An empty room

When I was a young student and first started earning enough to live alone, meaning enough to pay for rent and food, I left my parents and rented an apartment in an old Stalin-era building on the outskirts. The apartment was on the ground floor, covered in graffiti like "Hi, Zhora!" or "Happy Birthday, Vadik!"—basically, a kind of hangout where some girl had lived before me. I rented this hangout, naturally, because I had no money, not because of my preferences, and it was closer to the university.

When I moved in, and this girl was moving out, she looked at me and snidely told me to "get ready." What to get ready for, I didn't understand then. The apartment itself consisted of a hallway, a kitchen, an abandoned room, and my room. The kitchen had a huge window, "decorated" with tattered and yellowed curtains, a peeling ceiling, and graffiti on the walls. The abandoned room, as my neighbor later told me, belonged to someone's grandmother, who had died. It was furnished with unwanted furniture from other rooms and an old Soviet radio built into the wall, only able to receive "Mayak" radio and plugged into a special outlet. My room was the largest and generally unremarkable, a little cozier than the others, but with the same graffiti on the walls.

On the first day, after moving all my things and connecting my computer, I was settling down to sleep completely alone in my room when I suddenly noticed music coming from the empty room next door, filled with old things—old Soviet music without lyrics. It was around 1:00 AM. To be honest, I was scared to death—I lay there, huddled in bed, not daring to move, for about twenty minutes, trying to convince myself it was the neighbors, that I was imagining it. But the more I listened, the more I realized the music was coming from there. Covered in a cold sweat, I took my butterfly knife out of my backpack and went into the hallway, turning on the lights in the hallway and in my room along the way. Ahead of me was a closed white door leading into an empty room. Gathering my courage, I barged in, shouting, "Get out of my apartment!" but no one was there. Only the radio was playing, having somehow turned on by itself.

Having calmed down a bit, I unplugged the radio, locked the room tightly, and went to bed. I think I needn't say I spent the night with my eyes open, staring down the hallway with the knife under my pillow.

The next day, everything seemed fine. I went first to university, then to work. I came home that evening, sat at the computer, and started studying—I had some cryptography lab work to do, I think. So, after finishing my chores, I sat there until one o'clock, listening intently. I laughed at myself—how could the radio play if I'd unplugged it? And yesterday, something must have just broken, that's why it started playing...

I went to bed, but I felt a little uneasy, and I couldn't fall asleep until three in the morning. And then it started. The SAME music was playing again, from the same room. Then I rushed to the front door of my room, propped it open with a stool, and barricaded it with a nightstand. I spent the second night sitting opposite the door, thinking I was going crazy. The music was pretty loud—it was clear it was coming from the next room, not the neighbors.

 The music stopped after half an hour, and the next morning I went in and checked—the radio was unplugged. I had nowhere to go. I'd had a fight with my parents when I left, and I had no friends who could take me in. The third night was the same, but I was almost no longer afraid, and the music lasted only a short time—five minutes, it seemed. Of course, I didn't dare go back to my room. On the fourth day, it was all over, and a month and a half later, having found a new place to live, I moved out.