THE INSTRUCTIONS — Part 1: It Saved Me. I'm Going to Teach It to You, Step by Step.

0:03 Hello and welcome to Ghost Scary Stories. This series is The Instructions. Episode 1, Check the Locks. I'm going to give you something tonight and I need you to take it seriously because one day... It might be the only thing standing between you and what's coming. It saved me. I mean that plainly. I would not be here, talking to you, if I hadn't learned it. And I'm going to teach it to you the way it was taught to me, step by step, in order, so that you have it too. All I ask is that you follow along, pay attention, learn the first step tonight, and hold on to it. You never know when the fear is going to find you, and when it does, you'll want to already know what to do. That's the whole secret. You

1:09 have to already know. And you mustn't tell anyone. I'll explain why later. For now, just trust me. This stays between us. The people who don't understand it will try to take it from you, and then you won't be safe. So, between us. Agreed? Good. I knew you'd be one of the ones who listens. Let me tell you how it was, before, so you understand what the steps are for. There was a stretch of my life, not long ago, when the fear came and would not leave. I can't tell you exactly what started it. Something ended, some part of my life closed, and into the space it left, the fear came.

1:58 I want to be clear that I was not a foolish woman. I was capable. I ran a household. A full one. A loud one. There were always people in my kitchen. And I was the sort of person other people leaned on. So when I tell you that I became afraid to be in my own house after dark, I need you to hear that this was not weakness.

2:20 It came for me anyway. It comes for the strong ones too. It might be coming for you already. A little. At the edges. that feeling in a quiet house at night that you are not as alone as you should be. That's how it starts. That's exactly how it started for me. For months I didn't sleep. I'd lie in the dark and listen to the house and know, with a certainty I couldn't argue with, that something was wrong, that something was in the house with me, or wanted to be, that it was testing the edges of the place, looking for the way in. I'd hear the house tick and settle and I'd build a whole intruder out of a floorboard and then lie rigid till dawn. I checked the locks a hundred times a night and it didn't help

3:11 because I was doing it wrong. I was doing it frightened and random and randomness is no protection at all. That's the thing I didn't understand yet. The fear isn't held back by doing something. It's held back by doing the right things in the right order every time. It's held back by the steps. I found the steps when I had nothing left. I won't tell you exactly how I came by them, partly because it's hard to remember now, those days have gone soft and far away, and partly because it doesn't matter. What matters is that I learnt the first one, and I did it, carefully, properly, in order, and for the first time in months, the fear stopped, it just stopped, the relief of it, I cannot describe to you the relief of it, after all that time,

4:03 like surfacing from under black water into air. I stood in my kitchen and I breathed and I was safe, for the first time in so long, and I knew I would do anything, anything at all, to feel that way again. And that is the part I need you to understand better than any other, because it is the part that will happen to you. It was not that the steps worked once and I was cured, It was that the steps worked, and then a few hours later the fear came creeping back, and I did them again, and they worked again, and the relief came again. That same clean flood of safety, and every time the fear returned it was a little bigger, and every time I did the steps the relief was a little sweeter, and somewhere in there, without any moment I could point to,

4:53 the two of them became the whole clock of my day. The fear and the steps. and the relief, and the fear again. I stopped thinking of it as something I did. It became something I was. And if you had asked me, in that first week, whether I was afraid of being trapped by it, I'd have laughed at you, because it didn't feel like a trap. It felt like the only door out of a burning house. It always does. That's how you'll know it's working. That's how you'll know it has you. So here is the first step, I'm giving it to you now. Learn it. You check the locks, but not the way I used to, not frightened, not in a rush. You do it in order, and the order is always the same, and you name each one as you go, out loud, because saying it is part

5:46 of it. You start at the front door. You put your hand flat on it, and you feel that it's shut, and you say, front door. Then the back door, the same way, your hand flat against it, back door. Then the window over the kitchen sink, the latch, you press it, and you say, the window over the sink. Then the door to the cellar, the little bolt at the top, you slide it and feel its seat, and you say, the cellar, front door, back door, the window over the sink, the cellar, in that order, every night. Your hand flat on each one, The words out loud. It takes a minute.

6:31 It costs you nothing. And it holds the dark back like a wall. Say it with me now. So you have it. Front door. Back door. The window over the sink. The cellar. Good. You have it now. That's yours forever. Whatever else happens, you have the first step, and I feel better knowing that you do. I have to tell you something, and I want you to not worry about it, because I don't. Since I started the steps, I've been losing things. Time, mostly. I'll be doing the steps, and then it will be hours later, and I won't quite know where the hours went, and there are days I can't fully account for, and things I used to know that have gone quiet in me. The way a word you've said too many times stops sounding like anything. Small

7:25 things at first. I lost the name of the street I grew up on. I lost a birthday. I couldn't tell you now whose. Last week I found a coat in my closet. A child's coat. Small. Red. And I stood holding it for the longest time because I could not think why it would be in my house. Whose it was. And it frightened me. Just for a moment.

7:51 And then I did the steps and the fright went quiet. and I put the coat back, and I haven't thought about it since, until just now. It sounds frightening when I say it out loud like that, but it isn't, not once you understand. The steps take a little something each time. That's just the cost. Everything that protects you costs you something, and hours, memories, a little of the fog at the edges of my mind. That's a small price for being safe, and I pay it gladly, Every night, and so will you. You'll see. The first time the fear stops, you'll understand that there's no price too high.

8:37 The one thing I will tell you, the one thing you must never do, is skip a step, or do them out of order, or miss a night. Never. I know it's tempting, when you're tired, when it's late, to think just this once won't matter. It matters. It matters more than anything. Because I did it wrong. Once. Near the beginning. And I know what happens. And I am telling you so that it never happens to you. It was late. And I was so tired. And I did the locks. But I did them in the wrong order.

9:14 I did the back door before the front. Such a small thing. I remember even as I did it feeling the wrongness of it. Like a stare that isn't where your foot expects. And I thought... It's fine. It's the same doors. What does the order matter? I went to bed, and in the night, I woke. And there was something at the foot of my bed. I want to describe it to you exactly, because you need to know what you're keeping out. It was a figure, a person's shape, standing very still at the foot of the bed, between me and the door, and it was darker than the dark around it, and it was watching me. I couldn't see a face. I didn't need to. I could feel it looking at me the way you feel sunlight on your skin that specific warmth of being seen except it

10:06 was cold it was the cold of being seen by something that should not be able to see you and it was patient it didn't move it didn't have to It just stood there in the place where the wrong order had let it in, and it watched me. And I understood that this was what had been outside all those months. This was what the fear had been the shape of, and that I had let it over the threshold myself by doing the back door before the front.

10:35 And I'll tell you the detail I've never told anyone, the one that still finds me in the small hours. When I finally made myself look at where its face should be, at that darker dark, I had the most terrible feeling that I knew it, that the shape of it was familiar, that if it had stepped one foot closer into what little light there was, I would have recognized who it was, and that recognizing it would have been worse than anything, so much worse, that I shut my eyes rather than know. I have never let myself wonder too hard about who I was so afraid it would turn out to be. The steps keep me from wondering.

11:16 That's another thing they're good for. I lay there, and I did not move, and I did not breathe, and I did the steps in my head, the right way, front door, back door, the window, over the sink, the cellar, over and over, and eventually, near dawn, it was gone. And I have never, not once since, done the steps wrong again. Now, I've told you that story so you understand the stakes, and I can hear, maybe, that it frightened you, and good, it should. But here is the thing I want you to sit with tonight, the thing I still turn over sometimes in the small hours when I'm not quite as sure as I sound. I have wondered, once or twice, in the years since, whether the figure was ever outside at all, whether I did the steps

12:18 wrong and it came in, or whether I did the steps and it came, whether the doing is what calls it, whether I have been, all this time, feeding the very thing I'm keeping out. I get very close to a thought like that, some nights, and then I do the steps, and the thought goes quiet, the way everything goes quiet, when I do the steps, and I feel safe again.

12:43 And I don't have to finish the thought. That's another thing the steps are good for. They stop you from finishing certain thoughts. That's a mercy too. You'll be grateful for it. In time. But we won't finish that thought tonight. There's no need. Tonight you just have the first step. And that's enough. That's plenty. That's a good beginning. Front door.

13:08 Back door. The window over the sink. The cellar. Do it before you sleep, if you can. It can't hurt. That's what I told myself, at the very beginning. It can't hurt to be safe. Come back to me, and I'll give you the next one. There's so much more you need to know, and I'm the only one who'll tell you, because I'm the only one left who still does the steps and remembers why. Everyone else who knew is gone now. I'll be right here. I'm always right here.

13:40 Just do your locks, and come back, and we'll keep you safe together.