The Children Upstairs

The Children Upstairs

This is a story I heard from my friend at university. A man (we call
him "K") got whiplash in a car accident and decided to convalesce at
home for a week. K 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 upstiars. He didn't
pay much attention to it, although he wondered if they 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 they had two
children up there. The place where K lived was a large apartment block
but inspite 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 surrounding. K however did not feel annoyed, but was
rather glad of the distraction and a break it gave him from the eerie
silence.

The next day K, feeling bored and not motivated enough
to cook lunch, ordered some pizza. The pizza, which arrived within 30
minutes, turned out to be too much for K that he left one whole pizza
untouched. Usually he would keep any left-overs for his wife but this
time he remebered about the children upstairs and, willing to do
something kind, he decided to take the pizza to them.

K had no
idea who the occupants of the room upstairs were but rang the bell on
the door anyway. He heard something stir inside, but there was no
answer. He rang the bell again. He felt someone was looking at him
through the peephole. "Who is it?" A faint voice called out from behind
the door.

K 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. From the gap
about 5 cm 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. K 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 odour. 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 K
put the pizza box through the gap a hand reached out right from the
side and snatched it away.

The three faces were still staring at
K. "Thank you....." He heard the faint voice again. K 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 ten metres from him, the same three faces looking at
him from the corner of the corridor. Like before, they were showing
only the 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 he frantically ran down the stairs.
Although the health-conscious K often used stairs instead of lift and
could even ran 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......and the strange things I saw behind the faces
were...hands.....holding up the heads......

He ran into the nearest convenience store and asked the people there to call the police.
The
police came, and searched the flat - and found the bodies of the mother
and children in the bath tub. These bodies were headless.

According to their findings, it had been three days since the heads had been chopped off the bodies.
And
the husband, who turned out to be the murderer, was found hiding in the
wardrobe - insane. He insisted his family was still alive. There was a
terror in his eyes; the polie did not know the source of his terror.

But K knew.