Stories to Tell in the Dark

Be careful how you lock your doors

Careful with how you lock your doors.

My neighbourhood has always been what you'd describe as "fucking cliche'd". White picket fences, Fathers happily barbequeing, the works. Not to say that this wasn't nice, it was certainly a lovely neighbourhood, and the peace was well worth the humdrum day to day it'd provide.

Of course, it never lasts, otherwise I wouldn't be here telling you all this.

It all started about three weeks ago, we started to get breakins in the neighbourhood. Never anything too serious, it was just food from pantries, and the occasional box of goodwill clothing that had been thoughtlessly left outside. Of course, even if only food or clothes were stolen, it's still incredibly unnerving to know that someone was prowling around your home while you might even have been inside it, so the old rules of the neighbourhood watch were dusted off, and everyone was vigilant for the next two weeks or so before they stopped caring again. People relax too easily.

I suppose a little background on myself is important here. I'm a university student, living at home with my mother and father, and my sister. Dad's in banking, Mum delivers the mail. Pretty standard. We've got a pretty nice home that we moved into about 6 years ago, for a price you could call "Tough but fair", kitted out with a pool, two ensuites, a gaming room, the works. We all lived upstairs when we were younger because kids generally don't like living on a different floor to their parents, but as we got older they shifted me downstairs so that I could have a bit more room to myself.

Now, this will be complicated, but bear with me because it's important.

The layout of my room is what you could consider at best, unusual. With a lot of Australian homes, it's not uncommon to have the main entrance on the 2nd floor, which then lead down to your ground floor, so therefore, my room can be entered through two different ways. You can come downstairs straight into the bulk of my room, you can take the outside door that goes through the laundry, down a hallway, in turn to my room. I don't have any doors to actually close my room, a fact that has made hooking up very difficult in my teen life.

Three days ago, I woke up in this room to hear someone walking around. This isn't an uncommon occurrence as it's an old house, it does creak. It took me a few minutes to realise why this bothered me so much.

The steps were someone walking around on my floor.

This doesn't happen. My mother and father used to do it, back in my first days of living down here, but I'm a light sleeper and whenever they came down to throw some clothes in the washing machine it'd wake me every time.

I shit myself. I've never been brave at the best of times. I just sat there pretending to sleep, hoping he or she would just take whatever and leave. I then heard a click, of my door closing, with no more footsteps. I waited for several minutes before I even dared to move, before sprinting upstairs and waking up Mum and Dad in a blind panic. We didn't sleep that night, we were too busy searching the house.

He didn't take anything. Not a single thing.

Mum and Dad let me stay home for a few days after that, albeit once we'd replaced the locks with deadbolts and looked at some high level security systems. I was still convinced he'd stolen something, it was too unusual that based off what had been happening in the neighbourhood, he'd chosen to take nothing here. So I did some investigating.

I spent a few hours essentially itemising my own belongings, the food in our pantry, I'd even considered testing for prints at one stage when I noticed something. The laundry has several doors for storage of brooms and the like, and one of them was sitting slightly ajar. I swung it open, a kitchen knife at the ready, only to be slightly embarrassed. Then I noticed something at the bottom, hidden just out of view by a bucket.

There was a panel in the wall here, just one of your standard ones for accessing the inner area of the wall. Of course, I was still on edge, so I thought I had no other choice but to investigate. I opened it up, and shined a torch inside, only to see a massive cavity, one that extended all the way to the wall of my bedroom.

That's not the part that bothers me. You miss these kind of things when you move into a house.

What bothers me is the food wrappers and rags of clothing I found in there.

What bothers me is the pictures on the walls of the neighborhood children.

What bothers me is the constant thought I've had every single day since then.

There's only one reason to break in to somewhere and not steal a single thing.

You weren't breaking in at all. You were heading out for the night.