Collage 2

It’s been a couple months since I moved into this house. I don’t own it, there’s a portly landlord. I met her when I moved in and she handed me the keys and the documentation for my new place. Didn’t think much of her at first. Not to be mean, but she’s the kind of person who’s hard to remember once you’re not looking at her. Not ugly, just plain looking. Handed me the keys and said that if I ever lost them or something like that, she had a spare set in her house.

So, I settled in and moved all my stuff in and such. Initially it was great; my previous place was a third of the size and situated further from the city centre and university. Initially I was very happy. The place was pretty, too; A two-story house built with red bricks and a black slate roof. A massive tree dominates the front garden, and the back-garden has enough fencing to insulate against the noise of the street outside. The landlord told me that she kept her tools and equipment in the basement and that it’s otherwise cold and damp, so I never saw any reason to go down there, really.

Then, one evening, following a glass of wine or two, I was about to head to bed. I was walking into my bedroom to slip into bed when I spied something in the window. I haven’t told much of this story to anyone, because they would think I had gone mad, but I think I have bigger problems now. In the window I saw someone looking at me. I was afraid at first, very afraid. Seeing someone spying on you in the privacy of your own home is unnerving, but then I just got angry. I shouted at them, demanded to know who they were and called them a creep, a pervert and ran to the window. Either because they had clearly been noticed or because I was shouting, they vanished from sight. I got there a moment later and opened the window to find them, but they were nowhere to be seen. I also realised I had not thought of another aspect; that I lived on the first floor, and to look in my window like that they would have needed a ladder or some serious climbing skill. I ran outside in my nightclothes to try and catch them before they got away, but no dice.

I considered mentioning it to my landlord, but as I said, I haven’t mentioned much of this to anyone. So, I kept it to myself. Over the next few weeks, I often felt watched, even after I purchased blackout-curtains for all of my windows. I would be in the shower and catch glimpses of someone in the glass-door. The curtains were only drawn aside when I left my house on errands, schoolwork or to meet friends and family, something I did increasingly as my unease grew.

I lost an entire night of sleep once in that first period. I had been feeling uneasy ever since I woke up, even more than usual, so I felt very relieved when the feeling subsided around dinnertime. In my relief, I managed to get a lot of work done and was exhausted by bedtime. But as I went to bed and could feel myself drifting off to sleep, I heard someone trying the door to my room. I shudder to think what would have happened if I didn’t habitually lock the door to my room when I go to bed. They try the locked door a few times before giving up. I asked them who they were and what they wanted, but I got no response. While the uneasy feeling of being watched did not return all night, the events of those few seconds left me so scared that I could not catch a wink of sleep. I considered dragging my clothing-cabinet in front of the door, but I was too tired to do anything about it.

When I finally gave up on sleep and rose from my bed, it still took me most of an hour to get dressed and leave my room. I locked the door to my room behind me and checked every single room on my floor before venturing downstairs. The front door to the entrance-hall, and as such to the stairway that led to my floor, was still closed and locked. Concluding that it must have been my downstairs-neighbour trying to play some weird trick on me, I knocked on his door. There was no response at first, so I knocked again. Eventually I heard shuffling from behind the door and I heard him asking what I wanted and that was in the middle of the night. When I explained what had happened, he said it wasn’t him and to not bother him so late at night, then left. I tried to knock again, but he did not respond after that. I hope he will respond the next time.

I didn’t know what was happening, and like any sane individual, I assumed it must have a logical basis. Someone was stalking me or casing my house to rob me. That was what I thought, but several elements caused me to not raise the alarm with my neighbour or with the landlord. Factors like the mysterious disappearance of my observer on that first night and the seeming absence of anything they could have used to scale the wall, how I felt watched even when all the curtains were drawn. And after the attempted break-in that night, my neighbour claimed it wasn’t them. They could have been lying, but the tiredness in their voice seemed too real to me to be fabricated. I am not normally one given to paranoia or delusions, if that has any bearing on the matter.

So far, all the events had transpired while I was in the house. My first sighting had in the window of my bedroom from the door, and the attempted break-in had been while I was in my bed. The feeling of being watched also only seemed to occur while I was inside the house. So, I was especially unnerved when, one day, I was in the garden, reading up on some coursework and sipping a coffee, when I felt gooseflesh on my neck. I tried to ignore it, focus on my book, but it grew stronger, so strong that, instead of looking up, I became intensely afraid of what I would see. I became aware that, ever since that first sighting in the window, I had not seen my stalker again. Even though I felt watched near every day and they had even tried to gain access to my room while I should have been sleeping, I had not seen them more than that one time.

There had been another reason I had not informed anyone else of what had been happening. That face that I saw briefly in my window had had an eerie quality to it. I had found it hard to place at the time, and simply attributed it to the shock of the situation, but now that I lowered my book and scanned around the garden, I could not get the mental image of that pale, drawn face and those wide eyes out of my head. At the time, I would have called it haunting, and were I in a lighter situation now, I would laugh at that. I saw it quickly, and for a moment I was stunned, unable to breathe or move or even scream. There on the first story, in the window that I could vaguely recognise as looking into my bedroom, I saw a person standing, looking down at me. They had long hair that looked brown or red from the distance. I wasn’t sure, and it looked filthy enough that it could be either. They wore a pale-coloured frock like something from a hospital or an insane asylum and simply stood there, clearly looking at me. I vaguely registered that the frock had an enormous, red stain across the front of it before I managed to stumble out of my chair. I didn’t even notice my book hit the dirt or the garden-table I was sitting at topple over. I can’t remember everything I did then, only that I screamed. It was a wonder no one came to check on me, even the neighbours. Maybe my behaviour frightened my onlooker, for they looked at me one last time then vanished into the darkness of the room. I wasn’t sure if they were leaving or coming down for me, so I felt I had to hide. I looked around the garden, but it was manicured and useless. Then my eyes fell on the door that led to the basement. The landlord had said that she keeps equipment down there and maybe I could hide there or use it as a weapon.

I abandoned my book and ran for the basement entrance. The door was heavy but, in my desperation, it only took me a few seconds to open it. I kept hold of it so I wouldn’t bang on the floor and hurried inside then closed the door behind me. It boomed shut and left me in darkness, but that darkness was still more comforting than whatever had stared at me from my room. I fumbled in the darkness for a moment until my fingers hit the light-switch. The basement was nothing special, at first at least. Walls covered in white plaster and a low ceiling. An naked lightbulb hung down to my face and provided the only illumination in the narrow hallway. I could see 3 doors, one of which was closed. Part of me wanted to stay by the door and keep it shut, but I also wanted to see if I could find something to use as a weapon. After inspecting the door for a possible lock, I ventured into the closest room.

The ceiling was taller, and the room was uncomfortably warm. After a moment I noticed why; an air-condition unit was blowing into this room, carrying an uncomfortable smell I couldn’t identify. Machines and tools for maintaining the garden stood leaning on walls or arranged on small tables. I was tempted to grab one of the motorised saws, go at my stalker like something from a cliché slasher-movie, but I decided against it. I would be more likely to injure myself than my stalker. I will readily admit I am not well practised at any tool-use, especially not those for gardening. But I noticed a large number of knives and saws arranged around the room in neat rows. Judging by their handles, they seemed well-used, too. Eventually I settled on a fire-axe leaning against the far wall. I felt more comfortable with the makeshift weapon in my hands and returned to the corridor.

The first thing I noticed was a cool breeze from my left, and that it was noticeably brighter in the corridor. Looking up, I saw that the door that I had left closed was now wide open. Even as I stood stunned, someone stepped into the light. For the second time that day I stumbled backwards. If I hadn’t hit the plaster wall, I would have fallen on my ass. My white-frocked stalker stood at the top of the stairs. I had never been so close to them, and now some more details stood out to me, even though I was practically frozen with fear.

They were clearly a young woman. Her brown hair extended almost down to her waist and could have covered the red stain on their frock if they so wished. The red stain looked like blood to me. It could have been red paint, but for some reason I was sure it was blood. It was also still dripping, leaving crimson droplets on the stairs as she walked down towards me. Her eyes were bloodshot and wide, staring fixedly at me without blinking. I felt I had seen them before, somehow. Before all this started. But as she took the last step down and stepped onto the floor of the corridor, my survival instincts overcame my fear enough for me to move; I pushed away from the wall and ran. I still had the axe in my hand, but I had given up all thoughts of using it. I just wanted to escape. I could feel her gaze, feel her following me. The corridor was not long, and it did not take many seconds before I stood before the remaining two doors. One was closed, and the other led into a white-tiled bathroom. At this point I should reiterate that I was not thinking straight, or to put it differently, I was panicking. I sprinted into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. I looked for the lock, but when it was not immediately apparent, I decided to let it be. The bathroom was small and narrow, with just enough space for a toilet, a sink and a curtained shower. A detached part of me noted that the curtain was a transparent, plastic sheet. Cleaning agents of various kinds littered the floor with the most of it being cheap bleach. In my panic I thought no further on these hurried observations. Seeing no window or other means of escape, I threw myself against the door. There I stood for maybe a minute while I tried to catch my breath. During this time, I realised I still had the axe in my hand and that I had not even tried to use it. I then came up with a simple plan; I would wait for my pursuer to try the door, then open it and attack in the moment of surprise. At this stage, I still persisted in believing my pursuer to be a human like me. I wanted to believe that. It was only what happened next that shattered that belief.

I stood at that door and pressed my body to it as best as I could, waiting for pressure from the other side or the noise of the handle moving. So focused was I on this that it took me a moment to notice what was going on in the room I was in. The toilet gulped. I barely noticed the sound. Water splashed out of the bowl and onto the floor. When I registered it and looked to the source of the noise, I saw something that rekindled the panic I had felt in the doorway. An arm was reaching out of the toilet. As I watched, it grabbed onto the cistern and pulled. Next came the head and the other arm. My stalker had followed me, but not through a door. Their entrance was slow and laborious, but I was practically paralysed with fear. It wasn’t until one of her feet slapped onto the tiled floor that I woke to my senses and turned to the door. In that motion I noticed a key hanging off a hook on the inside of the door. I grabbed it, snapping its cord in the process, and ripped open the door. I slammed it shut behind it, more out of instinct than any hope it would change matters. I turned to the corridor to escape, but my heart caught in my throat. Somehow my pursuer was already there. She stood in the centre of the corridor, still dripping blood onto the floor. There was one door left, and I had to hope that the key in my hands would open the door. I spun in place and rammed the key into the keyhole, hitting it perfectly. Small victories, I suppose. The key turned smoothly, and I heard the click as it unlocked. I pushed at the door with strength born from panic and entered the room, not looking to see if I was followed.

The room I found was split into two main sections, and I quickly found why it was locked. One side was covered in sheets of transparent plastic, tape, and linoleum flooring. More bottles of bleach stood at the edge of it all. The other side was what caught my attention. A worktable stood beneath a large corkboard covered with paper clippings. The table was like a kindergarten hobby-table; small scissors, glue and piles of paper and other parts. I approached the corkboard, only dimly aware of the squeaking door behind me. The clippings were from newspapers from all over the country. There I found why the face of my pursuer was recognizable; it was the face of a young woman who had been found murdered in this very town some 5 years back. They had never found the killer. The other newspaper clippings were of similar cases; young people found murdered all over the country, the identity of their murderer usually a mystery. I noticed one where they had arrested a suspect, and the word WRONG had been written in red marker-pen on the clipping. My pursuer had joined me in the room, but they were not following me now. She walked past me without any attention towards the worktable and went to stand in the other section of the room. She sat down on that linoleum floor and stared at me. Her stare was still frightening, but my mind had begun to put two and two together. All the newspaper clippings, the over-abundance of saws and knives and all the cleaning agents around the basement.

So here I am now, sitting in my apartment, wondering what to tell the cops, how to break the news. I haven’t seen my serial-killer landlord, or my pursuer, since I left the basement. I made sure to close all the doors and lock the ones that were locked when I arrived, but I can’t imagine I’ll have much time.