That was really well written. Turned nicely and gradually away from my expectations to give me a chill :)
There is a neighbourhood in my home town that I am scared of and I am very squirrely about admitting it in the wrong social context.
It's not a "bad" neighbourhood, mind you. For one thing, it's a regular, middle-class neighbourhood, where people take their kids to school then go to work and then get back home to watch TV and all that. And even if that weren't the case, I grew up in a bad neighbourhood, so bad neighbourhoods don't scare me.
That's not the problem.
Two or three hundred years ago, one of those many, scary plagues took a turn for the worse and a lot of people died. We don't know exactly how many. Most of those who died were poor slum-dwellers. Their death was an unsavoury subject to many of their contemporaries, and an uninteresting problem to others, so nobody bothered to write it down. They were buried in hastily-dug common pits, and the living poured quicklime over their bodies before covering the pits again.
There's no sign of that two hundred years later, it's all concrete and apartment blocks, but *I know*.
Streetcars pass through that neighbourhood all day, and nobody pays attention to that, it's just part of the heavy traffic. But late at night, when the last streetcar passes, you notice how the concrete trembles behind it. You notice because it's late, and it's dark, and it's quiet, and you know it disturbs those who sleep underneath the concrete.
If you stick your ear to the ground in the midle of the summer, you hear them clawing at the pavement. You hear a rustling like that of dead leaves, but there are no dead leaves in the summer.
On late autumn nights you can hear them shivering and their teeth clattering, tick, tick, tick, like flickering streetlights.
An apartment there is pretty expensive from what I hear. It's a good area and the apartments are spacious and comfortable. Most of the apartment buildings are either new, or very well-kept. But I don't want to live in one. It's not that I'm afraid of the people under the pavement.
They just look like tombstones to me.
That was really well written. Turned nicely and gradually away from my expectations to give me a chill :)
I do a lot of stuff in the paranormal field. That story has a very interesting perspective.
It's not *completely* untrue, either. As a grown-up adult who's seen some scary shit over time I am no longer completely terrified of it, but back when I was a child I hated it when I had to go there. I'd be in and out as quickly as I could. Nowadays I still find myself going as fast as I can if I'm in that part of town and I hate it when I'm there after dark. Gives me the creeps.
This is beautiful... it makes me nostalgic for home.
I'm not sure if that should be taken as an endearing compliment about your home or as a warning for strangers to stay away :-D?
I'm glad you liked it though. I (think I) sort of understand how you feel. I don't like that part of my home town but it's still my home town. It's going to be a part of me forever. I love it and dread it in ways that I cannot describe and though I often dream about leaving it, I'm sure I would miss it more than anything else.