Eighteen Days

Hi friend, Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. This episode has some of my favorite styles, suspense, melancholy, and creepy childhood memories. My name is Edwin and here is a scary story. There were lots of things I should have said. The lights were usually on by this time, and I thought of all the arguments that we would have to make it just another Sunday morning. For eighteen days it had been this way, coming home to an empty house, no bad smells of onions or garlic on the pan, and no smiles and no more. How was her days? You had a habit of waking up early and forgetting about the kettle whistling in the kitchen while you took a shower. The lights on in the hallway always reminded me that I was not a morning person, and even if I was, still would not count, because who wakes up at four point thirty every morning? Doesn't that still count as being a night owl. And even though lots of people started coming and leaving from my house asking if I needed anything to seriously just ask, I knew that the noises at night were from you. It was two in the morning and my eyes were drifting from side to side, my body tiring out the bed, and they got way too hot before I turned to the other side, until the best part of it turned out to be the edge. How ironic A friend of mine had suggested reading scary stories to get my mind off things, and that it did. And with the thoughts of my monsters and creatures that lurked under the beds of people around the world, the fear of one of them being in my room was small compared to the fear that I would be spending the rest of my life by myself. So come get me, monsters, You don't scare me at all, I remember saying, perhaps out loud. There was a clock in the kitchen that would tick at all hours of the day, being a regular old clock that you could find at any swap meats or discount store. All I had to do was find it and pull out the batteries. But she picked it out somehow. The rhythm and the way she spoke was embedded into that thing, and it was the first thing I would hear when the house got quiet for the first time in the morning, tick tick tick. In the middle of the night, it would get angry with me, unwilling to stop trying to wake me up. It would speed up and slow down, but soon it would become the easiest problem to solve. I got up like I normally did, the bed now not letting me cool down anymore until I slipped off into the floor. I searched for the slippers on the dark carpet, but gave up and walked barefoot to the kitchen. The wooden floorboards didn't like that, and they knew that I wasn't her. You know how they say that people watch over you from the other side. Have you ever been told that whenever something worries you that things will be all right because of them. It took eighteen days for me to realize that the thing watching over me wasn't her. As I stood there in the kitchen waiting for my mind to tell me that I wanted something, and then for it to figure out what it was. With the refrigerator door open in front of me, with the light seeping through the old tupper workings, some empty, some with dried cooked chicken or soggy vegetables, shining directly directly on my face, I heard the clock ticking above me, with its rhythm and her voice clearly in my mind like never before. First she said it laughing, and then with a serious voice, please leave. She sounded like this during her last days, waking me up to walk with her to start the kettle, and then coming back to bed. You know, she mentioned once, this is going to sound crazy. I think they're here. They're here for me. I try to help her, but even the doctors would begin to blame me for her theories of crawlers and shadows watching her through the window. When she woke up before the sun. I knew she sick. She knew she was sick, and those images of the creatures waiting for her were all in her head. But now what was around me? I heard the clock tick to a stop before the silence began to swallow me up, like driving through a tunnel with your lights off. The hum of the refrigerator snapped me out of it. I smiled, trying to laugh at myself for believing in such nonsense. I reached for the top corner of the fridge door and closed it right in front of me. When my eyes locked with the darkness outside the window, it was blocked. Thing scurried off to the left like a rat. We caught in the basement once who thought that we couldn't see it if it didn't move. I was able to see the distant lights of the neighbor's porch through the window once again. But like that clock that never ticked again, I too never heard her voice, like a lifeline, replaced by the thoughts that my turn was coming to I would hear a sound from the kitchen, sure that something was there, and despite my fear of seeing a burglar or worse, I would walk up to the hallway to see two or three figures standing in the faintest shadow behind the kitchen table. They wouldn't blink, it wouldn't move, and who knows if they even had eyes, but it would zoom past the kitchen and into the living room. When I'd say no, that I was fine, that I could order online to my friends but I didn't need anything, and that it had been several days, I could feel the shadows multiply, like hungry dogs around their prey. At night, looking over me. An old friend came by to help me clean, and another came to cook for myself, and another one he brought along. We watched a game. A few days later, we watched a movie. They repeated this until I was ready to go out for coffee. Once again, light is supposed to scare the shadows, but it can also be the other way around if you let them tick tick, goodbye friend. We used to live in an old apartment building on the other side of town where I live now, and from what I see when I drive by, it is that the place does not look like it used to, not one bit. The place was renovated and painted white with green fencing and borders. Back then, from what I remember, it was a dark brown and had more of a forest type feel. I remember the apartments being mostly empty, and I would bounce the ball around the main courtyard all by myself most days. I wasn't in school yet and I used to spend most of my time playing around, making paper things and walking around the complex. It was locked, and my only instruction was that I was to stay in the front courtyard stay away from the parking lot. One of those times, the ball went rolling out towards the back courtyard over where it was still under construction, and I didn't find it to be a big deal to go back there and grab it. Was a hard experience to forget, considering just how much trouble I got into for going after it, though. The thing bounced around and ended up close to some mailboxes that hadn't been put up on the wall yet. I tightened up the velcor on my shoes and ran after it as fast as I could. That's when I heard someone laughing from the upstairs sixterior hallway by the handrail. I stopped and looked up. A boy grabbing onto the railing looked down at me. He looked to be about my age, wearing gene overalls and white shoes. I asked him to come downstairs to come play. He looked down and laughed, stretching out his hands for me to toss him the ball. There were other kids in the building. I remember thinking. I went over the ball and grabbed it and then ran to where I was standing before. But when I looked up, he was gone. I looked around the upstairs area of the building to see if maybe he had walked away or was hiding, but there was nowhere for him to have gone. It was then when I heard my mom yelling at me from across the complex. I ran back to the other side and waited for Mom to come. Walking up to me. She grabbed my arm and dragged me back inside. I was made to repeat the rules before I was able to go outside again. The next day, I told my mom that I had met a friend, and she asked me who it was, but she was confused as to who it had been. Not many families were living there, but it was a large enough complex for it to be understandable that people may have moved in without any of the neighbors finding out. Eventually, I started school, and I forgot all about my friend, which I guess really had just been some kid. But when you were moving out the car stuffed to the top with boxes and furniture, I looked at the old building, fully aware that I would never ever go back to my same room or play in the same yards, and I waved goodbye. Or from the exterior hallway the plays right above our door was the same boy. He stood still, letting go of one of the handrails with his right hand. I saw him lift it up and wave goodbye. The following story is about a haunting message called the voicemail, and it is coming up and after this. It was not even that late when I got that first phone call. I normally don't answer the phone from numbers that I don't recognize, and, come to think of it, I don't usually have notifications on and it will not vibrate half the time, but still there. I was watching a movie on my phone when I got that notification banner slipping in from the top at eleven at night. Strange. I swiped the notification back up and press play again on the movie. That's when I got a second one, a different one, this time voicemail from a strange number. Out of curiosity, I tapped the voicemail number. I'm sure of how to check it without automatically calling the person back. You know that happens sometimes. I opened up the notification window to see the long list of missed calls in previous undeleted messages, mostly spammers, that dated all the way back to over a year. The play button showed up, and that's when I heard it. The chance of an old woman interrupted by the static and phrases that seemed to come from a book in various voices, speeches and sounds that were all too familiar, just far enough away to not know where they were coming from. Something about the message made me feel extremely paranoid. When I put the phone down, all I wanted to do was turn on the light and forget that I had ever received it. Still, I couldn't get myself to delete it. Perhaps it had a message that I actually needed to hear, and despite my best efforts, I finally tapped play again and ended up going through the exact same feeling, except this time the woman's voice clearly said they will be with you soon, with you. I looked directly at the curtains. The lights from the streets made only the silhouette of the dry branches of the peach tree stand out from the orange lights lighting up against the white drapes. A few minutes later, of deadly silence, I grabbed my phone once more, only to see another notification. I had received another phone call and missed it. Being alone in the house that night did not seem like a nice relaxing idea anymore. I was about to grab my things to go out for anything, a coffee and a doughnut, or just a drive, something that will let me know I wasn't going crazy. But while lost in my thoughts, I felt the phone vibrate in my hand once again. You voicemail from a strange number. The message was shorter, this time sixteen seconds. I watched my shaky thumb work its way up to the phone screen and tap the play button, hovering over it just in case I wanted to tap pause immediately. That's when I heard it, dying voice of a woman crying, telling me that it will be with you soon, with you soon, with you soon. And then songs like a twisted radio flickering on and off from the background, noises voices fading in and out from the rest. I ran out of the bed and flicked on the light. I walked to the living room, turning every single one in sight. I looked at my phone and then tapped on the notification once again. Instead of hearing the voicemail, I started to hear the tone when you wait for someone to answer your call. He started racing once again. As I looked to go back to the phone app screen to hang up. That's when I heard from the other end, Stummer plumbers. How can I help you? I couldn't find the word to say anything except a soft sorry and something that did not even sound even close to my regular voice. How can I help you? The woman asked, I received two phone calls from this number, I said, and though I wanted it to come out as a question. It didn't quite work out that way. She stayed quiet on the other end, Hello, I said, not finding another way to break the silence. Sorry, it's just that. She then stayed quiet. After that, I heard some chatter in the background, and then another person came to the phone. Can you tell us if she said anything, the other voice asked. She phone call eventually went on for another ten minutes or so, scattered with nervous laughter on both sides, as they explained to me that a long time employee when that had manned the phones, had recently passed away. They thought it was her. They asked if I could send the messages for them to confirm, and I agreed to go visit them since I had used their services before and knew of their office. But I was too creeped out to go. But it's been a long time. I hope they've forgotten about it. Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Kobert. You can find you on Instagram at Edwin COO. That's E d W I n c O V. Reach me via email if you want to get in touch or have an idea for a story. You can also find the podcast on Scary story podcast dot com. Be sure to tap follow to get notified when new stories come out. See you soon,