Bailey Gaus

Writer’s note:
This story includes graphic depictions of violence, assault and gore.
I listened to the album Tonight She Comes by Wojciech Golczewski for inspiration while writing both parts of The Neighbors. I would suggest listening for a more immersive experience. -Bailey

I had a hard time sleeping last night. My thoughts raced and replayed the conversations with Tom, and I no longer felt safe in my own home. I don’t know that Tom would actually attempt to break into my home, but I just kept thinking back on his face when he approached me by the van. That was not the man I knew. But if I really think about it, my interactions have always been limited to small talk, so I guess I didn’t really know him at all.

I rolled over in bed, grabbed my phone from the nightstand and unplugged it from the charger. I scrolled through notifications from the night before and saw one from the camera in our back yard from 3:40 a.m. I clicked on it and waited for it to load.

At first I didn’t see anything, but that’s because I was focused on my own yard. I almost brushed it off until I noticed that Tom’s garage light was on in the video, and I knew it was a motion sensor light.

Then I noticed slight movement near his garage. Our privacy fence covered most of him, but Tom’s head and upper torso were visible from the way the camera was angled. He looked to be using a shovel and was digging near his garden. After a few minutes, he stopped shoveling and looked like he was moving large, black plastic bags around that were knotted at the top. Then the video ended.

The fence cut off most of the view, but why in the actual fuck he be doing this at 3:40 a.m. in the morning? I wondered. I could see their backyard from my bedroom window so I got out of bed and looked. Sure enough, there was an area of freshly dug dirt in his garden.

What the hell? I thought to myself. Is this actually happening? Like, am I being crazy for assuming that Dina is in those bags he was messing with and just buried them in his backyard? I need to check for myself.

Around 10 a.m., I told my husband I had some errands to run and would be back in a few hours. Our kids were staying with my in-laws this weekend, so I wouldn’t have to account for them. I grabbed my keys, walked through the back yard and out by my garage. I knew Tom worked Saturday mornings because Dina had mentioned that before, but I walked by his garage to make sure his truck was gone. I peeked into the window in the garage door and saw that it was empty.

I felt my back pocket to make sure I remembered my phone as I approached Tom’s fence. I tried opening it but the gate was locked from the inside, which meant I would have to hop the fence. I climbed the chain-link fence, and once I was on the other side, I grabbed my phone from my pocket and walked up to the garden.

I looked around for any sign of movement, but I didn’t notice anything. The dirt in the garden was still soft, but looked smooth as if it had been patted down with a shovel or something flat. I was having an internal battle with all of this and my mind was racing. Should I just start digging? What happens if I find the bags, open them, and it’s a crime scene? Would I be charged with trespassing and fucking with a crime scene? I can’t just call the cops about a suspicion if I want them to take me serious. Ugh. Just shut up and do it already.

So, I decided to dig. I grabbed the shovel that was resting against the side of the garage and dug as gently as I could because I didn’t want to hurt whatever was in those black bags. The dirt was easy to pull up since it was still mostly soft, and I only had to go about six inches down before I hit the first bag.

I set the shovel on the ground and knelt down next to the hole. Using my hands, I pushed the dirt off of the bag until I found where it was tied on the top. I untied the bag and took a deep breath. Maybe I should be recording this, I thought. I propped my phone up against the shovel, angled back a little by the blade, and hit record. Positioning myself back over the bags, I untied the first bag with an uneasy feeling in my stomach.

Clothes. Specifically women’s clothes. Underwear, necklaces, earrings, socks, and blouses. Every single item was covered in blood and I’m pretty sure that’s a finger. Fuck. I need to stop. I leaned back and tried to process what this could have even been from. I stood up and backed up a bit. I felt gross and violated. Why wouldn’t he just burn this stuff? It seems like it would’ve just been easier to do that. Then I heard a squeaky garage door start to open. Shit! That must be Tom.

I knew the only way out of the backyard would either be over the back fence and walking by his garage, or I could go through the front gate and walk through his front yard to get back o my house. I decided to take the front because I didn’t want to take the chance of him seeing me by the garage.

I grabbed my phone and ran up to the front gate, but it wouldn’t open and felt like something was blocked it from the front. This wasn’t a chain-link fence like in the back, it was a privacy fence that would be nearly impossible to climb because I’m so short. Fuck. What the fuck am I going to do? I am NOT going inside of his house… I thought.

I glanced around the backyard. They had an above ground pool that had a deck on one end of it. Tom had built it the summer before. I saw a section where the steps met the pool and it looked big enough for me to crawl through there and under the deck. Well fuck me, I guess this is my only option at the moment.

I hurried over to the pool, knelt down and crawled between the steps and where the pool met the ground. They had laid rock under the deck, making it difficult to be quiet as I crawled around under there. I went as far back as I could under the deck until I was touching the fence that separated our back yards. I positioned my body to fit between the side of the pool and the fence, with my head peeking out just enough to still see the steps. My feet were hitting something, but I wasn’t able to move my head over enough to see what it was.

My plan was to get out from under the deck and back home as soon as he was inside his house. I just need to listen for the door and then-

A door slammed and soon there were heavy footsteps on the sidewalk, but they suddenly stopped. Oh god. I didn’t cover anything back up, so he’s probably seeing that it’s been dug up.

Silence. For I don’t know long. I was afraid to reposition myself and possibly making noise with the rocks, giving away my hiding place. My phone was in my back pocket and I was able to grab it. I sent the videos I’d taken to my husband and sent a text.

Me: “I am hiding from Tom under his pool deck. Look what I found in his garden. Check the security cam footage and watch the 3:40 a.m. video that’s saved.”
Stephen: “What the hell?! Are you okay?”
Me: “Physically, yes. But I can’t see Tom anymore. Can you look out the bedroom window and see if he’s still in the back yard? I’m too scared to move and try to see him myself because he doesn’t know I’m here.”
Stephen: Typing… (for what felt like an eternity)
Stephen: “He’s still in the backyard, but he’s closer to the house. He’s looking at his phone.”
Stephen: “He’s walking over to the pool. The side that almost touches the fence. I think I’m going to head over.”

As I began to type to tell him not to, I heard wood squeak from being pulled apart, and then plastic being dragged away. I heard a door open, more plastic dragging and rustling, then a door slam. I could hear that he was in the garage with whatever that plastic was. I shuffled a little bit, trying to not make any noise with the rocks below me, but that was basically impossible. My heart was beating so fast I could hear it in my ears and my hands were sweaty.

I held onto the side of the pool and tried lifting myself up sideways to scoot down towards the opening where my feet were, and where that object was that Tom moved. I could still hear movement around inside of the garage, and my feet were almost to the opening. I stopped for a moment, giving my arms a rest before I picked myself back up. I could feel air moving around my feet which told me I was almost out. But then I felt something grab onto my ankles and pull me out from the pool. I screamed and knew it had to be Tom.

“What in the hell are you doing?!” I yelled. “Let go of me!”

Tom had both hands on my ankles, gripping as hard as he could. I tried kicking but nothing worked. He was still dragging me through his yard towards the garage. I was screaming as loud as I could, hoping that someone would hear me. Where the hell is Stephen?! I thought.

Tom dragged me into the garage, still pulling by my feet. I tried grabbing onto the doorframe, but he kicked my right hand as I latched onto it, breaking at least one of my fingers.

Tom dragged me to a corner of the garage and shoved me down. “You wanted to see Dina, right?!” He sneered at me. “Well today’s your lucky day, Sarah. The ‘cat’s out of the bag’ as they say.” He pointed at his hip, which held a handgun. “I will not hesitate to shoot the shit out of you if you try to escape. So be a good girl and sit there while I go get Dina for you.”

He pretended to look around with a hand on his forehead and yelled, “Oh Dina! Sweetheart! Where are you? You have a visitor!” He walked towards his truck where a large plastic lump was and it looked somewhat like a cocoon. Is that… Is Dina in there? Oh god. It looked like some kind of white and clear plastic that contractors would lay down to cover floors as they painted. He lifted one of the ends up and started to cut it open with the box cutter he had clipped to his cargo pants, and the first thing to hit was the smell.

“You see, when Dina came home from her last cruise, she said she decided she wanted a divorce. But I just wouldn’t have any of that. We’ve been together for over 40 years and she just wants to throw it away? I work for fun now, not to keep her happy with alimony for the rest of her life while I slave away again.” He continued to cut deeper into the plastic before cutting a straight line across the top of it. “Now she wasn’t always the best looking woman in my life, but I’d say her looks have definitely gotten worse over the last two weeks.” He removed the thick plastic to reveal Dina’s body that had been wrapped in what looked to be saran wrap.

“You can see that the cling wrap is actually preventin’ her from decomposing to the stage she should be in. She’s been wrapped up for just over two weeks now.” He pulled most of the thicker plastic out from under the body and threw it to the side of the garage.

“There was some kind of study done that tested the durability of saran wrap on cadavers in case of a national emergency. Poorer countries were considerin’ it as a method when covid was at it’s highest and people were droppin’ like flies, but most ended up burning bodies and using mass graves anyway. I decided to try it out on Dina, but was eventually plannin’ on dumping her out on my buddies’ hog farm. Pig’s will eat anything.” He sniffed and looked at me while taking a step closer.

“And I mean anything. Bones and all.”

I could see the liquid pooled near the bottom of the cling wrap, and while she was still wrapped, the smell was horrid. Her eyes and mouth were open, but mostly covered by her gray hair that was tangled and matted and covered most of her face. Jesus fucking Christ. I started to gag from the smell.

“Oh, come on, Sarah. I thought you’d have a stronger stomach.” He laughed as he hooked the box cutter back onto his cargo pants.

“Tom, you’re one sick fuck, you know that?” I glared at him. “You really think you can get away with this?!”

He ran over to where I was and screamed in my face with veins protruding from his forehead, “Well, I was thinkin’ I could until you started messin’ around where you didn’t belong.” I wiped spit off of my face and was too afraid to look back up. I froze, cowering in the corner. Come on! You have to do something other than just sit here, I thought. He has a gun. What even could I do?

I scanned around the floor looking for anything that I could use as a weapon. There was an old flathead screwdriver that I could potentially use. Maybe I could stab him in the eye? Or what if I stabbed him in the foot or the leg and then tried running away? Tom was still towering over me and I’d have to wait for him to step away. I didn’t want to look up and make eye contact with him again.

Just then I heard a loud metal clanging sound and Tom dropped to the floor. Stephen! I looked up and saw Stephen standing there holding the shovel from the backyard. “Stephen! Oh my god!” I ran up to him and gave him a huge hug, forgetting about my broken finger until I interlocked my hands around his back.

“You won’t believe what’s happening.” I sobbed.

“Oh, I will. But right now, let’s just get out of here and call 911.” He said as he pulled me towards the door.

But as we walked out into the backyard, we heard a gunshot. We jumped down on the ground and checked to see if either of us had been shot and we hadn’t. “Tom?!” I yelled and waited but didn’t get a response. “Stephen, just call 911.”

As Stephen dialed 911, I decided to look in the garage and saw that Tom was laying on the floor next to Dina’s body. He had shot himself in the right temple and thick blood pooled from his head and around body, slowly making it’s way over to where Dina’s wrapped body was. A thick, red river was busy making a path on an unlevel garage floor, flowing from the body of a murderer, and I can’t say I blame it for wanting to escape.