This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Eastern_Ad7411 on 2025-10-24 15:45:46+00:00.

People often tell me that the stories my family carries could fill a book or a whole TV series. Sometimes I agree. Sometimes I still don’t believe half of what we’ve lived through myself.

This story is one of those. It’s something that happened to my father when he was just a boy, in the same small town where The Whistling Man story took place.

He told it to my siblings and me one night, his voice trembling, his eyes distant, like he was seeing it unfold all over again.

“Take it how you will,” he said. “But it’s something I’ll never forget.”

When my father was a kid, he was one of nine children, he second youngest. He was small, quick, and restless, always wandering around the neighborhood or by the river, finding things to do when the house felt too loud.

He used to tell us that back then, life was simpler. The houses were spread far apart, the streets unpaved, and most homes didn’t even have electricity. Only a handful of people had televisions, those old black-and-white sets with dials you had to twist just to find a channel.

One of those people was Don Julio, a quiet man who lived near the riverbank. Every evening, he would open his window so the neighborhood kids could watch the flickering images through the glass.

It became a ritual: as the sun sank, the kids would gather outside his window, sitting in the dirt, whispering, laughing, their faces glowing in the dim light of the TV screen.

“We didn’t even care what was on,” my father said. “Just watching those moving shadows felt like magic.”

That Friday afternoon started the same way. Except the sky darkened faster than usual. Clouds rolled in from the east, swallowing the last of the sun. The air felt strange, heavy, charged, like something was waiting to happen.

Tomas, the boy who lived next door to my father, nudged him.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “If it gets dark, my mother will kill me.”

The other kids nodded and began to scatter. At that time, there were rumors going around, children disappearing, strange figures seen by the river at night. Nobody knew what to believe, but everyone was careful to get home before dark.

Tomas asked my father to walk with him. But my father refused.

“I didn’t want to go home,” he told us quietly. “My dad had just come back from the army. He drank all day, and he was mean when he did.”

He thought for a second, his expression tightening.

“So I stayed behind. I told myself if it got too late, my mom would come get me anyway.”

He watched the TV a while longer, though he wasn’t really paying attention. His thoughts drifted like the river nearby.

Then Don Julio leaned out the window.

“Mijo,” he said softly, “creo que es hora que te vayas a tu casa.” (Son, I think it’s time you head home.)

My father nodded.

“Está bien, Don Julio.”

He picked up his old soccer ball and started walking. He saw Don Julio close the window, the light flicker out. The air seemed to thicken the moment that light vanished.

But instead of heading home, my father sat down by the riverbank, just a few steps away from Don Julio’s house. He wanted to wait, to breathe, to stay out just a little longer.

He told us that the moon that night was bright enough to touch the water. It made everything glow in that pale, yellow-white light, like the world was half awake.

He said the sound came suddenly.

A scream.

Sharp. High. Terrified.

He jumped to his feet. His first instinct wasn’t fear it was curiosity. Maybe someone was hurt. Maybe a dog. Maybe… he didn’t know.

He started walking toward the sound, soccer ball tucked under his arm. The scream came again, closer now, echoing between the houses.

That’s when he saw movement—something breaking through the bushes that lined the river.

A woman.

Completely naked.

Running.

Her hair wild, her skin glinting pale in the moonlight.

“I was a kid,” my father said, his voice catching. “I didn’t understand what I was seeing. My body just… moved on its own.”

He dove into the tall grass that grew along the river’s wall, flattening himself against the dirt. Through the blades, he could see her stumbling, her bare feet slapping against the ground.

And then he saw why she was slowing down.

Blood.

Dark streaks running down her legs, pooling from a wound in her stomach. With every step she took, a red footprint bloomed on the dirt.

She was just a few meters away when the bushes behind her rustled again.

A man emerged.

Also naked.

Holding a knife.

“I’ll never forget that knife,” my father said. “It looked like it belonged in a kitchen, but longer, heavier. He was holding it like he’d used it before.”

The man caught up to her easily. My father pressed his face into the ground, watching through the grass, frozen.

The woman turned, he said she made a sound that didn’t even sound human anymore and the man drove the knife into her back.

She fell forward, screaming.

He kept stabbing.

Over and over, until the screams turned into gurgles, then silence.

The only sounds left were the man’s ragged breathing and the faint ripple of the river.

My father said he didn’t move. Not when the man pulled the knife free. Not when he stepped over the woman’s body and disappeared back through the bushes.

He stayed there, face down in the dirt, too scared to breathe, until he was sure the man was gone.

Then he ran.

He ran the whole half-mile home, barefoot, still clutching his soccer ball.

When he burst into the house, his mother was there. His father wasn’t.

She was lying on the floor, bruised and silent, a wet cloth pressed to her lip.

She asked where he’d been. He told her everything. Every word.

She cried, angry, afraid, and relieved all at once. Angry that he’d been out so late, sad that he’d seen something so horrible, and thankful that she hadn’t gone looking for him that night.

Because she realized something my father had too:

If she had come to fetch him, she might have been the one bleeding by the river.

The next morning, police came to the house. The story had already spread. A woman’s body had been found near the river. They questioned my father. He told them what he saw.

The newspapers wrote about it a few days later. They didn’t use names, just called her “la mujer del río.”

There were others after her, bodies found in similar places, always near the water. It took years before they caught the man.

“He wasn’t from our town,” my father said. “They said he worked at a ranch not far from there. Quiet man. Friendly. Nobody would’ve guessed.”

He stared off when he said that, eyes dark, hands trembling.

“I used to think about her,” he said. “About how she ran. About how close she was to me. About how I didn’t do anything. But I was just a kid. What could I have done?”

When my father finished telling us the story that night, there was a long silence. The room felt small. Heavy.

His eyes glistened in the dim kitchen light.

And then, almost too casually, he said,

“Who wants ice cream?”

We all nodded, still trying to breathe.

That was that.

But the image of him, this big, fearless man, suddenly small again, stayed with me.

It explained so much.

Why my father, who once hunted crocodiles in Florida, who caught snakes with his bare hands, who made us jump from high rocks into the river for fun… was terrified of the dark.

Why even now, as an adult, when he asks me to go somewhere with him at night, I don’t ask questions.

I just grab my keys and go.

Because I know what the dark has already shown him. And I know some things, once seen, never leave you.

Sometimes, when we sit outside on warm nights and I hear the faint sound of the river in the distance, I wonder how many ghosts that water carries, screams, footsteps, whispers, echoes of what my father saw.

And I understand why even the bravest men keep one light burning.