The House Next Door

One of my friends' neighbours was found dead in his flat this week (read the full story here). While I'm sure this is not uncommon, especially in a city like London, it's still a strange experience, I would think, to be confronted with death so immediately. Poor Little Potato. So much bad luck in a single week!
It also reminded me of the good old next-door-neighbour horror stories, most of them set in suburban America. So until I can think of a better one to suit her story here's my version of a classic:

It happened next door. Generally, a lot of things happen next door. Some of best creepy stories happen next door. Some other ones do too but those normally belong into the realm of teenage dreams. This one is one of the former kind.
He was a very quiet neighbour. A model citizen you might even say. Mowed the lawn regularly and kept it at a length of approximately three centimetres. Also walked the dog three times a day. Drove to work at half past eight every weekday and normally returned at six or six thirty every night. A very punctual man. Very tidy. Wore a freshly washed and ironed shirt every day. He was always very polite to the neighbours, too. Never failed to wish everybody he met a good morning or afternoon and sometimes he would briefly stop to chat. The only thing about him was that he was very reserved - almost shy. Had a beautiful wife and two lovely daughters, too. He carried pictures of them in his wallet and loved showing them off to people. Spoke very fondly of them. Nobody was too worried that they never saw them. The daughters go to boarding school, he would say. And the wife gets up very early in the morning and comes back late. Works very hard, he said. Then one hot summer he left for a few days. On business he said. He didn't expect the electricity to go down for several days (bad thunderstorm tore down the lines). He also didn't expect that it would blow the fuse in his house. After two or so days people started noticing the smell. It was coming from his house. His cellar. When he returned people had already called the police. The officers check the entire house and the cellar. Nobody was prepared for what they found. Nobody had suspected that this quiet, pleasant man's family had been in the house all that time. With the same precision with which he mowed his lawn, ironed his shirts and went to work he had sawed his wife and two daughters into 10-centimeter slices and frozen them in a large freezer in the basement. The only parts left intact were their heads. They had been neatly arranged in a row on top of the rest staring, mouths gaping, teeth bared and skin stretching tight, eyes empty at anybody that cared to lift the lid. When the officers arrived and checked the basement some parts had already disintegrated into a stinking pulp covered in green mold. The skin on their dead faces had started drooping revealing rotting flesh and bone. But their empty eyes still stared. They had been dead for at least five years. And so, this soft-spoken, introverted family man had lived in that house for five years with his wife and two daughters. And every evening before going to bed he would go down to the basement to kiss them good night.