SNAP

Yesterday I moved into this house abandoning my last one after only 7 months.

So about 7 months ago I got a house into this neighborhood. It seemed pretty nice and the people were polite and friendly as they could be. My neighbors helped me with handling and setting up my stuff. Just as we were done, I started asking them about the place, you know, basic stuff about hospital timings, workplace cultures etc. Everything seemed pretty standard and we were just wrapping up the conversation when I saw Elle, the neighbor, elbow here husband as if trying to make him tell me something.

Josh took the hint and said: “Yeah that’s pretty much it about this place just like you would find in almost any other town, but there’s something that you should know.”

His voice took a more serious tone as he continued, “At exactly 2:44am in the morning, you’ll hear someone walking down the street in front of your house, you will hear whistling and finger snapping, you must not look out at the figure. It’s for your own good.”

I asked “2:44am seems like a random time, anything I’m missing here?”

“It’s a different time for every house depending on its location, the first snap in the town is heard at 12:30am. We have marked each house with the time they would hear the snap.”, Josh answered

I nodded and told him I’ll keep that in mind. I don’t consider myself to be someone who is easily scared but I wasn’t taking my chances. And of course, my bedroom had to have a window directly facing the street. I blocked the window with curtains that night, and I patiently waited for the clock to strike 2:44.

And right at time, I started hearing a snapping sound. It sounded like it was coming from down the street. It kept getting closer and closer. Then started the whistling. It was the creepiest whistle tone I’d ever heard and it freaked the daylights out of me. Thankfully, whoever was making the sound only stopped in front of my house for a few seconds before moving along to the next house. Terrified, I couldn’t sleep that night and was miserable the next day.

The snapping used to happen every single night. The same exact routine, at the same exact time. I started to get used to it. Other people took more extreme measures to make sure they didn’t accidentally look out the windows, blocking them with boxes and even wooden planks. My neighbors Elle and Josh were one of them.

I worked in a law firm, that was like a 30-minute drive from my house. It’s a small town though, it would probably only be like a 3-hour drive if someone were to go entirely across the town from one end to the other. The office norms were pretty simple and usual. I had the usual morning to early-evening shift which I was happy with since I love my sleep and working late into the evening would’ve definitely messed with my brain.

There was this girl in the office that I had a crush on at the time. Our duties only overlapped for a few hours as she worked the 2nd shift. Her name was Amanda we used to talk a lot during our overlapping shifts. She lived on the other side of town. About a 2.5-hour drive from my house. I noticed that she liked wearing contacts a lot, every few days, she would have a new pair of contacts, just slightly different shades of black and brown.

Speaking of contacts, there was also Ryan who was a big nuisance in the office but I have to give it to him, his blue-green eyes would flatter everyone. I didn’t know eyes were made that beautiful.

A few months later, I finally gathered the courage to ask Amanda out and thankfully she agreed. It was a very scary moment indeed. Almost scarier than the snapper. We used to hang out on the weekends since our shifts were perfectly designed to not let us hang out during the weekdays, which pissed me off royally. But we met at the weekends and it was going well.

This one night, I came home especially tired, it had been an extraordinarily tiring day at the office and I had to work 4 hours overtime. I reached home and instantly just passed out on the bed. At 2:44am though, my eyes opened since I heard the snap again, and to my horror, I had forgotten to cover the windows before sleeping. As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw a dark hooded figure walking down the street, but it stopped as soon as I looked at it. Quickly shutting my eyes, I frantically closed the curtains and sat on the bed, knees to the chest terrified.

The silence was only there for a few seconds, and I almost thought that the person hopefully just went away. But right as things were calming down,

SNAP.

Right outside the window. There was no way in hell any human could’ve covered that distance from the street to my window in a few seconds. The snap continued rhythmically and I heard footsteps of someone walking all around the outsides of the house. Then came the whistling, it was louder than usual since it came from right outside my house.

The snaps started to get louder, and faster, pacing quickly around the house. There was no whistling anymore, it was just snaps, and they were getting so loud it was almost deafening. They were way louder than any sound human fingers could produce. SNAP… SNAP… SNAP... SNAP.

It got really fast and deafening that even the windows started shaking. I closed my eyes to accept my fate. It was over. Then all of a sudden, all the snaps stopped. Utter and complete silence. I couldn’t tell if the silence was better or worse. Then, I heard a thud on the window pane. Then another. Then another.

The thud getting harder and harder. At this point I started screaming. “LEAVE ME ALONE”

To my surprise, the thuds stopped. I could hear footsteps going around the house towards the main door of the house. I walked up next to the door with a knife to hopefully protect myself even though something told me it wouldn’t be useful. I knew the figure was standing right outside the door. I could tell.

The figure said “Goodnight” in a soft but loud whisper. The voice sounded more reptilian than human. I heard footsteps walking away from the house and continuing along the street, whistling and snapping. I fell to the floor with relief. I couldn’t believe I was alive.

The next day I talked to people and told them about what happened. Everyone was so shocked. They told me it was a miracle I was still alive, since usually when that happens to someone, they don’t live to tell the tale. They continued to tell me that the snapper takes it as a permission to enter the house of the victim if they see it. My neighbors had heard the incident live as it happened since they were right next door. They told me the same thing.

I wasn’t complaining though, I was glad to be alive. The next day, we had a campfire party organized by the office in light of our recent win on a high-profile case. I just took it as an opportunity to hang out with Amanda. When we met that night at the campfire, I noticed she was wearing contacts that had a pale shade. I didn’t bring it up to her though I was confused why she wore contacts near a fire. I always thought they were supposed to melt if anyone got that close. We talked and everyone had a great time but I also noticed that Amanda was having trouble seeing ‘cause she almost tripped over a rock. Probably the contacts messing with her vision because of the heat.

Oh, and I had already decided to move out of this neighborhood at this point. I got out alive that night but I wasn’t gonna wait around. I planned to move out in 2 days. That night when I went to sleep, I heard no snaps. No whistles. Nothing. The snapper didn’t come. It was the first time I had experienced it happen.

In the morning I talked to Josh all happy telling him how nice it was to have a night without the creature walking around. Josh on the other hand wasn’t too happy. He said “This has happened before. Whenever this happens, it means that the snapper already got a prey that night and didn’t continue along the journey. Someone died last night, and I’m sure we’ll figure out who in the news today.”

And sure enough, the news headlines for the day announced a person dead. “A person by the name of Ryan Felling was found dead in his apartment. He was found by his neighbor in the morning and the neighbor described it as follows: ‘It was terrible. His eyes were white. Completely white. He had no iris. There was no blood anywhere. He was intact, but his eyes. God have mercy’

I froze. This was the same Ryan with the beautiful eyes. He was dead? Just like that? Then it hit me, Ryan lived right next to Amanda. I rushed to the office to see if she was okay. I saw her talking to my boss Emily and waited impatiently for her to finish her conversation. But when she turned around, I almost passed out.

She had blue-green eyes.

That was yesterday. I am approximately 2700 miles away from that town. Into this new place, where everything seems standard. Today at the office, my assistant got an appointment call she told me about.

“It’s an appointment request by one Amanda Brenner. I told her you were busy and asked her if there was anything she wanted to tell you, she said ‘I need the eyes, Jack.’ “, said my assistant.

Oh well, I know this’ll be in the news tomorrow. I’ll be in the news tomorrow.

THESE CHILLING WORDS ARE FROM THE MESSAGE FOUND IN JACK GRIMES’ APARTMENT BY THE POLICE WHILE INVESTIGATING HIS DEATH. HIS EYES WERE BLANKED OUT WITH NO VISIBLE WOUNDS ON HIS BODY. THERE WERE SIGNS OF FORCED ENTRY THROUGH A BROKEN WINDOW. CAUSE OF HIS DEATH IS STILL UNKNOWN