The first scream came at 2:14 in the afternoon, while I was standing three miles away in a grocery-store parking lot, holding a carton of eggs and wondering whether I had remembered to lock my back door.
My phone rang before I could put the eggs into the trunk. Mrs. Higgins lived next door to me and almost never called. She was the sort of neighbor who preferred waving from behind her hydrangeas to picking up a telephone. When I saw her name on the screen, I answered immediately.
“Claire, where are you?”
Her voice was thin and breathless.
“At the store. Why?”
“Come home.”
I stopped moving.
“What happened?”
“I heard someone screaming in your house.”
For a moment, I honestly thought she had made a mistake.
“My house is empty.”
“I know.”
“Are you sure it was my house?”
“I was standing in my kitchen when I heard it. It came from your upstairs bedroom.”
A cold sensation moved across my shoulders.
My house had been empty for almost an hour. I had left after lunch to pick up groceries, and I remembered checking every room before I went. The bedroom windows were closed. The doors were locked. No one had been expected.
“What did the person say?” I asked.
Mrs. Higgins hesitated.
“She kept saying the same thing.”
“What?”
“Help me.”
I looked toward the grocery store entrance. People pushed carts beneath the bright fluorescent lights, arguing over produce and talking about ordinary things. Nothing in that parking lot suggested that my life had just tilted sideways.
“Did you call the police?”
“I did.”
“Are they there?”
“They're on the way.”
I started the car.
The drive home took less than ten minutes, but I barely remember making it. Every traffic light seemed too slow. Every car in front of me seemed deliberately placed there. My hands were tight around the steering wheel, and twice I caught myself checking the rearview mirror without knowing what I expected to see.
My husband had been dead for two years.
I had become accustomed to saying that sentence without feeling the need to explain it. Derek died in a highway crash on a rainy night. There had been wreckage, fire, identification, paperwork, a funeral, condolences, and the long, gray aftermath that followed.
For two years, I had believed that the worst thing that could happen to a person was losing someone they loved.
I was about to discover there were worse things.
Mrs. Higgins was waiting at her fence when I pulled into my driveway. She looked older than she had an hour earlier.
“You came,” she said.
I got out.
“Where are the police?”
“They're still coming.”
“Did you go inside?”
She shook her head so quickly that her silver hair moved against her cheeks.
“No. Absolutely not.”
I looked at my house.
From the outside, it was exactly as I had left it. The pale curtains in the upstairs windows. The flowerpots beside the porch. The brass light fixture beside the front door.
Nothing looked disturbed.
That frightened me more than a broken window would have.
“Tell me exactly what you heard.”
Mrs. Higgins glanced toward the second floor.
“It started with a woman crying. Not talking. Crying.”
“Could you recognize her voice?”
“No.”
“Did you hear anything else?”
She swallowed.
“Then I heard a man's voice.”
I stared at her.
“What did he say?”
“I couldn't make out all of it.”
“What did you hear?”
She lowered her voice.
“Something about two fourteen.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“He said, ‘Not yet. It's only two fourteen.’”
A car turned onto the street.
Police.
Two officers stepped out and approached the house. I explained what Mrs. Higgins had heard, answered their questions, and handed one officer my keys.
“Stay outside,” he told me.
I nodded.
The officers entered.
Mrs. Higgins stood beside me.
Neither of us spoke.
Three minutes later, one officer came back.
“No one inside.”
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
“Everything's secure?”
He looked at the other officer.
“Nothing obvious.”
That answer stayed with me.
Nothing obvious.
They checked the upstairs bedroom again. The windows were locked. The closet was empty. The bathroom was untouched. There was no sign of forced entry.
The officer asked whether anyone had a key.
“My husband had one.”
He was silent.
“Derek,” I said. “My husband.”
“I understand.”
“He's dead.”
The officer looked at me carefully.
“I understand.”
I hated the way he said it. Not because he doubted me, but because people had learned to speak gently around me whenever Derek's death came up.
Mrs. Higgins suddenly touched my arm.
“I know what I heard.”
“I know.”
“No, Claire. I mean I know what I heard.”
She looked directly at me.
“There was someone in that room.”
That night, I barely slept.
The police had found no intruder. Mrs. Higgins insisted she had heard a woman. I tried to explain it away. A television from another house. A passing car. A misunderstanding caused by distance.
But there was one detail I couldn't dismiss.
At exactly 2:14, my upstairs bedroom had apparently become the center of something neither I nor the police could explain.
The next morning, I noticed something on my bedroom floor.
A muddy footprint.
It was small.
Barely visible.
It led from the hallway toward my bed.
I crouched beside it.
The print was fresh.
And whoever had made it had been inside my house after I left.
I called the police again.
Before they arrived, my phone received a message from an unknown number.
I read it once.
Then again.
You should have stayed away from the house.
I stared at the screen until the words blurred.
A second message arrived.
Next time, she won't scream.
Click here to continue reading: PART 2: I Returned to the Empty House After the Warning, Only to Discover Someone Had Been Inside and Was Still Watching Me
At 2:14 in the Afternoon, My Neighbor Heard a Woman Screaming From a House I Had Left Empty That Morning
Part 1 of 20
