“That’s just terrible,” Sue said.

“Yeah, no shit,” I replied. “No one could believe something like that could happen in our small town.”

“Are you telling her that stupid story about Granny Donovan? You know it’s all bullshit, right?”

Andrew said as he came back with another round of beers.

I groaned when he said this.

“Wait, it’s not true?” Sue exclaimed, looking at me.

“Goddamnit Andrew,” I cursed at him.

Andrew laughed before he took a sip of his beer while Sue still stared at me, confused.

“Sue, I swear, it’s all true! The old lady really invited all the kids from the playing field over to her home and sewed them together!”

“Oh, come on, Eric! Who’s going to believe any of that?”

“Shut up, Andrew! It’s true, and you damn well know it!”

“Alright, Eric,” Sue started, clearly annoyed now. “You can stop.”

“What? No! Honestly, it’s true. If you don’t believe me, we can go there right now and have a look! You can still see the old bloodstains and everything!”

“Dude, we’re not going to some stupid run-down building in the middle of the freaking night,” Andrew cursed.

“Oh yeah? Are you scared of Granny Donovan?”

Andrew put his beer down, and his eyes focused on me. “I just don’t want to go over there right now!”

“Yeah, it’s because you’re-“

“Oh Jesus Christ, cut it out, you two! Fine, let’s go then.”

A few minutes later we’d all put on our shoes and set out towards the old Donovan house down the road.

“Can’t believe this shit,” Andrew mumbled to himself as he walked behind Sue and me.

I slowed down for a moment and approached him. “Dude, come on, this is going to be fun.”

“Yeah, you know I didn’t want to go there again tonight. Why can’t we do normal things for once? Like watching a movie or something?”

“Well,” I said with a big smile, “because this is much more interesting!”

“Ugh, whatever,” was all he answered.

I turned towards Sue, who was still walking ahead of us. She was blissfully ignorant of our conversation, typing away on her phone.

“So,” I started when I was next to her again. “Did I tell you that I was there that day as well?”

“What? Come on, you’re making that up!”

I gave her a hard smile. “No, but I was sick, so my mom had to get me before the end of the game. That’s the only reason I’m still alive. If I’d gone to her house with the rest of them,” I broke up shaking my head.

I could hear Andrew groan behind us.

It wasn’t long before we arrived at the old field. From there we could already make out the outlines of the former Donovan home.

It had once been a beautiful, bright family home, but decades of abandonment had transformed it into a ghastly ruin.

As we stepped closer, we could all see the wild and overgrown yard, the boarded up windows and the wide open doorway.

“This looks scary, do we really have to go in,” Sue asked in a low voice.

I gave her a little smile. “Come on, we came all this way. Didn’t you say yourself we should go?”

For a moment, she shuffled around before she gave me a weak nod.

Without waiting any longer, I stepped into the building. Sue was by my side in an instant, pressing herself against me.

I led her through the dark entry hall to the remnants of the kitchen.

“See, this is where she mixed the poison into the lemonade,” I started. “It was right here that she killed all those boys. If you look over here, you can even see a stain on the floor. It’s where one of the kids dropped his glass, and the liquid etched itself into the floorboards.”

I led her to the corner of the room and showed her a spot were the floorboards were especially rotten.

Her eyes grew a bit wider for a moment before she laughed nervously.

“You’re making this up, Eric!”

“You still don’t believe me? Why don’t we go upstairs and I show you the room where she did it.”

“Did what?”

“Sewed all their corpses together.”

She cringed a bit but then nodded.

“Wait, where’s Andrew?”

I had to fight to hide my smile. “Wasn’t he just behind us? I bet that pussy went back outside.”

“A-are you sure? Can’t we just go back?”

“No way,” I answered and softly grabbed hold of her arm.

With that, I led her upstairs.

The old stairs groaned with each step we took. As Sue held onto me, I could feel the goosebumps on her arm.

“The story goes that she dragged all of them up here, into the room at the back. Take a look over there at those scratch marks.”

I pointed at a few scratches on the floor that were clearly left by some animals.

“It’s said that some of the kids were still half alive and left those when they tried to get away from her.”

Sue inched in closer, totally believing it.

With each step we took down the hallway, her breathing intensified. I could feel her shaking slightly. It didn’t help that the old house around us groaned and shifted, filling the night with all sorts of noises.

Once we’d made it, I carefully pushed open the door. A loud creaking sound cut through the night and Sue whimpered in fear.

We stepped inside, and I led her to the back of the room. There the floor was discolored and dirty.

“This is where she did it. Come here, Sue,” I said and pulled her closer. “This whole spot here is where she let them bleed out. That whole floor was soaked in blood.”

Her eyes grew wide, and she put a hand over her mouth as she saw the large dark spot that covered almost half the room.

“You know, the legend goes that Granny Donovan’s ghost still haunts this place. If you come here in the middle of the night, you can sometimes see her, needles in hand, ready to make you part of her collection.”

“Fucking stop, Eric, alright?” she pressed out with a whimper. “You’re scaring me! Can we please go back now?”

“Sure, but, you were the one who wanted to come, so don’t blame-“

Suddenly my words were cut off by the sounds of needles clicking against one another. Sue’s eyes grew wide, and all the color dropped from her face. For a moment, she stared at me before she turned into the direction of the sound.

At that moment, she noticed the long-haired figure, dressed in a white nightgown. It was standing against the wall right next to the door.

Sue screamed up as the ghastly apparition cackled and rushed towards her. It raised the needles high into the air. Moments before the metal pierced her skin, she passed out from shock.

I started to laugh when her body hit the floor.

“Oh man, you’re getting really good at that,” I said to Andrew.

He cursed and dropped the needles as well as the old wig head been wearing.

“Shut up, do you have the stuff?” Andrew asked me while he struggled to get out of the old nightgown.

“No worries, I got our special little lemonade right here,” I answered and took out a small bottle.

I stepped up to Sue, forced her mouth open, and poured the liquid down her throat. It didn’t take long before she started shaking and convulsing. Not even a minute later, she lay still again.

I went and picked up the needles again and put them into my back pocket before I turned back to Andrew.

“Alright, you take the feet,” I instructed him.

Together the two of us started to carry the body through the hallway and down the stairs.

“Why did we do this upstairs again?” Andrew asked, annoyed.

“I thought it would be fun to mix things up a little,” I said with a short laugh.

Once we’d made it downstairs, I pushed open the door to the basement. For a moment, I retched as the smell of rot and decay hit me.

As soon as we’d made it down the last couple of steps, Andrew let go of her and left the basement again.

“Alright, I played Granny tonight, you take care of the sewing!”

I sighed, but agreed, covering my nose to ward off the smell.

“So, how many did she kill and sew together that old urban legend?”

“Think it was thirteen,” Andrew answered.

Thirteen, I thought, still four more to go. Then I started the process of connecting Sue to the rest of them.

I was sure if there ever was a Granny Donovan, she’d be proud of us.

Chance encounters are common, even in the middle of the night, or especially in the middle of the night. The man who taught me and my friend Sebastian how to crack vending machines, though, was anything but common.

The two of us had gone out like usual, on a whim and with no other plan than to get drunk. We left our small hometown behind, took a train to the city and went on a bar crawl, on Thursday evening to bout. Our plan was simple: have some fun, get drunk and take the last train home at one in the morning. As so many times before, things didn’t exactly work out that way. After getting lost for a good hour, we ended up at a small, isolated station and saw we’d missed the last train by about half an hour.

“Isn’t that fucking great!?” Sebastian cursed the moment we arrived.

My eyes wandered to the display, hoping against all hope that another train would arrive shortly. Of course there wouldn’t and we’d have to wait until early morning.

“So, what do we do now?” I asked, turning to him. “You got any money for a taxi?”

“Nah, man, it’s way too far and way too expensive.”

“Great,” I mumbled. “Guess there’s nothing we can do.”

Sebastian’s eyes wandered to the display as well, and when he saw how long we’d have to wait, he groaned. A moment later, however, he sat down on the bench, opened his backpack, and produced an unopened six-pack.

“Where the hell did you get that from?”

He shrugged.

“Late night store while you were taking a leak. You took forever, so I thought I might as well stock up for the ride home.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, sat down next to him and we each opened a bottle of beer.

Half an hour later, and once I was done with my beer, I felt my eyes falling shut. Knowing that we still had a good three hours left, I didn’t even try to stay awake.

I don’t know how much time had passed when strange sounds woke me.

“Dude the hell are you-?” I started, but saw Sebastian wasn’t there.

All that was left was a couple of empty bottles and his backpack, which leaned against the bench next to me.

I listened again, now realizing what I’d heard before were echoing footsteps coming from the stairs that led up towards the station. I opened my mouth to ask Sebastian where the fuck he’d gone, but closed it when I saw a figure that was definitely not Sebastian. No, the person who’d just made their way up the stairs was way too big to be my scrawny best friend.

Fear washed over me and I was wide awake instantly. It was half-past two in the morning, on a weekday to bout. The trains weren’t running for another two hours, so why the fuck would anyone come here?

I told myself it had to be another poor schmuck who’d missed the last train like we had. Yet, the closer the figure got, and the better a look I got at the man, the more unsure I was.

He was huge. At first, I’d thought he was just fat, but below the dim station lights I could see hard, bulging muscles. His face was half-hidden by an unkempt, wild beard and surrounded by strands of long, greasy hair.

I knew right away that this guy wasn’t your average hobo. No, he was probably drunk and probably up to nothing good. Once more, my eyes darted around for Sebastian, but he was still nowhere to be seen. For a second, I wondered if that guy had done something to him and was now coming for me.

I scrambled from the bench, almost tripped over one of Sebastian’s empty bottles, and got a hold of my backpack. When I stared back at the man, our eyes met. Not drunk, I realized. His eyes were wide, sharp, and focused on me and only me.

“Well, what do we have here?” he brought out, his mouth turning into the slightest grin. “Didn’t know someone else was around.”

An almost physical sensation washed over, as if I could feel the lie he’d just told me on my skin. I was damned sure he’d seen me up here and I was damned sure he wasn’t just here for a greeting.

I felt goosebumps all over my arms, felt myself getting sweaty and had to will myself to stop from shaking. In an instant, I threw my backpack over my shoulder and was about to run, only the bump right into Sebastian.

“The hell are you doing? I just went for a leak and you’re-“

He broke off when he, too, saw the imposing figure who was walking towards us.

Yet, the moment the man saw Sebastian, he stopped. One of his hands went upward, and he began scratching his head. For a second, I thought I’d heard him mumble something to himself.

“Who’s that?” Sebastian asked me in a much too loud and much too slurred whisper.

“Let’s just get out of here, all right?” I urged him.

With that, I threw him his backpack and began pulling him after me.

When the man noticed my intentions, he lifted his arms in a defensive gesture and did his best to beam at us.

“Now, now, boys, there’s no need to be worried. I don’t mean any trouble. Just went for a little walk and decided to have a look at them vending machines up here. You know?”

“V-vending machines?” I brought out in a confused whisper.

“Yeah, that shiny beauty over there,” he said matter-of-factly, and pointed at the single vending machine that had been placed on the platform.

In a few wide strides, and much faster than I’d expected, he crossed the distance between himself and the machine. A second later, he lifted one of his giant hands and beat against the side of the machine. The loud, reverberating bang made both me and Sebastian jerk.

When the man saw it, he grinned at us.

“You boys want to know a little trick?”

Neither I nor Sebastian said anything, and after a few seconds of painful silence, the man continued on.

“Throughout the years, I’ve learned quite a few little tricks, but you know which is the best of them? It’s how to crack things.”

I couldn’t help but stare at the guy, preparing myself to run at any moment. The hell was wrong with him?

“What are you-?” Sebastian slurred, but the man cut him off.

“Cracking things like this vending machine here. If you know what you’re doing, and you do it just right, it will all work out perfectly well,” he continued to explain.

“You just go for a little twist here, a turn there, and, of course, a little bit of the good, old brute force and eventually, all the little secrets will spill out. Just got to make sure no one else is around. Security, you know? That’s why you always should check up lonely little stations like this one here.”

As he said this, he gave me a little wink that made my skin crawl. Then he turned back toward the machine and put his heavy, muscled arms around it as if to embrace it. I saw his muscles bulge and could almost hear the metal of the machine straining. Then he bumped his wide chest against the machine multiple times with such force, I thought the glass would break. When nothing happened, a curse escaped the man’s mouth, and he began beating the side and top of the machine. Eventually, he bumped it with his chest again. I watched the surreal spectacle in front of me, not understanding what he was trying to do. Yet, after another, well-measured, almost gentle hit against the side of the machine, the sound of dropping coins reached my ear.

“See, boys, took a bit of work, but I cracked it just right, didn’t I?” he said, laughing.

A moment later, he began stuffing one of his pockets with a handful of coins. As he did, though, I saw he’d dropped something n his attempt at breaking the machine. It was a small, dirty piece of clothing, but the man didn’t seem to have noticed it. Instead, he turned and stared back at us.

“You want to try it as well?”

“No, I think we’re-“

“Yeah, sure!” Sebastian cut me off.

As drunk as he was, he hadn’t noticed how wrong this entire situation was and walked up to the guy, undeterred. I was quick to follow him, but I didn’t know what I’d do if things turned bad. Hell, I didn’t know if I could do anything at all against a guy like this.

I was antsy, half expecting him to reach out for or rush Sebastian. Yet, when I stared at the guy now, he acted like an entirely different person. Nothing of the crazy, dangerous hobo I’d seen before remained. Instead, he seemed like a big, but jolly man out to get a bit of change. For a moment, I wondered if I’d just been too drunk and tired before. Those eyes, however…

“So, what do I have to do?” Sebastian asked in a half-slurred, half-excited voice.

“Well, it’s cracked good and well already, so you won’t have to do a whole lot. A bit of force should do the trick, even for someone like you,” he said, laughing.

Sebastian rose his hand and beat against the machine’s side. But, of course, nothing happened. He did it a few more times before he grew frustrated and threw himself against it instead. Once more, I could hear the dropping of coins.

“Holy shit, man, it worked! Dude, you ought to give this a try as well!”

“Nah, man, I’m good.”

“See boys, that’s how it’s done.”

While Sebastian was busy filling his pockets, the guy grinned at me once more. His eyes turned sharp again, wild, even hungry, and instantly all my fears were back. For a moment, a contemplative look washed over his face, but instead of coming for me, he simply turned and left.

“Always got to make sure there’s only one,” he mumbled, but this time more to himself than to me or even Sebastian.

My friend, however, had noticed nothing and was busy milking the machine next to us for another handful of coins.

“Why you got to make sure there’s only one?” Sebastian suddenly asked.

By then, however, the man had already made his way down the stairs and was long gone.

At that moment, I remembered the small piece of clothing he’d dropped before. When I got closer, however, his words came back to my mind, his explanations of how to ‘crack’ things.

‘You just go for a little twist here, a turn there, and, of course, a little bit of the good, old brute force.’

What I saw lying there, on the floor, next to my still oblivious friend, was a small, almost delicate human finger wrapped in a bloodied piece of cloth.

Premonitions. They always happen at the strangest time, and always out of nowhere. One second, everything’s all right, the next I witness something horrible.

My friend Paul and I were sitting on his living room couch, having a few beers. Suddenly, his drunk face was replaced by an empty, blood covered mask. At that moment, I knew something terrible was going to happen to him. When I saw it, fear took hold of me, a hot feeling washed over me, and sweat broke out all over my body.

“Yo, man,” I spoke up once the vision was gone. “We should call it a night. I think we’re both pretty drunk, and I should-“

“Fuck that, man! You promised you’d go with me! That bridge is where Julie and I first hit it off. Just want to get some closure, all right?”

I sighed.

“Look, I just got the feeling something bad will happen.”

“Like what? You think I’m going to cry?” he asked.

Then his face changed to an expression of slight outrage.

“You don’t think I’m planning on jumping or some shit, do you?”

For a moment, I was quiet. I knew I could never talk about these premonitions of mine. Not ever, not to anyone, not even a friend like Paul. Instead, I just shook my head.

“Nah, nothing stupid like that. I just think it’s not the best idea, that’s all.”

For the next half hour, I continued trying to convince Paul, but it was futile. Fueled by sorrow and alcohol, he was steadfast in going. So eventually, we set out.  As we made our way through the town’s dark, empty streets, the premonition’s nagging feeling continued to linger in the back of my mind. Paul, however, didn’t notice my anxious and thoughtful expression. Instead, he lamented over his breakup with his ex-girlfriend. I only listened with half an ear. I’d heard it all before, had heard it many, many times over the past weeks.

As I trudged along after him, I couldn’t help but wonder when those premonitions had started. When I was ten, playing with our family cat, Polly, I suddenly saw her lifeless body in the middle of the road. I didn’t understand it then, but hours later, it came true. Over the years, these visions, or premonitions, as I came to call them, grew darker. At first, they were only about pets or strays I saw in passing, but eventually, they were about people as well. The worst was with Grandpa. I tried to warn him, but it didn’t change a thing.

My head was a mess, as the terrible images of so many other similar premonitions came back to my mind. There had been so many over the years, so many terrible things, and yet, I’d never been able to prevent even a single one of them.

With a heavy mind, I soon saw the big bridge at the edge of our town. It was a monstrosity of steel and cement and spanned the wide valley and river below.

“Paul, let’s head home. It’s freezing out here, and I’m tired,” I said, trying one last time to stop him.

Yet, he didn’t even seem to hear me, and trudged on, undeterred. Then, after a few seconds, he stopped and jerked around to face me.

“Fuck that man! We went all the way out here. Let’s just have a cold one, watch the dawn, and then you can go back home. Fucking hell!”

I opened my mouth to say something, to put the anxiety that flooded over me into words, but what could I even say? For a few more seconds, I merely watched him before I set out to follow him. When I made it to the bridge, Paul was already standing at the railing, and had taken two beers from his backpack.

“Told you we should have a cold one out here!” he said with a wide, drunken grin on his face.

With that, he popped open the bottles and handed me one of them. For a while, we just stood there, taking sip after sip in silence. Both our heads full of our own worries. Paul’s with his girlfriend and the break-up, mine with the terrible, haunting premonition.

“It’s beautiful up here, isn’t it?” Paul eventually said, staring at the valley and the horizon where the sun had begun dawning.

“Yeah, it’s a pretty nice view,” I agreed, mumbling.

“So, why didn’t you want me to go? It’s not like anything bad will happen if we’re just standing here.”

My hand tightened around the bottle. I took a deep breath before I opened my mouth and told him.

“I saw you die,” I said, my eyes focused on him.

“What?”

Paul furrowed his brow, but didn’t seem to understand if I was fucking with him. For a moment, I thought he’d laugh, but the seriousness of my expression made him stay quiet.

“A premonition,” I answered calmly, taking another sip of beer.

“What the hell are you-?”

Before he could finish, I’d reached him, and before he could do anything in his drunken state, I’d pushed him over the railing.

For a second, a high-pitched scream cut through the air before a sickening thud followed. As I leaned over the railing and stared down, the sun was slowly coming up. It really was beautiful, I thought, as I stared down at Paul’s bloodied body and face. Finally, my anxiety and worries ebbed away. It was done.

Premonitions. Whenever I saw them, I knew what I had to do. It wasn’t just about witnessing the future; it was about making it happen. Every single time.

Working at a retirement home is a tough job. The hours are long, overtime is a constant, and the pay is low.

And yet, I never hated the job. No, I always enjoyed helping people and did my best to guide them through the last years of their life.

All that changed with Mrs. Lizzy.

When she first arrived, she was a lovely old lady with a warm character and warmer demeanor.

She’d worked as a kindergarten teacher for the better part of her life, but was forced to retire because of old age. There was nothing she loved more than children, the tiny lady would always joke.

However, it soon became clear why she’d been sent to a retirement home.

Mrs. Lizzy suffered from an early, albeit quickly progressing case of dementia.

During the first months of her stay, she was sharp and active, prone to telling long tales of the many years she’d spent with the children she loved so much.

In time, however, her condition worsened. More and more often she’d babble to herself and wander the retirement home in confusion searching for a certain something.

It soon became clear what it was. A peculiar type of food, something she’d call ‘her yummy food.’

This wouldn’t have been so bad. Over the years, I’d gotten used to working with patients with various peculiarities and conditions. What made working with Mrs. Lizzy so bad was her growing dislike for any normal food.

Sometimes she’d just stare at her meals with a certain disdain, pushing the food from one end of the plate to another.

On other rare occasions, though, that dislike would manifest in a passionate hate. She’d grow violent, throw plates and demand to be given the food she’d love so much.

“Just once,” she’d bring out with tears of rage in her old, yellowed eyes. “Just once I want to eat it again.”

Over the months she’d been with us, I’d taken a liking to the tiny old lady. I guess it was because of her former occupation and because she, similar to me, had sacrificed much of her life by caring for others.

It pained me to see her like that, and I tried my best to find out what this certain type of food was. But of course, I never got an answer.

Once her attacks were over, she’d just babble on like always, incoherently, often about the children she loved so much.

I tried the most during those now rare instances when she was of clear mind, but she’d always just stare at me.

“Now what are you talking about, dear?”

“That special meal, Mrs. Lizzy, you’re always talking about it and I’m wondering what it might be. I’m sure I can do something about it.”

And yet, she could never answer me. Instead, she stared at me with a mixture of confusion and distrust, almost as if I was trying to trick her.

The more her condition worsened, the more nonsensical her tales became. I still sat with her, like I used to, but what had once given me a warm feeling now only made me sad.

The once lovely tales of playing with children and teaching them the alphabet turned into an incoherent mess consisting more of food than children. More and more often, her longing for that special food manifested in her tales.

“Oh, those yummy little children,” she’d sometimes whisper to herself while I sat next to her.

During those moments, I almost couldn’t fight back the tears. It was heartbreaking to see this nice old lady turning into a confused, demented mess.

And yet, the worst was still to come.

The night it happened, I was on night duty. While I walked through the retirement home for a nightly check-up, I found the door to her room wide open. When I stared inside, I found her bed empty and the covers thrown to the floor.

“Mrs. Lizzy?” I’d ask, but when I turned on the lights I found her room empty.

I cursed and informed my co-worker Linda that one of our patients had left her room and must wander around the retirement home. When I told her who it was, I heard her groan.

Mrs. Lizzy had never been a favorite with the rest of the stuff and by now everyone was sick and tired of her peculiar behavior.

As I made my way through the long hallways, whispering her name, I heard Linda scream.

With quick steps, I rushed over and found her on the floor in front of the door to a room.

“Linda, what’s going on?”

Instead of answering, she just stared at me. Her face was as white as a sheet and her lips were quivering before she raised a shaking hand and pointed inside.

The room, I realized, it was the room of our comatose patients.

Without wasting another second, I stepped inside and hit the light switch.

There was Mrs. Lizzy, standing next to the bed, holding onto the arm of one of the comatose patients.

At first I didn’t understand what was happening, but then I saw what must’ve caused Linda’s panic.

Mrs. Lizzy’s mouth was wide open, and she’d sunk the few teeth she’d left deep into the thin arm. Blood was dripping from her mouth, running down her chin and dripping onto the floor below.

“Dear lord,” I brought out as I stared at the sight in front of me.

I watched in horror as Mrs. Lizzy pulled her mouth back, tearing skin and flesh off the arm before she swallowed it.

Behind me, Linda retched and threw up.

“It’s so yummy,” Mrs. Lizzy brought out when she saw me.

Her eyes were filled with tears of joy.

“So yummy.”

I was quick to restrain her and pull her off the poor patient. I’d expected she’d fight me, but when I told her I’d take her back to her room, she was strangely docile.

On my way out, I told a shaken Linda to take care of the patient’s bleeding arm.

As I led Mrs. Lizzy back to her room, I was quick to call an ambulance. All the while, the old lady was smiling to herself and babbling on the entire way about how yummy it had been.

The look in her eyes, that smile filled with pleasure and satisfaction. It made my skin crawl. Even more so were her words.

“So long, it’s been so long since I last tasted it,” she’d brought out cackling.

When I put her into bed, her eyes focused on mine. For the first time in a long while they were clear again, and for the first time I saw the lingering, sinister darkness hiding in them.

Even now, back at home, I can’t stop thinking about those strange, confusing stories of hers.

I’d thought it was nothing but nonsense and mixed-up words, but after tonight I can’t anymore.

All I can hear inside my head now are her words, words that fill me with unspeakable terror.

“Oh, those yummy little children.”

If you’d ask me ten years ago where I’d see myself now, it definitely wouldn’t be working at a cleaning company. No, I’d tell you I’d run my own successful business.

I had high aspirations when I was younger, and I even dropped out of school to choose some vague, unrealistic dream. All hoping to make it big, to get rich. After things didn’t work out time and again, and I had nothing to show for my lofty ambitions, I had to face reality. It was time to find some work.

This cleaning job was supposed to be nothing but a temporary thing, but five years later, I was still here. To say I disliked the job would be an understatement, but it is what it is. There are some perks though, half the time I work alone, so I can listen to music or podcasts. The other half, I work with my superior, Mark, who was the most laid-back guy in the world.

I usually work in the early mornings, getting things ready before rush hour, and all the regular people arrive. I hated the early morning shift because there was never enough time to get everything done. The night shift was entirely different. You got all the time in the world, and there’s this sense of calm and quiet.

Tonight, Mark and I were dispatched to some high-rising office building, and we were told to clean up the premises of a promising start-up on the third floor. Apparently, those tech guys couldn’t be bothered cleaning up after themselves.

It should be a night I’d never forget.

We arrived at the building late in the evening. It was nothing but a dark monolith made of glass and steel rising high into the night sky. After Mark unlocked the door, I pushed our massive cleaning cart inside. The thing was a monstrosity, an amalgamation of anything we’d need for the job. It was stacked with various chemicals and detergents, a handful of mops and two floor cleaning machines. As I pushed the thing into the lobby, all I could see was a giant staircase in the back.

“Oh, come on, you’re telling me we have to carry all that up the stairs?”

I was in a foul mood that day, and I hated things already. Mark gave me a grin and waved a key-chain he was holding.

“No worries, there’s this nice little service elevator waiting for us around the corner. Come on.”

With that, he led me to a small, half-hidden elevator shaft, unlocked it, and we pushed the car inside.

“See, Tom, the job’s got its perks!” Mark said, laughing.

“Yeah, guess so,” I mumbled to myself.

I had to admit, though, I was more than happy we didn’t have to carry all that stuff upstairs. Once we’d made it to the third floor, Mark unlocked the company’s premises.

“Well, you ready for our little night time adventure?” Mark asked, while pushing the cart inside.

“I don’t get how you can always be so happy doing this shitty job.”

He shrugged.

“Gotta make the best of it, you know? Can’t be moping around. Come on, smile a little. This job ain’t so bad.”

“Yeah, why don’t you just fuck off,” I mumbled, but couldn’t help but laugh.

Mark sure wasn’t the smartest guy around, but he sure was one of the jolliest.

“All right, how do you want to do this?” he asked as we entered the pristine hallway covered in motivational pictures.

I used to like them, had them plastered all over my walls years ago. Now they meant nothing and seemed to mock me for my failures. Then I let my eyes wandered around before I turned back to Mark.

“Well, would make sense to divide things up, wouldn’t it? That way, we’ll be done sooner. I go left, you go right?”

“You want me to walk around here all on my own in the middle of the night?” he asked in a fake-shocked voice. “What if there’s some crazy serial killer on the loose, or, you know, ghosts, or-“ he rambled, but I cut him off.

“Stop joking around, man. You know I’m not in the mood for any of that creepy shit. Let’s get going.”

While Mark laughed his ass off, I stacked up on cleaning supplies and got my floor cleaning machine ready. I plugged it in, started the beast, and began on my way down the hallway. Those things were pretty damn awesome, I had to admit. I rumbled past the first glass door when I thought I saw a glimmer of light from inside. For a moment, I felt goosebumps all over my arms, as Mark’s stupid jokes came back to my mind. God, he’d laugh his ass off if he saw me right now. I shook my head and told myself it must’ve been my imagination.

A moment later, however, anxiously, I turned off the floor cleaning machine and opened the door. When I entered, I found myself in a giant office, filled to the brim with desks and computers. When I stepped inside, a strange smell reached me. It was faint, but somewhat noticeable. A chair in the back had toppled over, and what looked like a… blouse, crumpled up and forgotten, lay next to it on the floor. Yet everything was quiet, and no one was around. What the hell? I took down my headphones and listened for a moment.

“Anyone there?” I called out, annoyed at the slight edge in my voice.

When I didn’t get an answer, my hand wandered to a nearby light switch. Before I could flip it, a guy’s head poked out from behind a computer. I jerked at his sudden appearance.

“Jesus Christ,” I blurted.

The guy’s eyes focused on me. He seemed fidgety, almost as if he was trying to hide behind the computer, afraid I’d approach him.

“Oh, hey. Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” the guy said in a nervous voice. “Just trying to fix the code. Someone messed with it, so…”

“Shit man, it’s like… eleven in the evening,” I said, glancing at my phone.

His eyes continued probing me. The way he held his body was defensive, as if he expected me to come for him or… do something to him. After a few seconds, however, he gave me a weak shrug.

“Yeah, it’s late, but hey, if you got to clean, go ahead. Maybe you could finish here last, though? Really got to fix this.”

As I looked at the guy, I saw how bloodshot his eyes were, how tired his face was, and somehow, I couldn’t help but feel for the guy. If he was still here at this hour, his job was even worse than mine. Finally, I shrugged and gave him a brief nod.

“Sure thing. I’ll take care of the other rooms first. You’re probably done by then.”

At first he was quiet, and just continued to stare at me, but after a few seconds, he opened his mouth again.

“Yeah, thanks man, all good, all good,” he mumbled in a slightly shaken voice.

What the hell was wrong with this guy?

Back in the hallway, I turned my cleaning machine back on, pressed play on my music, and continued on my merry way. After that, I took care of the toilets at the end of the hall, and once those were done, I cleaned the conference room and what appeared to be a storage room.

I returned to the hallway just to see the glass door to the office open up. My eyes met those of the guys I’d seen before. I saw his mouth move, but couldn’t hear him over my music. I took down the headphones once more and took a step toward him.

“Sorry, what was that?”

I got no answer. Instead, he just stood there in the doorway, half of his body hidden behind the door frame. Then he pushed his head outward, his eyes growing wide by the second.

“You know, why don’t you just keep on cleaning and leave me the hell alone?”

What did he just say?

“Yo, man, you know you’re having a rough day, but there’s no need to be an asshole!”

The guy started mumbling to himself. I could see his jaw tighten, saw his body growing tense.

“…calling me an asshole?” I heard between other, indistinguishable curses.

“Yeah, I’m calling you an-“ I started, but when I took a step forward, my foot got caught by the floor cleaning machine’s cable and I almost crashed to the floor.

I cursed and gave the machine a hard kick. A bottle of detergent I’d placed on top of it clattered to the floor and popped open.

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.”

I quickly picked the bottle up and closed it, staring at the puddle on the floor. I sighed before I turned back to the guy who still hadn’t moved.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, trying my best to defuse the situation. “Guess I’m having a rough night, too. Let’s just forget about it. No need to tell your boss about our little argument, right?”

Eventually, the guy gave me a weak nod.

“All right, gotta get going,” I said before I turned around.

I don’t know what the guy’s problem was, but he gave me the creeps. Freaking computer nerds, I thought as I continued on my way to the kitchen. The place was a mass. To say it was untidy was an understatement. The floor was stained, as was the table and almost all other surfaces. I even found a woman’s handbag resting on the kitchen counter. I pulled out my phone and checked out our to-do list. Of course, we had to clean all surfaces in here. I sighed, what was, I glorified maid? For the next half hour, I was busy with half a dozen chemicals to return this dump of a kitchen back to pristine condition.

Once I was done, I was pretty proud of myself. Sure, the job sucked ass, but I had to admit, I wasn’t half bad at it. Well, that leaves the office. I pulled out my phone to hit up Mark, but of course he didn’t answer. He had this stupid habit of turning his phone off.

When I stepped back into the hallway, I hesitated. Something felt off, and a strange feeling washed over me. Was that guy still… here? Finally, I pushed open the door to the office and found it quiet. Even the dim light from earlier was gone.

“Yo, programmer dude, you still around?” I called out.

Thankfully, he seemed to have left. I was about to get the floor cleaning machine when I noticed a bunch of dark splotches on the floor. Great, guess he left me a little goodbye present. Freaking asshole. Well, doesn’t matter, get rid of it and be done. I flicked the light switch on and came to a stop. For a moment, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. I’d thought it was just a small puddle, but as my eyes wandered across the room, I saw splotches, splatters, and even… footprints. I knelt down to clean up the mess he’d left, but when the rag touched the liquid, it stuck to it. It was thick and syrupy. I froze. What was that stuff, anyway? Then the smell hit me, a sharp, metallic smell. Don’t tell me this was… blood?!

Then I noticed a discarded piece of clothing on the floor nearby, the blouse I’d seen early, also stained in dark red. What the hell was this? Don’t tell me… As I inched closer, step by step, I thought about the way the guy had acted, how nervous and fidgety he’d been, how… creepy. I followed the trail of liquid, dark red liquid that was most likely blood.

“Fucking hell,” I cursed when I noticed the first outlines of a pool of corrugated blood below a desk.

“Shit, fucking shit,” I cursed to myself.

I was trembling, my heart was pounding in my chest, and with shaking hands I pulled out my phone, ready to call 911. Then I made my way around the desk. What I saw made me catch my breath, my body went cold, and time stopped. On the floor, right in front of me, lay a woman in a pool of her own blood.

“Oh, dear God…” I whispered, backing away.

My legs buckled under me, and I crashed to the floor. I opened my mouth to call out to her, to ask her if she was still alive, but her eyes were wide open, and her mouth distorted by a perpetual scream. This can’t be real, it can’t… A second later, my heart pounding in my chest, a scrambled away, and threw up into a trash can. What the hell happened here? That guy, that guy I’d seen, he must’ve…

Instantly, my head jerked around, half-anticipating this deranged psycho to come for me. Sweat ran down my face as I backed up against the office wall, my eyes darting left and right, desperately scanning the area. All was quiet, and I saw no movements. For all I knew, he really was gone. Then something clicked. The only exit was at the other end of the hallway, where Mark was. What if he’d run into Mark, and… Shit!

I tried to hit him up on the phone, but it was still turned off. Shit, why did he always have to do that!? I opened my mouth to call out for him, but then closed it again. What if that guy was still inside the building? What if he was lying in wait for me somewhere? As quietly as I could, I inched forward, carefully passing every door.

When I arrived at the service elevator, I found the doors closed, and the elevator gone. But you needed a key to operate it, didn’t you? The key that mark had. I continued down the hallway, my own fears forgotten, desperately calling his name, but I got no answer. It didn’t take long for me to find him. Mark was lying on the floor at the other end of the hallway. His floor cleaning machine was still rumbling on next to him, soaking up the blood that was leaking from his body.

“No, Mark, goddammit! Say something!” I cursed out, trying to lift his body, shaking him.

Yet his body was limp, his eyes unseeing and empty.

“Dammit…”

His body slid from my hands, and I slumped down beside him, hands trembling, cursing myself for not having realized things sooner.

Then minutes later, when I’d calmed down, I finally called 911, and explained the situation as best as I could, given my condition. While I waited for the police to arrive, half-catatonic, with the lifeless body of my co-worker next to me, I slowly put things together.

The blouse, the handbag… that must’ve been those woman’s things. That guy, whoever he was, was probably never supposed to be here. What if he snuck in to… and when we arrived, he had no way out?

Then something else crawled into my mind and began growing there like a festering wound. The office, the guy’s behavior, and those dark splatters and splotches. The blood. It hadn’t been there when I’d first entered it.

My friend Josh was my polar opposite. He was a young successful entrepreneur and, frankly said, filthy rich.

I on the other hand was a perpetual failure, who lived in a small one-room apartment, always looking to make it to the end of the month.

While Josh owned a flourishing online business, I drifted from one odd job to another.

Why’s any of this important, you might wonder? Well, it was no other than Josh who left me with this weird set of rules.

It was about two weeks ago that he had to leave for another one of his business trips and needed someone to not only sit his house but take care of his cats. Josh owned four of the little buggers, all special breeds and exotic.

He came up to me because he knew my situation had taken a turn for the worse because of Covid-19. I was behind on rent, bills kept stacking up, and finding work was harder than ever.

Josh offered me a fair amount of money, enough to last me for an entire month, and I eventually relented and accepted his offer.

Every single time I arrived at his house, I was awestruck. It was a beautiful, two-story building that he’d bought a couple of years back and renovated from the ground up. There was probably more modern technology in his home than in the rest of the entire neighborhood.

Josh didn’t just own a smart TV or smart lights. He had an entire smart living room, a smart kitchen with a smart coffee machine, and even a freaking smart toilet.

I didn’t even know half the stuff he owned existed and wondered why he’d need the other half. Josh, however, loved everything new, shiny, and smart.

When I arrived, he offered me a bottle of imported crafts beer and led me inside. He told me the couch was all mine, I could roam the place as I saw fit, but his office was off-limits. Josh was very particular about this stuff, and I didn’t see any reason to intrude.

After those first instructions, he introduced me to his cats right away. There was an older Bengal, an Egyptian Mau, a Cornish Rex, and a recently acquired Savannah kitten. To be honest, I only remember the different breeds because of his list of notes. I was never a cat person. No, to be honest, I was never a pet person.

Once he’d told me all their names, which I’d forgotten the moment he’d left, he handed me an envelope containing his instructions about the cats. Or as he called it, ‘The Rules.’

He gave me a little wink and told me to only open them once I’d left. I rolled my eyes but gave him a little laugh.

Josh was not only a weirdo, but he’d always been a very immature and childish person. I could already tell that his so-called rules were most likely nothing but bullshit.

Still, I humored his antics and put it away on the couch table for now.

Josh told me about a few more things about the house before he handed me the money and went on his way.

Once I’d gotten myself settled, I got myself another one of his crafts beers and sat down in his lavish living room to read ‘The Rules.’

I was prepared to find the envelope filled with nothing but a silly picture, but to my surprise, it actually contained a list of rules.

The Rules – Instructions on How to Succeed at Cat Sitting

1. Feed the cats twice a day, at 8 am and 8 pm. DON’T be late.

2. Always measure the amount of food using a measuring cup following the instructions on page two.

3. Each cat has their own special food, following a strict diet plan. DON’T mix up the food and leave their feeding bowls at their respective places.

I rolled my eyes at his damn peculiarities. They are freaking cats, why’s all this stuff so important?

4. If the TV turns on at 10:23 pm on a random channel, leave it on. DON’T turn it off before 10:48 pm.

When I read this one I stared at the list for a moment before I chuckled. Really, Josh? Cryptic, obscure rules? God, this was too silly, even for him.

5. The cats need to be groomed every other day. Check the instructions on page three for more information.

6. If the lights turn on in random rooms of the house, DON’T turn them off until the following morning.

7. Should you take out the trash, ALWAYS use the dumpster on the far right. ALWAYS make sure to close it. NEVER open the one on the left.

Yeah, this was getting stupid. It was obvious what was going on here, and for a second I was about to crumble up this stupid list and throw it away. Then I went to read on. Who knows there might still be something important between all the bullshit?

8. There’s an outdoor kennel for the cats. Make sure to let them go out in the afternoon.

9. If you hear strange after 11 pm, ignore them and DON’T try to figure out their origin. Just stay in the living room. Again, DON’T try to figure out where they come from.

10. There might be noises coming from the office at random times during the night. DON’T enter at any time. The noises will soon stop again.

11. Each of the cats has a specific nutrient mixture that should be added to their water bowls. Check page two for more instructions. Try not to forget about it.

12. If you hear a knock against the window, you must ignore it. DON’T let anyone in. She will leave again if you ignore her.

13. DON’T use the oven after 10 pm. It’s a little too smart for its own good. Trust me on that one.

14. Ignore any voices you hear throughout the house. There’s no one else there. DON’T investigate. They will stop eventually.

15. The beer’s all yours, but try not to get wasted and break things.

Once done, I couldn’t help but laugh. This was so typical for Josh.

I put the list aside and checked out pages two and three. They were filled with detailed information about each cat. With a sigh, I went through them, trying to understand what the hell I was even supposed to do.

Once I was done, it was almost noon.

I checked out the feeding and water bowls, but Josh had filled them up. So, I didn’t have to do anything except letting the cats out in the afternoon and feeding them in the evening.

The first day at Josh’s place was amazing.

I’d said before that I never knew why he had all those gadgets, but after a couple of hours at his house, I could see the appeal. I could call out any song I wanted, and it was played instantly on his amazing 5.1 sound system. I could turn on and off lights with nothing but a wave of my hand and don’t get me started on his toilet.

As the hours passed, I watched Netflix on his giant movie projector and drank a few more of the crafts beers. Man, this was a life I could get used to. Some of the cats joined me at random intervals throughout the day, eyeing their new roommate curiously.

Once it was evening, I followed Josh’s instructions and refilled the cat’s feeding bowls. It was actually harder than I expected. I was quite tipsy by that point and Josh owned a plethora of different cat food and nutrient mixes. In the end, though, I got everything right, at least I think so.

I’d just sat down for yet another movie when I heard sounds from the second floor. It was quiet and barely audible while the movie was playing.

At first, I thought it was one of the cats, but when I turned the movie off I realized that it was a voice, a woman’s. A shiver went down my spine. As I listened, it almost sounded like someone was counting.

I went from the living room to the stairs and listened.

“… seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen…” and on it went.

Needless to say, I was damn confused and not just a little scared about what was going on.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” I called out, but I got no answer. Instead, the numbers continued to decrease until they reached zero. At this point, the voice stopped and silence returned.

I swallowed and after another minute had passed, I carefully ascended the stairs. There was no one there, though. All I saw was an empty hallway. I didn’t know what I’d expected, and I wasn’t sure if I should be relieved or not.

Right at that moment, I remembered his list of rules and returned to the living room.

There it was, the last one on the list:

14. Ignore any voices you hear throughout the house. There’s no one else there. DON’T investigate. They will stop eventually.

All right, I told myself, this was bullshit. It was most likely a recording that was being played somewhere up there.

With another beer as mental support, I went back upstairs. As I checked the walls though, I found no hint of speakers or a radio.

I was about to open one of the doors when I saw a light flickering on and off in a room at the back of the hallway.

Fuck this, I told myself. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I sure as hell didn’t want to mess with any of it.

It was nothing. Probably a malfunctioning light.

Still, when I returned to the living room, I checked every corner of the room before I settled back on the couch. For the first time since I’d arrived, I was happy to see the cats nearby. At least I didn’t have the sleep alone here all by myself.

When my phone woke me at 7 am the next morning, my head was slightly throbbing. I made my way to the kitchen and instructed Josh’s coffee machine to mix me one of its strongest options.

With the blackest coffee I’d ever seen in my entire life, I made my way to the feeding bowls. The cats followed me but kept a clear distance from me.

The moment I took out the food, though, they became much friendlier. Oh, I knew what was going on here, you deceitful little creatures.

There was nothing special happening on the second day. I spent most of it either in the living room or exploring Josh’s home. In the evening I found my way into his small, private library. It was filled with books on self-improvement and a sheer endless amount of business manuals.

Eventually, I discovered a collection of the works of M. C. Escher, hidden between some obscure work of eastern philosophy and a biography of Jay Gould.

I took the Escher book with me to the living room, instructed Alexa to play some ambient music, and went through the book.

Something was fascinating about Escher’s work. While I was busy studying yet another one of his optical illusions, the room was suddenly flooded by the light of the TV. I jerked up and stared at it. It was set to a random channel, showing nothing but static.

How the hell had the damn thing turned on? I checked if I’d sat on the remote or if any of the cats had been toying with it, but I found it resting on the couch table.

I reached out for it and was about to turn the TV back off when I saw the list of rules lying nearby. Hadn’t there been something about the TV on there?

I found the one I’d been looking for right away.

4. ‘If the TV turns on at 10:23 pm on a random channel, leave it on and DON’T turn it off before 10:48 pm.’

When I checked the clock, I saw that it was now 10:25 pm. Oh, you’ve got to be freaking kidding me.

For a moment I was about to say fuck it and turn it off, but then I remembered the weird voice from last night.

I told myself again nothing was going on. Just another error in the settings. Still, there was this quiet, little voice in the back of my mind asking me ‘What if?’

Grumbling, I put the remote down again and tried my best to ignore the annoying static. Once it was close to 11 pm, I decided it was safe enough to turn it off again and go to sleep.

Thus ended my second day at Josh’s home.

Over the next days, more strange things happened all around the house. I was still telling myself it was all a malfunction or a coincidence. Hell, maybe Josh fucking with me, but that quiet voice in the back of my mind wasn’t so quiet anymore.

Every day I found the lights on in random rooms, rooms I hadn’t even set foot in yet. At other times, I heard the strange voice again, always counting down to zero.

I tried to call Josh but I couldn’t seem to reach him. When I sent him a message about the weird occurrences, all I got back was a simple ‘Just follow the rules and everything’s fine.’

I cursed at that and almost threw my phone against the wall. To be honest, I almost noped the fuck out of his house by the fourth day. Real or not, this was all a little too weird, and it was getting to me.

The problem was, Josh trusted me, and hell, he’d paid me a fair amount of money to take care of his house and the cats.

So, I stayed.

It was by day five that things took a turn for the worse and I should come to regret my decision.

I was in the living room, browsing Reddit when noises reached my ear yet again. This time it wasn’t the counting voice, though. Instead, it sounded like someone was banging against the walls. Each bang made me jerk up, and eventually I had enough of this shit.

This stops now, I told myself. As I made my way to the stairs, I got another idea. What if Josh had instructed another one of his friends to sneak in and fuck with me? It was a silly idea, but I wouldn’t put it past him.

More angry than afraid, I made my way up the stairs and soon located the source of the noise. It was coming from his office.

I remembered his words. Hell, I remembered the freaking rule about the office, but I didn’t give a shit anymore.

“All right, whoever the fuck you are, knock it off!” I cursed.

“If Josh put you up for this to fuck with me, well done, you got me ha ha!”

The banging continued, but soon I heard something else. It was crying, muffled crying.

“What the fuck,” I pressed out.

“… help me…” I heard a quiet, muffled voice from inside the office.

My eyes grew wide and an icy shiver went down my spine.

It was Josh’s voice.

“… please, this guy broke in and locked me up here…”

The voice went quiet again. Once more the crying started before labored breathing replaced it.

“Josh…? What the fuck?”

I got no answer. All I heard instead was more of the labored breathing coming from inside.

I didn’t even think about the rules anymore. Something strange was going on here, something very fucking strange.

I took a deep breath before I put my hand on the door handle and ripped open the door. What I found inside the office was absolutely nothing.

There was his desk, his computer, his whiteboard, books, and papers, but nothing else. The light was off, no one was inside, and nothing was in disarray.

Then, as I stared at the empty room in front of me, all the lights in the house turned on in unison only to flicker out moments later.

Needless to say, this freaked me the fuck out.

I threw the door to the office shut, hurried downstairs, and booked it out of the house.

Once outside, I could’ve sworn I saw lights turning on and off in random rooms of the house. Almost as if someone… or something was rushing through it, searching it.

I went straight home after this. The moment I’d locked my front door, I sent Josh a message asking him what the fuck was going on. All I got was yet another short, obscure message.

‘You said you opened the door?’

‘Yes, what the fuck does that even matter?’

‘Shit man, I told you to leave it be and NOT open it. Well, nothing to do now. She won’t go after the cats, and by tomorrow things should be normal again. You closed the door, right?’

‘What the fuck are you even talking about? The hell’s the matter with your damn place!? Please tell me this is all one of your stupid pranks and you’re fucking with me!’

This time no reply arrived. Instead, he called me.

Josh explained that his house had a history, quite a fucked up one at that. Back in the day, long before he bought it and renovated it, the place used to be an orphanage. One night, more than half a century ago, the caretaker snapped and murdered the orphans one after another. All while counting down the number of kids still alive until she reached zero.

Josh found out after some research that his office used to be the caretaker’s old bedroom.

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes strange things happened at his house. A voice counting down or pretending to be other people, lights flickering on and off, and other, similar things.

That’s why he got so many smart gadgets. For some reason, those seem to confuse the spirit, as he called it. Generally though, if you leave it alone and follow the rules, nothing bad will happen.

“What the actual fuck!? You’re kidding me, right?” I almost yelled into the phone.

“Afraid not, that’s why I left you the rules, but I should have explained things to you beforehand,” he pressed out.

“Yes, you fucking should have! Why the hell would you even call them something like that if it’s about a… shit, Josh, why the fuck would you even buy a freaking haunted orphanage?!”

“The place was cheap, all right? Way cheaper than any other in town. How the fuck would I’ve known that… Shit, look, man, I know it’s fucked up, but please can you go back tomorrow and take care of the cats? It’s only three more days, but I’m worried about them.”

I was about to tell him to go fuck himself with his freaking haunted house. When he told me he’d pay me some extra money, though, I shout my mouth as soon as I’d opened it.

Shit, I mean, how bad could it get, right? I hadn’t been hurt so far, and Josh reassured me that nothing had ever happened to him. It was all noises and flickering lights.

So the next morning, I found myself at his house yet again. During the day time, everything looked as normal as it could be.

By now I’d calmed down, and by now I wasn’t so sure about his story anymore.

The cats came up to me the moment I entered the place. When I checked my phone, I saw that it was almost 10 pm. The poor little buggers seemed to be hungry, and the moment I’d refilled their feeding blows, they churned down their food.

I was about to leave again, but nothing had ever happened during the day. If anything weird were to happen, I could put down some food and water for the cats by 8 pm and get the hell out of there.

So that day I made sure to take care of all the cat duty Josh had given me. I let them out into the kennel for the afternoon, groomed them in the early evening, and once it was 8 pm, I fed them again.

There was no hint of anything strange happening, and once more I wondered how much was true about Josh’s story.

Instead of going home then and there, I picked up my laptop and settled down on the couch. I went on Google and started searching for any proof of his story.

At first, I found various articles about orphanage related murders and other atrocities. Once I’d narrowed my search down, I noticed a specific brief article.

‘The Horror of Sister Maria – Gruesome Murders at Orphanage’

The article detailed the same story that Josh had told me before. In March 1972, the caretaker of an orphanage, named Sister Maria, had murdered all the children she was overseeing.

The name of the orphanage told me nothing, but when I saw the address, I knew that it was the very same building I was in at the moment.

You’ve got to be freaking kidding me, I cursed. For a moment a feeling of apprehension flooded me and I wondered if Sister Maria had murdered some of the kids right here, in this very room. My eyes darted around, but there was nothing, of course, apart from one of the cats sitting near me.

I petted the little bugger as went back to the article. Then the cat suddenly jerked up, his ears rose and his eyes darted around.

It was a few seconds later that I heard it too. I froze, searching for the source of the noise before I realized it was coming from outside.

I’d barely gotten up when three muffled bangs from the front door and wailing reached me. Step by step, I made my way to figure out what the hell was going on. I’d made it to the hallway when I heard another bang, this one against one of the living room windows.

For a moment I noticed a shadowy figure outside before it vanished again. Then there was another bang, from a different window followed by more wailing.

And then I saw the outlines of a face pressed against the window, staring right at me.

12. ‘If you hear a knock against the window in the middle of the night, ignore it. She will leave again if you don’t acknowledge her.’

That was the moment I lost it. That was the moment I knew this entire thing was real. Her. He’d written it specifically. It had to be the spirit, the ghost of the caretaker.

Before it had been noises, flickering lights, something I could deal with, something I could tell myself was a coincidence. But this, this was different.

Once more the figure vanished, I heard more wailing before I heard it from a different window.

‘She will leave again if you don’t acknowledge her.’

I’d stared right at her, hadn’t I?

What if this thing, this ghost, was no coming after me? For a moment I thought I could hear the counting voice again from somewhere in the house, and at that moment I ran.

I was at the front door in an instant, ripped it open, and stumbled outside.

And right at that moment, I saw it. To my right, in the middle of Josh’s garden, there was the shadowy figure of a woman.

When it took one step towards me, panic flooded over me and I dashed from the house towards my car and jumped into it.

When I turned it on and the headlights flooded the area, I could’ve sworn there was more than one figure.

I noped it the fuck out of there without ever looking back.

Once back home, I was a mess.

Fuck the house, fuck the cats and fuck Josh. I’d never go near his damned house EVER again.

I only sent Josh a single message.

‘I’m done with this shit.’

Then I turned the damn thing off.

I was too shaken up about everything that had happened that day. Before I’d tried to tell myself that it was all a hoax, nothing but a stupid prank, but after what I’d seen tonight, I couldn’t do it anymore.

That night I didn’t sleep. Instead, I turned on every damn light in my small apartment, put on the dumbest movie I could find, and tried my best to distract myself. It didn’t work. Every single sound in the entire freaking building made me jerk up. I was a shaking mess.

Only when the sun came up was I able to relax, if only a bit.

It was by ten in the morning that my doorbell rang. When I opened the front door I was surprised and confused to find Josh outside. His face was white, almost sick looking, and he seemed to be as shaken as I was.

“Hey man, we need to talk,” he said the moment he saw me. No greeting, no nothing, right to business.

I stepped aside to let him inside. I laid into him right away, asking him what the hell the matter with his house was and why he was even back right now. He was quick to raise a hand to tell me to be quiet.

“I think you better sit down, there’s a lot I’ve got to tell you. We, no, I fucked up,” he started.

With that, he told me the entire thing. All he’d done, and all that had happened.

As it turned out Josh’s home was the definition of a smart home, much smarter than I’d ever expected. There were cameras, sensors, hidden speakers all over the place. He told me he liked to play music all over the house, so he’d installed speakers all over the house. Most of them were concealed and not visible. If you didn’t know they were there, you had no clue they existed.

I stared at him, not understanding what he was going on about, but then he dropped me a fucking bomb.

He’d been fucking with me. The entire thing was an elaborate hoax, just as I’d expected. He’d occasionally used speakers to play tricks on his guests. With me, though, he upped the ante a little.

At first, he only added a bunch of weird rules to his list of instructions to play a joke on me. Soon enough, he got a much more devious idea. He programmed his entire freaking house to act out at specific times during the evening and night. Lights would turn on and off, the TV would play static and weird noises would be played from various speakers in the house. He even recorded himself crying in his office.

He even created an elaborate backstory for his house, one that was complete and utter bullshit.

“But, I read that article,” I started. When he looked at me, a mixture of misery and embarrassment visible on his face, I knew the truth right away. He’d even planted a fake article about his house.

When it all sank in, I went freaking livid on him, calling him every name in the book while he sat there, embarrassed and guilty.

Then I stopped. If it was all a joke, then what about last night? What about that ghost I’d seen?

I confronted him right away. I told him it was so beyond fucked up to even hire someone to scare me like that.

That’s when Josh cast down his eyes and I heard him inhale sharply.

“That woman, she wasn’t part of it,” he pressed out in a low voice.

“What the fuck do you mean? Are you trying to tell me she was an actual fucking ghost!?”

“No,” he answered, shaking his head.

“Last night, a man broke into the home of one of my neighbors, Miss Graham, an older woman living by herself. The police’s still investigating, but the man must’ve attacked her, but could not restrain her. She got away, badly injured, and made her way to the house closest to hers to call for help.”

“Yours,” I answered with a shaken voice.

Josh nodded.

“W-what happened to her?” I pressed out after a few seconds of silence.

Josh stayed quiet for a long while, only answering after I’d repeated the question a second time, this time louder.

“Got a call from the police in the middle of the night. My alarm was eventually set off and police checked it out. They found her beaten to death at the back porch of the house.”

I couldn’t speak. My world started spinning, and I almost crashed to the floor.

That’s when I realized what I’d seen that night, who the figures I’d seen were, and what I’d done.

Instead of helping poor Miss Graham, I’d ignored her and left her there to die.

All because I’d followed Josh’s stupid list of rules.

I guess everyone has heard about a Craigslist horror story, but no one expects to end up in one.

I’d been thinking about leaving the city life behind for a while now. I guess I couldn’t stand the bustle of the city anymore and longed for a more remote life.

I’d saved up quite a bit of money over the years and decided to buy a house. When I saw the prices though, my jaw dropped. I’d expected that buying a house was expensive, but I’d never thought THAT expensive.

In my desperation, I opened Craigslist. I didn’t expect to find anything there, but that’s exactly what I did.

The ad was as simple as it could be.

‘Small house for sale, way below market value’

I clicked on it in an instant. When I saw the price though, I was sure the seller had made a mistake. There was no way someone would sell a house that cheap.

The place looked decent from what I saw in the pictures. Eventually, I found the seller’s phone number and called him. I honestly expected the price to be a mistake. Hell, maybe it was all a scam.

Instead, I found myself on a call with a man named Wilbert Johnson. When he told me the place was still available, the first thing I asked about was the price. The old man assured me there was no mistake. It was an old house, he said, in the middle of nowhere and he wanted to get the sale over with as soon as possible.

There was a catch, though. He wanted the payment in cash only because he didn’t trust the banks or any of the real estate agents. Some other people had shown interest before me, he said, but they’d all gotten cold feet at the mention of this. I didn’t see a problem with it. Hell, things would be way quicker that way.

I guess that was my first mistake.

To make a long story short, a week later, on a Saturday morning, I found myself on the three-hour drive to Old Wilbert’s house. Which, I hoped, would soon be mine.

When I arrived, the old man greeted me with a bright smile.

He was a sturdy, hard man in his late fifties, from what I could tell.

“You Mark?” he asked as he reached out to greet me.

I nodded. “Yes, sir!”

“Well, that’s the place,” he said and stepped aside to allow me a better view of the small house.

I had a look around for a bit before I stepped inside. The moment I did, the old floorboards welcomed me with aloud creak. The moment it happened, an anxious expression washed over the man’s face.

“Guess you were right,” I said laughing, “the place’s pretty old. It sure has character though.”

When he heard that relief flooded over his face and his smile returned.

“Oh, that it has. Been living here for over thirty-odd years.”

“Now then, how come you’re selling it that cheap?”

The old man was quiet for a bit. His eyes wandered for a bit before he sighed.

“Tell you what, there’s no reason to keep it to myself. It’s because of Lisa’s disappearance.”

“Lisa?”

Another sigh followed.

“My wife, Elisabeth. Been almost two months now since she vanished. Walked right out that door over there and never returned. No one’s seen her, no one’s heard a thing. Just like that, vanished without a trace.”

“Shit, I’m so sorry. I’d no idea-“

“Nothing to do with you,” he cut me off. “Did everything I could, talked to the neighbors, then the cops. Hell, they searched half the dammed county, but they found nothing. I kept searching, but by now…”

His voice trailed off as he shook his head.

“Can’t keep living here. Everything reminds me off her. That painting over there, she drew it a good twenty years ago. See that table cloth? She bought it at a flea market a couple of years back. ‘Isn’t it beautiful, Wilbert?’ she asked. Been stuck with the ugly thing ever since. Whenever I see it, I can’t help but wonder where she went and what happened to her. It’s just too much,” he broke up, his voice trailing off.

I stood there, shuffling around, not sure what to say. I was never good at those things, people things, I mean.

After a few moments, I opened my mouth when I heard something. It was a small quiet sound, like scratching.

In a moment, Old Wilbert stepped up to an old radio and turned it on.

I stared at him as the music drowned out the sound.

“Sir, what are you-?”

When he noticed my stares, he looked embarrassed and turned the radio back off again.

“Well, that’s another reason the place’s so cheap.”

“So what’s causing it?”

“Ghosts.”

I stared at him, but his expression didn’t change. I opened my mouth to enquire what the hell was up with that when he burst out laughing.

“Goddammit, I’m pulling your leg! Its rodents! We’ve had problems with the damned beasts for half a decade now. Dunno where the buggers come from, but they sure are persistent. They’re digging through the dirt outside and crawl into the walls. Never been able to figure out how they do it. Might as well be a cat in there, too. Heard they sometimes crawl after mice or cat and end up getting stuck.”

I shrugged. “Well, I planned on renovating the place, anyway.”

“Remember you telling me about that. I’ve got quite a bit of junk stored up. Been planning to give the place a good old once-over myself, but with Lisa going missing and all that, I never had time to do it.”

With that, he led me to his garage and presented me with an assortment of tools and materials.

“Tell you what, I’ll add all of it to the house for free. God knows, I can’t take it with me anyway and I sure as hell won’t need it anymore. Take it as an apology for not telling you about the rodents beforehand.”

I thanked the old man wholeheartedly. Looking at the amount of stuff here, I might well be looking at half a grand, hell, maybe even more.

We talked more while the old man led me through the house. Here and there he stopped me and told me what sort of renovations he’d planned and gave me detailed advice. Start with the second floor, use this and that material, do this that way and so on. It sounded like solid advice and I could tell the old man knew what he was talking about.

Once the tour was over, we shook on the sale and I arranged to be back in a few days to finalize everything. The old man, in turn, told me he’d put together a little write up of all his renovation advice.

Once I was back, and I handed him the money, he sighed again.

“Guess there’s one last thing I’ve got to tell you. This place, well, it’s got a history.”

I looked up. First the rodents and now… what?

“It’s probably all nonsense,” he started shaking his head. “But Lisa always talked about that stuff. She said back in the day when folks still owned slaves, there’s been a lynching out here. Never gave much of a damn about those old tales, but…”

This time I couldn’t help but laugh. Was he pulling my leg again?

“Tell you what, I never believed in any of it, but Lisa swore she heard wailing and crying in the middle of the night. To be honest, I think it’s just those damned kids down by the creek?”

“What kids?”

“There’s this old shack down by the creek, not too far from here. Some local kids, teenagers mostly, hang out there, getting drunk and causing all kinds of trouble during the night.”

“Well, it doesn’t sound like anything I can’t handle.”

It was a few minutes later that we shock on the deal. The old man handed me his notes and told me he’d written down his phone number. If I had questions about the renovations, I should call him.

Once he’d driven off, I stared at what would be my new home.

Quite the place, I thought. Sure, I’d have to put in quite a bit of work, but there was no way I’d get a cheap property anywhere.

For the first couple of nights, I didn’t sleep in the place. There was still all the old man’s furniture in there. No, to feel comfortable here, I’d have to get rid of his stuff first.

To be honest, it felt weird, disposing of someone’s entire life and memories like that. Even worse was the dammed scratching. It was there again and again. Sometimes it was quiet, sometimes it was more frantic. Maybe there really was a cat stuck somewhere. I shuddered a bit. I liked cats, and I didn’t want to think about one of them suffocating in my walls.

The next day my friend Mike arrived. I’d told him about the house I was buying and he said he’d be happy to help me out with the renovations. To be honest, I think he wanted to get away from his wife and kids for a bit. Do some good old handy work and share a couple of cool ones with an old buddy.

“Well, it’s quite the place. You really got it that cheap?”

“Yeah, it’s because the place is haunted and there are mice in the walls… and rats and cats.”

Mike gave me a weird look.

“Come on in, I tell you all about it over a beer or two.”

As the two of us sat on the floor in what would one day be my kitchen, I told him all about Old Wilbert and the stories he’d told me.

As if to prove that I wasn’t bullshitting him, the frantic scratching started again for a moment. He listened intently.

“Doesn’t sound like mice to me. Could be rats, though. We’re better of getting some poison or call an exterminator.”

I considered it for a moment, but then I shook my head.

“If we get an exterminator, they’ll cover the entire place in chemicals or god knows what. I’d rather get started on the renovations.”

Mike shrugged. “Well, I warned you, don’t blame me if we find some giant rat colony in one of the walls here.”

We shared another beer before we started on the work.

There was a lot to do. The floorboards were old and rotten in many places. The wallpaper was stained and old-fashioned and some partition walls had to go, I decided. Either way, we had a busy few days ahead of us, hell maybe even a week.

It wasn’t long before we retorted to the old man’s method of turning on the radio. The scratching, while quiet, was still somewhat distracting.

Mike and I made some decent progress the first day. At first, he wanted to get himself a hotel room in the nearby town, but after a bit of back and force, he agreed to stay.

We spent the evenings talking about old stories from high school and college, and often Mike would tell me about his wife and kids. As much as he told me he was happy to have some time away, I could tell he missed them already.

During our third night at the place, he woke me up in the middle of the night.

“Dude, you hearing this?” he asked me in a quiet, hushed voice.

As I listened, I could hear the scratching, but there was something else. It was quiet, coming from quite a distance, but I was sure I heard it. It sounded as if someone was wailing or crying.

I thought back to the old man’s story about the lynching and what his wife had heard. Then I shook my head and remembered what he’d told me about the kids out here.

“Probably some drunk kids fucking around. The old dude told me they’re gathering down by the creek to get drunk. Maybe they thought it was fun to mess with the new guy.”

Mike nodded, but he still looked unnerved.

“Yeah, guess you’re right. Want to go out and teach them a lesson?”

I laughed but shook my head. There was no way I’d go out in the middle of the night to chase some teenagers. I also didn’t want to become known as the local crazy guy.

Eventually, we got back to sleep. Still, somehow my mind lingered on the story. That scratching, that wailing, there was… something about it that didn’t seem to fit.

The next day, busy with renovations again, I’d already pushed all those thoughts away.

Guess that was my second mistake.

We doubled down on our efforts. Me trying to find a hint of those damned rodents and Mike most likely wanting to get out of here. He’d always been the superstitious type.

When the wailing started again on the fourth night, Mike told me he’d get a hotel room if it would persist. I retorted that it was those kids again, but this time he wouldn’t have it.

“Yeah, so you’re telling me there’s some group of kids out there that got nothing better to do in the middle of the night? Two times in a row?”

“Fuck man, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a cat stuck somewhere. I sure as hell don’t believe there are any freaking ghosts!”

Mike grunted but said nothing. For a while, I considered going out there to figure out who or what was causing it, but not long after I drifted off to sleep again.

At this point, we were on the fifth day of renovations. The place was almost barren by now. We’d started on the upper floor first. After that, we’d taken down the partition walls and had stripped down the old wallpaper.

Not knowing too much about renovations myself, I’d followed the old man’s guidelines almost to the letter.

That was my third mistake.

“So, what else you want me to take care of?”

“Well, you could clean the garage for starters and that lawn looks like it hasn’t been cut in months.”

“All right, hilarious Mark,” he said when he saw the enormous grin on my face.

“Tell you what,” I started, “how about we take a bit of a break for the rest of the day. Tomorrow we take care of the floorboards down here and that’s it. God knows those need to be replaced.”

As if to prove what I’d said, I switched my balance a bit, and the floorboards creaked in answer.

“Sounds good, but if we hear any weird noises again, I’m out of here!”

I sighed but nodded. Then I realized something. I had heard none of the scratching today. Maybe our ruckus had driven off whatever rodents had infested the place. I didn’t know a damned thing about mice or rats.

That night we sat together until long after midnight. I’d brought out my old laptop, and we spent the time with some old movies and a bottle of whiskey. Not a sound was heard all night. No more scratching and sure as hell no wailing.

“Told you there are no ghosts here,” I slurred.

“Yeah, whatever,” Mike said laughing.

Taking care of the old floorboards was much tougher than I’d imagined, with a hangover that is. Still, somehow we made decent enough progress and by noon we were done with the first half of the house.

“Guess those rats really are gone, aren’t they?”

I shrugged. “Guess so, not a sound. To be honest, I half expected them to linger below those old boards. Sure hope they stay the hell away!”

We continued joking around and having a good time. It all changed when we found the basement.

As we removed the floorboards in the old man’s storage room, we stumbled upon an old hatch. Once our initial surprise was over we pried it open, revealing a staircase.

“All right man, what the hell.”

“The basement, I guess,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, I ain’t blind, but why the hell’s it hidden like that?”

Things still hadn’t clicked.

“Who knows, maybe he just didn’t use it? Hell, maybe it was infested by rodents so he sealed it off?”

“Yeah, or it’s his secret serial killer basement.”

“Dude, not funny,” I cursed.

“All right, all right. You want to check it out?”

As I looked down the dark stairs that led… somewhere below a feeling of apprehension washed over me. I didn’t feel so sure about my words anymore. Finally, I nodded. We each got a hold of a flashlight and started our descent.

There was no light down there and for a moment I half expected the old hatch to be thrown shut by no other than Old Wilbert himself.

“Shit man, this is creepy,” I mumbled.

“Will you stop? I don’t like this any more than you do.”

Once we’d made it down the stairs, we found ourselves in a small, damp room. It was empty.

“Small, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” I said.

The entire basement was no bigger than one of the rooms above. Wasn’t a basement usually the same size as the house?

“At least there are no rats,” I said.

“Yeah, but this wall here’s kinda weird.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” he started, “look at the moss and the dirt on all the others, this one’s different. Looks kinda new to me.”

Now that he’d said it, I noticed it too. Sure, the wall was as damp as the rest, but there was no moss on it or anything.

I watched as Mike reached out his hand and knocked against the wall.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Shh,” he shushed me.

He went to one of the other walls and knocked there, then came back and knocked again.

“Sounds hollow.”

We both stared at each other.

“You think that’s where the rodents came from?”

A minute later we were down there again, starting to tear down the wall.

After a few heavy hits, the first of the bricks collapsed inwards. I instinctively took a step back, expecting rats or mice to pour from the hole, but there was nothing.

We inched forward, peeking into the hole, and that’s when we realized what this was. The second half of the basement.

Mike had already gotten his flashlight and beamed inside. At first, we saw nothing, but then we saw something on the floor. No, not something.

“There’s someone inside,” I pressed out.

We redoubled our efforts and soon we’d broken down enough of the wall to enter.

The person inside had long grey hair, wore a dirty nightgown and was female. The old woman’s face was frozen into a mask of perpetual terror and she was without a doubt dead.

When I saw the long, bloody scratch marks all over the walls, it finally clicked.

A moment later I was back upstairs and called to police, telling them what I’d found. There was no need for them to tell me the woman’s name. The moment I’d understood what was going on here, I knew who she was.

It was Elizabeth Johnson, the old man’s wife.

We always think we know who our friends are. Hell, I’d known my best friend Martin for the better part of two decades. After what I saw today, however, I realized that I never knew who he really was, and what he’s capable of.

I began working for his company about a year ago. I was a university dropout who was scraping by as a freelancer, hoping to make it big one day, but none of the things I did ever took off. At age thirty, still stuck in the same shitty one-room apartment, I knew things had to change.

One night, when I was out with Martin, after half a dozen beers, I lamented about my situation. Once I was done, he leaned back and told me a few things himself. Things hadn’t been easy for him either, and after his parents had retired, he was forced to take over the family business. He’d restructured it from scratch, and things were finally looking better. Soon he’d be able to make some real money, but for that, he’d need a few helping hands. I looked up when I heard this, not sure what to say. He was selling canned soup at farmer’s markets and fairs. The fancy kind, sure, but was that what I wanted to do? Then I thought about my situation, and I had to admit, there was no way I could refuse his offer.

Things went pretty well. Stable pay meant I didn’t have to worry about rent anymore, and after I’d proved myself over the course of the first few months, Martin put me in charge of our logistics. It was nothing fancy. I took care of our small warehouse, the monthly trips to our supplier, and handled the occasional delivery, or business deals, as Martin called them. While most of our customers bought directly from our market stall, others ordered our product in bulk. As a sign of goodwill and gratitude, we offered to deliver the product in person. Sometimes it meant a slight detour after the market had ended. At others, the customer would arrive right at the market stall. It was business as usual, and I thought nothing about it.

That’s until today.

Martin had sent me a message instructing me to handle another one of his business deals. The customer would come to pick it up in the late afternoon, around the time the market ended. Attached to the message was an image of a cardboard box standing in the middle of the warehouse.

In the morning, I put the box in the van, and secured it between the parts of our market stall. The market was pretty much dead; only a handful of other traders attended it, and few people arrived to buy any product. I had no idea why Martin had sent me here. There was no way we’d turn a profit. Hell, we’d lose money considering the price of gas these days.

The hours passed slowly, but eventually dusk arrived, and the market ended. I was about to pack up when an expensive-looking station wagon came right to the stop behind my market stall. A well-kept older man stepped outside. He had an aura of self-importance about himself, and his outfit must’ve cost more than I made in a month. He scanned the area for a moment before he hurried toward me. As he approached me, his eyes darted around nervously, and he grew more uneasy with each step.

I watched the man curiously. He wasn’t the first weird customer I’d met; Martin always said such things came with the territory. Rural areas in the middle of nowhere were prone to characters such as this.

“Hey there, can I help you?” I asked in the friendliest voice I could muster.

The man’s expression changed to one of disdain, and I could instantly tell he looked down on me.

“I’m here for the delivery,” he said condescendingly.

“Ah, the box! It’s in the back of the van. Quite the order you got there. Stocking up for the holidays?” I asked, in a jolly manner.

The man said nothing and continued to stare me down. While his eyes rested on me, I shuffled around awkwardly before I led him to the market van. When I opened it, and he saw the cardboard box, his expression changed. His eyes grew wide, and a hungry grin appeared on his face. Martin was right, you met the weirdest characters out here. All this over a few cans of soup?

“All right, let me get it.”

With that, I reached out for the box, but saw a corner had been torn open during transportation. Some of the packaging peanuts had already spilled from the hole.

“Shit, I think the box was damaged during the trip. Let me check if everything-“

“That’s no problem,” the man said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure everything’s all right.”

“You sure?” I asked, squirming under the grip of his hand.

“Just carry it over to the car, please.”

He smiled at me, but there was no hint of emotion in it. I nodded, freed myself from his hand, and dragged the box from the van. The man was already at his car, trunk open, waiting for me. With every second, his face changed, and I watched as an annoyed, almost angry expression replaced the smile. Every once in a while, his eyes would dart around, and his hand was tapping against the side of the car as if to urge me to get a move on. I did precisely that. The guy was creeping me out, and by now, I wanted nothing more than to get this entire thing over with. Then the box began slipping from my hands. My steps sped up, and I barely made it to the car before I lost my grip, and it tumbled into the trunk. As it did, the already damaged side of the box tore open. An audible gasp escaped from the man next to me.

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-“

My voice trailed off. Instead of cans of soup, something else spilled from the box. At first, I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Between the mass of packaging peanuts, I saw something white. It was a small white hand that dangled from the box. What the hell?

Before I could even say a word, or ask what was going on, the man threw the drunk shut. I jerked at the sudden loud noise and focused on the man again. Neither of us said a word, and for a few seconds, we just stared at each other in silence. I was bewildered by what I’d just seen, while his face showed a mixture of fear and anger. I was afraid he’d jump me, but then he just pushed himself past me, jumped into his car, and without another word, drove off.

During the long trip back to the warehouse, I tried to convince myself that my eyes had played a trick on me. There was no way what I’d seen was real. It had been a long day, and that guy had been creepy as hell, so my mind had probably conjured up the image. I shook my head, then began laughing out loud, to convince myself how ridiculous the idea was, but even to my own ears it sounded fake and hollow. I’d turned the heater in the car to the max, but even though I felt cold, and shivered in my seat.

The moment I reached the warehouse, I saw Martin already waiting for me. I almost drove right past it, but his face was as friendly as usual.

“Hey man,” he greeted me when I stepped out of the car. “I was just checking on a few things, so I thought I might help you unload everything. How did the market go? Any good?”

“Nah, it was pretty shit. No customers at all.”

“Well, can’t be helped. How did the… business deal go? Did the guy pick up his delivery?”

“Yeah, everything went well,” I blurted out, almost a bit too fast.

A hint of suspicion showed on his face, but it was gone in an instant.

As we unloaded the van, we talked and joked as usual, but the atmosphere was different, tense even. Something unspoken hung heavy in the air, and every once in a while, I found Martin’s eyes linger on me for a tad bit too long. Neither of us said a word about the packaging peanuts scattered in the back of the van. Instead, we unloaded the parts of the market stall and re-shelved the unsold cans of soup. Once we were done, I gathered my things and was about to head to the nearby bus station.

“Hey man, why the rush? Let’s have a drink!” Martin offered.

I was about to decline and get the hell out of there, but a small voice in the back of my head told me that wouldn’t fly tonight.

“Sure, why not,” I answered in as calm a voice as I could muster.

Whit that, we drove to the nearby grocery store, got ourselves a beer each, and settled back in his car. While I stared at the bottle in my hand, Martin took a big sip of beer before he sighed.

“Sorry man,” he finally said.

“What do you-” I started, but when he looked at me, I knew this was about the box.

“You know, I haven’t been quite honest with you. Things haven’t been going well at all. It’s all about online stores nowadays, and most people don’t even go to the weekly markets anymore.”

I nodded.

“After I took over the company, I barely made any money. With Julie and the kids at home, it just isn’t enough.”

Once more, I nodded, trying my hardest to keep the anxiety at bay.

“There was no way I could tell Julie how bad things really were. We’d just bought the new house, and now I couldn’t even pay the freaking mortgage. I was looking for some serious trouble, so I did some research, went to a few trade shows, and talked to some of dad’s old contacts. Eventually, I stumbled upon a few, well, alternate products.”

“And you decided to sell them on the side, right?”

“Yeah.”

We both were quiet for a long while, drinking our beers in silence.

“Never imagined I’d be selling something like that. Freaking sex dolls.”

“Sex dolls?” I blurted out, instantly regretting it.

Martin, however, sighed, before he explained. He’d gotten in contact with someone from Eastern Europe, Slovakia. It was a company that specialized in anatomically correct sex dolls. They were perfect down to the tiniest detail: smooth soft skin, real hair, the whole deal.

“It’s disgusting how close they are to the real deal, but there are people out there looking for just that.”

I took another sip of my beer.

“You’re telling me there was a sex doll inside that box? Isn’t it way too small for that?”

Martin’s face turned dark.

“Well, they make them in all sizes, you know? There are people out there who are willing to pay quite a bit extra for… that.”

I knew what he was implying. Once more, I looked over at Martin. I thought I knew him, and yet… Then I imagined him going home to his wife, tugging his kids into bed, and I felt sick to my stomach.

“Well, I guess it’s time for me to-“

“Hey, sorry again. I should’ve told you about this whole damned thing right from the start. I know it’s sick. Fuck, it’s disgusting, but we’ve all got bills to pay, you know?”

His eyes rested on me, and he was looking at me pleadingly, almost waiting for me to say something, to ask an unsaid question, but then I noticed something else in his eyes, something darker, more sinister.

“Guess you’re right,” I blurted. “I have to go, though. Got almost another hour on the bus before I’m home.”

“Yeah, sure, night man.”

I gave him a nod, exited the car, and made my way to the bus station. With each step, I could feel Martin’s eyes digging into my back. I forced myself to walk as normally and calmly as I could, yet before long, I felt my steps speeding up. I’d waited for his car to drive off, for him to leave, but I heard nothing, and I knew he was still watching me.

When the bus finally arrived, I nearly leaped inside. I was anxious, scared, and had to clutch the seat in front of me to keep my hands from trembling. I should’ve been calm. Martin had explained everything, after all. It was messed up, sure, and probably illegal, but they were just dolls, right? He was my best friend, and I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe him so badly. Yet there was one thing that kept coming to my mind: the image of what I had seen just before the man had thrown the trunk shut.

That small hand, those tiny fingers… if it was nothing but a doll, why the hell had they moved?

This is a story my grandpa told me.

 When he was younger, he worked with the Soviet police, the Militsiya.

He told me many stories about that time. Most of them didn’t have a happy ending. Grandpa admitted he’d done his share of bad things, but he often tried to make people’s life at least somewhat better.

It was a couple of weeks ago that I asked him what his strangest case was.

At the time he told me about a murder case. It was rather tame if you can call a murder tame. I was a bit disappointed since it wasn’t too different from his other stories.

A few days later, however, he approached me. He admitted that he’d lied. It wasn’t long before he told me what the strangest thing he’d ever experienced truly was.

It was something that he called the Prisrak Case.

It all happened in a small town called Krutchshow, in Southern Russia. It was the late fifties, a time of heavy industrialization in the Soviet Union. At the time the Soviets build what grandpa described as factory towns.

I looked up, but grandpa said, most of them are long gone and forgotten.

The principle was simple. First, look for a suitable location for factories or other production facilities. Once these were constructed, cheap living quarters for the workers were built nearby. Krutchshow was one of these towns.

The one thing that was different about Krutchshow was that the region had a history. During the time of the Russian Empire, the area was the estate of a noble family.

The old mansion still stood, but it was vacant and abandoned.

Once the factories were constructed, the old building was renovated and used as makeshift living quarters. They divided up the vast, lavish rooms into small-one room apartments and relocated the future workforce there.

The case started when an old woman arrived at grandpa’s station in Volgograd. She said she was worried about her brother. The man lived in Krutchshow to the south, but she hadn’t heard from him in months. She was too old to visit the small, distant town by herself, so she pleaded the Militsiya to find out more.

Grandpa was the one who talked to her. Krutchshow might have been hours away, but it still fell under their jurisdiction. In the end, he assured her, he’d check it out and made the long trip there.

Grandpa told me he’d heard his share about those factory towns, but he’d never seen any of them for real. Once he arrived, he saw that things were even worse than he’d imagined.

The old mansion was dirty and run-down. People lived in a state of utter poverty. They were either old or migrants from other parts of the Soviet Union that had nowhere else to go. Some weren’t even fluent in Russian.

Needless to say, many were scared when they saw a man of the Militsiya arrive. The Soviet Police had a bad reputation, and there were more than enough reasons for it. People thought grandpa was there to take them away or drive them from their home.

Once grandpa arrived, he found no trace of the man. When he asked around though, no one told him a thing. He actually had to toughen up on them a bit, he admitted with a blank expression on his face.

His first suspicion was that one of the other inhabitants had murdered the old man. He quickly learned, though, how much more there was going on.

It wasn’t just the old man that had gone missing. In the course of the past three years, he learned, more than a dozen inhabitants had vanished.

A person going missing wasn’t strange. The times were hard. People rarely had enough to eat. People running off, going missing, or dying from starvation wasn’t unheard off. A dozen people vanishing without a trace, however, was an entirely different story.

Grandpa informed the local factory overseers as well as his higher-ups in Volgograd, and soon an investigation was started.

They weren’t concerned about the people, of course. All they cared about was their production quota.

For days they questioned the people living in the old mansion, but even now, no one seemed to know a thing. Or they weren’t willing to talk.

An investigation of the building itself revealed nothing. Even consulting the blueprints brought them nowhere. They were old and shoddy.

There was one thing, however, that grandpa had heard from time to time. It was the word prisrak that people mumbled and whispered to one another. Only when they thought he wasn’t listening, though. Prisrak is Russian for ghost or phantom, grandpa said.

Whenever the Militsiya questioned the inhabitants about it, they all pretended they’d never heard about it.

It was clear that something was going on. The Militsiya made plans to move on to some stricter methods of interrogation. Then one of the factory workers finally started talking.

It was an older man, most likely in his late fifties named Dimar.

The man was as scared as anyone else, but he said someone had to talk. He asked the Militsiya for a stiff drink, to which grandpa complied after a moment.

He downed the drink in one go.

Then, cursing, he started to tell the Militsiya about the noises that haunted the building. They’d started years ago. At first, people thought it was someone messing with the other inhabitants? God knows, there’s no shortage of shady characters in the building. Yet, the longer the noises continued and the more often they could be heard, the clearer it became that something else was going on.

The nature of the noises, it was all wrong. At times it sounded like heavy steps, at others like scratching or beating against the walls. Sometimes they echoed from afar at others they seemed to come from right next to you. Occasionally, Dimar said, they originated from rooms long-vacant or empty. It didn’t matter what time of the day it was. You could hear them early in the morning one day, then in the middle of the night.

It was the older woman who first started to talk about the legend of the prisrak, Dimar said.

Whenever the noises start, people freak out. The old women are crying, and even the men are scared. Everyone thinks that the prisrak is going to get someone again.

At this point grandpa, interrupted Dimar, asking what he meant. With a scared expression, he told him that it’s always during the noises that someone vanishes.

Ever since the Militsiya came, the noises happened daily. It’s only a matter of time, the man said, till someone’s taken away again.

When grandpa asked why he didn’t leave, Dimar laughed. Where would he go? He was poor, got no money, and almost nothing to eat. It was the same for everyone else. If they left, where’d they go?

After that the man was quiet. His expression was somber. He said he was never one to believe in ghosts, but with everything that’s happened… Especially now because he talked, he couldn’t help being scared. Grandpa assured the man they’d find out what was really going on there and made sure nothing would happen to him.

It was during the next days that grandpa looked into the story of the so-called prisrak. He didn’t find much. It was nothing but an old urban legend.

The first time the prisrak is mentioned was more than a century ago. Back then, the mansion was still home to a noble family. It was said by many people that the place was haunted. Strange noises could be heard at night, and more than one servant vanished throughout the years. No one could say what the prisrak actually was. Some said it was the ghost of a serf killed by the family, while others say it’s the ghost of a disfigured family member that was locked up in the basement all his life. Yet others say it’s something much older.

It was all nonsense, of course, grandpa said. Nothing but silly ghost stories. The inhabitants, however, believed them to be true.

Grandpa had never been superstitious or religious for that matter. During his years with the Militsiya, he’d learned one thing upon everything else. The darkest and most vile things are always committed by men themselves.

Of course, he didn’t think so without reason. There was one thing that Dimar had said. The noise happened daily, ever since grandpa had arrived. They why had no one of the Militsiya members ever heard anything. It seemed that whatever, or better, whoever, was responsible, made sure none of them were around.

The plan that grandpa hatched was simple. They’d bug the place, storm in when the noises were going on and catch the perpetrator. Of course, that’s not what they told people. Instead, they said they had to do a sweep of the building, to find evidence. Their real aim, however, was to plant a handful of simple listening devices.

It wasn’t anything sophisticated, of course, but it was enough to do the trick.

Once they were done, they only had to wait. The Militsiya divide into two groups. Grandpa and a few others would enter the building, while the rest kept tight surveillance of the outside. The goal was either to catch the perpetrator inside the building or while he tried to flee the scene.

It was only a few hours after they’d installed the devices that the noises started again. They moved out right away.

The inside of the building was in an uproar. People were huddled together in the hallways. Some of the old women were crying and praying. Some of the men even went as far as to accuse the Militsiya of angering the prisrak.

It took grandpa and the rest almost half an hour to restore order. Once everyone was accounted for, they realized that one person was missing, Dimar. Grandpa immediately rushed to the man’s room but found it empty.

A search was conducted right away. Even after checking all the rooms, however, there was no trace of the man. The group outside also attested that they’d seen no one in the area or leaving the building.

For all they knew, the man had vanished into thin air. Just like all the other people who’d gone missing.

At that point, the Militsiya had enough. There was no one someone could vanish without a trace.

They’d checked the place already, but now they planned to do a complete and thorough investigation. There had to be something that could tell them what happened.

The inhabitants were swiftly evicted and put under strict surveillance in a factory warehouse nearby. Some were reluctant, but after a few threats, they fell in the rest.

They went through the building rigorously, from top to bottom. They checked each room, went through everyone’s private belongings, but there were still no hints. Worst of all, Dimar’s room showed no signs of a struggle.

The search took hours. Some started to voice their concerns, questioning if maybe there was more to the story of the prisrak. When the sun dawned, grandpa was about to give up altogether.

That’s when one of the other men noticed something. He’d been in Dimar’s room, rechecking it for what must have been the fifth time. A part of the wallpaper looked a bit strange. It was more darkened than the rest and seemed to hang loosely in front of the brickwork below.

At first, he thought it was due to the buildings lousy condition. When he went closer, though, he noticed something. It wasn’t just the wallpaper that looked a bit strange. The brickwork behind it also didn’t look normal. Part of it looked different from the rest as if it didn’t belong to the wall.

The moment the man touched it, he noticed that he could move it. At that moment he called out to the rest.

They removed the loose part of the wall, and a small entry to the room next door was revealed. At least that’s what they thought they’d found.

When one of them tried to squeeze through, he found himself somewhere else, in a space between the walls.

At this point, another member of the group left the room to compare the inner and outer length of the two rooms. He came to the conclusion that the wall between the rooms had to be almost a meter wide.

They were all equally puzzled and consulted the old blueprints, but the shoddy notes didn’t say anything about the width of the walls. What they learned, however, was that this wall had been part of the original mansion. Sure, a lot of new walls had been added to divide the building, but the old walls were still there.

When they entered the space between the walls, they were even more surprised. It wasn’t a hole, no, it turned out to be a tunnel that continued on for the whole length of the wall. It was easily half a meter wide, which allowed more than enough space for a human being to pass through.

While they explored the tunnel, they found that similar tunnels stretched on through all the walls of the original mansion. There were also more of the secret entryways all over the building. From outside, those were almost invisible and blocked off to make entry impossible.

At this point, it was clear what had caused the noise. It must’ve been someone moving through these tunnels.

When checking out these other, additional tunnels, they found more things. There was an old mattress, stacked between the walls, a chair, and a table and even an improvised cooking area.

It didn’t take them long before they stumbled upon Dimar’s corpse. The cause of death was strangulation, but the man also showed a head wound, caused by a blunt object.

It was clear what must’ve happened. Whoever had been inside the walls must’ve entered Dimar’s room in the middle of the night. Then beat him unconscious, dragged him into the walls, and strangulated him.

Grandpa was quiet for a moment. He’d promised the man they’d make sure he was safe, yet they’d done nothing.

The investigation of the wall tunnels took hours. Ladders connected them to similar tunnels on the second floor, and even entrances to the attic and the basement were found.

Finally, they also stumbled upon a stack of old, rotten clothes and various other items. It didn’t take them long to discern what they’d found. It must’ve been the belongings of the people who’d gone missing throughout the years. They all must’ve suffered a fate similar to that of Dimar. One thing puzzled the Militsiya though, no remains, except those of Dimar, were ever found.

The investigation went on for weeks, but even after harsher methods of… questioning, the perpetrator was never discovered. The only thing they knew was that it must’ve been one of the inhabitants. There were secret entrances to the wall tunnels all over the building, but none of them led outside. So after the perpetrator had murdered Dimar, he must’ve left the tunnels and mixed in with the rest of the inhabitants.

Grandpa said that if they’d more time, they might have figured out who it was. Regrettably, though, the higher-ups didn’t seem to care much about the case. It didn’t matter to them if a handful of workers or migrants died.

In the end, the old mansion was demolished, and people were relocated into a newer, more modern building. Grandpa and the rest left Krutchshow behind and returned to Volgograd.

Grandpa said the case bothered him for years. It wasn’t because people had died, it wasn’t even Dimar’s death, it was something else he’d realized.

There had been a routine to the murders. A person was only killed every few months.

At first, I didn’t know what he was trying to say, but then he reminded me what they’d found in the walls and what they didn’t.

There was a reason for the cooking area, and there was a reason they’d never found any remains.

It was indeed a terrible time, grandpa said, shaking his head and it was indeed an impoverished area.