My days of being a nosey neighbor are over…
It started about a month ago when I was pulling in from work. I saw a tall, slender looking man fiddling with a pair of keys in the door of the conjoined duplex right next to mine.
I usually stayed to myself in most instances, but thought it’d be rude to just walk straight into my home without at least introducing myself. I walked up to him as he was starting to open his door, “Hey there!” The man had nearly jumped out of his skin, and quickly turned to face me. He had a fairly pale complexion with dark black hair, while his eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses.
“Hi…you’d think I’d know how to work a key by now,” he shyly responded with a slight smile while extending his hand, “I’m Troy. Your new neighbor.”
“Nice to meet you, Troy, I’m Danny.” I grabbed his hand, which oddly seemed a bit sticky. As Troy swung his door fully open, I could see his eyes light up. “Wow…lots of room for activities…” That was kind of a weird comment to make, I thought. What was even more bizarre was all of the furniture left over in the house. I looked back at his driveway and noticed he only had his car sitting there. And all Troy had on his person was a polaroid camera around his neck. Curiosity finally got the best of me, “Did you pack pretty light?” Troy looked back at me with a perplexed look, “Oh…ha yeah…the mover’s are going to be a few days late.” He stood in his entryway looking at me like an NPC waiting for their next command. I took this awkward moment as my chance to get out of there. “Well, let me know if you need any help unpacking when they finally get here. Nice meeting you, Troy!” He kept staring at me and smiled, “you too.” Troy began shutting his door but stopped just before it was fully closed. I could see his face glaring at me through crack in his door.
“Our new neighbors pretty damn odd, honey.” My wife had just gotten back from picking up some groceries and she was already hearing it from me. “I just think it’s bizarre how Sarah (our landlady) always happens to find the weirdest of tenants to rent to.”
My wife sighed, “Well he’s probably a step up from that last guy.”
“Greg? That’s a pretty low bar…how did Sarah even find a tenant so quickly? I hadn’t seen Greg in a few days but I had no idea he even moved out.”
After dinner I went to roll out our trash bins to the curb and happened to glance over at Troy’s place again. The door was still propped open, a little bit more than earlier. I squinted as nonchalantly as I could and I could’ve sworn I saw the outline of Troy’s face creeping through the darkness…
“My God, Danny…he was not waiting in his doorway watching you. You’re just being paranoid.” My wife apparently mistook my intrigue as paranoia as I gave her the details of my latest Troy sighting.
“How do you explain him having his door propped open then?”
“I don’t know, maybe the AC is down and he’s trying to bring in some fresh air. Greg probably tarnished that place with all the smoking he did.” As my wife said that, my eyes wandered outside to see Troy struggling to bring in a pretty sizable sleeping bag. I wanted to make more of a case with what I had just seen, but maybe she was right, I was done debating for the night. We both hopped into bed, turned on our TV and watched a few episodes of a series we were binging before we both fell asleep.
I went back out the next day after work to go bring our trash bins in when I felt a sudden tap on my shoulder.
“Hello, Danny.” He couldn’t even look me in the eyes, but I noticed Troy seemed a bit more excited.
“Oh hey Troy, how’s the move going?”
“It’s going well, thank you. I’m having a game night tonight…would you and your wife care to join me?”
My wife was going to be out at her friends bachelorette party, so that left me with an empty home and it also left me with no plans or excuses. Luckily, my previous career in sales made me an expert bullshitter.
“Ah, sorry, I can’t. The wife and I are going out of town to see her in-laws. Maybe some other time!”
Gauging from his facial expression, I could tell he was pretty disappointed. I gave him a wave goodbye and started my way back in when I heard him mutter, “You know we can’t play unless you come in, Danny…” That line sent a chill down my spine, but I tried to keep it cordial and did my best not to engage. “Enjoy your night, Troy.”
My wife brought home some Bdubs before heading out to her bachelorette party that night, so I kicked back, cracked open a couple beers and turned on the TV to celebrate the start of the weekend.
An hour or so in, I heard a car door slam outside. I looked out our window to see three people (two guys and a woman) walking up Troy’s driveway with bottles of liquor and a case of beer. I realized I had seen these three previously when Greg was living next door. I’m pretty sure they were his rowdy drinking buddies. Maybe that’s how Troy had heard of this place? Perhaps Troy was just one of Greg’s artsy stoner friends who happened to sublease for him. Usually it’d be annoying to see a bunch of college aged kids going in for a house party, but seeing those three relieved me a bit. It was good to see Troy at least had friends, it humanized him a bit more.
Those cheery thoughts of mine were soon interrupted when I heard them pounding about almost immediately. And soon after that they were blasting some pretty odd music on and off. I was back to being annoyed as I thought about slamming on the wall to get them to quiet down, but then I remembered I had lied to Troy when I told him that we would be out of town. I buckled down and just dealt with it. As I was getting ready for bed, I heard the slam of a car door and the rev of an engine as it peeled off into the distance. Finally some peace and quiet.
I woke up in the middle of the night - needing to take a piss. As I rubbed my eyes and turned over to get up; in my peripheral I thought I saw something scurry through our hallway. It was incredibly brief, but it almost looked as if someone had just crab walked past our bedroom door…I grabbed the baseball bat I kept underneath my bed and approached my hallway with shaky legs and looked both to my left and right…nothing. I turned on all of the lights in our place, and searched our entire place - but came up with nothing. After taking the most frightening piss of my life - I saw our porch motion lights had gone off. This sounds like an incredibly dumb move (and maybe the baseball bat gave me a little too much courage) but I decided to step outside to see what it was.
There was a certain stillness outside, but something immediately felt off…in the distance was a rustling noise. A few steps out towards my driveway I found where the sound was coming from - Troy’s place. The rustling was followed by a giggling sound. I peered around the corner to see his door was again propped open, but even wider this time…almost fully open. This perspective gave me a full view into his entryway and living room. In the corner of his living room stood Troy, back turned to me, wearing nothing but his briefs. He dropped something and stuttered, “y-you’re here to play…” In that moment I felt frozen, but I did my best to puff out my chest and called out, “Troy? Is everything alright?” Just then he darted across the room to hide behind a wall. Another giggle. His pale face popped out from behind the wall. Troy put his right hand over his mouth, and pointed at me with his left and started giggling. His motion was so unnatural as he ran across the room arms flailing above him to hide behind another wall and started giggling again. His arm poked out to grab the item he had dropped earlier. “Come on! What’re you waiting for?” He popped back out to stare for a second and then hid back behind the wall. A few seconds go by and I began to hear a childlike whimper. “W-why won’t y-you play?” I started to find my footing again and began to back away…I reached for my phone to call 911. “WHY WON’T YOU PLAY!?” Just then Troy started storming towards the front door with a knife. I quickly slammed it in his face and ran to my car. He pounded on his door from the inside as I threw my car in reverse and quickly got out of there.
My call to the cops didn’t initially lead to much. They said they checked out the place, knocked on the door to no answer and that they couldn’t do much without a warrant, but that they’d ‘keep an eye on the place’ throughout the night. Luckily my buddy Drew was able to wake up to my constant barrage of calls and let me crash on his couch. I texted my wife what had happened and to not go to the house. That next morning here and I met for breakfast and called our landlady Sarah afterwards.
“Hey Sarah, we were just reaching out to tell you that we’ve been having some issues with your new tenant next door to us.”
There was a deafening silence before she finally spoke up, “What are you talking about? What new tenant?”
A breaking and entering report was enough to finally get the police involved. They asked me a few questions about Troy, but I feel I didn’t give them much help as to who the guy was. Sarah apologized to us profusely, she mentioned being at a funeral that week and felt terrible for having us been wrapped up in this situation. She couldn’t tell us much other than Troy had apparently gotten ahold of Greg’s phone and his house keys and that there was an ongoing murder investigation. Sarah gave us the unfortunate news that Troy was still out there but she would do everything in her power to make sure we felt safe. A few patrol cars would continue to monitor our place for the upcoming weeks and Sarah had installed a ring alarm system. While we appreciated her concern, this was enough of a sign that we needed to move. We had saved up enough for a new place anyways - and this was the best excuse to get our asses moving.
We got extremely lucky and found a place within our range and a few days ago we had finally got everything packed up and ready. The movers packed everything up yesterday morning, and as they were backing out - I saw a manilla envelope placed on our driveway. I opened it to read a note that simply said, ‘We still need to play - my door’s always open.’ A few polaroids fell out and my heart sank. One showed Greg with a part of his skull cracked open - he was jammed tight sticking out of a freezer. The photo was labeled ‘freeze-tag’ in red writing. Another polaroid was of the three people that went into Troy’s house that dreadful night. One person was laying face first on the floor bleeding out while the other two were tied to chairs with gags in their mouths with hardly any clothing. They had this incredibly sad and awful look of fear and despair on their face. This one was labeled, ‘musical-chairs’.
I looked at the final photo and my chest began to feel extremely heavy. My breath was becoming more shallow…I think I was having a panic attack.
The photo was a shot of me from behind, most likely pretty recently…it read, ‘Hide-n-seek…’