I never knew who lived in the old house across the street. Its windows were dusty, curtains always drawn. But that night, as lightning flickered, I saw it - a face, pale and emotionless, staring right at me from the window. A watcher, observing my every move.
My heart pounded as our eyes met. There was something unnaturally captivating about the face. It wasn’t merely curious; it was obsessed, a fixation that sent shivers down my spine.
Days turned into weeks, and the face became a constant presence. It watched me as I ate breakfast, as I worked from home, as I tried to sleep. It never moved, never blinked, just watched. I felt it even when I wasn’t looking.
I tried to investigate, knocking on the door of the old house, asking neighbors, but no one knew anything. The house was supposedly empty, its last occupant gone years ago.
Desperate, I called the police, but they found nothing. No trace of anyone living there, no sign of the watcher. They told me it was stress, a figment of my imagination. But I knew better.
The watcher became more than a face. It was a presence that filled my thoughts, a haunting shadow that knew my fears, my secrets. I felt a connection, an inexplicable bond that grew stronger with each passing day.
I began to lose sleep, haunted by dreams where the watcher was always there, lurking in the shadows, a silent observer in every facet of my life.
Friends and family grew concerned as I became more and more withdrawn, consumed by the watcher’s unrelenting gaze. I stopped going out, afraid to leave my home, afraid to be watched.
And then, one night, the watching stopped.
The window was empty. No face, no eyes, nothing. An inexplicable dread filled me. Something had changed, something was wrong.
That’s when I found the letter on my doorstep, old and yellowed as if it had been waiting for years. It was addressed to me, written in a trembling hand, a plea from someone who had been watched before.
“The watcher knows,” it read. “It learns, it waits. It’s not a person; it’s something else. Leave now, before it’s too late.”
I left everything behind and moved away, driven by an instinctive fear that I couldn’t explain. The watcher was gone, but its presence lingered, a haunting memory that will never leave me.
The old house was torn down a few years later, and the mystery of the watcher was buried with it. But I still feel its eyes on me, a lingering connection that defies explanation.
I share this with you, dear readers of /r/nosleep, as a warning and a plea. If you ever feel watched, if you ever see a face in a window where there shouldn’t be one, trust your instincts. There are things in this world that we don’t understand, obsessions that go beyond mere curiosity, connections that can turn deadly.
Remember, the watcher in the window is never just a face. It’s something more, something that knows, learns, and waits. And it might be watching you too. Perhaps it’s already found its next obsession, and perhaps, just perhaps, it’s you.