Those Nights in January [Plus Commentary]

The lonely swing set out in the field was moving in the darkness, and all I could do was stare through the kitchen window. It was another January at home, but what used to be my home and then turned into it again, this time though there was no family around, no parents, and almost no neighbors. My parents refused to sell it, despite it being worth almost a million dollars by the time they were older. Instead, they died in it, and now it was mine to sell, well half of it, at least. It was large, too big for me and unnecessary for them. They stopped cleaning the upstairs area, where the dust and cobwebs made it unlivable for me, so I too started avoiding it. They had a room by the kitchen, a guest bedroom that I stayed in. It had its own bathroom, its own entrance, even and at times I would forget how long I had lived there. It was every January when I would think that this year, really, this time I was going to sell it. Now. This is the story of an inner haunting, whether inside of your own body or as an extension of it, a thing we can escape. My name is Edwin, and here it's a scary story. The house had a large field out front a swing set too old for anyone to use, but I remembered all those times out there a barbecue grille filling up the air with white smoke, only to disappear by the edge of the trees. My cousins used to love coming over to the house to play on that swing set, and as we got older, we started adventuring into the wooded area right behind the house. The place where we would play hide and seek eventually turn into play where we would only go and talk about girls in high school drama. But like how things go, usually the successful ones left and soon it was only me in town with my dreams of leaving two. I guess that's what I'm working on now. It was a twelfth or thirteenth January. Now the heater had stopped working, so I was using a small electric heater thing that would make the room smell like burnt plastic, one that I had to watch out that it wouldn't set itself to the highest wattage because it would trip the breaker, and the breaker was upstairs. But aside from that, I had little to take care of out in that house. The guest bedroom, the kitchen, and that was that, though I must admit I could never bring anyone to the house very often. Some of my coworkers eventually found out where I lived, and they would ask to host a cookout or something out there. A few houses down in the valley had fields like mine, maybe only a patty and neighbors I would complain about not being able to open up their windows, or that the music was too loud, that their baby was sleeping, or some other annoyingness. Not here, I would come home, minding my own business. As I closed the gate, drove up as closed to the side door as I could, and parked. I could yell as loud as possible from my front door and no one would hear me. But I came to find out that maybe that wasn't such a good thing. An appraiser, right, that was the thing I would need in order to sell the house. But before getting that done, I would have to clean up everything, remodel, get rid of my parents nick knacks and the furniture I grew up with, the one in all the photographs. But before getting rid of things, I'd have to talk to my brother. He was up to no good and would call me when he remembered that we were sitting on some money with that house. He would demand to sell. Then he would forget about it. And remember again near the end of the year, three children from two different women, balancing from job to job, state to state, girlfriend to girlfriend. But I would tell him this place needs work, no one's gonna want to buy it, just like that. But he didn't care, and I meant it. He would forget about it and go back to his own things while I dealt with the house, and as you can imagine, it was quiet. I would arrive to turn on the TV, open a can of coke, and sit until I got hungry. Boy, I hated going to that kitchen, even to this day. I think back on it and wonder what the heck I was doing there. Not saying I would have done this, but it did cross my mind to break open a hole in the wall to go straight behind the refrigerator and get to the kitchen that way, because what I had to do was open up my door, get a clear view of that living room. Old couches, portraits on the walls, mom's old piano in the corner, dusty carpets and chairs, and if it was dark, it would be even worse that couldn't take it. I would have to turn on the lights to that old area of the house. Lights would slowly fade as you looked up the stairs and to the second floor, the next level of darkness, where my imagination would reach the barrier of what could never be. Then I would walk to the kitchen and flick on the lights to see the familiar sight the toaster, the pitcher to heat water in the two plates, and a mug neatly stacked on the drying rack. Everything would go back to normal then, though by knew somehow behind me, in that dark living room and in that even darker upstairs area, there was something an unfamiliar sight. Though it's strange to think that of a house you grew up in. Had me toasted bread and eggs that night for dinner. It had been a long day at work, and our holiday events had been delayed in exchange for having the time for peak sales at the end of the year. Sure it was a weird time to have winter dinner event in January, but with our commissioned paychecks coming in, nobody seemed to mind it. I guess the day just felt longer to me because of the higher ups trying to cheap out on the venue, an outdoor event at a regional park which was all dirt and probably frozen in some areas. I don't know. The previous year, they had held it at a bar and grill, one of those chain ones that all felt the same. It was all right, food and drink. Something to do. During one of the meetings, one guy, Robert said, let's go to Jose's place, right, better than that park. Everyone knows. Pause in the meeting and they kind of looked at me. I smiled, trying to play it off. I swear that at the time I didn't think it would be a bad idea. They could honestly use some friends, and the co workers had finally started having me join them for lunch and for their gossip talk. No matter how much I hated them, they knew about where I lived, the large red gates off Road seventeen. I thought of a lot of things once I got home, that this could be my chance to finally tidy up the place, starting with the yard, at least the path to the bathroom and what a guest would see on their way there. Maybe part of the stairs, maybe open up some of the windows. Imagine myself taking the things out to the street for trash day, maybe waxing those old floors. If I could take the Saturday before to stay at the house and maybe go upstairs for once, the place might start changing, because sometimes I would have to spend time sitting in the truck at the parking lot of a Walmart, or going to a drive through somewhere to pass a time. And yet I could never put my finger on exactly why I didn't want to be in that house. All of this I thought about as I sat on the tiny table in the kitchen a chef's take, like my. Father used to call. It had gotten dark while I was thinking of all of this, Only the kitchen was illuminated. The egg yolks looked green from the fluorescent lights in the ceiling, the wet bites filling the room along with an electric hum above me. I looked at myself in the reflection of that kitchen window, the one that led to the dark and empty field with an old swing set just beyond it. Somewhere in the dark air, something squeaked. I stopped chewing, holding my mouth half open, and I tried not to move. I squeaked again. It was definitely coming from outside, but chill ran down my back as my legs automatically pulled me up and toward the window. The thing about feeling safe at night is that the light blocks out the darkness outside. It can't see you, but you can't see it. And the sound was coming from the swing set, a deep, hard squeak. I was thinking back on how it was when my cousins and I would play on it, the high pitched squeaks we made, and a pattern that wouldn't change no matter how high we swung on it. We know because we would try and use it to count the number of swings before it was someone else's turn. Counting to thirty always took the same amount of time, and it always sounded the same. But this one was different. Could it have been of how old it was? Does rust have that effect on a squeaky chain? Because the only other explanation I could think of was of someone an adult, sitting on the old set, maybe not swinging, but just sitting there moving unintentionally. There was another line of cold air down my spine, cold sweat, it felt like as I stood there, letting whatever was out there look at me as I looked into my own eyes, eyes completely unaware if I was looking straight into the eyes of someone or something else. But no matter what, the thought of shutting off the lights to get a clear view never crossed my mind, and instead I did something no one should ever do when you're out there, surrounded by trees that had gone to sleep for winter, in the stillness of a house in the middle of a dark field. I reached for the window and slid it open to the right. Now, the light from the inside was doing its job, and I could see an angled stripe making its mark, my own shadow at the end of the bluish white crooked rectangle on the ground. And at the end at the end of this light strip, I could see my silhouette. It was the old red swing set, moving very slowly from side to side, likely in the direction of the wind. I thought, I cannot do much more than to stare out the slowly fading darkness of that night just beyond the swing set, slowly focusing my eyes into that swing slowly moving left to right, right to left, I shut the window and my head automatically turned, as if by instinct, behind me, toward the darkness of the living room, just beyond the kitchen tile on the floor. It was as if someone was there. I couldn't tell directly. The lights right above me would make a type of curtain in my eyes. The only other times I felt that was while driving downhill with high beings. Coming up to me. But the night was still, and there was nothing but the wind in the outside and the hum from that light above me on the inside. If I paid close attention, I might hear my heart beat. But that was it, Or was it? There was footsteps. I heard them, little by little, the sound of a squeaky step on the staircase. It was a third step. That's the loudest I had done so all my life. But this one was deeper, a heavy footstep, or slow enough to try to keep it from making noise, somehow, making it sound like a grunt echoing through the darkness of the house. I slowly walked to the edge of the white tile. That pitch black living room sent me right back. It must have been two or three steps away from the light switch, and yet all I did was stand there. Perhaps if I showed off the kitchen light, I might be able to see something. There was no way I was gonna do that. I told myself that I was stressing out about the event for my job, the one that they were talking about making at my house. I thought of the pros and cons in my head. It was a small team that would be there, maybe twenty five people tops. They would bring. Along the catering and everything. They would come with their own cleanup crew. That's right, the cleaning, and if they were gonna come, I would have to clean up beforehand. And it wasn't like they were to go upstairs. But if I tried, if I really tried, I might be able to clean everything the whole house before they get there. What was I saying? The thing was huge, plus the whole going upstairs thing, I don't know. The last time I went up there was to flick the breaker back on in the house during winter January too. I remember that. With those thoughts in mind, I was able to drown out the squeak that came from inside of the house, somehow less terrifying that the one that came from the outside from the swing set. The eggs and toes had gotten cold by the time I started eating it again, the yolk turning into plastic from the outside. I took the plate and washed it right away, food still in my mouth, making noise with the water and humming to myself so that if another sound came from that house I would be sure to miss it. I took a gulp of the carton of orange juice that was in the fridge and washed it. Everything down. The plate's now stacked again, no drinking glass to wash. With a deep breath. I flicked off the light to the kitchen and felt my way down to the switch of the living room, but I didn't turn it on. No, I kept going straight to the door of my room. I snuck inside, and that's when I flicked on the light. You see, even though I was in the same house, something felt different about being in that room. I hardly thought about my parents' final days in there, with my mom going first, two weeks later Dad followed, and once a grief died down, I started fixing up the place. I turned it into something special. The window faced the field, and if you stood on the left side of the window, you could see that swing set out there. It was in that room that I could be in complete darkness or near complete darkness with the TV on at night and feel all right. The lock always latched on the door that led to the living room, but the one that led to the outside, well, I never. Really checked it. Something about that house made my mind run crazy with thoughts of being a little kid and running down the stairs after getting scared and what happened. Often I used to have these dark dreams, and sometimes I would see things that I couldn't explain that would scare me enough to run. But as I grew older, I stopped seeing those things and consider them. What my parents used to repeat over and over, You're a crazy imagination boy. But at that moment in the bedroom, I wanted to prove something to myself that I wasn't scared, that there was nothing I should worry about, and that what I had heard was nothing but the sounds of my own brain making things up in the dark. So I flicked off the light and walked to the window, and in plain view, now maybe because of the light of the moon finally coming out from the trees, I could see that swing set. It was no longer moving, and. Quite frankly, I started doubting if it had even more moved in the first place. Those chains were heavy replaced when we were kids from the ones they originally came from, because Mom would complain about the sounds it would make that replaced them and the noises stopped. I was thinking back on that and making up theories as to what could have gotten the swings to move when I heard it, a subtle, insignificant step coming from above. I knew what they sounded like, so I froze by that window, holding my breath for whatever had made that noise to take another step, And then it did. It was moving right above me toward the hallway that led to the staircase in the middle of the second floor, slowly at first step, step step, and then rushed to the other end of the house. Another chill ran through my body, and I didn't know if I was scared or actually cold. I felt around the floor for the space heater and plugged it in. I watched as the glowing orange light of the grille of it turned on, and quickly it popped and then blended back into the darkness. This time, I ran to over the light switch and flicked it. Nothing. I flicked it again, and then two more times. I was in complete darkness. Now I prayed for the flashlight to have batteries in it. The thing I kept under the bathroom sink. Carefully, I made my way there until I felt the toilet against my knees. I bent down and felt around under the sink until I got it. Eagerly, I pressed a button. I nearly jumped when I saw my face in the mirror. I led her a chuckle. In that moment, I thought of how weird this had been, and if it was even anything at all. But then it hit me. Now, with the flashlight against the ceiling in the bathroom, I could see my breath in the air, and I felt dread. Right then and there, I knew I was gonna have to go upstairs and flick the breaker. I made my way back to the room. Standing by the locked door that led to the rest of the house, I took another deep breath, unlocked it quietly, as if whatever was up there on the second floor was going to hear me, as if I weren't alone. In the place. I tried not to breathe as I listened for something, anything, up there, but all I got was silence. It was then that I got the courage to open the door. As expected, I was met with the darkness from that living room. My flashlight lit up the opposite wall, and I could finally see those portraits at night. I looked down to where the old rug had started, and I watched my foot finally step over it. After what must have been years. It wasn't long before I was at the base of the stairs. I was shining the light directly on the next step, avoiding looking up as I slowly climbed one step, two, and then the third, a deep squeak, and I kept going until there was nothing else. It was noticeably colder up there. I looked down to the living room, now a soft light from the outside, now illuminating the floors with that dead blue light that comes on certain nights. That's when I heard another footstep. I'm in front of me, now down the hallway where my old room used to be. I couldn't do anything but wait, and I had nowhere else to turn but to that darkness. So I thought of closing my eyes, but I knew it wouldn't help, not anymore. I couldn't stop my mind from creating figures of the silhouettes that came from the dim moonlight in the deep end of the hallway. And then I watched as something seemed to hide between the lamp tables by the walls, playfully trying to avoid being seen. My heart was beating faster now, and I worked my way toward the storage closet by the water heater. I walked fast enough not to run. I swung the door open, the loose hinges, almost giving up on it. I aimed the flashlight toward the breaker box, opened it and flicked the last one. I could see some light down by the living room. Now I ran, this time rushing toward the stairs, basically hopping every other step, questioning absolutely everything I had known up until that point. I shut and locked the door to my room, flicked on the TV, and stood there for a moment until I finally plopped onto my bed and waited for what. I don't know, but that night seemed alive with taps and scratches and everything would make me meet the TV and wait again. I was tired the next day at work, but everything seemed to be back to normal by the next week. It was a Monday when my supervisor walked up to me in the break room and asked what I thought about having the winter dinner at my property, and I lied. I told him I was going to have extended family over and that they would be staying for a couple of weeks. Easily, the light came out and he believed it. He said not to worry about it, that they were going to bite the bullet and pay for a real venue instead of the park space like they had planned. Too many complainers, he said. I chuckled and nodded for the rest of the conversation until he left. But really the truth was that I had been planning to agree to the event taking place there. I had bought trash bags and I found the brooms out in the shed. I started cleaning the porch in the living room, but I kept stopping myself. There was something about that house that made me think twice. So I was about to head upstairs that Saturday, broom in hand, but just as I passed the third step, I felt it a sudden drop in temperature, the ambient of the house just a little bit darker. There was something out there waiting. I turned around right away and went back to my room. I thought of my parents and their time there. Rooms I hadn't been stepped in for years before they even passed away, Thinking that perhaps it wasn't that they couldn't go upstairs anymore, but rather that they didn't want to. And sometimes I would. Lay there in bed at night thinking about the place, and I would hear a swing creek, that deep, lonely groan that would come from the outside steps, that would travel from one side of the house to the other, sometimes fading into nothingness right above me, strangely familiar. But I didn't think much further than that, so I gave up on the idea of the appraiser and started getting annoyed at my brother's calls to sell. I told him we would both take care of it if that's what he wanted so badly, and that I'd be waiting for him to come and help clean out the place. He hasn't called My home would be only. The room and my kitchen and the idea of a door that would lead me straight to it, and I could live like that forever. It's what I'm hoping for. Anyway. I still avoid the rest of the house, just like my parents did. It's been January again a few times since then. If you're listening to this episode in January, I just want to say Happy New Year. I really appreciate you've been here and for you know, all the stuff that you did in twenty twenty five, listening and sharing and liking and commenting and everything. You could really appreciate that. Now we're all to twenty twenty six. So what was up there? That's the question, right, what was haunting this man and how the story was written? That the man himself is expressing loneliness, right, and he hears one he kind of goes through memories in the past, things that you know, playing with his cousins, when he started hanging out in the forest or you know, in the wooded area of the property. The footsteps going along the hallway, his own memories of him growing up in that house. So and he mentioned also he has no friends, right, so he has that loneliness. Now, the loneliness itself can be a haunting thing. Could he be making these things up in his head? He even doubts himself that he heard these steps up there, but they're always like these lonely like things that happened in that house. So it could be himself the one that's haunting him. Could also be some entity there. Also, there was a small little hint there, a small there's no spoilers now because the story's over. But remember this little little detail in there that he says he locks the door that leads to the living room and for the one that leads to the outside, well, he never really checks it, So did somebody sneak in? And if he never checks upstairs, could somebody be staying up there? Did that gave me chills just thinking about it. Yeah, there's a lot of the different ways that least this story can go. And this is actually how they're written. I heard this. From forgot what author it was, but it said that short stories themselves are like little snippets, like a magic trick. Like somebody shows up and they do a magic trick in front of you, and that's a short story. As long as you. Felt surprised in this case, if you felt scared or felt that chilled down your spine for a little instant, or you were in the world of the story. Job is done right, You're in it. We got you in, And that sense is what a short story is. Now, for longer stories, for movies or books, novels, those need to be like consistent, burned and actually closed every single time. For these they just need to be things that like really getting your mind and they linger like what happened? Like who was there? Now? When it gets annoying, you know, I completely understand this is I'm hinting at something in and it just feels like a cliffhanger, Like that's actually I've I've I've gone through some of the stuff that I've written before and I'm like, yeah, this sounds this. Is frustrating and I get it. So but either way, I appreciate the comments on all of that, and hopefully this this one doesn't overstep that that rule, you know, when it feels like a cliffhanger, This one should feel like, oh, okay, the story's over, but like have that like anease at the end. Either way, I'm very interested. I know that we have people that listen has been listening for a very long time, so they're familiar with some of the stuff that comes out in this In this podcast, I'm very interested in finding out what do you think about it? Would you didn't like about it, or ideas that you might have for or maybe even hints or theories as to what could have been. Where if of this turns into a longer story, where does it go? Another point? I wanted to address real quick, is why my voice sounds so weird right now, And that's because I've I don't know if it was like something with my sidnesses or something. It's just I have had really, really, really terrible allergies these past two or three days. And I'm saying like this flare up of can't sleep, feel my nose is super tight, this burning sensation, itchy eyes, this is like the whole thing. But now it's finally at least I sound, believe it or not. It sounds a lot better than it did yesterday. But it's thankfully it's not like the flu or anything like that. It's just this is what I can say, allergies. Actually went into the storage area with a lot of dusty clothes and old stuff, and I was I felt it right away, and I'm like, nah, and I just you know I'm still going now. Thing. Here is our schedule. We're going to be publishing Sunday night, so get ready for those Sunday scares if you're up for it. And now I have some of the comments from our last episode, Soup Mondays. I'm reading from the Spotify comments section here. If you don't have Spotify, you don't use it, but you have access to email, feel free to send me an email with the comments on. The recent stories are fireworks. By the way, this one makes it recording a little bit over two that if you have any you can also send me dms with your comments about the recent stories. I'm gonna be reading from some of the recent episodes only, so if you'd leave a comment in the older ones, I might get to them, but it's more likely that I'll get from the recent episodes. So this one's from sup mondays it says. This one from Moroxany Mruzk says, welcome back. I missed you and this podcast so much. I was afraid you dropped it. I love your stories and the way you tell them. It's still soothing. Plus I still did not find anyone with the voice addiction better than yours. Edwin. Good to have you back. Thank you so much. You're always a huge supporter here. I appreciate you, appreciate everything that you know you do, even just this interaction with dropping comments, even a like or a rating or anything. Like that really helps out the show. But also I need to put my part here and I need to publish these stories right and some of the things that got what I would feel like got in the way were a lot of these life events. I guess you had to call them from the past year, and it really disrupted the flow of stories. But I feel that even in dark times, even in uncertain times, we need to somehow not waste them, and believe it or not, scary stories do help out people in dark times. Strange right. I heard heard about this from a friend a long time ago. She said, Hey, if you're feeling down, I would listen to scary stories. That's what I do. And this is before we've launched the podcast, so very interest to. Think about that. Let me see this. Thank you, by the way, Rosny. Jean Lewis says, Hey, Edwin, another great episode. This one really slade a sleigh as in slighing like winter sleigh like anyway. I love the horror holiday vibes, perfectly spooky and cozy. Also, I feel I always feel like security guards are undercover defenders of the spooky world. Thanks so much for sharing this awesome episode with us. Thank you so much for this. I appreciate it. Then, Yes, actually, security guards have sometimes the best stories out there. I don't know what kind of guts. It tasts like to be a security guard. But these guys do it. These men and women now from the world that are taking care of places. You know, haunted places sometimes very eery to think about. Naomi says, hey, can you please make a haunted blue plush story? You know what, plushes and dolls and toys make really good topics for stories. I don't want to overdo it, but we could definitely come up with a story like that. Maybe not use that specific name for copyright reasons, but we don't want to. You know, one time I published this story about a hospital. Longtime listeners will recognize this. They I got an email from them, and I didn't know this was a real hospital. I made up the name, so I had to adjust a few things there. Because this was a generic story. This was a straight up, one hundred percent coincidence. I make up names sometimes for places and it happened to match, so I got it careful with that. Thanks knowing for the for the comment. Joe from Nowhere says, Hey, Edwin, I'm trying to find that one episode where the character bought a doll. She has a roommate who's irresponsible and keeps making excuses fireworks. I just heard the firework. Keeps making excuses about not being able to pay rent but buys expensive things. One day, her roommate brought a dog and left it there, And now the dog is barking at something at the end of the hallway. I've been trying to find it for days now. It's so controvery to listen to the same stories that scared me before. Please help me find it, all right, let's see what. Story could that. Here's the thing about me finding stories. I remember the stories, but I can't remember the names of them, like the names and the titles of the stories. Let me see if I can find it, because I'm gonna keep searching. I'm gonna keep searching for this the one you mentioned. The character bought a doll, has a roommate and a roommate. I thought of the story called Helenke, which was the story of Yeah, there's two roommates. One of them is kind of annoying, making noise in the middle of the night, but also she becomes obsessed with this doll. Now that that one's a different story, then there's a different story about a dog that at every single, every single day, goes up to a certain place and just stares down the hallway and that's it. It was one of the early early stories. But for this one, I have no idea. Are you sure it was me? It was sure it was my story, and hopefully I'll find it. If not, someone from our community here a scary story. If you can help Joe from nowhere out, just send me a DM an email or something, and hopefully I can we can find the story. This happens often sometimes I'm looking for a story that I can't remember the name of it, but. It's there anyway. That's all all the comments that we have for the Scary Story podcast here. On Spotify YouTube, we have no comments there. I don't think the story published there yet. But if you don't have a comment section on the app that you use, let me know. Let me know so I can check the comment section there. Anyway. Thank you so much for for checking out my stories here. You know I make Scary Story podcasts like from the audio, the recording, the script, everything, so I appreciate your support in any way that you can. The way that helps out the most is to share stories guys in press a share button, copy the link or whatever. And even that like tells the algorithm like, hey, somebody's sharing your story, so you know it works out, but also letting people know in case somebody is wanting to listen to scary stories out. There, it really helps out. I'll time if you. Want to support the show through a membership Scaryplus over at scaryplus dot com is always available anyway, That's all I got. For you today. Thank you so much for listening, for showing up every week. So the next story get ready for it is coming out next Sunday night. Thank you so much. Remember keep it scary everyone. See us soon