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redditnosleep · 6 years

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Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, and Whatever You Do, Do Not Let Her Inside

by AllDreamNoDrive

I walked through death on my way to Cam’s house.

Above me, skeletal trees lined the road, reaching their crooked branches towards the dark, wet sky. Their green leaves had already turned red, then yellow, before falling about the street in piles. It was almost winter. Whatever the wind hadn’t blown away rotted on the sidewalk, squishing under my sneakers.

I pulled my jacket over my head. We had some nasty weather recently, but this was by far the worst. The kind of night that caused accidents, flooded rivers and threw trees onto telephone wires. There was no doubt in my mind— bad things happened on nights like these.

Thankfully, Cam only lived seven houses down from mine. I knocked on his front door.

A few seconds later, I heard his muffled voice on the other side. “Who is it?”

“Uh, it’s Matt,” I said. “Open the door! It’s freezing out here.”

The lock clicked and the door swung wide, revealing Cam’s apologetic face. “Sorry,” he said, “I guess our neighbor saw somebody prowling around the neighborhood. My mom’s freaked. She’s making me ask ‘who is it’ every time somebody comes to the door. So annoying.”

“How do you guys have a mail slot but not a spy hole?”

“I dunno, it’s retarded. C’mon, I’m almost done setting up.”

Inside, a Monopoly board lay open on the dining room table, stacks of multicolor banknotes stuffed under the edges. I could smell melted cheese coming from the steaming pizza box on the counter. Rain pitter-pattered on the kitchen skylight. Cam’s mom hurried around the house, late for her work function. Between fixing earrings and stumbling into her shoes, she thanked me for coming over and told us not to do anything stupid. “And make sure the doors and windows are locked,” she said before leaving. “You know Delores saw a strange person standing in her front yard last week.”

“Yeah well, Mrs. Delores believes in mermaids, Mom!” Cam shouted towards the back door. He waited for the mechanic hum of the garage door shutting. “I think my mom’s been watching too much Criminal Minds,” he said. “She even tried calling my sister’s friend to come babysit.”

“... Katie?” I asked, hopefully.

“Really?” Cam rolled his eyes. “One: she’s way older than you, and two: she didn’t answer anyways.” We sat down at the table. “I mean, we’re thirteen. Not like we need protecting, right?”

I shrugged. “I’m ok with it. Especially if it’s Katie.”

Cam shook his head. “Gross dude. Delores is actually crazy though,” he added. “I bring in her garbage can every week. Once she told me that her grandma is a bloodsucking alien.” He chuckled and dumped out a bunch of silver tokens on the table. “Let me guess. You’re gonna be the thimble.”

“Got me,” I said, grabbing the piece and placing it on the board.

As Cam sifted through the pile of tokens, I looked around at the walls around the kitchen. Several huge Alaskan crabs were pinned up on plaques, arms outstretched like giant armored spiders. I always thought it was kind of bizarre, but Cam’s dad was a career fisherman and liked his trophies. My attention returned to the table as Cam slammed down the silver scottie dog token onto the board. He crossed his eyes. “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” he said in a mock Dorothy voice.

It was about an hour after we started playing and the game was heating up. Cam had just landed in jail, when somebody knocked on the front door. It wasn’t a normal knock. More like a heavy pounding— slow, calculated. From where I was sitting at the dining room table, I could see the door. The knock came again.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Me and Cam looked at each other with wide eyes. We thought it was the cops.

But after a few seconds and still nobody called Police!, we got up hesitantly and tiptoed towards the door. Cam put his ear against the wood and listened. He must not have heard much of anything, because a moment later he asked, “Who is it?” Pause.

“It’s me,” came the eerie voice from the other side.

If our eyes were wide before, now they were dinner plates. Me and Cam just looked at each other, unsure of what to do. “Who?” Cam asked again, shakily.

“It’s me. Your mom. Open the door.”

The voice was strange and halting. Like the body it belonged to hadn’t breathed enough air to speak, but still tore the words from their lungs. I couldn’t even tell if it was actually a woman. For that matter, I couldn’t even tell if it was... human. Whoever was on the other side of the door, it wasn’t Cam’s mom.

Cam backed away from the door. “You’re not my mom.”

“Yes. Yes I am. Open up.” The door handle wriggled.

I put a hand to my chest— my heart was thumping a million miles a minute. By the sound of Cam’s voice, so was his. He spoke loudly, trying to hide the tremble in his words. “Go away. You better leave now, we’re calling the cops!”

We stood there, still as statues. Silence.

“Check the window,” Cam hissed, after a few minutes.

I looked at him bug eyed. “You go check the window!”

“I can’t hear anything. I think she’s gone. Go check.” Cam gave me a little shove. “Don’t be a pussy,” he added.

I slapped away his hand and gave him a scathing look, but still got down on my hands and knees, crawling towards the bay window. The wooden floor felt cold on my palms. As I neared the window, Cam flicked off the lights. Reaching up, I pulled aside a corner of the pale muslin curtain and peeked outside… at first, I didn’t notice anything.

But then—

There, at the corner of the driveway. A figure. Barely illuminated by the yellow glow of the light above the garage. It stood so still that I almost mistook it for a shadow. I squinted, but the harder I looked, the more its shape seemed to waver in the rain. I couldn’t see a face, but I could just make out a mess of long, black hair. All of the sudden, it turned around and walked away.

“See anyone?” Cam whispered. He had crept up to the window.

“Somebody at the end of your driveway. They walked down that way.”

“Fricken’ wierdos in this neighborhood, I swear.”

“We should call the cops,” I said. I was honestly shaken.

Cam protested immediately. “No way. It was probably nothing,” he said, trying to brush it off. “The cops would come, ask a bunch of questions, call my mom. Can you imagine? She wouldn’t let me leave the house for the rest of the year. Besides, it was just a joke— did you hear that voice? Think about it. Nobody talks like that.”

“Yeah, exactly. You were scared too.”

“What, do you think it was… a zombie? A phantom?” Cam stretched his arms and pretended to be a ghost. “OooOOooooO… let me in child, I must suck on your brain!” He laughed. “Don’t be dumb. Let’s finish the game. I just bought Boardwalk. I bet you just don’t wanna play ‘cause you know you’re gonna lose.”

Well, he was partly right. I really hated losing.

Soon enough, we were back into Monopoly and had nearly forgotten about the whole incident. Still, I kept peeking at the door, half expecting to hear the loud knocks at any minute… but they never came again. Towards the end of the game, I was pretty much convinced that the person I saw was just another neighborhood prankster.

As it turns out, I ended up winning. Cam was livid. The entire time we spent putting the game back into the box, he couldn’t stop talking about how “cheap and unfair” it was. I just laughed. We were just about to fold up the board, when I happened to glance at the front door again—

And dropped everything I was holding. I stumbled back into the table.

“What is it?” I heard Cam ask, urgently. He sounded far away.

A set of scrawny fingers had opened the mail slot in Cam’s front door. They rested on the inside, holding ajar the small brass cover. Through the tiny rectangular slot, a face looked into the house. It was smiling. It was looking straight at me.

I tried to scream but the sound caught deep in my throat. I flailed a pointing finger towards the door. Cam rushed over, just in time to see the face and fingers retreat out of the mail slot. He ran over to the window and peeked outside. I crawled into the kitchen and hid behind the countertop. A moment later Cam crouched next to me.

“Ok, that was really creepy,” he said. “I didn’t see anyone out there.”

“I’m calling the police, Cam.”

“Yeah, alright. Yeah. Good idea. You call, my phone made it into the laundry, remember? ”

I pulled out my phone and put it on speaker. It rang twice before the operator picked up.

911, what is your emergency?

I talked as fast as I could. “Hi, um, we think somebody is trying to break into the house, we’re alone, can you send somebody quick?”

Who is in the home with you?

“It’s just me and my friend Cam, it’s his house, we’re both thirteen, his parents are out working, can you hurry please?”

Are you at 1408 Berryrock Road?

I looked at Cam. “Yeah, that’s it,” he said out loud.

Ok. I’m going to give you some directions, please listen very carefully. Are the doors and all the windows locked?

“Yes, we think so,” I said.

Ok. Unlock the front door.

I hesitated. This seemed like an odd request. Cam gave me a quizzical look. “Um, what?” I asked, tentatively.

Unlock the front door.

Cam piped up. “What? No way, I don’t see any cop lights out there yet. We’re not gonna do that.”

Do it. Open the door.

“Who is this?” Cam demanded. “We called 911, who is this?”

It’s me. It’s your mother. Open up now, sweetie. Open the door.

I smashed my phone against the floor and threw it over the counter. I’m not ashamed to say I felt like crying. What was going on? I was sure I dialed 911. How was this possible? Cam rubbed his face in his hands. He was just as rattled. “Ok, ok, ok. What do we do, what do we do?” he said to himself.

“When is your mom supposed to get back?” I asked.

“I dunno, I dunno… she said late. What is happening? I am seriously freaked out right now.”

“What about your dad’s gun cabinet?”

“It’s locked. I don’t know where the key is. He hides it somewhere. We could look for it in his room…” Cam wrinkled his brow and looked around. “Hey, do you hear that?”

“Huh?” I held my breath and listened. The wind blowing, creaking the beams of the house. The throbbing, heavy rain. And something else, slightly louder. A slow tapping. Sharp, like a fingernail against glass. It came from the ceiling. I looked up.

Above us, a woman crouched over the skylight, face against the glass. At least, I think it was a woman. Her black hair lay splayed out, writhing across the window. Her cheeks gaunt, eyes sunken far back into her skull. Her fingers tapped on the window. She smiled. She licked the glass. She didn’t look real. I thought I was hallucinating.

But Cam saw her too. He screamed.

The next thing I knew, we were running down Cam’s hallway. We burst into his room, slamming and locking the door behind us. I was trying to calm my breath. I could feel my asthma acting up and I didn’t bring my inhaler. Cam started pacing back and forth. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” he said, over and over again. “Oh my god.”

We barely had time to catch our breath before we heard the tapping again. Closer this time. On Cam’s bedroom window. The blinds were closed, but somehow she still knew we were in there. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Lightning flashed outside. For a second, her grotesque silhouette spread across the window.

“Here.” Cam was pushing something into my hands. A bat. “We need to get away from the windows,” he said. He was holding a knife, the blade gleaming red in the light of his oozing lava lamp. “Hurry!”

Cam ran into the hallway. I followed him into the bathroom at the end of the hall. It didn’t have any windows. He turned off the light and locked the door. We both crouched in the long tub, hiding behind the curtain. The baseball bat shook in my grip.

“I don’t think she can get inside unless we let her,” Cam said. “Right? Otherwise she would’ve already broken through window, right?”

I nodded numbly— I couldn’t say anything. I was too scared. But I hoped he was right. At least we couldn’t hear the tapping anymore.

For a long while we crouched there. I don’t know exactly how long. It’s hard to get a sense of time, when you’re terrified and all you have to count is your breath. It could’ve been minutes or hours, but at some point, we heard the front door creak open and swing shut. Slowly.

Footsteps throughout the house. Cam and I tried to be quiet, tried to slow our breathing. The footsteps came closer, and closer, until they stopped right outside the bathroom. The door jiggled. A moment later, the lock clicked. I held the baseball bat as tight as I could. The light flicked on.

“Cameron?” came a female voice.

I got ready to swing. My muscles tensed. Cam raised his knife.

A hand pulled aside the shower curtain.

It was Katie.

We almost beat up Katie.

“Jesus!” she shouted, taking a step back. “Holy shit, are you guys ok? What’s going on?”

“Katie,” Cam said frantically, “how did you get in? Did you lock the door? Please tell me you locked the door!”

“Calm down, I locked the door. I used the key your mom gave me. Sorry, she left a voicemail asking me to keep an eye on you tonight. I just got it and came over to check. What’s the matter? Your neighbor said that she heard screaming.”

“Oh my god, somebody’s been trying to break in, we called the cops but…” Cam began to say, before pausing. “Wait, our neighbor heard us screaming? Which neighbor?”

“Your new neighbor. She was standing outside when I pulled up. Came over to check on you too.”

“Wait Katie, wait. Our new neighbor? We’ve had the same neighbors since I was six.”

“Oh, really? You should ask her yourself then.” Katie opened the bathroom door completely and looked out into the hallway. She seemed confused.

“Hmm, that’s strange,” Katie said, “she was just behind me…”

#creepy #horror story #mysterious figures #author: AllDreamNoDrive

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