Short Horror Stories

Annoying Neighbour

I had just moved into the apartment for my overseas job, with the help of my dad and one of his friends. The rest of the night had gone normally, wishing my dad goodbye, eating dinner, staying up on my phone for a bit, then getting ready for bed.

By the time I had gotten into bed it was around 10 at night. I expected that I would get to sleep really fast from being tired from all of the moving stuff into my new house, but I was interupted by a tapping noise from the ceiling.

Ta ta ta ta. Ta. Ta tap ta ta. Ta tap tap ta. Tap tap. Ta.

It sounded like high heels on wodden floorboards, so I just assumed that the person in the house above from me had gotten home from a job where they had to wear high heels, and that they were now going to bed.

But the same tapping happened again. The same pattern.

And again.

And again.

This went on for about half an hour, before it abruptly stopped.

I paid no mind to it, only glad that I could now finally go to sleep.

A few more weeks passed, and the same thing would happen every night. The same pattern, the same time and it never failed to happen any night.

I wasn't too bothered by it, as legally the time where neighbours had to stop making noise that would keep someone awake was 11 pm and it always stopped at least half an hour before that.

I went on with my life, continuing my job, making new friends at this new country, until it got to Christmas, where I would go visit my family.

But a week before I left to see them, the tapping stopped. And it never happened again. I paid no mind to this though.

When it was finally time to see my family, I arrived at my parents house, greeted by our dog Rusty jumping on me as a welcome. We all caught up, and it was now time for the Christmas dinner.

It was cooked by my mum, and it was delicious, and with our bellies full, we were re-telling stories of things that have happened to us.

I talked about a crazy party that I went to with some of my new friends, mum talked about some of the silly things I had done when she was trying to raise me, but then an interesting topic came up.

It was the topic of when my dad when to war for a period of his life. It was when I was only a baby, so I didn't remember, but I still listened intently to all of his amazing adventures he said he had been on. At one point he even mentioned he had learnt Morse code, which I thought was really cool.

It was then that something clicked in my mind. 'What if it was Morse code?'

"Hey dad?" I spoke up.

"Yeah mate?" He replied, having just finished his story of something or other.

"Say, if this was Morse code, what would it mean?" I asked, and proceeded to tap out the pattern of taps that had been engraved into my brain.

Ta ta ta ta. Ta. Ta tap ta ta. Ta tap tap ta. Tap tap. Ta.

"Oh," he made a sound of slightsurprise. "Well in Morse code, that is translatedto 'help me'."

A/N:

This story came to me while I was on holiday camping, and when I tell you I had trouble sleeping that night, I did. It is shorter than most of the other stories I will be writing, so yeah.

- Olivandro