Hello. I really didn’t want to bother anyone with this, but I feel like I have to tell someone or else I am going to go crazy. I guess I’ll just start from the beginning.
My name is Alex. I moved to a small town in Indiana to take a job that I got offered out of college. I felt really lucky to be getting this opportunity, since this is somewhere that I had only dreamed of working. It was an eighteen-hour drive from Florida to here, but it wasn’t too bad, since I had my stepdad with me to keep me company along the way. Once we arrived, I unpacked the truck that had been holding the contents of the past twenty years of my life. It was kind of depressing, feeling like my existence had been dwarfed into meaningless belongings. Nevertheless, I set up my room, which was quite a bit larger than the one that I was living in at my parents house in Florida. It was nice. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was truly an adult.
My roommate, who was a friend of mine from college, who also got the job, had brought his girlfriend along with him. I didn’t talk to her much since we weren’t too familiar with each other. When I did it was usually about who would be taking out the trash, or to show me some video that she had found. This is why I found it jarring when she pulled me aside with a very serious look on her face to tell me something. “The neighbors are watching.” Her tone made it clear that she was not joking. “Yeah, probably, we are the new neighbors” I said, disregarding the momentary fear that ran through my body. “No, like they are watching through the window.” The neighbor that she was referring to has a screened in porch on the front of their house that can see directly into one of our windows. “He set up a chair. He pointed it towards the window and everything.” Now I must admit, I did find that odd but when I went to look, he was gone.
A few weeks went by without anything strange happening, causing me to disregard that encounter as her adjusting to the new living situation. Then Nettie showed up. Nettie was an older woman, probably mid-sixties, or early seventies, who decided to start helping out my roommates girlfriend who I will call Mira from this point on. Mira didn’t have a car or a drivers license. She was working vigorously to get a job here in Indiana, but nothing was working out since she had no mode of transportation. Nettie offered to drive Mira to interviews and to help with her transport in general. I began to hear about Nettie daily, to the point where it was almost creepy. She began buying food, clothing, and some other necessities for Mira. Mira would tell me about this and how she found it a bit odd, but when we brought it up to her boyfriend he said, “that’s just how people are in the Midwest.” Mira and I still found it weird and decided to do some digging. It turned out that Nettie had a daughter who had been killed. We tried our best to find out the cause of death, but to no avail. Things began to make a little more sense. Nettie was clearly looking for someone to fill the void left by her daughters death.
Things calmed down for a while after this realization, allowing us to think that maybe she was just a nice old lady with no ulterior motives. Then she sent Mira a present. It was a pair of snowsuits and shoes, along with a set of diapers for both of her children. Now this may seem pretty normal and like it shouldn’t need to be a concern, but Mira had just put all of these exact items in her Walmart shopping cart online a day ago. I mean EXACT, down to the brand and color of every single item. Mira was scared and I was pretty anxious about it too. There is no way that this woman could have known about any of it. We made sure to shut the curtains on all of the windows and lock all of the doors from that point on. When we told her boyfriend what had happened, he gave the same sort of response. “She is just an old religious lady from the Midwest. I’m sure it’s fine.” We gave up on his help.
About a month had gone by since that incident and nothing else really strange had happened. I went to work, played video games, and worked on some music to pass the time. I was living a pretty monotonous life, but I enjoyed it. After the move it was nice to finally be settled into my new life. This is around the time that I saw him for the first time, the neighbor that had been watching through the window. He was a large man with stubble and short hair that wore jeans, an old, buttoned shirt, and boots. I saw him standing outside as I pulled into my driveway. I gave him the obligatory neighbor wave to no response other than a dead-eyed stare. I had mostly forgotten about the original incident with him, so I just figured that he was grumpy about my loud car. I began to see him more often, never receiving my wave back.
One day I decided that it might be good to go actually introduce myself. I consider myself to be fairly well spoken and polite, so I thought that maybe I could win him over and stop getting stared at every time that I returned home. I pulled into my driveway the same as always and exited my car. He was standing on the steps that were right outside of his back door smoking a cigarette. I began to walk over, and it seemed like he barely noticed my presence. Then, like a robot, he snapped me into his gaze and smiled. It was like he was seeing me for the first time. His new presence sent a chill down my spine and caused my words to get caught in my throat. “Have you seen the lake?” these are the first words that I heard out of his mouth since moving there. “yeah, I.. I like it.” I couldn’t help but trip over my words in response to the randomness of the question. “They always like the lake.” I felt like I was having a fever dream. “She did too you know?” The only thing I could think to say to escape this conversation was “I’m sorry, I have to go.” I had to keep myself from bursting into a sprint to get back into my house and the garage door felt like it took a year to open. I closed and locked the door and called for my roommates. “What the hell are you screaming about?” I told them about the interaction that had just taken place and they both laughed. I could tell that they thought that I was lying. I felt betrayed, especially by Mira, since she was the one that had experienced the other strange things that had happened since we moved there.
I stared out my window at the lake that night. It was almost as if I thought that it was going to pull me in if I let it out of my sight. Eventually I gave up my post and collapsed into my bed. There was no way that today had happened. Why would he say any of that to me. It didn’t make sense. “She did too, you know.” Who was “she” and why would he think that I would know. He was aware that I had just moved there after all.
In the following weeks I avoided him at all costs. I would not risk another interaction like that last one. Work, sleep, weekend, over and over. I enjoyed my job though, so it was alright. Work, sleep, weekend, work sl.. *knock knock knock. * I nearly fell out of my bed I sat up so fast. It was 2am, what could my roommate possibly want right now that was worth scaring me half to death. It was Mira. “She drowned Alex.” “Wha… who drowned?” I asked, still coming out of a delirious sleep state. “Nettie’s daughter. She drowned in the lake out front of the house several years ago.” My heart sank and I could feel heat on my back from the direction of the window that faced the lake. Mira left me alone after I couldn’t manage to respond, and I stood stupidly in my door. I couldn’t bear to turn around.
I slowly crawled into my bed and debated who I could possibly tell that wouldn’t call me crazy. I reached for my laptop and began typing. Now I am here.