Speaker 1: Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Two people meet, they fall
Speaker 1: in love, but sudden dreams began to threaten them both.
Speaker 1: My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. My
Speaker 1: friends had just left the mall for a movie they
Speaker 1: were going to watch together, something Elena and I both
Speaker 1: agreed we were going to skip, even though we didn't
Speaker 1: know each other, and we're desperately searching for a time
Speaker 1: to talk alone. We were trying to drift away from
Speaker 1: the pace of our friends along those same stores, the
Speaker 1: ones that seemed to line up every mall ever made.
Speaker 1: We would fall behind, match our steps, ignore each other
Speaker 1: for a bit, and then speak our first words, Oh,
Speaker 1: I need to get some new shoes. I didn't, but
Speaker 1: wanted to sound like I had other reasons to be
Speaker 1: there with everybody with the most boring place on earth.
Speaker 1: Do you want to go to Kim's, she asked. I
Speaker 1: need a few things from there too. Kims was like
Speaker 1: an off brand reseller, sort of like Payless at the time,
Speaker 1: but I had gotten most of my shoes growing up
Speaker 1: from there. I was relieved to know that she was
Speaker 1: like that, normal someone who I didn't have to play
Speaker 1: pretend with. She probably also wanted to skip the movie
Speaker 1: because it wasn't worth it. You can watch movies for
Speaker 1: free and so many other places, but for me it
Speaker 1: was half I want to talk to her and half
Speaker 1: I don't want to pay for a movie. And it
Speaker 1: was at the food court when we started talking. Everything
Speaker 1: seemed to match. I guess during that stage everything seemed
Speaker 1: simpler than it will be. But she wasn't afraid of
Speaker 1: saying things how they were almost to a level of
Speaker 1: brutal truth, both to herself and to me. It was
Speaker 1: how I knew that she was honest, down to earth
Speaker 1: and normal. Nothing about her would even hint at what
Speaker 1: we were going to go through in the coming months.
Speaker 1: We had both graduated, me with an economics degree and
Speaker 1: she got it in literature and English. We both had
Speaker 1: jobs near each other, so we quickly decided to move
Speaker 1: in together, although we hadn't told our families yet. Being
Speaker 1: together for such a short time was the main reason
Speaker 1: our families who would flip out. But as young people do,
Speaker 1: we wanted to rush to do everything to plan out
Speaker 1: our lives to get the most of it. But I
Speaker 1: started noticing something was off. Sometime in January. We were
Speaker 1: planning on going to our family's house to give them
Speaker 1: the news, before driving to my childhood home, practicing how
Speaker 1: to tell them without getting lectured on it. Part of
Speaker 1: me thought that it shouldn't be that big of a deal.
Speaker 1: We were both adults by then. Plus I also thought
Speaker 1: that that's what was bothering her and why she would
Speaker 1: end up on her phone late at night, scrolling with
Speaker 1: the occasional loud TikTok popping up on the screen, startling
Speaker 1: me enough to wake up. As expected, she would wake
Speaker 1: up tired, her face started drooping around her eyes, and
Speaker 1: her hair stopped shining the way it used to. Of course,
Speaker 1: I was more careful with my words, although she expected
Speaker 1: absolute honesty from my behalf when it came to these
Speaker 1: kind of things. Open communication was our rule. But I
Speaker 1: struggled to finally ask if she needed to see a doctor,
Speaker 1: if the pressure of our relationship was affecting her sleep.
Speaker 1: I mustered up the courage to talk to her, finally
Speaker 1: approaching her during breakfast on a Monday, and that's when
Speaker 1: she startled me, I've been having terrible dreams. She looked
Speaker 1: down and stayed quiet. What about, I asked, half expecting
Speaker 1: her to continue without me asking I know when I'm
Speaker 1: gonna die, she said, looking down at her coffee, no
Speaker 1: longer steaming and still unstirred, with a creamer slowly rising
Speaker 1: in strange shapes from the darkness. I couldn't think of
Speaker 1: anything to say, so I asked her when in March.
Speaker 1: She said, March second this year, I asked, in shock
Speaker 1: of both what she was saying with such a straight
Speaker 1: face and the thought of losing who I thought was
Speaker 1: going to become an important person in my life. I
Speaker 1: don't know what I was thinking. It only felt like
Speaker 1: something that she wanted to talk about, perhaps a topic
Speaker 1: of conversation. And yet I can't help myself at thinking
Speaker 1: if I fuel this. Had I ignored, this would have
Speaker 1: been forgotten, along with the many other ideas that Elena
Speaker 1: would have for me on a daily basis. She was
Speaker 1: an interesting person who was obviously familiar with the stories
Speaker 1: across cultures and ages. That day, she simply nodded and
Speaker 1: quietly got up to go to the bathroom to brush
Speaker 1: her teeth. The inside of the coffee cup was completely
Speaker 1: light brown, now all on its own. When she got
Speaker 1: home from work, I asked her more about what she
Speaker 1: had told me in the morning. Had to promise her
Speaker 1: that I would take it seriously. Because I had been
Speaker 1: bothering her for several weeks. The thoughts of us celebrating
Speaker 1: something that wouldn't happen because of her death was a
Speaker 1: very serious and very real thing in her head. I
Speaker 1: had no choice but to ask more about it. I've
Speaker 1: been having these dreams, she said quietly, Dreams where I'm
Speaker 1: in bed and suddenly I can't breathe, my heart begins
Speaker 1: to struggle, and suddenly I'm gone. It always happens the
Speaker 1: same way, enough for me to spot details within them.
Speaker 1: I waited for her to tell me the rest of them.
Speaker 1: You can't think I'm crazy, she told me. I simply
Speaker 1: stared at her light brown eyes. You can't, okay, she
Speaker 1: asked again. All right, I said, raising my hands as
Speaker 1: I backed away and placed them on my lap, adjusting
Speaker 1: my shoulders to line up with hers on the couch.
Speaker 1: For several nights, I've had these dreams where I'm in
Speaker 1: bed and I begin to hear strange noises. There's knocks
Speaker 1: on the window, tapping on the wall. I look around,
Speaker 1: sitting up in bed, and I hear them voices coming closer,
Speaker 1: asking me where I want to go, and some only
Speaker 1: tell me where I'm going. They tell me not to
Speaker 1: be afraid, but of course I panic. I begin to
Speaker 1: shake and wonder what is going to happen with me?
Speaker 1: What will happen to us and to my family, my things?
Speaker 1: How though, how do you know that it's happening soon?
Speaker 1: This is where I tell you to not think I'm crazy.
Speaker 1: But do you know about the puppy calendar? I nodded
Speaker 1: that things she picked up when she was at one
Speaker 1: of the department stores. I think t J Max near
Speaker 1: the cash register. She loves of all calendars, those cheap
Speaker 1: ones you would get when you pick up a Chinese
Speaker 1: food order or at furniture stores, usually of beautiful views
Speaker 1: of nature, animals, or cities around the world. This one
Speaker 1: she picked up for two dollars on a whim and
Speaker 1: placed it on the wall next to her mirror. The
Speaker 1: two Dulmatians, she said, her eyes filling up with water,
Speaker 1: but keeping her tone the same. It's always set to
Speaker 1: the two Dulmatians in March. Are you going to ask
Speaker 1: me about the dates? She said, looking right into my eyes. Yes,
Speaker 1: how do you know about the exact date? I followed
Speaker 1: up without skipping a beat the moon. It's always at
Speaker 1: the edge of the light post on the right. I've
Speaker 1: searched for it. There's a day in that month when
Speaker 1: it would appear right there, right around that time, and
Speaker 1: appears right there from where I'm sleeping March second. I
Speaker 1: don't know how it worked, and frankly I didn't care.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get her some help, to do everything
Speaker 1: I could to at least stop her from thinking about this,
Speaker 1: and we did. Helena. I was super smart, and I
Speaker 1: had a list of things to cross off, including researching
Speaker 1: all these theories of time and why she was being
Speaker 1: told where she was going to go. The next few weeks,
Speaker 1: we went to get a bunch of tests done, her heart,
Speaker 1: to lung's brain, everything we could think of. She would
Speaker 1: tell the doctors that something didn't feel right, but stopped
Speaker 1: herself at that Everything checked out just fine. She was
Speaker 1: eating the same things, maybe even healthier than me. Helena.
Speaker 1: I asked her on the drive back from one of
Speaker 1: those appointments, Am I in the dream next to you
Speaker 1: when you die? No, she said, but you're around I'm
Speaker 1: not alone when I go. Still, I kept thinking that
Speaker 1: maybe it was all in her mind, something about the
Speaker 1: vision she kept seeing found a way to repeat itself.
Speaker 1: But the thought of her leaving and our dreams shattering
Speaker 1: like that made this a serious matter. How can you
Speaker 1: know if these dreams are real? I asked, expecting to
Speaker 1: stumper with a question. She turned to look at me again.
Speaker 1: You can't think I'm crazy, I nodded. I've dreamt other
Speaker 1: things too, she whispered. As the days and weeks passed,
Speaker 1: I started keeping track of her dreams, multiple ones, as
Speaker 1: she would have at least the notable ones with the
Speaker 1: reoccurring dream of the voices and her death. She witnessed
Speaker 1: a death in one of them, and it was of
Speaker 1: a red car that spent past her and ran a
Speaker 1: red light. She called me crying. Two days after that,
Speaker 1: when it happened a mother and a daughter were crossing
Speaker 1: the street and were hit, dying on the spot. The
Speaker 1: wrong delivery dream where a FedEx guy comes and tries
Speaker 1: to deliver a package but it's actually for the neighbor's house.
Speaker 1: Nothing significant, but it did happen. About two weeks after that,
Speaker 1: her sister announcing pregnancy, my friend getting fired from his job.
Speaker 1: Sure those things were eerie to me, but they did
Speaker 1: it didn't matter. All they seemed to be able to
Speaker 1: prove was that her dream was going to come true,
Speaker 1: that she would leave me and leave all of us.
Speaker 1: One Saturday morning, she was in the kitchen when I
Speaker 1: walked up to the counter and found her staring at
Speaker 1: the unstirred coffee again. She looked at me and said,
Speaker 1: at four o'clock in the morning, without her having to
Speaker 1: explain anything else to me, I knew she had found
Speaker 1: out the time she was leaving. And from that day
Speaker 1: on things changed. Helena was calmer, smiling. Even whenever the
Speaker 1: topics of her death came by, she would talk about
Speaker 1: it like she had accepted it completely. I wanted her
Speaker 1: to change, although of course I loved seeing her this happy,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't help myself. I asked her about us
Speaker 1: taking a trip, maybe going somewhere for the rest of
Speaker 1: the month while we take time off work, to maybe
Speaker 1: try to gain this crazy theory and move out to
Speaker 1: change things, to get rid of the calendar she had
Speaker 1: on the wall, Maybe talk to someone about it. I
Speaker 1: don't know a priest or someone who would know about
Speaker 1: this stuff. I suggested sleeping pills and prayer. Things I
Speaker 1: was not known for even wanting to talk about like
Speaker 1: meditation or witch doctors. Someone somewhere must know about this
Speaker 1: phenomenon and might even be able to help us. It
Speaker 1: will readjust, she said, smiling. She must have already tried
Speaker 1: this before. I noticed her moving her mirrors and adjusting
Speaker 1: the blinds, switching the position of where she slept for
Speaker 1: a time. Yes, I asked myself about who I thought
Speaker 1: I was, thinking I could get in the way, but
Speaker 1: I knew what she wanted. She didn't want anyone else
Speaker 1: to know about this in fear of them getting in
Speaker 1: the way or telling her that something was wrong with her.
Speaker 1: It was until she accepted what was going to happen,
Speaker 1: when she became calmer, that she began to sleep better
Speaker 1: and would wake up in a better mood. Sometime in February,
Speaker 1: around Valentine's Day, she quit her job. We started talking
Speaker 1: about finances, ideas I'd never thought i'd have to talk
Speaker 1: about with her, at least not this early in our lives.
Speaker 1: And it was March by now when I thought of
Speaker 1: everything we had gone through in those last few months,
Speaker 1: Like our entire lives, played out really quickly, and soon
Speaker 1: I found myself next to her as she was falling
Speaker 1: asleep now past midnight. It was March second. We talked
Speaker 1: about her staying awake, hoping that somehow those dreams were
Speaker 1: only nightmares and that we would wake up the next day.
Speaker 1: We would laugh about it, move on. We would end
Speaker 1: up with a great story to tell her children one day.
Speaker 1: But sadly, it didn't turn out like that. I woke
Speaker 1: up around three in the morning after twisting and turning
Speaker 1: from ho the night. She was breathing normally, and I
Speaker 1: tried to wake her up when I suddenly noticed the
Speaker 1: movement in the corner of the room. It was quick,
Speaker 1: like a tissue, and the way it disappears into a
Speaker 1: vacuum cleaner by accident. That's when it started. The knocking.
Speaker 1: It was soft at first, with taps on the window,
Speaker 1: before quickly building up to full on knocking at the
Speaker 1: front door. I started shaking Elena that morning, trying desperately
Speaker 1: to wake her up, but she wouldn't move. I got
Speaker 1: out of bed and walked over the door to the bathroom,
Speaker 1: swinging it open so violently that it slammed against the wall.
Speaker 1: The knocking at the front door became louder, and the
Speaker 1: shapes around the hallway were materializing into these strings of light,
Speaker 1: like smoke when the candles go out. They were streaming
Speaker 1: up and around the ceilings, back down, and then toward me.
Speaker 1: I saw one in particular swaying toward my face and
Speaker 1: neck before vanishing. Then everything went silent. As I rushed
Speaker 1: back to Helena. Her body was curled on the blankets,
Speaker 1: facing toward the ceiling. I turned on the lamp on
Speaker 1: the nightstand next to her. Her chest and stomach were
Speaker 1: not rising anymore, and from that moment on they would
Speaker 1: do so no longer. The next few days were a blur.
Speaker 1: I couldn't remember going to sleep or what happened after
Speaker 1: I discovered Elena lying still on her side of the bed.
Speaker 1: I was trying to piece everything together when my mind
Speaker 1: was available. I don't remember when I requested time off
Speaker 1: work or where I placed anything around the house, but
Speaker 1: I did start to remember a few things, like memories
Speaker 1: of Helena, almost as if they were dreams. I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure who I had come into my house to get
Speaker 1: rid of her things, someone who knew how devastating finding
Speaker 1: something of hers could be to me, my parents, perhaps,
Speaker 1: dreams of the mall walking next to Elena among the
Speaker 1: crowded stores, with the echoes of strangers around us. Everything
Speaker 1: was coming back when I slept, or at least when
Speaker 1: I thought I did. There was something about dreams and
Speaker 1: nightmares that I believed in ever since I was a kid,
Speaker 1: that they would somehow become real only if I could
Speaker 1: remember them when I woke up. It rarely happened, And
Speaker 1: yet I doubted Elena so much when she told me
Speaker 1: about hers, or did I What if I had been
Speaker 1: responsible for what happened for believing in her own dreams,
Speaker 1: I could have dismissed them. I could have told her
Speaker 1: that I thought she was crazy, and maybe that idea
Speaker 1: would have stuck with her and none of this would
Speaker 1: have happened. But I couldn't. I believed in these things.
Speaker 1: They were real to me once I heard them, but
Speaker 1: I dreamed what happened, and I was able to make
Speaker 1: the connection only when I remember them. Deep down, I
Speaker 1: knew that this could become a slippery slope that I
Speaker 1: would never escape. The way you can blend reality with
Speaker 1: dreams is not something you play around with. I always
Speaker 1: made up a scenario in my head, saying, what if
Speaker 1: I could fly in my dreams? And somehow confuse that
Speaker 1: in real life heading up in a crowded sidewalk surrounded
Speaker 1: by strangers, dreams are not something we should talk about.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't make them real. And these thoughts I knew
Speaker 1: would never leave my mind. I was lying in bed
Speaker 1: one night. I'm not sure if it was days or
Speaker 1: hours from these previous thoughts I had when I got
Speaker 1: a message from an old friend. He said that they
Speaker 1: were getting together after the rush from Black Friday, and
Speaker 1: to come meet them that many months had passed already.
Speaker 1: A question out loud, without thinking much about it, I agreed,
Speaker 1: assuming that maybe this would be good for me. After
Speaker 1: I sent the message, I went back to my home
Speaker 1: screen on the phone and looked at the date, and
Speaker 1: I was losing it. December again. I turned off the
Speaker 1: screen and looked at the reflection of my eyes against it.
Speaker 1: I was losing my mind. I woke up with the
Speaker 1: worst headache I've had in years months. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: I scrolled her on my phone, finally opening up my
Speaker 1: photos app, a thing I had been avoiding for a
Speaker 1: very long time, or at least I thought so. I
Speaker 1: found nothing in there but pictures I took at work,
Speaker 1: my brother's birthday party, a picture of the sun set
Speaker 1: from a living room window. Where was Elena? The thought
Speaker 1: circled my mind a whole day as he followed me
Speaker 1: to the sidewalk and the bus stop from the parking lot,
Speaker 1: and to the exterior tables where my friends and I
Speaker 1: would always meet. Then they arrived. Up in front of
Speaker 1: me were my three friends and a fourth person, Helena,
Speaker 1: standing with her guns and Roses t shirt, her white
Speaker 1: shoes and blue jeans. She smiled nervously as my eyes
Speaker 1: widened and I stood up from my chair. My eyes watered,
Speaker 1: completely blurring my vision, though I managed to grab a
Speaker 1: napkin from the holder in front of me. And these parts,
Speaker 1: these I remember, the way she looked at me, and
Speaker 1: the way we wanted to talk to each other, knowing
Speaker 1: each other's favorite stores, a dislike for movies, her questions
Speaker 1: about what high school I went to, and if we
Speaker 1: had met before, the way we laughed at the man
Speaker 1: with the hat, the same one who had given me
Speaker 1: a strange metal mixer thing that he put on my head,
Speaker 1: supposedly a head massager that ended up getting tangled up
Speaker 1: on my hair. Memories of what seemed to be another life,
Speaker 1: we like our time at the food court that day,
Speaker 1: same spot, same coffee, The way I looked at her
Speaker 1: coffee cup, the creamer slowly creeping up to the top.
Speaker 1: I looked up at her, and she looked back at me.
Speaker 1: I could tell that she knew me, and she knew
Speaker 1: the same of me. Things went as drenthed before, with
Speaker 1: our trips to the store and the calendars of puppies,
Speaker 1: the Netflix nights and recommendations for podcasts. We would both
Speaker 1: wake up from terrible dreams sometimes, and although I managed
Speaker 1: to forget mine, I know that they linger for her,
Speaker 1: and yet, from our previous lessons, they can't become real
Speaker 1: if we don't talk about them. Yet I keep waking
Speaker 1: up from the nightmare it is to watch her lay
Speaker 1: completely still, the knocking and the voices, the streams of
Speaker 1: energy looming around the hallway, saying goodbye. Let the fear
Speaker 1: stay in our our minds, But they say fate only waits.
Speaker 1: I think of this now as February is coming to
Speaker 1: an end, hoping so desperately hoping that it becomes December again.
Speaker 1: Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me Edwin
Speaker 1: Kobar Rubias. If you like this story, drop some stars
Speaker 1: for me. On Spotify, you go to the podcast, you
Speaker 1: tap the three dots and rate the show. On Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: you scroll down the podcast page and you add your
Speaker 1: stars there. It's simple than free, but it gives a
Speaker 1: show a boost and we need to keep up. As always,
Speaker 1: if you're following the show, I will tell you another
Speaker 1: story next week. Thank you very much for listening. Keep
Speaker 1: it scary everyone, See you soon.