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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ChubbyDom on 2025-05-21 12:35:03+00:00.

Martin James Lawrence was born on August 15th, 1939, and died on June 12th, 2010. He was my mother’s brother, Uncle Marty, as I knew him.

Growing up, Marty was like a second father to me. My own dad had walked out fifteen years into his marriage, leaving Mum with two kids and a broken heart. But Uncle Martin stepped in. He taught me to swim, to ride a bike—all the typical dad stuff. He even helped me practice asking out my first crush in Year 8. He must’ve known I was hopeless, but he gave me the confidence to try. (Emma didn’t reciprocate, but the attempt alone helped build my confidence.)

Beyond just me, Marty was my mother’s rock during her worst years. He helped with bills, cleaning, cooking—whatever she couldn’t handle on the bad days . He babysat me and my sister when Mum needed space. He was always there, patient and kind. I used to think we owed him everything. Without him, I might’ve turned out a confused, bitter person.

I idolized him. I wanted to be half the man he was.

Now? Now I know better.

Mum passed a few years before Marty, leaving just me and my sister, Rosie, as his last dependents. His will split everything between us—no hidden fortunes, just a decent-sized house that’d net us a tidy sum once sold.

After hanging up with the solicitor, I called Rosie. She and Marty were never close. Even as kids, she’d look right through him, never outright hostile but… uncomfortable. I figured she resented our dad and Marty took the brunt of it. When I told her about the inheritance, I asked if she’d help clear out the house. She refused—too busy with her own family. Fair enough. But part of me had hoped we could reconnect over old memories.

Then, when I mentioned going alone, her tone sharpened. Rosie’s practical; she argued we should just hire professionals. Logically, she wasn’t wrong—we could afford it. But it felt  cold. Marty deserved more than strangers boxing up his life.

I decided to handle it myself. I booked a week off work—figured it would take three or four days, max, depending on how much effort I put in. More than that, it was a chance to properly say goodbye to Marty, to lose myself one last time in the house that held so many of my treasured memories. After Mum passed, we all grew apart. Every now and then, a worn-out postcard would show up at my door, but life has a way of getting in the way. Regretfully, I didn’t see much of him in his final years.

One thing about my uncle: he was obsessed with the sea. His home was a shrine to it, ornaments of weathered driftwood, paintings of storm-tossed waves, the salt stained smell of old nautical charts. He spoke about the ocean with a reverence most people reserve for religion. I always chalked it up to him romanticizing his days in the Royal Navy. God, the stories he’d tell. Battles spun like scenes from an action movie, near-death escapes so vivid you could taste the salt and gunpowder. On those uncertain nights, his voice was a lifeline. I’d be perched on the edge of the sofa, hanging on every word until the very end. Even Rosie, usually buried in a book, would peek over the pages just as the story reached its climax. Being older now and having a much better understanding of history I see now much of these stories was hyperbole but I imagine he was just stretching these tales to keep our young minds engaged. He never did tell us the story that resulted in him leaving the Navy.

For as long as I knew him, my uncle worked at the local post office. Just clerical work, forty hours a week behind the counter, servicing customers with a tired smile. But if you asked about it, he’d deflect, steering the conversation back to the sea with some anecdote or obscure fact. The ocean was his real life; the post office was just the thing that paid the bills.

None of that seemed important at the time.

But it would be. Soon.

Let’s begin now with my first and only night in that house.

I arrived around midday, the bungalow looked worse than I remembered. Its best years were long behind it, peeling window frames, paint bleached by the sun in some places and eaten away by damp in others. The garden had surrendered to the weeds, green fingers pushing through the cracked paving stones leading to the front door. That door, once a rich brown, was now grayed and warped, like driftwood left too long on the shore.

Letting myself in, I expected a wave of warm nostalgia to wash over me. Instead, the house greeted me with a cold, sterile silence.

Everything looked virtually the same, yet not quite right. The air smelled of dust and something faintly mildewed, like old books left in a damp cellar. A thin layer of grime coated every surface, except for what you might call the ‘essential’ areas the armrests of his chair, the small side table beside it. Those alone looked recently wiped, as if he’d only just stepped away.

The paintings hung slightly off-center, each one crooked in its own way. The whole place felt like a crude imitation of the home I remembered, uncanny in its near-perfect preservation. Unsettling, like walking into a museum diorama of someone’s life. I told myself I’d warm up to it eventually.

Most of the day passed uneventfully. I worked carefully, handling his prized possessions with deliberate gentleness as I packed them away. The smaller items didn’t take long. Soon, boxes lined the front room, filling the space where my memories had once been.

As I worked, a growing sense of foolishness settled over me. This wouldn’t take nearly half the time I’d allotted. And something still felt… off. The house carried a quiet wrongness I couldn’t place.

Then, near the end of the day, it hit me: I’d never actually been inside my uncle’s room. He’d always kept it locked. I remembered how sharply he’d scolded Rosie once for once entering there. It was uncharacteristically harsh, his voice cutting through her nervous laughter. She never spoke of what she saw in there. The rest of the house had been ours to roam, but that room? That was his alone.

I stared at the door. Even now, it loomed just as tall and intimidating as it had when I was a child, that forbidden threshold I’d never dared to cross.

It stood slightly ajar.

I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry, and stepped forward with the cautious pace of someone expecting to be caught. Any moment, I thought I’d hear his voice boom down the hallway: “What do you think you’re doing?”

But as I crossed the threshold I was met with silence.

The deeper I moved into the room, the heavier the air became. The ghost of tobacco began to seep into my nostrils. A cold sweat prickled at the back of my neck. Why did this room feel different? Worse? Like the walls themselves were holding their breath?

As if drawn by some unseen cue, my gaze locked onto it, a small tackle box jutting out from beneath the bed frame. At first glance, its pristine condition suggested ordinary contents. But why would Marty keep something so cared for hidden away? The rest of the house languished under layers of dust, yet this box gleamed as if tended to daily.

After picking up the box and playing it upon his worn out bed. Sitting beside it the springs screeched at me as the mattress settled. I was overcome with a wave of trepidation as I began to unhook the latches on the box. Opening it I was met with a sight that left me confused. It seemed to be a memory box, inside were several objects.

The first thing that caught my eye was the shine of gold. A wedding band. Strange, I thought. My uncle never married, or at least, he never mentioned doing so. When I was growing up, he was far too busy with us to make his own family. It was one of the many things I’d been thinking about while packing up his life. Then I began to feel even more uncomfortable as I inspected the ring. It felt familiar, like I’d seen it before. Of course, it must have been my mother’s.

But that didn’t make sense. Im sure she had been buried with hers. I remembered feeling conflicted about that; it was one of the requests in her will. After all, Dad had gotten up and left without so much as a word. Why did she care so much that it stayed with her?

Uncle Marty never held his tongue when speaking about him. Would mutter things like “ungrateful, undeserving bastard” if Dad was ever mentioned in conversation. Mum would always just look away and keep quiet.

Other items in the box included a small key. I dont know what it opens and I dont think I want know. There was a worn wallet too, but as I noticed it, my eyes caught what lay beneath, photographs. Some were so faded the faces seemed familiar but just out of memory’s reach. I sifted through them: me, Rosie, Mum. Even one of Mum and Dad together, which I flipped past quickly. After cycling through the stack, I turned back to the wallet. That same nagging familiarity, though I still couldn’t place why.

When I opened it, everything twisted into sick, perfect sense.

It was my father’s wallet. His driver’s license stared up at me. His credit cards. The wedding band. No. I grabbed the photo of Mum and Dad again there it was, glinting on his finger as his arm draped around her shoulders. What the fuck is going on? Why did Marty have this?

Then I turned the picture over. The writing crawled across the back like something once alive: “She was never yours. Always mine. Now all you have is the waves above your weary head, and I have them.”

This man, for reasons I’ll never understand. Murdered my father. Stole his life, stole his …

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