The first time I heard the noise was when I was getting ready for bed one Saturday night. As I approached my bed, a tuba-esque squeal, which is the closest I can get to accurately describing it, filled the air. It wasn’t overbearing. Not at first anyway. I had never heard it before, so it caught me off guard.
I decided to go outside to find the source of the noise. As I stepped outside, the noise stopped. I walked around the building, glancing all over for the source of the noise. I thought it would start making the noise again as I searched, helping me pinpoint where it was coming from. But I never found anything. I was too exhausted to do as much as ask around, so I went back inside.
When I stepped inside, it started back up. I took a step back outside, only for it to stop again. I stepped back inside, deciding to wait until morning to figure out where the noise was coming from. Once I had both my feet in the house, it started again. I took it as coincidence and went to bed.
I woke up and checked the time. 7:02 AM. It took a few seconds for it to click in, but the noise was still playing. Echoing throughout my house. I could hear the echoes in each of the rooms from my room. It was weird. After I got myself ready for the day, I stepped back outside to investigate the noise. Once both of my feet were on my front porch, the noise stopped. I asked each of my neighbors about it. I described the noise to each of them. They had looks of confusion on their faces and told me they hadn’t heard a thing like it.
I checked every room in the house but came up with no luck in finding the source of the noise.
In my living room, where the noise seemed to be the loudest, I took my phone out and recorded audio of the noise. After I stopped recording, I went back out onto my front porch. As I expected, the noise stopped. When I played the audio back, a deafening scream blasted out of the speakers. It noiseed like three people were in horrible pain. I jumped. As I heard the screams go on, a cold chill ran down my spine. I never wanted to hear any noise such as those screams, especially not at such a loud volume. I held the volume button down until the audio muted.
I glanced around to see whether anybody else was around to hear the screams. Nobody was outside. I stepped back inside. Once inside, the noise started yet again.
As I went through my day, the noise grew annoying. It became ear piercing in a way I hadn’t felt before. It was as if my ear drums were being rubbed against a cheese grater. I called my landlord to ask about it the noise. After saying yes to every “have you checked” question, he offered to come check on it.
In the days waiting for him, the noise grew more excruciating. It was almost as if every 5-6 hours, it pierced my ears harder. It got far too annoying. I decided to go buy noise cancelling headphones to ease my annoyance and bring comfort to my ear drums. When I put them on… silence. My ear drums felt euphoric. I sighed in relief. My ears rang a teeny bit, but that was preferred over the grating noise.
I carried on with my routine in silent euphoria. It was relieving as ever, but then an issue came up. About five hours into wearing the headphones, a pressure hit my ear drums. It was a moderate pressure that didn’t bother me too much at first, but about 5 hours after it started, it hit my ear drums as a harder pressure. It became discomforting.
Despite the discomfort, I took it over hearing the ear piercing noise. I even went to bed with them on. I woke up five times that night to the pressure I felt on my ear drums, but I didn’t want to take them off and hear the noise in a state five times worse. It got worse as the hours went on. The times at which the unknown pressure punctured my eardrums harder lined up perfectly with the times the noise got more grating. Every 5 hours or so.
At one point before sunrise, I fell into a state of being half awake. A state I didn’t have control over myself in. I flipped my blanket off of me, stood up, and at a rapid pace I stepped into the kitchen. I pulled the cutlery drawer open and pulled out a knife. I was half asleep, so my handling of the knife was rather wonky. The only thing I remember after that was me dropping the knife back into the cupboard, then I awoke on the floor in the hallway. I checked the time. 7:16 AM.
The sleep walking I did felt like a dream, but when I stepped into the kitchen, the drawer was open. It was opened as far as it could be. I walked up to it, noticing the knife laying over the cutlery, not in a specific tin. Dread rushed through me. The noise inspired me to wake up in a half asleep slumber and attempt to stab myself. I needed out. I stepped out of the house. The pressure lifted, filling my ears with a burst of euphoria.
“Figures,” I said to myself.
The noise was in my house. Not anywhere outside my house. That’s what I knew. I sat outside. I wasn’t going back in there with that awful noise. I needed to contemplate what I was going to do.
I got lost in thought. Staring into space and all. At some point, I realized I could hear the noise again. It was blowing my eardrums out. It felt like my head was being crushed. I also realized I was standing in my living room. A sense of lightheadedness hit me. I stepped towards the TV. But in an involuntary way. Like I wasn’t in control of my body. That’s when I realized I was half asleep again. I grabbed the TV and pulled it. Then I dropped it onto the ground. I stomped on it a few times. As if in a rage. All I could focus on was the sound. It’s like it was hypnotizing me. I tipped the stand over, sending everything that was sitting on it crashing to the floor. I attempted to move my limbs, hoping I could move any muscle at all. Fingers, hands, arms, feet, legs… none of them budged. I continued my out of control dazed rage while the damn noise continued to puncture my ears.
I proceeded to knock picture frames down, rip plants out from their pots, then I went into the kitchen and smashed every plate. This might just sound crazy, but it began to get spooky. I made my way to a drawer. I opened the drawer, took out a marker, then I began to scribble all over the wall. But that’s not the spooky part. I was intending to draw a symbol. A symbol with a sinister meaning. A warmth that felt like hot flames overcame me. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to snap out of whatever sleep spell I was under. I couldn’t. I didn’t have the will.
Sometime after, I woke up on the floor of the hallway again. My ears were ringing louder than the noise. I thought it was good at first. Maybe the noise was being toned down. Maybe it was finally going away. But as I woke up more, I realized the noise had gotten so intense my ears just couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up, but fell to the ground again. I could barely pick myself up. The fluid in my ears had been thrown off balance.
I looked at the wall near where I was struggling. The symbol was there, in the black writing I wrote it in when I was half asleep. Oddly enough, it looked like a bunch of random squiggly lines. I had forgotten the exact issue with the symbol. I could only recall the burning sinister intent behind whatever owned it.
I crawled back outside. I wasn’t worried too much with my sense of direction being overthrown. I just wanted to get back outside. I rolled my feet out the door, then the noise stopped. All I could hear was a high pitched ringing. Nonetheless, I was happy the noise was gone.
As I sat outside, wondering what I was going to do, I found I had the urge to invite people to my home. There was no reason for it. I just wanted people to have fun in my house. It opposed every other thing I had the urge to do thus far, so I found it weird. Part of the urge was to bring Kanins into my house. Why Kanins? Why Kanins specifically? Then came the urge to have everyone bring knives and bleach into my house.
No.
A rush of dread filled me. It was the extension of my urge to kill myself. To destroy everything. To draw some weird symbol on my wall. I was convinced I was going insane.
I stayed in my friend’s apartment for a couple days. I told him about the noise. How unbearable it was. I told him my landlord hadn’t arrived yet. He understood the landlord situation and let me stay until the noise was taken care of. I couldn’t tell him about the destructive or self threatening sleep walk spells. I would be sent away quite fast. Although, sometimes I wondered if it would be for the best. I didn’t think I was going to do the same thing at his place, as the noise wasn’t there. I planned on staying at his place for a bit.
At 1 AM, I awoke to somebody peeking through the window. Dread rushed through me. What a creep… But hey, better than the noise… right? He stood there for a little while. I wanted to know what he wanted, so I stood up to show him I was aware he was staring in through the window. He fled. I grunted. Still exhausted, I climbed back into bed.
In the morning, I noticed a piece of paper was taped to the window. I walked up to it to read what was on it.
“Finish your business at your home.”
A well drawn bleach symbol was drawn below the words.
Was somebody doing this to me? It didn’t click in so much until then, as I was too focused on the noise. Somebody had to be messing with me, I thought. But who? As I pondered, my friend walked in.
“I found these pictures on my doorstep. They were sent to you?” He said with a confused tone. He handed the images to me.
It was a sheet of paper with two images taped to it. Complete with a note that said the paper was for me. My full name was written on it. As I looked it over I noticed what the images were of.
The image on the left was of a dozen people lying in what looked like my living room. As I looked closer, I noticed all of the people had green or brown splotches of rotting skin. My stomach turned. They were dead bodies. I then noticed my name was written in red across the wall. All the furniture was torn to pieces. The windows were cracked. There was a calendar date on the bottom right. It confused me. Oct 12 24. 2024? Maybe it was just a typo, I thought.
I glanced at the image on the right. In it was a bunch of animals sitting in a basement. The only light was whatever daylight was shining through the window. As I looked on, I noticed the shape of the animals were a bit off. They looked irregular compared to what I’d believe animal silhouettes would look like. It felt weird to look at. On the bottom right was the same confusing Oct 12 24 calendar date.
As I stared at the images, my phone buzzed. I checked to see I had a message from my landlord.
“Don’t go back to your house until I tell you to,” He said.
I asked him what was going on, but he didn’t answer. I almost got furious. I needed my house. I couldn’t stay at my friend’s place forever. I went on with my business throughout the day, hoping the landlord would have the problem fixed as soon as possible.
That night, I awoke to the noise. It was faint, but I could hear it. I jolted my head up, but out of my own control. I was half asleep again. My friend stood at the door, holding a phone up.
“Someone sent this audio to me. They said it’s for you,” He said.
I stood up. It felt so weird, and dreadful, to be doing things without control. I stepped past him, then I ran out of his house. I didn’t want to assume where I was headed, as the worst case scenario froze me with dread just thinking about it. Once I got to my street, the dread filled my stomach. I attempted to move my feet in the opposite direction they were moving in. No avail. I attempted to speak, but no muscle in my mouth would move. When I stepped onto my property, I braced for the worst.
I stepped up to my door. “Come on,” I said, trying to move my muscles. I turned the knob, then I opened the door. There were bodies lying all over the floor. Blood pooled around each one of them. As I stared in confusion and chills mixed in with the intense dread, a sting punctured my eardrums. Then the noise came rushing back into my head.
I awoke in my backyard sometime later. It was morning. The sunlight blinding me, I turned my head to my right. The back door was open.
Messaging my friend, I learned that after I choked him, he called the police. According to him, the police said they’d look for me, starting with my house. After talking to neighbors, one of them told me something that will stick with me.
“I saw two officers walk into your house after you and they never came out. Somehow, no backup arrived. Are you okay, man?”
I walked up to my living room window and peeked inside. Bodies were laying there. All over the living room. Unmoving. They didn’t have rotted skin, but there were pools of blood under each of them. Who were they? I wondered. I looked closer at one of the faces. It was a man. His chin was lower than what seemed realistic, giving me a light chill.
My house has been taken from me. I don’t believe anybody would believe a noise could get so bad. Maybe I can wait for that supposed further notice from my landlord, but I have to make sure I don’t get lured into my hell house before then.