I don’t know if I’m going crazy or I need to lay off the pills, but someone’s gotta set me straight.
I was a beat cop dealing with my regulars, vandalism, loitering, and just kids being kids when I responded to a call. It was a report of a couple arguing, a common occurrence in my town where couples would yell at each other until the cops showed up, only to act as if nothing was wrong. I knew it would probably be a waste of time, but it was early enough in my shift that I could use it as an excuse for an early lunch. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but like most guys who made it through the academy, being a police officer was just a paycheck for me.
The house was about a mile from where I was parked. When I arrived, I could still hear the couple yelling. She was a schoolteacher, and he was an engineer. They didn’t have kids and spent most of their time engaging in a ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ lifestyle, buying expensive but pointless things to seem important—all glitz and no substance. I knocked on the door and called out, announcing the police presence. The arguing stopped immediately, and the wife opened the door. She was short and pretty, with brown eyes and blonde hair—an odd combination, but I wasn’t one to judge; I just wanted to get on with it.
Her husband walked up behind her, looking at the back of her head before his gaze shifted to me. He forced a smile through gritted teeth, insisting everything was fine and that they would try to keep their voices down. She turned to glare at her husband, and he certainly looked frightened. I asked him to step outside so I could talk to him alone. She glared but didn’t protest. Once alone, I asked if he was okay. He replied in a monotone voice, “I left the window open again… sorry.” His mind seemed blank, and then his attention returned to me. A genuine smile replaced the frightened look, and all the worry that had concerned me vanished. “I’m sorry, what were we talking about?”
He had no memory of what he had just said or the argument that prompted the call. He claimed he loved his wife, and there were no issues to speak of. I mentioned this was the fourth call in as many months and that we couldn’t keep doing this, but he insisted they had never fought in their lives, not even recalling a single disagreement. I tried to delve deeper, even pulling up records of some of the last few calls, but he apologized and said he had no memory of those events or even the nights in question. After a few go-arounds, I finally gave up and warned that if calls continued, we might have to make an arrest. He must have thought I was joking because he chuckled as if to say, ‘Yeah, right.’ But after a moment, that same worrying look I had first seen flickered over him again. “I left the window open again… sorry,” he repeated. He walked back into the house; the wife looked at him and hugged him.
They smiled genuinely at each other and then back at me. I gave them my card and said if things were about to get heated again, they could call me before it escalated to yelling. I’m not a therapist or anything, but sometimes people need someone to talk to, ye’ know?
A month later, I received a call. It didn’t go through dispatch; my sergeant mentioned I had a history with these people, and they seemed to favor me, so maybe I could unearth what was brewing beneath their facade. I wasn’t keen on being singled out, especially since I found the couple not charming but creepy. Reluctantly, I agreed, and my sergeant thanked me, his voice dropping to a murmur as I left his office, “Keeps muttering about windows…” He shook his head, perplexed, and returned to his paperwork.
I arrived at their house about an hour later. The air was still, but the front door stood unsettlingly ajar, a faint smell of sulfur or a start to a barbecue, drifting out like a ghostly invitation. I stepped up to the threshold and identified myself. The wife greeted me with a smile, her brown eyes darker than before, perhaps a trick of the dimming light. Inside, the husband’s voice floated from the kitchen, singing a tune that seemed too cheerful for the hour. When I mentioned someone had called for me, they exchanged glances, their laughter ringing hollow in the dusky evening air. The husband offered me a beer while the wife retreated to the living room. There, she was on her hands and knees, fervently scrubbing a large, ominous red stain on the carpet. Footprints were coming from the large bay window that marked the usually bright and cheery living room. She caught my gaze for a fleeting moment, her voice a whisper of guilt, “I left the window open again… sorry.” She resumed her cleaning, her movements desperate. Meanwhile, her husband froze mid-step, his facade of joviality crumbling to reveal a look of deep torment. He stared at me, his eyes pleading for an understanding I couldn’t offer. Her voice sliced through the tension from behind me, “You okay in there, George?” Snapped back to reality, his smile returned, forced and brittle, as they both shrugged off the moment with practiced ease. I tried to probe deeper, scanning the house for any further anomalies, but after enduring a few minutes of strained small talk,
I excused myself. I reminded them my number was available, but only if necessary. Their smiles were tight-lipped, assurances that they’d call only if needed, yet everything was ‘fine.’ The wife continued scrubbing, her eyes a shade darker, almost unrecognizable—a stark contrast to the woman I had met before.
Six weeks later, my sergeant called, his tone urgent. “What do you know about that couple? They’re asking for you again.” I confessed I had tried to erase them from my mind; their presence lingered uncomfortably. He dismissed with a grunt, “I don’t have time to field home visits for lonely professionals. You need to go there and tell them your number isn’t for casual use during working hours.” He explained his attempts to call them back, but the phone rang endlessly each time into the void. No answer, ever. “Go put this to bed,” he ordered, his frustration clear. “I’m not running a therapy clinic.”
I pulled up to the house at about 7:30 PM, just as it had begun to rain. The footprints I had noticed inside the living room were now visible in the yard, as though someone had tracked through mud, leaving debris scattered across the grass as they approached the house. I knocked on the door and called out. Through the door, I could hear hushed, urgent whispering. After a minute or so, the wife answered, dressed in a long nightgown, her smile serene yet unsettling. I explained I had received another call and asked if everything was alright. She mentioned she had been working a second job and hadn’t been home much, but perhaps her husband George might have noticed something—he was out in the garden, just finishing watering his tomatoes.
Glancing back at the rain, now noticeably heavy, I resolved to end these bizarre visits once and for all. I accepted her invitation and moved through the house toward the backyard, finding him as promised, watering his tomatoes despite the rain pelting down so hard he was almost obscured from view. He shouted through the downpour, “I left the window open again… sorry,” and continued tending to his plants. As he spoke these words, I felt the wife’s hands on my right arm, her grip urgent as she tried to pull me back toward the house, terror evident in her eyes. I noticed they were blue now, not brown as before. She seemed unable to speak but pulled me toward the kitchen and the basement door. “Isn’t that right, Lois?” we heard through the rain. She stopped pulling, her expression abruptly shifting back to placid serenity; the familiar brown of her eyes returned, and the fear vanished. She laughed it off and insisted everything was fine, asking if I wanted a drink. As she went to fetch it, I noticed the basement door was ajar, just enough to reveal the muddy footprints I had seen outside, leading up and down the stairs. These prints were too large to belong to either of the two residents. More disturbingly, there were noticeable drag marks on the wall, as though someone—or something—was regularly being forced down the stairs.
I didn’t want to stay in that house a moment longer; I said a call had come in over the radio and that I had to get back to the station right away; they looked at each other, the smile gone for just a moment and then returned their gaze to me, “have a good night officer…” they responded in unison their smile notably artificial, I nearly stumbled through the threshold on the way out the door, and tipped my hat. I was never coming back if I could help it.
Weeks passed without further calls, but the silence was as unsettling as the whispers I had heard from that house. One overcast morning, when the couple had uncharacteristically missed several days of work, my sergeant dispatched me back to their residence, accompanied by additional units. The atmosphere was tense, an electric dread charge hanging in the air as we approached the familiar yet foreboding home. The house was silent as we entered, the usual signs of life eerily absent. The air was thick with an unspoken horror. A neighbor found something in the basement, the place I had avoided during my previous visits, haunted by the memory of those heavy, dragging footsteps. With a deep breath, I led the descent into the basement, the air growing colder with each step. The door creaked ominously as it swung open, revealing a macabre scene that would haunt my dreams forever.
Lined up against the cold concrete wall were eleven bodies, each eerily similar in appearance to the couple but distinguishable by their eyes, skin tones, and facial features—subtle yet clumsy attempts to mask their ethnicities. Their lifeless gazes were fixed on a mark on the ceiling, above which the phrase “I left the window open again… sorry.” was written in black ink that appeared both fresh and indelible. The air was thick with the smell of decay and secrets long concealed. Footprints, much heavier than any I had previously seen, led from the meticulously arranged bodies to a concrete wall in the foundation of the house. These prints ended abruptly at the wall, offering no clues as to the path or fate of whatever—or whoever—had left them.
I’m putting in my papers today. I’m not going through something like that again. I mean, “I left the window open again… sorry.” But I wasn’t crazy, right?