Creepy Tales, Page 2

  ****

  A Series of Strange Occurrences

  Unlike in stories, mysterious events cause anger and confusion rather than terror when they happen for real. I became obsessed with the events at my old apartment building for a while as I tried to piece together some explanation, but, as I reach a full year since my departure, I have to accept that I will never get closure. Posting them here is my way of releasing them into the world to become someone else's problem.

  Our nickname for the building in question was the Old. It was a 1920s construct populated by a distinct mix of young college students and older couples who were mainly without children. There were five students other than myself on the top floor, and about thirty adult residents on the lower floors - so we literally called the building "the Old" as our way of recognizing that we felt out of place passing grey-haired working men in the stairwell.

  They didn't like us much, either, so we tended to suffer the symptoms of the aging building without complaint. Early last December, the building's furnace broke down. It stayed off for nearly a week as the temperatures in our room dropped to freezing levels. We couldn't fathom how the older residents simply ignored the problem.

  That week, I often walked by the massive metal door to the furnace room in the basement, reading the asbestos warning repeatedly and wondering if I should go in and try to fix it myself. I was returning from one of those moments when I came upstairs and found warm air... I checked: the furnace was still offline. At first, I said nothing, as I was just confused.

  The six of us spent most of our time alone in our rooms that week studying for finals. I remember, after several hours of late night solitude, the exact moment the oddities began.

  I heard the voice of Andrew, the guy across the hall, speak quite clearly. I jumped and scanned the room, but I was alone. I hadn't caught his words, but his voice came again. He said: "What do you mean?"

  Perplexed, I crossed the hall and knocked on his door. He answered with a yawn and followed me to my room. He asked what the problem was, and I told him I'd heard him speak. He then said:

  "What do you mean?"

  His words carried the exact same tone and cadence I had heard moments earlier. I came up with an excuse and apologized for interrupting his studies. He shrugged and left... and I decided to cut down on the caffeine.

  The next afternoon, I ran into him in the hall. He asked me if I talked in my sleep, and I laughed and asked why. He shook his head and looked confused, but didn't explain. He returned to his room while I headed down the stairwell... and the subsequent incident caused me to start keeping a journal of the strange events.

  As usual, I got stuck behind a slow walker in the stairwell. He wore a suit and was obviously some sort of corporate man, his grey hair belying many years of toil. I'd seen him before. As with most of the residents, he didn't like us very much. I accidentally sighed at being stuck behind him... and he turned, giving me a look of animosity and disbelief that was oddly directed at my arm. He turned back around, muttered something, and resumed his descent at a slightly faster speed. I decided to apologize to him.

  "Excuse me..."

  The old man froze for a moment without looking back. I began to speak again, but he took off at a surprising speed and slammed out of the Old's front door. By the time I got to its small window and looked out, he was nowhere in sight.

  As I thought back on my polite but distant interactions with the other older people in the building, I realized that a pallor of fear had been hanging over them for the last several days. They had all seemed... afraid of us, for some reason.

  Each day, the Old grew warmer.

  I had relished the ability to forego sweaters while studying, but, by the weekend, I was down to undershirts and verging on uncomfortable - and, still, the furnace was silent.

  I began to hear snippets of conversation and music at random intervals. I'd never had a problem hearing other rooms before, but now I was subject to bits of old-fashioned music, overly loud conversations, and - on one particularly maddening occasion - somebody's snoring. All of this seemed to originate from somewhere inside my room, though I could never pinpoint where.

  For his part, Andrew seemed gaunt and tired. He chalked it up to studying too hard, but he seemed to be nervous about something. I hadn't seen the other four college students in days. That Sunday night, I cornered Andrew. I told him about what I was experiencing, and asked him if he'd seen or heard anything. He mumbled a single phrase before retreating to his room:

  "Bad dreams..."

  It left me with a chill I couldn't explain. I tried to get down to it and focus on studying for the finals that were coming up over the coming week, but the building's creaking seemed more pronounced. The Old seemed to shift with the icy winter wind, which I took advantage of through an open window. By then, the hallways were practically a sauna.

  At some point, I'd had enough. I was more angry than afraid, and I decided to start asking some questions. I'd left more than a few notes under the maintenance man's door on the first floor. My first plan was to knock on his door and get some answers. As my hand pressed against the door, it swung open.

  There was nothing but a brick closet beyond.

  Confused, I touched the old brick, smearing soot on my fingers. I even rubbed some on my journal later to keep evidence that I wasn't imagining it - and, next to my feet, I found my last letter on a pile of paper remnants. I remember staring at the pile, realizing that the other letters had not been burned - they'd merely decomposed.

  I resolved to get the hell out of the Old until I figured out what was going on, but the three feet of snow outside stopped me. I had no place to go. No real money. I could sit at a Starbucks all day, but I'd eventually have to sleep in my own bed... and I wanted to have all the evidence I could gather.

  I didn't have much longer, though. I spent an hour or two knocking on the doors of the other residents, but I got nothing but confusion and anger. The older residents all refused to look at me directly in the same strange manner. They seemed overly distressed every time I spoke. I gave up, more confused than ever, and knocked on the doors of the other students, but none answered. Andrew only shouted through his door, telling me to leave him alone. Miffed, I went to bed, sweating even with the window open. I awoke to the final event, the one which compelled me to leave the Old at any cost.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling in the heated darkness. The shadows seemed to swirl in an odd manner, and I found myself focusing my sight to try to catch them. I played that strange game for a few moments, until I heard a woman scream.

  It was a scream of pure terror, as if she was desperate to escape something that had cornered her. Worst of all, it seemed to come from inside my room. It sounded again, and then a third time.

  I immediately leapt up and circled the walls of my room, trying to avoid the continual terrified screaming that was loud enough to hurt my ears. I couldn't understand what the hell was going on - the spot kept moving toward me, and I stumbled in my haste to avoid the slowly approaching source of the wailing screams. I heard doors slam in the hallway; other people had to have heard. I ran for them.

  In the hall, I fell and scraped my hands in response to an overwhelming wave of heat. It felt like I'd stepped into a furnace - and the dark hallway seemed empty. Where were the people I'd heard? And still, that godforsaken screaming rang out from behind my hastily closed door. I could hear it getting closer to the other side of the wood, and I backed away in horror. My back touched Andrew's door...

  ...and another voice, this one male, began shouting from behind his door. I couldn't tell if it was him, but I could hear him screaming for God and salvation and crying as his door shuddered with several impacts, as if someone on the other side was desperate to escape. I was forced to cover my ears to stop the pain from those two voices screaming at the top of their lungs...

  ... and another screaming voice joined them, this one from a distant room at the end of the hallway. A fourth
, one long roar of agony and pain, echoed from another floor.

  I ran.

  I vaulted down the stairwell, a smoky bitterness stinging my eyes and a furnace heat rushing around me. A choir of screaming voices, hundreds for all I knew, screamed and shouted and begged with the utmost imaginable human terror and agony. I pushed at the heavy front door, but it refused to budge. It seared my hands, and I fell to the floor, near to crying. I was at my wit's end.

  Then I looked up, and saw the little square window set in the door. I slowly stood, hands pressed to my ears in a futile attempt to block out the endless screams. Some wordless intuition warned me not to look through that window. A dark light sheared through it in a distinct glow that alternated green and blue. I put my hand up against the door just as I was about to look...

  ...and I stumbled out the front door into snow, directly into the arms of a police officer.

  Two police cars radiated red and blue nearby in the silent chill. I saw Andrew leaning against one of the cars, his arms curled against the cold. He seemed... worn. I looked up at the Old, expecting to see smoke or fire. I saw nothing.

  The officer I'd run into asked me several vague questions before explaining Andrew had called them over a 'noise disturbance.' He asked if 'the kid was a druggy', but I shook my head. He looked me over, probably noting my sweat and confused look, and asked me if I was one. I told him that, no, I was just studying and sick from too much caffeine and sleep deprivation. He laughed, and let me go.

  I figured I'd had a mental break... I was going to head straight for the school library and I was determined to stay and make calls until I got things straightened out. The cop asked me one last question as I walked away.

  "You see any of them?"

  I turned back to him, folding my arms close against the cold.

  "Who?"

  "The kids."

  I narrowed my eyes.

  "What kids?"

  He gave me a strange look.

  "The ones that did all that screaming."

  I shook my head, faking calm, and hurried away from the Old without a single look back.

  In later conversations with the building's owner, I learned that he'd only rented it to college students, and only on the top floor. The rest of the floors were unlivable - he didn't elaborate. I told him that we'd passed other residents every single day, but he insisted they must have been squatters. According to him, the only tenants were myself, Andrew, and two other students.