A Night in a New Apartment

It happened in 2013. What happened to me defies explanation. I myself can't understand what it was. Let me say right away that I don't do drugs and I don't hallucinate.

One autumn evening, I was returning home. It was cool outside, and it was drizzling. I unlocked the front door with the intercom, went up to my floor, and walked into the apartment. I had recently moved into this apartment, as well as into this city. The apartment was full of boxes that I still needed to unpack, along with a lot of scattered things and clothes.

I went into the bedroom, threw my backpack on the bed, sat down in the armchair, and started smoking my last cigarette. A dim nightlight was on in the room, and it was pitch black outside, with raindrops visible on the cloudy glass.

For the first few minutes, nothing special happened. But after a while, I got a strange feeling, as if something was wrong in the apartment. I was overcome by an inexplicable sense of unease. I lay down on my bed, thinking it would pass—I just needed a good night's sleep.

Throughout my sleep, I smelled something rotten and burnt. An unpleasant odor. It must have been coming from the living room. But I never woke up and went back to sleep. I remember having nightmares at that moment, which soon became so terrifying that I woke up in a cold sweat and headed to the bathroom. For some reason, the door wouldn't open the first time. Then, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I saw someone's face behind me out of the corner of my eye. I turned around, saw no one, exhaled, and went back to the bedroom. Although I lay down on the bed there, I didn't want to fall asleep—I was afraid the nightmares would continue. However, soon, somehow, I fell asleep without even noticing it. I woke up to a terrible scream echoing through the apartment. It wasn't even a scream, but a loud wail, hardly human-like.

Shadows were scurrying across the ceiling, moving around the room. A shadow resembling a head and neck was approaching my bed, gradually taking on the shape of a long torso. I could hear screams coming from under the bed, knocking at the door, and whispers near the door. After lying there, paralyzed with terror, for a while, I finally got up and left the room. I was incredibly scared; my legs seemed to be moving on their own, independent of me. I headed into the living room, followed by slow, loud, echoing footsteps.

In the light of the streetlights, I saw that boxes had been overturned in the living room, and things had been scattered even further. I tried to turn on the light, but it wouldn't come on—the bulbs throughout the apartment had burned out at once. I ran into the hallway in terror and rushed out of the apartment. I didn't even want to look for an umbrella, despite the pouring rain outside. My only desire was to leave as quickly as possible.

I didn't return to the apartment until the next day, spending the night with a friend. Then, not without difficulty, I moved to another apartment in a different neighborhood.