I live alone, obviously, things like this don’t happen to people with roommates. My apartment complex is pretty humble, nothing crazy. The neighbors are though. They would make noises all throughout the night, strange ones, imagine what it would sound like if a bunch of people were jumping up and down, slapping the floor with bare feet. Thin walls I guess. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone exit or enter the apartment. That was my only neighbor as I lived right on the corner of the building, on the third floor. I’ve always had trouble sleeping at night but the sounds emanating from the apartment next door only made it worse.
Tonight I saw the neighbor. He was leaving the apartment at the same time I was. My job starts at twelve in the morning working at the local gas station. He walked out at the exact second I opened my door. The guy was clearly on something which made the fact that he must have been 6’4” so much worse. He saw me and quickly went ahead of me to leave the building.
When I got back from work, around one a.m. I heard the strange noises, louder than ever coming from his door. I went inside my apartment, trying to ignore them, and got ready for bed. The noises stopped promptly when I got into my bed.
Deciding to see this as a good thing I tried to get some sleep. Then I heard it, the sound of whistling wind outside of the window above my bed. It wasn’t windy at all when I arrived back home. It was almost deafening, making the panes of glass shudder. I wrote it off as a squall and closed my eyes.
I woke up to something utterly sickening. I opened my curtains to let some light in and I saw it. A massive handprint right in the middle of my window. I lurched back, completely revolted. I attempted to wipe the print off with a paper towel, then I realized it was on the outside of the window.
At first, I was panic-stricken at the thought of someone breaking into my home and leaning over my bed to place their giant hand on my window. But now I was bewildered at the very notion of a handprint being on the other side of the glass. ´How the hell could anyone even get up there?¨ I thought to myself. I was on the third floor. The owner of the handprint would have to have scaled the side of my building and using only one hand, grasp onto the bricks lining the building while simultaneously placing a hand onto my window and climbing back down.
I was getting seriously freaked out at the thought of some total weirdo doing this to MY window. The sheer strength and effort it would take to perform an act like this was something only a true psychopath would feel was worth doing.
The neighbor came to talk to me last night. He knocked forcefully on my door at three in the morning. When I opened the door he towered over me, a wild look in his eyes. I was by no means small in stature either, being a 5´10 man, I wasn´t used to people being so much taller than me. I asked what was wrong in a trembling voice. He replied with a booming yet terrified tone ¨I think something is in my house.¨ I knew he used, it was clear in his appearance. Deep-set eyes, and a thin face. His skin was pocked with marks and scratches framed by long dark disheveled hair. ¨Meth.¨ I thought to myself.
The man was clearly having some kind of paranoid episode. He looked completely disturbed, whatever the hell he had experienced was clearly the stuff of nightmares. It was strange to see someone who looked so intimidating shaking like a scared child. ¨What did you see?¨ I replied. ¨I didn´t. I heard it.¨ Remembering the noises I had heard days prior, I asked what sound he heard.
¨It started with whistling, then it was the feet. I heard someone running through my apartment with bare feet, slapping the ground.¨ My jaw dropped in horror, he heard the whistling too. I asked with no hesitation, ¨Did you see the handprint too?¨ He stared at me, his glassy jade eyes widened in astonishment. ¨On the outside of the window…¨ He said slowly.
This was certainly a revelation, I wasn´t quite sure if I should be more scared that someone else saw it too, or relieved at the fact that I now had a large companion who could possibly defend whoever was doing this.
His name was Silas, a formidable title, it was fitting to say the least. As it turned out, he and I actually had quite a bit in common. We both were metal fans, privy to Iron Maiden and Metallica. One night, Silas and I were at my apartment listening to Master of Puppets and talking about life. Silas told me about his addiction and how it stemmed from the death of his son, Carlos. He had lost his son to a drunk driver and he never fully recovered, he turned to crystal meth after the loss and his wife left him after he became fiercely addicted.
I found in Silas a confidante I could tell anything to. He shared with me that the sounds had been going on for a while but he wrote it off, attributing it to the fact that he was chemically impaired most nights. The night he came to me though was when he realized it was something bigger than drug-addled paranoia. Silas had been trying to get clean and get his life back together, he´d been sober for almost a week and of sound mind. When he heard the slapping footsteps coming from his kitchen he knew that there was someone or something really doing this. He immediately left and knocked on my door, but later when he got back to his apartment he saw grimy footprints in strange patterns all over the floor in the kitchen.
I saw them myself, but the strangest part was that some of them were on the wall. Individually, like if you put one foot on the wall in different places. Horrified, I wondered if this would eventually happen to me. Silas´ apartment was a complete pigsty and stunk of burnt plastic but with a sweet undertone. He had newspapers taped up to every window and mirror. We talked about who could be doing this and how they got into his apartment. The police were no help, Silas was reluctant to call them because he´d had trouble with them before but I insisted. They came to investigate and to dust the prints but they matched none of the records on file.
No sign of forced entry was apparent, but this wasn´t the most secure building. In the seedy side of town, most crimes went unsolved. The cops didn´t care enough to continue the investigation since there wasn´t enough evidence. We decided that this was something we were gonna have to deal with this ourselves.
The first idea we came up with was to hide nanny cams all over Silas’ apartment. Silas knew the tech store on the other side of the tracks would have what we needed. They would buy old electronics on the cheap and fix them up to sell.
We arrived at the shop, taking Silas’ busted old orange truck. In the store, I was wandering around looking for the cameras, and suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. Turning around to face a teen girl that clearly worked at the store. She obviously thought I was going to steal something. “Can I help you?” The girl said rudely. She glared at me, her face studded with piercings. “Oh! I was just wondering where the nanny cams are.” Snapping her gum, “They’re in the back.” she hissed.
I checked out the back to see if her statement was true. Silas was already there. “Did you run into Medusa too?” he joked, clearly talking about the rude employee. “Let’s get out of here before she turns us into stone.” I quipped back. We purchased four cameras all for different corners of each room. After we got back to the apartment, Silas put each camera up, one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, one in the living room, and the last in his bedroom. I hooked the cameras up to my computer so we could watch from my apartment.
We watched for a while, Silas asked if I wanted him to make something for us to eat while I monitored the video feed. Nothing was really happening so I agreed. He went to my kitchen to make some pancakes for us. Immediately after he walked out of the room I saw something on the feed. It was grainy and hard to make out, but there was no mistaking it. ¨SILAS,¨ I yelled, ¨GET YOUR ASS IN HERE, IT´S ON THE CAMERA!¨ His large frame bolted in through the door, and his faded band tee was splattered with pancake batter. He approached the computer as we watched the static shape form in the dark. It came from underneath the couch in the living room. The shoddy old couch was incredibly close to the ground, anyone that could fit in there would have to be thin as a rake. First, I saw the skirt covering the gap under the couch shift.
A static noise hand reached out from under the couch, revealing itself from the cover. The hand looked thin and bony, but also gigantic, it had to have been the size of a plate, matching the ones dotted around our apartments. We were frozen in absolute terror. I couldn’t move, all I could do was watch as he crawled out from under the couch. At first, I had thought this could have been some kind of supernatural entity, I was always a believer in that kind of stuff. But as the man stood up, looking to be about 6’6’, I could tell he was of human descent. He was completely deformed, his face stretched down like some kind of flesh horse, and his eyes were bugged out and looking every which way.
The features this freak of nature possessed were so prominent I could see them clearly even with the bad video quality. I heard Silas throw up behind me, hyperventilating at the thought of that thing having been stalking him and watching him this whole time. Staring at the screen, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. He looked up at the cameras, his smile widened, teeth black and rotten. Moving away with a horrifying sluggish gait, the man walked to the kitchen. “Switch it.” Silas ordered. I did and almost immediately regretted my decision.
The thing had started walking on its hands upon entering the kitchen. Giant feet outstretched as if those were suddenly its new arms. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Silas was transfixed, a look of dread plastered on his face. Then it started doing something, attempting to use its feet to grab something. It grabbed a frying pan with its toes and feigned cooking with it, a giant smile on its face as it stared at the camera. Silas got up. “We’re calling the cops and showing them this.” I dialed the number, nine-nine-nine, while Silas manned the cameras.
The cops would arrive shortly. “It’s gone!” Silas shouted, “I only looked away for a second!” I frantically switched the cameras, finding them all obscured with some sort of dirt. A knock at the door came. Slow. Slow. Slow. Three slow knocks, each with about two seconds in between. Silas and I looked at each other with wide eyes. My friend grabbed the nearest object to use as a weapon, my switchblade sitting on the coffee table. He flipped it open, holding it up like a cross. We approached the door slowly. The knocking had stopped. I peered through the peephole, something was obscuring the tiny window though.
¨ It’s covering the door.¨ I whispered. As soon as I spoke a loud bang rattled the door, almost throwing me to the floor. Silas whipped the door open, ready to kill whatever the hell this thing was. Looking out into the hallway, nothing was there. I tried peeking down the hall but it was as barren as ever. Right when we were about to go back inside I felt something drip down onto the back of my neck. I grabbed Silas and pulled him back inside. ¨It was right above me…¨ I murmured softly. ¨IT FUCKING SPIT ON ME!¨ My tone rose. We heard the sirens and the cops showed up and knocked on my door.
I showed them the spit on my neck from it. They took a lab sample of it and Silas said that they should take a look at the footage. We took them to my room to look at the computer, but when we got in there it was completely trashed. I was in disbelief. My window panes were taken off, almost surgically. It had gotten into my fucking house after distracting us, destroyed the footage, and made us look like fools.
I couldn´t believe this. Then the police said something that set me the fuck off. ¨You know, this is kind of starting to look like some kind of elaborate prank.¨ One of the officers remarked. ¨A PRANK?! A FUCKING PRANK? ¨ I yelled. ¨Well, the most this guy could get is an attempted stalking, it seems like he had access to your apartment so it wouldn´t be considered a break-in.¨ ¨What the hell do you mean, ´had access to´? This fucker took my window out to get in!¨ I shouted. ¨Sorry but the most we can do is place a patrol car out in the parking lot.¨ One of the cops said blatantly as they exited the building, leaving Silas and me sitting on our asses. ¨I swear to God, human or not, I´m killing this fucking thing.¨ Silas snarled with rage.
I don´t know how it happened. I told him not to go back into his apartment. Silas got this thought into his head that if he sat waiting for it, he could finally confront this monster. He wouldn´t listen to reason, I eventually said that I could watch the cameras for him and call him if I see or hear anything over the feed.
Watching the feed, Silas was vigilantly perched in a chair facing that couch, holding his knives; one in each hand. Nothing happened for a couple of hours so Silas decided tonight was safe enough to sleep in his bed, I protested, saying he should just crash on my couch. But he wouldn´t hear it. Silas was ready to turn in when all of a sudden the cameras went black. I could still hear the gritty audio though. I heard slapping footsteps coming from all around, blaring out of the speakers.
The gurgling noises were the worst, I was frozen in shock. Pulling out my phone, I dialed the police again, telling them the situation and how much of an emergency this was. I went to Silas´ apartment door and saw that it was already open. I knew I shouldn´t have gone in by myself, but I needed to know if my friend was okay.
The door was cracked open, it almost looked like it was pulsating in anticipation of my entering. The darkness from behind the door was swirling, darker than delirium´s eye. Passing through the threshold was strange, it felt cold and wet inside, and the paper covering the windows was drenched with some kind of clear liquid. The carpet squished under my feet, it smelled of dank.
It was almost completely dark only lit by the dim light coming from the hallway. Venturing deeper, into Silas´ kitchen, I immediately vomited from what the meager light made visible. It was Silas. His body lay flat out on the tile. His face was twisted into an expression of confusion, rage, and terror combined. My friend´s legs were clearly broken to the point that they had liquified.
Bone shards were scattered around him. But Silas´ neck… That was what confused me. It looked like he had been choked to death, but instead of what would be handprints bruised into his skin, the marks looked more like they were made by feet.
I was enraged, this fucking thing thinks that it can terrorize my entire life and then kill my only friend in the entire world. The damn thing was probably watching my every move. ¨Get the fuck out here, I know you´re listening you goddamned freak!¨ I said, standing my ground. Planning on ripping his face off. I waited, and waited, for hours. Nothing came, not even the police.
Inside I knew that I would never see it again. Sometimes I wonder if I went crazy, there was never an investigation into Silas´ death.
I left that night, packed only my essentials, and drove off not knowing where I was headed. I´m typing this out on an old laptop I picked up from the tech store, the same rude worker staring me down. I don´t think I could blame her, I probably looked like shit.
I´m staying at a motel now just outside of town, but I need to finish this. I don´t care where you are, but f you hear that whistling, get the fuck out of there. And for God´s sake, don´t try to film it, they´ll never believe you.