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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Grand_Theft_Motto on 2025-09-23 14:10:32+00:00.
I don’t know how I managed to fall asleep with all of the noise but I did. It was only briefly, though, and still daylight when something crashed through the bedroom window. I screamed. Jodi put himself between me and the window. There was a rock on the floor surrounded by shards of glass. Another, smaller object thudded through the hole in the window. Jodi bent down to look at it and then jumped back.
“What is it?” I asked, leaning over.
“Don’t look,” he shouted.
I’d never heard him raise his voice like that before or sound so freaked out. He kicked the thing away then threw an old t-shirt over it but I still caught a glimpse. I told myself I was seeing things but it looked like a finger with a cracked, gnawed nail.
My fears were confirmed when a hand shot through the broken window, the arm slicing itself deeply against the shattered glass. The hand had four fingers and one fresh, red stump.
“Open the door, Jodi,” came a singsong voice from the hallway that almost sounded like mom. “Be a good little boy and open the door.”
The last three words came in a growl that didn’t sound anything like our mom.
I screamed when more glass fell from the window. A second arm was reaching inside. A third arm appeared, and then a fourth, and then the window was full of arms. They squirmed like worms in a jar, pushing against each other and cutting themselves to the bone on broken glass. Thin rivers of red blood and black liquid dripped and puddled on the floor. Jodi sprang to the window, turning over the nightstand and using it to press back the arms.
“Open the door,” said a deep voice from the hall.
“Open it, open it, open it,” demanded another voice, this one high-pitched, almost hysterical.
More voices joined in from both the doorway and outside of the window. Hands grabbed at Jodi, tearing his shirt and scratching his face. I was crying and shaking, huddled into a ball with my knees in my chest. Not knowing what else to do, I started to pray, a nonsense prayer that was half-nursery rhyme, half-whatever I could remember from the last time we went to church the past Christmas.
Something laughed in the hallway but the hands pulled back and the knocking stopped. Jodi wedged the nightstand into the broken window, blocking off as much as possible. Then he began clogging it with dirty laundry, strips of torn curtains, and anything else he could find in the room.
When he was finished and the window was as secure as he could make it, Jodi sat on the bed and sobbed. It was the first time I could ever remember hearing my brother cry. It was so shocking that I stopped crying and sat next to him, squeezing him in the tightest hug I could manage.
“We’ll be home soon,” I said. “We’ll be home soon. Home. Home. Home.”
Jodi stopped crying almost immediately but didn’t move other than to return the hug. We sat there together for a long time watching the cracks of light that slipped through the window barrier darken and shrivel as the day crept from afternoon into dusk.
It sounded like the end of the world on the other side of the door. Mom and day continued their party after we barricaded ourselves in the bedroom. I heard them singing and stomping all over the cabin. Dad began alternating between laughing like a madman and howling. Mom would just sing over him, violently off-key. There was one moment when I heard one of them scream, I couldn’t tell which. The scream was loud enough to hurt my ears and sounded so full of pain and terror that I started sobbing into Jodi’s shoulder. Thankfully, the shrieking didn’t last long before the singing began again.
Things got worse as the night went on. The noises coming from the rest of the cabin grew louder and spread out until mom and dad sounded like an entire crowd having a party. Music started playing; at first, I thought dad had charged the speaker but this music was too close, too blaring, and too big to be coming from a little device. If it wasn’t impossible, I would have thought there was a band playing. I heard flutes or pipes, violins and horns, and so, so many drums. Jodi and I had to plug our ears when the music and the party sounds got louder and louder.
The drumming was so noisy it took me a long time to notice that someone was banging on our door. Banging and banging and banging hard enough to make the bed that was pushed against the door shake.
Jodi held me while I cried. I cried for a long time, maybe hours. I cried for mom and dad and begged them to stop and sobbed until my throat was sore and my voice was gone. Then I cried just a little more. At some point, I might have fallen asleep for a few minutes but a new sound woke me up. Or, a lack of sound.
The cabin had fallen silent.
I looked at Jodi. He was staring at the door.
“What’s going on?” I whispered.
Jodi just shook his head.
There was something heavy about the silence. I joined Jodi in watching the door and began to get the impression that someone was on the other side. Maybe a lot of someones. The image of a cabin full of people, absolutely stuffed wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, came suddenly into my mind. I pictured them all smiling the same mad smile as the bronze bust, all staring at the bedroom, with mom and dad both pressed against the door by the flood of people-things. In my mind, my parents were smiling the widest of all.
I would have screamed if my throat wasn’t too raw to let it out. Jodi held onto me until I stopped shaking. The silence dragged along like a body being pulled into a ditch.
“Mommy,” I sobbed into Jodi’s chest, my voice a faint croak. “Daddy.”
“It’s okay,” Jodi promised, rubbing my back gently. “We’ll be home soon. It’s okay.”
I shuddered. “Mommy. Daddy. Mommy. Daddy. Mommydaddymommy.”
“Hey, Cara-bear. Hey, you have to breathe, okay? Cara? Cara…first question: are you a person, a place, or a thing?”
Jodi repeated the question until it finally broke through my sobbing.
“I’m a place,” I rasped. “I’m anywhere but here.”
“Cara…you have to stop giving me answers before I ask. You’re terrible at this game.”
“You’re terrible,” I said, not quite smiling but nearly.
We played twenty questions back-and-forth until the first gray light of sunrise came through the curtains. It stayed silent in the cabin the entire time. After I’d calmed down and was on the edge of sleep again, I finally released my grip on Jodi.
“Cara, I’m going to open the door to-”
“No!”
He put a finger to his lips. I didn’t realize that I had shouted.
“I’m going to open the door, just a crack, to see what’s going on,” he said. “Help me slide the bed back but be ready to shove it back if I say so, okay?”
My hands were shaking when we moved the bed. Jodi took a deep breath, unlocked the door, and then opened it gently, silently. After a moment with no sounds from the other side, he pressed his eye to the opening.
For the first time in my life, I heard my brother scream. Jodi jerked his head back, kicking the door closed. He shouldered the bed back into place on his own, then pawed for the door’s lock, fumbling several times before finally getting it to click.
“Jodi?”
He sat with his back against the barricade, trembling.
“Jodi, what is it? What did you see?”
My brother shook his head and didn’t answer. He was crying. I sat next to him and hugged him. Jodi hugged me back. It took almost ten minutes for him to stop shaking but when he did, his eyes were clear and he looked steady.
“We have to leave,” he told me.
“But mom and dad-”
“Cara, we have to get out of the cabin. We will wait in the woods for Uncle Roy to get back. He should be here today, I’m guessing this morning since he’s an early riser when he’s fishing.”
“Can’t we just stay here and wait for him, then?”
“No. Because he might not be back until this afternoon. Or even tomorrow if the fishing is good. And we don’t want to be in this cabin another night. I can’t be in this place another night. Even with us locked in here, I’m sure it’s safer outside. Maybe we can grab the keys on the way out and hide in the car or, heck, I can even drive us away if it comes to that. We just have to leave. Do you trust me?”
“Always,” I said, immediately.
Jodi smiled. “Okay. Here’s what we are going to do: you remember Blind Man’s Bluff, right?” I nodded. “Good. Before I open the door, you are going to close your eyes shut and keep them closed until I say you can open them.”
“I’ll trip.”
“No, I won’t let you fall. I’ll be right with you, holding your hand. Just follow me but, whatever you do, do not open your eyes until I say so, alright?”
I tried to keep the tremor out of my voice and mostly succeeded. “Okay.”
Jodi smiled and kissed the top of my head, then slowly began sliding the bed away from the door.
“Cara, one more thing: if I say, ‘hide,’ you open your eyes and you run for the forest and you find the best hiding place you can, okay? And don’t come out for anyone but me or Uncle Roy.”
“How will you find me?”
“Cara, did you forget? I’m the undefeated hide and seek champion. I’ll find you. I promise. But unless I tell you to hide, you need to-”
“Keep my eyes jammed shut,” I finished for him.
“That’s right. Get ready.”
I took a shaky breath and closed my eyes. Jodi slipped his hand into mine and gave me a comforting squeeze.
“Steady,” he said.
I heard the scrape of the bed moving the rest of the distance o…
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