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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Dr_AK_Myst on 2026-05-14 00:30:57+00:00.

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My therapist said I need to write this down somewhere. Somewhere outside my own head. She originally wanted me to share it with friends and family, you know, the usual advice. Talk to people who know you. Let them carry some of the weight.

The problem is, I don't have much family left to call. Not after what happened. And the friends I did tell, the ones I trusted enough to sit down with and actually explain, they laughed. Not cruelly. Just the way people laugh when they're uncomfortable and don't know what else to do. The way people laugh when they've decided, before you even finish talking, that what you're saying cannot possibly be true.

So here I am. Talking to strangers on a website I don't understand, because apparently that's what's left.

I should probably give some context. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Set the scene. Tell you where I'm from, when this happened, what the place looked like. You know… the district, the approximate year, how far the village was from the nearest town. But I don’t feel like it, because what's the point, exactly? You won't know the place. The name won't mean anything to you. So let's just say: it was a rural area in Bangladesh. It was the kind of place where the land is so flat you can see rain coming from three kilometers away, and everyone knows everyone's business, and a new pond is a cause for quiet celebration.

In our area, ponds don't stay unused for long. If there's land, someone will dig. Sometimes for fish farming, sometimes irrigation, sometimes just because stagnant water feels more natural than dry soil. A pond makes the place feel complete. So when the empty plot behind our house was finally bought and cleared, no one was surprised.

I had just finished college in Canada and come back home. From Vancouver to a village… I know how that sounds. The plan was to stay at my father's until I found something stable in Dhaka. A few months, maybe. Just until I got my footing.

My father was happy I was there. More than happy. He'd been, I don't know how to put this,  quieter… since my mother died. Like something in him had just turned down. Having me around seemed to help. We didn't talk about it directly. We just made tea and sat on the roof together and watched the workers dig.

It was a good few weeks, honestly. Peaceful in a way I hadn't felt in years. I was sending out CVs, half-heartedly arguing with strangers on Discord, drinking too much tea. Normal stuff.

The digging started in late November. It was dry season, the ground cuts easier then. At first, everything was normal. Excavators during the day, workers smoking and talking loudly, piles of wet earth rising on the sides. By evening it went quiet, leaving just a wide raw pit slowly pulling in groundwater from below.

But by the fourth day, the workers started leaving early.

Not all at once. One or two at a time.

No arguments. No complaints.

They just… stopped coming back after lunch.

My father noticed first. "Strange," he said. "They're being paid daily. No one leaves work like that."

The contractor came the next morning with new workers. By afternoon, same thing.

I started watching from the roof. You could see straight into the pit from there. It was deeper than most ponds I'd seen.

Almost too deep.

The sides were cut steep, and the bottom stayed darker than it should have, even under direct sunlight.

One worker stood near the edge for a long time, just staring down. Another came up behind him and asked something. The first one didn't respond. Didn't even turn his head.

That night, I heard splashing. Not loud. Not like someone swimming. More like… something shifting its weight in shallow water.

It was strange, because the pond wasn't even filled yet. I looked out the window, but no one there. Just the dark outline of the pit.

And the sound stopped the moment I opened the window.

The next morning, one of the workers didn't show up. No call, no explanation. The contractor shrugged. "People quit. It happens." But I noticed he didn't make eye contact when he said it. Just looked back at the pit.

By the end of the week, the pond hit groundwater fully. Water started seeping in from below.

But it didn't look right.

It wasn't muddy the way fresh pond water should be.

It was too clear.

Clear enough that you could almost see the bottom.

Almost.

That's when people started talking. Not loudly. Just small conversations across fences, nothing you could pin down. Someone said the land used to sit lower than everything around it- a natural hollow that never fully dried. Someone else said there had been something built there once, years ago, but no one could agree on what. Or when. Or why it was torn down.

I didn't tell my father what I'd experienced. I'm not sure why. Maybe I didn't want to worry him. He hadn't been well physically, and he was still carrying a lot since my mother passed. I told myself I'd mention it if it happened again.

And it did happen again…

My father stopped coming to the rooftop around this time. Blood pressure, he said. The stairs were getting to him. I didn't push it. I told myself it made sense. He was old. He was tired. That's all I could see. Or maybe it was all that I chose to see.

But I do think about it now. The way he stopped eating much at dinner. The way he'd go quiet sometimes mid-conversation, like he was listening for something. I noticed all of it. I filed it under 'he's getting older' and moved on.

That's what hindsight does to you. You replay every moment you dismissed. Every door you didn't open. Every question you didn't ask. And you weren't even doubting yourself back then, because why would you? You were the educated one. The rational one. The one who had been to Canada and knew better.

I didn't know anything.

Three nights later, I heard it again.

The splashing.

Closer this time.

Not from the center of the pond.

From the edge nearest our house.

I didn't open the window.

I just listened.

There was a second sound now. Underneath the water sound. A soft dragging. Like something being pulled across wet soil.

The next morning, there were marks near the edge.

Long grooves in the mud.

Not footprints. Too wide. Too smooth.

As if something heavy had been pulled out of the water and across the bank.

And the grooves just… stopped. A few meters from our wall.

I didn't tell anyone about the marks. I just stood there for a few minutes trying to come up with a reasonable explanation, went back inside and made tea. That was my response. Tea.

It was the neighbor from the house to our left who finally said something out loud. Noorjahan Begum. She was in her seventies, had lived on that street her entire life, and was not the type of woman who spoke unless she had something worth saying. She caught me at the gate that afternoon as I was coming back from the pharmacy. No dramatic approach. No lowered voice. She just stopped next to me like we were continuing a conversation we'd already started.

"Fill it back in," she said.

I asked her what she meant.

She nodded toward the pond. "That plot has been empty for forty years. There's a reason for that." She looked at me the way old people sometimes look at young people. It was not unkindly, but it carried a specific kind of tiredness. "Tell whoever bought it to fill it back in. Pay them if you have to."

I asked her what was in it.

She was quiet for a moment.

"Something that was sleeping."

That’s all she said. She went back inside before I could say anything else. No folklore. No story. No explanation of what it was or where it came from. Just that one sentence and a closed door.

I stood at the gate for a while after she left.

Then I went inside and told myself she was just a superstitious old woman. That the grooves in the mud were probably from the construction equipment. That the sounds at night were frogs, or pipes, or the kind of thing your brain invents when you're half-asleep in a new environment.

I didn't tell my father what she said.

I didn't tell my father a lot of things.

Things shifted quietly after that. The way things do when you don't want to admit they're shifting.

My father started sleeping during the day. Not napping, but actually sleeping. Door closed, curtains drawn. The kind of heavy sleep you don't wake from easily. I'd check on him at noon and he'd be completely out. I told myself he was tired. He was recovering. Old men sleep.

But at night, he was awake.

I'd get up for water at two or three in the morning, and see the light under his door. Sometimes I'd hear him moving around. Slow, unhurried footsteps. Not pacing. More like he was just... repositioning. Finding the right spot to stand.

I knocked once. Asked if he was okay.

"Fine," he said. "Go back to sleep."

His voice was normal. That's the thing I keep coming back to. His voice was always completely normal.

He stopped eating much around this time. Not dramatically, though. I mean, he'd sit at the table, move food around, take a few bites. I asked if his appetite was off. He said he just wasn't very hungry. I made lighter meals. He'd eat a little and thank me and that was that. He was losing weight, but slowly enough that I kept finding reasons not to measure it.

Then came the night I found the footprints.

I was up late preparing for a remote job interview that I had the next morning. It was around 2 when I went to the kitchen for water. The back door was unlocked. I was certain I'd locked it...

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