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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/viktorqwrites on 2026-05-11 18:43:56+00:00.

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I have to be honest, I never did like Uncle Pete very much.

I don’t think anyone did, which is probably why the only person he left anything to when he died was my mom. Even then, that crappy old house felt less like a gift and more like a burden we suddenly had to deal with as a family living on opposite coasts.

Technically, I live the furthest away, but when it came down to a question of who was going to clean out the house, it was always going to be me. It’s literally my job.

I started out just doing odd jobs on the weekends and after classes in college, but eventually, I was making so much money as a cleaner it made more sense to focus on the business. I was never cut out to be a lawyer, anyway.

I’ve cleaned everything from a governor’s hoarded mansion filled with antique treasures to literal crime scenes, and everything in between. I figured my uncle’s house, creepy and filled with unpleasant childhood memories as it was, would be a relatively easy gig. I was wrong.

The house is in Roame, a small town about four hours north from where I grew up. It’s the kind of town you drive through, not into, and the locals always give you weird looks when you stop in the gas station to refuel and get snacks. Probably why that town fit Uncle Pete like a glove.

He was the last person anyone ever expected to escape his hometown, but according to Mom, one day he just up and left. Loaded everything into his beater of a car, didn’t tell a soul until he got there, and that was that.

It wasn’t like he got a job transfer or met someone. He already had one kid he didn’t even bother to see, and he never held a job for more than a few months at a time. I have no idea how he even afforded to live let alone buy a house, even in a place as cheap as Roame. He was dishonorably discharged from the military in his early twenties for reasons even my mom doesn’t know, despite being the only relative he stayed in touch with, so I doubt he was getting any benefits.

I've always assumed that's where the scar notching his right eyebrow came from, but that's pure speculation. Some people are an open book, but my uncle was a broken TV.

Whatever it was about Roame that called to Uncle Pete, it kept calling until the day he died. We’d visit occasionally when I was younger, mostly when we were passing by already.

Mom traveled a lot for work and she’d pack me and my sister into the family station wagon. She’d never tell us in advance when Uncle Pete’s was going to be a roadstop, because she knew we’d complain the whole way, but as soon as she turned past the abandoned textile mill, Hannah and I would groan because we knew what was coming.

Uncle Pete was mean as a snake and he looked a solid seventy-five for at least two decades of his life. Both traits he inherited from our maternal grandfather, from what I understand. The man breathed more smoke than oxygen, and he never met a person he didn’t have something nasty to say about. Even my mother.

As a kid, I remember sitting there on the floor of that smoke-filled living room listening to him berate all Mom’s life decisions, the rotten floorboards creaking beneath him as he gesticulated for emphasis. Like the house itself agreed. He’d criticize the clothes she was wearing, her job selling medical equipment to private practices, her marriage and subsequent divorce from our “deadbeat” dad. But in Uncle Pete’s mind, me and my sister were her biggest mistakes by far. The chains that had saddled her to our dad for as long as she’d stayed.

Mom would usually shoo us out of the house before he could really get started and tell us to go play in the “yard," which was little more than a patch of dirt and overgrown weeds. But I eavesdropped often enough to piece things together.

The whole time, Mom would just sit there with this longsuffering look on her face and occasionally try to change the subject to something more positive. It never worked. The list of things Uncle Pete actually approved of was limited to his favorite football team and the pub down the road where he ate most of his meals.

Sometimes, if Hannah and I were feeling particularly brave, we’d explore the house. Not that there was much to see. It was a three-bedroom ranch with a living room, a kitchen, and a tiny space that might qualify as an attic if you were feeling particularly generous.

Even though Uncle Pete had a daughter around my age, there were no toys anywhere in the house. The room that was ostensibly for when my cousin Cassie came to stay with her dad was completely taken over by musty boxes, stacks of old newspaper, identical broken TV sets Uncle Pete kept replacing without getting rid of, and whatever else the old man deemed worthy of collecting over the years.

The third bedroom was always locked. I never even saw Uncle Pete go in there, but you could see the light of another TV flickering beneath the door. Unlike the TV in the living room, that one was silent, but they were both kept on at all hours. Always.

Hannah liked to joke that even Uncle Pete didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts, and I think there was probably more truth to that than she realized.

Over the years, the clutter started spilling out from the two open bedrooms. Like the junk was trying to claim the house and Uncle Pete either didn’t notice or couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it. Some of it was trash, but most of it was just… stuff. Like he hit the thrift shop after he left the pub every night and just grabbed whatever random stuff he could carry in his arms back home to sit in front of the TV.

When I arrived to clean the house, it was so much worse than I remember. To be fair, I never went back once I left for college. Neither did Hannah. My uncle’s room was the worst of it. There was a thin, crooked path leading to the bed, but I doubt he was even sleeping there in the end.

According to the neighbors, his TV was blasting at all hours of the night, just like always, lights flickering through the blinds. If he screamed, there was no way anyone would have heard it. He was alive for a few hours after the stroke, apparently, so it's possible he did.

I asked the officer who notified me of Uncle Pete's death to keep that particular detail from Mom when he spoke to her, and he generously agreed.

What I still can’t figure out is why Uncle Pete had me listed as his emergency contact instead of her.

The old man hated me even more than he hated everyone else. And that was long before I convinced Mom to let me bring my first boyfriend along on a visit, just to mess with him. I used to joke that Uncle Pete somehow figured out I was gay before I knew myself. A real ally.

Mom never found that joke funny. But after what happened the first and last time I ever stayed at that house alone, it felt like a more than justified act of revenge.

It was the winter Hannah broke her femur. She was on a skiing trip with her class and had to be hospitalized for over a week. Mom couldn’t get out of a work trip because her boss was even more of a tyrant than the last, and she was convinced thirteen-year-old me wasn’t mature enough to stay home alone.

She was probably right, but still. Sending me to Uncle Pete’s for a whole three days felt like cruel and unusual punishment. Dad wasn’t an option, considering his new wife liked to pretend we didn’t exist. I guess Uncle Pete was right about him, after all.

So Uncle Pete’s house it was.

I watched through the window as Mom’s car pulled away and I’m pretty sure I mouthed “don’t leave me” with my hand pressed to the glass. I was always a little dramatic.

As it turned out, the first two days really weren’t all that bad. Other than occasionally waving his hand when I blocked the TV or barking at me to go get him another beer, he was content to pretend I wasn’t there and I was more than happy to do the same.

Every so often, at random intervals during the day, he'd disappear for a few hours at a time. He always brought me with him to the pub, and I never heard the front door shut before those disappearances, so I have no idea where he went. Uncle Pete was a man you heard coming and going. It was almost like the house just… absorbed him for a few hours at a time before spitting him back in his chair when I wasn't looking.

The boredom was the worst of it, but once I managed to move enough clutter to find a working outlet to charge my Gameboy SP, I knew I’d survive.

Night was the hard part. Uncle Pete never actually went to bed, he just fell asleep in his chair, one TV blasting in his face and the other flickering silently under the door down the hall. I wasn’t about to sleep in his bed and smell like smoke and stale beer for a week, so my cousin’s room was the only option, ancient Hello Kitty bedsheets and all.

I had been asleep for a couple of hours already the first night when I heard it. A man’s voice calling my name.

Immediately, I knew it wasn’t Uncle Pete. Even in my half-asleep state, I knew he’d never use my actual name. He’d always just called me “kid” or “you there.”

Then I heard it again.

Nooooaaah.

Not quite a singsong, but close. Like someone was trying to be heard over a long distance with a smile in his voice.

I got up, still only partly awake, and shuffled down the hall, tripping a few times over the clutter. Sure enough, Uncle Pete was still snoring in his chair in the living room, some late-night infomercial host screaming through the TV speakers...

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