u/Equivalent-Diver1966

the only controllers that work are xbox and PS ones
and if you connect an unsupported one it won’t work

I still don’t know why Steve chose me to survive.

Maybe because I was the only one who ever treated him like a human being.

Or maybe because he wanted someone alive to tell this story.

Either way, this happened three years ago, and I still wake up hearing those things moving in the basement.

Back then, there were five of us.

Me, Sara, Bob, Lisa… and Steve.

We all graduated together. Same school, same classes, same friend group for almost four years. Steve was always the weird one, but not in a dangerous way. He barely talked, always wore old sweaters even during summer, and looked uncomfortable whenever too many people were around him.

Still, he was our friend.

At least I thought he was.

The last time we saw Steve before everything happened was around five months before graduation. Then he just disappeared. No calls. No texts. No social media activity.

We thought maybe he moved away.

Then, two days after graduation, all four of us got the exact same email from him.

The subject line was:

“COME VISIT ME.”

Inside was a long message explaining that his grandfather had died right before graduation, which was why he never showed up to the ceremony or party. He apologized for disappearing and invited us to stay for a few days at his grandfather’s home in a small town in Pennsylvania.

Bob immediately got excited because his dad had just bought him an RV as a graduation gift.

“Bro,” he said in our group call, “this is literally the perfect road trip.”

Sara didn’t like it at first.

“You guys don’t think this is kinda weird?” she asked.

Lisa laughed. “It’s Steve. He IS weird.”

I should’ve listened to Sara.

The drive took almost a full day.

At first it was honestly fun. Music blasting, stopping at gas stations at 2AM, Bob driving like an idiot while Lisa yelled at him from the passenger seat.

But the closer we got to the town, the stranger everything felt.

The roads became emptier.

No cars.

No stores.

Even the GPS started losing signal.

The town itself looked dead. Most buildings looked abandoned, and almost every house had boarded windows. We barely saw any people outside.

Then we reached the address.

And it wasn’t a house.

It was a castle.

An actual massive stone castle sitting alone behind iron gates and dead trees.

No lights around it.

No nearby houses.

Just that thing standing there like it didn’t belong in this century.

Bob laughed nervously.

“There’s no way this is the right place.”

Then the front doors slowly opened.

Steve walked out wearing a black suit and white gloves.

I barely recognized him.

His hair was slicked back, and he looked… healthier somehow. Taller too. More confident.

But there was something wrong with his smile.

It looked practiced.

“Welcome,” he said quietly.

No hug.

No excitement.

Just… “welcome.”

He grabbed our bags himself and led us inside.

The castle smelled old. Not dirty exactly — just old. Like wet wood, dust, and something metallic underneath it all.

Every hallway was lined with paintings of people who all had the same blank expression.

The furniture looked expensive but ancient.

And the entire place was silent.

Too silent.

Steve showed us the rooms upstairs.

Bob and Lisa shared one room. Sara had her own. Mine was across from hers.

Steve’s room was at the end of the hallway behind large double doors.

“This room stays closed,” he said immediately.

Bob smirked. “What, you hiding bodies in there?”

Steve stared at him for a little too long before answering.

“Something like that.”

We laughed.

He didn’t.

That first night was the moment I realized something was seriously wrong.

Around 2AM, I woke up because I heard movement outside my room.

Not footsteps.

Dragging.

Like something heavy being pulled across the floor.

I opened my door slightly and saw Steve at the end of the hallway dragging large black trash bags toward the staircase.

His white gloves were covered in dirt.

He suddenly stopped moving.

Slowly turned his head toward me.

And smiled.

“Go back to sleep,” he whispered.

The next morning, I told the others.

Bob laughed immediately.

“He’s probably moving old furniture.”

But Sara looked uncomfortable.

“I heard noises too,” she admitted.

Steve acted completely normal during breakfast.

Too normal.

He kept staring at us while we ate.

Not talking.

Just staring.

At one point Lisa asked where the nearest town was.

“There isn’t one nearby,” Steve answered.

“But we drove through one,” she said.

“That town died years ago.”

Nobody spoke after that.

Later that afternoon, Bob wanted to explore the castle.

We found entire hallways Steve never mentioned.

Rooms filled with old dolls wearing human clothes.

Basement doors locked with chains.

One room had dozens of family portraits, but every face had been scratched out except Steve’s grandfather.

Then Sara found something that changed the mood completely.

A photo.

It showed Steve standing beside a very tall man wearing the same black suit and white gloves.

The man’s face was hidden by shadows.

Written on the back was:

“THE NEW CARETAKER.”

That night, Lisa started crying.

She said someone stood outside their bedroom door for almost an hour.

Not moving.

Just breathing.

Bob finally got angry and confronted Steve downstairs.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted.

Steve just stood there quietly holding a cup of coffee.

“You should all leave tomorrow,” he said.

That sentence killed the entire mood.

The next morning nobody wanted to stay anymore.

Except me.

The truth is… my life back home was hell.

My parents fought constantly. My dad drank almost every night. Sometimes I slept in my car just to avoid hearing them scream at each other.

So even though that castle terrified me… a part of me still didn’t want to leave.

Bob planned to leave around noon.

I was asleep when they packed.

When I woke up around 1PM, the RV was gone.

And so was Steve.

The castle felt different without everyone there.

Too quiet.

I walked through the halls calling his name.

No answer.

Then I noticed the double doors to his bedroom slightly open.

My stomach dropped.

For days he had forbidden us from entering.

But my brain kept telling me to look.

I wish I hadn’t.

The smell hit me first.

Rot.

I opened the doors wider and saw a decomposing corpse lying on the bed.

An old man.

His skin gray and sinking into the mattress.

Beside him was a handwritten note:

“FROM YOUR GRANDFATHER — COMPLETE THE JOB.”

I stumbled backward trying not to throw up.

Then I heard the castle’s front doors opening downstairs.

Heavy footsteps entered the house.

I ran back to my room and locked the door.

For hours I heard things moving downstairs.

Metal scraping.

Heavy objects being dragged.

At one point I heard someone crying.

The next morning, Steve acted like nothing happened.

At breakfast I asked him what he had been carrying the night before.

“Tools,” he answered calmly. “Basement maintenance.”

I told him I wanted to leave that day.

For the first time since we arrived, his expression changed.

His face went pale.

“Stay one more night,” he said quickly. “I’ll arrange transportation tomorrow.”

That’s when I knew.

Something horrible was about to happen.

That night it rained hard enough to shake the windows.

Around midnight I heard loud noises downstairs again.

This time I forced myself to look.

The basement door was open.

I tried escaping through the front entrance first, but it was locked.

Then I looked outside.

The RV was sitting near the forest.

Abandoned.

My chest tightened immediately.

I walked toward the basement slowly.

Every step smelled worse.

Rotting meat.

Wet fabric.

Blood.

Then I saw them.

Tall human-sized dolls hanging from hooks around the basement.

Dressed in real clothes.

Their shapes looked wrong.

Too realistic.

Then I saw my friends.

Bob.

Sara.

Lisa.

Hanging upside down.

Skinless.

I couldn’t even scream.

I turned to run but something massive grabbed me from behind and threw me onto the floor.

It wasn’t Steve.

It was the tall man from the photograph.

Huge arms.

Same suit.

Same white gloves.

He dragged me beside one of the dolls and started cutting it open with a knife.

That smell…

Jesus Christ.

Inside the doll wasn’t stuffing.

It was organs.

Human organs.

I finally understood what they were doing.

The dolls were made from people.

I was hung from the ceiling for hours while the man prepared tools nearby.

I couldn’t feel my arms anymore.

Then he walked toward me holding a long knife.

Slowly.

Like he wanted me fully awake for it.

And suddenly—

A gunshot.

The man collapsed instantly.

Steve stood behind him shaking violently while holding a revolver.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he kept repeating. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

He cut me down and shoved car keys into my hands.

“You need to leave now,” he whispered.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“They only wanted the ones who abandoned me.”

Rain poured through the open basement doors as he pushed me toward the exit.

“GO.”

I drove until I found the nearest police station.

I told them everything.

Every single thing.

When police arrived at the castle later that morning, they found the basement exactly how I described it.

But Steve was dead.

In his bedroom.

Lying beside his grandfather’s corpse.

The police never found the tall man.

Not even footprints.

Officially, the case remains unsolved.

But one detective told me something before I left.

Steve’s grandfather had founded a cult decades ago.

A group obsessed with punishing people they believed lacked loyalty, empathy, or compassion.

Their symbol was found all over the castle.

Hidden in paintings.

Furniture.

Even carved underneath the dolls.

The detective believed Steve had been raised inside that cult his entire life.

Conditioned to continue whatever his grandfather started.

“But why did he save me?” I asked.

The detective looked at me strangely.

Then he said something I still think about almost every night.

“According to Steve’s journals… you were the only friend who was ever kind to him.”

I haven’t spoken about this publicly until now.

But recently, I got another email.

No sender.

No subject.

Just one sentence.

“THE JOB IS NOT COMPLETE.”