The Second Room

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I’m 20 years old, and I’ve been living separately from my parents for four years now. When we moved to this city (me, my mom, and my sister), we bought an apartment. Some time later my mom met a man, and they got married. Naturally, we moved in with him, and our apartment stood empty for six years. A few years later, after finishing school, I enrolled in a vocational college and moved back into the apartment my mom and I owned, since it was closer to get to school from there.

For the first year I didn’t really live in the apartment properly—I mostly stayed there on weekdays overnight and spent the rest of the time with my parents. When I was 17, my boyfriend and I decided to live together, and he moved in with me. That’s when everything started. My boyfriend worked for a security agency, and he was away from home for two days at a time. Naturally, after classes I would go straight home—cook, do chores, all that. When my boyfriend wasn’t home, strange things began to happen. Especially at night: I couldn’t fall asleep, something constantly kept me in fear, I simply couldn’t sleep. Sometimes I wouldn’t sleep for up to three days.

When my boyfriend came back home, I would have hysterics—I’d cry nonstop, without even understanding why. I had a nervous breakdown: I covered all the walls in the living room with drawings of different people so I wouldn’t feel alone, so I’d know I wasn’t alone. My boyfriend came back from a shift, saw that all the freshly put-up wallpaper was covered in strange faces, and I was sitting in the far corner of the room crying. After that he quit that job, got a daytime one, and bought me a dog. Everything settled down, my fear disappeared, and we renovated the apartment again. I finished college and also got a job.

The apartment is two-room, but we only live in one room. We closed off the second room and used it for storage—there’s even a motorcycle there. It’s broken, but it feels like a waste to sell it, so we put it in that room.

A week ago, strange things started happening again. I don’t sleep at night because my work schedule is mostly night shifts. So I’m sitting at night at the computer, watching a movie, chewing on something, with my dog sitting nearby. Suddenly something falls in the kitchen with such a loud crash that I practically jumped out of my chair. The dog goes up to the door of the room and starts barking (each room has doors, and we always latch them because of the dog—she can make a mess). I walk up to the door; the dog looks at me with her tail tucked. I open the door, step into the hallway, and go toward the kitchen. The strangest thing was that the dog didn’t follow me—normally she’s the first one to run to the kitchen.

I open the kitchen door and look around—nothing is lying anywhere. Nothing except a pot could have fallen with such a loud clang, but all the pots are standing exactly where they were on the shelf. But the window is open, which is basically impossible: even though it’s summer, this is a northern city, and we don’t open the windows because it’s cold. The idea that someone opened it from outside is ruled out immediately—we have bars on all the windows. I closed the window and went back to the room, leaving the door from the living room to the hallway open.

About forty minutes later I hear a strange sound. At first I don’t pay attention—it’s very quiet, and I think it’s just background noise from the movie. I run out of cigarettes, and as I’m about to go to the kitchen, I pause the movie, and a second later it hits me that the sound is coming from the hallway. It was like an electric shock—I got goosebumps all over my back. I look at the dog, who had her front paws on my knees, and I start shaking with fear because I realize the dog hears it too. The sound was like a small child who can’t speak yet, babbling in some incomprehensible language.

I slowly stand up and walk toward the hallway, listen more closely, and realize the sound isn’t coming from the stairwell, but from the second room, which is closed. I stood there frozen—you know that feeling when it’s terrifying, when fear comes in waves, stronger and stronger, and it even hurts because you’re digging your nails into yourself. At the same time, I’m going through possible explanations in my head. Nothing sensible comes to mind except to close the door to the room. I turned the movie back on and went to bed, clutching my boyfriend, and only fell asleep when he woke up for work. I didn’t tell him anything, because I remember how bad it was for him when he was helping me get back to a normal state before.

During the day everything was fine; I almost forgot about the night. But around two o’clock the next night, I started noticing something again—this time in my peripheral vision. It was as if there were shadows. They were everywhere, there were many of them—small and completely black. I tried to catch them with my eyes, to be sure I wasn’t losing my mind, but I couldn’t. I didn’t even notice how I squatted down onto a chair, pulling my legs out from under the table—I realized it only when my legs started going numb. And those shadows kept darting around the room, hiding behind armchairs or the wardrobe. I looked at the dog again. She scared me even more by shaking her head and following the same things I was seeing. Without thinking much, I picked her up and sat there all night, occasionally drifting into a light doze.

That day I spent almost the entire day at work and messed up a lot of things there because my head felt like cotton from lack of sleep. And again I was afraid of night coming. My boyfriend is asleep, and I’m sitting at the computer, chatting online with a friend. Again it’s 2 a.m., and I hear that sound again, like a child babbling, only much louder. Suddenly a sharp rattling sound joins it, as if sharp metal is being scraped against something iron. I jumped in my chair from fright; the dog started whining. I run to my boyfriend and start waking him up—the sound continues. I wake him and ask if he hears it. He says no, and immediately the sound stops. I go back to the computer and start thinking about what could make such an unpleasant whistling, rattling noise, or at least try to remember what metal objects we have in that room. I remember the motorcycle—but it couldn’t possibly be scratching itself. After thinking a bit more, I remember there’s also a baby crib in that room left by the previous owners. Why it wasn’t thrown out, I don’t remember.

Again I sat like that until morning, dozing in short bursts, then work again and back home. That night I prudently took some juice and vodka from the fridge. I just didn’t know how else to get rid of the fear of waiting for night. But strangely enough, until 4 a.m. everything was absolutely quiet—maybe I just didn’t hear anything because I was wearing headphones and listening to loud music. I finally decided to go to sleep and lay down in bed. Slowly drifting off, I heard the dog start quietly whining and woke up. Again I listened to the silence. The door from the living room to the hallway was slightly ajar, and there came a sound as if someone were drawing a knife across a fork, or snapping large scissors—this is a sound I recognize anywhere, since I took hairdressing courses. The sound became clearer and clearer—it was as if whatever was holding those scissors was walking back and forth along the hallway. Unable to stand it, I rushed to the door and shut it. Only two hours later did I fall asleep.

For a couple more nights it was the same. I always closed the door, and the sound was barely audible. Yesterday evening the motorcycle was taken to a parking lot. Before it was taken away, I examined every screw on it—there were no scratches on it at all. Tonight the sound of snapping scissors was loud and very close to the door; the door creaked and opened several times—I thought I was going to die of fear. Now before going to sleep I put a knife on the bedside table. I’m afraid my boyfriend will think I’ve gone crazy. Every night this thing gets closer, and one of these nights it will come into the room. What I should do then—I don’t know…