Short Unsettling Stories

Story 1

The Long Night
It was a cold damp night, Jane was walking alone from work, like always. She had to walk down a dark, creepy alley to get to her apartment. She stood at the entrance feeling as if someone was staring at her. She tells herself she's crazy before continuing her long stretch home. She rushed through it. The chills crawl their way up her spine all the way to the back of her neck. She feels the cold seeping through her thin ragged jacket. She finally reaches home and throws the old coat in her closet, shuts it, and looks at the time: it's midnight. She starts to get ready for bed when she heard it, one single knock on her window. She chooses to ignore it, 'it can't be anything' she tells herself; she lives on the 15th floor. She gets into bed and pulls the warm, but worn down blanket over her head and lets out a loud sigh and starts to fall asleep. About three hours later she wakes up to another knock. She sits up and looks at her window, it's open. The wind was whipping the curtains around. She stands up and looks around her room in pure panic. No one was there, she slowly walks over the the window and looks out: no one. She quickly pulls her head back in and slams the window shut. When she turns around it there's a deep jagged laugh almost echoing all around her. She pushes herself to a corner around and calls out to whoever is there with her. In return, there's a scraping sound along the wall. Not in the same room though. It sounded like it was coming from the kitchen. She grabs the lamp from the side table and slowly creeps her way to the kitchen. Her breathes were shallow and short. The floorboards groaned under her weight as she made her way to the noise. She gets to the entrance of the kitchen and raises the lamp above her as if she was playing baseball and was about to hit a ball thrown at her. She quickly jumps into the kitchen and turns in a full circle to find whoever is there, lamp in front of her. But she soon finds she is the only one there. She starts to laugh at herself. I must be dumb she whispers to herself. She lets her guard down and starts to make her way back to her lonely room when she starts to feel like eyes were prying at her. Telling her to turn around. No, forcing her to. She starts to slowly turn around. About half way around she feels a heavy breath on her neck. She stops and stands, terrified, she knows this is really bad. She starts to sprint towards her room, there's a phone in there. She gets within 5 feet of her room when a large sweaty hand latched onto her small arm. Pulling her down to the ground. She lets out a loud scream, hoping to wake anyone up. She feels the intruder put their hand over her mouth to silence her frantic shrieks. After a second she realizes this isn't getting her anywhere, so she bites the intruders hand and they screamed out in pain, while doing this they let go of her. She freezes that scream sounded like someone she knew. Someone close to her. She gets up runs to the light switch and spins around to she her idiotic brother. Without even a second of realizing who it was she runs up to him and slaps him.
"You idiot! I can't believe you. You're so dumb! I hate you!" she rants. She realized at this point she was shaking from rage and fear.
"Jane it's a prank! You haven't been around much so I decided to check up on you," He says. She looks at him, a long stare, she wanted to rip him apart. In her eyes were fires, burning with rage. He just stands there like he did nothing wrong.
"You can't just do that! You know I live alone, what made you think that was a good idea to just 'check up' on me?" she retorts back. "I'm doing fine on my own. You can just leave, you know where the door is."
"Jane, I'm sorry I didn't mean to upset you. I just meant to mess with you a little bit. Can you at least let me stay the night? It's already late I will leave first thing in the morning. Please?" He begs her to let him stay. She knows she can't stay mad at him, and if he leaves she knows she'll still be creeped out and won't be able to fall asleep.
"Fine. You can sleep on the couch," She states bitterly. She goes to her closet and gets out a blanket and pillow and hands it to him. "If you get cold just grab another blanket from the closet," and with that she just walks away. She once again slips into her now cold bed and starts to fall asleep knowing her brother was in the room next to her. She takes one glance at the clock and sees it's now 4:30 am. She starts to slip into an uneasy rest when there was a noise coming from her closet. She sits up in her be and sees her closet is slightly pulled back. If her brother is out on the couch, then who is staring at her from her closet?