“When I got home, my neighbor marched straight toward me and said, ‘Your house gets ridiculously loud during the day!’
I blinked at her. ‘That’s not possible. No one should be inside when I’m gone.’
But she doubled down.
‘I heard a man yelling. Clear as day.’
The next morning, I pretended to head to work and hid under my bed. Hours crawled by—until footsteps entered my bedroom… and a voice I recognized whispered my name.”
That Wednesday, when I pulled into my driveway, my elderly neighbor, Mrs.
Halvorsen, stood outside with her arms folded tightly across her chest. Her expression was sharper than usual. “Your house has been making such a racket lately, Marcus,” she scolded.
“There’s someone shouting in there.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, juggling my grocery bags. “I live alone. And I’m gone all day.”
She shook her head like she was swatting away my excuse.
“No, someone is in there. I heard a man yelling around noon. I even knocked.
Nobody answered.”
Her certainty unsettled me, though I tried to hide it with a laugh. “It’s probably the TV. I leave it on sometimes so the place looks occupied.”
But when I stepped inside, the air felt… off.
Stale, tense, almost expectant. I dropped my bags and walked through the house slowly. Everything looked untouched—windows locked, no signs of forced entry, nothing moved or missing.
Eventually, I convinced myself my neighbor had misheard something and tried to shake it off.
But that night, I barely slept.
By morning, after pacing in circles, I made a decision. I called in sick, opened the garage door, drove out just enough for the neighbors to see, then rolled the car back inside and slipped quietly into the house. I hurried to my bedroom and slid underneath the bed, pulling the comforter down to hide myself.
My heartbeat pounded against the floorboards.
Minutes dragged into hours. Silence smothered the house.
Then, around 11:20 a.m., the front door clicked open.
Slow. Deliberate.
Footsteps wandered through the hallway with the ease of someone who didn’t feel like an intruder.
The sound of their shoes—unhurried, familiar in a way that made my stomach tighten—moved closer.
Then they stepped into my bedroom.
A man’s voice, low and irritated, muttered, “You’re always leaving this place a mess, Marcus…”
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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