Brandon never desired the damned apartment. He had not intended to move, why would he? But when his last roommate vanished into the night without a word two nights prior, the landlord had the locks changed with lightning speed. With nowhere to call home, he bounced from couch to couch, frantically looking for jobs and apartments, only to find the few that were available were either hauntingly vacant or falling into squalor.
Then he saw a notice for a second-floor apartment downtown, clean, furnished, utilities included, no credit check. Something was sinister in the straightforwardness of it all; he did not look behind the darkness of the offer. He simply went.
The building was a testament to time, a decaying carcass that whispered secrets. Narrow stairwells wound their way up, flaking paint peeled away like forgotten memories, and a damp odour of mildew permeated the air. But the unit? Peaceful. Oppressively so.
He stood in the doorway, wincing into the gloom. A bedroom, a bathroom that gleamed with suspect cleanliness, big windows shrouded by heavy curtains, and a hall mirror that stretched from floor to ceiling ,a portal for invisible things.
Too good to be true, yet here it was, a tempting snare. The super was already signing the lease in a rush.
"This apartment's fine," he muttered without glancing at Brandon. "Don't bother the neighbors."
Brandon's heart quickened. "What neighbors?"
The super's pen hovered, a moment fraught with foreboding. "That's just something we say," he said, a smile curled on his lips that never quite made it to his empty eyes.
The first night, Brandon slept the sleep of the dead, a condition of oblivious bliss. Weeks of tension dissolved in the surrounding quiet; he fell into a deep sleep, fully clothed on top of the covers, unaware of the unsettling hush.
But he was awakened in the dark by a gentle tap… tap… tap. Thinking initially it was the ghost upstairs, he quickly recognized that the sound was not above, but rather behind the bedroom wall, the ominous wall to the vacant unit adjacent, 2A. He remembered its locked door, barred locks, painted-over doorframe, a wall to secrets best not known.
He glared at the wall until the strange noise shuddered to silence.
Then he plunged once more into the abyss of sleep.
The tapping started again. Louder now, echoing like a foreboding heartbeat. Brandon pressed his ear into the cold, unyielding wall. Silence enveloped him immediately. Then something even more unsettling followed. A low hum, a ghostly whisper that clawed at the edges of his sanity. It pulsed, a last sigh of a perishing appliance from a bygone age. He stepped away, dread building in his stomach, half expecting a spectral hand ripping through. But the wall stood. Quiet. Heavy with secrets. The nightmares began.
He was trapped in a hallway, a mirror image of the one beyond his door. Yet the lighting distorted into a grotesque, too low, a sickly gold, as if the blood of sunset tinged the air. The door to 2A stood open, behind it an inch of darkness. And there, someone stood, watching.
A woman. Deathly pale, hair dark water plastered to her gaunt face. Eyes despairing, bottomless and empty.
She didn't utter a word.
Simply pointed, an accusing silence.
Brandon woke with a jolt, eyes fixed on the wall, heart ensnared, fists balled in the sheets like an insect pinned fast. The dreams visited every night, always her and that accursed door.
He fled from sleep. Sat in tortured wakefulness, the television droning softly, muted voices filling the quiet. He called friends he hadn't seen in years, drained the bottle, but the allure of sleep was insidious.
And she was always waiting there.
Now her lips were moving, a silent scream in a world devoid of sound. He concentrated to hear her thoughts, but they darted away. Until they didn't.
"Help him."
A shudder ran through him; he had no clue who "him" could be. But each morning brought a chill to the apartment.
Her hum was louder.
Not in the dream, in here, in the real world. A haunting, sorrowful melody crept through the drywall like smoke. It seemed to be woven into his soul itself. He leaned against the wall, heartbeat pounding like a warning.
"Hello?" he ventured to say.
Silence was the only response.
Then:
Brandon.
Whispered, as if breathed from the void.
He said nothing.
Didn't sleep.
Didn't eat.
He attempted to make a dash for it, to find himself cornered. He picked up his bag, ordered an Uber, and dashed downstairs.
But when the black car rolled up, there was a threatening glitch in the app; his phone froze, the screen burst to life, displaying only: HOME: UNIT 2B.
Regardless of how wildly he walked, the damned building was just a block away, calling to him like a moth to the fire. He circled it five times, then was again standing stunned at the front steps.
Trembling, he climbed once more, terror building in his stomach. The door to 2A was open, a silent invitation to horrors inside.
He knew he should run, cry out for assistance, but a gruesome fascination pulled him forward. The hall became thick with shadows, the mirror reflecting a distorted picture of himself, eyes hollowed, mouth gaping in what appeared an eternal scream.
He pushed the door open. Inside, nothing remained, a void so immense it echoed with the absence of life itself. The walls gleamed a ghostly white, yet the air was heavy with presence beyond the earthly.
And then he saw it, a black scribble slashed across the far wall: I stayed for him. Below, a macabre instruction carved into the paint: Stay.
He awoke on the cold floor of Unit 2B, bloodied fingertips and shattered nails, as if he'd clawed desperately at the dark all night. The hallway mirror fogged anew, yet he hadn't touched the shower.
In the condensation, a message writhed: We're still here.
He stood transfixed as the letters curled and vanished into the mist.
He didn't dare erase them.
A month later, the damned apartment was available once more. Rent reduced. Furnished. Eerily quiet. Second floor. Utilities included. No pets.
The superintendent escorted a young woman through the dark room, his eyes darting, probing for concealed perils.
"It's a good place," he got out, a phony grin stretched across his face. "Just don't disturb the neighbors."
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I scared myself with this one, hope you enjoyed!