Alone

[00:00:00] Welcome to Scary Story Podcast.

[00:00:03] This episode has two stories about the household and relationship troubles that are much darker

[00:00:08] than you might be used to.

[00:00:12] My name is Edwin.

[00:00:13] Here is a scary story.

[00:00:17] Alone, it was 1991 when they found her.

[00:00:24] And I swear, even though she'd always told me not to swear, that not a day goes by

[00:00:28] that I don't think about her.

[00:00:31] When I lost her, lots of things left.

[00:00:35] First, it was hunger.

[00:00:36] I was replaced by the pain of having to wake up every day.

[00:00:41] Feeding me until the weight became unbearable.

[00:00:44] And I took to solving my own problems with things I found around the house.

[00:00:49] The pain landed on my shoulders and I carried it on my back until, some days, even the

[00:00:54] thought of rolling out of bed felt heavy on its own.

[00:00:58] I would finally go to the kitchen, hoping that something was still in the refrigerator

[00:01:02] and that I wouldn't, for the love of God, have to go to the grocery store.

[00:01:07] It would be sometime in the middle of the night after sleeping the whole day when I'd get

[00:01:11] hungry.

[00:01:13] Sometimes it was when the only way to know if it was dusk or dawn was to make a mental

[00:01:17] note of where the shadows were forming around the room.

[00:01:20] If it was in the middle of the night, I would have no choice but to go to the

[00:01:24] pantry.

[00:01:25] But when that Stephanie spent so much time setting up and take a red and white

[00:01:30] can out and devour it without even watering it down, ignoring the serving suggestion, my

[00:01:38] son moved back in around 1994 or 1995, I forget.

[00:01:44] But I kicked him out.

[00:01:46] That good for nothing kid sold the sewing machine we saved up for back when Stephanie

[00:01:49] started her design business.

[00:01:51] And even though it was long after they finally removed her business number from the yellow

[00:01:55] pages and other phone books, when the phone stopped ringing asking for her.

[00:02:00] The sewing machine was a reminder that she had ones lived here.

[00:02:03] If I tried hard enough, mainly during my most painful night, I would hear the sounds of

[00:02:11] that motor.

[00:02:13] The bobbins and the thread rattling inside that machine.

[00:02:16] If I had left them in the house for much longer, what?

[00:02:20] He would have sold the refrigerator or stove?

[00:02:24] We started talking again back in the year 2000 around the time of Y2K.

[00:02:29] I remember and he apologized for telling me what he told me.

[00:02:33] We talked about it on the porch.

[00:02:36] He was about to have a child and I can't lie that I almost felt proud of him for not

[00:02:40] turning out as bad as I thought he would.

[00:02:43] But still, those things he told me, they were true.

[00:02:49] With that sour face of mine, I would always be alone.

[00:02:52] I wanted to.

[00:02:55] I still do.

[00:02:58] When he died in that motorcycle accident, his wife took my granddaughter with her.

[00:03:03] They rarely call.

[00:03:05] At his wake we discussed it with anger and sadness, in part because of the situation

[00:03:09] itself.

[00:03:10] But I regret saying a few things to her.

[00:03:13] It wasn't the time nor the place.

[00:03:18] This house is too big.

[00:03:20] Every nook and corner of it has a story, a place where I remember Stephanie.

[00:03:25] Every nail she pounded into the wall, every mistake with a new paint she suddenly

[00:03:29] decided to bring to the house.

[00:03:31] Quantities of five gallons on her way home from a meeting.

[00:03:36] The wish she made fun of my expressions and the way I sighed after knowing that I would

[00:03:39] have to set up paper and tape for her to paint the walls.

[00:03:44] Then her making fun of me for spending the next two days out in the garage because

[00:03:48] of the smell of paint.

[00:03:50] My imaginary headache, she would say.

[00:03:54] The staircase, the funny rug story that still makes me smile.

[00:03:59] Remember we thought that a long area rug would be fine to lay on top of the staircase,

[00:04:04] only to end up with it looking like a slide.

[00:04:07] The dumb rug wouldn't fold like it said on the label.

[00:04:11] We rolled it up and kept it for when we made a hallway that was long enough for

[00:04:14] it.

[00:04:15] I'm still not sure what we were talking about.

[00:04:19] I see her at the top of the staircase, her hands on her hips, pretending to leap

[00:04:24] into the slide we made by accident.

[00:04:28] I see her in the kitchen, opening every drawer on the counter searching desperately for a

[00:04:33] rag to lift the whistling kettle.

[00:04:35] And though I told her it would be on the handle of the oven door, though I had also told her

[00:04:40] a million times that turning off the fire under the pot would also do the trick.

[00:04:45] But when I say that I see her, I mean it.

[00:04:52] Be it my imagination or confusion, dementia or whatever you want to call it, I see

[00:04:57] her.

[00:04:58] I promised I would find her and that I would search for the rest of my life if that was

[00:05:03] required.

[00:05:04] But the journey ended early with a visit from two police officers.

[00:05:10] Her body, the river, her wallet.

[00:05:16] The whole conversation was a blur.

[00:05:18] But I remember what matters.

[00:05:20] My brother came to my town not too long ago and the conversation was the same.

[00:05:28] What was I doing?

[00:05:29] Then tried to poke fun at me for the memories with Stephanie.

[00:05:33] But I held back my anger this time.

[00:05:36] He got to witness the light flicker from the kitchen.

[00:05:39] He changed the topic real quick.

[00:05:42] But he had a point, and if she was still around, wasn't it because I couldn't let

[00:05:46] her go?

[00:05:48] What if she wanted to cross over but I had been keeping her all this time?

[00:05:52] When I asked her things took a bad turn.

[00:05:58] When I come downstairs in the middle of the night, I see her figure at the base of the

[00:06:02] stairs as it floats away toward the kitchen.

[00:06:06] She just stands there now.

[00:06:08] Not doing anything at all.

[00:06:11] Her face with white eyes looking directly at me.

[00:06:16] Her red cheeks now purple and dipped and dead.

[00:06:23] And I started to question her existence and that is what she was angry about.

[00:06:29] But I see her.

[00:06:30] I feel her.

[00:06:32] She's here.

[00:06:34] No wait.

[00:06:36] I live alone.

[00:06:38] I sit by myself in a couch for two.

[00:06:40] I cook for myself and there's always leftover water in the kettle.

[00:06:45] I live alone, everyone says.

[00:06:48] There is nobody here.

[00:06:51] The visits to the doctor with a calming voice and the questions was right.

[00:06:55] What was there for me to process?

[00:06:59] Write it down, come on.

[00:07:00] Write it down he would say.

[00:07:03] I never could.

[00:07:05] Those old printed $20 bills still sit in her wallet, I told him.

[00:07:10] Somehow accepting her passing.

[00:07:13] But at the same time wondering why she hadn't spent them yet.

[00:07:18] I live alone.

[00:07:21] I eat, clean and talk alone.

[00:07:24] I sit on this couch right now when I'm telling you this.

[00:07:29] Alone.

[00:07:31] But if I'm alone, then who was that?

[00:07:36] Was that walking upstairs?

[00:07:39] Was coming down the staircase huh?

[00:07:41] Turn around.

[00:07:42] Look at her.

[00:07:44] If I'm alone, then who was coming up next to you?

[00:07:49] You have dangered her.

[00:07:52] Turn around.

[00:07:55] Look at her.

[00:07:58] Look at her.

[00:08:13] The following story is called Your Hand on My Arm and it is coming up right after this.

[00:08:25] Your hand on my arm.

[00:08:33] We always laughed looking at the wedding pictures as newlyweds.

[00:08:37] The way her hand reached inside the sleeve of my jacket in order to touch my forearm just

[00:08:42] above my wrist was caught on camera.

[00:08:46] She used to say that she liked how cold my arm felt as the warm fingers crawled my

[00:08:50] arm like a little mouse, still warm from a nap.

[00:08:53] It was the way we used to sleep, her thin fingers walking around my arms.

[00:08:59] I could tell when she was about to doze off by the sudden jumps her hands would make.

[00:09:04] Twitching as she went off into dreamland.

[00:09:08] It's a little weird to talk about, I know.

[00:09:11] The weird quirks and things that we do.

[00:09:14] Though I'm sure that as part of a couple you also find your own weird things like that.

[00:09:19] Inside jokes, getting used to odd habits and even made up words.

[00:09:25] When we moved in to the new house things started to change between us.

[00:09:29] I had no clue what happened.

[00:09:32] Perhaps the reality of taking care of a real home with just the two of us is what started

[00:09:36] pressuring our relationship.

[00:09:38] Well, at least I thought it was just the two of us.

[00:09:45] I was drinking coffee one morning, remembering our forced conversation from the previous

[00:09:49] night.

[00:09:50] Comparing it to how things used to be.

[00:09:53] Do you think it's going to rain tomorrow?

[00:09:56] She asked me.

[00:09:58] I couldn't believe we had resorted to talk about the weather now.

[00:10:02] I think so, I replied, hesitating on asking Alexa about the weather the next day.

[00:10:09] Knowing very well that an answer would ruin our conversation for the rest of the night.

[00:10:14] We can watch fifty-first dates tomorrow after work in order takeout.

[00:10:18] What do you think?

[00:10:19] I asked.

[00:10:20] Sheepishly enough to make me feel ashamed of myself.

[00:10:23] Who was I?

[00:10:27] The feeling creeped up on me all over again.

[00:10:30] Awkwardness or embarrassment I think is a better word.

[00:10:33] Reliving last night.

[00:10:36] How she grunted and turned away from me.

[00:10:40] How the dark room helped me envision our life before this house.

[00:10:44] And how packing and moving our things from apartment to apartment seem to bring us

[00:10:47] closer together.

[00:10:48] When I looked at a ray of light move from one corner of the room to the other.

[00:10:55] A pair of headlights turning the corner of our block.

[00:10:58] We shined on our wedding picture and ended on our darkening curtains.

[00:11:04] The ones that sink even the sunlight and turned it into nothing but a pitch black patch

[00:11:09] of nothingness.

[00:11:13] The steps I heard from upstairs brought me back to my cup of coffee.

[00:11:17] Needing once again another thirty second boost from the microwave.

[00:11:21] She was heading toward the staircase and to the kitchen to grab the water from the

[00:11:24] kettle I prepared for us every morning.

[00:11:28] She used to stand behind me back when I was a better reader and would lean against my shoulders

[00:11:33] to ask about what I was reading.

[00:11:36] Her hand would reach for my arm and I recognized that tingling sensation of her warm hands

[00:11:40] against my cold wrist.

[00:11:43] The coffee wouldn't get cold back then.

[00:11:46] This house wasn't like any other place.

[00:11:49] Some rooms felt colder, naturally colder.

[00:11:53] And others were just cold.

[00:11:56] Plus, neither of us wanted to clean the living room and we both at one point spoke

[00:12:00] about how draining the house made us feel.

[00:12:03] I got us out of the house more which was nice for a while.

[00:12:08] She complained a few times about the laundry room in the basement and

[00:12:11] eventually simply refused to go in there and had me move the washer and dryer

[00:12:15] along with the lengthy installations over to the side of the house.

[00:12:19] A tiny room by the kitchen.

[00:12:23] Her claims were ridiculous.

[00:12:25] But the most vivid explanation she gave me came one afternoon

[00:12:29] when she had worked from home.

[00:12:31] I arrived to find her out on the porch looking as pale as a ghost.

[00:12:36] She started crying when she explained to me what she had seen.

[00:12:40] She had forgotten to pick up her clothes from the dryer at night,

[00:12:44] something that didn't surprise me when I heard it

[00:12:47] because one of her clothes needed to be taken out right away in order to stop it

[00:12:51] from getting wrinkled.

[00:12:53] So she rushed downstairs to the basement and went past the bookshelf I was working on

[00:12:57] when she spotted a figure on the corner of the basement where the water heater was.

[00:13:04] I interrupted to explain that I had put insulation on the water heater

[00:13:07] but she simply kept going without complaining that I cut off her story

[00:13:12] and she kept staring out into the street.

[00:13:15] Her eyes lost somewhere in the vision of what she had experienced,

[00:13:19] lips still moving.

[00:13:21] I stopped talking.

[00:13:24] She had seen a woman in a white dress

[00:13:26] bending to pick up some invisible basket from the basement floor.

[00:13:31] Her hair was neat and her face was young

[00:13:35] but her legs were twisted as they carried her unnaturally toward the other corner of the basement.

[00:13:41] I got closer to her as she explained what she felt,

[00:13:45] putting my hand on her lap.

[00:13:47] She put her other hand on my forearm.

[00:13:51] She was cold this time.

[00:13:54] She explained that her own leg stopped working when she tried to run back to the stairs,

[00:13:59] grabbing onto the crooked bookcase before falling straight to the concrete floor.

[00:14:05] From between the shelves she could see the strange silhouette turning her face.

[00:14:10] Her eyes suddenly becoming jet black

[00:14:13] and her mouth opening wide.

[00:14:16] She was approaching with crooked steps.

[00:14:20] With feeling in her legs now, my wife started crawling toward the staircase,

[00:14:23] putting her hands directly on the last steps and dragging herself up

[00:14:28] until she was able to run up the stairs

[00:14:30] while she was leaning heavily on the wooden handrail.

[00:14:34] All she could hear from behind her now were the creepy sounds of laughter

[00:14:38] echoing softly through the basement.

[00:14:42] I put my arm around her, my mind still trying to come up with an explanation of what she had seen.

[00:14:48] She knew I wouldn't believe her, just like I didn't believe her

[00:14:50] when she told me that she had felt a pair of hands trying to push her down the regular staircase.

[00:14:56] Or the time that the kitchen rag that she used daily caught on fire on its own.

[00:15:01] Her claims that someone was trying to get rid of her made no sense.

[00:15:06] Now I know what she was talking about.

[00:15:10] Within a week of my own experience we had gathered our things and gotten out of that place.

[00:15:17] It was just another night.

[00:15:19] She had gotten a warning at work that day and she was in a terrible mood.

[00:15:24] I remember how easy it used to be to make her smile again,

[00:15:26] but instead I had to avoid bumping into her in the kitchen or in the living room.

[00:15:32] I stayed out in the garage until it was too cold to be there.

[00:15:35] Ready to get to bed.

[00:15:38] I went to my side of the bed and she was reading a paperback book,

[00:15:41] which I found unusual but still...

[00:15:45] I simply said goodnight and turned off my lamp.

[00:15:48] I had been having nightmares for the past several days so I had trouble falling asleep,

[00:15:53] thinking about the figures in the room at night.

[00:15:56] A woman specifically,

[00:15:58] floating by the foot of the bed and standing by my wife, staring at her,

[00:16:02] completely still.

[00:16:05] When I moved my eyes toward her she would blink,

[00:16:08] slowly

[00:16:10] and turn her neck toward me.

[00:16:12] She would blink once more and turn back to her sinister stare.

[00:16:18] No expressions, no movements.

[00:16:22] Her jaw hanging loose by only her skin

[00:16:25] with a large dark gash on her left cheekbone

[00:16:29] blending in with her long dark hair.

[00:16:34] I wasn't about to tell my wife about that.

[00:16:38] Eventually I managed to get to sleep when I felt that warm hand on my arm.

[00:16:43] She was still awake it seemed.

[00:16:46] Maybe she wanted to talk with me about something but I hesitated.

[00:16:51] In the darkness I figured I'd just ask how she was doing so I whispered it.

[00:16:56] There was no response.

[00:16:59] I felt her sniffle a little, her hand doing the walking motion with her fingers all over my forearm

[00:17:05] just like she used to.

[00:17:08] I remembered the happy days again when we ate on a cardboard box and she dared me to wear a bowtie to work the following day.

[00:17:15] I remembered her hand when we sat by the river that her parents had near their home when we first met.

[00:17:22] The way she made me laugh telling me that her hand was a spider looking for a home.

[00:17:27] I suddenly felt goosebumps followed by the waves of chills that her hand sometimes made me feel.

[00:17:33] Her fingers ran up and down my forearm but they lost her warmth.

[00:17:38] They became rough

[00:17:40] and heavy. Then I felt the sting of her nails breaking through my skin.

[00:17:47] I pulled my arm away and reached for the lamp.

[00:17:51] I turned around.

[00:17:54] My wife was next to me.

[00:17:57] Sleeping on her side but facing away from me, I looked at my arm to see the stripes of dripping red liquid coming out of my skin.

[00:18:10] I screamed startling her.

[00:18:13] She sat up quickly and scooted over to me pointing at the door unable to see a word.

[00:18:20] I looked in that direction.

[00:18:23] By the doorway was the woman in the white dress.

[00:18:26] She looked toward the hallway.

[00:18:29] Her legs started twisting robotically away from the room.

[00:18:38] Things have been better since we moved away.

[00:18:55] The stories and scary story podcasts are all written and produced by me, Edwin Coarubias.

[00:19:01] Stay in touch by heading over to scarystorypodcast.com where you can find my email and ways to get notifications of new stories right through your inbox.

[00:19:10] If you'd rather be notified through your podcast app simply click follow right now to get alerts when the new episodes come out.

[00:19:18] Until next time, thank you very much for listening.