Full Body Chills - My Dad Was Married Once Before

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

A story once told by a frightened father on his deathbed.My Dad Was Married Once BeforeWritten by Danny RickardYou can read the original story at http://fullbodychillspodcast.com/ Looking for more chills? Follow Full Body Chills on Instagram @fullbodychillspod. Full Body Chills is an audiochuck production. Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

This episode was produced with audio effects in full surround sound. For the best experience, we kindly recommend you listen with headphones. Hi, listeners. I'm Shai Sharae, and I have a story I want to tell you. A story once told by a frightened father on his deathbed. So, gather round and listen close. My dad was married once, before he met my mom. We always knew that growing up, but no one really talked about it.

My mom was the only mother my older sister and I ever had, and she loved us both like we were her own. And of course, she loved my dad too, and dad loved her. But he always carried his first wife with him, even if he never brought her up. It wasn't until just before he died that he told me the whole story. It was obviously hard for him to talk about, but I think not saying anything was even harder. I suppose I'm telling it to you for the same reason, even though just thinking about it gives me chills. Dad's first wife was named Lily. The two of them met fresh out of school and fell head over heels for each other, as they say.

She was pretty, dark-haired, tall. Apparently she thought he was pretty too, though he could never figure out why. They shared that first love together, that love that feels like you're two people at the end of the world. From a young age, they saved up their money to start a family. So when they found out Lily was pregnant with my sister, that just meant their plan was running a little ahead of schedule. They had to get married in a hurry to keep the families happy, but neither of them had wanted a long engagement anyway.

For a wedding present, Dad bought them a house. It was an old house with big windows and creaky floorboards. People these days would call it a project house. To Dad, it was just all they could afford. They were happy there for those first few months. As Lily got bigger and bigger, they prepared for the baby. Together, they read through books of baby names, marking down their favorites. They put a fresh coat of paint around the house, helping to make it feel more like a home. And they even got themselves a fat tabby cat so they could practice being parents. And boy, were they ready to be parents. Dad says they were just bounding with joy. But much as we might wish otherwise,

things always change. And nothing changes things more than a baby. Don't get me wrong. My dad says the day my sister was born was the happiest day of his life. But she wasn't easy. From the time they took her home to the time she could walk, she was either sleeping or crying. And unfortunately, she never cared to sleep during the same hours as her parents. From sunset to sunrise, seven days a week, you could hear that baby

screaming clear across the neighborhood. That crying runs a person ragged, dad told me. Not all at once, of course, because you love having a daughter. But bit by bit, as the memory of sleep fades away, you start to catch yourself having terrible thoughts like, if I'd known being a father was going to be like this. But however hard my dad had it, it was nothing compared to what Lily went through. Dad said she wasn't ever quite the same after the baby came. At first, he chalked it up to the stress of being a new mama. But as time went on, it only got worse. Over those first few weeks, Lily got quieter and quieter

until it seemed like all the laughter in the house just dried up. Then, her mood started to flip. She could go from not speaking at all to crying almost as much as the baby in seconds, with no warning. And that really scared my dad, because he had no idea how to help her. Dad still worked his 9 to 5, so more often than not, it was Lily who stayed up soothing my sister through the night. Dad said he would watch from the bedroom through half-closed eyes as she paced back and forth on the creaky kitchen floor, shushing the baby in her arms. Step, step, creak. Step, step, creak, step, step.

He'd fall asleep watching her long, dark hair sway as she shuffled across the room and back. Step, step, creak. Step, step, creak. Step, step. It wasn't long before Lily's mental state really started to decline. She couldn't sleep, even when she wanted to, and her prescriptions didn't seem to decline. She couldn't sleep, even when she wanted to, and her prescriptions didn't seem to help. She started losing things constantly. To hear her say it, nothing ever stayed where it was. Different doors and cupboards were always ajar, and at least twice my dad found the fridge left open in the night. The house got filthy.

It seemed Lily could never keep up with the cleaning. She blamed my dad for the mess, but he was away most of the day. There was no other explanation for it. It had to be her. But somehow, she just forgot. I worried about her, Dad told me. I surely did. But you have to understand, I ain't no good with that kind of thing.

He looked hard at me, begging with his eyes. Please believe me. I wanted to help her, but I just ain't no good. The best he could do was try and keep her calm. She started telling him there were people living in the walls, that she could hear them moving around at night. So he took it upon himself to lock those strangers out, installing new deadbolts around every window and door. He was only humoring her, of course. The only thing he heard at night was the floor creaking like mad as she walked back and forth in the dark.

Step. Step. Creak. Step. For hours on end. And every once in a while, the cat would hiss at God knows what out there and come running into the room to hide under the bed. It got so bad that he started to worry for

his own safety. Not that he thought she would hurt him. She'd never. But the whole situation made him uneasy. He said there were times when he'd wake up and see her silhouette in the doorway, standing there with her hair wild and long, her posture strange and bent. He could feel her watching him while he waited with his eyes half open, pretending to be asleep. And then, everything fell apart. That May, my dad went on a fishing trip. Lily asked him not to go. She said she didn't feel safe in the house, never mind the extra locks he installed.

He argued that the house was fine and that she just needed some rest. Besides, this fishing trip was a yearly tradition between he and his brothers. He couldn't just call it off. It would only be three days, and anyway, he'd call her every night to check in. He would have never left if he thought she was in danger. But of course, the truth is, a part of him wanted to get away. After those last few months of endless worry, it would have taken an awful lot to get him to give up three nights of peace and quiet. He packed up his rods and tackle, kissed my sister's bald little head,

and said goodbye to his wife. She held him tightly by the hands as they stood there on the stoop. I'm trying to forgive you for leaving, she said. I love you, though. I really do. Dad spent three days with his brothers, hooking walleye out on the murky waters of Lake Erie. He told me it didn't feel as good as he expected. The weather was nice, and the fish were biting.

But no matter how hard he tried to shake that uneasy feeling, his thoughts kept turning back to his wife and child, all alone with the monsters in Lily's head. He had hoped some of his tension would melt away on the boat. But the stress climbing up his shoulders only got worse as the days went by. It probably would have been different if he'd been able to call her. Every evening, when they got back to the lodge, he called the house, but the phone would just ring and ring with no answer.

This was back before everyone had voicemail, of course, so it was possible that she just wasn't around to hear him call. He told himself she was probably at the store, or she'd taken an extra dose of that new sleeping medication to help her relax. Or hell, my sister was loud enough. Maybe she just couldn't hear the phone over the baby crying. There was no reason to assume the worst. All the same, he cut the trip short on the last day.

He told me that as he made the four-hour rush home, his grip on the steering wheel got tighter and tighter. Up until that point, he'd been able to pretend that everything was fine. The creaky house, the wailing baby, and Lily's strange nighttime wanderings were far behind him. But with every hour, the knots in his stomach pulled tighter. He was shaking by the time he pulled into their gravel driveway and ran up to the house. He paused for a moment to take one last breath before turning the key in his shiny new lock.

It was too late. He found her on the floor next to the couch. The empty bottle of sleeping pills had rolled out of her hand and was halfway across the room. My dad said he almost died right there with her. But it was the sound of my sister crying in her crib that brought him back. I can't imagine

how it must have felt for him to have that much horror and relief running through him all at once. I'm glad I can't imagine that. The police came and swept the house and asked dad a bunch of questions. Then they went away and took the body with them. For a few blurry days, dad just went about his

business, trying to survive and care for his daughter all by himself. After a while, he got the coroner's report. Lily died of an overdose and her death was ruled a suicide. All the doors and windows were locked from the inside and given Dad's description of her recent behavior, police put two and two together.

Though, there was one thing that was odd. dad didn't understand all the technical talk about rigor mortis or liver mortis and so on but Lily's time of death didn't seem to make sense according to the report she died at least a full day and a half before he found her. Except, he took my sister to the doctor that night he got back to make sure she was alright after being left all alone in her crib. The pediatrician told him that malnutrition was a real concern because babies that age can't go without nursing for very long.

But my sister hadn't dropped any weight and overall seemed to be in good health. They told him it was a minor miracle, but my dad had a hard time feeling like a miracle had anything to do with it. When they swept the house, police found empty bottles of formula left on the counter, which no one thought was strange at the time. Only now,

dad questioned how those bottles got there and when exactly my sister was last fed. But eventually, he realized some questions would drive you crazy. Please understand, he told me, I tried and tried to figure it out, the timeline of it all. But I had to let it go, or I would have lost myself. So, he let it go, moving on and picking up the pieces of his shattered life. But things only got harder after that. As the days turned to weeks, Dad realized there was something wrong about that house.

It was almost as if, after they took her body, the ghost of Lily had stayed behind. The sick, frightening parts of Lily. Every night was spent half asleep, Waiting for my sister to cry, he would lay in his bed, listening to the house and all its strange noises. He swore there were some days where he could hear a sound, like someone walking in the kitchen. Step. Step.

Creak. Step. Step, step, creep. Step, step. He began double-checking all the doors, the windows too. But everything was locked. Around this time, he started losing track of things. A book or a towel would always appear in a room he never left it. He blamed the stress and wrote it off as the trauma affecting his memory. Meanwhile, the cat was going wild. He almost asked his brother to adopt it, just so he

didn't have to hear it meow and spit all through the night at things he never saw. He told me with revulsion about the time he came across Lily's hairbrush. He was packing up some of her things and found a long hair tangled in the comb, except it wasn't dark brown like he remembered, but deep black and coarse. A few times, he dreamed that there was a shadowy figure with long, wild hair standing in the doorway to his room. All he could do was break out into a cold sweat and hold his breath until it turned and walked away. He felt his mind betray him, blurring lines between reality and nightmare. This must have been how Lily felt, he thought, all alone with the shadows in her head. He would spend whole nights just listening to the creaky footsteps while whispering into his pillow, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

Then, about a month after Lily died, it happened. It was 3 a.m. on a Tuesday, and Dad woke up to the sound of my sister crying. My sister crying, and something else. In between her screams, he could just barely make out a soft... He froze. Someone was in the house. He froze. Someone was in the house. They were in his daughter's room.

He tore out of bed and dashed into the hallway, just in time to see the figure with long, tangled hair, the one he thought was only in his dreams. He saw it as it slipped out of his daughter's room and into the kitchen. He was shaking so hard he almost threw up on his feet right there. But all he could think about was his daughter. He had to protect her. He rushed down the hallway, straight past the kitchen, and into the baby's room.

My sister was okay, thank God, still wailing in her crib. He took her into his arms and sprinted for the front door. The figure was gone now, nowhere to be seen, but he didn't care. He got my sister in his truck and drove off to my granddad's, two towns away. The next morning, he gathered his courage and went back to the house. The cat was spooked and hiding beneath the bed, but otherwise okay. The house itself was empty and cold. Everything was locked, meaning there was no way some stranger could have snuck in. He drifted from room to room, not really sure what he was looking for. A reason to call the cops, maybe.

Proof that he hadn't lost his mind. Personally, I think he was trying to work up the nerve to say goodbye, even if he didn't know it yet. But there was no one there to say goodbye to. He walked into the kitchen, where the figure had disappeared. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing. He stepped onto the sagging kitchen floor with a creak and felt it sink an inch beneath his foot. Two feet away, another section of the same floor lifted by an inch. It took Dad a second to process what he was seeing,

but then the realization knocked the wind out of him. The old creaking floorboards, the ones that had never fit quite right, had rotted through. They had broken off the very foundation of the house and were fully loose. It would have been impossible to tell unless you stepped at that exact spot, and unless you were looking, he felt that tension climb his shoulders again. He wanted to run away, but instead, he reached down and fit his fingers underneath the boards. They lifted right out of place,

almost like they were made to. He could see dirt through the hole underneath, a crawlspace beneath the house. He knelt and slowly lowered his head into the hole. It was empty, except for some loose soil and cobwebs. There couldn't have been more than two feet of open space between the house and the ground The only real light down there came from a broken section of the wooden lattice that wrapped around the house As all the blood rushed to his head, Dad tried to picture it

The broken lattice, the narrow hole from the crawlspace into his kitchen It didn't seem likely that anyone could fit through there. He certainly couldn't do it. But a thin, bony woman with black, tangled hair? A stranger willing to crawl on her belly like a snake just to stalk around a family's home? Maybe. Dad moved out of that house that same night and never went back. He called the cops and they swept the place again, but nothing ever turned up. Even if they had found something, and even if he'd gotten that floor fix,

he would have never been able to relax under that roof. He took his daughter halfway across the state to start again, and that was where he met my mom. Eventually, the old house was torn down, but even then, Dad could never let go. It was the guilt, I think, that kept him carrying the memory of Lily for so long. Guilt of not believing her. Guilt of leaving her alone. And guilt of remarrying so soon. Dad met my mom a year after Lily's death He was still taking it slow But she came on to him pretty hard

And as a single parent Desperate for that lost companionship He started to warm up to her It wasn't long before they became close And eventually married While we were alone And while my father laid on his deathbed, he finally confessed to me his greatest fear. He told me that he loved my mother, that she was the greatest support he had

after Lily's death. But there were times when he'd look at her and get this feeling, a sour, sickly feeling that he always tried to dismiss but was rooted in his stomach. He wouldn't say why, but he didn't have to because my mother's long hair is deep black and coarse.

This series was produced by Ashley Flowers and David Flowers. This episode was written by Danny Rickard and read by Shai Shirey. This story was modified slightly for audio retelling, but you can find the original in full on our website. Full Body Chills is an AudioChuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?