The Sixth Floor Tenant

The building was called ‘Sunrise Heights’, though the sun rarely touched its grey concrete facade. My parents moved into apartment 6B on a muggy July afternoon, thirteen years ago, when I was just a child. The apartment had two balconies, one off the living room, one off the main bedroom, and a narrow hallway that connected the rooms like a vein. The previous tenant, an old woman named Mrs. Kapoor, had died alone in the apartment a month before. The landlord, Mr. Mehta, had simply repainted the walls and handed over the keys, not bothering to mention the lingering smell of camphor and old newspapers that clung to every corner.

My mother, Meera, was the first to feel it. She was a practical woman, a doctor, not given to fancies. But the moment she stepped inside, she felt a cold draft sweeping past her, even though all the windows were shut. She dismissed it as the building’s old air conditioning system. As she unpacked kitchen utensils, she heard a faint tapping from the second balcony, as if someone was knocking on the glass door. But when she checked, there was nothing—just the city’s grime and the distant hum of traffic.

The first incident happened during the monsoon’s first storm. My father, my grandmother, and I were in the main bedroom watching television, while my mother went to retrieve the clothes drying on the balcony. The wind was howling, and rain lashed against the windows. As she ducked back inside, clutching a heap of damp saris, she heard a woman’s voice whisper her name: ‘Meera.’ It was so clear that she spun around, but the corridor was empty. The kitchen door was ajar, and she thought she saw a white sari slip behind it. She shook her head, blaming her imagination and the storm’s fury.

But then the switchboard started clicking. Rat-a-tat-tat, like a child playing. My mother crept towards the living room, her heart thumping. There, near the entrance, the array of switches for the fans and lights was flickering on and off, on and off, in a quick, playful rhythm. She froze, staring at the panel. She called out, ‘Is someone there?’ Her voice was swallowed by the rain. Then, as quickly as it had started, the flickering stopped. The silence that followed was heavier than the storm. She walked back to the bedroom, her legs trembling, and told my grandmother what she had seen. My grandmother, a woman of generations, simply said, ‘It’s Mrs. Kapoor. She never liked the new paint. She used to say the color was too bright.’

My mother was not superstitious by nature, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was not alone. She started sleeping with the lights on, and every time she entered a room, she would announce her presence, as if to ward off an intruder. The unease grew. Once, she was sitting at the dining table and felt a touch on her shoulder, a feather-light caress that made her jump. Another time, she found her toothbrush in the washbasin, neatly placed, though she remembered swearing she had kept it in the holder. Little things, but they accumulated.

The climax came on a Sunday. My father had gone to the market, and I was taking my afternoon nap. My grandmother was in the kitchen, and my mother was alone in the living room, reading a magazine. Suddenly, the doors to all the rooms slammed shut at once, a deafening bang that made the walls vibrate. My mother stood up, her heart pounding. Then she heard it again—the whispering, this time more urgent, forming words: ‘Get out. Get out.’ The switches began to flicker again, and the ceiling fan above her started to slow down, as if something was gripping the chains. Her eyes darted to the balcony, and she saw the figure of a woman, translucent, standing against the rain-soaked glass, pointing her finger directly at her.

My mother didn’t scream. Instead, she walked calmly to the kitchen, where my grandmother was stirring tea. She took a deep breath and said, ‘Maa, I think we need to find a new place.’ My grandmother looked at her, her face impassive, and said, ‘It’s time we did.’ That evening, they found another apartment, and we moved within the week. I was too young to understand the urgency, but I remember the look of relief on my mother’s face as we loaded the last box into the van.

Years later, I asked her about that day. She told me the whole story, her eyes distant, as if she was reliving it. She said, ‘I never believed in ghosts until that moment. But I learned that some places hold on to their past tenants longer than others.’ To this day, whenever I pass by Sunrise Heights, I think of the woman who lived and died on the sixth floor, and I wonder if she still searches for the new people who move in, waiting to whisper their names under the rain.