My Lovely Neighbor

I still get called paranoid whenever I tell people this story, but I know what I saw, and I know what happened.

When I was sixteen, my family moved into a quiet neighborhood where every house looked almost identical. The kind of place where everyone knew everyone, where people waved at each other from their driveways and nothing interesting ever happened.

Except for the house across the street.

Nobody talked about it.

At first, I assumed the owner was just an old man who liked keeping to himself. I would see him outside sometimes, always standing in the same spot near his garage, staring directly at our house.

Not casually looking.

Watching.

I mentioned it to my parents, but they brushed it off.

They told me he was probably lonely.

A few weeks later, I noticed something strange.

The man across the street knew things about us that he shouldn't have known.

One afternoon, he stopped me while I was walking home and asked why I had changed my bus route.

I never told anyone I changed my bus route.

Another time, he mentioned that my mother had been sick the previous night.

She had.

Nobody outside our house knew.

I started paying attention.

Every night around midnight, the lights in his upstairs window would turn on.

The same window.

The same time.

And every night, I saw a shadow moving behind the curtains.

Eventually, curiosity got the better of me.

I looked up the property records online.

I wanted to know who this guy was.

The results made no sense.

The house had been empty for eleven years.

Not abandoned.

Empty.

The owner had died, and nobody had purchased the property since.

I thought the records were wrong, so I asked my parents about it.

They immediately got uncomfortable.

My dad told me not to worry about it and that I should stop looking into things that didn't concern me.

That was the first time I realized they already knew.

A few days later, I went outside and saw the man standing in his driveway again.

I walked across the street.

I wanted answers.

I asked him who he was.

He just smiled.

Then he said something I still think about.

"Your family has lived here before."

I laughed because it sounded ridiculous.

Then he pointed at my house.

"Ask your parents about the basement wall."

I went home and immediately asked.

The reaction was instant.

My dad went pale.

My mother started crying.

They finally admitted that before we moved in, they found something hidden behind a wall in the basement.

Old photographs.

Dozens of them.

Pictures of our house.

Pictures of our family.

Pictures taken before we ever lived there.

They thought the previous owner was some kind of stalker and covered it up because they didn't want to lose the house.

I went back outside.

The man's house was dark.

The driveway was empty.

I crossed the street and knocked.

Nobody answered.

The next morning, I checked the property again.

The house was still empty.

The windows were covered in dust.

The grass was overgrown.

There were no footprints anywhere.

The police searched the property after I reported it.

They found nothing.

No furniture.

No belongings.

No evidence anyone had been inside for years.

But they did find one thing.

Behind the upstairs window where I always saw the shadow moving, there was a wall covered in photographs.

Every single picture was of my family.

And the newest one was taken the night before.

It showed me standing outside his house, knocking on the door.