The Half-Moon Sink

In the autumn of 2003, I moved into a small flat on the third floor of a crumbling Victorian building in the heart of a city that never slept. The flat was a bargain, but the real reason I took it was the proximity to my mother, who had recently divorced my father and was struggling with her own demons. She lived just two streets away, in a similar flat, and I hoped that being close would help her, and maybe me too.

My new home was a cramped two-room affair: a living room and a bedroom connected by a narrow hallway. To the right of the hallway was a tiny bathroom, and the kitchen was an open nook jutting off the living room. The walls were covered in a faded floral wallpaper, and the floorboards sloped slightly, as if the building was sinking into the earth. I didn’t mind. It was cheap, and I could walk to my mother’s in five minutes.

The first week was uneventful. I unpacked, painted the bedroom a soothing blue, and tried to make the place my own. But on the eighth night, as I was reading in bed, I heard a distinct clatter from the kitchen. It was the sound of metal striking linoleum, like a fork or a knife dropping. I froze, listening. Silence. I shrugged it off, assuming a stray pot had shifted, and went back to my book.

The next morning, I discovered the kitchen in disarray. The refrigerator, a heavy old model, had been moved about three feet from the wall, and the stove had been pulled out as well, its gas hose stretched taut. There was a trail of dust and grime on the floor, as if they had been dragged. My heart hammered. I called the landlord, who grumbled about ‘settling foundations’ and sent a handyman. The handyman found nothing wrong, but he looked at me with a strange wariness and said, ‘This building has a history, you know.’ He refused to elaborate.

A few nights later, I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, when I heard a faint scratching from the wall behind the mirror. It was rhythmic, like fingernails tapping on glass. I stopped, and the sound ceased. I leaned closer, and then I saw it: the mirror’s polished surface seemed to ripple, as if something were pressing against it from the other side. I stumbled back, but the ripple was gone. I told myself it was a trick of the light.

I began to notice other anomalies. Small objects would move on their own. A spoon would appear upside down in the sink. The shower curtain would billow, even with the window shut. My mother, when I visited, seemed more agitated than usual. She confided that she too had heard things in her flat: whispers at night, the sound of a child crying. But she was drinking heavily, and I dismissed it as her paranoia.

One night, I was jolted awake by a loud crash from the kitchen. I rushed in to find all the cutlery scattered across the floor, and the kitchen table overturned. The refrigerator had been shoved against the hallway door, blocking it. My blood ran cold. There was no rational explanation. I struggled to move the fridge, but it was immovable, as if glued to the floor. I had to climb over it to escape.

I called my mother, and she confessed that she had experienced similar things in her new flat, but she was too ashamed to tell anyone. She described a strange, oily figure that would appear at the foot of her bed, whispering my name. I shuddered. That night, I slept with all the lights on.

Days passed in a haze of fear. I researched the building’s history and discovered that a woman had been murdered here in the 1920s. Her body was never found. The authorities suspected her husband, but he disappeared. The hallmark of that case was that all the sinks in the flat were replaced with a peculiar half-moon shaped design, rumored to be an attempt to cleanse the place of her spirit.

The final straw came on a rainy afternoon. I was in the living room, and I heard my mother’s voice from the hallway, calling my name. It sounded desperate, frightened. I ran toward the sound, but when I reached the hallway, it was empty. The bathroom door was ajar, and from inside came the sound of dripping water. I pushed the door open and saw that the sink was full of blood, and on the mirror, written in a red smear, were the words: ‘Help me.’

I fled the flat and never returned. I moved in with my father across town, and I told no one about what I had seen. But sometimes, when I wash my hands in a normal sink, I think I see the faint outline of a half-moon stain, and I hear a child’s whisper on the wind: ‘You left me there.’