Recently, I’ve been finding scratches on the front door of my house. Not really noticeable scratches or deep gashes, but more like someone was lightly dragging a bit of metal against it so it left a mark. Usually I would put this down to animals, there are a lot of cats that wander around at night around here and even a few foxes that wander out from the nearby woods to find food, but these marks are at the keyhole and are nowhere near the bottom of the door where you’d expect them to be.
When I first found them, I just put it down to regular wear and tear because its an old door and has been up since before my family even moved here back in 2001. Just to give some context, we’re in a fairly normal suburban area that has never seen any sort of crime rate and what small incidents there have been were minor, like the only real time I could really think about was an attempted burglary that happened to one of my neighbours and that was years ago with nothing happening since, so its not like we’re living in the middle of nowhere or in a rough part of town or anything.
So after finding them at first I just washed the marks off and forgot about them. That was until they came back less than a week later. I’d left the house and just as I was about to lock the door, I noticed the marks were back again and were pretty much in exactly the same place, near the keyhole. I think its weird and go about my day without really thinking much of it again, but later that evening I was in the hallway talking to my brother when I hear something at the door. Scratching noises. There’s a window small window next to the front door that, whilst the glass is weirdly stylised so you can’t get a clear picture of whos at the door, you can at least tell if someone is there.
Me and my brother go to the window and look to see what’s causing the sound, but as soon as we get there it stops abruptly, like someone just flipped a switch and caused whatever it was to stop. We open the door and there’s literally nothing there, but I notice there are more marks than before near the keyhole.
We, obviously, think this is pretty weird and we both go down the drive way and look up and down the street to see if anyone was there. It was pretty late so nobody else should have been about, so we figured whoever it was would stick out pretty easily. But nope, there was absolutely nobody around. Just to be safe, we even checked over the walls and fences of our neighbours in case they were hiding around there.
We don’t bring it up with our parents because we don’t want them to worry and we’re both adults at this point, so whoever was scratching our door, we felt pretty confident in handling. Fast forward a few nights and we haven’t heard the noise again, so we just put it down to someone playing a prank on us or a drunk person getting the wrong house. About six days later, though, I’m up at about 11pm playing video games in the living room. I pause the game to get a drink and I start to hear the scratching noises again. Louder and faster this time, like whatever is outside is desperate to get in. The curtains are closed and I really…REALLY….don’t want to open them, but know I have to if I want to see who keeps doing this.
I make a quick detour to get a knife from the kitchen just in case, come back to the living room and shut all the lights off before opening the curtains as little as possible and peeking outside.
And what I saw was…just…so wrong.
It was…well…thinking back, I don’t think it could have been called a “person” but for lack of a better word and for the sake of my own sanity, I’m just going to refer to it as a person from now on.
It was tall, freakishly so, I’m around 6’1” and my brother is 6’3” and this person was much taller than both of us, so much so that if we were stood next to it, it could look down and comfortably see the tops of out heads. I don’t even know how to describe what its body looked like. It was like someone had taken parts of different people and glued them together. Some parts were fat, others average and some were skinny. I could only make this persons body at this point and part of me was thankful that I couldn’t see its face yet. One of the weirdest things about it was despite the disproportionate size of its body, it was dressed fairly normally, if a little out of season considering this was during the summer. He was in a winter coat, like the ones you see with fur lining the hood, tight jeans and heavy looking walking boots. At this point he was still scratching the door with both hands. I could just make out his hands…or I guess what would be hands on a normal person. They were big, skinny with slender fingers about twice the length of a normal human’s.
I was frozen, just staring at this “person” for…I don’t even know how long. But then he stopped, leaving everything in such an eerie silence that it was like time froze. And then I saw his face.
The worst part is, I was looking through the smallest gap in the curtains, pretty much only one eye was actually viewing whatever this…thing was. He shouldn’t of been able to see me, but somehow he knew I was watching. And one second, He was at the door, his hands by his sides and then, in literally the blink of that single eye watching him, he was pressed against the window.
I won’t describe the face. Just sitting here now typing this out, that horrible fucking face is burnt into my mind. thinking about it nearly sends me into a damn panic attack…. I can only really say that…you know that painting “The Scream”? How the person in the foreground’s face is warped and doesn’t really have visible features? His face was like that but in real life. And oh…you could make out every sickening detail. The eyes were just…otherworldly, like a sharks, lifeless, black pits, always staring and never blinking. And that mouth…that goddamned mouth…
I screamed and ended up waking the rest of the house up. They came down and I told them that “something” was outside. We all went to check, safety in numbers after all, but there was absolutely nobody there again. Whatever that freak was, he was gone. I told them about the scratching noise and my brother backed me up on it. We looked at the door and sure enough, the faint scratches were there.
Its been about four weeks now and despite waiting up at night and placing cameras near the front door, he left us alone for a while. I thought for the longest time he was gone. My parents were away on vacation, leaving my brother and me to look after the house. Or I guess just me, seeing as my brother was working nights now. I had finally put the scratches and that person out of my mind. It was late at night, around 1am. I was up late, playing video games again, when I heard a noise. Different, this time. It was the sound of someone scraping their fingers down a window. That long squeaking noise, you know?
I’m…pretty much frozen again, just listening. Thinking whatever is out there will go away if I don’t let it know I’m there. Then I hear another noise added into the mix. A low, staggered, rasping groan. I call my brother a few times, but he doesn’t answer. So its just me and that thing on the other side of the window. We started keeping a baseball bat near the door after the first time I saw this thing, so I take it upon myself to deal with whatever the hell this guy was. I grab the bat, open the door and immediately, the noises stop. I step out and he’s gone…again. I look around again and find nothing. No trace of anything or anyone and just as I’m about to step back into my house, this…sound…echoes out from the distance. It was almost like it was letting me know it was still there.
So… on to tonight. My brother is on night shift again. My parents aren’t back from vacation. And he’s back. And he’s been there for an hour now. He’s pounding on the glass of the window. I can hear his groaning. I have the baseball bat next to me, but I doubt it will do any good.
I heard the glass break and the stairs are creaking.
He’s coming. Wish me luck and…goodbye.