Neighbors

I've been living in our current apartment with my parents for about three years, but nothing strange, let alone scary, has happened to us until a certain point. We live on the fourth floor, and the neighbors upstairs are constantly arguing, throwing heavy objects, crying, yelling, and so on. At first, I didn't pay any attention, but then I started having insomnia, and I often heard someone quietly crying in the apartment upstairs at night, like a little child. To be honest, it started to irritate me. I asked my father who lived there. He said he didn't know for sure, but it seemed like his father and mother had a child, but he didn't know how old he was. I figured the child was small, that's why he was crying, and that the parents were drunks. Then, during the day, I started noticing adults arguing at the neighbors'—it sounded like a daughter and her mother arguing—then something heavy would fall, and everything would go quiet. And at night, I'd hear quiet crying again.

One time, I was home alone for two nights; my parents had gone to the country. And then it started. All day long, people were stomping and throwing things upstairs—all I heard was screaming, no words. Naturally, I couldn't sleep that night; I was getting fed up with it, so I decided to go knock on the neighbors' door together. I went upstairs and rang the door next to this one. An elderly grandmother opened the door. I apologized and asked if she was tired of the noise and din. She sighed heavily and said, "Come in, son, I'll tell you something." I went in, sat down at the table, and the grandmother poured me some tea and started telling me.

 Somewhere in the mid-1990s, a quiet and happy family—a mother, a father, and a small child—lived in this ill-fated apartment. When the girl was seven, her sister died, leaving behind a 17-year-old daughter—a rebellious, party-goer who drank, smoked, and, pardon the expression, "played around." They were forced to take her in. They fought constantly. One day, the girl came home drunk. Everyone was already asleep except the little girl. She greeted her joyfully and called her to bed. But the girl was furious for some reason and pushed the child away forcefully, as if to say, "Get out of my way, little one." The girl fell and hit a sharp corner. She lay in a coma for about four days, and then died. The father and mother were devastated with grief, and the older girl stayed away from the apartment for a long time, but then returned, again drunk. In the end, the man, enraged, beat the girl, and she died. My mother jumped from the 12th floor in grief, and my father drank himself to death and hanged himself. But their souls, apparently, have never found peace, and this whole ordeal continues to this day...

I thanked my grandmother and went home, in shock. I told my parents, and the whole building gathered and called a priest. He blessed that ill-fated apartment. Nothing seems to have happened there since then, but no one has yet dared to move in.