Reddit Collection (Fresh-Short #9) by DeYtH Banger (ebook reader with highlight function .txt) 📕

me once. It was still just barely drivable but had already won prizes. He spent all his free time working on it.

The last couple of days the truck that he drove to work had been sitting in the driveway when I left in the morning, but the following day it was gone. That same evening, the new noises started.

It was around 5 P.M. I was on my computer, when from upstairs I heard what could only be described as shuffling. Like something covered in cloth was being dragged across the floor in short bursts. Then the sound of something heavy, like a big dresser, being moved. More shuffling. I heard the phone ring multiple times, but nobody picked up. A few minutes later, I could hear Jack slam the front door shut and walk towards the garage. As he passed by my window, I looked outside.

Now, I have to say that Jack was not a man who cared a great deal about the way he looked – his hair was grey and disheveled, his clothes often had holes and oil stains and I had never seen him even remotely close to clean shaven – but this, this was different. There was something unnerving about his gait, but I couldn't put my finger on what exactly was wrong. Arms hanging at his sides, he was looking up into the sky. I couldn't see his face, but for a moment it looked like his mouth was wide, wide open... was that his tongue bulging out, swollen and black? No, of course not, it couldn't be...

I closed the curtains and locked my door. Never before had Jack frightened me.

That night, I woke up from screaming upstairs. Not frightened screams, or calls for help, but angry. A man's voice, loud, shouting in rage. I couldn't make out any words. Was it Jack? I stumbled out of bed and fumbled around in the dark for my clothes. Not really knowing what to expect, I looked around for something to defend myself with, and grabbed a knife from the kitchen. With shaking hands I called the police on my cell, ran upstairs and beat my fist against the door.

There was no answer. The house was dark and silent. Jack's truck was there in the driveway, cold, sleeping. After a little while a police patrol drove by, and I talked to the officers briefly in the driveway, but they left after looking around outside and not finding anything out of the ordinary. Useless cops. So useless. I turned around, and the house loomed in front of me like only houses in the dark can. I thought I saw movement behind a curtain.

After an hour or so I crawled back into bed. I did not sleep. I just laid there, quiet as a mouse in the dark with my covers up to my eyeballs, listening for any noise or movement upstairs.

There was only silence.

Thankfully, I was not scheduled to work the next day. It was late summer and a lovely day, but I was afraid to go outside. I did not hear Jack all day – however, the phone rang multiple times. Nobody picked up. I spent the day with millions of thoughts running through my head, jumping at every little sound the house produced, kitchen knife never out of reach. Had there been a knock on my door that day I would probably have suffered a fatal heart attack.

Nightfall brought a sense of despair. I did not see anyone walking by my window that evening, but through my curtains I saw the lights come on in the garage. I started to wonder whether I was losing my mind.

Sleep came late, and when it did, it was filled with terrible dreams. It was one of those long nightmares that you never really seem to be able to get out of. In my dream, Jack was standing by my bed, looking down at me. I remember his face – foreign, cold, filling me with a deep feeling of dread. And then, something had roused me from my sleep. I looked up and that lingering feeling of dread escalated into paralysing fear, violently wedging an icy spear into my spine – because for a few terrifying seconds Jack was right there, mouth open so impossibly wide, like a ghostly image burned into my retinas from looking into bright light. I screamed, and the vision faded away. Just then, as if something upstairs had heard me scream, a response came in the form of a heavy thump. Something rolled across the floor. I think I cried.

Looking back, I think that was the turning point for me. Everything about this was so, so wrong and I couldn't continue letting this happen, whatever it was. I needed to not be scared anymore. This needed to end. When dawn finally came after what seemed like an eternity, I looked outside and felt my heart skip a beat when I saw something moving around in the lit garage. This was it. It had to happen now. I needed to know the truth. I grabbed my trusty kitchen knife and climbed out my bedroom window, which was not visible from the garage.

Crouching, I sneaked around to the front door and held my breath as I turned the smudged brass knob. It wouldn't budge – the door was locked. Is it possible to be both relieved and disappointed at once? My sweaty hand tightened around the handle of the knife as I went around the side of the house. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins, eyes in the back of my head like a startled deer. Please-don't-let-him-see-me-please-don't-let-him-see-me.

The kitchen window was open. It was open... I still remember every terrible detail so clearly. After picking together the last bits of courage I could muster, I stood up and looked inside. The fluorescent light over the sink was on. I could see that the refrigerator door was slightly ajar.

Then... The smell. That awful, disgusting stench, wafting out through that window slit. And there, on the floor, next to the broken dishes... God help me.

I did not go back inside. I didn't stay. I drove away, and I called the police from my car. I did not want to gamble on that thing, whatever it was, staying put in the garage until the police arrived. I drove until I was too tired to drive any further, then I pulled in on a side road and slept.

I never went back to the house.

A few days later, I found the article in the local newspaper. It stated that a 58-year old man had been found dead in his home on 112th and Dunsmuir. Cause of death was unknown. An autopsy was going to be performed. Foul play had been ruled out, however. The coroner estimated that the man had been dead for about three weeks before he was found by his tenant. It also spoke of some unusual findings around the property, especially in the unattached garage, but I did not read any further.

The worst part is, sometimes when I wake up I can still see Jack standing beside my bed, draped like a blanket over something far more dark and sinister.

A terribly creepy story

 by Igloo444

 

 

The following is a story my grandpa used to tell me before he passed away, I thought r/nosleep might be able to appreciate it. This story is really long, so if you don’t want to read the full story, I’d suggest skipping the first two paragraphs (disclaimer: I’m not a WWII buff and I’m just telling this story the way I remember hearing it, some dates/locations may be slightly off):

 

My grandpa was a British infantryman in the Second World War. He was only about 19 years old when he enlisted to serve his country, and while he thought that joining the military would give him opportunities to see exotic locations around the world, he was never deployed to Tunisia, or Italy or the Pacific, instead he ended up practically in his own backyard—Switzerland.

 

This is just some historical information, but it’s important to understand before reading the rest of this story: Switzerland did its best to maintain “neutral status” throughout the war. But regardless of its attempts to maintain neutrality, Switzerland was still highly sought after by both the allied and the axis powers. Once the Nazis began committing acts of aggression against Switzerland, England provided reinforcements to the Swiss military. Yet, in an effort to prevent open war within its borders, the Swiss government instructed its military (and subsequently, the British reinforcements) to perform a series of tactical retreats into the Alps. That’s how my grandpa found himself stationed in a remote village in the Swiss Alps.

At this time, it was early in the winter of 1943, and my grandpa’s company was stationed in a secluded village of about 500 people. Part of the advantage that they had with this location was that it was really hard to get to and therefore had little chance of being spontaneously invaded by Nazi Germany, but this was also a disadvantage because it made communication with the rest of the Swiss military very difficult. The issue with communication was further compounded when sometime in early December, a series of blizzards swept through the region and completely destroyed the few lines of communication that they had in the first place.

So, essentially trapped in this isolated Swiss village without being able to make contact with the rest of the army, my grandpa’s Captain decided it would be best to uphold the standing orders and continue defending the village.

Weeks passed. Any roads to the outside world were buried in 7-9 feet of dense snowfall, and any telegraph/phone lines that they had were equally useless. It grew deeper into winter, the leaves were stripped from the trees and the bare trunks protruded from the mountainside like broken ribs. The town was nestled between two large mountains, sunlight only directly reached the town for a few hours each day, making the soldiers feel as if they were living in a state of perpetual dusk.

 

One night my grandpa was at the town bar with a few of his friends from the company, and a group of locals approached them, one of them in particular was visibly upset. All of the Swiss people in the town grew up speaking German, and none of them were used to having Brits around, so one of them began shouting in broken English:

“Where… take you… the children?”

 

Luckily, one of the guys my grandpa was drinking with spoke fluent German, and was able to act as an impromptu translator. After several minutes of confusion and yelling, the “translator” turned to my grandpa and the rest of the soldiers and said:

 

“They say some of the village children have gone missing. They want us to do something about it.”

Now obviously, the British military doesn’t exactly act as a bunch of “mercenaries for hire,” so my grandpa and his friends told the villagers to come back to the “Headquarters” (really just a makeshift barracks that they had thrown together in the town’s church) to talk to the Captain.

 

Due to the language barrier, the villagers’ discussion with the captain took about two hours. And basically what the Captain and his self-designated translator were able