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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Secret_Information88 on 2024-09-09 17:32:06+00:00.
People always find it so funny that even though I’ve lived in the same place since I was born, thete are roads probably only a couple of hundred meters away from my house that I’ve never been down. That wouldn’t be a big deal if I lived in London, but I’m from a tiny litttle town, really a village, where everyone knows each other. I won’t say which one for obvious reasons, but it’s in the English county of Surrey, and it’s boring.
I don’t really know why I don’t explore my own town much, but my mother thinks it’s an aspie thing. I know where to go, and I just go there. Going to the park for a kickabout? Head left then go straight. Train station? Head left then take another left. School? That was Bus Stop B; head left and take a right. We weren’t far from the epicentre of our town, if you could call it that, and as far as I was aware there was nothing on the other side apart from a few rows of semi-detached houses. Of course, that was before I met Luke.
Luke moved over from North London three years ago, when we were both fifteen. His parents were one of so many couples who decided to move out of London during COVID. They moved in summer so Luke could settle in before starting sixth form, which if you’re not from the UK is basically the last two years of school and the only bit that’s optional.
Me and my two mates, Tom and Liam, met Luke in the park on a swelteringly hot day, inviting him to join us for a kickabout that only lasted about twenty minutes before we surrendered to the heat and sat in the shade, pumping him with questions as rural kids inevitably will when encountering anyone new. He was a fun guy to be around, the kind of guy who would never take the piss out of you for no reason but would roast you back mercilessly if you tried to do the same.
We walked back to his parents’ house with him and I found out that he was only a couple of roads away from me - we were neighbours. His road was quiet and peaceful, with nice cars on the driveways and slightly bigger houses than down our way. I didn’t tell Luke that I’d never been down his road before. He had a PS5 and his parents were really nice, so we decided to stick around and texted our parents to say we’d be back late. We played FIFA for a while in a round robin, and when it wasn’t my turn I alternated between watching and looking out of the window.
The house directly opposite his caught my eye. It looked slightly older than his parents’ house, with fading brickwork,but that wasn’t what drew my attention to it. Even though it was still a while until sunset, someone was systematically closing every window on the front-facing side of the house. I saw the same arm, its owner obscured behind net curtains, reaching out to close each window before making a hand movement that quickly interpreted as locking it. This strange little ceremony started in the living room, then progressed to the kitchen, then there was a pause - I interpreted this as the occupant going to the back windows to do the same - then it resumed upstairs. Before long, every window in the house was closed and locked, the curtains closed, and the house dead. After about twenty minutes, I saw a very faint glow coming from the living room windows. The occupant had turned the lights on.
Everything about this felt wrong. For one, we were in the middle of a heatwave. For the last few nights, my room had transformed into a sweaty hotbox and I’d lay awake, uncomfortably melting. Not to mention that this was in the height of COVID, where people were keeping their windows open in the dead of winter let alone a boiling summer evening. I stared at the house for a few moments, wondering how stuffy and uncomfortable it must have been at the moment.
“Luke,” I said, nudging him as he played. “Who lives across the road?”
“Which one?” he asked, not turning around as he skillfully moved past the defence as Mbappe. “The one with the big oak tree outside or the one with the red curtains?”
“Red curtains.”
“Don’t know. Got a look at him once. Old guy. Beard. Keeps to himself.”
“Does he always keep his windows closed? Curtains drawn?”
“Yeah, does it every night,” he said, pausing the game and looking at me with that excited look people give you when you’ve noticed the same thing they have. Tom, who by all accounts was about to concede a goal as Juventus, gave a little ‘what the hell’ shrug. “I’ve watched him a couple of times.”
“Must be boiling in there,” said Liam, his attention now drawn to the window. But he turned away. Liam never had a great attention span. I kept staring at the house. It had signs of life inside; after about twenty minutes, a faint light came on in the kitchen, then went off after a few minutes. I kept watching the house as the sun started to set, then my attention got diverted as Tom nudged me to tell me it was my turn.
For one reason or another, I find it very easy to get fixated on something and much harder to take my mind off it. I’ve got mild Aspergers and self-diagnosed OCD, so take your pick. From there on, whenever I went round to Luke’s house, sometimes with the others and sometimes alone, I’d stare at the house and watch the little pre-sunset ritual. It was clockwork; always around twenty five minutes before sunset, even as summer drew to a close and night fell earlier and earlier. Luke hadn’t taken as much of an interest in it, but he was polite enough to indulge mine. He’d seen the man a few times now, and told me that he got a food delivery every three weeks or so but that was the only time he saw him leave the house. One Saturday morning in September, I managed to get a look at this firsthand.
The delivery driver was waiting at least three or four minutes when the door opened. An older man, in his late seventies maybe, opened the door and walked straight out onto the threshold. He looked like he’d had a few hard years; his skin, even from across the road, looked rough and coarse. His hair was dirty grey and too long for a man his age, coming down to the nape of his neck. He had a thick, ragged beard of the same unsightly colour. He was wearing a vest that showed off a surprisingly wiry physique for a man of his age as well as some mildewy-looking pyjama bottoms.
What really stood out about him, though, were his eyes. Even from my distant vantage point I could see that they had a burning energy about them, and the delivery driver - who’d no doubt been about to voice a complaint of being kept waiting for so long - visibly took a step back. The old man’s eyes never left the driver as he picked up the shopping, then promptly retreated inside, closing the door immediately behind him. The driver, taken aback, paused for a few moments and took off, heading out the gate much faster than he’d entered.
As the school year started and the seasons took a slow slide from summer, to autumn, then finally winter, my attention waned when it came to Luke’s strange neighbour. His window routine became just another thing happening in the background, just like everything else that could happen in a nothing town like ours.
That was until a month ago.
Luke and I, now gangly eighteen year olds, had been at the pub celebrating our last exams. Our ‘A’ Levels (a major set of tests that happen at the end of the sixth form and basically determine which university you can get into). We’d gone back to his to have a few more beers and play some of his newer games. In the three years since the two of us had first met, Tom had moved away and Liam had fallen in with some of the rougher kids at school, thinking he was a roadman and giving us a wide berth.
It was getting late and I was thinking of going home. I had my phone resting on the windowsill and I grabbed it to check the time I saw a figure running full pelt down the road. It was the old man, moving with a speed I’d have barely thought credible, his movements seeming to match a younger man. He ran until he got to his house, slamming the gate behind him before unlocking the door in record speed and squeezing himself into it before closing up. I summoned Luke over silently and we watched the house for the next twenty minutes, neither of us saying a word, too gripped by fear to make a sound. A few lights went on in the surrounding houses, probably people woken up by the loud closing of the gate and the door, but the old man’s house stayed completely pitch black and silent.
“What the fuck was that?” Luke said, breaking the deathly silence.
“What was he running from?” I asked, knowing how freaked out my voice sounded.
“There’s an Alsatian a few doors down,” he said, scanning the street. “Big beast. Bad temper.”
“If you run from a dog, it’ll chase you,” I replied, my eyes fixed on the house opposite. Still no signs of life.
“Liam?” he asked uncertainly.
“He’s a little shit but he wouldn’t mug an old man.”
“What about his mates though?”
“I don’t think so.” My voice was tense, hollow. I had a horrible feeling on my mind. We sat there for half an hour, scanning the road. Then I headed back, looking up and down the street. An eerie silence fell over the whole place and I shivered in spite of the hot summer night. All the house lights were off now down the road, the occupants deciding to sleep now the commotion had passed. I got to my parents’ house and turned in, my sleep uneasy.
I woke up around noon - hey, you did it too when you were on summer holidays - and headed downstairs, deciding that I …
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