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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/11velociraptors on 2024-11-29 21:16:54+00:00.

I (33M) live in Texas with my daughter, Alicia (8F) and my son Jay (4M). Their mom has been out of the picture for the past two years (not dead, just a piece of shit) and I’ve managed pretty well as a single father. The three of us lived in a two bedroom in a nice neighborhood, I’ve got a solid job, and the kids are thankfully healthy. 

Everything was smooth sailing until one night, two months ago, in which I was awoken by Jay poking me in the face. He was sobbing violently, though I recognized it as the “I’m afraid” kind of crying as opposed to the “I’m hurt” kind of crying, which made me a little less worried. Jay’s always been nightmare-prone, so I assumed that’s what was causing him distress. When I asked him what was wrong though, he said:

“The man in the next house is making scary faces at me.”

I’d heard my fair share of Jay’s stories about monsters terrorizing him from the dark corners of his bedroom, but this was something new. I assumed he meant our neighbor’s house, and the lack of fantastical elements in his description made me uneasy. It felt too specific to be one of his usual nightmares. 

I got out of bed with Jay in tow and walked to my kids’ room. Alicia was awake in the top bunk. From the soft glow of their nightlight, I could see her crossing her arms and scowling down at her little brother. I didn’t turn on any lights to give myself a better view of the outdoors and peered out the bedroom window. Their window had curtains on it, but for once they hadn’t been drawn all the way, and there was a small opening between them through which Jay must have looked out.

One side of the neighbor’s house (the one to our left if you looked at the front of our house from the street) was visible from Alicia and Jay’s room. There were two windows on the neighbor’s side of the house, but it was too dark inside to see anything. I recalled from what I’d seen in the daylight that the window on the left, the one closest to the front of the house, was the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what the window on the right was as it always had its curtains drawn.

I asked Alicia if she’d seen anything, and she shook her head. 

“He’s always having nightmares and crying. I don’t want to share a room with him anymore, Dad. I never get any sleep—it’s not fair!”

Of course, hearing that made Jay start crying again, so I let him sleep in my room for the night. He has this TMNT indoor “camping” tent that he prefers to his actual bed. Honestly, at that point, I half-suspected his nightmare to be a ploy to get me to let him “camp.” Anyway, I guess I’m a total pushover because he slept in that tent in my room for the next two nights. On the third night, I was again woken up, but this time by Alicia, who was standing over me and shaking my arm. That kid hadn’t woken me up in the middle of the night for years. When I asked her what was wrong, she said: 

“The neighbor was making faces at me.” 

Those words, and the fear in my daughter’s voice, really put me on edge.

“I closed the curtains when I said goodnight. Did you open them?”

“Only a little … but it’s 'cause I heard a weird noise.”

“What did you hear?”

Alicia couldn’t recall exactly. According to her, she had gotten out of bed to see what was going on, and when she lifted the curtain, she saw a light on in the neighbor’s window. The curtains in the back room had been drawn back and our neighbor was standing in his house, right up against the window frame.

“What was he doing?”

Alicia thought for a moment, and then made an expression I never want to see on my child’s face, or anyone else’s for that matter, ever again. I won’t do it justice by describing it, but it looked something like this: first she smiled with both sets of teeth, so that there was a little open sliver between the rows, and then she furrowed his eyebrows. She inclined her head towards me, kind of Kubrick-stare-esque, and strained the muscles in her neck. The worst part though was what she did with his hands. She held out her left arm, forearm up. Then she clenched her right hand into a fist and moved it back and forth rapidly over her forearm. Poor thing described it as “playing the violin”, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that my neighbor was pantomiming cutting. Disturbed, I told Alicia to stop, and to not make either the expression or the gesture again. I was angry and confused. My neighbor, a man in his 40s, was a bit of a recluse, but he had seemed normal enough in the three or four times I’d spoken to him. I couldn’t fathom why he would do something like that to my kids.

After asking Alicia a few more questions, I realized that my neighbor might not have done anything technically (or at least legally) wrong. It wasn’t against the law to make inappropriate gestures in your own home, but it seemed like he was targeting my kids specifically. Legal or not, I planned to have a little chat with him the following morning.

My last question to Alicia was if our neighbor had made any other gestures, and she nodded. Then, she started making beckoning, “come-here” motions with both of his hands.

I had Alicia sleep in my room for the night as well. I also checked out the window in my kids’ room, but like before, I saw nothing. The house was completely dark.

The next morning, before work and after dropping Alicia and Jay off to school, I spent a good five minutes knocking on my neighbor’s front door. I figured he was home since his car was in the driveway, but he never answered the door. Eventually I had to leave for work, and as I was walking away, I turned around quickly to see if he was watching me. He was, the coward—I saw him for a split second at the front window before he ducked beneath the sill and out of view. Clearly, the guy had problems. I yelled out to him to stop fucking with us and then left. 

That same night, I put a plan in motion. While my kids slept in my room, I hung out in theirs. It was a Friday night, and I was ready to pull an all-nighter so that I could catch my neighbor in the act. Although I trusted my kids, I wanted to confirm that there was actually something nefarious going on before I escalated things. I made sure the house was locked up and all the curtains drawn, tucked my kids in, and sat on the floor under the window in their room. At around nine, I started marathoning Midnight Mass on my phone. I didn’t want to wear headphones and miss any strange sounds, so I kept the volume low and mostly read subtitles.

At midnight, I started to hear strange sounds. Like Alicia said, it’s a bit hard to describe—best I can do is that it was this low, repeated clicking sound. You know the “chk-chk” sound you make to beckon a horse? It was something like that. All I knew is that the sound was undoubtedly coming from a person. After a few minutes of this, the sound switched to what I think was supposed to be a whistle, but it came out all wrong, like someone sucking breath in through their teeth. The sound was so crisp that the neighbor’s window must have been open, which was an unsettling thought given that there was only around fifteen feet of space between our houses.

Certain that the neighbor was at his window, and that this was my best chance to see him, I stood up and pulled the curtain back in one motion. I saw him right away. There was a dim light on in his room, allowing me to see that horrible expression Alicia had made the night prior. It was one thing to see my child’s recreation, but it was far more frightening on an adult. His window was indeed open, and his arms were stuck out into the cold night, violently swiping against each other in a grotesque mimicry of self harm. 

When he saw me, and realized that he was looking at another grown man and not some poor child, he stopped his erratic motions. His cartoonish grin faded and another, more genuine emotion settled over his features: rage. 

The man grabbed the window and slammed it shut, then closed the curtains with the same forcefulness. I let my own curtain fall. I was a little shell-shocked, I think. Of course, I was perturbed by the sight of the man, by his face and his movement and the fact that he’d been doing that for who knows how many nights now in an attempt to frighten my kids. However, another detail stuck out as even more concerning to me, which was the fact that I genuinely wasn’t sure if the man I had just seen was my neighbor. I’d seen him so few times in the years I’d lived in that house, and I was having trouble conjuring up his face. 

I sat on the floor for a minute, my blood thundering in my ears. I definitely had enough evidence at that point to call the cops, right? Just as I was about to pull out my phone, I heard a tremendous smack against the glass of the bedroom window. 

After a brief hesitation, I pulled the curtain back again. There were no lights on in the neighbor’s house, and there was also no one outside from what I could see. I pulled the curtains back a little further and saw a handprint in the top corner of the windowpane. It’s worth noting that our house is on a raised foundation and that particular window is very tall, so even though the window is on the first floor, the man outside would’ve needed an insane vertical to get his hand up there. 

I pulled out my phone and dialed 9-1-1. As I explained the situation to them, I quickly walked around the house to see if I could catch a glimpse of the man. My last stop was my bedroom. Once inside, I locked the door…

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