DELANCY: Secrets in the Shadows

CHAPTER 54

That Mole!

It stared at me as I tried my hardest to concentrate on what she was saying. Jenny Langstrom, our realtor had been droning on for what seemed like days. Jenny was showing us this apartment for the second time because my wife liked it so much. I kept looking at that huge mole that sat on her top lip like a bird perched on a fence. I felt my wife’s hand touch my arm. She knew I wasn’t concentrating. Emily knew I was basically a child in a man’s body. I slowly turned my head towards her, and she flashed me an annoyed look. I took a gulp and looked back at Jenny. Jenny was a short woman with unkept brunette hair and the greenest eyes I had ever seen on a person. She wore a grey blazer and black pencil skirt. Hiding behind her almost oversized blazer was a white blouse. Her black high heeled shoes propped her up and gave her a bit of authority. There was something wrong with that woman. From the moment I met her I knew there was something off. I had tried to tell Emily a few times, but she didn’t take me seriously. You see I had been dreading moving to a new apartment. I had lived in my current apartment for years as a young bachelor. I had been there even before I met Emily. From the moment we were married, and she moved in she hated it. All of it. The exposed brick. The smell of car oil. The shower that had to be turned on with a pair of pliers placed on the floor. Emily also claimed that there was an old man from across the road who would watch her when she was alone in the apartment. I didn’t believe her too. I knew she would do anything to get out of that apartment. It wasn’t a big deal anyway. I loved her and she loved me so I could stomach the idea of moving.

Jenny kept going on about the crown molding or something boring like that. Emily ate it up. She was nodding her head and humming. She kept asking questions about the apartment and the area and homeowners associations. What the hell was she talking about? I often believed Emily enjoyed acting like a grown up. I myself didn’t care. It felt like these people were just making up grown up words. Whatever.

“I’m going to check out the bathroom,” I said while pointing at the hallway.

Jenny smiled at me and nodded, and Emily gave me a murderous stare.

“I’ll be back,” I said with a grin to reassure Emily.

She was not happy. I didn’t care, I liked pushing her buttons. I feared if I didn’t challenge her once in a while, she would get bored of me or something. I walked to the hallway and Jenny words started to fade away and it sounded like a grown up from “Peanuts”. I found myself at a sort of T junction where I saw 3 doors around me. Right Infront of me was a door and on both sides were two more doors on each side.

Knock Knock

I heard a slight Knock on my right on the wall along the hallway. I turned my head towards it. The faint knocking continued. I looked back at Emily and Jenny, and they were still deep in conversation. I touched the wall and the knocking stopped. I was probably hearing things. I brushed it off and walked towards the door on the right and opened it. I found a large bedroom that curved around me. I walked in and looked around. After gazing at the walls I opened the closet.

“Don’t rent the apartment,”

I heard a whisper around me. I looked around. I leaned closer into the closet.

“Don’t rent the apartment,”

The whisper got louder. I stepped back from the closet. I closed and rubbed my eyes. I walked back to the closet and listened again. The whisper was gone. I smiled to myself and sighed. I walked to the door, and I heard a knock coming from area I heard it from before in the hallway. The knock then intensified. I walked closer to the wall. I realized that the coat of white painting around that area was slightly different. I was a dentist so I could tell the difference between shades of white. The knocking continued. I pressed my ear onto the wall. The knocking stopped again.

“DON’T RENT THE APARTMENT!”

A female voice shouted into my right ear. I grabbed my ear and fell to the ground. It felt like someone had stabbed my eardrum.

“Emily!” I shouted.

My body felt limp. Suddenly my voice was gone. I crawled to the door, and I struggled to turn the door handle. I walked out the door. Suddenly the apartment was dark. I struggled to my feet, and I limped to the living room. The skies outside the window were now red and it gave the room a b****y tint. Emily and Jenny were now gone. I tried to scream for Emily a few more times. Nothing came out of my mouth. I looked back and Jenny stood in the hallway and her left hand was on the wall where the knock had come from earlier and her right hand had an object in it. I walked towards her.

“Where’s Emily?” I asked her.

She ignored me.

I could now see that Jenny was rubbing the wall as if the wall was her womb and she was caressing her baby bump. She had a big smile on her face. Now I could see the object in her hand. It was a blood-soaked knife. Now I was really worried.

“Where’s Emily?!” Shouted angrily.

She giggled.

“What do you mean? She’s right behind you,” she said with a sinister tone.

I slowly turned backwards while trying to keep an eye on Jenny. I got the shock of my life. Emily was right behind me with her hair covering her face. I tilted her head up slowly and her face had a pale blue hue. Her neck had striation marks like she had been strangled with a rope or a garrot. Her body was also riddled with stab wounds. I grabbed her almost lifeless body and shook her.

“Emily!” I shouted again.

I then felt a pair of hands rub my shoulders. I jumped up and looked back. It wasn’t Jenny. It was a young black woman who had pale brown skin. Her eyes were blueish white, and they looked dead. She also had rope burn around her neck and stab wounds all over her body. She then grabbed my neck and started choking me. I tried to fight her off.

“I thought I told you not to rent the apartment!” She screamed angrily.

I woke up in my bed riddled with sweat. I had also woken up Emily. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me.

“What’s wrong?” She asked with concern.

I insisted that we should change realtors. I didn’t have the guts to tell her about the dream. After days of back and forth arguing she agreed. We got a new realtor and found an apartment that we both liked.

I’m sure you think I was overreacting right? Why don’t you ask Lucy Johnson if I was overreacting? She was the previous tenant of the apartment and she had been missing for a year and half. They believe she is dead, but they never found her body. I’m pretty sure we both know where she is. If you don’t think that’s enough, why don’t you ask the McGregor’s if I was overreacting? They were the couple that rented the apartment after we pulled out. Come to think of it they wouldn’t really be helpful because they were both found stabbed multiple times and strangled to death in the apartment. I watch the news time and again and I see them struggle to find any decent leads while I sit here with this unbearable burden. I have no idea if I should call the cops. Would they even believe me? What do you think I should do? Whatever happens there is one thing for sure: Jenny Langstrom is a monster.

**

For the last two decades, we have always owned our own home. Our last home was an expansive one on a lake-six bedrooms, a full basement, three bathrooms and a full walk-up attic that hid everything from various holiday decorations to unused furniture. It was a lot of room but more importantly there were no sounds except for the occasional fox rustling through the leaves, singing bullfrog or a fish jumping to capture their evening dinner. At some point, we wanted to retire and downsize. My husband was already retired and I was counting the days until I could claim the same status. We had this long-term plan of selling the house and moving into an apartment in the city. Living our best lives having wine with our neighbors and dining out, shopping for clothes and fine smelling soaps rather than new roofs and furnaces. On a whim, we decided to list the house. It had been on the market over a year when we purchased so we figured we would put some feelers out with plenty of time to change our minds. However, it sold in less than two hours of the listing going live. And the buyers wanted in. Fast. So here we go. Dreams realized.

We spent the next few weeks giving away most of our things as if we were going to live on Mars and fantasizing about our future. As if any tiny cocktail fork or butter dish would be an imposition on our new lifestyle. We scaled down from 3500 sq feet to 1100 sq feet and we were elated to do so. Our kids received all their childhood memorabilia and photographs-any reminder that we raised five children. We were essentially cutting ties from parenthood and moving gracefully into retirement symbolized by the small two-bedroom two bath apartment in a large complex with all the amenities one could imagine.

We handed the lake house keys to the new owners, mutually excited about the future. We quickly settled into the apartment in the city locked into a 12-month lease. No lawn and snow removal responsibilities. No unexpected repairs or home improvement projects. Freedom! Pictures went up on the wall, things perfectly and sometimes strategically placed to make this new lifestyle work for us. We had done it! We had thrown caution to the wind and found paradise.

We had prepared for everything or at least we tried. Even the actual mental toll of communal living. We read one story after another of all the bad neighbor experiences in hopes of an easier transition. On the first night, we lie awake hearing every sound through walls that were thin enough to see through. We heard every passing motorist and every conversation around us. Would we ever hear silence again? We complained to each other but only half-heartedly since we were proud to be among the group that could complain about city living.

Before too long, we adapted to the noises of everyone else living their lives. Until one day, we heard the most terrifying sound imaginable. Outside the apartment, some woman (which we now know as the downstairs neighbor) was running throughout the grounds screaming “Help me! Somebody help me!” with the urgency of someone who may get murdered any second. Did our bad luck instantly import us to the pre-cursor to the next Dateline mystery? We tried to see her and yelled for her to call out so we could answer her plea. Sounds came and went with no way to triangulate on her location. She was running but from what? Screaming over and over, this dark, urgent request. In our panic, we were unable to locate this cry for help and for the first time in my life, I called the police. The 911 operator talked us through every important question. As the police arrived, guns drawn, shielding themselves behind our vehicles in the driveway, pointing at the apartment below us. Fearing a stray bullet in the certain g*n fight, we tried to find hiding spots hardened by walls, unsure if they were bordering the mayhem. Stepping out the shared floor guessing which sections may be vulnerable to violent, breakthrough bullets.

But then the screaming suddenly stopped. Certainly, she had met her fate. Certainly, we were too late. Why didn’t we call sooner? Why did we try to locate her first instead of calling for the experts to help neutralize whatever nightmare threat was chasing this woman? It just stopped. I watched out my window sick to my stomach waiting for crime scene tape and the coroner to drive up. And yet nothing. Within 15 minutes, guns were holstered, police cars exited with nothing more than a passing wave. What the hell just happened? I am not a nosey person. I like to keep to myself, and I like others to do the same. But this bizarre scene deserved some explanation which went unasked and unanswered.

The next day we passed each other in the parking lot. She wouldn’t look at me, but I am quickly surveying her for what is certain to be obvious bruises and cuts and other life-threatening injuries. None. I tried to say hi, but was met with an ignored response. Maybe she was embarrassed? Maybe she couldn’t look at me because she was being held captive in some agonizing stockholm syndrome. I repeat my greeting to let her know I am here for her for whatever she needs. This time I recognize the response. Hostility toward the good samaritan who was trying to help her with her own desperate request. But in this moment, I quickly realize, she was mad, and I was the problem.

Several days passed with the normal noises of dogs barking and babies crying but no more murderous screams. Relief. Maybe it was one bad day or moment. We settle in and I start working from home which was my normal working status. I have an office in the loft of the apartment which meant everything I said flowed down to the living room and vice versa. But my retired husband was keeping busy, and the apartment was working out nicely. Until it happened again. Up until now, I remained incredibly suspicious of the husband since the incident. But this time (and most of the future events), no one was home but her.

Screaming louder and louder. Hair raising screams. Under me and around me. In my living room. In my bathroom. In my kitchen. Screaming. Crying. Urgent pleas for help. Resisting the urge to call 911 again. Worried I would draw even more ire from the people downstairs. Only to pass each other later or the next day like nothing was happening. This is all part of the experience, I thought. Just another story to share among all of the wine-drinking neighbors we haven’t met yet.

We have an “office” to raise concerns but after the reaction when we called the police, I didn’t want to aggravate things any further. So, we just learned to deal with it. We knew exactly what time she awoke and went to bed, and we found solace in the quiet hours of her sleep schedule. We went about our days and nights adjusting to this bizarre situation. Apartment living, am I right?

Months went by and something transformed our brains. If someone was truly calling for help, it would have literally fallen on deaf ears. Visiting guests appeared to notice what we have now become accustomed to. They don’t comment, they just look around as if they are hearing things. They have always known us to be reasonable, normal people. So, they looked confused because we don’t even notice. And we simply go about our business as if someone isn’t screaming for their life. We laugh about the latest meme on f*******: and talk about mundane things occasionally raising our voice over the sounds of terror.

One day a co-worker on a conference call tried to challenge our new existence and asked about the screaming woman in the background of all my calls. Is everything okay? Does someone need a doctor? I politely explain that we live in an apartment thinking this would explain it all. When she didn’t back down, I just assumed she owned a home with no shared walls and floors and tried to continue with our work-related conversation. She wouldn’t understand. She was not one of us.

“I have lived in an apartment for years and this isn't normal” she proclaimed. There isn’t anything I can do though. 12 month lease. Besides we are getting used to it. We eventually end the conversation about the terrifying background sounds and move to more productive work at a little louder decibel and with a more awkward pace than it was when we started.

Then one day, logic finally broke through. About 8 months into our lease, I received a call from “the office”. I had never talked to them and was curious when I saw the number appear on my phone. Apparently, there was a complaint from the apartment below that our TV was too loud sometimes which bothered her. I suddenly snapped out of my docile, don’t-bother-anyone-and-they-won’t-bother-you mentality and unleashed on this poor woman who had the unlucky job of calling me that day. I explained everything. The screaming, the police, the guests, the work calls. Everything laid out neatly and efficiently amid my release. As if my mind was regurgitating 8 months of some sort of cognitive journal. When I paused to take a breath, I was met with silence on the other end for a very long time.

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”, she finally inquires. Thinking I now sounded a bit deranged; I explain that we were under the impression this was normal apartment living. She seemed slightly shocked at our naivety and asked for details. I gave them. Many of them. She was apologetic explaining others had complained. What? People complained? Weren’t we all in this together? Despite the original reason for calling me, she explained they were “in the process of addressing it”. She offered up a solution. Move… to another apartment in the complex.

We were given several options. Close to us. Further out. We scoped out our potential new neighbors like a private detective. At all hours of the day and night, we stalked the pending neighbors listening for similarities to our current living situation. Why go to all the trouble of moving again if it was going to be the same situation? We remained unconvinced that this is not normal. But to our surprise not one plea for help. Not one blood curdling scream. Not one heart racing event where I imagine a gruesome murder scene. Quiet.

So, we chose our next home and packed up our belongings to the now familiar and weirdly comforting sound of the devil we know. Wondering about the new neighbors despite our thorough reconnaissance. Some part of me is disappointed that our experience is unique. That we can’t wear our apartment dweller war wounds with the rest of the crowd. We are no longer in a class that becomes aloof city dwellers. This wasn’t a typical experience that we will laugh about someday. Wherever things land, though, we will always be grateful for our first apartment experience. The experience left us entirely immune to the random noises and sounds from the walls and floors. We are fully and completely adjusted. This experience accelerated all learning curves and understanding of shared spaces. I wish nothing but the best for the former neighbor and hope she finds her way to peace. As strange as it sounds, some part of me feels like I am abandoning her. Our journey are now separated just as quickly as we came together. But there is still this constant, nagging worry that some news outlet will eventually answer our many questions about this woman and her demons, real or imagined.