Speaker 1: Calorogu Shark Media, Hello and welcome to Ghost Scary Stories.
This is the showing Episode three, The watched.
Speaker 2: I didn't sleep that night. I sat on the couch
in the living room, every light in the house blazing,
watching David watch the windows. He didn't move, didn't speak,
just stood there in the glow of lamps and overhead fixtures,
his eyes tracking something I couldn't see, or maybe something
I didn't want to see. Not again. When morning finally came,
gray and cold, the sun a pale smear behind heavy clouds,
David blinked like a man waking from a dream around
the room, looked at me. Did I fall asleep? Standing up?
He laughed, but it came out wrong, hollow. That's weird.
I feel like I was just just what. He frowned,
rubbed his eyes. I don't know, watching something. I wanted
to scream at him, wanted to grab his shoulders and
shake him and tell him what I'd seen in the hallway,
what I'd read on the closet walls, what Margaret Wetherby
had told me about her husband who couldn't leave. But
something stopped me, some instinct that said, pushing too hard
would push him further away, further into whatever the house
was doing to him. We should go out today, I said, instead,
get breakfast somewhere, see a movie, just get out of
the house for a while. Sure, he was already drifting
toward the window again.
Speaker 1: In a bit.
Speaker 2: I just want to now, David, please, Something in my
voice got through to him. He looked at me, really looked,
for the first time since the previous morning, and I
saw a flicker of the man I'd married, the man
who loved me, the man who was still in there,
somewhere underneath whatever was happening to him. Okay, he said, softly, Okay,
let's go. We drove into town, found a diner, ordered
pancakes and eggs and coffee, and sat across from each
other in a vinyl booth while the January light struggled
through the windows. For a little while. It almost felt normal.
I've been thinking, David said, stirring his coffee, about the house.
My heart clenched. What about it? It's strange, right, the
way it makes you feel like you'll be watched all
the time. He looked up at me. You feel it too,
don't you. Yes, I thought I was going crazy, But
if you feel it too. He set down his spoon.
What do you think it is? The house itself, some
kind of I don't know, energy, it's not energy. I
reached across the table took his hands. David, there's something
in that house, something real. I've seen it, seen what
a figure a shape it was in the upstairs hallway
last night. That's why I was outside when you found me.
I saw it, and I ran. He was quiet for
a moment, processing what did it look like? I closed
my eyes. I didn't want to remember, didn't want to
see that smooth, pale face, those dark pits where eyes
should be, that terrible smile that formed without a mouth.
But I made myself describe it anyway, every detail, every
wrong angle and impossible proportion, the way it had watched me,
the way it had been pleased. When I finished, David's
face was pale. I've seen it too, he whispered. I
didn't want to admit it. I thought, I thought if
I didn't say it out loud, it wouldn't be real.
I've been seeing it for days. Every room I walk into,
it's there, watching, waiting. Why didn't you tell me? Why
didn't you? We stared at each other across the table,
two people drowning in the same water, too afraid to
call for help. We have to leave, I said, Today,
we pack what we can carry, and we go and
go where. We put everything we had into that house,
every penny we can't just I don't care about the money.
I don't care about any of it. We leave now,
or we end up like the others. What others. I
told him about my research, the seven families, the pattern
of shorter and shorter stays, Margaret Wetherby and her husband Robert,
who went into the house one day and never came out.
I told him about the names carved into the closet wall,
the desperate messages, the warnings no one had heeded. They
all saw it, I said, They all looked at it,
and something happened to them. I don't know what, but
they're gone, disappeared, and I will not let that happen
to us. David was silent for a long moment. Outside,
a few flakes of snow began to fall, drifting past
the diner window. Like ash, Okay, He finally said, okay,
we go back, we pack, we leave. But Emma, he
squeezed my hands, promise me something. What whatever happens, don't
look at it again. If you see it, if you
even think you see it, close your eyes, turn away.
Don't give it what it wants. What about you? He smiled,
but it was a sad smile, a scared smile. I'll try,
he said, I'll try. We went home. The house looked
the same as always, white siding, black shutters, that big
oak tree reaching toward the windows. Just a house, just
wood and glass and brick. But I could feel it
watching us as we pulled into the driveway, could feel
its attention, heavy and cold, pressing against my skin. We
went inside. The first thing I noticed was the smell,
that faint sweetness I detected in the basement, but stronger now, cloying,
like flowers rotting in stagnant water. The second thing I
noticed was the cold. The heat was on. I could
hear the furnace running, but the air was frigid. Every
breath came out in a faint cloud of vapor. The
third thing I noticed was the silence, complete and absolute,
like the house was holding its breath. Let's make this fast,
David said. His voice sounded too loud in that stillness.
Grab clothes, documents, anything important, we can send movers for
the rest. We went upstairs together, Neither of us wanted
to be alone. I pulled a suitcase from the closet
in the master bedroom and started throwing clothes into it.
Didn't bother folding, didn't bother being neat, just grabbed whatever
was closest and shoved it in. I was reaching for
a stack of sweaters when I felt it, that pressure,
that weight, the sensation of being watched. I turned slowly.
It was standing in the doorway, the same figure I'd
seen in the hallway, Tall and wrong, hunched to fit
beneath the frame. Those dark pit eyes fixed on me
with terrible intensity. Don't look at it, close your eyes,
turn away. But I couldn't. I couldn't move, couldn't breathe
couldn't do anything but stare at that pale, smooth face
as it tilted slowly to one side, curious, considering. And
then it raised one long, wrong hand and pointed at me.
Emma David's voice sharp with fear. He grabbed my arm,
spun me away from the doorway. Don't look at it,
you promised, I didn't. I couldn't close your eyes, Keep
them closed. Whe eased my eyes shut, let him lead
me across the room, away from the door, away from
the thing that stood there watching. But I could still
feel it, still sense its attention, its focus, its hunger,
and behind my closed eyelids, I could still see it,
that pale shape burned into my vision like an after image,
like staring at the sun too long. It's still there,
I whispered, Even with my eyes closed, I can still
see it.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: David's voice was barely audible. I know it's been like
that for me since yesterday. Every time I close my eyes,
it's there, waiting. We stood in the middle of our bedroom,
eyes closed, clinging to each other like children afraid of
the dark, and somewhere behind us in the doorway, I
heard a sound, soft, wet, like lips parting, like something
learning to smile. We didn't leave that day. It wouldn't
let us. Every time we tried to move toward the stairs,
it was there, blocking our path, watching. When we tried
the windows, we found them sealed, not locked, just sealed,
as if the frames had fused with the glass, as
if the house itself had grown solid around us. The
front door wouldn't open, neither would the back neither would
the garage. We were trapped the basement. David said, there
has to be a way out through the basement, a window,
a bulkhead, something. I'm not going down there. We don't
have a choice. He was right. I knew he was right.
But when we reached the top of the basement stairs,
we both stopped. The smell was stronger here, that rotting
star weakness, thick enough to taste, and underneath it something else,
something that made my stomach clench with instinctive revulsion, the
smell of old meat, the smell of things left too
long in the dark. David went first. I followed, one
hand on the back of his shirt, both of us
moving slowly down the wooden steps, into the cold and
the dark and the smell. The basement was different now.
When we toured the house with Patricia, it had been empty,
just concrete floors and exposed beams and the furnace humming
in the corner, standard unfinished basement, full of potential. Now
it was full of something else, belongings, decades of belongings,
piled and stacked and arranged with terrible care. Furniture from
different ears, A Victorian settee, a mid century modern coffee table,
a plastic lawn chair from the U eighties, boxes of
dishes and books and children's toys, clothes hung on makeshift lines,
suits and dresses from every decade since the fifties, all
of them faded, all of them wrong. And photographs, hundreds
of photographs pinned to the walls, covering every surface, layered
on top of each other like scales. Photographs of families,
the Hendersons posed in front of a Christmas tree, smiling
at the camera, the Marshals at a birthday party, children
in paper hats, cake on the table, the Oconquos in
the backyard, summer sun on their faces, the oak tree
smaller and younger behind them, the prices, the Santo Sees,
the weather bees, the Linns, every family that had ever
lived in this house, every person who had ever slept
within these walls, all of them photographed, all of them preserved,
all of them watching us from those faded images with
eyes that no longer saw anything at all. Oh God,
David's voice cracked. They didn't leave, none of them left.
They're all still here. I turned slowly, taking in the
scope of it, the collection, the museum, the nest, and
I understood the thing in this house didn't just watch.
It kept it hoarded memories and belongings and photographs, because
they were all it had left of the families it
had claimed, all it had left of the people it
had taken. But where were the people themselves? Where were
the bodies? I got my answer when I looked toward
the far corner of the basement. At first I thought
they were Mannikins, life sized figures standing motionless in the shadows,
arranged in a semicircle around a single point, dozens of them,
men and women and children, perfectly still, perfectly present. Then
one of them moved, just a flicker, a turn of
the head, a shifting of weight, and I realized they
weren't Mannikins at all. They were people, the previous tenants,
the Henderson's and the Marshals and the Oconquos and all
the rest, standing in the dark, watching us with hollow,
empty eyes, not dead, not alive, something in between, something
that had looked at the thing in this house for
so long that they had become part of it, reflections
of its hunger, extensions of its need. They were still watching,
after all these years. They were still watching, And now
they were watching us David. I grabbed his arm. We
need to go right now. But he wasn't listening. He
was staring at the figures in the corner, his face slack,
his eyes wide and glassy. They're so still, he whispered,
so quiet. They don't even blink, They just watch, David, Please,
is that what's going to happen to us? He turned
to me, and his eyes were wrong, too dark, too deep,
like something was looking out through them from very far away.
Is that what we become? Watchers? Witnesses? We're leaving, we're
getting out of here. There is no out. He smiled,
and it wasn't his smile anymore. It was too wide,
too knowing. Don't you understand, once you see it, really
see it, you're already part of it, already connected. You
can't unsee what you've seen. You can't unfeel what you've felt.
That's not true. Margaret Weatherby got out, she left, did she?
The smile stretched wider. She's been in that care facility
for thirty years. Emma staring out the window, waiting, still connected,
still watching. She never really left at all. I slapped him.
The sound echoed through the basement, sharp and sudden. David blinked,
shook his head. When he looked at me again, something
of my husband was back behind his eyes. Emma, he
touched his cheek. What we're leaving now. I don't care
if we have to break down the walls. We are
getting out of this house. I don't think. I don't
care what you think. I grabbed his hand, pulled him
toward the stairs. I'm not becoming one of those things,
and neither are you. We ran up the stairs, through
the kitchen into the living room, and we stopped. The
front door was open, not just unlocked, standing wide open,
letting in a wreck tangle of gray January light. Cold
air poured through, cutting through the rot sweetness of the basement,
clean and sharp and real. For a moment, neither of
us moved. We just stared at that open door, at
the freedom beyond it, waiting for the trap to spring.
It's letting us go, David whispered. No. I watched the
shadows in the corners of the room, watch the move
shift coalesce. It's not letting us go, It's giving us
a choice. The figure emerged from the shadows by the stairs.
It was clearer, now, more solid. Every time we'd looked
at it. We'd given its substance made it more real.
Now it stood before us with terrible clarity, that tall,
wrong body, those long fingers, that smooth, pale face, with
its pit dark eyes. It looked at me, then at David.
Then it stepped aside. Beyond it, near the couch, I
could see the shapes of the previous families, the watched,
the witnesses. They'd come up from the basement. They stood
in a loose, semicircle, their hollow eyes fixed on us,
waiting join us. Their silence seemed to say, stay, watch,
be watched forever. The door was open, the path was clear.
But I understood now what leaving would mean. If we
walked out that door, we wouldn't be escaping. We'd be
carrying it with us, the connection we'd formed, the attention
we'd drawn. It would follow us wherever we went. We'd
seen too much, looked too long. Margaret Wetherby had been
staring out that window for thirty years, and she was
still connected, still watching, still waiting for the house to
call her back. There was only one way to truly escape,
and it meant going deeper into the dark. David, I
gripped his hand tighter. I need you to trust me.
What are you going to do? I looked at the
thing that stood between us and the stairs, at the
hollow people gathered in our living room, at the open
door that promised a freedom we could never really have.
I'm going to end this, I said, whatever it takes.
The thing tilted its head, curious, interested, and somewhere in
those dark pit eyes I saw something I hadn't seen before. Fear.
It was afraid of what I might do, afraid of
losing its witnesses, its collection, which meant there was a
way to hurt it, and I was going to find
out what it was.
Speaker 1: Y