Speaker 1: I was so used to it lingering in the dark,
Speaker 1: watching my every move, listening to my breath at night,
Speaker 1: and when at least expected it, it would approach carefully,
Speaker 1: not because it was afraid to be seen. I had
Speaker 1: the chance to do so many times before. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: what it wanted, But I'll tell you when I finally
Speaker 1: saw it, I wish that every single fiber in my
Speaker 1: body belonged to anyone but me. And isn't that fear
Speaker 1: the reason why we started to believe in God in
Speaker 1: the first place, pretending that someone else is in control.
Speaker 1: But I know it's there watching me, hearing. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you this. It knows me, and now it knows
Speaker 1: you too. Who's to say that nothing lingers around your home,
Speaker 1: watching you while you're clean, or listening to your breathing
Speaker 1: next to your bed. Who's to say nothing's listening with
Speaker 1: you right now? My name is Edwin, and here's a
Speaker 1: scary story. It all started one evening while talking with
Speaker 1: a friend on FaceTime. She was by herself, like I
Speaker 1: was just across town, her husband again away for work,
Speaker 1: and me alone in the house for another week. As always,
Speaker 1: she would ask about my sons and how they were doing,
Speaker 1: and as always I told her where they were and
Speaker 1: how proud I felt of them. One of these days,
Speaker 1: I said, my oldest will be coming around one of
Speaker 1: these days. I could see her folding her clothes in
Speaker 1: her bedroom as we spoke. The new way of keeping
Speaker 1: each other company, a thing we learned over the pandemic.
Speaker 1: I went down to the kitchen, phone in hand, in
Speaker 1: flicked on the lights. With the other hand, I opened
Speaker 1: the fridge and took out everything I needed for my
Speaker 1: turkey sandwich. I just wanted something quick this time. Dirting
Speaker 1: up two pads for just myself seemed like too much
Speaker 1: these days. Mayonnaise, mustard, and slices of turkey from yesterday.
Speaker 1: I was warming up the bread in between the long
Speaker 1: stretches of silence with her on the phone. But I
Speaker 1: needed both hands to spread the mayo on the bread,
Speaker 1: so I put the phone down, leaning against a large
Speaker 1: tin of coffee that I had on the little table
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, and it looked away for what must
Speaker 1: have been five seconds. But when I looked back at
Speaker 1: the screen, all I saw was the screen with the
Speaker 1: list of contacts. She probably got disconnected, I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: Hurrying with the bread and waiting for her to call back,
Speaker 1: but she didn't call. I ate my sandwich in peace,
Speaker 1: even turned on the television for a little bit. And
Speaker 1: once I was done and the silence was beginning to
Speaker 1: spread around the house, I decided to call her back. Tracy,
Speaker 1: I said, you hung up on me, you jerk. She laughed.
Speaker 1: How's your son, she asked, out of nowhere. My son,
Speaker 1: he's all right. I responded, a little wearded out by
Speaker 1: the question, and after a little gap of silence, she continued,
Speaker 1: that's why I hung up, because your son got home.
Speaker 1: A soft chill ran down my back. My son wasn't home.
Speaker 1: Nobody was. I had been alone for several days now,
Speaker 1: especially those evenings. Well mine is the two dogs. I
Speaker 1: asked if she was joking, and she nearly spilled her
Speaker 1: coffee when she saw how serious I was. My son
Speaker 1: wasn't at home. I saw him, she said, he was
Speaker 1: walking up behind you. I thought he was going to
Speaker 1: surprise you. I stood there in silence. My son hadn't
Speaker 1: gotten home. I was the only one in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: Quit scaring me. I remember saying, there's no one home.
Speaker 1: I saw him. She insisted, he was all he was,
Speaker 1: her son, I know him, he was standing right behind you.
Speaker 1: I begged her at this point not to hang up
Speaker 1: on me again. Not at that moment. I was, after
Speaker 1: all alone in the house, or at least I thought
Speaker 1: it was, and I never heard or saw anyone else
Speaker 1: come in. All of the doors were locked, and the
Speaker 1: dogs had embarked. All I could think of, at least
Speaker 1: at that moment, was just how someone approaches when they're
Speaker 1: trying to surprise you, and how eerie it can look
Speaker 1: if you don't have context watching someone approach you silently.
Speaker 1: It's something I still can't shake off. But several things
Speaker 1: that happened to me already at this house, and this
Speaker 1: confirmed to me that I wasn't safe. I should have
Speaker 1: listened to those signs, to those shadows that appeared out
Speaker 1: of the corners of my eyes, the footsteps in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night, but I didn't. It was a
Speaker 1: cold afternoon and it had just gone work, tired, thinking
Speaker 1: maybe I was getting sick. After one of my customers
Speaker 1: showed up sneezing all over the desk. He apologized after
Speaker 1: the damage was done, but still anyway, I came in
Speaker 1: through the main door, the one by the living room,
Speaker 1: and I sat on the couch before the silence started
Speaker 1: creeping in. It was like a deafening kind of silence
Speaker 1: that I can only explain as when the refrigerator turns off,
Speaker 1: the thing that made you realize that there was a
Speaker 1: humming filling up the house that you never noticed until
Speaker 1: it was gone. It was like that, like that rare
Speaker 1: silence between the crashing waves by the pier, or when
Speaker 1: you close a window from your bedroom. Stillness, not peaceful, uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I immediately opened my eyes, not noticing that they were
Speaker 1: closed before, and I watched the shadow moved into the
Speaker 1: column of the living room, a pillar that had been
Speaker 1: there ever since we moved in. I would have said
Speaker 1: that it hit behind, but no, it went into the
Speaker 1: column and vanished completely. Maybe I was tired again and
Speaker 1: imagining things. Sure, that's a possibility, just like how it's
Speaker 1: a possibility that it was real. So I got up
Speaker 1: and stepped outside for a second, but that tiredness was
Speaker 1: already there. I knew that once I got to my room,
Speaker 1: my eyes would shut. I would wake up in a
Speaker 1: few hours and follow my simple nightly routine. It turned
Speaker 1: out to be anything but that. I don't know how
Speaker 1: I got to bed, but that sleep was deep. I
Speaker 1: shut off my phone and everything, just to be sure
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't be woken up. I left it by
Speaker 1: the front door. We had no nearby neighbors, were all
Speaker 1: separated by a semi large field around here, and the
Speaker 1: only sounds that would come from the outside would be
Speaker 1: the people honking along the dirt roads for no reason,
Speaker 1: to dogs maybe, or to say others to come open
Speaker 1: the gates. But there was a different sound this time,
Speaker 1: a vaguely familiar sound that I had learned to ignore
Speaker 1: some night, the soft creak of a bending floorboard next
Speaker 1: to me. I turned away like I always did, but
Speaker 1: it must have been just how tired I was that
Speaker 1: I miscalculated, and I rolled my shoulder off the bed
Speaker 1: and the rest of my body landed straight on the floor.
Speaker 1: I tried to get up immediately, so I put my
Speaker 1: hands on the floorboards next to my bed when I
Speaker 1: felt it, a cold, bony foot and a leg against
Speaker 1: my arm. My eyes were open. Had forgotten that even
Speaker 1: at night, in the pitch darkness, I would open them
Speaker 1: and see nothing. But this time the sun was still out,
Speaker 1: and I sighed for the first time. I looked up
Speaker 1: as I leaned against the edge of the bed, my
Speaker 1: legs failing to hold me up as I called laps
Speaker 1: to the floor. My arms were reaching to the bottom
Speaker 1: corners of this bed, and I begged them to pull
Speaker 1: me away from this thing. I crawled as far as
Speaker 1: I could before my eyes looked up at this figure.
Speaker 1: It was wearing a sleeping gown ripped from the top,
Speaker 1: an old creature, thousands of wrinkles, some of them cracked
Speaker 1: at the folds, with dark blood forming lines and strange patterns,
Speaker 1: patterns that looked like symbols all around its legs and arms,
Speaker 1: but its face, dark hair missing in patches. It would
Speaker 1: reach its nose and just below the ear. It was greasy,
Speaker 1: falling straight down as if wet. It covered part of
Speaker 1: its eyes, large and dark, looking steadily in my direction,
Speaker 1: it just stared. The deafening silence was around me. Once more,
Speaker 1: I could see its jaw dropping little by little. The
Speaker 1: gums and the inside of its mouth were a dead purple.
Speaker 1: The few teeth that remained were stained yellow, and its breath,
Speaker 1: that of sulfur and sewage that escaped its lungs reached me.
Speaker 1: Nothing worked, not my arms or voice. All I could
Speaker 1: feel where the tears streaming down to my chest. As
Speaker 1: I sat there frozen, it slowly rotated its body and
Speaker 1: started approaching me, leaning its face closer to mine, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure if I was breathing anymore. I could
Speaker 1: smell nothing and feel nothing, not even the heartbeat that
Speaker 1: had been thumping at the side of my neck and
Speaker 1: blocking up my ears just a few seconds ago. It
Speaker 1: opened its mouth very slowly and stared into my eyes. Mom,
Speaker 1: It said, Mom, can you open the door? It was
Speaker 1: my son, or at least his voice. I finally managed
Speaker 1: to scream that it realized that I could se see it.
Speaker 1: I screamed even louder once I caught my breath loud
Speaker 1: enough that I felt my throat burned from deep inside
Speaker 1: my chest. It smiled and backed away, crossing straight through
Speaker 1: the small gap between the frame and the door, and
Speaker 1: then it disappeared into the hallway. I sat there, vomit,
Speaker 1: finally working its way up my throat into the floor
Speaker 1: if the rest of my body could only hold me up.
Speaker 1: As I waited for the thing to return, I listened
Speaker 1: for its dragging footsteps, but there was nothing. For that
Speaker 1: rest of the afternoon, I sat there wondering if anyone
Speaker 1: would believe the explanations of what I had just seen
Speaker 1: until the sky turned orange outside. It was going to
Speaker 1: get dark soon, so I dragged myself toward the doorframe.
Speaker 1: I pulled myself up and managed to get myself out
Speaker 1: of the living room from the side table by the door.
Speaker 1: I grabbed the phone and keys, stumbled into the car
Speaker 1: and locked the door. Or out from the car, I
Speaker 1: watched the windows for movement, but there was nothing. I
Speaker 1: stayed there deep into the night, so I finally managed
Speaker 1: the courage to call my friend and wake her up.
Speaker 1: I didn't tell her anything about what happened that night.
Speaker 1: I told her enough to not feel like I was
Speaker 1: losing my mind, that I had taken a nap and
Speaker 1: had a nightmare, but that I felt different. I put
Speaker 1: my lie together on the spot. I think someone got
Speaker 1: into the house, or something got into the house. I
Speaker 1: don't know. You saw something the other day, too, Remember
Speaker 1: your son? Yeah it was not my son, I said,
Speaker 1: regretting it immediately. I'd just woken her up and was
Speaker 1: asking for her help, and now I was treating her
Speaker 1: like this. She stayed quiet. Okay, maybe not your son,
Speaker 1: but I saw somebody. Then he stopped before he got
Speaker 1: to you. I felt that sensation vomit crawling up my
Speaker 1: body again. He was standing there behind you, waiting for
Speaker 1: you to turn around. I didn't go back inside the
Speaker 1: house that night. It was like at work, where you
Speaker 1: let the work drip into another day or onto someone else,
Speaker 1: thinking that if I simply stared at the windows, I
Speaker 1: would see something and I would have proof that I
Speaker 1: wasn't going crazy. But nothing happened. It was three in
Speaker 1: the morning by now, and I was finally succumbing to
Speaker 1: the exhaustion. It was like those nights at the airport, shallow,
Speaker 1: restless sleep where your body is shutting down, but your
Speaker 1: mind is un alert, watching for sudden movements or for
Speaker 1: the tugging at your luggage. Everything from the flapping of
Speaker 1: the wings of the moths to the frogs in the distance.
Speaker 1: Any change in the rhythm would wake me up. The
Speaker 1: wind across the fields, the headlights of a car through
Speaker 1: the hills, even the soft knock from inside the house.
Speaker 1: I didn't go to work the next morning, didn't even
Speaker 1: bother to call in. Nothing was better then, and I
Speaker 1: don't think it was going to improve. I hadn't been
Speaker 1: to the bathroom and didn't want to. And now even
Speaker 1: the sunlight didn't seem to erase what happened the previous night.
Speaker 1: The thing was no longer afraid of it. It was
Speaker 1: done hiding. The dogs had stayed outside in their little
Speaker 1: dog houses, and they came wagging their tails up to
Speaker 1: the car door. I opened it and they lowered their heads.
Speaker 1: They trusted me, and so I walked over the door slowly,
Speaker 1: like the house belonged to someone else. The dog stopped
Speaker 1: walking right at the doorframe and whined as they took
Speaker 1: two steps back still. I stepped in and walked through
Speaker 1: the house, every room, closets, cabinets. I checked the windows
Speaker 1: and the locks. Nothing, no sign that anything or anyone
Speaker 1: had been there. And so I got to my bedroom.
Speaker 1: A puddle of vomit on the floor next to the bed,
Speaker 1: dragged on by the socks that was still wearing. I
Speaker 1: stepped in and went to check the windows. The curtains
Speaker 1: were shot, the same ones I had seen that night,
Speaker 1: the ones that were wide open just a few hours ago.
Speaker 1: The sheets were pulled down, like someone had gotten up
Speaker 1: in a hurry or fallen down. I didn't sleep in
Speaker 1: that room again. I moved to the living room. For
Speaker 1: the next few nights, slept with the lights on, the
Speaker 1: television running. I apologized that work made up an emergency
Speaker 1: that they believed. And it was like that for a
Speaker 1: few days, until the silence started finding its way back.
Speaker 1: The television and sounds from the outside were becoming nothing again,
Speaker 1: and that same familiar pattern when your mind ignores everything
Speaker 1: and hyper focuses on one thing, That one footstep, the
Speaker 1: creek on the floorboards, like something's moving around you watching
Speaker 1: It was the fourth day after the incident when it
Speaker 1: approached again, or at least try to. I just dozed
Speaker 1: off on the couch when I heard it. Footsteps, slow
Speaker 1: and careful crossing the hallway. There was nothing moving or breathing,
Speaker 1: but I felt it stop at the entrance of the
Speaker 1: living room. And then my son's voice, the oldest one.
Speaker 1: Mom It sounded scared, like when he was little and
Speaker 1: I would be with him until he fell asleep. It
Speaker 1: blended with when he wanted to know if I was
Speaker 1: home without waking me up. I try to answer, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to scream or turn my head. I wanted
Speaker 1: to open my eyes completely to make sure. But something else,
Speaker 1: something deep inside of me kept me still because now
Speaker 1: I knew that I had seen it already, and I
Speaker 1: felt like I was being tested. I was still facing
Speaker 1: the back of the couch for seconds that felt like
Speaker 1: hours before I heard it again, and it was closer. Mom,
Speaker 1: why aren't you answering me? The voice cracked a little bit,
Speaker 1: like a recording, a perfect replica of a voice I
Speaker 1: was familiar with. My hand twitched just a little, and
Speaker 1: then the footsteps continued, one step, then another, slow, careful,
Speaker 1: closing the distance between the back of my head and it.
Speaker 1: That's when I smelled that same air rot was right
Speaker 1: behind me. It was leaning closer. The air was moving
Speaker 1: near my ear. I could feel it, and it whispered quietly,
Speaker 1: almost curiously. Mom, why won't you look at me? I froze.
Speaker 1: Even though I had wanted to move, I couldn't. I
Speaker 1: don't know for how long I was there in that couch,
Speaker 1: but the sun had long been set, and that's when
Speaker 1: I left. I didn't pack anything. Instead, I borrowed a
Speaker 1: charger once I got to my friend's house. I also
Speaker 1: stayed in a motel and in my car for one
Speaker 1: of those nights, the ones when I was sure I
Speaker 1: was ready to go back to my house, but wasn't.
Speaker 1: And just last night I got a call for my son.
Speaker 1: I hadn't mentioned any of this to him, and it
Speaker 1: had been two days since we had last spoken. Had
Speaker 1: gotten a project across the state and would visit two
Speaker 1: times a month. I answered right away, Mom, it was him.
Speaker 1: It had to be. The voyays had the same tone,
Speaker 1: but still I couldn't be sure. It felt delayed. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, it's me, I said, are you okay?
Speaker 1: There was a silence on the other line, and then
Speaker 1: I'm home, the boy said. I felt another cold chill
Speaker 1: take over my body. What do you mean, I asked,
Speaker 1: I got here earlier. He said, you weren't here. More silence.
Speaker 1: I waited, he said, so. It was starting to form
Speaker 1: on my phone case and on screen. Where are you
Speaker 1: right now? I asked. There was silence again, as if
Speaker 1: I was thinking of what to say. I'm still here,
Speaker 1: The voice said, I don't know if that was him,
Speaker 1: but he hasn't answered his phone when I call him back.
Speaker 1: So still I sit here in the car at the
Speaker 1: end of the road, the house still visible from between
Speaker 1: the trees. In this place that's never silent. This episode
Speaker 1: of Scary Story podcast was written and produced by me
Speaker 1: Edwin ko Aruyez with the support of the Scary FM
Speaker 1: team and our supporters at scary Plus. Thanks again for
Speaker 1: your ideas for stories. I actually got an email about
Speaker 1: Japanese legends and basing a story off of one of them,
Speaker 1: which sounds like it could be a really really spooky
Speaker 1: thing that could get scary really fast. So let's see
Speaker 1: what I can come up with here. If you're subscribed,
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with another story. So don't
Speaker 1: forget to share this story with someone who would be
Speaker 1: into it you or comment somewhere would also be super
Speaker 1: cool if you're able to do that. Anyway, Thank you
Speaker 1: very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.
Speaker 1: M