Neighbor Reveals Why Police Recently Surrounded This Abandoned Home

I’d seen the cruisers crowd the curb
Like vultures on a wire—
Their lights made ghosts out of the trees,
Their engines low with fire.

The house had slouched for fifteen years,
Its shutters torn like skin,
Its porch collapsed like drunken knees,
No soul had dared go in.

We whispered tales on summer nights
Of blood beneath the floor,
Of children’s laughter echoing
Behind that bolted door.

But yesterday, I spilled the truth—
A truth I’d held too long:
It wasn’t ghosts or devil’s rites
Or echoes done in wrong.

I told them of the man who came
At dusk with bags in hand,
How he would pry the boards apart
And vanish where he’d stand.

He never stayed till morning light,
Just shadows drawn and dim.
He wasn’t loud, he wasn’t wild—
But something wasn’t him.

I told them of the girl I saw—
No older than sixteen—
A frightened face behind the blinds,
Half-starved and barely seen.

They came because I found her note
Tied to my backyard tree:
“I don’t know what he’ll do to me—
Please, someone set me free.”

The cops kicked down the swollen door
And found more than decay:
A room of locks and windowless walls,
And chains that never fray.

No headlines came. No anchors wept.
The girl won't speak her name.
But I still hear her crying out
When the wind begins to flame.

So yes—I told. It broke my heart.
I should have told before.
But silence is the cruelest thing
When evil’s at your door.