Cheap Apartment

Two of my classmates, who had come to the capital to study, were looking for a rental apartment. I wasn’t very close to them, but we often crossed paths in our course — borrowing their perfect notes and, frankly, sometimes laughing at their lifestyle, which revolved entirely around studying.

To everyone’s surprise, both girls started performing very poorly this semester: they arrived late to the first classes, often skipped them, or looked like they had been partying all night with wine and friends. During seminars, they rarely answered, remained silent, or, avoiding eye contact, told the teachers that they weren’t prepared, hadn’t managed, or had overslept.

After classes, our group often gathers behind the building to have coffee in the common smoking area. One day, to our surprise, one of the girls, Sveta, approached and asked for a cigarette. This behavior was completely unexpected from her. She looked exhausted, had bags under her eyes, seemed very insecure, and even her hands were trembling. At that point, she couldn’t avoid questions. Here is what she recounted, in her own words:

“We found an apartment — at first we searched through an agency, but their commission was very high, which we couldn’t afford. Apartments were very expensive, but we really wanted to move out of the dormitory. We walked around the area near the university, put up posters saying that two students would rent a cheap apartment or room. Three days later, a woman called us and said she had a ‘two-room apartment’ in not very good condition but for a small price. We went to see it — the condition was indeed terrible: dusty, the furniture was decaying, the switches and plumbing seemed like they would fall apart at the slightest touch. But we decided to take it because the price was laughably low by city standards. We spent the entire weekend cleaning the apartment, sorting out the junk, washing windows. In the end, it looked poor but clean.

The first couple of nights were normal, nothing unusual happened, and we began to get used to our new home. The first incident occurred on the fourth night: the kitchen light turned on and off for no reason, and then an empty cup fell off the table and smashed with a crash. We weren’t sleeping yet, but were already in bed. We ran to the kitchen, picked up the shards, and were surprised, of course, but not particularly scared. The next night we noticed a strange smell. We both woke up because the stench seemed right under our noses — a sweetish burnt smell, but there was no smoke or fire in the apartment. We opened all the windows, and only by morning was it breathable. We didn’t associate this with the broken cup.

The real nightmare began after a strange phone call. We didn’t use the city apartment phone, didn’t give the number to anyone, so when the phone rang, we thought it might be the landlady or someone she knew. Tanya picked up, yelled for a while, but no one answered. There was silence on the line. A few minutes later, the lampshade of the bedside lamp shattered. That night we slept together under one blanket, trying to understand what was happening. By morning, we had slept until noon and were late for classes.

For the next few days, nothing happened, but we felt a strange fatigue, even though we slept 8 hours. Tanya began feeling unwell; in the mornings it was impossible to get her up for classes, she had nightmares all night, sore throat, dizziness. I stayed with her, thinking my friend was just getting sick. By the end of the second week, I also became ill. General weakness, mild fever, headache. I really wanted to go to class because home was too uncomfortable and gloomy.

One evening we went to the store for just 20 minutes. Returning home, we noticed lights on in our windows, even though we had turned them off before leaving. When we got home, we found an incredible mess in the bathroom: all shampoo and gel bottles were scattered, caps unscrewed, almost all the contents smeared on the walls and bathtub.

Tanya called the landlady, complained about what was happening, and asked if anyone else had keys to the apartment — besides us, maybe someone had been coming in. The landlady just laughed and even yelled, saying, ‘Don’t go crazy, if you don’t want to live here — there’s a line of tenants for this price. You won’t find anything this cheap.’ Tanya apologized and hung up.

We couldn’t sleep, sat in the kitchen until morning. I urged Tanya to move out, I didn’t like any of this, but she tried to explain everything and didn’t want to leave. She had only one mother, who sent her very little money for rent and food. Getting a job while keeping up with studies wasn’t possible for Tanya. A dorm room was immediately occupied, so she literally had nowhere to go. I decided to look for another place, even if I had to pay more — I didn’t want to stay in this apartment at all.

For two days nothing strange happened; we calmed down a little, everything seemed normal again. One night, while I was sleeping soundly, I was woken by my friend crying. She sat at the edge of my bed and sobbed:

‘Sveta, let’s move out, I can’t take it anymore...’

I tried to calm her down, and she began telling me that for the second night she had been hearing strange sounds under the couch — scratching, scraping. We went to the kitchen and stayed there until morning. Then I decided to move her bed and found a disgusting sight. Behind the old landlady’s couch by the wall, where Tanya had been sleeping, the wallpaper was torn — horribly shredded, with deep scratches on the walls.

That was the last straw. I didn’t go to class, claiming a headache, and began packing our things. Something seemed to urge me on; I knew I wouldn’t spend another night there. I called the landlady and told her to come get the keys in the evening because the strange occurrences didn’t stop, and we weren’t staying. My parents found acquaintances in the city who agreed to take us in temporarily.

All the things were packed, and I was waiting for Tanya. There was a knock at the door. Through the peephole, I saw a woman about fifty years old. I opened the door. It turned out to be a neighbor. She asked us not to make noise during the day — her husband works night shifts and sleeps during the day, and apparently, for a week someone had been moving furniture and turning the TV up full blast. She asked politely, but I assured her we weren’t home during the day and no one touched the furniture. Before leaving, I decided to ask who had lived there before us.

‘Old lady, Baba Olya,’ she said. ‘Her husband died back in the ’80s, I don’t remember why. Her son was an alcoholic, lived with his mother, then he drank himself to death. After his death, Baba Olya lived alone for a long time, didn’t really get along with neighbors, rarely went out, only to the store a couple of times a week. By spring, one of the neighbors started complaining that Baba Olya probably got a cat or a dog — someone scratching and clawing the walls. She went to the apartment, but no one opened the door. They called the police after a few days, and they found a terrible scene — Baba Olya had been dead for some time. Her hands and feet were terribly contorted, lying against the wall. They say she fell and paralyzed herself by that little wall section. It turned out she had scratched her fingers to blood, clawing at the wall — probably trying to signal the neighbors, but no one arrived in time. Some distant relatives found the apartment, and now they rent it out. There were only a few tenants before you, and it hasn’t even been a year since then.’

That’s how all the strange events with my classmates were explained. That’s why you shouldn’t rent an apartment from strangers.