A Town of Lonely People

It took three calls to the Sheriff's office for them to finally take me seriously, sir. They would say, we can't send an officer out there for that. It's Friday night. Her last officer is on a call. We'll follow up on Monday, all right, But it wasn't all right. Those sounds in the attic. I knew it wasn't all right, But eventually the police also figured it out. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. I sleep like a rock. People joke about me being able to sleep under a train track, but there are certain noises that wake me up. A rattling door, knob keys, jingling, or the dreadful squeak of the third floor board by the front door. It was a Monday, actually, now that I remember, two little taps came from the attic while I was dozing off in the living room. Miles days were like that. I would come home, doze off with the TV on a super low volume, and once my eye somehow caught that it was getting dark out, boom, I would be awake and alert as if nothing had happened, but it was still full daylight out. The television was still playing on a weird game show with an uncomfortable model or co host on it smiling at the camera, the producers would hold the shot a little too long on her, so I'd looked at the TV for a little bit, unaware of what was going on. Immediately after these two taps, I noticed that I had even stopped breathing when it happened, so I wouldn't miss it if it happened again. Right away, I thought about how. It could have been from the door or a window, but no, this thing had come from upstairs and just stopped. So I waited and waited. That's just how certain I was that the noise was coming from up there. Yaddic. Then I heard something again, the soft sound of a latch. I couldn't explain it. B knew for a fact that I had come for my attic A bird. I thought wouldn't be the first time that a bird would pet at the wooden frame out for the entrance. The house had a strange store up there on the outside instead of the inside. I asked about it when I got the house, and I remember the realtor taking my question as a joke. I assumed every other house in this wooded neighborhood had the maide this way, I knew, had some other quirky additions too, things that I had never heard about, like a bare watch community group, two types of sheds, one for weapons and a normal one. Sure direct question what the heck I was doing out there, But like many people who were either past their homes down or were there by choice, the reasons existed. I wanted to get away from things, and a life a little ways out of the city seemed to fit. It's not like I changed my mind now, But amongst all the silence, I understood more of the paranoia, the stereotypes of people that liked to live out there. But those two taps, clear as day, I swear, sounded unlike anything else I had heard in that house. I've heard the wood pop when the sun begins to beat on it in the middle of the day. I've heard the raccoons out on the roof, the woodpeckers, the branches that somehow managed to make it to my roof every autumn. And I didn't want to let my mind roam a little too much. That night, I'd been a tough weekend and started the week already. I let my eyes wander up towards the ceiling as if I'd be able to magically use X ray vision, but instead I rolled them up by myself. I grabbed the remote and turn up the volume two more levels, looking once again at the woman in the red dress on TV. For I got up to cook up some dinner. It was Tuesday morning now, and my house felt full. It was a strange feeling, considering no one else had lived in this place but me. All my life had been this way, knowing exactly where my things are, Who comes, who goes? Hint, it's just me, But not that day, like someone else was breathing my air or the body heat, that uncomfortable feeling you get when you sit on the warmth of someone else on the bus or a waiting room. That's how all of this started. Yes, of course, that's how it started, completely logical, at least in my mind, until everything became strange. It was a Wednesday afternoon, the same TV show was on. A roulette was spinning between two colors, yellow and purple. Everyone was cheering, and yet the camera was still zooming in on the woman, and I hadn't bothered to change the volume back down, so it was higher than normal, and yet without a doubt. A series of thumping steps rushed from one side of the ceiling to the other. I stood up and reached for the fireplace poker, that metal stick, and I held on to it firmly. My heart was on my throat by this point, and a rush of cold blood was begu to dissipate away from my chest. It flicked off the television automatically. You went outside to look at the roof. The window, the same one that served as the entrance to the attic, was shut, though from all the scratches or sun damage, all I could see was a foggy white glass. I ran inside the house again and looked around the living room and the pantry. I searched the closets, every last corner of the place, and searched for a door or an entry to the attic. There were animals up there. Could they make their way into the house itself? It was nothing, no place for it to do so, But animals, I don't know. That was the last thing on my mind. I knew this wasn't some rodent. I knew what they sounded like. It was starting to get dark, and I knew where my mind was going. Someone was in the house. Someone had to be in the attic. So I watched my hand grab the remote and turned the volume all the way down, and I sat there for about an hour. I sat there, waiting around as a room got dark. Just as I was about to get up to turn on the light, it happened again, the softest click and then the deepest. Groan from the floorboard. Slow avoidance. On my way into town that Thursday, one of the neighbors, a man named Mill, was always out there looking for someone to talk. Flagged me down. It was out in the lawn chair, pretending to look busy with the watering pot next to him. They parked the truck shut it down. I think we all looked for that at one point, just someone to talk to for some of us, just to make sure that our voice still works. You hear about the Preston's house, He said, terrible news. You know that old blonde lady, the one with the white Corolla. I nodded, asking him what the matter was dead he said, He pointed down to the ground and took a step back. Yep, she was found in the room. Her children just got down here too late. If you ask me, huh, he said, his smile quickly fading into a twitch of his left cheek. Mill was new to the whole living alone thing. His wife had passed away several years back, and his kids, well, they're all stity people. Now. He had not much more to say about the situation, but he wanted to talk about it. So I said a few things about that old lady talked about a paint for a fence around his property, And just when things had gotten quiet enough. I brought it up. Anyone ever gotten into your attic? I was looking away toward my truck when I said it. I could feel his white eyes on the side of my face, and it turned around your house, haunted, he asked quietly. Haunted. No, I mean, like, did someone ever sneak into your camped out in there? I don't know, I. Continued, You know about your place before you moved in, right, I knew that story. There was some other neighbor who had told me about it, and still I knew that I wouldn't be able to stop him from telling it all over again. You see, the family who lived there before me didn't build it, but instead had bought it from the original owner. It was strange because many of the houses that are around the area now were built around the time that this family moved into what is now my house, So if my house already existed, then it was one of the only ones there and therefore the oldest house in the area. That, of course brought along a lot of stories. But what made everything even worse was that the family had bought the house from had suddenly got up and left. One day. They were there and gone the next, and the realtor had found it a little odd, but kept insisting on the well done construction and how it was a steel and all that stuff that realtors say when they want to sell a house quickly so they don't have to make the drive back out there. I guess everything checked out when I moved in. Still does There were never any hauntings or whatever nonsense Mill was talking about, But still he went on about how when the house was vacant, they would see the light fixtures come on and off at all hours of the night. It could be seen for miles, even though everyone knew that the house was empty. Once a group of guys, after a night of drinking, decided to drive up there, and they said that they were greeted by a couple, a young woman, man strange smiles. I urged them to come inside. They said no, got back in the car and drove off without a clue as to how they made it back. But you know what creeps me out the most, Mil asked, leaning in a little more, the screams. He opened his eyes wide again, pointed to the ground, and took a step back. Now that's where he got me. I had a nerd about this. I mean that other people knew about it, because I certainly had heard them before. That was sure, because I had woken up a few times thinking that they had been part of a dream, These ridiculously loud screams coming from the corner of my property. And I don't wake up easily. I've told you, almost nothing can stop me but those screams or something else. I always thought it was a squeaking pipe. Sometimes it can make a noise, you know, if you pay close attention, it might sound like a scream, or like a squeak, maybe something in between. This thing, the scream was something I couldn't shake off for the first couple of years I was there. Okay, I might have thought it was a haunting of some sort, maybe for a minute, but I don't know if I got used to it or watch suddenly the scream stopped. Either that or I was able to sleep through them again. What about these screams, mil I asked, just to humor him a little bit, still happen. Don't tell me you don't hear them. It's either from your property or that section of trees you have just behind your house. But the old well, I don't. Hear them, I said. Mill looked toward me and started laughing. Maybe he got to clean out your ears. I chuckled a little at that poor guy. He was a good man. And with that, I said that I had to get going and got back in the truck. You followed me and leaned on my open passenger side window, his elbows drooping all the way down to the door handle. But hey, you got my number in case you keep hearing them. Noises, ghosts don't scare me. The only ones I got are inside my head. I nodded and started up the car. Something was off about the way he said it. I heard him tap on the side of the truck before stepping back, with that look he always gave me when you said bye to him, almost felt sorry to leave. I know what you're thinking the well. Before you get any thoughts in your head, know that most properties out there had wells, communal or private, and it was written in the paperwork of the property of what we had access to, and the terms would be updated every few years. But the well I had was one of the firsts. And sure I remember being told about how to manage it and all that in the beginning, but I never used it. The thing had a huge stone covering it up. You know, I hadn't thought about it all that much until that conversation with Mill. I had no intention of using it. Water from the main pipeline had arrived many years ago, even from when the previous family lived there, so all it was out there just stayed a dark, lonely hole in the ground, covered up for decades. When I got back later that night, I saw something up in the window slash door in the attic up on the roof. There was an orange light coming through the dirty frosted glass that covered it. As soon as my head lights hit it, it turned off. I was sure then that someone was up there. I don't know what I thought of it at the moment or why I went into the house as if it were just another regular evening, but I did. I kept the volume low, I kept. Looking around for any dust falling from the ceiling, as it would whenever something brocked the house, a branch or some animal. But that would be it for that evening. Before I knew it, that had made my way to the bed and was ready for another day at that old house. Though something had changed even when retelling this Now. I don't know what it is. Maybe it was paranoia that was making this whole thing. Maybe it was the town of lonely people that made us long for and be afraid of everyone else at the same time. But the ghost. There were scarier things out there than ghosts. Everyone knew that, especially around here, And so we got to this Friday. I was taking out the trash to the main road, something I normally wouldn't do, since the trash would come on Mondays. Even some of the sites were new cars I hadn't seen before. The light from one of the street lamps beginning to shine a certain way against the approaching darkness of those hills. It didn't look too different than the early mornings, but everyone knew each other's routines around there. It was how we knew that danger was approaching and those calls who are landlines would come in. The last thing I remember was a red truck that was set to be circling around the properties. The call had. Come from Mill. I even heard them prepping a shotgun through the phone. It turned out to be a couple of teenagers looking for a place to hang out, but they were driven away by some of the other people, the porters, from what I heard. How they managed to do that, I don't know, but I remember seeing those tail lights rushing away from the last hill toward town. That was making my way back to the house again from the trash cans, I clearly saw a light through the frosted glass of the entrance to the attic, soft like that of a cigarette lighter. I wasn't making much noise as I walked up closer to the sound of my television, so it stayed on, but I stopped and watched it from as close as I could get without the roof blocking my view. And it was there, clear as clear can be, the flickering light moving back and forth against the glass. I ran out to the shed and grabbed the first thing. I found a shovel that had slid down to the ground, clanking against the side door frame, and I watched as that light turned completely off. I rushed into the house, debating whether to stab the ceiling with the shovel while yelling, or maybe staying out and waiting out whatever this was. No animal, of course, not someone a human was up there. I went straight for the phone and called the sheriff's office, the one from town. I told the person who picked up that there were strange sounds in my house and that had been that way for about a week, with absolutely no sense of urgency. She asked some generic questions about animals or rodents, trees above the house, and if I lived alone. I told her my name, the address, everything all in one go, and she said that she would be making a report and follow up. I found it pointless and hung up before she said goodbye, but changed my mind immediately after hearing those same thuds going across the ceiling and toward the entrance of the attic. I ran to the living room, nearly tripping on the edge of the carpet, but managed to flick off the lights. To the house. Ironic how easy it is to see in the dark when you do that. I made my way back to the phone and call the police again. Lady, there's someone in the house. I heard steps up in the attic. She started her same script all over again, asking for my name and all that, as if we hadn't just gotten off the phone. The steps continued and finally ended with a groan and a thud. Was something hard against my ceiling. Dust was falling. I could feel it against my hair and nose as it landed like dry snow and got into my eyes. My heart was pounding again as I grabbed the shovel with both hands and rushed out out among the trees. I could see the shadows blended in the moonlight. I'm sure there was some one out there towards the well. I heard it for the first time in a long time, a scream from the woods, a deep, guttural scream of pain, disappearing into the night. The woman on the other line sighed when she picked up my phone. Call Officer Monduino, will be arriving. You said it was a third path in the left correct. Finally, yes, by the fifteenth mile marker. I'll be waiting out there, I said, hanging up. After a few seconds of silence, I grabbed my jacket and walked out there, completely forgetting the shovel in the living room. As I went out there to the main road, the wind was whistling now it did that sometimes nights got windy from the hills, and the trees would like to hum along with it. I could feel it against my forehead, that cold sweat. Whenever the wind picked up. I looked back at the howls, watching out for anything that stood out, anything out of place. But the light in the attic was gone, and along with it any sense of dignity. After calling for help for something as simple to handle, such as a trespasser, My eyes were looking out in front of my boots the whole time until I made it to the road. After about ten minutes out on the road, I was finally able to see headlights approaching. I wondered what it would be like and if I would end up knowing the officer by name. Wondered if anyone would spot the police car and alert the others. Including me. The officer arrived, had me hop in and drove up to the house while asking what the matter was. I told him as embarrassed as I was. Told him exactly what had happened about the strange sounds I had been hearing up in the attic, the light the footsteps for doll came back when he asked about damage to the property, danger or what I thought it was. I'm sure he was just doing his job, but still it stung. He pulled up in the front porch. I got out and turned on all the lights of the property. He still had his flashlight out and roamed around, checking out the ceiling before turning to me. Oh, yeah, this house is the entrance at the top right. He got the key. The key, I asked out loud, had. Ever been up there and knew even less about a key existing. It's probably opened. It was the only thing I could think of saying, making myself look even more like a fool. I knew what to do. I walked over to the shed and grabbed the ladder, setting it up against the porch by the front door, and was about to climb up, but the officer stopped me without saying anything else. Climbed up instead. I watched him grab the window, the whole thing and lifted it up like a latch it's open, he said, his voice fading out completely once it closed again, in that strangely familiar sound I had been hearing for days. I watched the light bounce around the inside of the attic from where I was standing for several minutes until he came back out, hmming his flashlight at the roof and then at the ground by where I was standing. He climbed down and kept following the beam out over the well before stopping and giving me a cold stare blood, he said, pointing down next to me. I looked, and yes, I could see it, fresh blood on the steps. I didn't know what to think, and instead just waited. The officer walked up to me and explained, finally giving me answers to what was happening. Rappers, he said, were found up there, two candles and a blanket. He asked me if I had been up there, if I had guests in there, because someone had definitely spent the night up there. I shook my head when he asked, still in disbelief. But then he told me about the blood. A nail he started about this high. He continued, looking at the space between his thumb and his index finger. Someone stepped on it. On his way out. I felt my mouth dry up, barely realizing that I had it open. He explained that he would be making a report about it, but that I should also call in with any news on the matter. That no one else had called with any reports, he said, before pausing and looking at me directly. In the eye. Maybe they took care of it themselves. I looked away toward the darkness of those fields again. When he said that get yourself a lot, he said, is there anything else I can help with? I thanked them and watched leave. I was standing out there in front of my house like I had many times before, only this time trying to remember exactly what it's like when you're sure for real this time that you're one hundred percent alone. Before putting the ladder away, I took the lock from the shed and climbed up, lifting up the lash to see the two wrappers of twinkies and corn chips from the gas station. The nail was still there. I shut the latch on my way out, locked it, and climbed back down to the now well lit living room. I shut the door and sat on the couch for a few hours until I fell asleep. I think about those nights often. It fed into the normal paranoia of what we hear out here, the soft sounds of a latch footsteps. I try to stay silent. The way I look at people and how they know much more about me than I'm aware of. Even the way I looked at the neighbors changed, and I think it changed the way they look at me too. Mill doesn't flag me down anymore as he sits in front of his lonely house. No matter how many times I drive. By his place. When I try to talk to him, he acts a little strange. It was that annoyance and those chats about nothing that would keep me sane out there, But now he had nothing to talk about. Perhaps it was me that burnt along the police car into the neighborhood that pissed everyone off. Maybe it was something else, But it's. True what they say, loneliness makes us miss strange things and act in silly little ways. Maybe the officer was right. Maybe something climbed out of the attic, step on the nail and disappeared into the woods. Maybe that's all there was to it. But the thing that stays with me is Mill. The screams, the stories, about the house the fact. After the police came, nobody seemed interested in talking about it any more. I don't know. Sometimes finding an answer only creates for your questions. Maybe that's why he still thinks about that week whenever the house gets quiet. But if you enjoy tonight's story, be sure to follow the show wherever you're listening. It helps more people discover scary story podcasts and to make sure that you won't miss any future episodes. If you have any ideas for stories, send it my way and Hugh shout out by the way to our Scary Plus members for making the show possible. Until next time, remember that not every sound above your head comes from an ampheatic. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it Scary everyone so soon,