I only saw the old man who moved into the apartment next door once, and that was on the morning he arrived. He was polite enough, wishing me a cheerful ‘good day’ and he looked smart in a shirt and bow tie combination that only gentlemen of a certain age can really pull off. His hair was thin and white but not unkempt, combed neatly over in a side-parting. And then he was inside, the door was closed and I didn’t see him again.
I certainly heard him, though. I mean, everyone’s noisy sometimes, aren’t they? You expect it in a place like this. The walls between these apartments are hardly thick and I heard the young couple who lived on the other side before him occasionally but they were quiet as a mouse, in comparison. He made an awful lot of noise for such an old fella.
He was always shouting. I presumed he was shouting at someone on his phone or his TV and that he was a little hard of hearing, perhaps. Maybe he was just shouting to himself. There were loud thumps sometimes and I often became concerned that he might have fallen but then the shouting would resume and I figured he must have been all right. I’d no idea what the hell he was up to but I was able to sleep through it and I decided it was really none of my business. I resolved to ignore the noise as best I could and keep one ear on it, in case I needed to call someone.
A couple of weeks in, I ended up knocking on his door anyway. In part, I wanted to make sure he was doing ok but I was mainly there because I wanted to see if my showing up in person might be what nudged him into keeping the noise to a respectful level. It had, gradually, gotten substantially louder, to the point that he was starting to wake me up in the middle of the night.
When I knocked on the door the shouting stopped, so I knew he’d heard me. He didn’t answer though. I knocked again but after a few minutes it became apparent that he wasn’t going to speak to me so I went back and, as soon as I shut my apartment door, the shouting started again.
The noise continued to get worse over the coming weeks. The thumps escalated to occasional crashes. The shouting got louder and more intense. I couldn’t quite make out his words but he was obviously very angry about something and it was frightening to hear, even more so when, one night, he suddenly started banging on my wall.
Now, I am not a noisy person. I know this. I never listen to music without my headphones on and I scarcely even have time to watch movies. When I still lived at home, my parents often thought I’d gone out because of how quietly I sat up in my room by myself, drawing or reading or whatever. There was really no reason for him to be banging on my wall and that just made the whole thing all the more scary. He was clearly irrational and it crossed my mind that he might be having some sort of breakdown. I was worried about him, sure, but far more worried about the danger I might have been in. I was reluctant to call the cops, though, until at least I was sure I really had to. Nobody likes a snitch. I hung on a little longer.
In a couple of short days it all became unbearable. He was practically screaming now, yelling awful, vulgar words in a furious rage at the top of his voice. The banging on the wall got louder and more violent to the point that I was sure he was throwing things at it. The impact made my pictures rattle and fall down.
Last night, among the dreadful roars and the demolition job he was doing on his apartment, he screamed my name. I heard the words, clear as a bell and I went cold. The idea of all that rage being directed at me was simply terrifying. I didn’t even want to think about how he knew my middle name - I hadn’t used it for years. There and then, I called the cops.
I almost didn’t hear them arrive. I’d put my headphones on shortly after I’d made the call so I didn’t have to listen to the awful sounds coming from the other apartment while I sat there waiting for help. It was by pure chance that they knocked during a gap between songs.
There were two officers, a young man and an older one. Both had moustaches, I noticed. The younger one did all the talking. He asked to double check a few details first, so I told him when the noise started, what sort of sounds I’d heard, how well I knew the tenant and, lastly, that I had, very clearly, heard him shout my name. I gave dates and times. I’d kept a log.
He was very pleasant, thanking me for the call and reassuring me that there was nothing to worry about but he kept repeating himself, a little incredulously. Are you sure the noise was from that side? For four weeks? And he definitely called your name?
I pressed him to find out why it was that they didn’t seem to believe me and he shrugged as he told me, finally, that they just couldn’t fathom where the noise would have been coming from. They had already gained entry to the apartment, you see, and found the old guy on the floor in the kitchen. He’d probably been lying there for about a month - likely since the day he’d moved in.
He was dead.
The younger cop carried on talking but I was only half-listening. I think he said the old man had taken a tumble and cracked his head on the way down. That there hadn’t been anyone else inside. He said something about the smell.
The officers went out into the corridor to do whatever it was they needed to do and I just stood there with the door open, staring at nothing. My God, could I smell him now.
I knew I had to get out of there so I started packing as fast as I could. I wasn’t sure where I was going but decided to worry about that later, rather than spend another night in that place.
The authorities busied around for a short while and later, some more people came to take the body away. Eventually, they locked up the door behind them and left the old man’s apartment empty.
As I heard the ambulance pull away, the banging started again.