SHINK, PSHH, SHINK, PSHH
Imagine hearing that for hours on end while you’re trying to get some sleep.
I mean sure, we’re all stuck at home and things can start to get a bit boring, but c’mon. Is digging holes really the best hobby you could’ve come up with?
It’s only been a few weeks since I’ve moved into this neighborhood. I can’t believe that I’m already starting to regret it.
I already knew it wasn’t going to be the most idyllic place to live, nor was the house itself all that nice when I saw it. Still, it was good enough.
However, it’d be dishonest of me to leave out the real reason why I decided to buy the place.
It was cheap. Not cheap enough to immediately raise any red flags, but it was at a price that I’d be foolish not to consider. On top of that, I knew the previous homeowner, Tom. Not terribly well, but he was a good enough guy, as far as I could tell. I really thought he was just doing me a favor. He also seemed pretty eager about it, so it didn’t really feel like I was taking advantage of him.
I remember asking him why he was moving, and he told me that he’d met some girl in Canada and was going up north to be with her. Fair enough.
I asked him about the neighbors as well and he told me not to worry, since the woman who lived on the house to the right was pleasant and mostly kept to herself.
“But what about the house to the left?”
For a moment, it almost seemed as if he were taken aback by the question.
“Oh, Dave?” he responded after a moment of silence. “He’s a nice enough guy. I think he lives alone. Also keeps to himself. I can’t imagine that he’d bother you at all.”
In retrospect, it was a bit of a strange response. But at the same time, to say that Tom wasn’t a bit strange himself would’ve been a lie, so I opted not to think anything of it.
In the end, we filled out all of the paperwork and the place was mine. I have to admit, owning my first ever property was a hell of a good feeling.
The place wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but I couldn’t complain about the interior. The carpets were clean, the water from the sinks seemed drinkable, and the bathrooms weren’t moldy. I mean, what else could I ask for?
There were two bedrooms and two bathrooms in total. Since I lived by myself, I could make some more money by renting out the spare room. Quite honestly, it was a great setup.
I saw the hole for the first time while I was smoking a cigarette out on the balcony my first morning there. It was pretty much impossible not to notice. It looked to be about 3 feet in diameter, smack in the middle of my neighbor’s backyard. The shovel that he’d presumably used to dig it was lying only a few feet away, still covered in dirt.
I’d seen stranger things in my life, so I didn’t think too much about. Maybe he was building a garden or something, I don’t know.
During the following few nights, I experienced some of the most horrifying nightmares that I ever recall having. I can’t remember what happened in them verbatim, but they all shared a commonality between them. Some sort of vague doom was always looming over or approaching me. Whether it was heavy knocks at my door that kept getting more forceful or steps behind me that kept getting louder, it always put me on edge. I remember waking up in the morning with my heart pounding and visceral fear overwhelming my sense of reality. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. This was in no way a normal occurrence for me.
One night, I woke up just as the sun started to rise, still groggy as hell from my lack of sleep. I shuffled out onto my balcony and lit up another cigarette, while my eyes drifted over to Dave’s backyard.
I had to blink twice when I first saw it, but I wasn’t hallucinating.
The hole had doubled in size.
I must have stared at it for half an hour as I tried to reel in my disbelief. What was this motherfucker doing?
When I went to bed that night, I stayed awake on purpose. At around midnight, I started to hear it.
SHINK, PSHH, SHINK, PSHH
Like a hellish clock that wouldn’t stop ticking. I kept track of the time. 12:30. 1:00 AM. 2:00 AM. It went up all the way until 5:00 AM. Five goddamn hours of digging during the dead of night. This had to be a joke, right? What was this guy trying to do? Elicit a reaction from his neighbors? Was this just the most obnoxious prank feasible?
Well, if he wanted a reaction, then I was going to give him one. As soon as the sun came up, I stormed over to his front door and rang the doorbell incessantly. He didn’t answer, of course.
Fucking pussy, I thought to myself as I started banging on his door instead.
“Hey buddy!” I yelled. “Quit the fucking digging, or I’m gonna kick down this door and kick your ass as well!”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, knowing that he might very well be recording everything that I was saying. I didn’t want to get into any legal trouble, after all.
“At least… dig during the day,” I said in a softer tone. “C’mon pal, give me a break.”
I waited a few more minutes for a response, but he didn’t come. I just went back home, hoping that he’d gotten the message.
I decided to give Tom a call later that day. I asked him whether or not Dave had done anything like this before, and if he had, why he hadn’t warned me about it.
“Digging holes?” Tom responded. “That is weird…”
He nearly paused for a whole minute after, leaving me with the sounds of his heavy breaths over the call.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” I asked. “C’mon man.”
“I think… I’d just try and ignore it.” He finally responded.
The nerve of this guy. I couldn’t believe it.
“Obviously that’s not happening,” I said. “If this guy keeps doing it, I’m gonna break into his house and toss his shovels into the ocean myself.”
“I wouldn’t confront him.” Tom replied, his suddenly tone soft and timid.
“What? Why the hell not?” I asked.
He went silent for another minute before hanging up on me. I called him back two more times, but he wasn’t picking up.
I was starting to figure out why he’d sold it to me for so cheap. He didn’t have the balls to confront the guy himself, so he just sailed ship.
Well, that wasn’t going to be me.
I didn’t even try to go to sleep that night. I sat down in the living room with a cup of coffee at midnight, waiting for that bastard to start digging again.
Sure enough, he did. As soon as I started hearing that Godforsaken noise, I stormed out of my front door. This time, I wasn’t going to waste time knocking. I was going to confront that asshole directly.
I approached the gate leading into his backyard, only to find it wired shut.
What the hell? I thought to myself.
I pulled on the handle, but it wouldn’t budge in the slightest. *What a fucking pain. * In a fit of rage, I kicked at it, causing the entire wooden frame to shake.
The guy didn’t even seem to care. He just kept digging. It was loud. So obnoxiously loud. I was really nearing my wits end.
In fact, the sound of it was so overbearing, it nearly drowned out the soft tapping that was coming from beside me.
Wait, I thought. What is that?
I looked over and nearly had a heart attack.
There was somebody looking at me through the window at the entrance of my neighbor’s house. My eyes adjusted after the initial shock of spotting him, and I was able to discern a man in his mid-late thirties. He had a petrified expression on his face as he looked at me. He put a finger up to his lips and shook his head, as if he were warning to me stop what I was doing.
My bravado disappeared in an instant. The despair on his face was palpable, filling me with a deep, sinking sensation in my stomach. As I stood there, still deliberating about what to do, the digging suddenly came to a stop.
I could feel my fight-or-flight senses kicking in. But it was different this time. Before, I’d only get that feeling when I knew what the danger was and could see it in front of me.
This time, I knew that I had to get away before the danger could present itself at all. I heard a shovel drop and the sounds of heavy footsteps coming from the gate beyond. I didn’t stay to find out what was walking towards me.
I didn’t sleep well for a week after that incident. But not because of the sounds. The digging had since stopped, and the hole hadn’t gotten much bigger. But I knew that was just because it was getting deeper.
Yesterday, I finally worked up the courage to go into his backyard during the day, since the digging only seemed to happen at night. I tried ringing my neighbor’s doorbell again, but he’s not answering. He obviously doesn’t want to talk to me about it.
I climbed over the fence and cautiously made my way towards the hole. At that point, it was taking up a considerable portion of the grass-space. Of course, a shovel was lying beside it. I took a closer look at it, seeing the deep imprints of bulky fingers on the bloody metal handle.
And then, I looked down into the hole itself. I couldn’t tell you how deep it was exactly. However, I could see nothing but the void below. Just pure darkness.
I went back into my house and found a piece of rope that I measured to be thirty feet long. I tied a water bottle to the end of it and went back to the hole, before slowly lowering it down. I ran out of rope in no time, but I never heard a “thud” below.
When I brought it back up, the bottle was covered in some kind of thick, dark goo. I just dropped it back down, along with the rope. I wasn’t touching that. I continued kneeling there for minutes afterwards, waiting for a confirmation that it had hit the ground below.
It never happened. Or maybe, it was so far below that I wouldn’t be able to hear it at all, even if it did. In any case, that little experiment brought me no peace of mind. It yielded no answers at all. I still doubted that I would be able to get any sleep.
At the very least, the digging had stopped. And over the next few nights, I actually managed to get some shuteye for a few hours at a time. I just wouldn’t think about the hole. It didn’t matter, and it would have no impact on my life.
Soon enough, my sleep schedule was back on track. My life was going back to normal. I could smile, knowing that this incident would just be a strange one-off in my life. A story that I could tell at parties.
I drifted off to sleep tonight without a worry in my head. I prepared myself to have a nice dream. Something I hadn't had in a while.
Instead, I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, my entire body shaking. Another nightmare. The worst one I've ever had yet. And it didn't end when I woke up.
The digging was back, even louder this time. Almost as if it were coming from my own backyard.
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Credits
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