The Second Floor Tenant

I remember the day we moved into the bottom unit of the old triplex on Mallow Street. The place had been vacant for months, and the landlord was desperate to rent it out. The rent was cheap, and with our third child on the way, we couldn’t afford to be picky. The previous tenant, an old man named Mr. Ashworth, had died of a heart attack in the living room, but that didn’t bother me much. I was more worried about the mold in the bathroom and the drafty windows.

We settled in quickly. The kids loved the big backyard, and my husband, Ted, was happy to have a workshop in the basement. But from the first night, I felt a presence in the house. It wasn’t oppressive, just a feeling of being watched. I chalked it up to the stress of moving and the pregnancy hormones. But as the weeks passed, the feeling grew stronger, especially in the upstairs bedroom. I would wake up in the middle of the night, convinced that someone was standing at the foot of the bed, but when I turned on the light, there was nothing.

Our neighbors were a strange lot. The middle unit was occupied by a reclusive woman named Mrs. Kettle, who I only saw when she took out her trash. She had a gaunt face and sunken eyes, and she never said more than a word or two. The top unit was supposedly empty, but sometimes I would hear footsteps above us, slow and deliberate. When I mentioned it to Ted, he shrugged it off, saying it was just the wind or the house settling. But I knew better.

One afternoon, while Ted was at work and the kids were at school, I decided to investigate the upstairs. I had never been up there, and the landlord had given me a key to the whole building. I climbed the narrow stairs, each step creaking under my weight. The top door was locked, but the key turned easily. The room was dusty and bare, with only a single chair in the center. On the chair, there was a photograph frame, face down. I picked it up, and the glass cracked as I turned it over. The photo was of Mr. Ashworth, but his eyes had been scratched out.

I felt a chill run down my spine, and I quickly put the frame back and hurried downstairs. That night, I couldn’t sleep. Every creak and groan of the house seemed amplified. And then I heard it: a faint humming, coming from the nursery. I got up and peered through the door. My baby girl, Lily, was sleeping soundly, but there was a dark figure bending over her crib. It was tall and thin, with long arms that reached out towards her. I screamed, and the figure vanished. Ted rushed in, but by then, Lily was awake and crying.

I tried to convince Ted that we should move out, but he said we couldn’t afford it. So I took matters into my own hands. I started to research the history of the house and the previous tenants. I discovered that Mr. Ashworth wasn’t the only person to die in that top unit. In fact, there had been a string of mysterious deaths over the decades, all of them in that same room. The last one, before Mr. Ashworth, was a young woman named Clara, who had thrown herself from the window. The neighbors said she was driven to madness by the loneliness of the place.

I became obsessed with finding out more. I dug through old records at the library and found a newspaper article from the 1920s. The house had been built by a man named Silas Vex, who was rumored to be a practitioner of dark arts. He had constructed the top unit as a kind of chamber for his rituals, and he had died in it, too. The article mentioned a curse: anyone who lived in the top unit would die within a year, and their spirit would be trapped in the room, forced to watch over the house forever.

I knew then that the figure in the nursery was Mr. Ashworth, or something that looked like him. He wasn’t trying to hurt Lily; he was trying to warn me. But about what? I started to notice other odd things. My health began to deteriorate. I was constantly exhausted, and I had headaches and nausea. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong. I also started seeing things out of the corner of my eye: shadows that moved on their own, and faces in the windows of the top unit.

One night, I woke up to the sound of scratching in the walls. I followed the sound to the basement door. I had never liked the basement; it was cold and damp, and there was a strange smell. But I opened the door and descended the stairs. There, in the corner, was a ventilation grate that I had never noticed before. It was loose, and I pried it open. Inside, there was a small room, no bigger than a closet. And in that room, there was a skeleton, wrapped in a tattered shroud. It was wearing a wedding ring that matched the one I had seen in Clara’s photo.

I staggered back, and I felt a presence behind me. I turned, and there was a woman, pale and ghostly, with her neck twisted at an unnatural angle. She whispered, ‘He’s still here. He’s always been here.’ I knew she meant Silas Vex. And I realized that the curse wasn’t just on the top unit. It was on the entire house. And we were in it.

I ran upstairs and packed my bags. I told Ted we were leaving, and I wouldn’t take no for an answer. He tried to calm me down, but I was beyond reason. I dragged him and the kids out to the car in the middle of the night. As we drove away, I looked back at the house, and I saw a silhouette in the top window. It was watching us, and I knew it was waiting for us to come back.

We never went back. We moved in with my parents, and I refused to ever step foot in that house again. But sometimes, in the quiet moments, I can still feel that presence. And I know that the curse is still there, waiting for its next victim. And I’m afraid that one day, I’ll be forced to return.