Still Watching from the Other Side

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[00:00:53] And he shares his last days on Earth. My name is Edwin. And here's a scary story. 17. Sometimes you just know. Subtle hints like the way people greet you on the street. When many on the train choose to ignore you, but not the children. They lock eyes with you with curiosity, though every time they looked at me, they could tell that I did something wrong.

[00:01:23] It's like they were trained in some other life that they still remember three or four years in. It would only be a matter of time before they, like I did, soon forget. But for now, it bothers me. Because it wasn't just one thing. Imagine these decades upon decades and the many times I chose to be selfish. The times I asked the wrong people or things for help. Money. Fame. Power.

[00:01:52] They all came and went with such simple requests. None of those things chose to stay with the exception of the ones that gave them to me. They look at me from the corners of the rooms, the bottom of the stairs, and the instant the lights go off at night. I've stayed awake longer than I should have many nights before thinking of them. Feeling their cold breaths against my face in that deep sense that someone's about to pounce with a knife against my chest.

[00:02:22] Memories, I presume. Of a guilty conscience. Sixteen. The sun was already out when I woke up. Another late night of nothing. The smell of these days has gotten worse. The large mirror Emma gave to me still in the corner of the room, not so much as a wipe down since she left. These dumb choices of mine now haunt me like the woman from the mirror.

[00:02:49] She thinks I can't see her from between the curtains on the opposite side. And when I turn, she isn't there. But that mirror wouldn't lie to me, just like Emma didn't. The punishment I received was to look at myself every day. Something I deserved. Fifteen. I found my old journals today. Full of a smug type of writing that I hated to read and yet, I know.

[00:03:17] That if I could go back, I would do it again. I deserve this. But, oh, did I live it. Women and the rubbing of shoulders with those who you may also recognize. Names that aren't yet on tombstones and haven't yet found their punishment. I doubt anything will find them anytime soon. Too bright. Too well known. I read of the time I lost my cousin.

[00:03:45] Well, quote unquote lost him on our hiking trip. Everyone was waiting for him at the cabins. Vaguely, I wrote about it. There was no way I would incriminate myself through these if I happened to go unexpectedly too. Like everyone was made to think after my cousin left. I wrote it in hints. Enough words on paper for me to remember what happened. How we showed up. How we set up the fires and the materials everyone brought. The chats and the books where they came from.

[00:04:14] The frightened ranger that found us in the middle of one of those ceremonies. There were no camera phones back then. It took a total of 43 minutes for the police to arrive. And by that time, we were gone. Some of us back on the road. And others, like my cousin. Quite literally gone. Never to be found again. Nobody and nothing made the news. They would lose too much money. Just some long lost ranger's report.

[00:04:44] Likely old and moldy in a cabinet somewhere in the woods. Fourteen. The journal was in my lap this morning. I was sure I had placed it back on the bottom bookshelf by the boxes of knickknacks Emma left behind. Things I couldn't get rid of. I looked toward it. Just to make sure I wasn't holding another book by mistake. And I caught a glimpse of the woman in the mirror. She shifted back into the curtains.

[00:05:12] Her reflection was dim this time. But a little more daring. I saw her face again this time. Nobody I recognized. But oh, she was disgusting. Her eyes were bloody around the white part in a perfect outline. One drop holding on from the bottom and about to land on her pale purple face. In shock is what I would describe her as. Eyes wide open. A loose jaw.

[00:05:40] Long, dark hair coming down the sides of her face and over her shoulders toward her chest. She was gone now. Thirteen. The knives weren't where they were supposed to be when I went to grab some of the stale bread and peanut butter. My hands had a rough time grabbing it off the jar already. Perhaps it was time to switch or something easier. Maybe marmalade. But then I thought and then remembered of how fast my head would spin from the sugar.

[00:06:08] I stopped caring about what the doctors told me near the end, though. This one was coming. I was too young to look like this. To feel like this. There's no explanation, at least not medically, for what was happening to me. My face got a thousand wrinkles. Folds like a crumpled paper almost overnight. Stress, they said. It was stress. But I knew it wasn't. I realized it was too late.

[00:06:38] My idea was never to live forever. But perhaps I should have chosen that. Twelve. I was never possessed, but I certainly thought I could be. Being so close to names from fallen angels or entities pretending to be. Dumb creatures they were. But they stuck to their word. Give them a life, a sacrifice of their choosing. And they will follow through. But they don't get it. Never how I wanted it.

[00:07:08] I wanted power and I got it, along with knowledge of things no other human being should ever know. The game we play when we walk around the street with targets on our foreheads. It just takes one slight sprinkle of envy or hate to bring us out of the crowd. You can be gone like my cousin, who I loved less because of a fight we had in middle school. That was it. He counted as a relative when I was given the cost of my prize.

[00:07:37] I wanted this house, but the lender was stubborn with the income and made me look bad in front of Emma. Eleven. I kind of feel bad for myself and that lonely thing in the curtains. It's only us two here without Emma. But I saw how fast I was going and needed to stay alive for just a little bit longer to get everything in order. Looking back at it now, I know it makes no sense. Everything was taken care of with trusts. Nobody to leave it to.

[00:08:06] Not even the charities would accept a connection with a name such as mine. Word had already spread about my deals with these otherworldly beings. Somehow. I blame Emma's family. They knew something was up with me. I could tell when I sat around the table with them. The way they looked at me. Like those children, curious and accusatory. I know what you did. I could hear the woman's voice in my head.

[00:08:35] I needed to leave the house. A jar of softer peanut butter and bread. Maybe some apple juice and milk. I didn't want to store too many things now. Things were darker around the house and the thing, the woman from the mirror, was losing her shyness. The rooms were darker and the smell, the damn smell, was everywhere. But the children, the way their eyes followed me as they were dragged along by their mothers on the street,

[00:09:02] like little monsters merged with a larger human by the hand. And I was sure that a child's head could turn around much more than an adult's neck could allow. I knew about it firsthand. Softer bones, I think. There was nothing left to ask before these figures and thoughts to go away. My own version of hell before the real one. Ten. Ten. The moon was right by the window when I looked toward the corner of the room in the middle of the night.

[00:09:32] She stepped out of the curtains, dragging that heavy dress behind her. She moved closer and closer toward the mirror. Her expression, once in shock, was now vengeful. Her eyes wouldn't leave mine through the mirror. I looked toward the curtains, but she wasn't there anymore. Her image, gone there and in the reflection. I stayed awake the whole night, watching past the curtains and through the window as the moon left the frame.

[00:10:02] The sky turned a cold blue. My hands were colder now. A sudden heavy feeling in my chest that I only remembered after the gifts came. It's easier to believe somebody if they're dead. It's why our lives are filled with quotes of those who have passed. Corpses, skeletons, and ashes. We admire them, and yet I know nobody will believe me even after I'm gone. Because of everything that I've been hiding. But I have no more time left.

[00:10:34] It's time for me to tell you what I've done. I was nine or so when a man approached my house to talk with my mom while my dad wasn't home. It took me a long time to realize what talk meant. And I was angry at mom for what she did to my dad. And then angry at dad for being the way he was.

[00:11:04] How could he be so dumb? And mom, how did you let me live with this secret for so long? Dad, why weren't you more successful? Why did we have to live like this? That was in my teenage years when I started learning about how things worked in the world. Money comes easy to those who are willing to break the rules, you know. For some, the rules are the same as the law. But for me, I knew that there was something else that gave us power beyond our beliefs.

[00:11:33] I know you won't believe me. And it doesn't matter now. But there are rules that don't care about government or the state police. Rules that take away our lives. Like the one I became familiar with when I was at my parents' funeral. And I simply looked at them in that dual burial, feeling nothing. It was like watching your hair on the floor of the barbershop being swept away by someone else. The anger hadn't left me, and it wouldn't. It was one of these rules.

[00:12:03] Nothing stays here forever. Although you can risk it and ask for it. I'm glad I never did. But some have. And these are the things that have been surrounding me at the house. The things that took Emma. They have chosen to stay, and this is what eternity looks like to them. The gift of forever. But now living in the shadows as monsters, deformed in ways no eyes should ever see.

[00:12:32] But when they're called, they come. And by the time they get to you, you have already gotten the gift you asked for. And they're here to collect. The things that gave me success in my business, and the election results that angered many people. The movements of the pencil as I wrote on those many essays and dissertations. Again, I was never possessed. Just abled.

[00:12:59] It was like looking at the writings of a researcher, shifting the way people read them. Even myself. But I would see them. In the walls. Crawling like spiders. And scurrying away when Emma showed up. One day, a tall man came to my door with a check for a sale we had made from a property I had never heard of. Congratulations, he said. As he shook my hand. Promising to come back once the fourth property sold. That should arrive soon.

[00:13:30] I was excited for the check for a little bit. But then Emma didn't wake up the next day. She was still warm that morning. And then she started cooling down. Eight. I changed my mind right then when Emma left. She had done nothing wrong. Nothing like my cousin who fought me over some girl nobody remembers. And then wouldn't talk to me until our uncle got us to shake hands. And I remember that evening. They both came knocking at the door.

[00:14:00] But wait. From this desk I can see the woman approaching. Her back is hunched now. As if trying to quietly step on the wooden floorboards that don't creak. Because the sound of her dress is too loud. It scratches as she moves. Only in the mirror. But she's getting closer and closer to it. To me. But there's nothing there in real life. Again, I continue.

[00:14:29] Those in my group shared no names. The campfires, like we call them, were usually in places nobody knew up until minutes before we all met up. Parking lots taken in cars to places nobody had ever imagined in their worst nightmares. Tall structures made for fires. Caves with relics said to be from many years ago. Writings and translators who would read and then explain texts to us.

[00:14:55] Some that spoke of humans doing the worst things imaginable. Again, that image of playing with strands of hair on the floor. Things that are part human. Hair. Nails. Traces. Of a person, but not quite. Death was only a part of the price. Our minds were the most valuable. The energy we gave to them. And those restless nights, several at a time.

[00:15:23] In a state of half-asleep that reminded you that there are worse things out there than dying. And although painless physically, the thoughts and the images that would get to you after the fifth hour or so, the realities of what stands next to you while you lay in bed, or when you hold that razor in the bathroom mirror, they were supposed to be enough to scare us out of existence. But no, they weren't. But they should have been. Seven.

[00:15:51] Enormous spiders from the walls now. Five or four legs at a time. Unaware of which is the neck and which are the legs. Even if it has those. They move quickly from that mirror and onto the floor in front of it. They get closer. As if to poke on my shins in an evil game of tag before scurrying back to the mirror. I think I can't see them. Or perhaps they don't care. But I know that if I lift my head,

[00:16:19] they will disappear back into the darkness where they came from. Six. The woman is stepping closer to the glass of the mirror now. I saw her for an instant when I woke up this time. She must have moved fast because the curtains were still moving at this time, despite the window being shut. The cold air is a real thing many people don't mention when they're dying. I heard that nurses speak of the smell of death. The body giving away the rotten parts of you, releasing them into the air.

[00:16:50] I walked to the phone in the corner of the room by the mirror. Maybe to call my lawyer. Maybe one of my uncles or anyone that needed to know that I was going to go. But then again, I deserve this. To be found dead one or two weeks after my mail filled the box in the front of the house, by the yard. I hadn't checked it in weeks, giving up room for it to build up. Monthly bills could wait. No point in paying them now. But as I stood there by the phone,

[00:17:21] I saw the curtains move. This woman separated from them. And with her eyes directly beaming at mine, she rushed toward the mirror and stepped out. She got closer as the phone rattled in my hand. I saw the sleeve of her dress rise up toward her cold face. The smell. That smell is what I remember most from this day. She stretched out her hand. Had rotten nails.

[00:17:51] She held it up in front of me. Five. Days left me faster from here on out. The end of the loaf of bread was on the counter. I remember picking off the crumbs from it. I put my clothes in the washer, but never took them out. Four. I was in bed when I saw the spider people and the woman coming toward me. A familiar voice was calling my name. From the voice of children in unison. I know what you did.

[00:18:22] And then to the mixed voices of the things that could see me through the fire in those ceremonies. Things that I knew could not be real because they only live there. Being called specifically by name. The faces with teeth so large you could bite through your neck. Eyes that dropped too far below the eyebrows. Horns sometimes, but not all of them. But those animal features, both from the fur and the attitude of a thing that didn't care about you.

[00:18:51] One that was well aware of the fate of living things. Being eaten and shred apart by something much more powerful at any moment. Even while you sleep, if you miss the signs. They approached together while the woman stayed behind in the mirror. Watching everything happen as I tried to scream and shoo them away. But it was no use. I was in that state again. Unable to move. Unable to rest. Forced to see these things around me.

[00:19:20] And reminding me of everything my life had been about. Three. The woman was standing by my bed now. She looked at me as though sniffing the covers. A cat with no sense of boundaries. I shut my eyes again. Two. I looked up at the ceiling as the spiders grew enough to cover the white paint that Emma had chosen. I could hear her voice now. One of disappointment. My cousin. The many people who I had taken advantage of.

[00:19:50] The requests that were still being fulfilled with the paychecks and envelopes somewhere in the mailbox. Maybe on their way in the briefcases of the men in suits instructed to bring them to me. Payments were still being made. The cost of them was still pending. Still had to be paid. I couldn't remember how I agreed to pay. It didn't matter. I wanted this to be over. I made my mistakes already. One. I can hear them.

[00:20:20] Louder and louder they scream. Unsure if it's a celebration or maybe just pain. This. This is my last note. From the mirror I can see what's left of me. Seventeen days before someone found me. The smell reached the neighbors. In two days, what was left of my place was empty. Emma isn't here. Nobody's here but these things that surround me.

[00:20:50] I'm not sure if I'm one of them now. As I look at the living with such envy. From every reflection. Scary Story Podcast is written and produced by me, Edwin Covarrubias. I was so happy and overwhelmed by the responses I received from our last stories. Thank you for that.

[00:21:20] Seriously, your comments and everything you do to support my stories means a lot. It also shapes the podcast over time. This format you just heard is an attempt at trying a mix between the old and new styles of story with a twist. Not sure if you picked up on how there's a lingering question at the end. Was he dead this whole time? Watching his own body? Just a thought. Anyway, the idea for this mixed format was submitted by Mroksny Brusnik on Spotify. As well as an idea for a future story, like a Slavic monster.

[00:21:50] Kind of like The Witcher. Sounds really good to me, so it might be coming up in a future episode. Thanks for this. As always, you can support my show by dropping some stars and sending it to someone who's a fan of scary stories. Links to everything, including how to get in touch with me, are in the description of this episode. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon.