u/Civil-Ship-1444

I find it hard to put into words when and how this nightmare started.

I moved with my wife, Sarah, to the other end of the country, which took a major toll on our social life as well as our marriage.

God, I wish I hadn’t accepted this job in the first place.

We were the social sort. She worked at a law firm, and I was a welder. Out of the blue, I got an offer to relocate and resettle at another site for three times my income. After discussing it with Sarah, we decided that I would take the job and she would find whatever work she could around here.

Everything was okay for the first few months, but life started to get dull. This place is somewhat small, and there isn’t really much to do around here that doesn’t become boring after a while. The lack of novelty took a toll on our marriage. I began to dread coming home from work and would take extra shifts just to delay going back to the house as much as possible.

Every day, I would sit for an hour in my truck on a secluded part of the road, just smoking and pondering. When I did come home, I prayed that she would be asleep so that I wouldn’t have to deal with her cold shoulder and snarky remarks.

And I thought that was bad.

A few months ago, we talked, and she decided to join some artsy club that one of her friends from work goes to. I was happy that this would finally get her out of the house and maybe calm her down for the time being. How I wish things were like before. How I wish we never came here.

So she joined this “club.”

At first, she genuinely looked happy, and I was glad that she managed to find some friends. She became happier and happier until she started becoming more dismissive and secretive about what they were doing.

One time, I asked, “Hey, what do you actually do?” and she just gave me this angry, bitter look before suddenly changing her mood and saying, “I will sign you up and you will see.”

This caught me off guard.

From that point, she went back to her happy, warm self. At least, so I thought. She would call me at work and ask about my day, which she hadn’t done in years. I would come home to large, well-made dinners. My favorite movies would be on TV. I would think about a gift for my birthday, and she would get me the exact thing I had imagined without me ever telling her.

Suddenly, my life turned from hell to heaven for seemingly no reason. I would still stop by the deserted road, only to cry tears of joy and wonder what the hell had happened. Not that I was offended or angry that it had.

Her intimacy also became something out of this world.

I took a major cut to my pay so that I could spend more time with her. I swear, each day I came home, she was more and more beautiful. And those weren’t subtle changes either. One day her hair would suddenly grow and turn lush and strong. The next, I could swear she was thinner and more muscular.

She spent a lot of time in her study making strange figurines for her art club. They looked dark, with strange runes carved into them. Supposedly, it was for some art world they were building. At least, that’s the core of the project.

I don’t know what material she used to make those figurines, but my head started to feel strange whenever I spent time in the house. I had this weird feeling as if they were looking at me. Sometimes I would hear faint whispers. Sometimes they would somehow move from one spot to another, even though I was alone in the house and never touched them.

My world became perfect until it came crashing down a week ago.

One day, I grabbed her hand and asked what had happened. I kept telling her how happy I was and how much our life had improved. She just smiled and said, “Maybe it’s time you met my friend Thilia.”

The name felt somehow off.

I agreed and suggested we go out somewhere, but Sarah insisted that she come by our house for dinner, as she was supposedly an extremely private person. I didn’t think much of it at the time. How stupid of me.

So we scheduled the dinner for Friday night at midnight, which, for whatever reason, didn’t strike me as odd. Someone coming to our house in the dead of night for dinner should have alarmed me, but I was so invested in my happiness that I had lost all sense.

Friday came, and Sarah wouldn’t let me anywhere near the kitchen. I mean nowhere near. I spent the entire day out of the house. I had taken the day off, no less, and Sarah just gave me this disturbing smile and said, “I will get everything ready. You go to town and have fun.”

No matter how hard I pushed, she wanted me out of the house. Again, I was too dumb to realize it.

I went to bars and enjoyed myself like a child with near infinite money. I came home just before midnight, and Sarah opened the door for me.

My jaw dropped.

She looked at least twenty years younger. I don’t mean she was well dressed or wearing good makeup. No, it looked like her aging had somehow reversed. Something made me shiver with unease.

“Come in, she’s almost here!” she nearly screamed with excitement.

The house was arranged like we were having a romantic party. She had flowers delivered. Incense sticks were lit all around, and the dinner table was filled to the brim with food.

One small detail struck me among all this abnormality. Sarah had a missing tooth that was suddenly there again.

Before I could press her for answers, someone gently tapped on the front door. There was no car outside, and we live far away from any public transportation.

“She’s here!” Sarah jumped with excitement and dragged me to the door.

The moment she opened that door, I felt sick. That gut-wrenching feeling when everything appears normal, but you know deep down something is very, very wrong.

“Thilia, welcome!” Sarah said with a wide smile.

The woman looked beautiful. Unnaturally beautiful. I couldn’t imagine anyone more appealing to the eye.

“Hello, Sarah,” she said while gazing at me.

Now I know her eyes were light blue when she came in.

“Can I come in?” she asked in a charming, feminine voice.

I muttered, “Of course,” and noticed her wide smile as she stepped inside. At that moment, everything around me seemed to dull, like I was severely intoxicated.

We sat down at the dinner table, and Sarah, for some reason, sat beside her instead of me. My knees shook. There was something very vile and off-putting about this woman. She wore a strange, ornate red dress with black jewelry set with what looked like priceless gems. Her hair was the darkest I had ever seen, perfectly kept.

She barely paid attention to Sarah, focusing instead on me, which made me uncomfortable.

Sarah placed the food in front of us in covered serving trays that we didn’t own before. She lifted the metal covers, revealing an exquisite dish made from some kind of meat and rare mushrooms.

My eyes widened. Sarah never cooked red meat, and this was far beyond her abilities. It looked like something prepared by the world’s best chefs. The strong, sweet, earthy aroma hit me immediately.

Sarah and Thilia stared at the meat with almost ravenous expressions before devouring it. They ate as if they hadn’t eaten in days.

My hands shook as I placed a piece of meat into my mouth. The texture was incredible, the taste unlike anything I had ever experienced.

“How is it, honey?” Sarah asked, almost mockingly.

“It’s… lovely,” I muttered, and they both laughed.

Even though it tasted incredible, I couldn’t swallow a single bite. It was as if my body refused to let me. I chewed and chewed, then discreetly spat it out whenever they weren’t looking. It felt wrong.

They ate like animals. Their portions dwarfed mine. They were like hungry lions, not human beings.

I felt anxious and out of place. Every part of me was telling me to run, even though we were supposedly having a nice time.

After they finished, Sarah said, “We should get more meat next time.”

That sounded wrong. She had barely touched meat for years.

Thilia produced a bottle of wine, which Sarah opened and poured. She gestured for us to move to the living room and sit by the fireplace.

To my surprise, the armchairs were gone, leaving only the sofa.

She poured three glasses of a dense, almost oily red wine. Now I swear Thilia’s eyes were dark green. Her pupils didn’t react to light at all, as if they were decorative.

They drank quickly and pressured me to do the same.

The wine didn’t taste like wine. It was extremely sweet, unlike anything I had ever had.

After that, I phased in and out of consciousness. I remember nothing else from that night, except that Thilia gave me one of her black rings, which I cannot remove no matter what I do.

I woke up the next morning in searing pain. My entire body felt like it was filled with burning coals. I could barely make it to the bathroom.

No matter how much I demanded answers, Sarah wouldn’t tell me what had happened.

I never fully recovered. I grow weaker each day. I have constant nightmares, and I always see that woman in the corner of my vision. I hear voices in my head taunting me, telling me I am going to hell, asking if I enjoyed my dinner.

I had bite marks all over my body. They were deep and bloodied, but Sarah brushed them off.

Each night, I suffer from sleep paralysis.

Finally, Sarah went out again. It took all my strength to reach the taxi station and get to a private hospital in another town.

The strangest thing is that the doctors found no traces of drugs, alcohol, or any major injuries. They said they had never seen a case like mine. I tried to show them the bite marks, but they couldn’t see them.

My blood test showed that I am as healthy as a ninety-year-old man. And I seem to be aging rapidly.

This damn ring won’t come off. Three blades broke when they tried to cut it.

The doctors think I am schizophrenic, and I am struggling to convince them otherwise.

I swear some of the nurses are her. I recognize those eyes, even behind the masks. One of them smiled at me today. Her eyes were not the same color as yesterday.

And I know the ring was on my other hand when I fell asleep last time.

Sarah hasn’t called me at all.

Maybe she will get another chance to undo her wasted life, as she called it.

She denied ever being married to me when the hospital called her.

It was my sister, trying to order a pizza from an unknown number.

Vintage three-bedroom apartment in the downtown area. Single tenants only.

That was the short newspaper advert that got me to this place. I graduated and needed a place to stay after leaving my college dorm.

There weren’t many places to choose from, and those that were available were far beyond my budget. The landlord greeted me and gave me the keys on the spot.  

I should have run then and there.

The apartment isn’t that bad all in all, it’s just old, although there is plenty of space considering I have two spare bedrooms I hardly use.

The building is old, probably built in the 1950s, considering the hallway is made from those old red bricks. Most of the tenants are people well into their seventies or eighties who barely leave their apartments.

My first few weeks in this place were uneventful. The place has an uncomfortable silence to it, the only thing I ever hear is the faint noise of my old neighbor’s TV late at night.

All was tolerable until recently.

I work from home, so there is little reason for me to go anywhere.

I was working the night shift when I heard a phone ring. After a couple of rings, it stopped.

The same thing happened through the night, the phone would ring two to three times and stop.

This was an old landline phone I had on the wall. I wanted to remove it, but I couldn’t figure out how to disconnect it. I’m surprised it still works.

I finished work and shut down my laptop.

I opened the window to get some fresh air, gazing into the empty street from the third floor, when suddenly someone rang my doorbell in the middle of the night.

“Who could that be?” I wondered, expecting one of the neighbors, or maybe someone had an emergency.

I opened the door and saw a tall man in a well-made but vintage-looking suit. He looked charming but had a noticeable smell of alcohol on him.

“Oh, excuse me madam. I must have missed the floor.” His voice was polite, but he stuttered.

“Oh, no worries.” I smiled and closed the door.

Deciding it was foolish to open the door to a random stranger like that, I put the chain on the door.

I walked into the bathroom and started getting ready for bed.

As I was getting ready to shower, I could hear loud thumping noises, as if someone was breaking things.

I didn’t think much of it and went to sleep.

The next night the phone rang again, but this time I managed to pick it up.

First it was silence, and then a faint voice of a woman whispered, “Please help me, he’s going to kill me,” before hanging up.

“Hello?” I answered back, but the line fell silent.

I put the phone back when someone banged on my door.

I walked up and looked through the peephole. It was the same man as last night.

I slowly opened the door and immediately felt a more noticeable smell of alcohol.

“Is Victoria here?!” He sounded angry.

“Um…no, wrong floor.” I answered and slowly closed the door.

“Sorry!” he yelled back.

And again I could hear commotion in the bathroom, but it was more noticeable this time.

The next morning, I met the old lady who lives below me and asked her about the man and this Victoria. She said that no one by that name lives in the building, but she was a recent tenant.

And again that same night the phone rang, and I picked up.

The voice was sobbing and pleading, this time I heard the voice of a small girl crying too. “Please, he’s going to kill us, I know it, please, please!” She hung up again before I could speak.

At the same time, someone started violently smashing against my door.

“Victoria!” He was yelling maniacally. “You put me down! You are the worst! Open the door! I could have been everything if not for you two!”

Scared out of my mind, I called the police, who came within two minutes, but there was no one around.

Supposedly, none of my neighbors heard anything.

Things stopped for a few nights and everything was normal.

Until tonight.

The phone rang again, but this time it was persistent. I picked up angrily and shouted, “Hey, quit this!” as I tried to rip the phone out. I managed to rip the cord, but somehow I could still hear the woman on the other end. “Please, he’s going to kill me and Emily, I know it…NO David please!” She and the little girl started screaming and yelling before the line cut off.

This time there were two light knocks on the door. “I know you can hear me. Tonight they got what they deserved for doing this to me.” I opened the peephole only to see the man, now clearly a seasoned alcoholic, holding a bloody hammer in his hand struggling to stand upright and heavily intoxicated.

“Now that I’m free, maybe we can hang out, darling?” His voice was slurred and barely recognizable.

I screamed for what felt like hours but was probably minutes.

The old couple next door came to my door and I let them in.

Suzan made me a cup of tea while her husband Frank talked to calm me down.

When I told him what had happened, his expression turned pale.

“Victoria and David were our first neighbors. She was a housewife and he worked for a large finance company. He was fired from his job and started to drink. He got more and more violent each day for years. He blamed her and their daughter for losing his job.”

Frank paused.

“He killed them both before hanging himself.”

He pointed to the ceiling above the phone. “Right there on that hook.”

I work as a night shift nurse in a remote hospital. Something is wrong with some of my patients.

This is hard to explain. I will be frank and say that I am not of the soundest mind myself, as constant night shifts have taken a harsh toll on my mental health. Still, I know that what I am seeing is real and not a fabrication of my mind.

A year before working here, I was employed at a private hospital in a large city. Some bad things happened to me, and I decided to leave my old life behind.

This place needed a permanent night shift nurse. Since I get almost no sleep anyway, it became the perfect job for me. The money is good, but I really do not care about finances anymore.

This hospital is the polar opposite of the tightly run and lavish one I used to work at. It is run down and looks half abandoned. It does not help that it is located in a densely wooded area with almost nonexistent lighting.

My mind is racing as I type this, and I am already on my third pack of cigarettes.

I do not even know where to begin. I would love to share this with someone in person, but even if I had someone, they would think I was insane.

The first day I arrived here, I was taken aback by the eerie brown and dark green interior design. The place looks like something out of World War I.

The air smelled like phenol, alcohol, and staleness, which was very off-putting, but I got used to that part at least.

The entire place was filled with narrow corridors that had poor lighting. If there were ten bulbs on the ceiling, one was functional, while the rest were either burned out or flickered at best.

I went into the doctor’s office. He was an old, short man, probably in his late eighties. I was caught off guard that someone his age was still working, but he was. I always considered it impolite to ask why.

He did not give me the usual interview or onboarding pep talk we are all used to. No, this felt sincere.

He raised his head and looked at me for a moment. “You smoke?” His voice was deep and soft.

I did not expect the question and simply nodded. He opened the window in his office and offered me a cigarette.

I hesitated, thinking it was some kind of test. He noticed and lit one for himself first, trying his best to blow the smoke outside.

I relaxed and joined him.

“We old ones do things a bit differently,” he said.

I immediately knew things here were more relaxed and far less up to code.

Moaning and frightened gasps from patients could be faintly heard in the office, which made me uneasy.

We talked about life and general topics for the most part, which honestly is not very interesting.

The eeriest thing happened at the very end of our conversation. He took my hand and gazed into my eyes. Most would consider this inappropriate and creepy, but it felt like a fatherly warning.

His voice sounded frightened. “Have you seen a patient die before?” he asked.

“A few, yes,” I responded.

“This place has many unfortunate memories. For over a century, it has been a place of great suffering. Things here are not quite what you might expect at times.” He paused, watching to see if I understood. “When patients enter the final hours of their lives, try to give them their peace.” He let go of my hand.

I was puzzled, to say the least.

My first few nights were normal. It was just me and two other nurses, and often only one doctor on the night shift. The hospital was huge, but because of its remoteness, it had very few patients.

Then, on my seventh shift, things became strange.

I was alone on the floor with four patients. One of them, an elderly man with a severe aneurysm, did not have much time left. He was barely responsive. That night, he looked me in the eyes and whimpered a repetitive “no, no, no.” I tried to comfort him when I noticed he was not looking at me. He was staring into the upper corner of the room.

I turned around, but there was nothing there.

The fear in his eyes was immense. I knew he was gazing at something only he could see.

He spent the next three days staring fearfully into that corner, with occasional pleas for mercy and redemption.

On his final night, he started shaking and clenching his teeth, completely unresponsive to my attempts to reach him. The room felt odd, and he was the only patient there at the time.

I cannot explain it, but it felt as if the room was darker than it should have been, especially around that corner.

The old doctor came in, took one look at the man, and nodded, gesturing for us to leave.

“He is going to…” I began, but he interrupted me. “His time has passed. You know we cannot do much.”

I knew he was right, but I have always been an advocate for trying everything. Reluctantly, I walked outside. I swear that the moment we closed the door, he started gurgling and writhing in pain. After a few seconds, he went quiet.

“Take a walk,” the doctor said, tapping me on the shoulder.

I went to the window and lit a cigarette, trying to make sense of what had just happened. This was not standard protocol by any measure. This cursed place makes me feel as if I am constantly being watched. The other staff seem to feel the same way, but everyone is reluctant to talk about it.

That night, I was scared out of my mind.

I looked out the window into the forest. Keep in mind, this is a remote place with very little light. I could swear I saw a man standing there, looking at me.

I tried to ignore him, but I could not stop staring. It was so dark I could barely make him out. I do not know if my mind filled in the blanks or if I imagined what I saw.

The man looked as though he was completely bandaged, yet the bandages were old and yellowed, as if they had been there for years.

I wanted to scream and slam the window shut before collapsing beneath it.

Weeks passed, and I grew more anxious with each day. I lost a noticeable amount of weight due to the stress and was barely recognizable to myself.

Things were normal until another patient who was clearly dying began staring into the same corner, either muttering nonsense or trembling with a level of fear I have never seen before. Every single one of them did it.

One day, I found the old doctor dead in his office.

He was the only one who died with a smile on his face. His chair was turned toward a corner of the room. There was a piece of paper on his desk addressed to me.

It was obvious that it was written with unsteady hands, probably just before he died. “One shall gaze into the finality of this life as if greeting an old friend. Their virtuous deeds will carry them as if they are but a feather. The other will bear torment in their final moments, crushed by the burning weight of their wrongdoings.”

Last night’s shift is something I will never forget.

The hospital has a basement that has not been used in God knows how long. I rummaged through the office and found a key to the padlock.

Being foolish, I took it and went down into the basement. I barely managed to open the lock, as it was so rusted that the key would hardly turn.

Eventually, it did.

The air smelled like death, and the halls were filled with old medical equipment and mattresses caked in dried blood.

The lights did not work, but I brought a flashlight.

My hands started to shake from the sheer fear of being down there. My gut told me to turn around and never come back. But human nature urged me to explore at least a little.

Against my better judgment, I opened a nearby door. It was a padded psychiatric room.

The entire room was covered in the words “Forgive me,” along with various religious symbols, except for one corner, which held a drawing of something I cannot even describe.

The scribbling looked as though it was moving, as if it were somehow alive. The etched and drawn shape in the corner looked as though it was shifting, as if something endless existed behind that small corner of the room. It resembled a dark mass of eyes that would close but never open again.

The moment I saw that drawing, I stopped feeling alone.

It is as if something is always breathing down my neck. I cannot shower without thinking something is right in front of my face when I close my eyes.

I swear I see things in the corner of my vision.

Small items have started to disappear.

Every time I ask my colleagues about the patients and the corner, they change the subject, no matter how much I press.

I feel drawn to something. I am still losing weight.

I grow sicker with each passing day.

Anonymous confession:

I stole antipsychotics from the office.

I have been taking them for three days.

They do not help.

The patients still stare.

Last night, one of them grabbed my wrist before he passed.

He did not look at me.

He looked past me.

Into the corner of the room.

And he smiled.

I told myself it meant nothing.

I told myself it was muscle memory. Nerve death. A reflex.

But tonight, as I sit here typing this, I have realized something I cannot explain.

I moved my desk earlier.

I do not remember doing it.

But it is no longer facing the door.

It is facing the corner.

I keep catching myself looking up.

Just for a second at a time.

I think…

No.

I know…

Something is standing there now.

And it is waiting for me to stop blinking.