.::The Creepy Thread::. - Printable Version

Spoiler

"About six months ago, my girlfriend and I moved into an apartment in the Benton Park neighborhood of St. Louis. About two weeks after we move in, her grandfather, who raised her, has a stroke, and she ends up going home to Twin Oaks to take care of him. She was living with him full time until we can find out how to afford a nurse or hospice.

Anyway, I'd been living in our one bedroom all alone for the last half a year. It's beautiful, newly remodeled, double paned windows, great insulation. The best a couple of hicks turned yuppies could want. It's got a couple of weird things about it, as you'll see. There's only four units in the building, on the second and third floors. We're on the top floor.

The first weird thing about the place we noticed right when we moved in. The walls and floors are paper thin. I could hear every word of my downstairs neighbors conversation at all times. I know when they take a shower, I know when they have sex. And I'm sure they know the same about us. It's weird, the more info we had on each other, the less we wanted to actually know each other.

They moved out six weeks ago. Then the other two units went vacant a week later. It was kinda weird, but also kind of awesome. I could finally stomp around, watch porn and play rock band at full volume.

About four weeks ago, it got weird. It was about 1 am, and I was going to bed, and I started to hear this noise from the empty apartment downstairs. Really quiet at first, but sustained. It sounded halfway between a hushed conversation, with only one person talking, and small motor running. Just a babbling, not quite regular drone. Freaked me out at first, but I rationalized that it was some plumbing or the refrigerator downstairs. Something I'd never heard over my downstairs neighbors farting and snoring. I learned to live with it, as it rose and fell every evening. Pretty soon a steady tapping sound started in with mumbling. I know it sounds messed up, but when you hear it every night for a while, you just make excuses for it.

Then I kept hearing boards creaking. It's spring, my first in this building, so I assumed it was just the old boards under the new drywall settling. Then one night, as I was brushing my teeth, there was a mighty dry thump, right behind me. I just about stabbed myself with my toothbrush. I stayed really still till I was sure there wasn't anyone in the house and then turned on all the lights in the house. This is when I noticed the peculiarity in the remodeling.

On the other side of the bathroom, where I heard the thump, is the hall closet. I open it up, and switch on the light, expecting a box to have fallen of the shelves, but it's all gravy inside. I tap on the wall between the closet and the bathroom, and it sounds oddly hollow. And I start to realize that the closet isn't as wide as I think it should be based on the bathroom. I pace it out with my feet, and then a tape measure just to confirm. Sure enough, there's about 30" of space in between the two walls that I thought were adjacent.

Again, rationalization time: Surely theres extra insulation there to keep the bathroom warm, or maybe walls are thicker than I imagined, because I've never built a house. So in this one thick wall, some huge rat must have taken a tumble and freaked me out. No big deal. I felt a lot better at the time; even better when it was the first night in a while without that weird noise below me.

So, everything is fine until last Friday night. It's about two in the morning and I'm home late from the bar, not as drunk as I want and remembering that left all my clean laundry in the dryer before I went out. One thing sticks out as I climb the stairs: The door to the apartment below me is closed. It's been open since the neighbors vacated. I got kind of used to seeing an empty mirror image of my place every day when I walked past. Maybe the landlord was showing it to people today. Rationalize, rationalize, rationalize.

I bag up a small load of laundry and climb down the back porch steps to the laundry room, which is really just part of the garage, but the staircase in on the outside of the building and it gives each floor a little shared porch. I get down there, and into the little room, and I start bagging up all my clothes into this big black duffel bag.

Two things you should know about me at this point. I turn off every light when I leave a room. No matter what. My dad used to beat the pumpernickel out of me when the energy bill was a penny over the norm. And I also lock the door every time I go through it. Hell I even locked the back door when I went down to get my laundry.

I start back up the stairs and on the first flight I look up, straight to my bedroom window. The light is on. And there's a silhouette against the closed blinds.

I pissed myself a little and every hair on my neck snapped to attention.

And then the light goes out. It happened in less than a second. Ten seconds later I'm still frozen in place, and trying to figure out if I just saw what I think I saw. Rationalization lost out, thank god, and I snuck down the stairs and out through the garage. I called a cab and stood across the street from the building looking at my living room window. About five minutes before the cab showed up, the venetian blinds parted slightly for a few seconds, like someone was looking down on me. Then nothing.

I stayed at a hotel that weekend, then a couple of buddies of mine came back with me on Sunday to see how much stuff had been stolen.

It was all there. My laptop was still charging, my brand new plasma TV. The doors were locked. I moved it all out that afternoon. While my friends were with me, and I had the daylight on my side, I checked out the apartment below me.

The downstairs closet had the same abnormally thick wall.

Only someone had hammered through this wall, a big round jagged hole, exposing the tiny crawl space between."