Open the Door for Mary

Today's story is going to bring you into the world of a couple that begins to doubt what they see at night and right outside their house. Who could it be? My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. Eric and I had fallen into our usual routine, him scrolling on his phone and me half awake watching whatever show we had put on as background noise. It wasn't late, but it felt like it, the kind of quiet that pressed against the walls, making the house feel bigger and emptier. I was curled up on the couch, wrapped in the old fleece blanket that still smelt faintly of lavender fabric softer. Eric sat in his usual spot at the other end. The phone was tilted toward his face, his finger idly swiping through the security app. It was his thing. Ever since we installed the cameras a few months ago. He had gotten into the habit of checking them at night, out of paranoia or anything, just out of curiosity. We lived in a quiet neighborhood, a cul de sac, where the biggest disturbances were straight cats setting off motion alerts. I didn't mind, if anything, I liked knowing the cameras were there. The thought of being watched made some people uneasy, but I found comfort in it. If you could see everything, the front yard, the driveway, the side gate leading to the backyard, if anyone tried sneaking around, we would know, or at least I thought we would. Eric suddenly tens beside me. His hand stopped crolling. Hey, come look at this, he said. His voice was quiet, but there was something in his tone, something tight on alert. I sat up, leaning toward him. What just hurry, he said. I screwed it closer, my heart already picking up speed, though I wasn't sure why. The phone screen was dim, casting a bluish glow over his face. He angled it toward me, playing the last few seconds of footage, the front yard grainy and the washed out night vision. The porch light cast a weak glow over the driveway, barely reaching the sidewalk beyond. At first I didn't see anything, but then movement. The figure emerged from the right side of the frame, near the bushes lighting the sidewalk. It was slow, a natural, a woman. I squinted, trying to make out her details. Her clothes were loose, shapeless in the poor resolution, dark hair, long, enough to spill past her shoulders. She wasn't walking normally. There was no natural sway to her arms, no shifting of her weight from foot to foot. Her movements were stiff and controlled. And then my stomach tightened. She was walking backwards with strange pressure settled in my chest. My eyes locked onto the way her feet slid against pavement, the way her arms hung limply at her sides. Her head remained perfectly still, never turning, never looking around. I glanced at Eric. His face was unreadable, his thumb hovering over the screen. What the hell, I muttered, I know, he said. Look. He dragged the playback slider a few seconds and hit play again. We watched as a woman moved in slow, deliberate steps, her body retreating away from her house. No hesitation, no glance over her shoulder. It felt wrong. Something was off. I swallowed, shifting uncomfortably. Who walks around like that? Eric exhaled, shaking his head. No idea, maybe she's He trailed off, as if realizing how little sense it made. Drunk, sleepwalking, injured. None of those explanations fit. I straightened off, check another angle. He switched to the next camera, the one facing the driveway. I covered a wider portion of the street, meaning we could see more of her approach. But when the footage loaded, the woman was already in frame, already moving backwards. I frowned, Wait, go back further, he tried, but the recording wouldn't rewind past that point, like she had just appeared there. The cold prickle ran down my arms. I thought these recorded everything I said they do. Eric muttered, I think we fumbled through the app trying to find older recordings, but neither of us had done it before. After a few minutes of frustration, men us looking back on themselves, the footage refusing to rewind further, we gave up. Maybe it's a glitch, I said, though I didn't believe it. Yeah. Maybe. We sat there for a moment, neither of us speaking, both still staring at the screen. Outside, the night stretched on. The wind shifted, the branches of the old oak tree in the yard, casting warped shadows against the pavement. The hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen seemed suddenly too loud. I glanced at the front window. The curtains were drawn, but the thought occurred to me, if I opened them right now, would she be there. The thought unseld me so much that I pulled a blanket tighter around my shoulders. Eric locked his phone and tossed it on to the coffee table. I'm going to bed, he said, stretching. His voice was casual, but I could tell he didn't want to talk about it anymore. I hesitated and then nodded, Yeah, me too. We shut off the lights and climbed the stairs, leaving the living room behind. I didn't check the window, I didn't check the cameras again, but as I settled into bed, listening to the quiet of the house, I couldn't shake the feeling that we had seen something we weren't supposed to, and worse, that maybe it had seen us too. The next morning, I tried to push the image of the woman from my mind. Eric and I had barely spoken about it after heading upstairs. He wasn't the type to dwell on things. If he couldn't explain something, he would let it go. But I wasn't like that. The more I try to forget, the more I found myself obsessing over it. I checked the cameras again as soon as I woke up, scrolling through the app while still curled under the covers. My heart thudded as I flipped between the different angles the front yard, driveway, back yard. Bright sunlit images replaced the eerie night vision from the night before, no signs of anything strange. I hesitated before tapping on the playback function. I wasn't sure what I expected to see, but when the video loaded, my stomach dropped. The footage was gone, not just the clip of the woman, but everything from the past week. A message on the screen said no stored recordings, but that didn't make any sense. I shook Eric awake. Hey did you delete the camera footage? He groaned, rubbing his eyes. What the security act? The recordings are missing? He sat up, slightly, blinking at me. I didn't touch it. I handed him my phone and he frowned, scrolling through the ap Huh, that's not normal, right, No, he exited and reopened the app, but the missing footage didn't reappear. A chill crept up my spine. The woman had been there, we had seen her, but now it was as if she had never existed. I swung my legs out of the bed. I'm going outside here, it groaned. What I want to check the yard? Maybe, but I don't know, Maybe there's something out there. With a sigh, he followed me downstairs. The morning light was golden, filtering through the windows in soft patches, but it didn't feel warm. It felt sterile and empty. I stepped on to the porch, my bare feet cooling against the concrete. The front yard was still undisturbed. The bushes where she had walked remained unbent, no footprints in the dew damp grass, no sign that anyone had been there at all. Eric folded his arms. See nothing, I hugged myself. Maybe we should check with the neighbors see if their cameras caught anything. He gave me a look. If you really want to go door to door asking if anyone saw a backwards walking woman. I hesitated. It did sound ridiculous, but still I couldn't shake the feeling. Instead of knocking on doors, I turned to the next best thing, the neighborhood watch group on Facebook. I scrolled through the posts. Someone was selling a coffee table, there was a lost dog, a complaint about teenagers setting off fireworks late at night. But then a post that made my breath catch did anyone else hear that? Knocking? Last? Night. There were already a few replies beneath it. Yeah, round midnight, I thought it was just me. Checked my doorbell, cab, but nothing was there. Weird. We heard it too, My husband said it sounded like it was coming from the back door, but when we checked, nobody was there. Called. The weight settled in my stomach. I clicked into the comments, my fingers tightening around the phone. Then another reply popped up. Actually, as anyone else seemed that woman. I felt my pulse in my throat. I hesitated before typing, wont woman. A few minutes passed before the person responded, not sure. My husband saw someone on our camera a few nights ago, but when he went outside there was no one there. She was just standing on the sidewalk. I swallowed hard. Did she look weird to you? I typed? This time The reply came quickly. Yeah, she was walking backwards. A sharp chill ran down my spine, I showed Eric. He frowned, rubbing his chin. So we're not the only ones. What if she's been around for a while, I said, He shrugged. Could just be some weirdo. But something told me it wasn't that simple. I couldn't let it go. That afternoon, while Eric worked in his home office, I drove to the local library. I didn't even know how to use it or what I was looking for, just the feeling that something about this woman was connected to this town. I started with old newspapers, scrolling through archived crime reports on the library's database, missing persons, unsolved deaths. I didn't know what I expected to find, but every case felt unrelated. Hours passed, the sun had shifted in the sky, casting long shadows through the library's tall windows. About to give up, when an old article caught my eye. Local woman found dead near creek, cause unknown. The date was thirty years ago. I clicked on it. The article was brief. A woman, Mary Finch, aged twenty nine, had been found near the creek that ran behind the neighborhood. No sign of foul play, no official cause of death, just found. The article mentioned that her husband had reported her missing the night before. He had lasting her standing outside their house facing the street. I noticed that I was holding my breath. I scanned the rest of the article, but there were no further details, no follow up. It was as if she had been forgotten. I sat back, my skin prickling. Could it be her. I needed more information. I searched the name Mary Finch in the art archives. There wasn't much, but I did find something strange and no. Letter to the editor written by a woman who had lived in the neighborhood decades ago. It was a warning. She claimed that after Mary Finch's death, people had seen her walking at night. She walks backwards because she doesn't want to see where she's going, it read. My hands trembled. I thought of the camera footage, the way she had never turned her head. I thought of the missing recordings, and then a horrible realization settled in my chest. But if she doesn't want to see where she's going, because she already knows, I close the computer. I had to get home. I drove home faster than I should have, my hands gripping the wheels so tightly that my knuckles ached. The sun was already sinking, casting a dull orange glow over the quiet streets of the neighborhood. Every shadow along the sidewalk felt stretched too long. Everything was so still. I pulled into the driveway and hesitated before turning off the car. My polls studded in my ears. Something still fell to off the house was exactly as I had left it, curtains drawn, the porch light not yet on. But the moment I stepped out of the car, I felt watched. I forced myself to move quickly, unlocking the front door with shaky fingers. The house was quiet except for the distant hum of Eric's office van. He barely looked up when I walked in. Where'd you go? I hesitated, library that got his attention. He turned in his chair, raising an eyebrow, still thinking about the camera thing. I shut the door behind me, locking it even though the sun wasn't fully down yet. Eric, I said, my voice lower than I meant it to be. I think I know who she is? He blinked. Who. I crossed the room, dropping my bag onto the table. Mary Finch she lived in this neighborhood thirty years ago. She went missing one night and was found dead near the creek. He frowned, so so people reported seeing her walking backwards after she died. Come on, there's more, I hesitated, heart hammering. She doesn't turn around because she doesn't want to see where she's going. Silence stretched between us. Eric exhaled, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Babe, listen. I get it. Okay, it's creepy, but you're chasing ghosts literally. People say all kinds of weird stuff on the internet. Maybe some lady just walks. Maybe it's not even the same person. I shook my head. Then why did our footage disappear? That made him pause. He looked at his phone, opening the security app again, and after a moment, he muttered, Okay, let's check it now. He tapped through the menu, pulling the live feed. The front yard flickered onto the screen. The bushes swayed lightly in the breeze. The street was empty. Normal. Then he switched to the driveway camera. Nothing, backyard, nothing. He exhaled. See Before he could close the app, the front camera flickered and the screen glitched for a fraction of a second. Static crawled across the image. The bushes seemed to shift, distorting unnaturally, as if the video had skipped, and then a figure standing too close to the camera. I gasped, Eric cursed, nearly dropping the phone. The image snapped back to normal, and the woman was gone. I barely slept that night. Every creek in the house set me on edge. Every rustling tree branch outside made me want to check the windows. By morning, I had made a decision. I needed to find out more about Mary Finch. There was only one place left to look, her house. I had found the address in the old newspaper article. She had lived just five doors down from us, at the very end of the cul de sac. So I walked over, and when I knocked, I half expected no one to answer. The house was old but well maintained, its porch lined with potted plants that looked too perfectly placed, like they had been on top for years. And then the door cracked open. An older man peered out. His eyes were narrow and suspicious, and I help you, I hesitated. I uh, sorry to bother you. I lived down the street. I was just wondering, did you know Mary Finch? That was quick, and his expression froze. The door opened a little bit wider. Why are you asking about Mary? I think she's been seen walking. For a moment, he just stared at me, and then with a heavy sigh, he pushed the door open and stepped aside. Come in. The inside of the house smelled faintly of dust and something older, like wood polish. Maybe The living room was tidy, but filled with antique furniture, the kind that had sat in the same place for decades. The man who introduced himself as Tom, lowered himself into an arm chair, rubbing his hands together. You're not the first to see her, he said. A cold weight settled in my stomach, he sighed. Mary was my sister. She lived here before me. After she died, people started talking. They said they saw her at night, did you, I asked. His jaw tightened. No, but I heard her. The room suddenly felt smaller. I would wake up at night and hear footsteps outside, slow, deliberate. His fingers were curled slightly, and always backwards. Why does she do that? I asked. No one knows for sure, but there's something else you should know. I leaned forward. The night she disappeared, she knocked on every door in the neighborhood. No one answered. The room was too quiet and the air was too thick. What do you mean? His eyes darkened. She wasn't supposed to be out there that night. What do you mean? I whispered. She called me before she left, said someone was at her window watching her. Said she was going to go to a neighbor's house. My pulse pounded who was watching her? Tom shook his head. No one ever knew, but when they found her body, her footprints led all the way from her house to the creek. He paused and then said they were all backwards. I left the house in a daze. My mind was spinning. Mary had tried to get help. She had gone door to door knocking, just like the posts on Facebook, and no one had answered. That night, I checked the cameras again, my heart pounding. The backyard feed flickered on, and then the driveway, then the front yard, and they were all empty. Relief washed over me. And then a soft tap on the front door, knock, knock, knock. I froze. My phone vibrated in my hand, A notification from the security app Motion detected front door with shaking fingers. I tapped the notification and the screen loaded. I held my breath. The front porch was empty, but the door book was recording not silence, not the wind, but footsteps moving away, and I think they were backwards. I didn't move. The soft knocking had stopped. My phone screen still showed the security feed, the empty porch, still night air, yet the recording was picking up something. These footsteps moving away, and then Eric's voice broke the silence. Theybe what's wrong? I barely registered that I had been holding my breath. My fingers were clenched around the phone. I turned to him slowly, my voice barely a whisper. Did you hear that? He frowned, groggy and rubbing his face. What the knocking? His expression shifted. No. I played the footage for him, my hands trembling. He watched in silence as the recording captured the sound of re treating. Footsteps were faint and deliberate. You could just tell they were backwards. It wasn't a distinct pattern. Eric just looked at me. This was getting out of hand. Do you think I'm making this up? I said? He shook his head. Nope, I just he hesitated, urtting a hand through his hair. There has to be some kind of explanation, a glitch, an animal triggering the motion sensor. Something animals don't knock, I said flatly, and Eric had no answer to that. I turned back to my phone, scrolling through the security history, looking for previous alerts, But just like before, all past recordings were gone. I clicked back to the life feed, my stomach twisting into knots. The porch was so empty and the street quiet. But then as I watched, the bushes moved, not like the wind had brushed through them, like something had passed through. Eric's phone buzzed. He glanced down and tensed up. What I asked. His voice came out low, emotion alert from the backyard. Neither of us spoke. The air between us fell to electric charge with something neither of us wanted to name. Eric tapped the notification, opening the backyard feed. The screen flickered to life, showing the overgrown grass, the wooden fence, the shadows cast by the back porch light. Nothing. He ad justted the timeline, rewinding to when the motion was detected. At first, there was just the backyard. It was still and quiet. But then a figure, not approaching, not emerging from the shadows, but already there, standing just at the edge of the light, a woman, her back to the camera. Eric cursed under his breath, my hands clamped over my mouth. She stood impossibly still, her hair hanging limp down, her back, her arms wet, her sides, not shifting, not breathing, just waiting. And then she moved, not a turn, not a step forward, but a slow, unsettling slide backwards, as if she were being pulled. She moved further and further into the darkness until she vanished completely. Eric's voice was barely audible. That's not a glitch. I didn't sleep by morning. Exhaustion settled deep into my bones. But I couldn't stop the knocking, the erased footage, the thing in the backyard. It all pointed to something we weren't seeing her worse, something we weren't meant to see and we saw. I scrambled to get to my notes app. I found the phone number and I called Tom. He answered right away, she came to our house. I told him the moment he answered, she knocked. The line was silent for a long time, and then, in a voice heavy with something I couldn't place, he said, she's trying to finish before she started. What do you mean, Tom sighed, you read the old stories. People say she walks backwards because she doesn't want to see where she's going. Yeah, they got it wrong. His voice wavered. She's not walking away, she's retracing her steps. I waited, processing it all. She's going back to that night, the night she disappeared. A cold. Realization hit me like ice water in my veins. She had knocked on doors that night looking for help, and no one had answered. I felt sick. I tried to tell Eric what Tom had said, but he didn't want to hear it. We're not dealing with the girls, he insisted. Some one is messing with us, then why is the footage deleting itself? I snapped, well, that shut him up. That night, we left the porch light on, we locked every door, and we sat together in the living room watching the security feed like our lives depended on it. Midnight came, and then one a m then two. Nothing. For a moment, I let myself think that maybe, just maybe it was over. But then knock, knock, knock. I couldn't breathe. The sound wasn't coming from the front door or the back door. It was coming from inside the house. Eric grabbed my wrist. His grip was ice cold. The security feed flickered, the screen glitched, and for the briefest moment, the image on the camera it wasn't the yard, it was our living room, and standing there, barely visible in the distortion, was her. I couldn't move the screen in my hands flickered, the security feed warping, twisting. It wasn't just a glitch. It was something wrong, something that didn't belong. It was the living room camera showing her. She stood motionless, her back to the camera, facing the farthest wall, as if she had been there the entire time. My lungs locked up. The air around me felt thick, pressing, in suffocating. Eric whispered, barely audible, she's inside, and then the feed cut to static. The phone slipped from my hands, hitting the floor with a soft thud, and somewhere in the house the door creaked open. Eric grabbed my arm, but I couldn't move. Every muscle in my body was frozen, locked and placed by the weight of something unseen. And then another sound, a slow, deliberate step behind us. Eric turned his head first. I didn't want to, I couldn't, but something made me. The hallway leading to the front door was shrouded in darkness, nothing but the faint outline of furniture and walls visible in the dim glow of the security panel. It was empty, but then the shadows shifted. Not a person, not a figure, a movement. Mary, I said silence, and then another step. The darkness deepened, stretched, like something was shifting in the air itself, and for the first time I understood she wasn't moving toward us. She was moving backward, retracing her steps. Eric yanked my hand, dragging me toward the door. Stumbled my mind, screaming that we were already too late. We reached the door. Eric fumbled with the locks, his breath harsh and ragged. My heart beat slammed against my ribs, and then a whisper. It was so quiet it might have been my own breath. Don't leave me behind. A chill shot through me. I turned before I could stop myself, and I saw her. She stood at the end of the hallway, barely visible in the darkness. Her body was stiff, unnatural. Her back was still turned to us, but her head, her head was tilting, tilting in a way no human head should a slow, deliberate bend, like she was trying to look over her shoulder without turning her body. She wanted to see if we were watching. The breath and my lungs turned to ice. And then I saw her feet, the dirty, bare souls, the way she stood slightly off balance, like she wasn't quite used to her body and the trail of damp, backward footprints leading from her to the front door, a path, a path she had walked before, and a path had ended at this very door decades ago. The knocking wasn't random, It was never random. She had knocked that night and no one had answered, but we had, and now she was waiting. Eric yanked the door open. Cold air rushed in, sharp against my skin. He pulled me forward, desperate, but I hesitated. Something stopped me. I looked back and Mary Finch was standing in the exact spot where her last footprints ended, and I finally understood. She wasn't haunting us, was trying to change what happened that night. She was reliving the moment she was turned away again and again, trapped in the last decisions she ever made, and now we were a part of it. She needed something from us, She needed the door to open for her. I felt my mouth go dry. Eric, he didn't hear me, though it was already outside. Pulling at my wrist, I turned back to Mary. She stood so still except for her head, still tilting, tilting, tilting, and for the first time I saw it, her face. It was lifeless, pale, her mouth slightly open, lips cracked, like she had tried to scream once but never got the chance. Her eyes were wide, dark and fixed on me. She wasn't blinking, she was waiting for my choice. I should have run, I should have bolted through the door into the cold night, away from whatever this was. But instead I stepped forward. Eric hissed my name, panic rising in his voice. What the heck are you doing? I ignored him. My hand trembled as I reached for the door. I didn't know what would happened. I didn't know if this was a mistake, but something deep inside me whispered, this is what she needed. Come in, I told her, and at the same instant, she was gone. No scream, no wind, no flicker of light or shift in shadow, just gone. The air in the house suddenly felt lighter, like something had been lifted, like something I'd finally moved on. The camera has never picked her up again. The knocking stopped, the footstep stopped, and though Eric refused to talk about it, I knew I had answered the door that no one else had a few nights later, I drove by the old house where Mary Finch had lived. It was quiet, empty, but at the doorstep and the dust, something caught my eye, a single pair of footprints leading up to the door, and none walking away. I like to tell myself that she finally arrived, and at this time someone had let her in. Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me edwin Kovat Rubias. So so forth the show and the other stuff I make here. Join us on Scary Plus. There will be a link in the description of this episode for you, and also don't forget a time, follow and leave us a review. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary every one. See us soon.