Condemn It All

Today is the day you move into your new home.

Being nervous at a time like this is natural; you’re familiar with the feeling of twisting guts and hot blood and cold sweat. You turn off the moving van, shuddering to a stop, and the quiet in the cabin sounds like music to your ears. Moving vehicles, you’ve learned, are not quiet machines, and neither are the items you’ve carefully packed into the back. You withdraw your new key with a sigh and get to work.

It’s going to be a very long day. The sun isn’t even fully awake yet.

Your friend, Will, exits the passenger side and begins to help you by unloading boxes into makeshift pillars in the driveway. The soft slam of Will closing the door jolts you back to the moment. Your heart skips a few beats and guilty blood coagulates in your veins—how could you have forgotten about him? You realize you don’t recall most of the drive there. It’s not the first or second time this has happened over the past couple of days, and it’s really beginning to irk you: the feeling of wanting to remember while needing to forget.

At least Will understands your fatigue, anger, and hollowness ravaging your chest, and tries to keep conversation light. You really aren’t up for much of a conversation, though. The fact you parked close to your door of the tenement house does liquify some of your anger as to why you had to move—anger which you know is not for Will—but the other vacuous feelings remain.

You decide you ought to scope out the place to gain a feel for the floor layout and square footage—pictures of lived-in apartments online don’t always encapsulate the vacuum of empty space. Although, the ad seemed adequate, move-in date was immediately, which was something you needed, and rent was cheap. Three hundred dollars a month in a one-story complex for a one-bedroom unit is a steal around your area. As you gently pace through the house to accustom yourself to the environment, you realize this place is very… old. A vile yellow-orange colour peels in the corners by the trim, the baseboards have pine peeking through the cat scratches and dings, and the air smells of dusty hardwood and hairy, fraying carpet. The smell is remarkably church-like, although the recognition of the odor sends a chill down your spine.

You pop open the cupboards and drawers to find mouse droppings, silverfish, and, underneath the kitchen sink, a cockroach. The bathroom has mold growing in the grout and behind the toilet. The bedroom’s light switch won’t connect the circuit to the overhead light. Disgusted, horrified, and frustrated, you call the landlord. As per your lease agreement, the apartment was supposed to be cleaned before you arrived, so you look through your phone to locate the lease agreement and the landlord’s contact information. Yet, something in your periphery piques your interest.

To your left? A perfectly painted grey door. That’s odd, you muse, thinking of the flaking paint on the walls. To your recollection, you don’t remember seeing a grey door like this in the advertisement. You decide to open it, the door swinging into the basement to reveal a long, dark, my-dad-built-this set of stairs leading to a musty floor. The basement seems to swallow the foot of the stairs with its stenchy mouth of shadows.

Ice floods your veins and the miniscule hairs on the back of your neck stand firmly in your hardening goosebumps. Why does it feel like someone, maybe something—you push that thought away—is watching you?

You spin around, expecting Will.

There is no one else in the house with you.

***

You sit at home alone on the couch with your phone later that night, scrolling through what you may have missed today in the flurry of moving boxes and furniture and fragiles. The recent memory of your discussion with the landlord rattles in your head—the apartment can’t be cleaned until Friday. It’s Tuesday night. You roll over, sick of living in squalor, and a little shaken from your basement discovery.

Maybe thinking about how helpful Will was today will distract you from your mounting discomfort as you peruse your Facebook feed. Have you thanked him yet? You glance at the time; it’s past one in the morning. He’s definitely asleep by now. He can read your text in the morning.

You just open Messenger to send him a message when a terrible, heavy noise echoes through your apartment. An overwhelming sense of urgency surges over you—the clunky sound is rhythmic and elicits an image of limbs and torso and head clambering along both walls and the wooden steps. And you were certain it came from behind that basement door. The only stairs you are aware of are the ones that lead from this living room to the basement—you haven’t had the chance to explore the entire complex yet. Fearfully, you push the groaning door open, expecting the gruesome and the frightful.

No blood, no body, nothing. Just the rickety stairs and whatever lies right after them.

You slam the door shut and race to your bedroom, turn the lamp on, and crawl under your covers. You hope the false sense of security your blankets provide will come through this time, but instead, you toss and turn, wide-eyed all night, listening for any more noises.

They never come.

***

The only way you can sum up your first day on the new job is: “a complete ass-disaster.”

You leave the house as early as you can to a) get away from whatever the hell just happened in the house last night, b) grab as much coffee as you can get your hands on, and c) make a good impression with your new boss and trainer. You manage to accomplish the first two articles on this list, however, the phone call you receive from your landlord at 9:45 a.m. definitely makes the last task more challenging.

“Hi there” —you try to remember what his name was, and you go with— “David. What’s the matter?”

He lets out an exasperated sigh. “I received a call this morning; someone wants to file a noise complaint against you.”

You try your best to be relaxed and steady here. Did the neighbours hear that invisible body roll down the stairs, too? Do they think you murdered someone last night? “When was the call made, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“No earlier than 9:30 a.m.”

You become visibly agitated at this moment, and you look at your trainer’s concerned face before getting up from your desk chair. “David, with all due respect, I’m at work right now and have been since eight fifteen this morning.” You finally reach an empty hallway by shiny steel elevators. “I live alone. How can I be responsible for being loud when no one is in my apartment right now? Like… what did they hear?”

There’s an eerie pause on the other end of the line which evaporates as soon as it appears. “They said it sounded something like a heavy item or person hitting the floor, some woman screaming ‘no, please.’” You hold in a gasp. Why didn’t anyone call the police? “Listen, I’m going to give you some free advice. Maybe now is not the time to go around making enemies. This is your first warning.”

You quickly find a way to resolve the conversation instead of remaining argumentative and go back to your job—you’ve wasted too much time, anyway, dealing with the move and the noises and your oblivious landlord. Unfortunately, your day floats in and out like autumnal fog. Your trainer does their best to give you information, but it’s in one ear and out the other. On tightrope precarity, you make it through your workday relying on pure anxiety, caffeine, and adrenaline, completely defeated by your work performance.

***

You return home after work, absolutely drained, pull some leftovers from the fridge, and microwave them. It’s even difficult sitting on the couch, crying quietly into your bowl of rice and veg and meat. The depression leaves your usually delicious dinner tasting like cardboard. But only until a thick and heavy noise resonates uncomfortably from the neighbouring wall behind you in the living room. Something hits the partition hard enough to make the screws in the ceiling light rattle. A woman’s voice rings clear through the drywall and sheetrock. “No… please…! NO!! STOP!!!” A crunchy smack. And silence. The tears have stopped flowing across your hardened face.

This is the last straw. If your neighbours are going to fuck with your sanity and accuse you of doing what they are, you’re not pulling any punches. Yet something feels dreadfully dangerous about confronting them or even phoning the police. You don’t dare create a feud between two houses. Frantic, you lock the knob, deadbolt, and slide lock to prevent any intruders. You call your landlord immediately and describe the noise from next door, and the absolute irony of the present moment.

He takes a pause that chills the marrow in your bones. “No one has lived in that neighbouring apartment for years. Not after the tenants went to a party in your unit.”

Hastily and as kindly as you can muster, you ask what happened. “He threw her down your basement stairs when he discovered through a friend she was leaving him the next day. Wasn’t a really nice man, really. I hated dealing with him. Cops came by their place a few times for domestic assault calls. They don’t like to come around anymore when they do get a call—apparently it was pretty bad.”

At this point, you wish you could throw your landlord down the stairs. Not only is it unclean but you also have the worst non-living neighbours ever and a liar for a landlord. In a justifiable fit of rage, you explain through a series of profane lectures that you are severing the lease because this arrangement is too boisterous for someone with a quiet lifestyle like you and you have sanitation worries. You say you’ll pay your remaining month of the lease and that you wish things were different, this circumstance is just too much for you to handle. David says through a clenched jaw he understands, and for some reason he can’t seem to keep tenants in your unit. It boggles your mind how tightly that man can jam his mandibles together—you practically hear his teeth grinding through the earpiece.

His last words to you are “Good luck, you’re going to need it. And by the way? My name is Darcy.”

Darcy hangs up the phone, leaving you embarrassed and afraid. You call Will in a fit of panic and explain the situation. He offers to help and within a few minutes he’s there to help you begin loading pre-packed boxes into the back of his truck. You can’t divulge why, exactly, you need to leave tonight, you know you just have to. It feels oddly dire and confusing as the back of his truck flies open—which one of your neighbours called in a complaint? Shouldn’t David—you try again—Darcy have told you who complained? And why are you the only one there but seemingly never alone?

Luckily, the items you had just moved with you remain mostly in boxes in the shadowy corners and hallways of the dingy apartment. The task at hand prevents you from spiraling psychologically. He takes the last load to hold in his garage while you do a final sweep to make sure you got all you needed in the absolute frenzy that was packing. Before leaving, Will says he can house you for tonight, but tonight only. Even this small gesture makes your heart swell and your body warmer. You reach out and touch his shoulder and express your gratitude. It feels a bit lighter existing now because you now have options. It’s 3:00 a.m. on your phone and no one has called in a noise complaint despite the odd bang of a table leg into a wall or the odd cuss as you jam your fingers in doorframes. This strikes you as very peculiar.

A box was placed on the kitchen counter, the one with the miscellaneous items in it, and you distinctly remember putting it there so you wouldn’t forget. To your surprise, it has vanished. Maybe Will took it with him in the front seat with the last load…

Still, you need to give the place a once over to make sure nothing was left behind—you focus on finding that last box. With every single room searched and a few balls of tape in your pocket, you resolve the box is with Will and begin to make your final departure away from this… place. That is, until you hear a very firm knock-knock-knock behind the basement door. You call for your friend, even though you know damn well he is unloading your shit at his house right now.

Please don’t hurt me.

Without touching the knob, the slate grey door swings open of its own accord with a grating squeal, the box you left on the kitchen counter resting at the bottom of the stairway. You have never been further than the threshold up until now, but you choke back a scream as you race down the unstable steps and pick up your box. The bottom of the basement is earthy; you can tell by the way it smooshes under your shoes. The only thing you can see down here are the stairs behind you and the small box in your arms. Floating up from the back right corner of the basement is an odour that brings bile to your throat: acrid, vile, rotten, putrid—it smells like remains. Your only hope is they belonged to a dead cat.

You bolt back up the stairs to quickly slam the basement door shut before you see or smell anything else. Breathless and in a coughing fit, you press your forehead to the door, sweat dripping down the small of your back and between your shoulders. Ignorance is bliss, you think. The smell lingers in your nostrils, and it’s a struggle to keep yourself from vomiting.

After a moment, you regain your composure and turn around to exit. Instead of an empty living room, before you is a tall, shrouded figure laced in charcoal mists. Despite its fabric frailty, you immediately discern this… thing… could easily overtake you with its ungodly, humanoid form. Your only weapon is the apartment key residing in your pants’ pocket. The monster places one exclusively-bone index finger to the gaping hole where its face should be and releases a rattlesnake litany. “Shhhhhhhhhh.”

You realize the being only ever wanted peace and quiet after what it went through. Your presence here, the blood beating through your body, the crashing waves of your breathing, the violence of your existence: these things disturbed a diabolical empathy far larger than you could have ever dreamed of or tried to comprehend. In the hideousness of this truth, you fully understand why this might be happening to you. The basement door flies open at the slim shadow’s graceful but inhumanely powerful gesture.

The creature rattles again, this time as a mother would soothe an upset child, and it relaxes you as dark curtain rod-length arms envelop you with a gentle scent of velvety earth. It encompasses its wispy tentacles around you as a cloudy paddle for a hand gently presses into your chest. Your feet fall out from under you and the cloud releases you, but you swear you’re floating through the darkness. Despite the creature’s vengeance, your fate feels almost kind. You thank her: the shadow.

The box of odds and ends crashes to the threshold of the living room but you can’t hear it; you’re only able to see the pens, papers, and magnets fly out the top. At last, when you stop moving, you realize the soft but rigid earth and the key in your pocket are the last things you’re going to feel.

But at least it is finally quiet.