Inheritance

[00:00:00] Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Based on the poll on Spotify, you want to hear a scarier story. So I thought of what scares me. This story called Inheritance is one of those stories that will grow with you. My name is Edwin and here's a scary story.

[00:00:23] It was a little after the kids had gone back to school from summer break when I got the call. I remember it because I was alone at the house, something I desperately wished for all summer.

[00:00:35] Julia had forgotten some folders that she needed for work and had just closed the door and was walking to the car when the phone rang. The man identified himself as David Border, part of the Border and Sons Law Group based out of North Carolina.

[00:00:52] Hearing the name of the state sent chills down my back. I'd gotten as far away as I could from my hometown in North Carolina. My relationship with my parents was not the best, problems that I assumed every family went through, but they were not the same as ours.

[00:01:07] There were things about my family that I didn't want to remember. Things that if I would dig into only a little bit, would move a larger stone that would send a landslide of memories back to my mind.

[00:01:21] The arm I was using to hold up the phone went cold when the lawyer told me the news. My father had passed away and I would need to sign off on the arrangements for the funeral and need to be present for the materials left behind for me.

[00:01:35] He said many other things that were just sounds, losing their connection to language altogether, but he did promise to email me a list of the things I was supposed to do or complete during my visit, that I shouldn't try to remember everything right now, that he understood how

[00:01:51] difficult this must be for me. Difficult, yes. I mean, the man was my father and I loved him, I would keep in touch with him every so often, but some of the things he would say ended up going too far into the past.

[00:02:07] To my mother and all of the things that we went through. The sad memories of us growing up. Regret in his voice. One of living a life full of empty people. The email from the lawyer arrived about 10 minutes later, right after I called Julia

[00:02:25] to let her know what had just happened. I realized I never asked how my father had died. I figured I would find out eventually, or maybe that it didn't matter anymore. I would be wrong about that too.

[00:02:39] Julia thought it was important for me to find out, but asked to keep her updated on my flight and reminded me of where I kept everything that I needed to travel. She asked me if I wanted her to go with me, but she already knew the answer.

[00:02:53] The whole thing seemed like a transaction, not a moment of grief. I knew my father was about to go for several months and I knew everything was planned out, although in secret. That was the thing with my family. The secrets.

[00:03:10] Even as a child, I remember having to explain to my teachers that my parents didn't let me fill out our family tree, giving them instead a letter from my mother. The school I went to was, again like with everything else in my life, not normal.

[00:03:26] During my college applications, I realized that the academies, as they used to call them, were private schools. The kinds where parents have full control and teachers simply follow directions. That wasn't all of it.

[00:03:39] My parents never had people over and I don't remember many parties except for the ones that they would throw for my brother. But even if I try, those memories are too far away and badly formed in my mind. There must have been four or five during those times.

[00:03:56] My brother's face is only a blur to me, but even that memory looked absolutely nothing like the person in the only family photograph we ever had on display in our home. Julia called me as soon as I landed, letting me know that everything would be taken care

[00:04:13] of and that her sister would be staying at the house to help with the kids and Beto, our sleepy golden retriever. I called the lawyer, David, on the drive into town where he gave me the address to the offices.

[00:04:26] It was around 8 at night already and he was still in the office, finishing up some divorce filings. Things of evil, he said, laughing. I didn't expect sympathy from the guy, nor from any lawyer actually.

[00:04:40] I think it was because he was about to tell me the details of the inheritance left to my name, something that he assumed I would be happy about, and therefore felt like he could joke around with me.

[00:04:52] The drive there was slow, so many cars along every single route I tried to take. So I got to his office at about 9.30 at night. His office was neat, wooden shelves and dark carpets.

[00:05:07] The reception desk was empty, but all the lights were on and the soft jazz music that was playing in the hallway could still be heard, along with the faint noise of a vacuum cleaner somewhere in the other offices.

[00:05:19] He was a tall man, a little bit older, thin and had a perfect posture, with the smile of a politician. He said hello to me and then ushered me into his office lined with books and newspaper

[00:05:31] clippings with framed certificates all along the walls, but still, all of them neatly placed and perfectly spaced from each other. He explained what had happened. My father had died in his sleep, but was still undergoing investigation.

[00:05:49] He made it seem like there was nothing to worry about when he casually mentioned potential foul play. Of course, I asked what had happened. My father had no enemies. Nobody wanted him dead. It took me some digging and questioning to finally get vague details on the situation.

[00:06:09] My father had been found by the cleaning staff on a Friday morning, his face contorted, twisted vertically so much that his jaw had been dislocated, or so they assumed. The lawyer had seen the pictures, he said, making an expression of disgust. They're pretty gnarly.

[00:06:30] He said that in about two days he would have the remaining paperwork ready, and he gave me a series of folders all neatly labeled with arrows on places where to sign. Each stack had a printed half-sheet of paper with a summary, one that said what I was about

[00:06:44] to sign. The estates, transfers from the trust, and other documents regarding fees and records of accounts that were remaining. Uh, ignore the insurance material for now. We have to wait for it to clear, he ordered. Still, my mind kept wandering. Insurance in case you got murdered?

[00:07:05] Was that what he was talking about? Your brother is not alive anymore, correct? He asked me, bluntly. He's dead, yes. He's been dead for a long time, I answered. I was upset at the question. Obviously this guy was supposed to know about my family.

[00:07:23] He must have noticed it in my facial expression because he cleared it up by saying that my father had left two heirs in his list. It had been done through a recent modification of his will in recent times to reflect my

[00:07:35] name and the name of my brother, instead of just me. Again, he read my confused expression and moved on. It was a lot to process, so I just signed over and over until he sat there reviewing everything.

[00:07:49] I took out my phone and started searching for places to stay, but found nothing. Hotels, Airbnbs, motels, and everything was all booked up, and the remaining were outrageously high, and despite me knowing that money would not be that big of an issue for me much longer,

[00:08:07] I could not bring myself to pay over $500 for a room. I asked Mr. Border if he knew of any hotels, but he shook his head and said that it was going to be a busy weekend as one of the largest conventions of something-I don't

[00:08:21] remember what-coincided with a concert. The point is, there was going to be no places to stay aside from, well, my father's house. The place was cleaned, he said. The staff had cleaned the entire house before realizing that they had been in the same building as a dead man.

[00:08:40] There was something about the way he spoke that made me feel like I was talking to only the shell of a well-dressed human, and I didn't like it. He said the case was processing now, so the area was usable, not required for evidence anymore.

[00:08:57] I could spend the night there. I didn't know what to think at the moment. It was a big deal, or at least it was supposed to be, but I accepted the thought of going to spend the night there faster than I had anticipated.

[00:09:12] I knew where my key was, and so after signing everything and agreeing to meet up again on Wednesday, I got back in the rental car and drove the half an hour or so back to my father's place.

[00:09:23] The front gate had been left unlocked, although shut completely, just like the memories with my family, available whenever I wanted them. Everything was the same when I went inside the enormous house.

[00:09:38] I remember the places where I used to play and the many others I was never allowed to enter. The noises in the attic, the footsteps, the closet underneath the stairs that went even further down to the basement through the spiral staircase. Everything remained intact.

[00:09:57] Even the smell of it was enough to make me remember the times we spent in that house, but mainly just how much I wanted to get out. You see, my mother had a few problems, demons to deal with.

[00:10:11] My father did his best to help, but being overwhelmed by the many issues mom had, he ended up focusing all of his energy into his work. He would come home late and lose himself in thought in front of the fireplace often.

[00:10:26] He would ask about our days, sure, but it wasn't always like that. I was young at the time, not older than six years old when I noticed just how big of a problem this had been.

[00:10:38] My mother had grown distant, lost, and I remember spending lots of time with my father around the house and even going to his work at the office. I remember my brother being gone and me asking about him, now having the entire backseat of the car to myself.

[00:10:57] I was told that he was out on a trip for the academy or that summer camp had been extended and he would be back soon after he finished with schoolwork. I don't know how old I was when I finally realized that I would never see him again,

[00:11:13] so I just stopped asking. But one afternoon, a Saturday just like any other, I had woken up early to go play outside. I walked down the long hallway and down the stairs, and with every footstep I could see

[00:11:27] a little more of the black shoes at the bottom of the staircase. Soon I could see the black, black pant legs and then the white shirt with the short sleeves and skinny arms.

[00:11:42] As I stepped down, I could see his neck and then his face, completely pale, shorter than I remembered him, but still, I knew it must have been my brother. All of these thoughts, all of these memories that I didn't want to have, not before I was

[00:12:02] about to spend the night in this house. But I remembered, and I kept remembering. I ran down the stairs, excited to see him, but as I got closer and he wouldn't move, I tapped him on the shoulder a little and watched him collapse completely on the floor.

[00:12:20] I screamed as loud as I could and ran up the stairs, waking up my mother who opened the door and then asked, what happened? Then she turned her head back into her room and then back to the hallway, yelling, George!

[00:12:35] And then dashing toward the staircase and then to the floor below. I remember standing there, confused as I saw her slowly climb up the stairs and then walk toward me on the hallway, completely ignoring me as she walked past me and stepped back

[00:12:51] into her room, carrying the curled up body of my brother, my older brother George, and then watched her shut the door. Part 2 of Inheritance is coming up right after this. Stay with me.

[00:13:14] Like a child again, I tried not to think of what I had just thought about as I made my way to the guest room on the first floor. I left all of the lights on, maybe to give the place some life or maybe to keep me with mine.

[00:13:29] But you probably have some of those places that grab you too. I mean, this house was mine, or so I kept saying to myself, but the thought that maybe it was the other way around wouldn't leave my mind. I stepped into the kitchen. Neat.

[00:13:47] Everything organized, likely in preparation for my stay, along with a note on the refrigerator, the cleaning service company, I guess. I didn't read the whole thing, but it was a thank you note to the new owners, the pleasure

[00:14:00] it had been working with my father and the condolences from their company. The lawyer had arranged my stay there already, and maybe that's why he had seemed so concerned about me staying somewhere else.

[00:14:12] I know my father had worked with him for years already, ever since the death of my mother. It was strange how she died, and the few relatives and friends that my parents knew also knew that.

[00:14:26] Even then I could understand how great it was for it to just be us, as a team against the world. But my mind was too simple to understand the dark world we were living in. We started losing my mother slowly.

[00:14:41] Again, with me being so young, all I can remember had to do with the things that she would tell me and the way my father would respond to it all. You see, when I was told that my brother left for camp all those times, I had been

[00:14:56] convinced that he had been taken by another family, and I don't know why, but I thought that I would be the next one to be taken. Back then I didn't know my brother had died and the reasons had been hidden from me.

[00:15:09] It was one of those secrets that made life impossible around the house. My mother would rarely join us for dinner after that, and she had an assistant of sorts, Mrs. Becky, a woman who would help clean her room and generally help out around the

[00:15:23] house, until she was yelled at and literally ran out of the house one morning, crying. Still I would get the chance to talk to my mother sometimes in the mornings, before going

[00:15:34] to the academy or at night, before I would go to sleep and she would be by the fireplace downstairs. I was still in the kitchen looking at the old living room with the fireplace, thinking

[00:15:46] of the way she would sit still, looking at the fire and then over at me with that half smile reassuring me that she was still my mother, and that she was doing the best that she could.

[00:15:57] You know, there was one occasion that I remember when she was a little joyful and actually smiling. The photographer had been hired to come to the house and take a picture of us, and we had all gotten dressed up.

[00:16:11] My father had his dark blue suit on and I had put on a matching one that belonged to my older brother George, that now fit me. I seem to have gotten my memories jumbled up because my brother was still in that picture,

[00:16:24] although I don't remember anything else of him that day. Yet he's in the picture, although again, he didn't look the same. I walked through the first floor of the house.

[00:16:36] The guest room that I wanted to stay in was down there, and it was on the east side of the house with its own entrance and exit to the backyard. I brought the bag I had left by the front door and walked through the living room, down

[00:16:49] the hallway and set it on the bed of the guest room, before washing up in the bathroom to get ready to go to sleep. I didn't know if the news had been so heavy that I hadn't processed everything yet, or

[00:17:00] if this was the way it was going to be. A guy who was completely okay with the death of his father and accepted it this quickly. The thoughts that came that night brought out a different image of him. He was a good person, although distant.

[00:17:17] He tried to please my mother for as long as I could remember until we lost her. Poor guy. It was sometime in the middle of the night when I woke up to the sound of footsteps on the floor above me.

[00:17:30] The hallway upstairs was closer to the middle of the house, and that's where they were heading. I could follow them, sudden and quietly, walking toward the staircase. It was nothing compared to the many things that would happen around the house when I was younger.

[00:17:49] The footsteps were another reminder of why I wanted to leave for so long. None of my friends wanted to come over, and the rumors of my mother being crazy and a witch kept everyone even further away. But it was those footsteps. The faded sound of laughter at night.

[00:18:08] The way the noises would come right up to the door of my bedroom, so close that I could see the shadow of the thing right outside it. It was that thing that kept me awake. I thought it would go away as I got older. Kids have strange thoughts.

[00:18:25] I mean, kids are afraid of everything, right? We make things up when we're that young, or so we'd like to think. But as I grew older and kept experiencing, or imagining, like I've convinced myself to believe, the strange things that went on in that house, things became real.

[00:18:46] You see, there were two main entities in that house, or whatever you want to call them. There was a woman by the window, and the little footsteps of the laughter throughout the house.

[00:18:57] I know it sounds hard to believe, but I don't think anyone accepts it until they've seen what I've seen. After going back to that house, there was no doubt in my mind about the other beings,

[00:19:11] the ones we knowingly ignore and refuse to see, who are around every single corner, but just one simple conversation away from becoming real. The footsteps stopped, I'm guessing from right at the top of the staircase.

[00:19:27] So I just laid there in complete silence, expecting the steps to move back to the hallway, merely against going to figure out what had been making the sounds. I'd investigated many times before, and no one had broken in, and no one had been walking down the hallway.

[00:19:46] I remember the expression on my mother's face when I told her about it late one night, and in a haunting calm expression, she told me to let the souls of Purgatory take their time, that they would leave when their time came.

[00:20:03] But I knew how scared she was about these things, I had seen terror in her eyes already. I clearly remember an event in my family's history that I came to name Trash Day.

[00:20:15] At least that's what I called it all of those times I've told my wife about it, that one time I had to explain my recurring nightmares, and how they all stemmed from that night.

[00:20:26] My brother was gone by that time, and my mother would be up in her room all day and night. When the helper on the house wasn't there, I would have to take her meals up to her room.

[00:20:35] And sometimes, I would see candles, dozens and dozens of them on the floor, short stacks of books along her bed, right there with her. Those books that she would look up from when she would say thanks and to leave everything by her nightstand.

[00:20:54] I was not allowed to be in there, technically, and she would remind me of it too, telling me firmly to please leave her whenever I would start to look around in there.

[00:21:05] I of course wanted to see what was going on, I mean she had been receiving shipments every few weeks, boxes that would very quickly find their way upstairs and into her room. This particular night, I heard a scream from upstairs, and my dad rushed from his own room

[00:21:23] and ran down the hallway to find out what was wrong. She was screaming at the top of her lungs, with words I couldn't understand. Then I heard my dad shouting, items falling down hard against a wooden floor.

[00:21:38] I stepped out into the hall and watched him carrying box after box with these strange figures I could only describe as people. He was bringing them downstairs and outside into the dumpster. Mom kept dumping boxes out into the hallway, screaming to get them out.

[00:21:57] I remember running to the door and grabbing a box only to see the head of a large doll looking right at me. I dropped it as soon as my mother commanded me to take it out of the house.

[00:22:08] I was at the top of the stairs when I saw my father running up to me and taking it from my hands, then made his way down quickly as I heard mom yelling and throwing more boxes and figures into the hall.

[00:22:21] I vaguely remember asking my father about it, and he said they were taking out the trash. That was that. He refused to say anything more. And you see, it was a different kind of fear.

[00:22:38] The kind that keeps you awake for far too long, where your mind begins to stretch to the impossible. So much that it spreads to your face. I heard the footsteps again. I could tell they were coming down the stairs, although struggling. And I don't know how it happened.

[00:23:04] Call it a hidden memory or a realization brought to me by the place itself, that I pieced together everything as I was gathering my things to rush for the door that night. The footsteps were at the base of the stairs now, and I could hear them clinking against

[00:23:21] the wooden floor. It was just too obvious to ignore. Grab my bag and leave the shoes. Grab my bag and leave the shoes, I told myself as I opened up the guest room door.

[00:23:34] My father, and the way he had passed, his jaw stretched out and dislocated, maybe from a muscle spasm or fear. The kind that stretches your face and welcomes you to the end of your life.

[00:23:50] My mother and the shipments of dolls, forever searching for the one that looked like my brother. The photograph. The one in the living room that showed my father, my mother, myself, and the thing.

[00:24:05] I heard the footsteps behind me as I shut the front door of the house and ran to the car. I knew. I knew that thing wasn't my brother. What did you think of the story? Let me know via Instagram or email.

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