“There might be some noise.”
That’s what she had said. A phrase that did not even begin to describe what we heard every night. Those agonized screams; nothing a human should ever make.
We had just signed the contract and wanted to go from house to house to introduce ourselves to the neighbors. Hers was the door to our right, the first door we knocked on. “J&K” was written on the doorbell in fancy letters.
She must have been around sixty but her pale skin and the large dark rings around her eyes made her look at least a decade older.
“I’m Kristina,” she said. “And I want to apologize in advance. My husband is not really well and sometimes there might be some noise.”
“No problem,” I said.
“Really,” she said. “Jonathan is not very well. But please don’t call the police on us.”
“Of course, we understand.”
“He is on his bed. I can show him to you.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We will drop by another time.”
We turned to leave. She stopped us.
“Really, please believe me. He really is just sick. He is not dangerous.”
Claire and I exchanged glances.
“That’s okay,” Claire said. “Don’t worry about us.”
“Sure?” Kristine asked.
“Sure,” I said.
We felt her stare on our backs while we walked down the small path back towards the street.
The moving van came a week later. Our life was thrown into the center of the empty living room.
The day was soaking our shirts with sweat, but we were happy. A new place. The perfect place!
We had pizza and beer and walked in celebration around the house. Singing and dancing we enjoyed our new home.
That’s when we saw him the first time, in Kristine’s house. Ground floor, the window just opposite my new office.
He was wrapped into a blanket up to a chest. Blue pajamas. Wrinkled eyelids deeply shut. A white table with bandages and medicine stood to his side.
Jonathan. Hair and skin so gray that I wondered whether he had been alive when they built the pyramids.
The door in his room opened. We quickly walked on.
It was at precisely 11:45 pm. We were just getting ready for bed; Claire in the bathroom and I already on the bed and waiting for her.
Those screams. The word agony does not even begin to describe them.
There were no words; just guttural sounds, roaring and moaning, like an animal hoping for death.
His screams stopped exactly at midnight.
“Did it stop?”
“I hope so.”
“My god,” Claire said. “What’s wrong with him?”
I shook my head.
“No idea.”
“I hope it’s not every night like that.”
“I’m sure it won’t.”
I was wrong.
I used my office the next day. Only for a short while, but long enough to stare at the open window opposite my own and long enough to feel a nervous cold run up my spine.
Jonathan lay there all day. His eyes closed and his hands on top of the blanket. No sound. No move.
Still like a statue during the day. Screams of agony at night.
More and more I found myself in that office at night. I pretended to work but in truth I was watching.
At around 11pm Kristine would always enter the room. She held a bowl and then closed the windows and curtains. Fifteen minutes before midnight we would hear his screams again. From midnight on – silence.
We learned to listen to loud music. Drums and choir vocals worked well to cover the screams.
It was a Sunday, just two weeks after we had moved in. Claire had seen Kristine leave early in the morning. Kristine came back just before noon. I was outside when her car pulled into the driveway with boxes stuffed into the back of her car.
I took a few steps up her driveway.
“Do you need help?”
“No,” Kristine said. “I never need help.”
She walked around the car and stood in front of the back window.
“Anything else?”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“Jonathan is fine. You hear me? He is fine.”
“Okay.”
“We don’t need your help.”
“Okay.”
I turned to walk back to our house.
“And,” Kristine said. “As said, I’m sorry for the noise.”
That night I had the lights off and waited for her to come.
Kristine entered the room but her sleeve caught on the door handle. The bowl fell from her hands. That’s why she must have forgotten about the curtain.
She cursed and quickly left the room.
When she was back she had another bowl and set it down on the white table.
She pulled the blanket aside.
She placed a large strap over his chest.
She chained his arms and legs to the bed.
She placed another strap over his forehead and pulled it tight.
Kristine froze half-way while turning back towards the table. Quickly she ran towards the window. She glanced outside, first to the right and left, and then towards my window. Her eyes seemed to scan the darkness inside the room. Then she pulled the curtains shut.
It was another week later. Claire saw Kristine sitting on her own doorstep. Kristine was holding her side. The left side of her face seemed limp.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure,” Kristine said. “I’m always okay. Just a bit dizzy.”
Claire walked up the driveway.
“Do you need help?”
Kristine jumped to her feet but quickly felt for the wall.
“No!” she screamed. “We never need help!”
The door slammed shut behind her.
Claire was upset and angry. And still she was worried too.
I wanted to get our minds of those things. We watched TV rather than the window.
We only noticed half an hour after midnight that we hadn’t heard any screams.
I checked the window. He was there, on his bed, soundly asleep.
The room was dark. I guess that’s why I only noticed it in the morning:
Red stains all over his clothes.
The police said that half their basement was filled with empty baby food glasses.
They found Kristine’s upper half on the living room floor. A stroke, that’s what they said.
They found Kristine’s lower half on the bedroom floor, right next to him.
His body, they said, was long cold. Still they couldn’t find a cause of death.
Their burial was a week later. Urns buried in deep holes.
There were not many people at the burial. No friends, no family, just neighbors. It was one of the other neighbors that told me about it. He said he heard it from a friend.
He heard that the cremation was done faster than is customary. Normally they take two or three days.
But for Kristine and Jonathan, he said, it was done the next day.
“They didn’t even wait with the cremation until morning,” he said. “They did it just after midnight.”
Credit To – Anton Scheller
Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.
Don’t get it
this story had an interesting build up, but left me totally confused at the end.
BUT WHO WAS BODY
He was possessed
DUDE! YOU’RE THAT GUY FROM NOSLEEP! HUGE FAN! But srsly tho, I tip my hat to you. Same thing that goes on at /r/nosleep; you just recreated it.
Fantastic story, but I’m really confused, as everyone else is, regarding the ending. I’d suggest a rewrite.
Guys, I figured it out!
Okay,so here’s what happened:
The husband is likely a vampire, or other undead creature, and Kristine takes care of him. From 11:45 to Midnight is the only time he is active, and it is at this time she feeds him. Perhaps her own blood (mixed with baby food?) or my more horrible theory that the food is given to children whose blood he feeds off of. She loves her husband, but he’s dangerous, so she shackles him up to prevent him attacking her when he wakes. She has to feed him, or he dies. One day, possibly due to her stroke occurring during the shackling, he rips her in half (in a fit of vampire crazy) and for a reason I haven’t quite worked out, he leaves half of her body in the living room and half with him. The cremation was scheduled to occurr like a normal one, but he awoke once more at his usual time, 11:45, and attacked whoever was there. Then at midnight, when his attacks relented, they burnt them both immediately.
I hope this has cleared things up.
This made no sense to me I was confused the whole story
Ok, I really think I got it:
First: The dismemberment of the woman could, nay, must have taken place after her death. Otherwise “A stroke, that’s what they said” makes no sense at all. So the woman goes to her husband as usual, dies by natural causes and only then her body is cut/ripped in two – by Jonathan himself. Why would he do that and then mysteriously die himself? This question, I think, gives us the vital clue.
So: Kristina kept her husband alive against his will (there are several passages that mention his desperate longing for death) and maybe even against nature (cf. his grey skin, his ancient appearance, his “long cold” body). She keeps him heavily sedated during the day. But she needs to feed him and thus is forced to allow him to wake up once a day. He cries in agony once he awakes, “like an animal hoping for death” – because he realizes once again that still he is not permitted to go in peace. That one night, however, the wife enters the chamber carrying the food. She suffers a stroke and dies. Jonathan is now free to die himself, but ere he does so, he exacts revenge on his wife’s mortal remains with ferocious anger.
Man, that is truly a great deal scarier than what I originally thought this was about: Being kept alive beyond the natural point of death is one of the greatest horrors I can think of. And a very real one at that. Bravo, Mr. Scheller.
Satisfaction is never free. The truth much less.
You labored hard.
You found reward.
Your name, my friend, I will steal it.
Things to work on:
There are several times in this narrative that I’m not sure which character is doing what, who is where, etc. This is not my error. The use of pronouns is a tricky thing when one uses them a lot, and often it takes away from the quality of the writing.
Paying attention to the representation of setting is also important. In this aspect, your narrative was ‘bare bones’ at the best of times, and non-existent at the worst. There was a span of time that I was triple-checking previous lines, because I was wondering where the narrator was when she was staring at the old man at night. THEN you mentioned a window.
Paragraphs are your friends. The writing structures taught in primary school are taught for a reason. This story, structurally, qualifies as neither poetry nor prose. What’s worse, the ‘single line’ technique is annoying.
Verbs are also your friends. In the English language, there should be at least one per clause. Make it so.
It shall be my honor. Thank you most kindly.
This seems like a good explanation BUT the ending is still unexplained.
“They didn’t even wait with the cremation until morning,” he said. “They did it just after midnight.”
This does seemed like a rushed job.
Okay, so the lady goes in to the room every night with a bowl of baby food. The husband, Jon, is a serial killer but Kristine loves him to much to let him go so she straps him down and feeds him and the screaming is him trying to get free and kill her, but one night he does and she is found dead. All over the house.
Perhaps the two halves mean that when she died she fell across the bedroom/living room doorway so that half of her was in one room and half in the other?
His bed must have been really close to the door…
Ok, I keep checking this comment section in the faint hope that someone comes up with a plausible explanation. I think I’ve read most of this author’s other stories on this website and I cannot remember any one of them having obvious gaps or other similarly notorious shortcomings. On the contrary: Herr Scheller seems like a very accomplished author who pays great attention to details. I still am not buying into the “well the ending is just some jumbled mess” theory.
If these are holes, they have been left on purpose. And if the pupose was to utterly puzzle readers, the author seems to have succeeded.
Ok, this story totally pulled me in, very interesting concept with a lot of potential but halfway through it stops making sense and seems rushed.
Please try again, think of the children! //shot//
For everyone getting caught up on the “other half” wording: that’s another phrase for spouse. They’re not saying she was split in two, they’re saying her husband died of a stroke and she was right next to him. Doesn’t make the story make any more sense, but I figured I’d clear that up.
Yeah, that would make things a lot simpler, but as far as I can see, there is no talk of “other” halves:
“They found Kristine’s upper half on the living room floor. A stroke, that’s what they said.
They found Kristine’s lower half on the bedroom floor, right next to him.”
And I can’t quite see how one might refer to one’s spouse as his/her lower (or upper) half, really. But come to think of it …
Well… I found this story pretty weird to read; Starting a new paragraph every sentence and the conversations are stiff and… well, lame.
The end is unclear, but it might have been an open ending, leaving room for speculations, I could find myself in that.
Apart from the whole cremation part in the end though, what was that all about? Also the empty bottles in the basement, was she feeding him baby food or something?…
All in all this seems like a very rushed and hastily written story. It has potential when explaining things a bit more, going in some more detail and making the conversations more like actual in real life conversations.
“There might be some noise…”
Dude: “Thank you Captain Obvious.”
Anyway, I was so into this in the beginning. I was reading hungrily just waiting for the next line when the ending… oh Lord, the ending. That was such a let down.
The author has obvious writing skills, the ending was just … gah. I don’t get it, no one seems to get it, and I really want to know what the author meant. What was going on etc.
Maybe the narrator was really inside a nightmare. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t make sense.
this was a rushed job. Great premise though, a suburban murder/mystery is alway interesting especially through the window. Like everyone else, I just got lost towards the end. So many things like rushing winds came at me and I zoned out. Baby jars, asylum restrictions, strokes, half bodies thrown about the house. Whirlwind of events lol
Why did she want them to come and see Johnathan?
Maybe she was poisoning him? oh someone mentioned lycanthropy; maybe but the moon wasn’t really mentioned. Banshee? Cannibal? OH maybe she was sucking his spirit/life force and he died of a broken heart :c
Alright ladies and gents lets keep this simple. The duder turns all crazy at 1145 and she has to keep the thing fed. things when she has a stroke, she can’t strap him down and he gets all nom nom and kills her. So yeah the execution could use some work but im digging this
At first I was startled by the rather unclear events of the ending. Well, I still am, but something in this really provokes my lasting curiosity as to what took place here.
The woman dies of a stroke and ends up in two pieces? Maybe she was a Manananggal … Might explain why the cremation was rushed. And Jonathan: “His body was long cold” – might be that he was one of the undead. Yep, this about explains it: A caring Manananggal is looking after her nocturnally-active zombie husband, then dies of natural causes. Both get cremated.
I thought this was going to be my most favorite yet… until I finished it. It was amazing, except for the loose strings at the end. Could’ve been slightly better… :/
I agree 100%!
“He was wrapped into a blanket up to a chest”. how many chests did he have? No wonder he could scream like no human! O_o
Jokes aside, the story was interesting, up to a point, then it descended in an undecipherable ending. I only have a faint idea of what happened, and I don’t understand at all the last sentence about cremation.
This was just too confusing. A stroke causes a body to be ripped into two? Empty baby food jar containers? The bowl she carried with her every night? Wish there was a better explanation for all of this…could have been an awesome pasta with more detail or explanation on those things..6/10
Her body was split into two pieces and the cause of death was determined to be a “stroke”?
There are ways of telling whether mutilation of a body happened pre- or post-mortem. In this case, she died of a stroke, and then she was ripped in half.
Coroners don’t see a mutilated body and say, “Well, the body’s all messed up, so obviously they died by being torn apart.” There’s a lot more behind the process of an autopsy.
I suspect werewolves. Strapping him down at night. The day she fails she is horribly torn apart. It seems to add up.
Hmmm… Seems logical.
No he would have escaped
The ending seemed rushed. I don’t understand what exactly happened. There was a great build up though.
I don’t get this AT ALL!! WTF?
How does a stroke cause a decedent to break in half? Did Jonathan (or his spirit) kill Kristine? Good premise, needs work on execution
So he was a zombie and ate her?
WHAT KIND OF ENDING WAS THAT EVEN IM SO MAD. THAT DOESNT EVEN MAKE SENCE.
Yeah, I can piece together he turned into some kind of psycho at 11:45 so she had to restrain him….but what’s up with the baby food jars? That came out of nowhere.
You dont make sence. Lol
hi jeff the killers brother
:P
I don’t get it. Can someone explain it to me?
Me, too.
I didn’t either. Glad I am not alone.
He was a vampire, she was feeding him blood, thats why she looked so old, she was practically drained, and with the first turn of day he would be forced to hibernate.
Nice.