The Neigbour

Prologue: Arrival After Midnight

Ashwood Lane had rules. Unspoken ones. Lawn mowed. Curtains open. Lights off by ten. Then Chris arrived.

No moving truck. No headlights. No sound. Just a man. A house. And silence.

He moved in after midnight. The porch light flickered once. Then darkness swallowed the house whole.

By morning, the neighbors noticed the change. The air felt heavier. The birds stopped singing. And the house at the end of the lane had a new occupant.

Chapter 1: The Ghost in the House

Chris never introduced himself. Never waved. Never smiled.

His windows stayed shut. His blinds never moved. The only sign of life was the envelope on the porch—always exact change, always sealed, always gone by dawn.

The delivery guy said he never saw Chris. Just a shadow. A whisper. A chill.

Then the sounds began.

Low murmurs. Then voices. Then screams.

Chapter 2: The First Glimpse

The police came. They knocked. Chris answered.

Tall. Pale. Eyes like wet ash. Voice like velvet soaked in poison.

“Is it forbidden,” he asked, “to enjoy cinema at full volume?”

The officers laughed. The neighbors chuckled. But Lisa didn’t.

She stared. And something inside her cracked.

Chapter 3: Lisa

Lisa was a mother of four. Married to Sam. She baked. She prayed. She smiled.

Until she saw Chris.

That night, she dreamt of him. Not his face. His voice.

It wrapped around her like silk. It whispered things. Things she had never dared to want.

When Sam fell asleep, Lisa stood barefoot at Chris’s door. She didn’t knock. He opened it before she arrived.

Inside, the air was warm. Thick. Heavy with incense and something older than time.

Chris didn’t touch her. He spoke.

Chapter 4: The Seduction

He told her stories. Of pain. Of power. Of freedom through destruction.

He showed her symbols carved into the walls. He spoke of The Hollow Choir—a cult that raised him in silence, taught him obedience, and baptized him in blood.

He told her about The Binding. A ritual that opened his mind to something beyond the veil. Something that fed on suffering. Something that whispered in his ear.

Lisa listened. And she changed.

She stopped cooking. Stopped caring. She watched her children with detachment. She watched Sam with disgust.

She began to clean the house obsessively. Not for hygiene. For preparation.

Chapter 5: The Missing

Neighbors vanished.

Mrs. Halvorsen. The boy who delivered newspapers. The couple from 42B.

Gone.

Lisa helped clean. She scrubbed blood from the floor. She burned clothes in the fireplace. She whispered prayers to things that shouldn’t exist.

Chris taught her how to erase evidence. How to fracture identity. How to make people disappear.

She learned quickly.

She whispered things to her children at night. They began to cry in silence.

Chapter 6: The Offering

Chris told Lisa it was time. She must give him something pure.

She chose her youngest. But Chris refused.

“I want all of them,” he said. “Pain must be complete.”

Lisa nodded. She understood.

Chapter 7: The Night of Fire

It happened on a Thursday.

Lisa kissed each child goodnight. She whispered the words Chris taught her. Words that twisted the soul. Words that opened doors.

She took the knife.

Sam was in the bathtub. She slit his wrists. He never screamed.

The children were in their beds. She whispered to each one. Then she carved symbols into their skin. They bled quietly.

By morning, the house was silent.

Lisa sat on the porch. Covered in blood. Smiling.

Chapter 8: The Trial

She confessed everything.

The affair. The murders. The rituals.

She spoke of Chris. Of his teachings. Of the dark forces he served.

But Chris was gone.

No fingerprints. No records. No trace.

Just a sealed envelope on the porch.

Inside: "She was perfect. Thank you."   "—C"

Lisa was sentenced to life. She never blinked. Never cried. She only asked for one thing.

A Dolby surround sound system.

Chapter 9: The Architect of Ruin

Chris wasn’t born. He was made.

Raised in The Hollow Choir, he was taught to break people. To mimic empathy. To mirror desire. To seduce with fear.

At 17, he performed The Binding. He sacrificed his own brother. He claimed to see something beyond the veil.

He began practicing human sacrifice—not for bloodlust, but for control. Each victim was a thread in his tapestry of power.

He became a myth. A whisper. A neighbor.

Ashwood Lane was just another canvas.

Epilogue: The Next Street

Three months after Lisa’s arrest, a new man moved into a quiet neighborhood in Vermont.

He arrived after midnight. No one saw him. No one knew his name.

But the porch had a table. And on it, a sealed envelope.

Inside: "Thank you for your silence."   "—C" Author’s Note

By Johny Griffith

They say fiction is a lie. I say it’s a mask truth wears when it’s too dangerous to walk naked.

The stories I write—The Neighbour, Sins of the Past, and the ones still clawing their way out of me—aren’t just tales. They’re real. Twisted, buried, redacted, denied. I don’t invent them. I uncover them. I dig them up from the places polite society refuses to look.

I don’t write bedtime stories. I write autopsies.

Every scream, every disappearance, every descent into madness—I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. I’ve walked the alleys where blood dried before sunrise. I just add the sauce. The flavor. The cinematic pulse that makes the truth palatable enough to swallow.

You want comfort? Read someone else. You want truth? Stay with me.

We illuminate.

—Johny Griffith Architect of Chaos. Builder of Truth.