The Apartment (Part 3)

I was laying in my bed, laptop open on my lap, a movie playing on my tv in front of my bed and a glass of red wine on my nightstand by my left arm. The only light in the room came from the dim blue glow of the tv and the flickers of a jar candle I had lit on my nightstand. The apartment was quiet except for the faint occasional clunking of the radiator, the events of the day had left me exhausted and drifting in and out of sleep. Then… Bang I sat up straight, the room was plunged into darkness, only the flickering glow of the candle remained. I got up to check on my son and was met with total darkness, not even the glow of the streetlights outside the window reached into the apartment, it was as if someone dropped a thick blanket over the whole building. I stopped in the doorway and turned around. I fumbled blindly in my nightstand drawer for a flashlight, finally my fingers touched the cold metal handle and I flipped it on. I hurried into the living room where my son was still fast asleep on the couch, relieved I made my way to the fuse box in the entry way and stopped dead in my tracks. There was a shadow on the wall beyond the door to my entry way, I moved the light around but the doorway was empty, there was nothing there to make the shadow but it was there, it had the distinct shape of a tall, thin man, his arms hung to his sides and seemed much too long, reaching to his knees. I couldn’t move, I just stared at the shadow, disbelieving my own eyes. Then it moved. It raised its right arm slowly until it was pointing at me, it’s fingers were long and bony. It had what appeared to be sharp claws at the end of its fingers. I couldn't breathe. Then a loud whisper in my ear… “Sooon…” I sat up, back in my bed with the glow of the tv filling the room. I was covered in sweat and shaking. “just nerves” I whispered to myself. Of course I had a nightmare after what my child had told me the previous night.

I reached for the wine glass and took a few big swallows, and worked up the nerve to look around the apartment to prove to myself it was a nightmare so I could go back to sleep. The living room was lit up from the glow of the stove light and white light from the street lamps outside filtered in through the curtains, my son was still fast asleep under his blanket and I found no shadows in any corners. I finally began to relax and crawled back in bed, noticing the time on my alarm clock 3:33am. I shrugged it off and turned the tv up a few notches before drifting back to a dreamless sleep. This nightmare continued every night for two weeks, until I finally went out and bought a bottle of sleeping pills in an attempt to stop dreaming. It worked for a while. I looked like a zombie, I was sleep deprived and felt like I was moving underwater, nothing felt real anymore I was losing my grip on reality. I found myself drinking before going to bed every night to calm my nerves and keep the nightmares away. The apartment was quiet again but I learned not to take its silence for granted, I knew it was just waiting for its next opportunity to shatter my nerves. It didn’t wait long. It was mid December, I had busied myself with getting ready for the holidays and was grateful for the distraction. Plus the added lights from the tree I put up was comforting and I left them on through the night. I started waking up to the tree laying on the floor every morning, assuming it was the cat I just picked it up and fixed the decorations without giving it another thought. That is until the day I found the tree laying on the other side of the room, as if someone had thrown it across the room. I hadn't heard any noise the night before and was reasonable certain the cat hadn't done that. With shaky arms, I gathered up the tree and put it back in its place, a number of decorations were shattered on the floor underneath it, as I carefully picked up the big shards, throwing them in a paper bag, I saw it. One of the big pieces had black smudges on it, I picked it up and examined it more closely. The smudges appeared to be mud but as I looked more closely, I wiped it off with my finger and realized what it really was, ash. Curious, I picked up more pieces, the smudges were in a circular pattern and when I pieced them together they began to take shape. I dropped the pieces as if they were hot and gasped. It was a boot print

I was instantly taken back to the night I saw the man standing at the foot of my bed and I backed away. Was someone living in a crawl space somewhere? The air sucked out of the room and my lungs, I was paralyzed. I made my decision to find a new apartment in that moment, I had two months left on my lease, that was plenty of time to find a place and get out of there. I quickly cleaned up the mess and began my search online. I’d like to tell you that things got better after I decided to leave, but they didn’t, not even close. The holidays came and went and my free time went to looking for apartments. When I finally found one just outside of the city, I was relieved but I still had another month left before I could leave. It was after I gave my months notice to my landlord that things got really weird. I began finding dead flies in my cupboards, hundreds of them. I would clean them out and they would be back the next day. Leftovers in the fridge would spoil overnight, last nights lasagna looked more like last months unrecognizable dinner. The noises got louder, the thumps, the footsteps on carpet, doors banging shut, then the nightmare came back. I was losing my grip again, I was terrified. None of this seemed to bother my son, in fact he didn’t seem to notice it at all. I really thought I was going crazy, until I heard my son talking to someone in his room. At first I thought he was playing and talking like kids do, I didn’t give it a second thought. Then I heard a deep voice respond to him. I froze, listening, hoping I imagined it. Then it came again. My son didn’t sound scared, he was laughing and playing with this person like he would with a friend or family member. I raced to his bedroom and whipped the door open, cold air hit my face like the winter wind. My son was sitting by himself in the middle of his floor, playing with his matchbox cars, he looked up at me and smiled. “Hi mommy!” he exclaimed “Sweetie, who were you talking to?” I swallowed hard. “My friend” he responded, humming happily to himself. “There’s nobody here though” I pushed. “Oh he is here mommy, you just can’t see him yet”

That was it, I coaxed him into playing in the living room where I could keep an eye on him, I checked his windows and found them all closed, but the room was already getting warmer. That night, I woke up from that terrible nightmare to a freezing bedroom, I could see my breath. Confused, I rolled over to go check the furnace and saw him. Not the same man as before, this man was in jeans and no shirt. He appeared to be in good shape, I could see the bulge of muscles on his biceps. His whole head was covered by a paper bag. He was standing perfectly still at the side of my bed, he was so close that I could have reached out and touched him if I had been able to move. Curiously, I wasn’t scared, I felt a deep sadness wash over me as I just watched him, afraid that if I looked away, he would disappear. I shifted a bit on my bed, his head then snapped toward me and he vanished. I lay stunned for a few more minutes before I turned on the light. Why was he wearing a paper bag on his head? Why didn't he scare me like the other one did? These questions rolled around in my head as I instinctively looked around the house, knowing I would not find anyone and everything would be locked up tight. I spent the rest of the night doing internet searches on the property and came up empty. Then I searched ‘ghosts with heads covered’ I learned that it is believed that apparitions that appear to you with their heads covered by something means that the person died by suicide. That would explain the feeling of sadness, but he wasn’t the one that had been tormenting me all this time, why did he appear now? That night, the nightmares changed...