Tag Archives: creepy

August 1, 2012

Travelers Beware

“Hey there, which way you going?” The woman leaned casually against the side of Leonard’s car, as if she didn’t care what the answer was. She had come over to him as he was about to pull out of the gas station and he had, against his better judgment, rolled down the window for her.

“I’m heading to Pensacola,” he said, after a moment. Then, because it seemed expected of him, “Do you want a ride?”

“I’m not going that far, but maybe you could take me up the road a ways, just to the next truck stop. I really appreciate it.” She gave him a hungry smile, opened the door and got in.

This scene was caught on the gas station surveillance camera. Neither Leonard nor the woman were ever seen again. Leonard’s car was discovered three days later outside of Portland, Oregon, 2400 miles away from where it had been last seen. The doors were locked and the driver’s seat was severely burned, although no other damage was evident. No human remains were ever recovered.

When the car’s GPS showed that the car had driven the entire way without stopping once, the investigators closed the case as quickly and quietly as possible.

12 Comments | tags: car, creepy, crime, fiction, mid-week flash, mystery | posted in Dark

July 26, 2012

Living with Fear

By David Stewart

This was based on a story prompt by my good friend, Sharmistha, on her post, Who Was That? Check out her blog and write your own version if you wish.

Source

I walked out onto the crushed gravel of the driveway, the only light coming from a window high up on the third floor. It was my bedroom, and the only inhabited room in the whole dreary pile. The rest of the manor, with its long corridors and sepulchral parlors was in the hands of another, at least during the night. It was a place where fear was as plentiful as the dark through which it flowed.

The mist was rising up off the lake, slowly taking the grounds for its own. I could feel its chilling caress as it flowed past me. My heart was pounding and my knees were shaking, but I swung the flashlight beam around, looking for the reason I had come. But the fog diffused the light and I could see nothing but the white mist.

Never look out your window after dark. That was my rule, which I obeyed faithfully for all those months I had lived alone in that gloomy mansion. But that night, as I drew the curtains fully closed, I happened to glance out and saw the flicker of a light below in the courtyard: not the bright beam of a flashlight from a lost hiker or a deliveryman, but the dim flicker of a lantern that had no place in the present age.

Never let the fear master you. That was my other rule, and so I ventured out to investigate, against the cries of common sense. I felt my neck prickle with premonition and I looked quickly back at the house. My eyes were drawn irresistibly to the roof and I saw it, the dark, cloaked figure looking down at me, so black that I saw its silhouette clearly, even against the night sky.

It could only be he, the long-dead master of the estate that I had usurped. For a moment, my will failed me and I ran inside, barring the door with futile bolts of steel.

Later, in my room I sat in dread anticipation by the glowing embers on the hearth. I had broken his truce and I did not know what would come. The darkness closed around me, pressing on me, until I did not dare move to build up the fire or find refuge in bed.

I heard the door creak softly and then a soft, almost inaudible whine as it opened, slowly but inexorably.

I tried to control my rapid breathing. Never let fear master you, my mind screamed, but the words were lost in the whirling shriek of the blood rushing in my ears. The floorboards creaked, one by one, coming ever closer. I heard that quiet tread, back and forth, just out of sight. I needed to build up the fire, but I could not move. Just as the panic overcame my senses and darkness began to cloud my eyes, I groped for a piece of wood and pushed it forward onto the embers.

The fire flared up and I heard a hiss from the darkness next to my chair. Then my mind slipped into darkness.

I awoke, still in the armchair, with a sliver of daylight slipping between the heavy curtains. When I pulled them open, I found blackened footprints leading to and from the door. Whatever had made them had paced back and forth in a circle, just outside the light of the fire.

From that day on, I never looked outside after dark and I kept the fire built high, especially on foggy nights.

Source

14 Comments | tags: creepy, fear, fiction, fog, ghosts, horror, scary | posted in Dark

July 20, 2012

Outside the Tower: Update on “It Only Takes Once”

By David Stewart

As you had probably guessed (by the “fiction” tag), the story I wrote a while back, It Only Takes Once is fiction. However, as I mentioned in the comments, it does take place in the apartment I’m currently living in. As I sit at my computer, I can look into the bathroom and see the window where the hand appeared. This one:

The following is true, by the way. Just so there’s no confusion. A few minutes ago, as I was sitting at my computer, alone in the dark, the light went on in the hall. The motion-sensor light. I suddenly heard this “squeak, squeak, squeak” over the sound of my music and I looked into the bathroom. Through the frosted glass window I could see my neighbor’s door moving back and forth really fast. Maybe it was just sitting in the dark alone like this, but it reminded me of the rapid, jerky movement of the haunted rocking chair in the movie The Woman in Black.

After about 20 seconds, the door slowly closed and the light went off. I’m sure there is a perfectly natural explanation for it all, but it made me really excited, because what if there wasn’t?

6 Comments | tags: apartment, creepy, outside the tower | posted in Uncategorized

July 15, 2012

Bloody Neighbors

By David Stewart

Don’t you hate upstairs neighbors? I cannot tell you how long it took for me even to get a sniff at an apartment like mine—how many real estate agents I had to suck up to, and how much networking it took. Finally, I got it though, the whole first floor of a beautiful old building on the Lower East Side. Every inch of it was mine and I made it my castle. It was perfect, except for the guy living upstairs.

There were only three floors in the building—three apartments total. The upper apartment was occupied by an elderly couple—the Gerards, according to their mailbox. They looked well-off, but kept to themselves. I probably wouldn’t have minded being under them. The guy on the second floor, a Mr. R. Hart, was in his mid-thirties, single and active. I could hear every step he made: from bedroom to bathroom, from kitchen to living room. It drove me crazy. It was worse when his girlfriend stayed over, and almost unbearable when he decided to have a party for all his friends—yuppies or hipsters or whatever that type is called these days. I would go to sleep with headphones on, willing the strains of Aaron Copeland to drown out the blare of dubstep from above me.

Our building had a dedicated elevator—you needed a key to use it. That was one of the things that drew me to the apartment. It meant that it could only go to one apartment at a time, since only one key would fit at a time. I loved that feature more than anything. It meant no awkward elevator rides with neighbors that I had no desire to speak to—talking about the weather or some other nonsense. Sometimes I would come home to find one of the other neighbors waiting for the elevator and I would pretend to check my mail until they had gone up.

The elevator opened into my entryway, just off my living room, but I had a box rigged up in the kitchen with a call button and a display to show the floor the elevator was on. So, even though I never met my neighbors I knew a lot about when they came and went. The Gerards never went out after seven, except on Sundays. Mr. R. Hart came and went at all hours, but once he was in for the night, he usually didn’t go out again. And just like me, they never visited each other.

One night I was up late, reading Kafka in the living room with a glass of wine. I got up for another glass and saw that the elevator was moving. It went up to the third floor. It was just after midnight on a Tuesday and I suddenly became worried. The Gerards were elderly and anything off schedule couldn’t be good. I looked outside for an ambulance, but the street was deserted.

I finished my third glass of wine and was bringing the glass into the kitchen when I saw the elevator going down. It stopped on the second floor. Probably Mr. R. Hart had called it. I watched for it to go down to the lobby, but it never did.

There were several footsteps above me and then a thump. There was another thump and then a crash. Normally, I didn’t think anything of any sounds coming from the apartment of Mr. R. Hart but with the mystery of the elevator, I was getting seriously anxious.

There was another thump and then another. Then the sound became rhythmic—thump, thump, thump—and I realized with a flash of relief and disgust where I had heard it before: it sounded just like a headboard hitting the wall. Right away, I could picture the scenario. Mr. R. Hart had had a woman over. He had called the elevator for her to leave but they had gotten caught up in the throes of passion again and started crashing around up there. I had heard similar, and worse, from his place before.

The thumping continued, on and on, while I clenched my fists and ground my teeth. I grabbed a broom and started pounding on the ceiling.

“Hey, jerks!” I shouted. “Quit rutting like a pair of drugged up hyenas. Some people are trying to sleep. I just called the police—they’ll be here in a few minutes.”

The sound stopped abruptly and I gave a smug smile. A moment later, the elevator started moving down to the lobby.

I rinsed out the wine glass and was just about to turn off the light, when I heard a sizzle and smelled a hot, metallic smell. I looked up at the light, just to see a large drop fall from it and splash in a tiny red puddle on my polished oak floor. I called the police.

By the time the police arrived, blood was dripping down my light and the towel I had put down was soaked. I was almost in hysterics—not something I like to admit, but I blame the wine. The police called the landlord and found Mr. R. Hart dead on his living room floor. His skull was crushed and blood was everywhere. The police estimated that the killers must have smashed his head against the floor at least fifty times.

The Gerards were dead too—brutally beaten to death and all their valuables taken. Based on my testimony, the police determined that the perpetrators had gone there first, then down to the apartment of Mr. R. Hart. No one knows how they got in, but the police suspected that they used a set of keys that the landlord admitted to losing several months earlier. Nothing was taken from Mr. R. Hart’s apartment. It seems the burglars had gotten scared and fled the scene. No one mentioned it, but I could only think of where they would have gone after the second floor.

* * *

The apartment building is silent now. The burglars were never caught and the two apartments above me are still active crime scenes. The police confided in me that even if they were arrested today, it would be years before the apartments could be rented again. I would never move though. I changed the locks, upgraded my security system, and now I sit, alone in a building that is two-thirds crime scene, while the ghosts of neighbors I never knew disrupt my sleep with their silent steps.

I almost wish I had gotten to know them.

15 Comments | tags: apartment, burglary, creepy, crime, fiction, horror | posted in Dark

July 9, 2012

It Only Takes Once

By David Stewart

(This is the first story I have posted that I consider a “Midnight” story. Slightly more creepy than my other stuff.)

There are some experiences that carve such a large hole in our lives that they affect everything from then on, for good or bad. The best defining moment of my life was when I stepped off my boat after sailing solo from New York to Cherbourg, France. The worst defining moment was shorter, but had a greater impact.

I was living in Korea, teaching English for a year for the experience of living abroad. My apartment was apparently designed by voyeurs since the only window in the bathroom led to the outside hallway. Flip the latch, slide the frosted glass window and I could have talked with my neighbors as they were coming home and as I was taking a shower. Needless to say, I never opened the window.

I got up one night around 3:00am to use the bathroom. I’m not normally skittish, but that night, I kept looking behind me.

The motion-sensor light in the hall came on—one of my neighbors coming in late, most likely drunk. I didn’t hear any doors open and a few seconds later, the light went off. I was just washing my hands when I glanced up at the window and saw a hand pressed against the glass.

The fingers were long and thin and the whole hand had a greenish-grey tinge to it. It was pulsing slightly—stroking at the frosted glass window with its fingertips and wherever it touched, it left greenish smudges on the glass.

My heart started to pound and I backed out of the bathroom. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. The hand slowly slid down the glass and out of sight until all that was left were five long smears.

I was not near the living room light switch but I reached into the bedroom and turned on the light there. At the same time, the motion-sensor light in my small entranceway came on.

I was starting to seriously freak out. Maybe it’s just a short in the wires, I thought. I knew my outer door had been locked. The entranceway light went off, but then a second later it came back on. I saw a shadow of something come across the light through the frosted glass windows in the closed entranceway door. The knob began to turn, silently.

I thought I was going to pass out from panic. I had nothing close by to use as a weapon. In a second, the entranceway door would open.

“Go away!” I shouted, although my voice cracked absurdly. “Go away now . . . in Jesus’ name!”

I wasn’t a Christian at that time, and I had no idea where that came from. It just came into my head, suddenly.

At that moment, the light in the entranceway went off again, which made things worse. I backed a little further into the lighted bedroom, waiting for movement to turn the entranceway light back on.

But it never came back on. The waiting became unbearable. I had no idea if the person was gone or if they were lurking there in my entranceway, not moving and not triggering the light. An hour went by before I got up the nerve to venture out and turn the living room light on. From its light, I could tell that the entranceway was empty. I opened the door and saw that my front door was open too.

There were many things I could not explain. I swear that I had locked my front door—I did so automatically whenever I came home. The outer door was big and creaky, but I never heard a sound. The entranceway was covered with bits of dust and tiny clots of greenish-grey dirt. The strangest thing—and what made me shiver in terror—was the sight of one of my steel-toed boots, crushed almost flat and covered with green dust. I could not imagine what could have done that, and silently too.

I have never seen anything like that since, but once was enough. I could not sleep in that apartment again. I slept in a hotel for two weeks until my school arranged for a new apartment for me, one with a pass code to get into the building. I would have thought it was all a horrible dream except for the dirt and the filthy smears on the window that were still there the next day.

Since that time, I have never had an apartment on the ground floor or one where the windows were at all accessible from outside. Still, whenever it is dark and I catch a glimpse of a window, I shudder to think of another hand pressed again it, smearing it with green-grey filth, or even worse…

…a face.

14 Comments | tags: apartment, creepy, fiction, horror, mystery, scary, stalker, window | posted in Dark

June 18, 2012

The Long Ride Home

By David Stewart

The darkness enveloped me on all sides like a shroud of fear. Leaves, twisting and shuddering in the night breeze, fled across my path as I steered my bike down the quickly darkening lane. Streetlights gleamed periodically through the gloom. It was becoming foggy.

Strange, I thought. They said that fog almost never appeared in that area. In fact, it was the first time I had ever seen fog this thick and cold. A sense of panic crept over me with clutching fingers as the mist settled around me. My bike was already dripping with condensation and I was damp from the fog and an anxious sweat. My hands were becoming numb from the wet steel handlebars and I was getting tired.

The turnoff to my driveway should be somewhere up ahead. It was taking longer than I had remembered. Maybe I had already passed it, obscured by trees, darkness and the mist that now blanketed everything. I had only lived in the area for two weeks and I had never gone much farther down the lane beyond my house. Something had always restrained me, a small tugging in my heart to do something else that had always seemed more important.

Suddenly, as if pulled by a preternatural sense, I turned to see two small points of light piercing the gloom some ways behind me. Headlights. An irrational terror seized me, as if those lights were the roving eyes of a beast that was searching me out. I looked wildly for a place to hide, to escape. The trees seemed to draw closer to the sides of the road, blocking any passage through them. Retreat was out of the question. The only way was forward. If only I could reach my driveway before those lights overtook me. I slammed the bike into a higher gear and started to pedal harder. The sleek frame sped along the slick asphalt.

I was being silly, I realized. The headlights behind me most likely belonged to a farmer, driving home from the store. I started to slow my pace until I looked back at the lights again, much closer now. Those pale, unrelenting beams bored straight into my mind, melting all logic and rational thought as they went. Adrenaline flooded my veins and again I was off like a shot. My muscles were aching and I was dragging in breaths in ragged gasps.

The car was closing fast; my last burst of energy had made little difference. At any moment it might overtake me. Then, at the last moment, it appeared: my driveway, like a tunnel in the trees on the right. The brakes let out an indignant shriek from the water, and gravel flew as I skidded recklessly into the driveway seconds before the car roared past. I took a deep breath and turned to go up to the house.

With a start, I noticed for the first time the tall iron-wrought gate that now barred my way. Beyond it, row upon row upon countless row of bone-white gravestones rose like broken teeth out of the fog.

This was not my driveway.