Something’s Terrorizing Our Neighborhood And It’s All My Fault

I live in a quiet suburb in Missouri.

The street I live on is what you’d picture when you think of your typical, all American family. There is never much action going on out here, everyone knows each other and gives the friendly wave as they pass down the street in their car.

It’s important that you know this before judging what happened next.

We were a safe neighborhood.

*

I had just gotten home and was exhausted after a long day of work. I didn’t feel like making dinner, so I planned on ordering takeout from a place that delivered.

I whipped out my phone and googled Chinese restaurants near me. A new one that I have never heard of popped up, so I figured I’d try it out.

I flipped through the channels on TV as I patiently waited through each long ring. The sound of static muffled through the other end of the phone. I cursed my cell reception, and called back three times until I finally got through to a person.

A woman with a strong Asian accent rattled through the phone, “You call for service?”

“Yeah. I just need white rice, crab Rangoon, and orange chicken.”

The woman on the other line made a few clicking noises, then quickly hung up without saying anything else.

How rude.

She didn’t even ask for my address! I went to dial the number again.

This is where things started getting…weird.

There was no ring tone. I tried calling a few more times, and each time the line picked up saying, “This number is not in service.”

The hanger was getting the best of me, so I decided to call a different place at this point. Just I was about to dial the next closest Chinese place, I heard a noise that startled me.

BANG, BANG, BANG.

Someone was at my front door. I glanced at the clock on my stove and realized that only five minutes had gone by.

I peered through the peephole of my door and saw an Asian girl standing outside. She had pale skin, short black hair, and a big smile on her face. Now the peculiar thing about her was that she was looking straight up in the air, as if she were stargazing.

I hesitantly cracked open the front door and peeked my nose out. The gold chain on my front door only gave me a few inches to peek out, but that was all I needed to see that she had the goods. She held the bag of food up in the air with a huge smile plastered across her face.

“Um. Hi… How much do I owe you?”

I tried to get her to answer me, but she just kept standing there, looking straight up into the sky with that smile on her face. I closed the door, undid the chain, and proceeded to invite her in.

“So, is this food free, or…?”

A laugh escaped my lips, a clear sign that I was joking, but she still stood there, in the same position as before. I was unnerved at this point, so I grabbed the bag from her hand, and handed her a ten-dollar bill, thinking that would do.

She just kept standing there, though. I felt my patience dwindling, but I figured she had some type of mental issue, so I nudged her along towards the door – then shut it.

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something so eerie about that girl.

She almost seemed as if she was a body with no soul. I know that sounds harsh, but if you would have been the one standing in the foyer with her, you would have felt the same way.

Everything went back to normal after that. I carried on with my night, ate my food, and then I started to get ready for bed.

That’s when I heard the second knock at my door.

It was around 9 PM.

I peered out the window and there standing on my stoop with her head held high into the sky was the same girl.

Immediately, I had this gut wrenching feeling.

They always tell you to listen to your gut feeling, and I wish I would have.

I was worried about her well-being, though. She looked to be in her teens, and I wasn’t sure if she ever went home after leaving my house. I did what I thought was the responsible thing, I invited her inside to let her call her parents.

As soon as she was inside, things got a little stranger.

She continued to look up with her chin held high with that damn smile on her face. I would try and ask her questions, but my effort was met with silence.

“What’s your name, hun?”

Silence.

“Are you lost?”

Silence.

“Do you want to call home?”

Silence.

It was starting to get late, and I felt bad kicking her out on the street. It was obvious she had some sort of mental issue going on, so I was trying to be a good Samaritan; I offered to drive her home.

To my surprise, she ran out of my house as soon as I offered. I peered out of the doorway, and she had practically vanished, so I shrugged it off and went to bed.

I thought my trouble with this girl was over, but I was wrong.

I awoke in the middle of the night to a tapping noise. I tossed and turned in the night. The tapping grew louder and more persistent, I thought it was just the wind from outside.

I rolled over to grab a glass of water from my nightstand, when I noticed it. The faint outline of someone standing outside my bedroom window.

My eyes were foggy from my slumber, so it took me a minute to adjust. I rubbed the sleep away from my crusted eyes, blinked a few times, then looked back to the window.

A shot of adrenaline pulsed through my veins.

The girl was back.

She was standing at my window staring at me, but as my eyes adjusted in the night, my face turned as white as a ghost.

She wasn’t just standing there staring at me, her back was to the window, and her head was bent all the way back – she was staring at me from upside down.

There are no words to describe how creeped out I was by now. I got out of bed to confront her, but the girl ran away before I could make it to the window. I made sure all my doors were locked, then fiddled under my bed to make sure my baseball bat was nearby.

I didn’t know what I was dealing with at this point. This girl wasn’t just sick in the head, she had an evil presence that followed her.

I spent the rest of the night with one eye open.

The next morning, I saw five cop cars lining the road; something our small street wasn’t used to. I flopped on my slippers, threw on my robe, and tried to pace myself without looking too eager as I made my way to the neighbor’s house.

A group of neighbors were gathered in the street by the time I had noticed what was going on outside.

My next-door neighbor, Bud, had already beat me to the scene. He stood in his boxers and white under shirt with his coffee mug in hand as the whispered gossip started to spread.

“Hey Bud, what’s going on over here?”

“Don’t got any idea, Sam.”

My eyes got wider as I saw the two paramedics wheeling out a gurney with what looked to be blood soaked stains covering a white sheet.

Bud took a short sip of his coffee, then groaned as he popped his lower back.

“Well, I’ll be damned, Sam. I’ll be damned.”

I’ll say this one more time. Our neighborhood was a safe place, nothing like this ever happened.

I couldn’t help but think it was the girl who did this. She was so young though, how could she have done something like this? Why would she have done something like this?

I had no answers at the time, but I was going to find out.

Eventually, the sun kissed the moon goodnight, and darkness fell upon us. I peered out my window at the empty street before me, the street that once had people walking their dogs and children riding their bikes till the street lights came on. Now those same street lights seemed to not glow bright enough.

Things were different, our once carefree neighborhood was now on edge.

I triple checked the locks on all my windows and doors that night.

Good thing I did, because I awoke to a jiggling sound at my front door. I got up out of bed and searched for the baseball bat that I kept hidden under my bed. My fingers danced along the carpet below my bed until I felt the wooden exterior of the bat.

I slowly walked to the front door, but before I could open it, the jiggling stopped.

My heart was thudding against my rib cage, my fingers were growing sweaty around the bat, and a nervous pee snuck up in my bladder. I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath this whole time, so I let out a long blow of air. Whatever was pulling at my front door knob had gone away.

I turned to head back to bed, gently twirling the baseball bat in circles as I walked down the hallway, through the doorway, and into my room.

Then I froze – there was something in my bed.

My eyes met with a lump underneath the covers. I squinted my eyes and prayed that my mind was playing tricks on me in the dark. I tiptoed towards the lump in my bed, ready to confront whatever was under there.

I pulled back the blanket, and out popped the girl, with that smile on her face and head staring straight up.

“Who are you?! What do you want from me?!”

She continued to sit there with her head held up in the air, not making a sound.

“You murdered my neighbor! Didn’t you?! ADMIT IT!”

Again, I was met with complete silence from her.

It felt like time was ticking slowly by, what was probably a couple of seconds felt like an hour. Then, before I could manage to spit out another assault, she slowly started to bring her head down.

What I saw next still gives me nightmares. I wish I could wash my brain of this memory, but it’s flooded in there forever.

Her black sleek hair fell across her shoulders as her chin lowered to me. Her white pasty skin almost glowed in the dark of the night, her mouth was gaping open and all I could see was the back of her throat, a black hole that was all consuming, then her nose; finally, her eyes locked on mine.

She stared at me with wide eyes. Something was off about them though; they looked like they were misshaped, then it hit me.

A cry left my lips as I took in her mutilated face; her face was upside down.

“Why?!”

The smile on her face contorted into a wide toothy crack.

“Do. You. Think. I’m. Pretty?”

Her voice resembled the sound of a pull string doll.

I noticed a knife dangling from her hand, so I picked up my baseball bat to swing. Just as the bat approached her head, she lifted the knife in the air, splintering the baseball bat before my eyes.

Shit. What was this thing I was dealing with?

“What do you want from me? Why are you here?”

The girl cocked her head to the side, a few clicking noises escaped her gaping mouth, then she gave me an emotionless answer.

“You. Called. Me.”

The feeling of one hundred centipedes ran down my backside when I saw that she was talking without moving her mouth. That wide gaping mouth had sound coming out, perfect annunciated words without even a twitch of her lips.

I could feel the droplets of sweat forming around my forehead. Was this thing even human? Suddenly, she lunged for me, and I was pinned to the ground.

“Do you want to play with my warm insides?”

She started to make that clicking noise again. Her white bony fingers started to scratch at my stomach, and those wide eyes stayed locked on my face.

I was frozen, like some internal force was holding me against my will, or perhaps it was fear that had a hold of me. Either way, I laid there as solid as a rock before I finally threw myself at the girl.

I reached for her neck and gripped my sweaty fingertips around her windpipe. She tried to hang onto life as the last few bits of breath escaped her black hole of a throat, then she nodded off. I felt for a pulse, nothing. I waited a few minutes, then checked her pulse again, still nothing.

Relief washed over me, but that didn’t last for long. My muscles contracted and turned to stone as a faint noise filled my ears.

Click, click, click.

The noise filled my ears as the onset of paranoia began. Wait, she was in my room just a minute ago…she was dead…she was laying right there. I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest.

Click, click, click.

I felt a pair of cold hands cover my eyes from behind.

Click, click, click.

Before I could let out a scream, I heard three hard knocks on my front door, then a turn of the knob.

“Hello, Sam? Everything ok in here?”

It was Bud.

Click, click, click.

The noise was vibrating in my ear. I felt the icy wrath of the girl consuming my body, and I knew that if I didn’t do something soon, I’d surely be the next one on the news. I did the only thing I could do in that moment, I screamed.

“Bud! Get out of here, hurry!”

In an instant, those cold hands left my face and the clicking noise ceased. The house became silent. I could hear my heart beating against my sternum, and my breath was as loud as a wind storm as I contracted my lungs in a panic.

I stood there for a couple seconds in a bout of confusion. What had just happened? I looked around my room, but saw no trace of the girl.

“Bud? You there?”

Silence.

Could this have all been a dream? Did my screams wake me up from my impending nightmare? I had no other conclusion to draw besides this. I still couldn’t shake the feeling of those bony fingers around my body, and those clicking noises radiating throughout my ear canal.

I paced back and forth as I tried to draw a conclusion on what to do. I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. I ran my fingers through my hair and looked up to the ceiling. I had an idea.

*

The next morning, I awoke to red and blue lights flashing outside my window. I had a jolt of electricity run through my abdomen as that dreadful feeling filled my head. Please don’t be who I think it is. Please, please don’t let it be who I think it is.

Bud was found dead in his house.

My insides twisted in grief as I knew what had happened to him, it was that girl, and it was my fault for bringing her to our street. I swore from that day forward, I wouldn’t let anyone else die on my street.

I knew what I had to do.

I created a fake Chinese restaurant on Google in hopes that someone else will call that number, that someone else will summon that girl to their neighborhood.

I haven’t seen that girl in awhile, so I’m guessing my plan worked.

If you have ordered Chinese recently, I’m sorry, really, I am.