in the evenings, when someone would knock on the door.

By that time, she wasn't knocking as much as she was slamming her whole body into the door. To block out the noise, my mom started cleaning the house all the time. No longer would she even look my dad in the eye. I could picture the bruises on Lisa's shoulder and arm going all the way down to her wrist. She didn't say if it hurt her.

She kept going.

Sleep seemed like a long time ago, and I woke up feeling confused, irritated, and most of all scared. I began going to my schoolfriend's (now my only) house without telling her I was going to avoid Lisa's knocking.

It was clear that his parents didn't like me, and things got worse between my brother and I until we got into a fight. I punched him in the gut, and he hit me back with words that broke everything.

A blow that was much stronger than what he could have thrown with his small hands clenched together.

"Your mum is a whore?! My mum says you're a jerk!"

It took me a while to figure out what the words meant when I got home.

To ask my mum the tough question again, "Am I a jerk?" I had to get up the nerve.

I had to watch my mum lose her speed and stop again.

I had to watch her lose what little light she still had.

I had to sit there by myself as she left the room and cry hot tears as the banging started up again. Each strong hit on the door made me think that Lisa was coming for me, which hurt.

That being said, my mom came back with an old, worn-out newspaper piece in her hands. Finally, she told me the truth about Lisa and Dad's second family in the basement. She held it close to her chest.

Even though I was young, I had to know. Even my mum knew.

She choked back tears as she talked about my dad's old family, the one he had and built before he met her. They made a terrible mistake that cost her three other good things in her life but gave her the best thing she had ever had. About how my dad's ex-wife was already walking on thin ice and how her cries for help went unheard. When she found out what my mum and dad were doing, she broke what little she had left.

About how they couldn't have known but how guilty she felt anyway—"like a heavy backpack, mom?"

"Yes, honey. But I can't put it down."

Lisa and Alex were both dead. that their mum did that to them and then did it to herself too. When my dad got home from work, he found them in the basement. That he and my mum had both never forgiven themselves. After their bodies were taken away and buried years ago, they came back to the basement and behaved like nothing had happened. They had no choice but to give them a normal life as they could have.

"But...why do they have to stay in the basement?" is another tough question.

My dad came home from work that night and opened the door. That's when I found out. Lisa came out of the darkness, and when I saw her face for the first time, I jumped when I saw the huge hole where her left eye should have been. Lisa was right when she said Alex was little, but the wound on his jaw would have made it hard for him to talk if he could have grown up.

At first, I was scared, but I pretended to be strong and grabbed Lisa's hand. I shared my toys with Lisa and Alex and laughed with them for the first time. I didn't meet their mum that day, but I would meet her years later. She had a hard time coping after she, Lisa, and Alex found out what happened to them. I'm nice to her when she comes out, even though she doesn't come out very often. The woman I know now could never have done what she did.

The second family of my dad still stayed inside, but they were no longer stuck in the basement after that day. We all grew into one big family that laughed, played, and loved each other. They stopped being my dad's second family.

I no longer live in that house... Being an adult has made me really value all the freedom and chances I had before, which I used to take for granted. I know my family isn't normal—in fact, I probably made it even worse as a child by being a part of it—but it's all I've ever known. I love all of them.

I still go back as often as I can, like on birthdays, at Christmas, and during the summer. When I go to visit, I always remember how thankful I am that Lisa opens the front door when I knock.