Crik-Cunk, The Unwanted Guest

When did I first start hearing strange sounds at night? That’s an easy enough question to answer. I hear strange sounds every night! If you mean the devilish sights and sounds that drove me from my previous apartment, well… Those I heard in the early hours of July 17, 2020, the last night I was caught unaware by the things that go bump in the night.

Then, as now, I was working remotely as a web designer. It was still relatively early in the pandemic. The mandatory lockdown order had been lifted, but we still weren’t sure whether masks were the best way of preventing the transmission, or if it was necessary to wipe down our groceries with Lysol wipes. I was living in a rusty nail of a studio apartment at the Gentle Giant.

At the time of the incident, I was redesigning the website for a local deli. It was a family business, and the patriarch mostly spoke in Chinese, with his son translating whenever he couldn’t find the right words.  I realized these were not the sort of clients who’d thoroughly check to make sure their site was free of spelling and grammatical errors or visit with multiple devices to make sure their site scaled properly for all screen sizes. I was sure that any mistakes I might make would be so minute that the owners would not be the wiser. It wasn’t like I needed to be fully functional while writing and reviewing HTML and JavaScript for a local deli’s website. During those days of the pandemic, every local business that didn’t know how to update their websites was looking to add pages detailing their takeout and delivery plans.

This is when I must put out the disclaimer that I am an alcoholic, and these first months of the pandemic I lived on a steady diet of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and freshly mixed screwdrivers. Working from home allowed me to become a full-time functioning alcoholic. During Zoom calls, I developed an effective technique for mixing store brand orange juice and Ketel One Vodka under my desk while reviewing jobs with clients. 

You’re probably tut-tutting me, but you really ought to cut me some slack. Who wasn’t shoulder deep in their liquor cabinet at the start of this horror show?  I was unideal employee, but I was doing as well as you could expect for the bargain rates I was charging.

Honestly, I’m thankful to have had a job that allowed me to work from home. Two years earlier and I might have been fated to fall in line with the other “essential workers” at Whole Foods, stuck struggling to maintain social distance while customers clamored for whale placenta or whatever cockamamie organic remedy Dr. Oz had been promoting that week. A three-month web design course fixed that. While most of the economy fell into economic purgatory, I was keeping busy. After doing five of these restaurant websites in the past two weeks, I felt I could do this work in my sleep.  

Anyways, it was just past midnight, the first hour of July 17th, and I was lackadaisically reviewing the deli website, listening to a podcast about abandoned World War II bunkers when I first heard the sound:

Crik-cunk.

I didn’t make a fuss the first time I heard that crik-cunk sound. A slight thumping sound isn’t the strangest thing one can hear in a janky apartment complex in the early hours of the morning. Believe me, I know. So, I resumed work, double-checking to see that links to Uber Eats and Grub Hub were in working order. I touched my coffee cup, wondering if I should pop another pod in the Keurig, or call it a night as soon as I was done with this review.

Crik-cunk, crik-cunk!

This double cunking was loud enough to make me lower my headphones and pause the podcast I’d been listening to. Instead of going away, the sound continues.

Crik-cunk, crik-cunk, crik-cunk.

It was going faster now. For some reason, I imagine a small cartoon pirate of the Long John Silver variety dragging around his peg leg against the supports of my studio apartment’s wall.

Could it be my neighbor?

My neighbor was a Bob Marley looking fella who played the electric guitar. He was quite good, if I was being honest; although, he occasionally practiced in the late hours of the night, which I considered my peak coding periods.

Could he be dragging something against his side of the wall? There wasn’t anything melodic about the crik-cunk, so I was hesitant to assign blame, but I must say that part of the reason I worked freelance was so I could work my own hours, and the reason I set my own hours was to avoid distractions from noisy neighbors.

My thoughts now took a detour through the macabre. What if my neighbor was having a seizure? Maybe he was on the other side, spazzing against the wall. Did I have any responsibility to check-in on him? I didn’t even know if he had a partner or roommate sharing the apartment; or if it was another studio or one-bedroom unit. The idea of getting to know your neighbor in an apartment complex seems so archaic; like that’s what people did before the internet and social networking.

I wonder what the official procedures would be if my neighbor croaked. Would I be questioned by the medical examiner or the police? I’d feel a little shame if a police officer stood across from me, pencil and notebook at the ready, asking if I’d heard anything the night before. I’d have to stand there and say, “Why yes, officer, I heard a strange sound through the walls at the exact moment my musically gifted neighbor was shuffled off this mortal coil.” I wouldn’t actually word it that way, of course, but I have to imagine the officer would leave thinking I was an insensitive moron.

Maybe I should walk over and check in on him, I thought to myself. If I walked over and asked, I would be able to verify whether my neighbor could also hear the sound. People who appeared perfectly healthy went and died out of the blue all the time. Bam! Gone.

Crik-cunk!

No. I couldn’t just wander over and ask my neighbor whether he was hearing the same sound in the walls. Maybe if it were nine, ten or even eleven o’clock, but not at one in the morning. How thrilled would I be if I had some skittish neighbor pounding my door in the wee hours of the morning because he heard a spooky sound? I’d be liable to ring his neck!

Gentle Giant Apartments was in a state of disrepair and the list of suspects for what could be producing the sounds would fill the three-story stairwell. It could be the old electrical systems acting up, or the water pipes. It would be embarrassing to walk outside now, knock on my neighbor’s door and inquire about the crik-cunk only to figure out it was some loose pipes rattling about.

Crik-crik, cunk-cunk.

Maybe it’s just a rat. I’ve seen them scurrying about near the dumpsters enough times to know the apartment complex is inundated with pesky rodents. I remember rats used to get in my family home all the time when I was young.

Crik-cunk!

That one actually managed to rattle the wall, causing me to jump.

On second thought… perhaps it was something even larger than a rat; a raccoon or an opossum weren’t outside the realm of possibility. Given the level of neglect the Gentle Giant’s landlord had allowed to befall the complex, I pictured countless holes scattered about the roof where any number of things between the size of a house finch and coyote could probably squeeze their way in.

Yeah. I figure a coyote in the wall wouldn’t be the most shocking thing I’d encountered since moving in. When I first moved into my apartment two years earlier, it smelled of piss and I had to periodically spray the carpet for bugs. This infestation was so severe, I once asked the landlord whether it would be possible to remove the carpeting entirely. I was given a definite no, which I assume was for the best. Knowing Gentle Giant, the wood was probably swarming with termites and the only thing keeping me from plunging through the floor was a mix of duct tape, twine and the owner’s stubborn pride.  

However, the greatest headache I suffered under Gentle Giant came my first summer. That’s when the window mounted air condition unit fell, taking out a good portion of the windowsill with it, leaving me to a wonderful, prolonged discussion with my landlord about liability (never mind that it might have killed someone if they’d been walking on the sidewalk below when it happened). Even now, there’s a slight gap between the windowsill and my A/C unit where the old beast of machine had splintered the wood. I covered this over with a piece of duct tape and figured that’d be good enough.

Such is but a taste of my glamorous lifestyle at the Gentle Giant.  

What few friends I’d had over to the apartment before the pandemic were always shocked that I could stand living in such a dump. “This dump,” I’d patiently explain, “is saving me five-hundred dollars a month. That’s five-hundred dollars more for savings, pizza, weed and booze.”

No one ever argued against that.

Crik-cunk!

Whatever, I thought. So long as whatever was crik-crik-cunking in my wall didn’t burst through the plaster and cover me in a cloud of asbestos, I figured it was best to return to my work and sort it out in the morning.

I put my headphones back on and turned up the volume. As I shuffled through my music library, I came to settle on Iron Maiden’s “Fear of the Dark.” That only seemed appropriate as I dove back into the digital realm of soup and sandwich delivery.

It wasn’t until I called it a night at 2:30AM that I began to worry about what might be crik-cunking in my apartment walls. The first thing I did after calling it a night was shut down my work laptop and switch to my tablet for casual media consumption. Being a studio apartment, my bed was only a few steps away from my desk, and the only other room I had was the bathroom.

It wasn’t long before I learned the damned sound wasn’t going away.

Crik-cunk!

I groaned, longing for an Ambien. The pill wouldn’t make the crik-cunking stop, but it would render it moot the instant I fell off to sleep.  I stopped taking those years back because I couldn’t control the things I said or did in those periods between popping the sedative and actually falling asleep. If you’ve not taken it before, things can get wild when you’re under the influence of Ambien. If you want a taste, there’s an entire subreddit devoted to ‘Things I did on Ambien,’ with people describing how they see kaleidoscopes of colors or suddenly feeling the urge to shave their balls. Personally, I had to give it up because I was an Ambien shopaholic. There were too many days I opened my mailbox to find odds and ends I’d ordered off eBay while under the influence of this tricksy little pill. 

I stared up at the ceiling. I raised a finger and traced the water stains in the ceiling. I wonder if those stains were from the 2017 hurricane, or if they were culminative efforts of multiple storms over the past fifty years. In the corner there is a collection of holes that look like three bottle caps arranged in a triangle.

Crik-cunk!

“Would you be quiet?” I shouted, tossing my tablet to the carpet beside my bed. “You’ve been going at it, ‘crik-cunk, crik-cunk’ for almost three hours!”

The last thing I expected my outburst to receive was a spoken response.  

“Pardon me. It’s awfully tight in these walls.”  A voice, light as a bell, and cold as steel floated through the air. “You wouldn’t mind if I popped myself in, would you?”

The voice wouldn’t have been at all out of place in a bedtime story. But those couldn’t be…

“Well? It’s mighty rude to keep a visitor waiting,” the voice added.  

“Wh-who’s that?” I stammered, eyes darting back and forth from my door to the bathroom to my desk and back again.”

“Someone who needs a place to sleep,” the voice said matter-of-factly.

Crik-cunk.

“Yeah, right,” I said, “Of course you do.” I picked up my phone from the bedside table, getting 9-1-1 at the ready. “How about you piss off before I call the police?”

“Why would you do that?” The voice replied, accompanied by the flitter of wings. “Say, what might your name be, humble code monkey?” I realized the voice was now coming from somewhere overhead.

Don’t tell it your name! I thought, recalling various bedtime stories I’d been told as a child. Giving mysterious creatures your proper name was as risky as inviting a vampire in for coffee. You just don’t do it if you value your skin and bones.

Crik-cunk.

My eyes scan the ceiling once more. Left, right, from one water stain to another, until I settled on those three holes in the center. Instead of darkness, there looked back a pair of bright yellow eyes.

“Not one for sharing your name, are you?” There was a melodic giggle, like a small copper flute. “I see you have room to spare. Why don’t you let me in?”

“What the hell…” I said incredulously. Was this someone’s idea of a sick joke?

“You weren’t paying close enough attention to your work, so I figured you could use a hand.” The yellow eyes bore into me, unblinking and filled with the cold malice of a child holding a magnifying glass over a colony of ants. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to type that Chin’s Deli serves the best Rot Beef Sandwich. Although, I must admit, I found that most amusing!”

“How do you know what it says?”

“By watching you, of course.” Whoever the speaker was clearly delighted in my discomfort. “I also know you wish you could have another shot of Jack Daniels. Perhaps that’s what I’ll call you: Jack!”

I turned on my phone’s flashlight and pointed it directly at those eyes. There was a hiss and another flitter of wings, and, just like that, the eyes were gone.

Crik-cunk, crik-cunk, crik cunk!

And then… Silence once again.

I approach the holes, flashlight trained on the ceiling. Around the corners I see a strange, twinkling residue. I am tempted to collect a sample, but it I don’t want to go sticking my fingers where whatever that thing was might get a hold of them. Who knew if—

Crik-crriiiiiii…  

Instead of a cunk there was a pulling, tearing sound, as if…

I snapped around, and, in the glow of my flashlight I could see the creature on my windowsill, squeezing its hand past the duct tape, trying to tear its way in! There was no time to think. I raced across the room, grabbing the nearest book I could and slamming it down on its hand.

There at the window I finally saw my tormentor. It had pale blue skin stretched tight over a bony little body that hardly seemed capable of supporting its softball sized head. It grinned at me with its mouth full of triangle teeth and with a flutter of crimson wings.  

“Ow!” The creature squeaked with mild irritation. Still, its hand appeared unharmed and continued to pull at the duct tape. “That’s no way to treat a guest.”

I slammed the book and held it in place. The only thing that mattered was keeping the bastard out of my apartment. And so, I held the book in place all night long.

After the events of July 17^th, I spent the next two weeks at a friend’s house, and, by the end of the month, I’d moved. It was a pain in the ass, scheduling a move on such short notice in the middle of a pandemic, but I had enough money to break the lease with ease. I moved to the northside of town to a single bedroom apartment that cost an extra grand every month, but I felt secure. There were no flocks of rats huddled around the garbage chute, no holes in the ceiling, and no duct tape on the windows. It was a perfectly serviceable, boring apartment, and I liked it just the way it was.

When friends ask why I cleaned up, I tell them I couldn’t have possibly gone on living the schlubby bachelor route forever. I didn’t tell them it’s because I never wanted to see a pair of eyes peeking through my window, or small hands reaching through my window.

A year later, I’ve not touched the bottle since then and I’ve become a model employee, even trading in my freelancer hat for a full-time job. By all outside observations, my life has improved dramatically. At least, that’s what everyone who sees me in my new buttoned shirts and slacks would believe looking in.  They don’t notice how all my windows have been welded shut, the three additional locks I’ve installed to the door, or how I’ve fastened chicken wire over the airduct in my bedroom. They don’t notice because I don’t let anyone inside my new apartment. This is my space, and I refuse to share it with anyone.

Even now, whenever I lie down for the night, I fear I’ll hear that familiar sound echoing in the dark…

Crik-cunk.