Ok, I'm going to try and make this as short as possible, but at the same time, not miss any details out. Lived in our house for 30years - about 16 years ago, a family moved in next door. Mother, Father, 2 sons and 2 daughters (who all appeared to be in their mid-late 30s). 2 daughters drove and worked, 2 sons don't drive and have never worked.
Due to his future behaviour, we nicknamed one of the brothers 'Hulk' (he's also quite stocky), so to make things simple here, we have Hulk and 'Gentle' (his brother).
Incidents when my kids were young:
- Hulk told me he was keeping a log of when my children made noise in the house
- Hulk splashed bleach on my ex's car when he parked outside their house for literally a minute whilst picking the kids up
- Hulk shouted at my young son for knocking to ask for his football, and when I saw him and Gentle next, I had a go at him for it. Gentle was 'holding' his brother back, like he would attack me.
My other neighbours don't like them, THEIR neighbours don't like them.
Over the years though, I got in the habit of saying hello and it became friendly enough. Time passed and the father died, then the mother died, one of the sisters died. I knew all this because they either told me, or, in the case of the sister, they had a big funeral procession, the hearse was parked outside the house for a while, and Gentle told me she died from kidney disease.
ALL through this time, I only EVER saw Hulk out in the garden with Gentle, gardening. Only ever saw Gentle and his sister go to shops, or laundromat. Literally the only time I would see Hulk is if he was with his brother out in the front garden, or gardening in the back garden. None of them go out a lot, but if one of them was walking down the street, it would only ever be Gentle.
Last year my daughter and her partner had a bit of a parking dispute with our other neighbours. They are nice but a bit fussy, and they always asked my daughters partner to move his car when he came over...he never parked outside their house, but they felt like they needed 'more space' for their daughters car. So he would move it, out of courtesy. Until one day he didn't, which resulted in their daughter 'having' to park outside Hulks house (she really didn't need to, plenty of space outside her parents house) - so an argument between them two occurred. A few weeks later, Hulk had asked us about the back yard fence, and we noticed some vines coming through from his side. He denied it, so I opened my back gate to show him. My daughter was also there, as was his sister, and he was stood about a foot away from me (I couldn't back up cos our cat run was behind me). Because he kept rambling, i eventually said, anyway, I've got to get on...and he literally just stood and stared at me, no expression for about 5 seconds....after about the 5th 'I've really got to go', i managed to end the convo and get him the hell out of my yard. Me and my daughter were really weirded out by the way he just stared and ignored me.
But, during this convo, he kept bringing it round to the parking dispute - telling my daughter re our other neighbours 'don't let them dominate you' - not kidding he kept coming back to it, and he must have said this about 6 times...so weird. I mention this because his language was so strange...it was a parking dispute and a small one at that.
So after this strangeness, I realised I hadn't seen Gentle for a very long time. And once I realised it, I started noticing that now only Hulk was doing gardening, and it was only Hulk who went to shops with his sister (they ALWAYS go out together).
And then we (my kids and me) started talking about their back garden. It's not a huge garden, but they already had two sheds side by side at the back. The rest was really lovely flowers. Until Hulk razed the flowers, concreted over and put a massive shed on it. If you look into their garden from our bedroom window, that shed takes up about 70% of the space, then the two sheds at the back as well. There's literally no garden space left, so what he's keeping IN the sheds, no idea.
But where is Gentle? Shed went up after Gentle 'disappeared' because he wasn't helping like he usually would have. I liked Gentle. He would even knock on the door if he needed help with council or anything. I find his brother weird. Now you'd think if Gentle had fallen ill, Hulk would have mentioned it to me during that conversation. The family dynamic is very strange anyway, but I can't stop thinking about what happened to Gentle.
So, what do you think? My kids were saying maybe call the police - but what would I say?
YABU - probably just ill or died
YANBU - he's definitely killed his brother