A Disturbance
by Brian Bockelman
Mark woke to a thud. He registered the noise but refused to open his eyes. If he opened his eyes, he knew he’d never get back to sleep.
Sleep was a hot commodity since he moved to the ground-floor loft in the city three months ago. But it wasn’t the city noise that kept him awake, it was the ever-present threat of an intruder. Mark’s loft mirrored the layout of all the others in the building, but his had a door in the living room, toward the back of the space, that opened straight out onto the sidewalk. The relief of having shorter grocery trips from his car to the kitchen was offset by the occasional homeless person pulling on his door handle in the middle of the night. Nothing had ever come of it, but the potential of a break-in was enough to keep Mark from ever sleeping too deeply.
Really need to buy a bat, he thought as he lay dead still in the dark. He listened hard for a sequel to the initial thud that woke him, ready to spring into action if necessary, but the loft was quiet. It was the type of quiet that somehow produces noise the more you think about it. The silence hummed, and then his ears began to ring. Distant at first, like a bug buzzing in his ear. Then louder. And louder. The more he acknowledged it, the louder it seemed to get. The thought crossed his mind that maybe he’d gone deaf. The ringing sounded like a distant scream.
A streetcar outside his window announced its arrival with a sharp ding that cut the silence. The ringing in Mark’s ears mercifully faded. Comforted by the knowledge he wasn’t deaf, he rolled over and let his mind wander, searching for sleep.
Just as his mind was beginning to get goopy and lucid again, another loud thud on the floorboards above his bed dragged him back into consciousness.
This was the third straight apartment where Mark had noisy upstairs neighbors. In fact, he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he didn’t have noisy upstairs neighbors. Growing up, his older brother’s room had been directly above his, constantly blaring music into the early hours of the morning in defiance of the early curfew set by their parents. The familiarity didn’t make it any easier to tolerate. The tall, cracking brick walls and aging wooden floorboards of the repurposed Envelope Plant he now called home had initially helped sell him on the place. “Character” and “charm” were words he used to describe it. He learned pretty quick that neither of those things do much for sound proofing.
This neighbor had been particularly noisy, too. It was fairly common for them to be partying late, even on weeknights. Particularly on weeknights. Mark assumed they must work at one of the nearby bars, coming home after a long day of work to throw a few back after having to sit by and watch everyone else have their fun. He just wished they had the decency to take their shoes off while they did it.
Mark continued to lay still with his eyes tightly closed, hoping against hope that the neighbors would be quiet just long enough for his mind to drift back into unconsciousness before the party really ramped up. As long as the music didn’t start playing, he knew he was fine. A few thumps here and there was okay, but if they started playing the music, he knew he was in for the long haul.
There were several louder THUDs, almost as if someone were moving furniture, followed by muffled voices. Loud enough to hear but not quite loud enough to understand.
Mark begrudgingly opened his eyes, sat up in bed and sighed. His eyes began to adjust to the darkness, the hope of falling back to sleep dissolving in front of him. In the dark, the details of his surroundings were shades of grey. The honey tinted glow of the streetlight outside his window shone through the blinds just enough to help bring the loft into focus: his single nightstand with the lamp to his right, the bookshelf of mostly unread books directly across from his bed, the maze of mortar running up the brick wall to his left, the high exposed beams above. He could make out mostly everything except the furthest corners of the lofted ceiling. Even during the day those never quite got enough light to reveal what was lurking up there, and it always made Mark uneasy. Likely there were just spiders. But the possibilities were endless.
He grabbed his phone off the nightstand and checked the time: 3:08. Witching hour, he thought. Mark had learned about Witching Hour during a Wikipedia deep dive the previous year after the bathroom door of his last apartment suddenly shot open untouched. Mark lived alone and was sitting on his couch in the living room when the incident happened, so he decided to do some research. Supposedly 3 AM is when demons are at their strongest and come out to play.
But the bathroom door opened itself during the middle of a bright summer afternoon. And, after some experimenting, Mark learned it was caused by a change of air flow that happened when he opened the living room window. He wondered how many paranormal events throughout history could be explained away by a simple change in air pressure.
Mark threw his covers off and swung his legs over the side of the bed with the intention to get up and take a piss. He put his hands on his thighs and braced himself, taking a moment to accept the fate of his night before standing. Opening his eyes was one thing, but to physically stand up and get out of bed would really be waving the white flag. Just as his brain was about to give his legs the command to activate, there was a loud smash from above. If the neighbors were in fact moving furniture, this was as if a sofa had been dropped from the floor to the ceiling.
Mark’s muscles tightened. Loose debris fell from the aging floorboards above him. A couple small chunks of the old brick walls jarred loose and toppled to the floor. It was as if he’d experienced his own personal earthquake in his apartment. Mark had never heard anything like that before. Even the rowdiest parties never sound quite like that. Like violence.
He waited in the dark, listening carefully for the next sound. His ears were ringing again. Louder. Louder. Screaming.
TWACK
Mark’s heart began to race. The muffled voices above escalated to shouts. He couldn’t make out the words, but he could tell they were angry. He cocked his head to listen and slowly rose from the bed, as if the two-foot difference between sitting and standing would help him hear any clearer.
To Mark’s surprise, his legs were wobbling. He’d always been averse to violent situations. The mere threat of a physical altercation would send his heart racing even if it didn’t involve him. He wasn’t sure what caused it, some subconscious memory that occurred when he was young perhaps, but it had been there as long as he could remember.
When he was sixteen, Mark and his friends had gone to a music festival where they stood all day in the June heat waiting for their favorite band to headline the main stage. One of the openers was some small-town punk rock band from Minnesota, and their handful of die-hard fans wanted to mosh. Problem was, not everyone was in that frame of mind. Especially the large fella who was positioned directly in front of Mark and his pals.
As soon as the guitarist hit the first chord of the first song, bodies began smashing into each other like atoms in a particle accelerator. It was instantaneous, and it was violent. Mark’s fight-or-flight instincts told him to fly, but he had sacrificed too much of the day to willingly forfeit his position. He dug his heels in ready to stand his ground in the tornado of limbs, but he wouldn’t have to stand long. A gawky kid with a lip ring and dark hair masking half his face went flying into the large fella in front of Mark. And that was that.
The moment Lip Ring made contact the hulking figure slammed him on his back. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was some past trauma. Maybe he was just plain mean. But something possessed the hulk to begin smashing the absolute Hell out of the kid’s face. The mosh stopped as fast as it had started.
The large man was on his knees straddling Lip Ring’s scrawny torso, holding him up by his collar and smashing his fist into his face repeatedly. With every blow, Lip Ring’s head flew back, smacked the pavement, and bounced up into position again, as if he were one of those inflatable punching bags that bounces right back up after you hit it.
A few people tried to stop it, but they would have been better off trying to stop an avalanche with a bucket. Mark stood transfixed, too afraid to move. Lip Ring’s mouth was hanging open; a gaping, dark red hole. For all anyone knew he was dead. Mark felt dizzy in the heat. Each time the back of Lip Ring’s head hit the pavement it produced a wet THWACK, like a handful of pumpkin guts being thrown against a wall.
The exact sound Mark heard from the apartment above.
The wet TWACKs continued. It wasn’t long before they were accompanied by another sound, the sound of someone crying. Whimpering. Pleading. A man.
Mark remained motionless, frozen by unease. His brain told his body to relax; that it was irrational for him to be scared. He didn’t know for sure what was happening, and the noise was above him. It wasn’t as if the floor would give way and the scene would collapse into his room.
Despite the logical argument made by his brain, Mark’s heart pumped in his chest like the piston of an engine on the brink.
There was another enormous bang, only this time it came from the far wall of the room across from Mark’s bed. More bits of wood and rock rained down from above. It sounded like someone was tossed across the room and slammed against the wall. There were a few more TWACKs followed by more muffled shouting. Based on the voices, Mark figured there were at least two assailants. Maybe more.
Mark mirrored the motion of the noise and tip toed over to the far wall of his bedroom. He leaned against the bookshelf and kept his head cocked to the ceiling, listening as hard as he could to make out a word, any word, to help him piece together what was happening. Money. Sex. Drugs. Anything to give reason to the thrashing taking place mere feet above him.
But the voices remained nothing more than a sequence of angry run-on syllables. If Mark closed his eyes, it almost sounded like the homeless man in his neighborhood who stumbled around town yelling about blowing up bus stops and setting park benches on fire. Somehow this was more unnerving.
They moved again, this time out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Mark could hear what sounded like a body being dragged across the carpet, fists and feet pounding as it traveled against its will. He crept across the room and followed them from below, careful to be as quiet as possible. Just in case.
They paused outside the bathroom door, and the drubbing resumed against the hallway wall. There was the sound of broken glass. A picture frame, maybe. Then more bangs. More bellows. More sobbing.
Mark’s mind was racing as he continued to stare up at the ceiling. This sounded far too destructive for his neighbor to be on the delivery end of the blows. Mark couldn’t imagine someone using a body as a wrecking ball inside their own apartment like that.
Mark stared through the darkness at the exact spot where the sobs and repeated thuds were coming from, hoping desperately to develop x-ray vision. There, right there, on the other side of that wood, something bad was happening. He tried to picture the scene in his head. The body of a man slumped against the wall, a bleeding bag of potatoes, just like Lip Ring from the music festival had been. Two large goons standing over him, cracking their knuckles, impatiently waiting until it was their turn to take another shot.
Come on, man. Just give ’em what they want, Mark thought.
His silent plea went ignored. The shouting intensified and there was a loud crack, as if someone had hit the wall with a baseball bat. A warning shot, perhaps. Or a skull.
There were a few more cracks, each accompanied by a deep guttural grunt. Then a long, drilling shriek. The more things escalated the more Mark began to worry about what he was witnessing. He debated bolting out the door and driving…anywhere. But there was nowhere to go at that hour. And how would that explanation sound the next day?
Huh, a murder you say? In the apartment above mine? No officer, I didn’t hear anything. Why, I was off running errands at 3 in the morning, of course. Like a normal person.
The police.
The police hadn’t crossed Mark’s mind until just then. He’d never dialed 9–1–1- before in his life; never wanted to be a bother. But if overhearing someone get beaten to death didn’t meet the standards of an emergency, he wasn’t sure what did.
He moved swiftly into the bedroom and grabbed his phone off the nightstand. The screen flashed that it was a quarter to 4. He hustled quietly back to the hallway. There seemed to be a lull in the action, but Mark could still make out the sounds of the victim quietly sobbing. If nothing else, he would just hold the phone up to the ceiling and let the operator listen for themselves.
He punched the numbers into his phone. 9. 1. 1. His thumb hovered over the dial button. There was still a tiny fragment of doubt buried deep in the center of his mind. Things seemed to have calmed down a bit. Maybe it’s over? Maybe it’s not that big of a deal? What it’s just a misunderstand-
A sharp cry interrupted his thoughts. Not a cry of anger or fury, but a long, drawn out cry of grief and pain that only ever comes from a place of pure agony.
Mark tapped the button. He moved down the hallway toward the living room as the phone rang in his ear. He was all too aware of the times he could hear his neighbors speaking through the poorly insulated walls as if they were right there in his apartment with him. God forbid he were to be overheard on the phone with the police.
“Nine-one-one operator, what’s your emergency?”
Even from down the hall in his living room Mark could hear the commotion beginning to ramp up again. The violent sounds danced down the hallway into his uncovered ear.
“Someone’s being beaten…or…something, above me,” Mark frantically whispered into the phone. “In the apartment above me, that is.” The words spilled out faster than he wanted.
“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t quite hear you. Could you speak up, please?”
The heat of stress flashed through Mark’s body and sweat formed on his brow. Didn’t the operator realize he could be risking his own safety by being any louder?
Of course not. He hadn’t told them anything yet.
Mark reluctantly raised his voice slightly:
“Someone’s being attacked in the apartment above me.” More measured this time. “It started about thirty minutes ago. I didn’t think anything of it until the banging got louder and I couldn’t sleep. Then I heard crying, like someone’s hurt. Here, listen for yourself.”
Mark held his phone out so the operator could hear the sound firsthand. But as he extended his arm into the darkness toward the hallway, he realized the noise had stopped. The apartment was completely silent. Mark’s ears strained to hear a noise, any noise, come from the darkness. The silence was humming again.
The operator’s voice was faint in his outstretched hand: “Sir? Hello, sir?” Mark pulled the phone back toward his face.
“It was just happening…”
“That’s okay, sir. I’m sending a car anyway. Where are you located?”
Mark tip toed back down the hallway to where the sound had been coming from. He momentarily pulled the phone from his ear and listened for any indication there was still someone above him. No pounding. No scuffling. No sobbing. Nothing.
“I’m at nineteen oh two Longview Boulevard. Apartment one ten” he finally replied. “The noise is coming from above me. Or was coming from above me. Apartment two ten.”
Mark worked his way back to the living room now. If the noise had stopped, that meant the assailants were likely leaving the building. Or coming for me, he thought.
“Okay, thank you, sir. And are you ok? Are you hurt at all?”
“Me? No, I’m fine.”
He peered through the blinds that hung on the door. His eyes darted back and forth, searching desperately for a shadowy figure that might be slithering away into the night. But the street was completely still and looked as quiet as his apartment had suddenly become.
“And what’s your name?”
Mark hesitated. Despite the silence, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being listened to through the cracks of the floorboards above. The hair stood up on the back of his neck at the thought, and he suddenly felt dizzy.
“I’d rather not say.”
“That’s okay, sir. I’ve sent a car your way. Would you like me to stay on the line with you while you wait?”
“No, that’s okay. I’m okay. Thank you.”
Mark hung up and listened to the darkness. He waited motionless for the sound of footsteps or a quiet sob. It never came. Perhaps they heard him on the phone and bolted.
Or maybe they finished the job.
The silence got loud again and slowly turned to ringing. And then to screaming. Mark shook his head.
He walked across the living room and back into the hallway. Upon reentering the hall, he heard a noise. It was incredibly faint, just barely audible, but in the silence of the apartment it might as well have been a woodchipper. A scratching sound was coming from the floorboards above.
Mark went to where he stood before and stared up at the ceiling. The noise reminded him of the sound a mouse makes when it gets stuck in a wall and tries to burrow its way back to freedom, never realizing the way to freedom was the way it came.
Tschtschtschtschtschtschtschtschtsch
There was a long console table that ran along the wall where Mark kept miscellaneous items; keys, junk mail, the occasional coupon. He carefully removed each item from the surface of the table and rested them on the floor. He picked the table up, positioned it in the middle of the hallway, and sat on top of it. He swung his legs around and slowly began to stand.
Tschtschtschtschtschtschtschtschtsch
His legs wobbled slightly. The table was tall, and Mark himself was tall, but he was still a good five feet short of being able to reach the lofted ceiling. He stabilized himself and stood absolutely still, focusing on the source of the sound, trying to listen.
Tschtschtschtschtschtschtschtschtsch
The scratching was all he could hear. It echoed down Mark’s ear canal and into his brain. His brain tried to match the sound with an image, but a mouse was still the only thing his mind could conjure.
Then suddenly, the scratching stopped. All Mark could hear now the sound of his own breathing. In and out. Wavering slightly. He waited a moment.
“Hello?” Mark whispered.
There was a tremendous BANG directly above him. The hit was so violent that it reverberated through the wood. The shock made Mark’s knees collapse and lose his balance. He tried to find it but failed. When he realized he was going down, he leaned his body forward and crashed down hard on his hands and knees, the table flipping out from under him.
His heart pounded in his chest. He frantically gathered himself and whipped around on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. It was as if someone, or something, had knocked him away.
The loud bangs continued, but these sounds were different from before. This wasn’t the sound of someone being hit. This sounded like a sporadic flailing of fists and limbs beating against the floor and walls at random, like the Tazmanian Devil.
He slowly stood, never taking his eyes off the ceiling. Part of him believed if he looked away, whatever was causing the chaos might crawl down through the cracks and get him. The less logical his thoughts became, the more he believed them.
Mark slowly backed toward the living room, tip toeing out of instinct. He took a step back and the noise inched forward. He took another step back, and the noise came closer still. A grotesque fury of limbs banging, and scratching, and clawing. This sounded more beastly than human. Fear turned to terror.
Mark turned and walked briskly into the living room toward his front door. He would not allow himself to run, because running would be admitting there’s something to be afraid of. And there was nothing to be afraid of. He woke up to some noise and couldn’t get back to sleep. That’s all that happened. This was just a noise complaint. His upstairs neighbor was being noisy. That’s all.
He peaked through the blinds again.
Where are the police? he thought.
The calm on the street contrasted the chaos happening inside. Cars fully lined both sides bumper to bumper. The streetlights shining off their smooth hoods made them look like glass. Something about the view made Mark nostalgic, sort of like the smell of fresh cut grass or the specific musty smell of an elementary school hallway. It reminded him of when he was a kid and would steal money from the bucket of change in his dad’s closet to go buy Sour Skittles at the convenience store down the street. He would always walk the four short blocks in the cool evenings of early summer, right after the sun had gone down. He only went on Fridays. It was his treat to himself for making it through the week, even though he was twelve and his primary responsibility was emptying the dishwasher. Those walks were some of the most peaceful moments he could remember. It’s what he longed for as his heart pounded in his chest.
Someone casually walking by on the street could never imagine the madness happening on the other side of Mark’s apartment door during such a peaceful evening. It made Mark wonder how many times he’d walked right by someone experiencing the worst day of their life without a clue in the world.
The beastly sounds of flailing limbs and snarls grew to a category 5 storm. The higher pitched smacking of flesh combined with the deeper sounds of knobby joints banging into each other created a haunting symphony. It was a hurricane of flesh and bone, just like the mosh pit at the music festival. Somehow even more violent.
Someone else has to be hearing this, Mark thought. I’m not the only one in this building.
And then, Where the fuck are the police?
He couldn’t bare the sound any longer. Dizziness was setting in. The entire apartment felt as if it were dangling from single string, the floor wobbling side-to-side beneath his feet. He opened the door and stepped outside where he was greeted with a rush of much needed fresh air. The door closed behind him. It was as if he’d entered an entirely different dimension. The unnatural fleshy noises were replaced with the soft, familiar sounds of a city trying to sleep.
He looked up the side of his building at the window belonging to the upstairs neighbor, hoping to catch a glimpse. But the lights were off, meaning whatever was taking place was taking place in the dark. Somehow that disturbed Mark even more and his mouth began to drool with the anticipation of vomit.
He walked to the edge of the street and craned his neck hoping to find police lights on the horizon. When he saw they still weren’t coming, he walked over and sat down with his back to the apartment door. The air felt nice and the ambient sounds of the city were calming. He vowed to wait outside until the police arrived.
It wasn’t long before sleep sank deep into his bones. He was mentally and physically exhausted, the initial shot of adrenaline from the events wearing off. He fought to keep his eyes open but failed on occasion, unsure how long they had been closed each time he reopened them. He was starting to think about how his backside was sore from the concrete when he heard it: the distinct sound of sirens in the distance. Faint at first, but steadily growing. Mark sleepily stood up and looked the direction he thought the sirens were coming from.
The serenading wailing grew in volume with each turn the vehicle made. The sound ping ponged off the walls of the towering buildings, making it difficult to identify the exact location. Mark thousand-yard-stared down the street, patiently waiting for the cop car to round the corner and come his way. His brain played the image of the car in his mind over and over so vividly that he thought he might actually be seeing into the future.
Instead what he saw was an ambulance scream past his street, its destination anywhere but where Mark stood.
He continued to stare indifferently as the sirens faded away as quickly as they had come. It was clear the police weren’t coming. Earlier, with crippling stress coursing through his entire body, he would have been livid at their lack of response. But now, weighed down with exhaustion, he couldn’t care less. He just wanted to sleep.
He let out a sigh and turned to go back inside, hoping against hope that the disturbance was over. He slowly opened the door, poked his head in, and listened.
Silence.
Relieved, he dragged the rest of his body through the door frame into the apartment. As he shuffled across the living room back toward the hallway, he saw the digital clock on the oven: 5:07. He hadn’t been outside nearly as long as it had felt. All told, the events of the evening had lasted just two hours. To Mark it felt like a lifetime.
He made his way back to bed. When he finally laid his body down, it embraced him with its cool sheets as his body sank into the mattress. Mark could only remember a few times he’d ever felt this tired. He was excited at how easily he was about to fall asleep. He was less excited about how quickly he would have to wake back up.
He checked his phone one last time, rolled over and closed his eyes, waiting for sleep to overtake him and teleport him into tomorrow.
Tschtschtschtschtschtschtschtschtsch
Mark rolled over, determined to ignore it.
Tschtschtschtschtschtschtschtschtsch
The scratching persisted. Quick, critter-like scratches gnawing at his ear drums. Slowly gaining friction. Back and forth. Back and forth. Faster. Faster.
Tschtschtschtschtschtschtschtschtsch
A headache was forming behind his eyes. Mark turned his bedside fan up to the highest setting, but the scratching only got louder. It burrowed into his mind. He wondered if a bug was deep in his ear canal causing it or if he was imagining it all together. What started as a nagging noise had festered into a bone saw.
TSCHTSCHTSCHTSCHTSCHTSCHTSCHTSCHTSCH
The scratching made Mark’s fingernails ache for attention. He pictured splinters of wood sliding their way deep under the nails into the sensitive skin beneath, the nails cracking, the blood caked beds being exposed. It was like an itch beneath his nails, the one place that’s impossible to scratch. Mark clawed at the skin on his thigh, trying to soothe the irritation with no success. His fingers were pulsing with pain now. Flesh was too soft.
He began to pick at his nails. Each tug produced a shot of pain which offered a momentary oasis of relief. But each time the itch came back even stronger. He went up and down the line; pinky, index, middle, pointer, thumb, pinky, index, middle, pointer, thumb.
Tschtschtschtschtschtschtschtschtsch
His left pointer was the first to go. Mark peeled the nail slowly, the skin underneath resisting as much as it could, feebly clinging to the underside of the hard shell, stretching every molecule as thin as possible before ripping apart. The slow torment offered the relief he sought, but the itch was replaced with a pulsing dull pain. He went down his hand one by one until every nail was either completely gone or ripped ragged.
This little piggy, Mark thought as he peeled each nail.
The final nail came off triumphantly. Some of his fingers were running with blood, the skin torn deeply. The others were coagulated and dry but hurting just the same. Mark admired them in the glow of the streetlight out his window.
Tschtschtschtschtschtschtschtschtsch
The scratching carried on. The hope of sleep slipped with Mark’s sanity. He resounded to stay in his car for what little was left of the night. Whatever was upstairs had won. He couldn’t take it anymore.
He got out of bed, grabbed his pillow, and hurried out of the room. His eye caught the dark corner of the ceiling and he shuddered. As he entered the hallway his shin smacked the side of the console table he had left flipped over. He toppled over it and fell hard on his stomach. The sharp pain in his shin briefly distracted him from the pain that pulsed in his fingertips.
He rolled over and faced the ceiling. The noise followed him and elevated to a loud series of cracking noises. It was either the splintering of wood or the snapping of bones. Since the wood of the floorboards remained intact, Mark deduced it must be the latter. He stared at it, willing whatever was on the other side to come through and take him. He was so tired. All he wanted was sleep.
Mark tried to move but couldn’t. He noticed the dark shadows in the corners of the lofted ceiling begin to grow and move, creeping down the walls as if they were alive. They came together in the bedroom and submerged it in the darkest shade of black Mark’s eyes could register. The shadow turned its sights on him and inched his way like a steadily rising tide. He still couldn’t move. He couldn’t even breathe. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
When the shadow reached Mark’s feet it shot a piercing pain throughout his entire body. It felt like a thousand shards of glass shredding his skin, tearing the flesh all the way to the bone as it crept up his legs and onto his torso. The result was inevitable. All he could do was lie there and watch as the darkness consumed him.
He still couldn’t breathe as the black shadow crawled up his neck. He felt an immense pressure on his chest, like someone was sitting on top of him. Finally, as the darkness crawled up his face and toward his mouth, his lungs opened like a floodgate. Relief at last. He screamed with amazing force as the shadow spilled down his mouth.
Screamed, screamed, screamed.
Mark woke with a pounding headache, hungover from a lack of sleep. The previous night’s events flooded back immediately as he observed his surroundings. He was slumped against the hallway wall, the console table still toppled over nearby.
He stood and groggily stumbled into his bedroom to grab his phone. Dark bits of debris peppered the light gray carpet. Mark exited his apartment and headed for the front desk. He wanted to make sure his upstairs neighbor was okay. He wanted to see the security footage of the assailants leaving the building. Most of all, he just wanted to know that what happened last night was real.
He casually strutted past the generic IKEA paintings that lined the taupe hallway leading to the leasing office. The dim lighting reminded him of the cheap motels his family would stay in during their family road trips as a kid. It made him nauseous.
The bells on the door jangled as he pushed into the leasing office. His nostrils filled with the smell of lavender and honey coming from the candle on the desk where Tony sat. Tony was a slightly overweight fake tough guy of Italian descent. He often boasted about how he was in college as if it was some sort of badge of honor. He wore glasses.
“Hey man, how’s it goin’?” Tony asked without looking up from his computer. Mark carefully shut the door behind him.
“Not bad, not bad,” Mark lied as casually as he could. It was important he didn’t come off as frantic.
Mark strolled across the room and sat in one of the small plastic chairs positioned across from Tony’s desk. The set up made Mark feel as if he were back in elementary school visiting the principal’s office for something he didn’t do.
“So what…is…up?” Tony said as he finished typing something, closing his laptop as he said the word “up.” He turned and gave Mark his full attention, which quickly shifted to his fingers. “Jesus man, what happened to your hands?”
Mark glanced down at his blood caked nail beds. They pulsed at his acknowledgement.
“This might seem weird,” Mark said, ignoring the question, “but you didn’t get any noise complaints last night, did you?”
“No. Nothing yet, anyway.” A grin spread across Tony’s face. “You get a little rowdy last night or somethin?”
“No, no. It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s the person above me. Only it wasn’t a party it was,” Mark hesitated, unsure how much to say, “…something else.”
“Something else? I’m gonna need a little more than that.”
Mark sighed and told Tony about his night. How everything escalated. How debris fell around his apartment. The sobbing. The phone call to the police. How he waited outside for a squad car that never came. He told him everything. Everything except the shadows. He couldn’t risk losing credibility. But the story already sounded fake even to him as he told it out loud for the first time.
When Mark finished Tony leaned back in his chair with a genuinely concerned look on his face.
“I just want to make sure whoever lives above me is okay. They might be seriously injured.”
“What unit are you in?”
“One ten.”
Without a word, Tony reopened his laptop and began scrolling around on his mouse pad, searching for something. His brow furrowed as he searched.
“That’s what I thought,” Tony said softly after a moment. “The unit above yours is vacant.”
“That can’t be possible.”
Tony turned the computer to show Mark his screen. On it was a spreadsheet listing all the units and the names of their occupants, along with columns of other personal information Mark probably shouldn’t be seeing. Tony wasn’t particularly thoughtful, or good at his job at all for that matter. But sure enough, several rows down was ‘UNIT 210.’ In the column next to it: ‘VACANT.’
Tony toggled to another tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet, swapping out the chart on the screen with a floor plan of the apartment building. The chart matched what the spreadsheet said. In the box representing Mark’s unit was his full name. In the box representing the unit above his, ‘VACANT.’
“But these are just words on a screen,” Mark said. “I know what I heard. There must have been a clerical error or something.”
“Maybe,” Tony said. “But I do all of these myself, and I can tell you firsthand that apartment’s been empty for three months.”
Mark wasn’t convinced, but his mind searched for other possibilities. Maybe no one lived there. But that doesn’t mean someone wasn’t there last night. Broken in somehow and used the space to conduct whatever violent business it was they were conducting. Mark purposefully ignored the fact that still didn’t account for all the parties he’d heard above him over the three months since he moved into the building. One problem at a time.
“Okay…,” Mark reasoned. “Just because someone doesn’t live there doesn’t mean someone couldn’t have broken in.”
“True.” Tony responded. Mark got the feeling he was only entertaining him now. And barely so.
“If so, they would have shown up on the security cameras.”
Tony raised his eyebrows. “Also true. Let’s take a look.”
He tapped around on his laptop some more and pulled up the footage. Once again he turned his screen so Mark could see.
“About what time did all this go down?”
“It started at 3 but who knows when they got here. Stopped around 5, though.”
Tony began to rewind the tape. As he did, Mark recalled the events in his mind. Doubt was beginning to creep in, but the details were too vivid for him to have imagined it. Something happened in that apartment. He was sure of it.
“There’s your cops,” Tony said. “I thought you said they never showed?”
Sure enough, there on the screen, two police officers, a man and a woman, were shown entering the building lobby at 4:11 am. Tony fast forwarded ahead a couple minutes to the time they left: 4:14. They were there a total of three minutes in all. Just enough time to knock on the door and leave.
“That’s not possible,” Mark whispered to himself.
“Well I’m looking at ‘em,” Tony said, as he kept fast forwarding and rewinding the tape between the time they entered and the time they left.
Mark shook his head. “Fast forward some more. Does anyone else leave the building?”
Tony sped the video up again. 4 am. Nothing. 5 am. Nothing. 6 am, a few people begin to trickle out, presumably on their way to work. But nothing suspicious. Nothing to indicate any of them had just committed a murder.
Mark stood up abruptly. “I want to see it.”
“What?”
“I want to see the apartment. I want proof that it’s empty.”
“Listen man, I’m telling you-“
“I don’t…care.” Mark gathered himself. He was visibly shaking. “I just need to see it, okay?”
“Suit yourself.” Tony closed his laptop, opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a keychain full of keys. “Let’s go look at nothing.”
Tony locked up the leasing office and flipped the sign that hung on the door so it now read “Sorry you missed us. Back in 15 minutes.” They walked across the cavernous lobby and entered the old elevator which took them the short ride up to the second floor. They got off, turned right, and walked to the first door, exactly where Mark’s door was some twenty feet below. 210.
Tony flipped through the ring of keys, found the perfect one, and slid it into the keyhole. He looked Mark in the eye and said, “Prepare to be underwhelmed,” as he turned the knob and pushed the door open.
He was right.
The apartment was empty.
Tony walked into the living room and spun around. “See? Vacant. Know anyone looking for a place? We have referral bonuses you know.”
Mark followed him in, dumbfounded. He walked across the living room and to the hallway where a majority of the action had happened. Nothing. No body. No blood. No indication that anyone had been there in weeks, let alone the night before.
He continued down the hallway and into the bedroom where the story was the same. The room was empty, which Mark thought made it feel so much bigger than his own bedroom directly below. The brick walls and old wooden beams that ran across the ceiling really shine when there isn’t any furniture to steal your attention.
Tony joined him in the bedroom.
“Satisfied?” He asked, no longer faking patience.
The truth was, Mark wasn’t satisfied. Something violent happened in that apartment last night. If he closed his eyes, he could feel the walls reverberating around him as the force above thrashed. He could hear the thuds of limbs and smacking of skin. But right now, all he heard was silence.
“Yeah,” Mark lied. “I guess so.”
Tony left the room and Mark followed him into the hallway. As he passed the bathroom door, something caught his eye. There, near the air vent on the floor, were what looked like scratch marks.
Mark stopped to look closer. They were faint, but they were definitely there.
He bent down to examine them closer. He got on his hands and knees and put his face close. There was no denying it. Those were scratch marks. Etched into the plaster like a fossil in stone.
Mark reached out his hand and gently ran his fingers over the marks, feeling the slight indentations in the wall. They were real. His nail-less fingers throbbed as he ran them across the marks. His ears started to ring.
