Scott's New Neighbor

© 2000 Yvonne Bruce
All rights reserved.

Scott's apartment was a noisy place to live, even though he had every one of its noises memorized, and even though most of the building's tenants seemed to be retired and frail. His refrigerator had a ghost: its mechanism made hollow whistling noises like the soundtrack to a deep space movie, and the circulating coolant always sounded like it was dripping heavily into the space between the fridge and the wall. It was so loud and so convincing he still sometimes checked it, even though he knew it didn't leak. Since Scott was on the top floor, next to the roof, and in the corner apartment to boot, there was a lot of creaking and crackling, even without the faintest breeze. He heard footsteps above him a lot (well . . . especially when he was alone), but he knew the security guard checked up on top for kids when he made his rounds because the roof was off limits to the tenants. And from his window he saw there were lots of vents cut into the brick outside, in the space between the ceiling and the roof, and birds nested there. On the weekends he could hear them scrabbling above him all day long. The underside of the roofline was crusted with wasps' nests, too; the little buggers cruised around his windows from sunrise to sundown in the summer. They were graceless as bumblebees, flying into the glass constantly with little clicking noises. He thought he could hear them at night, but that was probably just imagination—they had to sleep sometime.
And this was the South, after all. Scott had palmetto bugs the size of rats trying to get in from the roof, as well as from the usual internal points of ingress, like the drains and the gaps around the pipes and ceiling fixtures. He'd caulked and sprayed and prayed and still they got inside—how they squeezed themselves through spaces that the little old kitchen roaches could hardly manage was something he never liked to think about. And this had been an especially hot summer; there'd been two brief swarms of other bugs that just got inside somehow, and clumped in a corner of the window like a plague of termites. The newspaper had even run a humorous story about a kind of insect—love bugs, they were called, because they always flew linked together—that had overrun everyone in town for a two-week period. But he guessed that only in the land of Faulkner could they understand that kind of humor—you had to be a native, maybe, and he wasn't. In fact, when he was still a brand-new southern transplant he'd complained to the building's exterminator that there were mice—Scott had seen the droppings—and the man had laughed like this was the funniest Yankee-ism he'd ever heard: "Naw, that's jes the powmettuh bugs."
There was a room in the apartment that was like the fridge: it had a ghost, too. It was the spare bedroom Scott used as an office and it seemed to get all the bugs and all the noises. The room was perfectly square except for a little bump-out that didn't correspond to a "bump-in" in the kitchen, which was the room adjacent. He wondered what was in that space. It didn't help his imagination that there was a painted-over square on the short side of the bump-out that looked like laundry chute door (except there'd never been a handle on it that you could tell . . . not to mention, fifteen floors is a pretty long drop for laundry). It had been not only painted over but screwed shut. He heard a lot of noises coming from behind it. Before he caulked the bejesus out of it, he'd imagined what it might be like to unscrew those screws, scrape off those years-old layers of paint, and just open it.
What would come out?
And it was the South, remember? Even fifteen floors up you got the settling cracks winding around and meandering through your place. The building—not that old, but buildings age rapidly in humidity—used to have a different configuration of apartments . . . what configuration, he couldn't tell, but the laundry chute thing suggested it; so did the sealed-up door between his place and the neighbor's, like the double doors linking hotel rooms. Where the old connection was sealed up the cracks went crazy, deepening to chinks in places, and leaving flakes of plaster and paint on the carpet. Every time she cranked up her music the cracks seemed to worsen.
Going to sleep in a place like this, even in a house full of people, was a matter of getting used to your surroundings.
But when you were on your own . . .
The first night wasn't too bad. A few extra beers before bedtime usually took care of the gremlins, and it had been a long day. But even drifting off to sleep Scott found himself checkmarking the noises he heard on a mental list: that's the clock in the living room (how anyone could find that noise comforting was beyond him; he thought of it as the aural equivalent of the old Chinese Water Torture trick), that's the creepy noise of the refrigerator cycling on, that's the roof creaking (the building's flat roof with its constant leaks was just going to cave in one of these days; he had nightmare visions of all those creatures, grown huge and bold in the southern heat and darkness of the crawl space, pouring out on him in a flood of rotten wood and plaster), that's probably the window glass shrinking in the frame with a little popping sound—that, or a new kind of bug invasion. That's . . . that must be the guard taking a turn around the roof.
On his second night alone, Scott forewent the beer, even knowing that would make getting to sleep almost impossible. In the place of alcohol he took the next best thing to bed: his books. Unfortunately, the books he favored, the kind he could lose himself in enough to relax, were exactly the wrong kind for sleeping alone: stories of monsters and bloodsuckers, mad killers with a taste for human flesh, things in the sewers, black-hearted women who murdered their men.
But they were still a powerful drug, and he felt himself drifting, his head nodding over the paperback. The noises from the empty apartment were readily identifiable, and it was early yet; people outside were moving around. There was the misleading sound of the neighbor shutting his front door. He compulsively jiggled the knob to make sure the lock had caught, a sound that had woken Scott from a deep sleep numerous times, thinking someone was testing his door. The other neighbor's TV was going (she was the one with the loud music), and he could hear the white noise of people moving in the hallway: crackling bags from the grocery store, jingling keys, whining children. He heard the thock of tennis balls from the public courts right outside, which were open 'til eleven. From everywhere Scott could hear the sounds of sirens. The city's medical center was only a few blocks away.
But as the city finally slept, other noises came out to play. The refrigerator seemed to realize he was alone and its echoing noises played like a theremin. The clocks, all of them analog, none of them synchronized, ticked like a telltale heart. The footsteps above him . . . Goddammit! where were they coming from? Scott thought maybe he ought to ask one of the security guards about it, just to make sure. It was creepy as shit to hear footsteps over your head night after night when you lived on the top floor.
The sleepy feeling fled. Scott picked up his book and read, read, read until he got it back. It wasn't a windy night, thank goodness, but there was a breeze, and the building creaked like a ship at sea. Most of the creaking was soothing, but occasionally there was a sharp snap that pulled him toward wakefulness again. And then . . . then, just as he drifted between consciousness and sleep, he heard a scrabbling directly above him. He kept the covers over his head while he strained to listen more closely. It just sounded the same again: the delicate patter of little feet, like the whiskery scratch of blowing leaves. It was hard to be sure exactly what it was because the sounds were directly overhead for such a short time, only a second or two.
But another hour later, Scott was almost sleepy again. He'd nearly finished his book. His neck was stiff, his sleep, if it came, would be shallow because he couldn't unwind. But he had to get up for work tomorrow, so a little sleep was better than none. And he was almost there, the noises around him occupying the part of his mind that wouldn't quite go under: the skritching and scrabbling, the creaking and settling, the yawning pops from the windows and joists.
And then the footsteps again, this time comfortable-sounding steps, steps that belonged, like someone was climbing the creaky old stairs at grandma's house, someone who had grown up in that house and relished every squeaky step. What was going on? Who could be up there? He listened, not quite coming awake yet. The steps were purposeful, those of someone walking toward all the little destinations of the house—to the bathroom, to the kitchen for a drink, to the front door to make sure it's locked. Okay, fine: maybe the guard checked all the little cubbyholes and crawlspaces up there in turn; gave any doors upstairs a shake. Scott had never been on the roof—in fact, an alarm went off if anyone tried the access door. There could be anything up there. So the footsteps were weird, yes, but not, given his limited knowledge, inexplicable.
Until they began running. When they first sped up, they must have been way over on top of the living room—or even over a neighbor's. At least, that's what he figured, until they ran up right on top of him and he woke, realizing he'd been hearing them for some time.
They were running like mad—big, heavy footsteps—back and forth and back and forth and around in circles and then in meaningless patterns above his head, faster and faster. By now he was wide awake, and he lay on his back with his feet tucked in like a turtle's, his hands clutching the covers around his neck, his eyes bulging, moving back and forth, trying to track his unknown neighbor's progression. A low, throaty sound came out of his mouth, and now the terror was becoming perfect, because . . . because . . .
Because the footsteps were coming from behind the walls, up and down, faster and faster; Scott's new neighbor must be some kind of fly, crawling around and around, back up over the ceiling, now down the other wall, running and running.
Needless to say, he didn't fall back to sleep that night. The next morning he was too tired to indulge any horrific fantasies. He gulped down as much coffee as he could before it was time to leave. But on his way to the elevator he noticed an interesting thing. The fire stairs door close to his apartment was chocked open. Peering out the doorway, he heard voices drifting down from the stairs above his floor, the ones that continued to the roof. He climbed the stairs and saw that the roof access door was chocked open, too, its fire alarm apparently disconnected. The voices he heard more clearly now were comforting ones, lots of "Yeps" and "Naws" and hawks and sniffs. He could hear the bang of tools, too, and the roar of machinery, so he climbed down and continued toward the elevator. The workmen's being up there was not really surprising; there were always people up there tinkering with the monster air-conditioning unit or the satellite dishes. It just seemed . . . interesting that they were there after what he'd heard last night.
Scott made an even more interesting discovery by the elevator. There was another door open, one he'd not really noticed before. It stood between the trash chute and the elevator. He'd assumed it was a storage or supply room. But this door, too, opened onto a set of stairs leading to the roof, and he could hear the same beefy sounds of repair coming from this opening. It occurred to him that there were probably four or five roof access doors on this floor. There would be at least one more on the far end of the corridor, accessible from the fire door that corresponded to his, and there was probably another door that corresponded to this newly discovered one, too.
Scott's elevator arrived with a ping, and he tried to put everything he'd seen and heard since last night into its own little mental storage room and lock it up tight.
When he returned from work that afternoon, dreaming of a nap, the access door by the elevator was still chocked open, daylight flooding in, and the floor nearby was dotted with leftover tools, as though a party had spilled out into the hallway. None of the workers seemed to be around, so he took a quick look up and down the corridor, stepped through the doorway, and climbed the stairs.
Once on the roof, Scott simply stood where he was are and turned in a circle. Nothing seemed unusual, though he would hardly know what was usual up here. There was the AC housing, taking up half the roof, with doors spaced along it. He noticed another trapdoor, like the one he had come through, and the firedoor housing down at his end of the hall. He walked over to it, uneasy, not wanting to be too close to the edge of the building, which was surrounded by a lip only two feet high. He peered over it for a moment, heart pounding. You are this close to death, he thought. This close. The tarred roof was broken up by cracks and patches, and the thought recurred to him that all kinds of multi-legged creatures might be squirming through into the apartments below. Nothing else looked odd or out of place, so he retraced his steps and went home.
That night, the footsteps above the bedroom began at the same time as the night before: the faint, brief scratchy sounds so hard to identify, strengthening to the sounds of regular steps, as if there were a house above him instead of roof and sky. Scott had skipped the nap so he could fall deeply asleep at bedtime, but once the sun went down, the worry he had closed off earlier came roaring out.
The footsteps quickened until once again they were running, back and forth, from one of end of the apartment to the other, then in circles and figure eights right above his head, so fast how could they be human? He hardly noticed when a few tears of fatigue and frustration run down his face. Those steps were laughing at him, laughing, because they knew he was stuck until daylight, and he knew it, too; in fact, his weariness almost won out, and he started to nod off, confusedly thinking that perhaps this pattering of feet was just a new feature of the apartment, like the restless refrigerator and window frames.
But once he did, the steps above his head became poundings, the sound of someone stomping up and down in a rage. Scott was wide awake now, listening as the pounding stopped and the steps resumed, now circling his head, now flitting down the sides of the walls again. He heard himself whining in panic like a cringing dog, and that decided him. Anything was better than this. He got up, dressed quickly, and headed for the front door, turning on lights as he went. He could hear the footsteps behind and above him, fainter now, hesitating. He peered out the spyhole. Nothing—but the fire door was still chocked open. The security guard should have closed that hours ago on his rounds. It was after midnight now.
He stepped out into the hallway, leaving his front door cracked open. He looked indecisively at his neighbor's door. The neighbor was a great guy, but Scott wasn't ready to wake him up to ask if he'd heard the ghostly footsteps from the phantom sixteenth floor. He walked through the fire door and took the stairs up. There were no joshing workmen calling out at this hour, but he could feel the night air rushing downstairs, which meant that, for whatever reason, the roof access door had been left open.
When he reached the landing opposite it, there was something wrong, something different from this morning. He still felt the wind blowing past him, but all he could see through the open door was a rectangle of blackness. The roof outside should have been visible in the light from the hallway, but there was just nothing to see. Worse, it didn't look like nighttime blackness out there, and that breeze didn't smell like the outside air coming in. From where he stood he should have been able to see stars or planes or lights from other buildings, even with the glare cast by the inside light.
Scott leaned out slightly. Nothing—just more emptiness. Gripping the sides of the doorway, he put out a foot; it came down on a surface that felt like the rooftop. Sliding his foot from side to side like a minesweeper, he felt more of the same. There was grit and the slightly sticky roughness of a tar surface under his shoe, so he stepped outside.
It was black as a mineshaft, and he groped ahead of him with his arms, trying to ignore the voice inside that whispered this was all wrong. There must be some kind of tarpaulin covering over the work they're doing, he thought, like a canopy extending outward from the door. That would explain the darkness. Scott saw a tiny square of light ahead and to the left, toward the end of the building. He walked toward it, his hands still waving like antennae, his mind clutching at the canopy explanation, even though by now he realized it simply couldn't be. There wasn't any covering set up this afternoon, and he couldn't feel anything enclosing him, no matter how far to the left and right he strayed. It was just black, and that not-quite breeze was rushing past. His eye remained fixed on the light, which now he saw was coming from behind a door through a small hole.
There was no conceivable explanation for the door, which seemed to be hanging in outer space. Everything was black, and the light cast by the little hole illuminated nothing but more of the blackness; it was like Milton's hell, full of visible darkness. Scott groped; there was a doorknob. It turned freely, and he pushed.
First he felt fantastic relief and, dimly, satisfaction that he had found an explanation for those crazy footsteps. There was a workroom of some kind up here. God only knew what people were doing inside it at this hour: looking at porn videos, playing poker, whatever, but he could hear the faint, normal sounds of movement in the distance, and there were lights on in the back, reaching out to provide faint illumination all the way to where Scott was standing. Leaving the door open behind him, he walked forward cautiously. He was in some kind of entrance hallway: there were smooth, painted walls on either side of him, and carpeting beneath his feet. That didn't seem right. Why would anybody take that much care of a toolroom or electrical access room or even a breakroom or whatever the hell this was? Scott could hear someone walking around.
"Hello? Is anybody here? Hey! Anybody?"
No one responded, but the footsteps stopped suddenly, and he could almost feel that someone listening. His warning voice was whispering to him again, but he stepped forward despite it. He didn't even realize he was afraid until he noticed his hands were touching the walls alongside him for support.
"Hey! Hello?"
He was coming to the end of the short hallway now, and when he looked carefully around the corner he noticed two things at once: this place was not any kind workroom or storage facility, and those footsteps that were beginning again were coming toward him, faster and faster. His panicked eyes took in the furniture, dirty and out of place. There was an overturned chair with stuffing bubbling out of the rips in the cushion. The walls were hung with pictures, all hung askew. One of the frames was full of cracked glass, another had its glass intact but covered with dried splashes of something dark. He was turning away now, too slowly, much too slowly, heading back for the door he came in as those footsteps moved faster and closer. As he ran for the open door, the light from behind him picked out some letters on the front of it. 16R gleamed in the dimness. It was an apartment number.
The footsteps were right at his heels. Moaning now, he turned to look over his shoulder. That was a mistake. What he saw drained the urge to run right out of him, drained his bladder, drained his thoughts. As he fell to the carpeted floor, sobbing, and waited for the end, Scott looked up at something he knew no one had ever seen before.
And no one would, at least until a new tenant was found for 15R.

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