What’s out there?

“Yep, definitely haunted”, I sighed, hauling my bags across the couch and looking around the crumbling walls. I did like the antique-y feel of the house I’d be staying in for the next 6 months, but I couldn’t shake off the distinct feeling I was being watched.

My landlady had assured me she’d get the house fixed and painted in the next few days. Her stuff was strewn all over the place, including two bedrooms with padlocks on their doors. I didn’t mind, really. It meant I’d gotten the place for cheap, as long as I stuck to my room and the kitchen.

I’d moved to this small town for a bit of quiet, and I intended to spend most of the time wandering around the countryside and burying myself in books and the occasional brandy.

I spent the next few hours trudging through the house, setting things up and heading to the tiny balcony outside my bedroom for an occasional smoke. It was during one of these trips that someone called out from across the apartment, asking to bum a smoke off me.

I looked up to find an unnaturally thin guy, almost like one of those weirdly angled ventriloquist dummies, grinning at me from the adjacent balcony, holding his hand out as if he’d already decided I was going to lend him one.

“Whatever”, I shrugged as I tossed him a cigarette. “Cheers, buddy. I’m Eddie”, he grinned again as he launched into some passionate rant about how humanity could benefit with more ‘kindness and empathy’. “All that philosophy for a smoke”, I chuckled cynically to myself as I nodded along for a while before excusing myself.

The next few days followed a similar pattern, with me bumping into Eddie every time I went out onto the balcony. At times, I’d be sitting inside the room and suddenly hear him whistle a tune or just mumbling some incoherent nonsense out there. Once, I even wondered if he spent all night sitting out in his balcony, but dismissed that straight away as incredulous.

After a pretty uneventful first week which mostly consisted of me exploring the local pubs with some friends I’d made in the neighbourhood, I stumbled home drunk one night and clambered into bed without my usual late night ritual — A smoke out in the balcony with Eddie rambling on next door about whatever obscure topic had caught his fancy that day.

I woke up dazed a couple hours later, staring at the clock. 3AM. What on earth had woken me up? I stared groggily at the balcony door, just able to make out a faint outline peeking in at me through the curtains. “Eddie?”, I whispered hoarsely, creeped out of my wits. Our apartments were on the fifth floor, with wide spacing between the houses. How had he even gotten onto my balcony?

I kept staring at the curtain door, and the silhouette of his face slowly broke into a wide grin as he realized I was awake. “Eddie”, I cried out again weakly, but he didn’t move or say anything. Minutes stretched into hours, and still the silhouette stood absolutely still, occasionally launching into a grin that stretched eerily against the curtains. Too petrified to move, I pulled my blanket up to my face and kept staring, my face as white as a sheet, at the figure out there in my balcony. I must have eventually passed out, as I slowly woke up with a groan around 11 AM.

The events of the previous night instantly flashed across my mind, with anger replacing fear in the bright light of the morning. I marched out of my house furiously, determined to walk up to Eddie’s house and confront him. Well, I spent the next couple hours ringing the bells of all the houses on my floor, and yep! None of them was Eddie, or had even heard of such a guy. No one seemed to recollect seeing a neighbour matching the description I gave them.

I rushed out onto the balcony again, hoping to find Eddie sitting across the adjoining one, but it was empty. Equal amounts of frustration, fear and confusion were starting to engulf me, as I dragged myself outside the building to see if I could figure out which house Eddie’s balcony linked to. The project took all day, and after a few more unfruitful visits to the other houses in the apartment, I gave up.

Exhausted, I got into bed around midnight. My infuriation had been replaced by sheer terror at the prospect of whatever that thing was getting onto my balcony again. I had half considered just roaming the apartment lobby and sleeping during the day, but given that the neighbours already thought I was stark raving mad, I dismissed that idea instantly.

Around 1AM was when it happened. You know that moment when something creeps you out so much that you literally shake in terror as fear seeps through your entire body and binds you to the spot? It’s usually not something that you see or feel, but the realization of what’s to come.

You see, the strange entity I’ve been seeing wasn’t my neighbour. The balcony, I suddenly realized, belonged to the padlocked bedroom across the living room. Whatever that thing was, I was sharing four walls and a roof with it.

“Fuck”, I exclaimed, staring up at the ceiling in horror, “I was right. Definitely haunted”.