The Second Tenant

The first time I saw the thing, I thought it was a trick of the light. It was three in the morning, and I’d woken up with my heart pounding for no reason. Lying there, trying to catch my breath, I saw it at the foot of my bed: a tall, thin shape, darker than the shadows pooling in the corners of my rental apartment. It didn’t seem to have a face, just a deeper blackness where a face should be. I blinked, and it was gone. I convinced myself it was a stray moonbeam or a piece of clothing on a chair. I went back to sleep.

The next night, my roommate, Elena, came into my room looking pale. She said she’d had a terrible sleep, that she’d felt something press down on her chest, suffocating her, and when she finally forced her eyes open, she saw a dark figure standing over her. And her phone, which she’d left on the nightstand, was gone. We searched everywhere, and two weeks later, she found it centered perfectly under her mattress, dead. We laughed it off nervously, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that our upstairs neighbor, the one who always seemed to be watching from his window, had something to do with it. But that didn’t explain the scratches that appeared on my arms and legs over the next few months, thin red lines that stung like paper cuts.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, everything stopped. No more night terrors, no more scratches. Elena moved out for a job in another city, and I stayed, slowly convincing myself it had all been stress and imagination. I even started sleeping with the lights off again.

Two years later, I got a promotion that required me to relocate. I found a small house on the outskirts of a different town, a place that smelled of old wood and dust. The realtor warned me that the previous tenant had passed away, but she assured me it was clean. I unpacked my boxes, settling in, and for a week, everything was fine. Then, last Tuesday, I woke up at 2:47 AM, the exact same time as before. And there it was again: the tall, thin figure, standing at the end of my bed, watching me.

This time, I didn’t blink. I sat up, my heart hammering. I tried to scream, but my voice was a dry rasp. The figure tilted its head, as if curious, and then it vanished, not fading away but simply being there one moment and gone the next. I turned on every light in the house and didn’t sleep again that night.

Now, a week later, I’ve stopped sleeping all together. Every time I close my eyes, I feel its presence. I called the realtor, asking about the previous tenant. She hesitated, then told me that the man who lived here before me had died of a heart attack, and that his last words, according to the coroner, were a frantic plea: ‘Don’t let it find me again.’ That’s when I noticed the faint scratches on the inside of my forearm, fresh ones, in a pattern that almost looked like tally marks. I’m not sure how many are there anymore. I’ve stopped counting. All I know is that this house is not just haunted by a ghost. It’s haunted by a tenant that never left, and he’s trying to warn me that the figure I’ve been seeing isn’t following me. It’s been waiting here for me all along, and now that I’ve moved in, it has a new permanent resident.