The Children Upstairs

This is a story I heard from my friend at university. A man (let's 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 surroundings. 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 doorbell 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 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 only 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.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The best one by far!

Cheers
I'm happy to hear you like it! I will be posting more interesting stories! Wait and see!!
Anonymous said…
Cool! But... it made me think of Scooby Doo, how they sometimes managed the same thing... BTW, it is possible, but extremely difficult.
Anonymous said…
Really spookey!!! =D
Anonymous said…
wat.
idgi.
Anonymous said…
The dad was holding the heads up to the crack when the guy was at the door AND making the noises he heard before ordering the pizza. In other words, the Dad went nucking futs.
Anonymous said…
me loves shrunken heads
Anonymous said…
When i first read this, i thought it was some sort of monster or something that made the noises and held the heads, mainly from the fact that the police don't find the heads (monster chased K with them, so never got to put them back), and the fact that the dad is terrified. Plus, the dad doesn't have three hands. I thought that if it was the dad holding the heads up, he wouldn't have time to make it back to the room and hide in the closet before the police came. And maybe he went insane because of the horrible creature or something.
Anonymous said…
Oh god now I'm terrified.

I'm pretty sure the dead children and the dead mother were holding their heads up by themselves. Why would the Dad be so scared if it wasn't?
Koji Kun said…
Great stories! i just stumbled upon your site only yesterday and i have to say i am hooked! i love J-horror especially movies..i have a little collection growing which also include other asian horror films...but ya knoe it only goes so far..this is the perfect site to serve as a "snack" for my interest haha...

anyways..i think the dead bodies were carrying their own heads only because the father was scared and it would explain the kids playing upstairs during a school day..i dunno that's just me but great story none the less!
Anonymous said…
according to Koji Kun, he may be right when considering the following near the end of the story;
"He insisted his family was still alive."
Nero Marie said…
Okay...I love it...But how exactly does "K" Know????
Alaina said…
I love this story! It was really good, thankyou very much for posting it! (c^-^c)
HIKARI said…
definitly one of the best.
Damie said…
I'm not intending this as a troll comment. I'm honestly curious I'd the police found the pizza or if the dead kept it.
G. said…
This is a very late comment, however, though I agree this one is the best so far, another japanese-horror translation site which used another variation of this one made me wonder: there's no mention about the heads' whereabout.... which made the story creepier and still best of the best hahaha... I hope the heads didn't stalk K.

And like what the previous commenter said, I curious about the pizza.

The other translation site's conclusion story made the heads in the possession of the murder/husband whose found in K/s closet though.

I didn't know which one is creepier; some dead people heads which seem got a liking to you still have not found yet, or a murder found living in your closet with three heads (that seems taking a liking to you too).
@ G.: You're talking about Scary for Kids, right? He basically copied it from mine. THERE IS NO OTHER VARIATION TO THIS STORY. This story is not even famous, and you will be hard put to find a site that has this story even on the Japanese internet. I can't even remember myself where I took this story from, although I'm 100% sure it was taken from 2chan thread originally.

Sorry, this is nothing to do with you, and I'm not annoyed with you or anything, but I get annoyed about Scary for kids, because he or she just copies my work and change the details to make it look like it's their own work. Sneaky mofo. I hope they suffer in hell.
What I mean by "I can't remember where I took it from" is that I usually look at sites that upload stories taken from 2chan when I look for stories to translate. I never really visit 2chan directly.
G. said…
@Saya Ahahaha Yes I do understand. 'Sharing another works' aka copy-paste is also a big problem in art community. But no, it's not scary for kids.
fatalystic said…
Old entry I know, but I figured that since there are people replying to these...yeah. Anyway, this story is quite unnerving for me because when I'm at home, I tend to hear lots of noise coming from the unit upstairs. Marbles dropping, people running around, heavy objects dropping...yeah.

Now I'm never going upstairs to check it out.