Look, I know that there are (some) plausible explanations of what has been going on, but I genuinely don’t think that any of them hold water. I have read about sleep walking, and I do have roommates, so I get that it could be either one of those things at fault. Except, I don’t have a history of sleepwalking, and my roommates are among the folks who have been most hurt by the last few weeks (though one person was far more harmed). I have read about brain fog from covid, and I did have it several weeks ago, but this doesn’t seem to line up with my recent experiences. Brain fog doesn’t cause you to scare the shit out of everyone you know. Brain fog, doesn’t mean missing time, right? As least as far as I know.
I guess I should probably explain what I’m talking about. I just wanted to note that I have considered other explanations. Over the past month or so, really scary stuff has been happening to me. I first noticed something was amiss when I couldn’t find my dog in my room one morning. I asked both of my roommates, and they both said they hadn’t seen him since the day before. I checked my room’s window (even though we are on the 7th floor). Closed and locked as I’d left it. Just the normal rusted metal of the fire escape that my apartment shared with the one next door.
I checked under the bed, in the closet, behind the couch. I checked the front door, and found it securely latched, but took a look around our floor anyway. Nothing. No sign of him anywhere. I walked outside and started calling his name at each bush. Asked the other people I would see walking their dogs if they’d seen him. He’s a chow-shepherd mix, and lazy as all hell. He usually only wants a walk around the block at most, and he’s never run off like this. No one had seen him.
At this point I was getting pretty panicked, but figured I’d go home, check around the apartment once more, and then start posting on neighborhood sites. If he did run away, he couldn’t have gone far. Well, when I got back to my apartment, my roommates said they found him. I was so relieved. I asked where he was, and they told me he had somehow opened the cabinet in the kitchen and was hiding under the sink. That was very much not like him. He’d always been a really chill dog, and never so much as got into the trash, let alone opened a cabinet on his own.
I asked why he was still there, and they both said he wouldn’t come out when they called him. So, I went to look for myself. Sure enough, he was sitting under the sink. He had shoved himself into a corner, and his tail was tucked up under him between his legs. When he saw me, I thought he’d relax and come out. Maybe he had gotten himself stuck there all night and was anxious. That wasn’t the case, though. When he saw me, and I called his name, his eyes got really wide. He started pushing back trying to back up further but was already as far into the corner as he could be.
It took a lot of coaxing to get him out of there. He seemed really really scared of me. After a few hours of giving him some space (and a few extra treats) he seemed to warm up to me a bit again. The whole thing was pretty scary, but it seemed there was no harm, and after another day or two he seemed back to his old self. I couldn’t find his collar anywhere, but I had a spare. I tried to just brush it off as a weird night for him and move on.
Then a few days later, one of my roommates woke me by banging on my door with their fist. It was 4am. I opened the door with blurry eyes and asked what the deal was. They looked absolutely pissed. They flipped the script on me and asked me what the hell my deal was. I asked them what they were talking about, and they told me to follow them. I walked behind them in the dark of early morning to their room. They opened the door and sitting on the floor was a pile of all the pictures they had hanging in their room.
We’d been friends for years, so of course I was in quite a few of them. What was scary was each picture had everyone’s eyes scratched out. It looked like someone took a fork or a spoon or something and scraped it over each picture. The only one in any of the pictures without their eyes scratched out was me. At first, I didn’t get it. Why were they showing me this? Were they doing some art collage or something? Then they made it crystal clear that this was an accusation. They wanted to know why the hell I was breaking into their room, damaging their property, and being a total creep about it.
I told them that I had no idea what they were talking about, and I didn’t do shit to their stuff. They asked who did then, and I couldn’t answer. How could someone answer that question? It was 4am and they had pulled me into their room to ask why I scratched over all their pictures? That’s stupid. I told them I had been asleep and was just as confused as they were. They said whatever and told me to get out of their room.
The next few days they were super cold to me, and I guess my other roommate believed them because they were acting weird too. After a particularly uncomfortable morning of them giving me the silent treatment I blew up at them. I told them I’m sorry what happened to their pictures, but I really had nothing to do with it. They finally must have decided that without proof it would be too awkward around the apartment to continue being outwardly angry with me, so they agreed to just let it go.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of it. A few days later, I once again woke up to a fist pounding on the door. This time it was closer to 8am so I was less annoyed, though still a bit. It wasn’t on my room’s door, though. It was on the front door to the apartment. I opened it to find the building’s property manager, and a few of our neighbors standing there. I asked them what this was about, and they told me that my neighbors all noticed that someone had vandalized their front doors over the night. In front of each door was a dead pigeon, and someone had drawn what looked like an angry frowny face in each of the dead pigeon’s blood.
That was when I noticed that our apartment was the only door that was still clean, and no sign of any dead birds in front of it either. They said it was really suspicious that ours was the only one not affected. They asked if I knew anything about it. Of course, I told them I didn’t. They asked if my roommates were around. Unfortunately for me, the only one who was around was the one who’s pictures were ruined. As soon as I called for them, and they heard what happened, I felt their glare. The property manager and our neighbors noticed it too.
So once again I found myself having to explain to people that I was not doing this weird stuff. In fact, I was just as freaked out about this as they were. They ended up filing a police report, and my name was taken as a suspicious individual. My only bit of luck is that there wasn’t any proof of anything. Just lots of awkward elevator rides, and hushed voices when I walked past in the hall.
That’s when the worst thing happened. Well, the worst thing up until that point. I got up one weekend morning at about 8am, put on shoes, and took my dog for a walk. When I was coming back, I noticed on the elevator back to my floor that my dog seemed agitated. He was pulling on his leash a lot more, and his normally wagging tail was tucked up between his legs again. He kept taking glances at me in the elevator whenever I made a move.
When the door opened, I saw the hall was filled with people. The apartment next to mine had its door open, and what looked like a bloody handprint that arched and slid towards the ground. Everyone turned towards me. I saw the property manager whisper something to the police officer. He walked over and asked where I had been for the last six hours. Six hours? I told them I woke up about an hour ago and took my dog for a walk. One of my roommates was out in the hall, and said, “That was at 8am.”
I confirmed that was about when I left and said it must be about 9 now. They all looked at me funny. The police officer informed me that it was 2pm. That was a shock to say the least. They said no one had seen me in all this time, and where had I been. I was too stunned to reply. At this point my dog began getting even more antsy and was actively pulling away from both me and the open door of the apartment next to ours.
I asked what had happened, and they explained that our neighbor, Mr. Newstum had been stabbed to death in his apartment. If the missing time had shocked me, this was ten times worse to hear. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. The thought that someone could murder our neighbor so close to us and we didn’t notice was terrifying. Now this is when the police officer looked me dead in the eye and asked, “So, I’ll ask you again. Where have you been for the last six hours?”
They thought I killed our neighbor? I saw all the people in the hall look at me and seem to hold their breath. I stammered a bit as I told him the truth: I took my dog for a walk, and seriously had only thought I’d been gone an hour. The police officer let me know that they will be checking the lobby and elevator cameras to verify that. They said for now, I’m being detained under suspicion, and pulled me aside. Even cuffed me. One of my roommates had to take my dog. I’ve never seen him so happy to have them holding his leash. I was the one he was always so happy to walk with.
My stomach did somersaults while I sat waiting. They didn’t want to take me to the station until after they reviewed the tapes as the tape storage was on-site at the building. So, I sat for an hour… then two. Eventually, the police officer came back over to me (as I was seated in the lobby at this point), and uncuffed me. He told me they viewed the tapes for both elevators, the lobby, and even had another officer review them. All of them showed me leaving at 8am with my dog, and not returning until 2pm. I was cleared, but the damage had been done.
My roommates shared they weren’t comfortable living with me, and anyone who I saw in the hallway after that for the next few days seemed to skitter like small rodents hiding from whoever turned on the light. My roommates asked me to leave, but I refused. I told them how hurt I was that they really thought I did this even after my insistence, and even after the police confirmed my story.
It didn’t matter. They had been freaked out for weeks, and so they both ended up leaving me in the apartment alone. They didn’t tell me where they went, but I assume they went to stay with friends. Having the place to myself for the next few days turned out to be a real godsend. I needed to be alone after everyone in a five-block radius glaring at me or whispering behind my back. There were more details about Mr. Newstum, though. The kind that sent a tingle up my spine. Apparently, someone had messed with the crime scene hard when they killed him. The police report described it as an apparent occult murder. Symbols written in Mr. Newstum’s blood, animal bones, that sort of thing.
For the next few nights after the murder, I would wake up to the sound of someone pacing back and forth through the wall between my apartment and his. At one point, after deciding I had enough, I walked over and actually knocked on the door. No one answered, of course. And it only made matters worse because someone saw me doing it. 20 minutes later police were again at my front door. They asked why I had been spotted knocking on the door of the neighbor I was recently accused of killing. I told them I heard footsteps in his room.
I don’t know if they just took pity on me, or if they were getting freaked out by me. Either way, they let it go, and I went back to bed. Unfortunately, only for another hour or so because this time I was awoken to the sounds of someone slamming their fists on the wall between my apartment and Mr. Newstum’s. This time, I resolved to figure out what was going on without knocking on the door in the hallway. I remembered that Mr. Newstum and I shared a fire escape. So, I cracked the window, and crept my way to the window next door.
It looked pitch black in there. I rubbed my arms a bit as the wind was sending a chill right through me. Or perhaps it was the fear I felt. I thought about going back in for my winter gloves but didn’t want to linger too long. I leaned my face closely up to the window. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I instinctively felt up towards the top of the window. I’m not sure if Mr. Newstum ever noticed, but his window was unlocked. It slid open easily enough, and suddenly, I was standing in his bedroom.
It was quite and cold. The building manager must have turned off the heat in here. Inside was pretty much how I’d imagined it. Mr. Newstum must not have made the bed the day he…
I found myself in the living room, looking at the horrible stains of blood on the carpet, and the walls. Weird symbols written seemingly by fingertip. I wondered if they bothered to check for prints there. I suspected they must have, but it obviously didn’t lead anywhere. I took a peek to see if there was anywhere a person could be hiding. It was pretty open. Mr. Newstum obviously didn’t own a lot of stuff. He did have several stacks of random papers and magazines stacked all over, though. Turning around the coffee table, I got very acquainted with them. Mostly because I slipped on some and fell face first into the carpet.
I was dazed, and confused, and my face watch scratching up next to dried blood. However, lying face first on the ground, I saw something. A little glint of metal peeking out from under the couch. Instinctively, I reached for it. When I pulled it back, in my hand was my dog’s collar. The glint was his tag. The one that went missing weeks before. How did it get here? Did the dog come in here? At this point, I was freaking again. I hastily got to my feet, and went right back out the way I came in. Within a minute of finding the collar, I found myself standing back on the fire escape. I was breathing heavily and didn’t want to go back into my apartment. Hell, I didn’t even want to run into anyone in the hall.
So, instead I jumped down the fire escape. Went down all 7 floors and was expecting to have to let the ladder down to the street. It was already down, though. I scurried down the ladder landing just next to the dumpster behind the building. I let myself fall back and lean on the wall sliding to a seated position. I needed the fresh air. How did my dog’s collar get in Mr. Newstum’s apartment? After a moment of calming my own breathing, I realized I was sitting on something. I reached under me to find a pair of winter gloves. They looked just like the ones I owned, except on the right hand. The right index finger was covered in blood…