I noticed the house because of the upstairs light.
It was an old house across the road from where I was staying, and I had never really paid attention to it before. The grass was high, the windows were dirty, and there was a mailbox that looked like it hadn’t been opened in years.
The light came on around two in the morning.
I remember looking at it because I was awake anyway. I work late sometimes and my sleep schedule is pretty bad, so being awake at two wasn’t unusual.
I thought somebody had bought the place.
That was basically it.
I had also been reading scary story tales around that time because I couldn’t sleep. Not good stories either, just random stuff people post online. Some of them were actually pretty bad, but I kept reading them anyway.
The light came on again the next night.
Same window.
I didn’t think much about it until my neighbor mentioned that nobody lived there.
She had lived on the street for years, so I asked her about it when I saw her outside.
She said the house had been empty for a long time.
Then she started telling me about the guy who used to live there, although she didn’t know much about him. He had apparently died inside the house. She wasn’t sure when.
Then she started talking about her dog.
I don’t remember why.
Something about the dog getting out of the yard, I think.
Anyway, I forgot about the house again.
A few nights later I saw the light.
This time there was somebody standing in the window.
I couldn’t see the face.
Just the shape of a person.
I stood there looking at it for probably longer than I should have, mostly because I was trying to figure out if it was actually a person or just something in front of the window.
Then I lifted my hand.
I wasn’t waving exactly.
More like I moved my hand to see if the person would react.
The person raised its hand before mine was even halfway up.
I stopped.
It stopped too.
I went inside.
I don’t know why that bothered me so much. It was probably just someone standing in the house. Maybe my neighbor was wrong and somebody had moved in.
Still, I locked the door.
The next morning I looked across the road.
The house looked empty again.
There were no cars, no lights, nothing.
I went to work.
Nothing happened for several days.
Then I heard knocking on my bedroom window.
It was around eleven at night, not two in the morning this time.
I thought maybe a branch was hitting the glass.
There weren’t any trees close enough.
I didn’t look.
The knocking happened again.
I stayed in bed and waited.
After a while it stopped.
I actually forgot about it the next day.
Then I noticed the upstairs light across the road again.
I started getting annoyed with it more than scared. I know that sounds stupid, but when something keeps bothering you and you can’t figure out what it is, eventually you just get irritated.
I crossed the road that afternoon.
The front door was unlocked.
I shouldn’t have gone inside.
I know that.
But I did.
There wasn’t much in there. Old furniture, dust, some boxes. The place smelled damp and there were marks on the walls where pictures had been taken down.
Upstairs was mostly empty.
The room with the window had a mattress on the floor.
There was a chair facing the window.
The chair wasn’t dusty.
I remember touching it because I thought maybe an animal had gotten inside and somehow cleaned one part of it, which obviously makes no sense. I don’t know why I thought that.
There was something scratched into the wall beside the window.
I couldn’t read it properly at first.
It said:
Don’t wave back.
I left.
I didn’t tell my neighbor.
I also didn’t tell the police because, again, what would I say? I walked into an empty house and found writing on the wall?
That night the light came on again.
I didn’t look at the window.
I watched television instead.
At some point I heard knocking from upstairs.
Not in my house.
Across the road.
I turned the television down.
It stopped.
Then it started again.
Three knocks.
I went to the front window without really deciding to.
The upstairs window was lit.
Someone was standing there.
I could see the shape clearly this time.
It raised its hand.
I didn’t.
It kept its hand up for a while.
Then I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before.
The upstairs window was open.
I don’t know why that mattered.
It just did.
I went away from the window.
I slept somewhere else that night.
After that I stopped looking across the road completely.
I started staying with my sister more often. I told her I was having trouble sleeping, which was true, just not the whole reason.
A month later the house was demolished.
Apparently the property had been sold.
I didn’t see them tear it down. My neighbor told me about it afterward.
There was nothing left except dirt and some pieces of concrete.
I thought that would be the end of it.
It wasn’t really.
A few weeks later I was driving past the street at night and looked toward the house without thinking.
There was no house.
No upstairs window.
Nothing.
But for maybe a second I thought I saw a light where the window had been.
I kept driving.
I didn’t turn around.
I also stopped reading long scary stories to read online before bed, which is probably the sensible thing to do anyway.
Sometimes I still think about that chair.
Not the person in the window.
The chair.
Because if nobody had been living there, I don’t know why it wasn’t covered in dust.
And I know that’s not exactly proof of anything.
It just bothers me.
Maybe somebody had been going inside the house.
Maybe I was wrong about what I saw.
I don’t know.
I just don’t wave at people through windows anymore.
Even when I’m pretty sure they’re the ones waving first.
