For days, the neighbours endured the blaring alarm from the corner house. By the seventh day, someone had had enough and called the police. What the officers found left them stunned.
The first alarm sounded on Monday evening. The corner house was familiar to all—a sturdy two-storey cottage with a tidy front garden, faded indigo shutters, and a perfectly trimmed hedge. An elderly couple in their sixties lived there. Quiet, unassuming folk who kept to themselves but always offered a polite greeting when passing by.
When the shrill alarm first pierced the evening air, a few neighbours stepped outside. They waited five minutes, but it didn’t stop. The family across the street went to investigate. The wife answered—a woman in a knitted cardigan, her hair neatly styled. She explained it was just a malfunction, promising to have it fixed soon.
The next night, it happened again—same time, just past nine. This time, no one bothered her. They blamed shoddy repairs and let it be. Then again the following evening. And the next.
By the sixth day, patience had worn thin. When the alarm shrieked for the fourth time that week, someone called the police. The officer who arrived—a sharp-eyed woman with an air of quiet authority—inspected the house. Everything seemed normal, almost unnervingly so. No signs of forced entry, no distress. Just the same polite, slightly distant woman.
Yet something felt off. The officer lingered by the wall where the alarm wiring ran. Fresh paint covered a slightly warped section, the plaster beneath cracked. Then she noticed something horrifying.
«The wiring must be loose,» the woman said quickly.
«Where’s your husband?» the officer asked.
The woman froze, as if struck.
«He’s… away. Visiting relatives.»
The answer came too fast.
The officer’s fingers brushed the wall, finding a hairline crack beneath the paint.
Within the hour, a team arrived. They broke through the plaster.
Behind the wall, curled in the cramped darkness, was a man. Alive. Emaciated, his sunken eyes wide with mute terror.
Later, it emerged the woman had believed she’d killed him in a fit of panic—a fall, a blow to the head, she couldn’t say. She’d entombed him without checking for breath.
And the alarm, wired along that very wall, had sounded with every feeble movement—his trembling hands, his desperate, silent plea for help.
He had tried to signal. And in the end, he had.