The Evil Spirit in This House Wants Me to Kill | Part 1
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This podcast brought to you by Ring. With Ring cameras, you can check on your pets to catch them in the act. Izzy, drop that. Or just keep them company. Aw, I'll be home soon. Make sure they're okay while you're away. With Ring, learn more at ring.com slash pets. For three months, I went to bed with this voice in my head. For three months, I tried to ignore it as I lay next to my girlfriend, feeling the cold expanse between us. But I couldn't ignore it.

I was a fool to think I could. His voice was embedded there like some sort of malevolent insect, like a centipede, burrowing into my head to spread its spindly legs through my mind, seeding itself deeper and deeper every day. But of course, it started long before those three months. It started the day I was born, maybe even before that, hearing his voice despite the cottony warmth of my mother's womb.

Hearing him speak to me, his voice muffled. I have no memory of these things, if they ever happened, but I'm sure they did. I'm sure he was crawling his way into me before I even saw the cruel light of the world. I'm sure that was his plan all along, from the point of conception. At first, three months ago, I answered his calls. I hadn't heard from him in over five years, and when I saw his name on my phone screen,

A sickening jolt spread through me. His face flashed in my mind, the very hint of him making me feel small, like a defenseless child. Yet, despite these negative feelings, I picked up the phone. I picked it up even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. And I listened to him ask me, in his roundabout way, for help. Surprising myself, I told him no.

No. I couldn't help him. No. I didn't have any money to pay for in-home nursing. No. I couldn't come to him. No, no, no. That first phone call ended badly. With him screaming at me, my hand trembled as I hung up the phone. But as soon as his raspy voice was gone with the press of my thumb, I felt a sense of triumph. I stood up to him. I had finally told him no when he was asking for something important. I was jubilant.

But it didn't last, because he called the next day, the next, the next. After the first month, I stopped picking up the phone. He sent text messages and left voicemails. I couldn't help myself. I read the messages. I listened to the voicemails. And he kept calling. Three months is a long time, especially when you find out the only person you love has betrayed you.

"You're leaving?" Libby asked with a sneer in her voice, like she knew I wouldn't have the guts. I answered without words, shoving clothes into my suitcase while Libby stalked me from the dresser to the bed and back. "Where will you go, huh? You really going to live with your father? To watch him die?" For the first time, I realized how much Libby was like my father. Not in appearance, but in her demeanor and her quick-fire temper.

They say that men choose women like their mothers, but I went the opposite way. Maybe because I never knew my mother well enough to judge if any woman was like her or not. But my father... I moved around Libby and ducked into the bathroom, ignoring her blue-green eyes, her wide, freckled face, and the way her upper lip showed her gums when she sneered. Gathering up my toiletries, I spotted the condoms under the sink.

The package was still sealed from when I bought it two months ago. We hadn't been intimate in that long. Knowing she was watching me, I grabbed the box and brought it with me out of the bathroom. As I predicted, this gesture enraged Libby. She was silent for a long moment, and I could sense the storm gathering. "You think anyone wants to fuck you, Preston?" she snarled. "You think anyone will want to fuck you if you leave me?"

gruesome laughter slithered up her throat. You're pathetic! Fucking pathetic! My chin quivered as I slammed the top of the suitcase closed and zipped it up. I wanted to say something, but I knew that if I opened my mouth, my voice would crack and it would only give her more fuel. I hauled the suitcase off the bed and grabbed my laptop bag, which I'd already loaded up.

I knew I was forgetting something, but I didn't care. I felt a breakdown coming and couldn't wait to get out of the house and into my car. I couldn't let her see me cry. "You're crazy if you think you're not going to pay your half of the rent," Libby said, shadowing me down the stubby hallway and through the living room. As I approached the front door, she darted in front of me and blocked my way. "You're not leaving here without paying me my next month's rent." "I have the power," I thought.

I don't have to sit and take this. I can change my life. I can be strong. I can stop getting stepped on. It was a mantra I'd been using for years, despite the fact that it hadn't really changed anything. Still, I hadn't lost hope. "Just have him pay it," I said, hating how pathetic I sounded. Surprise flitted across her face. Then it was gone, and one corner of her mouth jerked up as if it was caught on a fishing line.

"You know? How did you find out?" "I'm not an idiot," I said. It was the wrong thing to say. Libby tilted her head back and roared with laughter. "Hahaha! Gonna fool me!" I turned around and headed for the back door, but Libby ran in front of me. "Pay me my money!" she screamed in my face. I turned around once again and rushed to the front door, but my suitcase slowed me down.

Libby got to me just as my fingers wrapped around the doorknob. She gripped my wrist in both hands, but it didn't keep me from turning the knob and getting the door open a few inches. She changed tactics. She turned and slapped me across the face. It was the first time she'd ever hit me. The abuse had been verbal up till that point, but I could see in her face as we stared at each other in that moment that she'd been wanting to hit me for a long time.

She seemed to revel in it, her eyes brightening with a cruel glimmer. She balled her hand into a fist and punched me in the mouth. I let go of the doorknob and stepped back, bringing my hand up toward my lips. But before I could even get it there, she punched me again, hitting me in the nose. Then she unleashed on me, swinging both hands in a frenzy, striking me several more times in the head before I dropped my suitcase and covered my head with my arms.

She reached up and gripped my neck with one hand while reaching into my back pocket for my wallet with her other. I had never laid a hand on her or any woman, but I wanted to hit her then. I wanted to hit her so bad I could feel it in the pit of my stomach like a hot coal lighting my whole body up with rage. But that was one thing I would never allow myself to do. Not ever. No matter how much I wanted to.

Fuck off!

licking the blood from my upper lip. I lowered my arms, grabbed my suitcase, and moved out the door. I stopped to grab my wallet, barely holding the tide back. When I got into my car, a whale escaped me, filling the interior of the vehicle with the sound of my torment. I looked at my face in the mirror and saw that my nose was bleeding and my lip was split. I would probably have a black eye.

wiping the tears from my cheeks. I put the car in reverse and pulled out of the driveway. I thought at the time that it would be the last time I saw the house, the last time I saw Libby, but it wasn't. God help me, it wasn't. It was late when I arrived at the address my father had given me. The two-story, Queen Anne-style home stood on a large, tree-covered lot on the outskirts of my New England hometown.

The home looked to be in disrepair, with shingles missing, cobwebs gumming up the windows, and the front awning sagging over the porch. It was a dark house, although hard to tell in the limited light what color. It was brown or burgundy, with slightly brighter trim, maybe light gray. I knew little about the house or the person my father was sharing it with, only that it was an elderly woman who dad called "a good friend."

As my engine clicked and cooled, I sat in the car with the windows up against the cold and misty night. Looking up at the house brought home the reality of what I had committed to. I was tempted to fire the engine up again and find a cliff to drive off of. Or maybe I could find an all-night Walmart and buy some duct tape and a hose. Then I could come back here and fasten the hose to my tailpipe, putting the other end in my window. I could go to sleep forever, and then my dad would have to deal with my death.

These were nothing more than fantasies, but tempting ones. I doubted I could go through with it. When it came time to do the deed, my cowardice would win out. So I sat in the car and looked at the house and touched my swollen face softly. The lights were off in all the windows besides one downstairs, next to the front door. The window was backed by a thin, opaque curtain, preventing me from seeing inside, but allowing light to shine through.

Something about that window drew my attention. I leaned forward, gripping the steering wheel, peering through the windshield. Little splotches of black were slowly blocking out the light from the bottom up. It took me a moment to realize that they were insects, although I couldn't tell what kind from this far away. They looked. I got out of the car, leaving the door open as I walked toward the house. All my attention was focused on the window. The insects were halfway up it now.

obscuring the light from inside. As I came to the bottom of the porch, I realized what they were. The centipedes crawled over each other as they came up from a crack in the warped porch boards. They were large, maybe eight inches long, their bodies an inch wide. Normally the sight of even a single centipede would disturb me, but something about these bugs drew me in, almost as if they were calling to me. Part of me thought it was the long drive or the fight with Libby.

or the fact that I was thinking about suicide again. Whatever caused it, I didn't think too much about my actions as I stepped up onto the porch and approached the window. I stuck my right hand out, feeling the antennae in the legs of the creatures as they gripped my fingers and crawled up my hand. Soon, my entire hand was enveloped in the insects, their smooth, cold bodies and prickly legs moving up my forearm. Smiling, I kept my hand out, welcoming more of them onto me.

Meanwhile, hundreds of the things kept moving up the window, blocking out more and more light. When the first insects reached my face, I couldn't help but inhale sharply, like I'd just jumped into freezing cold water. They crawled toward my mouth, prodding my swollen lips, seeking a way in. The fight with Libby played in my mind, stoking that bright coal of hate in the pit of my stomach.

Somehow, I got the sense that the centipedes wanted to get down there, to feed on that hate, to make it their own. My head swam. A languid, drugged feeling came over me as I thought about all the things I could have done to Libby after she started hitting me. All the things I should have done. The insects prodded at my lips, begging to be let in. My jaw softened.

I opened my mouth wide, feeling several of the creatures crawl in, tickling the insides of my cheeks and the roof of my mouth, their prickly little legs gripping my tongue. Then they started down my throat as if in a frenzy, a race to see who could get down first. I snapped back to myself as the writhing creatures cut off my breath. I brought both hands up to my mouth and started pulling the insects out as fast as I could. The porch railing crunched, and I shifted as I stumbled backward into it.

I couldn't get them out. They were choking me. They were going to kill me. I fell to my knees on the warped boards, clawing the centipedes out of my mouth, only to have more scramble in from my covered arm. "What the hell is wrong with you, boy?" My father's voice hit me like a blow to the head. I looked up to see him standing just outside the open front door, leaning on a walker with tennis balls on two of its legs. I could breathe. My mouth was empty. I looked down at my arm. There were no centipedes there.

Looking over at the window, I saw the unobstructed glow of the light inside. There were no insects. I was on my knees with both hands near my mouth, but there were no centipedes. I didn't understand it. "You drunk?" my father asked. He looked like a walking skeleton, his grimy robe hanging open to reveal skin pulled taut over his ribs. He wore white underwear that hung limply from his narrow hips. "No," I said.

still looking around, confused and frightened. "I'm not drunk. You know what time it is? Get in here before you wake up Greta." I lurched up and stumbled down the porch steps toward my car. The light was on inside, the door still open. "Where the hell are you going?" Dad asked. "To get my things," I said, grumbling. My dad turned and worked his way back inside. Slowly, with the help of his walker, he slammed the door.

I grabbed my two bags from the back seat, locked my car, and headed to the front door. As I stepped up onto the porch, I was sure I felt something move in my stomach. My skin started to crawl as soon as I stepped into the house. I felt immediately uncomfortable, like I was being watched from every dark corner. But as I stood in the reception hall, that strange drugged feeling started to come over me, a comforting buzz coming from my stomach.

The reception hall was a cramped area with stairs on the left and a coat rack on the right. Just beyond the coat rack was a closed door. Just beyond the stairwell was another door, but this one was open. There was a dining table inside the room, cluttered with prescription and supplement bottles, along with half-empty glasses of water and stacks of mail. An ancient chandelier hung over the table, dim light spilling from about half of the bulbs. The other half of them burnt out,

My father came into view in the dining room. "Put your bags down," he said. Then he pointed to the door to my right, next to the coat rack. "That's Greta's room. She's asleep. Don't wake her up." I looked at the door. The window I'd seen covered in centipedes belonged to that room, and I could see a light under the door. I put my bags down next to the staircase and followed my father through the dining room. He led me to a library-turned-bedroom.

The clawing stench of feces and urine struck me, but the even stronger smell of my father's body odor assaulted my olfactory senses, nearly making me gag. The once white bed sheets were stained with sweat and urine. A lamp on the table next to the bed gave off a weak glow, combining with the blue light from the TV sitting on a dresser across from the bed. Low noise came from the television, some sort of old Western show, Gunsmoke.

My father moved to the bed and sat down, breathing like he'd just run a marathon. Then he reached down and pulled a bedpan from under the bed and held it out to me. I stared at the item not moving. "The fuck you waiting for?" he said. "Come on, empty it. There's a bathroom past the kitchen." "What the hell am I doing here?" I thought as I grabbed the foul-smelling bedpan and took it through the kitchen to the bathroom in the back corner of the house.

I emptied the pan into the toilet and flushed it, noticing the grime invading all corners of the room. Everything was caked with a layer of filth. The place probably hadn't been cleaned in years. The kitchen wasn't much better. It smelled stale and wet all at once. Moldy fruit and veggies sat in baskets hung from hooks in the ceiling. Dirty dishes sat piled in the sink. There was no dishwasher that I could see. I guessed I was the dishwasher now.

When I brought the bedpan back into my father's room, he lay sprawled on the bed, staring at the TV. I stood next to him, looking around the filthy room, feeling like I'd just escaped one circle of hell, only to find myself in another. "Where do you want this?" I asked. His roomy brown eyes slid away from the TV into the bedpan. "Didn't you clean it out?" he asked. "The fuck is wrong with you? Clean it out!" "I dumped it. What else do you want?"

Rinse the thing out! I don't want all that residue stinking up my room! Rinse it out where? In the kitchen sink? In the bathtub! Jesus H. Christ! Don't you have any common sense? Something squirmed in my stomach. Or was that just my imagination? I thought of the centipedes. Was I losing my mind? I have the power, I thought. I don't have to sit and take this. I can change my life. I can be strong. I can stop getting stepped on.

"Don't you bathe in that tub?" I asked, realizing why the tub was so disgusting. "There's cleaning supplies under the sink, genius. Clean the tub after you bring the bedpan back." "Dad, I'm exhausted. I drove all day to-" "If you didn't come here to help me, then what's the point?" He shouted, skinny arms propping him up in bed. "I'm dying here and you can't do a few simple tasks for me? You ungrateful little shit!"

"You know how much I gave up for you after your mother died? You know how hard it was to raise you on my own? But I did, goddammit. I didn't ditch you. I raised you and kept you fed and cleaned up after your ass for years. Why can't you do the same for me?" I could feel the ghost of Libby's fingers around my neck, my stomach roiled, and my chin quivered. "Oh, okay," I said.

turning and heading back to the bathroom with the bedpan in hand. Behind me, my father cursed and murmured under his breath. I rinsed the bedpan out in the tub, disinfected it with 409 from under the sink, and then brought it back to his room. He was asleep, so I put it under his bed where he had it before. Back in the bathroom, I got to work cleaning the tub.

I couldn't find any gloves, so I had to do it with my bare hands and a threadbare sponge from under the kitchen sink. The house was quiet, aside from the murmur of gun smoke reruns on my father's TV. Then, when I was about halfway through cleaning the tub, I heard rushing footsteps from upstairs. They were heavy, like there was an adult running around up there. I looked at the ceiling as the footsteps went on, back and forth, for a good 30 seconds.

As far as I knew, my father and Greta were the only ones living here. He hadn't told me about anyone else. I stood and washed my hands in the sink before heading upstairs to see who had made the noise. I hoped maybe Greta had someone here to help her out so I wouldn't have to do everything. I still had to work as a medical benefits consultant, which was a remote job. I worked 40 to 50 hours a week, so taking care of two elderly people wouldn't leave me any time to myself.

I grabbed my bags and headed up the stairs, thinking I could find my room while I was at it. The stairs, which had stretches of worn carpet in the middle, creaked under my weight. At the top of the steps, I found myself in an L-shaped hallway. There was a door on the right, which I tried to open. It was locked. The footsteps had stopped as soon as I headed upstairs, so I walked to the turn in the hallway and peered down toward the back of the house.

The dark hallway was empty. I searched for a light switch but didn't find one. There was a lamp on a small table at the corner of the hall, which I clicked on. There were two more doors down this longer stretch of hallway, one on the right and one on the left. Thinking I should probably knock if someone was up here, I did just that, knocking softly on the right-hand door.

When there was no answer, I turned the knob and opened the door into a room cluttered with dusty boxes and other random household items that weren't currently in use. There was no bed. I repeated the process at the next door, opening it when there was no answer. It was the master bedroom, with a large, four-post bed and an attached bathroom. I assumed it wasn't in use because the stairs were too treacherous for my dad and Greta.

The light switch turned on two lamps in opposite corners of the room. One of them was a floor lamp set next to a reading chair. The other was a tabletop lamp on an ornate wooden dresser. The bed was perfectly made and the room smelled better than most of the house, although it certainly had the musk of an elderly woman who used too much perfume. I put my bags on the bed and inspected the bathroom, finding it dusty but clean for the most part.

Glancing at my reflection in the mirror made my stomach twitch, like something was moving inside it. I pulled up my shirt and stared, half expecting to see my skin bulge slightly as something moved inside. But I didn't. Of course I didn't. Because the thing with the centipedes was nothing more than a stress-induced hallucination. I dropped my shirt and stared at my reflection in the mirror, realizing that my father hadn't asked me about the injuries.

My left eye was swollen, making it look like I was squinting. The newly formed scab on my split lip was hard to miss. Faint discoloration was already starting to appear on my cheeks and temples. For a long moment, I fantasized about hitting Libby. I thought about how it would feel to punch her with all my strength. Maybe break her jaw or smashing her nose. Then the fantasy tilted even further, and I found myself thinking about bashing her head into the floor or grabbing a knife from the kitchen and...

I jumped back from the mirror and nearly fell backward in the tub, frightened by an unfamiliar face in place of my own, and by the ferocity of those murderous thoughts. My heart slammed around inside my chest. I righted myself and looked back into the mirror, seeing only my bruised, pathetic face. "What is happening to me?" I thought. Then the repetitive thudding of footsteps came from out in the hall.

I hurried out of the bathroom, but it sounded like the person was already past the turn in the L-shaped hallway by the time I reached the bedroom door. I rushed toward the sound, turning the corner just as the noise stopped. Nothing but an empty hallway greeted me. I moved to the stairs and looked down. They were empty. "I'm losing it," I whispered. The bathtub downstairs still wasn't fully cleaned, so I trudged back down to finish the job. Everything seemed as before downstairs.

The only thing I could think was that someone else was in the house and they were staying in that locked room upstairs. Maybe they were trying to scare me. By the time I finished cleaning the tub, I was exhausted. I felt like I needed a shower, but I was too tired. I went back up to the master bedroom, locked the door, stripped off my clothes, and got into the bed. The sheets were scratchy and the pillow was lumpy, but I didn't care. I just wanted to sleep. Tomorrow was a workday.

and I had my alarm set for 7am. Breathing in the stale old woman smell, I drifted off to sleep, trying to ignore the seemingly random spasms coming from my stomach. "Out!" Libby screamed. But it wasn't Libby's voice. It was certainly her face. She swung at me, hitting me in the face as she screamed for me to get out. "Get out!" I opened my eyes, body jolting up as I realized I'd been dreaming.

The silhouette of a woman stood out against the open bedroom door. She was hunched with her stringy hair hanging down. She was reaching out for me. "Get out!" I couldn't see her face, thanks to the backlighting, but I could tell that she was wearing a nightgown, scrambling away from her, thinking she meant to hit me. I pulled myself out from under the sheet and blanket, standing on shaky legs across the bed from the woman. "Who told you you could be in here?" she asked. "Get out!"

"I'm Preston," I managed. "My father, Forrest, asked me to come. I don't care who asked you to come. You can't be in here," she said. "Now get out!" She grabbed my laptop bag from where I'd set it near the dresser end. With some effort, threw it out into the hall. It crashed against the wall and fell to the floor. "No!" I screamed. "You crazy bitch!" I ran out and got to my knees, unzipping the bag, pulling the laptop out.

My heart sank and my stomach twitched as I saw that the screen was badly cracked. Powering it on confirmed what I already suspected. The display was nothing but a jumble of colors and lines. I couldn't see a thing. It was ruined. My teeth clenched and my cheeks were shaking with rage. I stood up and stalked into the room to where the woman was dragging my other bag toward the door. Driven by a gleeful voice inside my head, I raised my hand to punch her in the back of the skull.

It would probably kill her, I knew. That was good. She deserved to die. She cheated on me and treated me like shit. She deserved to die. Libby's sneering face was suddenly in front of me. The old woman was gone. It seemed so natural to me at the moment.

Of course Libby was here, making my life a living hell. Of course she was. And she wouldn't stop until she was dead. Well, I could make her dead. I could easily make her dead. It wouldn't take much. Not at all. As I cocked my arm back, readying to hit her as hard as I could, my mom's face flashed in my mind. It was a fuzzy memory, from back when I was two or three. The context wasn't clear to me as the memory surfaced from somewhere deep inside.

She was smiling and saying something to me. Something about kindness. Something about how it was the most important thing in the world to be kind. Maybe she was reading from a book. A children's book at bedtime. As fast as it had come, my mother's face was gone. But so was Libby's. The old woman was there again, and my whole body was stiff with rage. I was about to hit this woman. I was about to kill her. Over what? A broken laptop?