Day 3

Day 3

(Content warning: Horror story, contains gore.)

A few years ago, me and my partner decided that we wanted to move out into the countryside, away from the noise and bustle of the city. We knew that finding a home out there wouldn't be cheap, and the phone signal might be worse than it already is, but it would be better than staying somewhere that we knew wasn't working. We looked around online for a while, but we didn't find anything we liked that was in budget and the right size. These homes are usually large enough for big families, but it was just the two of us, so we had no luck.

After a while, we decided to go in person to a town that we whilst browsing the country on Google Maps, a sleepy little village in the East Midlands. Winding around the little roads, it reminded me of the long car journeys to holiday parks when I was a little boy. Excitement squirmed in my stomach as our little car bounced along.

We came to a stop outside the town's only estate agent. It was a pretty run-down place; a few of the letters had fallen out of the wooden sign, and the interior had no real decoration to speak of. The agent inside resembled their establishment, but they were able to get us a viewing for the next day, April 22nd. It was a detached house near the woodland reserve, with a large garden and shed at the back. The listing was brand new, so the current owner was yet to move out.

The next day, we went to the viewing with the estate agent. The homeowner answered the door, but they seemed to be in the middle of their lunch when we arrived. “I'm sorry if I'm being rude, I just couldn't wait any longer, I was starving!” His lunch seemed to be some kind of meat stew with bread. The strong, yet herby aroma suggested that he'd spent a long time preparing it. “You want some?”, he asked.

“No thanks, we are vegetarian”, I replied. I thought he would be disappointed, but his facial expression lit up into a beaming smile.

“Oh, you too? Don't worry, my stew is completely free of animal products! I make my own meat substitute. Please, I'd love for you to try it.” I admit that we had some reservations, we had just met the guy after all, but it would seem very rude to say no. Maybe he was just trying to make a good impression, he was trying to sell his house to us, after all. It was unlike any other meat substitute I'd ever had, but it didn't taste of meat either. It was quite pleasant and well seasoned.

After lunch, the owner and the estate agent showed us around the house. It was exactly what we wanted, with a spare room for an office and a large, spacious kitchen. Everyone seemed keen to make a deal as quickly as possible, and we made an agreement to buy that same day. Before the month was out, we had moved in. It was the fastest house sale I'd ever known, but I suppose it was the only one I'd ever been involved in.

As we were offloading our belongings from the removal van and settling in, we opened the fridge to clear it out. It had been scrubbed and cleaned out, with the exception of a plastic box with a note affixed. “To the new couple, made this fresh for you to say thank you. Enjoy and keep the box!” It was the same stew that we'd enjoyed during the meeting. Of course, we'd hardly eaten all day, so we sat and enjoyed it once again. Only after we’d finished and I was washing the box up, I noticed what looked like a date on the back of the box, written in black marker pen. “29/4”. It was the 30th of April. At the time, I simply assumed that the previous owner had left it for us a few days ago, and it had gone slightly past his ‘recommended date’. Upon reflection, that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I didn’t give it much thought.

A couple of days later, we had a worrying knock at the door. It was the police. They sat us down and told us that the estate agent who sold us the house had gone missing, and that they believed that we were the last people to have seen them. We had no idea what could’ve happened; they didn’t say much about their personal life, but we didn’t really get the vibe that anything had been wrong. They were dull, but they wouldn’t just vanish off the face of the earth. In the hope of finding some more information about them, the police asked to take a look around the property. We agreed, since we had nothing to hide (apart from many boxes still stacked up from the move that we hadn’t sorted out). The police searched all around the home for a while, and we just continued to go about our business. But as time went on, we started to get worried as to why they hadn’t left. We tried asking them, but they just told us to stay inside the house. Another police car arrived. Then another, with forensics investigators inside. Sick of waiting inside, we went outside to meet them and demanded to know what was going on inside our home. The officer replied “It’s not in the house we are investigating, sir. It’s in there…” 

In all the time we had seen the property, we’d never been inside the shed. We’d thought nothing of it, but now I think about it every day. As we stepped inside it, we were immediately struck by how cold it was, and then we were hit by the stench of death. The police were investigating the rows of jars that lined the walls, each one containing a different part of a human body. But these weren’t just being left to rot, they were being preserved. The shed had been converted into some kind of cooler, like the walk-in fridge in a restaurant. Each of the containers was marked with a short number, written in black marker pen. The freshest one, the one that the police were very interested in, was marked “29/4”.

I vomited.