Obliged to Love

The game has only just begun. Radio Silence Directors Matt Betnelli Open and Tyler Gillette are back for Round 2 with their new horror comedy film, Ready or Not 2. Here I come. Samara Weaving returns as Grace, The Battle of Warren and Bulletin Bride, and is joined by stars, Catherine Newton, Sarah Michelle Geller, Sean Hadasey, Nestor Carbano, David Kronenberg, and Elijah Wood. After Grace marries into a mysterious family and is forced to play a life or death theme of hide and seek, she emerges victorious. But what she didn't know is that by winning, she triggered a whole new twisted battle. This time with her estranged sister-fade on her side. The duo faces a shadowy group of rival devil-worshipping families who control the world, and they must fight to the bloody death for the ultimate prize. Two times the kills, two times the Satanic rituals, and two times the human combustion. Don't miss the full tilt insanity. Ready or not, too? Here I come. When it hits theaters, March 20th. No. This is Creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling, and disturbing creepy pastures and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened, or simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Okay, we can do this. Everyone, got a bit to get through before the story, so let's dig right in. First, a shout out to the new patrons. Tamia Kamaaf, Amy, Michelle, Julie Montillon, Lada Slokum, nobody 459, Trash Pandacute, Caleb L, Fatal Grace, Ryan Bailey, Heather Cudworth, and Aja Pickering. Check out who you can support to show angry words like bonus episodes in Logo March at patreon.com slash creepypod. Next, we have a request out for more stories that are either for a female identifying or ambiguous narrator. And yes, we're still accepting stories from male narrators. That's just our current ask. Remember, we pay for all stories and you keep all the rights except for our one-time narration right. We always prefer first person with limited back and forth or no dialogue. Check out how to submit it creepypod.com slash submissions. And along that line, we're going to start a new promotion for all writers. Once a month, we're going to do a drawing with all the stories we've accepted that month, and the winner will get some free merch from the show as an edit thank you for making the show possible. We love our writers. There's no extra steps necessary. Your entry into the drawing is automatic upon story acceptance. And we are getting real close to Creepway Camp 2026. So if you have a storyboat camping, the woods, summer camp, or general campfire stories, now is the time to get them in and get them featured across April. Again, first person stories preferred. And a quick shout out to our own narrator Megan McDuffie will be on the face off tour this April and may performing with dance with the dad and magic sword. I can't wait to hear it. I'm just super excited that you'll be here at the fine line of Minneapolis. But I'll be posting more on socials about their tour dates and reminding you about it here. So you can get your own tickets. Okay, enough of that. Thank you all for your patience as I get my head out of the bad weather. I mentioned last week that I was going to start playing some of the old recordings I found in the basement here at the station. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what's going on with them. The first I thought they were doing some sort of welcome tonight, they all think, but well, this doesn't really sound fun. Here, give a listen. You are the owner of a residence with any of the following. You are considered a plausible safe zone and should expect the local population to occupy your private property. Swimming pools without a drain, disconnected jacuzzi tubs, bathrooms that are being remodeled with no running water. Maintenance crews are reporting a terrifying chain of blockages that are said to have begun in these blockages are not a known substance and should not be touched under any circumstances. Please heed the following signs of these blockages invading your residential plumbing unannounced. If you hear what appears to be echoes of someone else's voice and not your own in your bathroom seat drain or utility closet or if you hear knocking from within your water heater or irrigation systems, then it is certain this unknown substance has made its way into your home plumbing. Emergency services have been contacted at a state level and are en route within the next three to five business days, not counting Monday, to bring immediate aid to the local area for homes that have been affected. During this time it is important that you do not panic. If you are currently sheltering within your home, please be advised that all water running from unfiltered taps will remain still. This is to simply inform you that you are not hallucinating. The substance is causing the still water effect. However, we have confirmed reports that this water is still in fact water. If you do have a still water sighting, it is safest to remain immobile in order to guarantee your own personal safety. One moment, I'm getting an update. Oh my. To anyone hearing this broadcast, if you are still listening to this message, it is with a heavy heart that I inform you, you are no longer out of the safe range of. Yeah, it's weird. I mean there is a town outside the Twin Cities called Stillwater, so I thought it was about that. Fun fact, that's where the recent phone footage movie The Frog Man was filmed. Just left, why? But obviously what you just heard isn't about that place. I don't know. Maybe it's an inside joke. I'll keep going through these and see what else I can share with you and maybe figure out what they're all doing here in the first place. And when they were recorded for that matter. Okay, let's get to this week's stories. First up, a new mother begins to notice unsettling changes in her youngest child, brushing them off as postpartum anxiety, exhaustion, and the strange normalcy of early parenthood. As her diary entries grow more frantic, the line between maternal instinct and something far more disturbing begins to blur. From writer Jamie Pitson narrated by Michelle Kane, creepy presents oblige to love. Have a baby, they said. Most rewarding thing I've ever done, they said. Motherhood is the best job I've ever had, they said. Well, I did it. I had a baby. And while it truly is the greatest gift I'll ever get, I'm not sure if it's the gift that keeps on giving. Did they mean to leave out the part about the excessive hair growth in the second month of life? I flipped through several baby books and nothing notes thick tuffs of hair on the spine. The follicles protruding like large craters on the moon or seed pods on an exotic plant. And I swear the baby growled at me the other day. Not like one of those innocent coos you can play off as their first laugh, but eight legitimate growl. A snarl so grumbly, the dogs ears perked and their tails retreated between their legs as they ran to their safe haven under our bed. The fur is concerning. It started yesterday and has become thicker today. Though our families have a lineage of being hairy, we expected to have the same situation with children. However, this coarseness is the type of hair you should only see in the nether regions starting in your teenage years. If you catch my drift, being the curious mother that I am, I plucked a piece of it and let me tell you, it took a bit of tugging. The bottom of the hair looked like a bolt of garlic. White to snow topped with a dark brown sprout. Too bad I didn't have a microscope to further investigate the foreign follicles. That growl though. I still love him to death. The diaper wasn't full of blood. It was just bad lighting. The nightlight was red, creating an optical illusion. Like the, is the dress black and blue or white and gold situation that took over the internet a few years ago. Red lighting is the weirdest. The fancy nightlight so expensive yet so worth it. We had to have it. I was pregnant with the first baby and it was the one thing we pined for on the registry. The $60 nightlight. Does it wipe your ass for you too? My husband asked when he saw the price while we browsed the store. We added the random yet necessary baby items to our list. Milk warmers, bottle sterilizers, pacifier wipes, buzzing chairs, wristbands acting as heartbeat and pulse detectors, rubber ducks that changed color if the bathwater was too hot. Hell some of the gadgets probably did in fact wipe the babies ass for you all while playing gentle rain sounds and emitting a soft shade of orange. But the diaper wasn't full of blood. It was definitely the lighting. Was it the slew of hardwood eggs I've been craving and ingesting lately? They helped me reach my daily dose of protein. Without them I'd be exhausted and my milk would falter. They were firm fresh eggs. Does that do something different with your farts than the chickens who were abused and droves? Maybe it was the sour crowd at the German place we went to this weekend? I don't remember anyone else complaining about being gassy. And what about the tough of hair on his tailbone? Maybe that was the lighting too. A figment of my wild twisted new mumbry. Is this growth something to write home about? Is it like the palantial cyst that I got in college? Will he grow a shiny and fluffy tail or will it be a bump full of pus? Ingrown hair, blood and teeth. It's probably that. Without the teeth, of course. How would babies get teeth in their cyst before they grow their own teeth? Perhaps it's the bone remnants of my last miscarriage. Feed us bits. The name of my next band. Is the tail worth looking into or am I overreacting? Like when I almost didn't tell the doctor about his swollen testicle and it turned out to be almost something. What if I hadn't mentioned anything? Would it have cleared up on its own? Come think of it. That's exactly what it did. The tail bump is probably nothing. It will handle itself, just like everything else. Pekes are weird, superhuman. It's probably his hormones just leveling out. All of my random thoughts and worries never matter though. Once I start nursing him again, once he's back on the womb, the euphoric feelings flow back to me. The unconditional love, the smiling, the wiggles, the cues. All of it tantalizing and hypnotizing me in cadence with the gigantic pushes of oxytocin as he drains my breast and provides me with a sigh of relief. He's my flying beast from Pandora in the movie Avatar, connecting by entangling tails, but in our case, by nipple and his mouth, if I go away from him, I will die. I will thirst. I will suffer. A lone time is never the same. When together, we are a tightly wound ball of string, growing larger and stronger with each nursing session. But I swear, his pupils dilated extra wide when he was suckling last night. It was only a flash, but I saw it. They turned completely black, and then he grinned and let go of my nipple. My milk came in when he cheesed, and the precious life-giving liquid sprayed all over his face, but his eyes remained fixated on me. Those black, pido-like eyes, completely innocent yet, somehow I felt violated. But then the violation completely dissipated once I stared into his eyes again. Back to normal, making me forget he was ever different. Just like how I forgot about the birth, the pregnancy, and the ailments of motherhood. Just like I forgot how evil one could be. Dear diary, things are getting a little weird over here. Today, the swing moved on its own. I had to put the baby down somewhere. I don't remember where. I was going upstairs to do the umpteenth load of laundry and lost track of which device I sat in that time. Could have been the swing, the rocker, the green pillow, the white pillow with elephants, or the dog bed. Who really knows? When I got back downstairs, I went to prep a pasta dish for Chimarol's dinner. My hand rocked back and forth on the cheese grater while my mind and mouth worked for the almond brother's band vinyl. In between tracks, I heard a squeaking noise from the living room, the swing. It's sad in its normal place in the living room. It's back turned away from me. It swayed from side to side, the gentle jig gearing up into a violent rock. A prideful baby giggle, saying alto to the soprano squeal of the seat. The mobile dangled and contorted to the beat while its plush elephants bounced back and forth with gusto as if controlled by a toddler with a play steering wheel. Upon investigating the house's new carnival ride, I saw the baby, but not where I expected to see him. Instead of in the chair, he was in the pillow beside it, smiling and laughing. His oversized and eminy baby toes wiggling and his fingers twiddling to the piano solo of Jessica in the background. His swear, his hands orchestrated the swing's motions. The directing and waving reminded me of a mini-lennard Bernstein on the Sorcerer's apprentice, controlling the broomsticks in Fantasia. When his arms flailed, the swing would sway like a seasick inviting pirate ship ride on a county fair. When he gave up or sucked his thumb, it came to a halt, faster than an animal rights activist car when cut off by a squirrel. I'm thankful for this squeaky swing, though, or else I wouldn't have caught it moving in the first place since I was often law-lawland, doing a mother's work of incessent picking up, putting away, wiping down and washing out. My husband and I have been meaning to grease the damn thing and always forget to pull out the WD-40. Good thing we procrastinated. He's fine. These things happen. These random, synch-up moments, you think, are spooky and enchanted, but end up being coincidental timing. Like how the Wizard of Oz matches up with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, just a simple, sweet coincidence. But the chair was turned off. My husband took out the batteries weeks ago because the girls kept messing with the settings, and we were afraid he was going to swing away into the sky without us knowing. I bet the dogs hid it with their tails or something. They're always trying to play nanny. They probably thought he needed something to laugh about while I was up in Lauderdale. This past week they have been acting strange with him anyway. It has to be there doing. His tail hasn't gone away yet either. In fact, it's getting furrier. No more bloody diapers though. I think goodness for that. Yet another two week phase he will grow out of. I'm sure the tail will disappear soon enough and be replaced by some other strange nuance of baby life. Time moves too fast. Last night I woke from a dream. Rather a nightmare about the baby. In the dream we were hanging out at our house watching a movie. In the backyard in the house, adults chanted, circled and danced and organized thrusts and kicks around a bonfire. They kind of reminded me of a lane at the Christmas party in Seinfeld. They had joints in one hand and cocktails in the other. A parent paradise. Other than the worry of fire and cracklings burning their bones. However, it gets much creepier. The house itself was surrounded and infiltrated by kids. Hiding in crevices only their eyes visible. Peeking through the windows, vents, pipes, cracks and closet doors, slits and the drawers, and the reflections of the mirrors, anywhere they could flex into. One child was also hanging from the ceiling in the upstairs theater room. Swinging from the dangling speaker cords we'd never gotten around to moving or hiding. Staring and grinning. Like a kid who pooped their pants and didn't tell you until after you gave him a lollipop. The mesmerized children tapped their hands to the outside chance and dribbled their fingers to the beat. My hands clung to the baby as I held him close to my chest and fear that children would steal him forever. As my heart beat in terror of the kidnapping kids, the baby fixated on them in their hiding places. We crept from one room to another, guided by the gusts of my steamy, heavy breaths against the chilled air. The baby nodded his head to the pitter-patter of the hand taps. He was, of course, smiling. As a some sick joke, as he infected with a strand of hell-raiser, where in the actual fuck did he get this from? Did it happen in the hospital? I knew there was something wonky after the circumcision. They said they were going to bring him back to my hospital room right away, so I could be his first point of consolation. But they didn't. It was bullshit. He was so calm going into it, and then he came back asleep. Like they hypnotized him, drugged him or injected him with some kind of demon seat, or was he evil as he grew in the womb? Or worse, did he get overtaken before his cells even decided what role they were going to play in his life? I know who his father is, not evil, but not completely innocent either. What about the dreams I had throughout my pregnancy? The ones about him being born and looking like a stranger. His broad and distant features, unlike those of my husband, did we travel into an alternate universe where I immaculately conceived a demon from hell, or has he been possessed by something or someone? A spell from the stranger at the grocery store who almost backed into us and gave me the finger when I hunked the horn. Or what about the dipshit who cut us off as we were turning into the McDonald's last week? I admit I screamed quite loud. I might have gotten out of the car to berate him in the drive-through. Big deal. He rolled up his window. Thankfully, he was three cars ahead and safe from the crazy headless mother. I bet he cursed us while sulking in his shitty car. Or am I the one that's rotten? Did I bestow this on him? My other two girls are quite evil, but nothing like this. Nothing that gets on paper and can be diagnosed in a doctor's office. Maybe it is my fault. A product of my anxiety. My need to always stay busy and do something with myself, all while forgetting about the children. Only to find they've befriended Satan and decided to house him in their soul. Whatever it is, I don't have time for this shit. My husband is gone for work. My kids abandoned me to claim to their grandparents in Florida. I can't keep track of the time anymore. I've been stuck in this house with the youngest for a week. Feels like a year. I had a physical scare what I think was a few days ago. I used to think horror films and scary stories happened on the psychological level. Mindfucks like how Charles Manson moved furniture around before people got home. This was not the case. I was walking into his room to nurse him and felt a cold wind blowing like he was inside of a walk-in refrigerator. Frigid icicles formed on the doorknob and droplets of condensation slid down the white door and sparkled in the fuzzy glow of the doctor who dollic nightlight. Speaking of which, I could have used that dollic. That dollic would have exterminated whatever the hell was festered in here with my boy. A harsh wheezing came from the crib. He lay there breathing in and out as hard as he could, as if he had inhaled a pile of wood chips. The sound was like someone was shuffling cards right next to him in cadence with the rise and fall of his chest. He changed colors before my eyes. Robbins egg blue, mint green, wisteria, daffodil, back to Robbins egg blue. He looked at me and smiled. His gums painted with bright blood. Who's blood? Who knows? Could have been remnants from my boob he'd tucked away on the inside of his cheek like bits of tobacco. Could have been from the dog's tail I found in his mouth earlier, or the dead mouse I found lying inside his crib the day before. Could have been anything, diary? Shit is so out of the ordinary. I don't know what to believe anymore. I can't say, it was certainty, that he planted the object that tricked me on the way back to my bed. The toy wasn't there on my way into the room. That's for sure. Things can get loopy walking around with boobs full of milk. All that oxytocin itching to get out and play, but instead, cooped up in the suffocating memory glands. I get it. But I know what I saw. I was halfway into the middle of the night, not yet in the thick, syrupy puddles of moonlight, where it really gets howling, the 3 am's and 4 am's. Reserved for prowling wolves, truck drivers, and somniacs, and new mothers. Even the drunks are passed out by then. They're slurred and misconstrued conversations now hushed in a pillow damp from whiskey-spiked drool. Shit hits the fan at that time. But it was only 12.33 am. I swear that toy wasn't there when I walked into that room, diary. Damn near broke my ankle on it. A plastic toy car, pink and purple and adorned with groovy, peace-loving daisies. A blonde girl, the driver, not a care in the world on her painted on face. She clearly had never been through adulthood. The slip took my foot forward, but my neck, backward. A whiplash I'll never forget. My back yelped and my legs clamoured to reconnect with my spinal column. Now I walk like a Japanese maiden with wooden clogs, shuffling my feet to avoid traps and pitfalls on my way to provide nutrients to a child that may or may not love me. I'm too old for this shit. Dear diary, one year ago today, I miscarried a 12-week-old child. Happy dead baby day to me, right? I will never forget that day. I lost that baby. But then again, I'm not sure I want to remember it. The miscarriage happened when the girls and I were in Florida visiting my parents. Luckily, they live in one of those gated retirement communities, where you can play shuffleboard, go to Water of Robics. Talk about where you're going out to eat that night to five different groups of people and pretend to still find it interesting. Whenever I'm in Florida, I try to stay within the perimeter of their neighborhood. Because any time I have to leave the gates, I remember I'm in Florida, and I fear I might get kidnapped by a cannibalistic maniac writing wrote gators like jet skis. My glorious and monotonous days in consolidated paradise consisted of two mile walks in the morning. Cardio workouts, headlunch time, and numerous snack breaks, cat naps, and meditative sessions sprinkled throughout where I fed birds, wrote in this very journal, and read literature better than anything I'd ever reach in my lifetime. The night before the baby vanished from my uterus, I'd had a little bit of spotting, which for the men out there means light bleeding enough to damage a pair of underwear and a night out. The blood was nothing out of the ordinary, but certainly not normal. Gugling, bleeding at 12 weeks pregnant, provided a bunch of nonsense that would never happen to me, so I kept moving on. I returned to the condo after one of my lunch workouts when I was attacked by an invasion of cramped pangs. Just some of that good old lighting vagina again, I thought. Except this time, it's a bit higher up, duller yet steadier. No need to worry. The thoughts kept rolling and justifying themselves for a few hours, until the blood flow quickened, and the contractions magnified bigger than the Cheerios on Honey-I-Shirt the Kids. My mind spun in five million directions about how my damn near perfect streak of pregnancies was ending. Pregnancy always was easy for me. What in the hell was this? While laboring my way to and fro when the L-shaped halls of the ER, thank goodness for the butterfly photography, I suddenly felt the urge to push out whatever was writhing in my nether regions. The baby must have come out when I pooped a bowl of red in the ER triage bathroom, because the ultrasound minutes later showed nothing but blood in the womb. Nothing but blood, huh? There had been a baby in their hours before, where did it go? Sometimes I think about that child. Am I kidding? I think about that kid every day, floating around in the Atlantic Ocean and pissed at me for leaving it in a swing state not taking it back to its liberal stomping grounds where it was conceived. Poor, dead, misunderstood, unspoken, science happens, baby. Anyway, here we are today, 15 months from the anniversary of the lost soul. One and half pregnancies, one dead floating baby, a handful of broken hearts, a couple of constant strains of sadness and resilience, and gobs of shootas, woodas, and cutas later, and we've got ourselves a rainbow baby, a sweet, snugly ball of love with a tail, a growl, and a mittle the likeability to cause things to float. How pleasant! I think I'll take him out and show him off to the world. Dear diary, our first outing as a troop of four was a success. We went to the Children's Museum, a place of laughter, imagination, and wide-eyed, frazzled parents wishing they'd chosen a more serene location to spend their day. We did all the things, the vet, the fire truck, the reading bungalow, the supermarket, and the room full of couches standing on their sides with nooks and crannies to crawl through. It was crowded, but I felt calmer than I had in a long time. My last baby was out. No more pregnancy? One of the best feelings ever. Your wolf pack is right in front of you, instead of hiding in your reproductive cave. What you see is what you get. What I got the third time around was a little magician. After we covered most of the museum, we did the bubble room, the sticky syrupy, soapy, sudsy, saloshi area with mechanisms overused and depleted from eons of play. Like the vagina of a mother who'd naturally birthed all three or one of her kids. The girls and I did our routine waltz of the bubble ring, absorbing each other in opaque spheres of dishwasher detergent until the frail ords exploded into the ether from our wispy pokes as soft as butterfly wings. The oldest child, UV-colored and fearless, decided to do the human-sized bubble maker. It never works. The bubble either pops too soon or one side pops early on. Never a complete globe. We failed four times, and my daughter's rushed away to enjoy other operable exhibits. But I stayed put, rubbing my eyes and disbelief. Only to forget, my hands were covered in bubble solution. Through itchy, burning eyes, I watched the bubble making apparatus raise and lower itself, completing the giant bubble three separate times, three times. I've never seen it work even once, and then I looked over at the baby, sleeping away in the dog dream. Brow furled, hands raising and lowering, like the crowd in the seventh inning, starting the wave. I know it was him making those bubbles. I can't tell my husband when he gets back tomorrow from his work trip. He'll think I'm nuts. But I think he's a miracle. Jesus fucking Christ, diary. I think something is wrong, like a really, really wrong. I don't know who to tell. I'm shaking under the covers, writing this diary. No time left. It doesn't seem like I've got much. My husband, Carltonite, said he's going to need another few days up at the new store. Their contracts are all messed up. He has to wait for new permits, so on and so forth, yada yada yada. Same old work bullshit. The baby, I think he's trying to hurt me. It might not be a baby. It might be an it. He's never liked this normally, and by this, I mean, a monster. I put him to bed last night, and he went down like a champ, smiling and giggling at the ceiling fan. And the time it took for me to turn off his lamp, crank up his humidifier, start a sound machine. He physically changed, and not in a good way. Not in the innocent tailway, diary. He changed. He was a pale greenish, the color of a smooth stone, perfect for skipping. Pock marks stung his cheeks and his skin shone dull. Like someone had drained him of his blood, and injected him with stale urine. His eyes were puffed up. The irises and sclerus matching his dark pupils like an extra terrestrial. His lips were falling off, diary. I repeat, his lips were falling off. Like he was decaying on the spot. He was smiling, grinning the same grin he had while the swing was squeaking and sway, smirking the same way he had while working the bubble machine in a mighty slumber. A copy of the cheesy face he had had in the dream had spooked me so much, I ran into my bedroom. Here I am, under the covers, documenting this. In case he teaches himself to walk or levitate in here to take a bite out of my throat. If only I'd taken him to the doctor when he was showing signs, they would have fixed this right up. I waited too long, like how I waited too long to get the tumor taken off the dog's face. I totally deserved the look she would give me wearing that comb. It's fine. I'll keep monitoring the symptoms. If that's what you'd call these spurts of wildness, that's what I usually do, and everything ends up working out. I can't go to the doctor, they'll take him away like ET. They might hurt him. He might even kill them. And next, after moving into a too good to be true apartment, a lonely man discovers he's not living alone when a ghostly woman begins visiting him each night to tell her stories. What starts is an unsettling companionship slowly curdles into obsession, as the apartment's history and his role in it reveals itself to be far more dangerous than he anticipated. For writer Matt Scott, creepy presents Sophie. I talk to ghosts. Well, I talk to one ghost, or rather she talks to me. I mostly listen. Mostly. But hey, I talk to lots of people every single day and listen to them in return with the smile on my face. I talk to the lady at the drive-through coffee place. I talk to co-workers and bosses. I talk to people on the phone. In one way or another. I talk to the people at the stores and gas stations I stop at. I talk to probably a hundred different people through the course any given day. One of them just happens to have died in the 1690s. I know. I look her up. She doesn't make me smile. Actually, it's not as cool as it sounds. I was terrified when she first came to me. But I'll come back to that. I assume it came accustomed to her impromptu visits and unsettling demeanor. She talked. I listen. It was as simple as that. I asked a question from time to time, but that that don't have to suffer the living. And I rarely got any straightforward answers. They were always cryptic and dark, like prophecy. I met her when I moved in last year. Man, has it been a year already? The edit said the apartment was a 2,000 square foot walk-up on the lower east side. Crapie neighborhood, but the place was massive and open and occupied the entire top floor of the old three-story Walden building. The Walden used to be an old boarded-dello in the early 1900s. It was next to the train depot at one time before they moved the station further in town. It sits at a three-way intersection and used to service the cowhands and drifters passing through town. The top floor had a rap-rom balcony that used to connect to several more smaller rooms, but now each floor had been made into an apartment. Spacious ornate? Historic. Now, on the east side, it's just a bunch of junkies and chain restaurants, tattoo parlors, and the jail. So yeah, not a great neighborhood, which is why I thought the price tag would be commensurate on the location. But I soon learned it was for other reasons the route was so low. Well, first I was terrified. I mean, who wouldn't be? Online and bad. Must have been well after midnight. I'd stayed up painting. Nothing break about with just some landscapes I've been torn around with. I'd learned a new technique I could have been using the death. I gave up after my third attempt to just left the grass with like marshmallow fluff. I needed new brushes. I needed new everything. I was on food, coffee, toilet paper, paint, patience, money, and work. I needed a job. I needed something regular. I like to do to get the place. 1200 a month was a steal for a place to spay shes. It had a real minimalist feel to it. A brutalist approach. I loved everything about it. Now I just had to keep paying the rent. So I'm lying in bed one night after I just moved on. I'd been able to paint or create anything of flippin' value when I feel a chill in the room. I mean, it got cold fast. I pulled the covers up over me. My breath billowing out to mplush white clouds. I have an old straight back wooden desk chair in my bedroom. I keep up by the door and usually fling my coat on it. My clothes when it change. I heard it move. I first hit wobbled and I thought it might have been the wind. Obviously there was a cold ass draft coming from somewhere. Made sense it in my radlon old rickety desk chair. But then after a couple seconds of wobbling around, it moved. It moved across the freaking room and stopped by my head on the floor beside my bat. As if someone were gonna sit down in it and asking me about my condition or some damn thing. The footsteps were the scariest. One after another slow, wet, stomping, squishing sounds and a thud is the footfalls met the hardwood. I couldn't move. I held my breath and the blankets tightly up by my face. The chair scooted back because of someone we're gonna sit. And then I heard my name. I froze me to my bones. I tried to blink away the confusion, the uncertainty, the disbelief, but it was no use. Before my eyes in the chair, appeared the visage of a young woman dressed in a long white sleeping gown. She wore white slippers with snow white little puff balls on the ends of them and her hair was brushed out long and straight. It was red with streaks of orange like flames in it, shining in the moonlight from the big bay window on the other side of the room. She said my name again. Yes, I whispered back to her. Her galt moth didn't move. Her lips, I mean. Dark blue, maybe black. It was hard to tell in the sparse light. Her eyes seemed to shine to reflect the light like a cat's. I couldn't look away. I don't know if she spoke the words out loud or if she just put them in my brain, but I heard her loud and clear. That first night, she told me not to be scared, but she wasn't going to hurt me. She told me she'd been so lonely these past few months. She'd been all alone up in the apartment. I didn't know ghosts could get lonely. That's what she was. Wasn't that a ghost and apparition, a spirit? My brain tried to make sense of it all. I was petrified. I realized I was still holding my breath. I exhaled a cloud big enough to envelop my head. She giggled, then. It was horrible. Like cats in a blender. They made my skin crawl and the goose flesh marched up the back of my neck. She told me I was a silly man and get some rest. She'd be back. I didn't even take it as a threat. I didn't know how to take it or if I should take it at all. I thought about packing a bag and high-tailing it out to the park and sleep on a bench. Anything would be better than this. But then, then I thought I really loved this place. And where the hell else am I supposed to go? And who the hell else would believe me? Did I believe me? What the actual F just happened? I laid there here in bed for hours until the sun came up in the light-folder room. Then I got up only then. The first thing I did was to return the chair. And obviously, if the woman was still around after all this time, I had no idea how long she'd been here then. Maybe we could share it? She'd stay on her ethereal plane and I stay on mine. It went on like that for weeks. Every night or on the same time, the chair by the door wobbled and scoot across the room and stopped by my bed. Then she would appear. She sat her name was Sophie and that she'd been here since before the railroad came, before the streetcars, before, before, before, before. Again, all I could do was listen. It was like we were out of phase. I would ask questions, of course, who wouldn't. She never seemed to hear them, never comprehended my words, perhaps. Could only hear herself in the rehearsed dialogue she practiced for centuries. Whatever reason she didn't respond to me, I laid there and listened nightly to her tales. She told me the land the walled in sat-hands was once part of her father's estate, her favorite part, the stables. She told me about lovers' lost, about broken promises in the night, but revenge and treachery. She talked about the absence of God and how it broke her heart. More importantly, she told me she was trapped here with me, that this was the place of her death centuries prior, the victim of her father's anger and her lover's greed. Every night for nine months, she came into my room when I was there. I know more about her in the history of this town than I do my own family. Then, one night in early September, she didn't appear. Like a wounded teenager I waited up for, her that she didn't come to me. She was gone. Disappeared as easily as she'd shown up. I didn't see her for over a month. She reappeared one night just after Halloween. I remember because I'd just splurged on cheap Halloween candy at the dollar store. I had a bowl of it sitting beside my bed on the night stand. Like always, she moved the chair closer to me, appeared in her usual white dress and slippers. But this time, the dress was filthy. It looked moth-eaten and muddy. Black tar was smeared along the hem of her dress. Big holes were peppered along the bodice, and the straps were an awful rust color, as if they'd been dipped in blood. Her hair was disheveled and she looked generally unkempt. She looked paler than usual, and she had a pain to look on her face. Her cheek sunk in in. The eyes had bell her shade of charcoal. She said she had missed me. I told her the same. And it was true. I had missed her stories. Listening to them was like meditation. The image is so clear in my head I could smell the wildflowers as she described them to me. I asked her where she'd been and if she was okay. I guess it was a dumb question. She started wailing. Jesus, who's so loud and disorienting, like nails on a chalkboard times a million. I heard one of the bay windows crack, and a mirror in the hall sounded like it shattered completely. I heard glass hitting the floor. She looked at me then. The only real time she ever acknowledged a direct question from me and jabbed an accusatory finger at me, it shook in the frigid air between us. I saw hatred in her eyes. Anger. Rage. What did I don't ask her? Her finger shook, her chest heaved and fell. Her head began to vibrate, I guess is the best word for it. I honestly thought it was going to pop for a minute. But it just kept vibrating, shaking faster and faster until it was a whirl of red hair and warm yellow eyes. There was a humming sound coming from her, a buzzing like electricity surging through a line. And then there was a loud snap, like bones breaking. And Sophie sat still and silent. Though it didn't look like Sophie any longer. I lay there clutching the covers to my face, unable once again to move. Her face was swollen, bloated and blue, splitting open and long and jaded seams. Yellow brown water seeped out of her wounds, her body inflated, decayed, fleshy bits dangling off like ornaments on a tree. She sank of sludge in the swamp, like rotten worms and dead fish. Her left eye bulged from the accumulation fluid behind it, popped out under a mildew dress along with a fountaine of pus and greens stagging a water teeming with little translucent tadpole looking things. They swam down her chest and puddled up in her lap. She looked at me from behind a pale grey eye. The tint the water takes on after doing the dishes. Kind of like all the color had been sucked out. What remains is just a photo negative of the original. Lost forever in time and space. She sat there, unmoving for hours, just pointing and gurgling. The sick muddled sounds were precious last breaths filling my ears. I don't know when I fell asleep or if I did, really. But when the sun came the next morning, like always, she was gone. Not exactly, like always, I discovered when I swung my legs up out of bed. The chair was still there, beside the bed. It was what? Sly me, covered in long, stringing tendrils of green algae and mud. And, God, maybe shit. It smelled like shit. I went to step away and I slipped in the muck on the floor. It looked and smelled like fish guts and worms, swamp water and Spanish moss smeared across the whole of the bedroom. The hardwood soaked in it. It took me all morning and every towel I had to clean up the mess. The rest of the day I wondered what I'd seen. Did I witness her death? Had she drowned? She looked like she drowned, but there wasn't swamp land or any water if that mattered near here, or maybe 20 miles or so. She said she was assaulted here. That she died here on this land centuries ago. Maybe her body was taken to the swamp and buried there. Seems good to guess as any. When I did crawl in bed that following night, I kept one eye open for Sophie. I was going to ask her if she'd been buried in the swamps. She wanted me to find her. If that's what she was trying to tell me. She didn't come back that night though. It wasn't her. It wasn't just her. I was awakened by the sound of a low rumble and then the chair beside the bed was thrown through the air. Incredible jaws, powerful ones snapped up from the darkness of the floor and snatched the chair out in midair, crushing it between its teeth, reducing it to splinters with one massive bite. I dared not look over the edge of the bed. I knew what I'd see, or at least I thought I knew what would be staring back at me. But I was wrong. Dead, wrong. The behemoth gator sat on the floor, Sophie's delicate body between its merciless snout. It chewed and thrashed and chewed some more, snapping and growling and hissing as it devoured the body of the poor miserable woman. It tossed the last little bit of her up in the air. I followed it with my eyes as it fell back down into the creature's throat. When it had swallowed the rest of her down, the animal turned quickly, flipping its tail and knocking a leg out from under the bed as it strutted out of the bedroom and out down the hall. I didn't go after it. I did a little research on this place. I wanted to know more about the occupants. Sophie never talked about them, only this land when it belonged to her father. I wanted to know what happened to them. Why, if she'd come to them too, had there not been anything about it anywhere? Turns out, maybe the price was too good to be true. The results weren't too difficult to find out. I'm stupid. I should have done that a long time ago. I don't know why I didn't. And maybe I do. Maybe I do know why I never told anyone over the past year about Sophie. Maybe because she made me feel special. Like I was unique. I had a ghost lady in my apartment and she talked to me every night. Told me such wonderful stories. Wonderful and sad. Heartbreaking, some of them in fact. But that's why I loved them because they were real. It was, is, right? Patrick O'Shea, the tenant who lived here before me, a 31-year-old warehouse worker only made it five months. Police found him dead in his car sitting in the parking lot of his job. He took a bottle of Xanax and washed it down with a fifth of vodka. Accident? Maybe. Maybe not. Bonnie Newton, a nurse working graveyard, it's a park mercy lived here before that. People say she lived here two years before there's any trouble. After that, she'd made numerous reports of some neighborhood punks I've been pranking her with dead fish and ghostly images projected under her walls. Nothing came of it. 46 days after the last report was made by Bonnie regarding a legit poltergeist like activity. She was found dead in her bathroom, electrocuted. A parent suicide, a corner concluded. Maybe? Maybe not. Two for two? Wasn't looking good. I found a tenant as far back as the 1950s. Clied Maxwell, encyclopedia salesman originally from Belouth moved into the top floor of the walled and right after it was renovated. He was the first to live in the newly refurbished joint. Larger open floor plans perfect for a hard work in bachelor. landlord phoned him hanging by his belt in his closet after he missed a second month's rent. He made at 60 some odd days, best guess. These records are a little dated. Some pieces missing, I'm sure, but they paint an accurate enough picture for me. She came back last night, Sophie did. Her white dress a brilliant ivory. Her slippers with two little white puff balls on the tips. But it was her face again that haunts me still. Even in the day time hours, which are passing by too quickly now. Her face is that of an insane animal. A red painted on smile tracing cannibal lips. Eyes red as a blood moon belching out hot rancid breath. saliva tripped onto my face. I didn't move, didn't blink, didn't breathe. She hovered above my bed looking down at me face to face. Our forehead's almost touching. She sniffed my hair. It, she, stayed like that for over an hour, suspended up over me, her gown brushing the covers hiding my face. I don't think I'll ever scream again. I bought a gun. I have it with me now. I loaded it before crawling into bed. But tonight I'm going to meet her in the swamp. I'll get my answers. I'll get everything that's coming to me. I'll know the mystery of Sophie. I'll learn her fate. Or be damned trying. And finally, a malfunctioning bathroom vent becomes an obsession for a lonely tenant. Its constant noise reshaping their routine, isolation, and sense of reality. As the sound grows more intimate and impossible to ignore, the neat understand what's inside the walls pulls them towards a revelation they may not survive. From writer Max Reyes and narrated by Megan McGuffey, creepy presents The Last Tenant. The first sign of it was the sound that came from the vent. I suspected the bathroom fan, though I couldn't prove it, but what else could it be? As soon as I flipped on the lights which, in step inside the room, I'd hear that nasty rattlestard. It was a gritty, wheezing groan, close to what I imagined you would get if you forced a jet engine to inhale six feet of gravedart. I tried to drown out the sound whenever I needed to take care of something in there, quick showers with my phone blaring, whatever song it last warmed its way into my skull, running to tap water the whole time I brushed my teeth or took a shit, blending them a not-nest droning of my toothbrush and the gentle shh of the water. Trying the super was futile, but I did it anyway. The missus were as varied as the means I used to deliver them. I would call. I would knock. I would send long, overly deferential text messages with detailed descriptions of the awful sound punctuated by a plea for assistance. I'm worried it will lead to mold damage. I'd scribble on a note already marked with my apartment number, then I jammed the paper between the door and the threshold of the super's unit. I don't want to lose the deposit. I said through the door once, my voice choked with all the financial angst I could muster, hoping most of it would carry through four inches of wood. When that failed, I tried to call on something deeper, some buried need for the world to make sense to adhere to some tidy logic I'd still yet to spot any evidence of after years of spent searching for it. If it's in me, I thought maybe it's in him. Please, I implored I just want to make sure that everything is working okay. I just want to make sure the vent is doing its job. That one I sent over text. He didn't have the courtesy to turn on his read receipts. After weeks spent sending intermittent distress signals, I gave up. I decided to let the fan and the awful sound it made win. I took long, hot showers that I spent staring at the great in the ceiling that I thought that I knew was the source of the noise I dreaded. I ran the water so hot for so long that when I finally opened the bathroom door, the fire alarm would bleed and a panic convinced the steam from my shower was smoke heralding ablaze that would engulf me and the other tenants. Some part of me hoped that what I was doing would deal a mortal blow to what was clearly a diseased machine. I hoped that by overworking that damned fan, I would put it out of its misery. I wanted it to die. I wanted to kill it and let entropy and my ecology win. I imagined the bathroom converted into a leopard-spotted jungle of fungus, mold of all varieties, staining the grout and blackening the egg shell-colored walls. It was a silly fantasy, of course. Nothing I could do would change that place in any way that mattered. Pain it, repaint it, rip out the molding in the tile and start over. It had been there before me and it would be there after. When I eventually decided against renewing my lease and abandoned the apartment to some new tenant better equipped to wait out my supers and difference. I wanted another opinion. I wanted someone to tell me if they thought there was anything unusual about the sound. If they thought I was being unreasonable, I hope I'm not being unreasonable. I'd say an every message to the super and the hopes that repeating it would make it true. But not many people came through my apartment then. Sometimes a coworker from my old work would text me, asking how the job hunt was going and offering to stop by. But I knew the outreach wasn't sincere. They were being polite. My exit wasn't acrimonious, but it wasn't like it was particularly pleasant. You can pretend the layoffs aren't targeted, but it's harder when one of the departments caught up in them consists of exactly one employee. My apartment was one long hallway in the basement of my building and a few rooms branching off of it. When I wasn't in my bedroom, I was in that hallway which didn't have a light. I started leaving the bathroom light on and the door open to compensate for the darkness that meant more of the noise of course. But I had gotten used to it. It became my metronome, the sh sh sh sh and rattle, a constant reminder of where I was, what time it was, and how much time I'd been there. I stopped bothering with the other lights in my apartment, the overhead lights, the reading light, the sun lamp my mother had insisted would be good for my mood. I kept the bathroom door open and the light switch flicked on. Some part of me still hoped the constant overwork would kill the thing in my ceiling, but it seemed to handle it fine. The constant rattling breathing didn't seem any more labored than it had been before. I started falling asleep to the lullaby from my bathroom hypnotized by the humble buzzing of the light positioned above the cabinet hanging over my sink. I would close my eyes and feel the light in front of them. I'd open them and the light would be there. The whole time I was wrapped in the blanket of the sound of the sh sh sh from the ceiling. I don't remember when I stopped going outside. It seemed unnecessary. I had the light and the sound, and that was enough. But I think that meant I had stopped looking for work. It's hard to recall, but I must have run out of money, but it's the only reason I have for why I cut the power. I was startled when I woke up to the darkness. I couldn't understand what was happening. I knew I hadn't touched the switch. I was certain that the light should be on because I could still hear the fan struggling to exhale. Some new understanding slid into place as I lay there in the dark. I don't remember grabbing the screwdriver. I felt my fingers wrap around it, and I felt myself tracing my hand along the wall toward the bathroom, depending on the tortured hum to guide me. Some part of me remembered I'd need light and held my phone limply at my side. I didn't remember to turn it on until I got into the bathroom and left it face down on the floor to illuminate the ceiling. The screwdriver turned once, twice, three times, and the first screw was out. It clinked against the porcelain of the toilet I balanced on, and then rolled to a stop on the floor. Something warm and sticky dripped out of the vent and landed on the bare skin of my chest. Somewhere, distantly, I recognized that I was naked. I kept driving the screwdriver up into the vent and twisting it until I heard another mechanical tink. The third screw came out without a sound. More of that hot liquid dripped into my face as I stood under the vent, considering what to do. A didn't bother with the last screw, I dug my fingernails into the gap between the vent and the ceiling, and I tugged. It came loose, and I lost my footing in a day loose aflued the temperature of a fevered human body. The world somersaulted once, then twice, and then my vision went dark. When it cleared up again, I was staring at the ceiling. The light cast ugly shadows on a reddish, purple mass that ballooned outward and suctioned back into place in time with my own shallow breathing. The whole thing was slick with a dark fluid, and the spasms of the fleshy mass flicked more of it onto my face. My naked body was drenched in the viscous mucus. My flesh was warm with it, and somehow I found that comforting. I heard a mournful sound from the hallway and recognized the noise belonged to my smoke alarm, but there was something wrong with it. I tried to lift myself off the ground and realized one of my collarbones protruded from my chest at the wrong angle. I ignored the pain and used the other arm to lift myself off of the ground. I don't remember dragging a step ladder into the hallway. I do remember the wet squelch, the tissue beneath the fire alarm made, when I used my screwdriver to pry it out of place. Blood wept from a gash I'd made in the bruise-colored flesh there. I caressed the tear and shut my eyes. I'm sorry, I whispered. The mouth I had uncovered, pleated again, quieter this time. I kept massaging the tissue and whispering, and eventually the bleeding died down to nothing. Once it was done, I shut my eyes tighter, and I listened for the sound that I had come to love. For the first time, the thing in my bathroom seemed to breathe with ease. It was a struggle to lift myself into the ventilation with only one good arm, but I had help, and it's quiet up here, peaceful. The only sounds I hear now are the muffled ones from below, made by the tenant who replaced me. I hope I get to meet them soon. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative, common, shallow-ite licensing, or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the expressed written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.