Handprints

My friend told me this story. She left for Moscow to study about five years ago and rented a small room in a communal apartment on the seventh floor. Life flowed at a leisurely pace, and then winter arrived. One morning, the girl went to the balcony window to check the weather outside and saw small children's handprints on the frozen glass. Amazed, she ran to ask her neighbor if any of the children had been in her room. The neighbor's face darkened and she replied, "It must be Danya playing around again." "What Danya?" the friend asked, surprised. The neighbor told her that a woman with her two-year-old son, Danya, used to live in that room. One day, while the mother was busy in the kitchen, the boy snuck onto the balcony, climbed onto a box, overhanging himself, and fell from the seventh floor. The mother immediately moved out after her son's death. Since then, children's handprints have occasionally appeared on the glass. Everyone who lived in this room before my friend also saw the palms and, upon hearing this story, moved out. My friend soon moved out too.