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This is a story I heard from my friend at the local university. A man named Kevin got
whiplash in a car accident and decided to convalesce at home for a week. Kevin was married
but his wife was also working, so he was all alone during the day. For the first few days
he enjoyed the freedom, but when the third day came, boredom began to set in. Still,
he had to stay in, because his injury kept him from going anywhere.
Then, one day past lunchtime, he was watching TV absent-mindedly when he heard heavy stamping
noises and children's voices from upstairs. He didn't pay much attention to it, although
he wondered if the kids were on a school holiday. The next day, he again heard the same children's
voices, around the same time as the previous day. It sounded like there were two children
up there. The place where Kevin lived was a large apartment, but in spite of that, it
tended to be very quiet during the day; the children's voices, therefore, echoed loudly
in contrast to the quietness of the surroundings. Kevin, however, did not feel annoyed, but
was rather glad of the distraction and the break it provided him from the eerie silence.
The next day, Kevin, feeling bored and not motivated enough to cook lunch, ordered a
couple pizzas. The pizza, which arrived within 30 minutes, turned out to be too much for
Kevin, and so he left one whole pizza untouched. Usually, he would keep any leftovers for his
wife, but this time he remembered the children upstairs and, willing to do something kind,
he decided to take the pizza to them. Kevin had no idea who the occupants of the
room upstairs were, but he rang the bell on the door anyway. He heard something stir inside,
but there was no answer. He rang the bell again. Strangely, he got the feeling that
someone was looking at him through the peephole. "Who is it?" A faint voice called out from
behind the door. Kevin explained he was from the room below
and that he had some pizza left from his lunch and wondered if they wanted it. The door opened
a crack. It looked unusually dark inside the room. Through a gap half an inch wide, a woman
appeared, revealing only half of her face. "Thank you very much. But we don't want it,"
the woman said coldly. It was a little too dark to discern her facial
expression. Kevin suddenly felt he was somehow out of place, like he shouldn't be there;
however, he tried to explain to her that he wanted her to give the pizza to the children.
A lukewarm air breezed out of the door. He smelt an unpleasant odor. In an instant, two
children's faces lined up below the woman's face. The door was open still just a crack.
The dull eyes of the children stared at him. The three faces were forming a line.
"I see.... then... I will accept your kindness," the woman said. When Kevin put the pizza box
through the gap, a hand reached out from the side and snatched it away.
The three faces were still staring at Kevin. "Thank you," the faint voice spoke again.
Kevin quickly left the place. He felt spooked. In the corner of his mind, he sensed something
was seriously wrong. The image of the children's faces had left a burning impression in his
mind. Faces.....
He felt a chill down his spine. Faces...they were forming a line...
His pace quickened. He wanted to get away as fast as he could. He waited for the lift,
but it would not arrive. Forming a line....vertically....on top of
each other..... He pressed the button again and again, but
the lift still did not come. He turned to the emergency stairs. His head throbbed with
pain. He began to feel nausea. Just as he opened the heavy door leading to
the emergency stairs, he felt eyes on his back. Turning around, he glimpsed, about 10
meters from him, the same three faces looking at him from the corner of the corridor. Like
before, they were showing only the upper half of their faces and staring at him with their
dull eyes. The cold day light shining through the windows illuminated their faces.
No longer caring about his neck, Kevin frantically ran down the stairs. Although Kevin was fairly
athletic and often used the stairs instead of the lift and could easily run up four floors
in one go, he felt as if no matter how fast he ran, he would never reach the ground floor.
Faces lined up, on top of each other....that's impossible...that means there are...no bodies......
He ran into the nearest convenience store and asked the people there to call the police.
The police came, and when they searched the flat, they found there the headless bodies
of a mother and her two children in the bath tub.
According to the police report, it had been three days since the mother and children had
been decapitated. The husband was found hiding in a bedroom
closet, his eyes wide with terror. Though the police had no evidence linking him to
the crime, it was determined that he was the murderer. The husband was clearly insane,
they said. He had claimed to have no knowledge of his family's death. In fact, he insisted
they were still alive. The police never did determine the reason
for his terror.