The Tenant Before Us

In the autumn of 2011, my brother and I moved into my mother’s new apartment complex, a three-story walk-up with no fire escapes, just a single set of stairs at the center. We took the ground-floor unit on the right, and the caretaker lived next door. The unit on the left had been vacant for months, and ours had been vacated only a week before we arrived. The previous tenant had left behind a few pieces of furniture: a pair of monobloc chairs and a small, wobbly dining table.

From the start, the place felt wrong. The walls were too thin; I could hear the caretaker snoring through the shared wall. But more unsettling was the constant feeling of being watched. I’d pause in the hallway, certain that eyes were on me, but when I turned, there was nothing. My brother dismissed it as nerves, but our mother noticed too. She’d close the curtains at night, saying she felt like someone could see in.

We tried to settle in, but the furniture was impossible to ignore. The table had a faint, uneven stain in the shape of a handprint, and the chairs were worn in odd places, as if someone had sat in them for hours, rocking. One evening, while setting up the kitchen, I moved the table to sweep beneath it and found a scratch on the floor: a long, deliberate line, as if someone had dragged a key. It looked fresh. I brushed it off as an old mark.

A week later, I woke at 3:00 AM to the sound of scratching. It was faint at first, like a mouse in the wall, but it grew more insistent, coming from the dining area. I crept out of my room and found the table had been dragged a few inches from its original position. The chairs were rearranged, one pulled out as if someone had just stood up. No one else was in the apartment. My brother slept soundly, and my mother was at work.

I convinced myself I had imagined it, but the next night I stayed up, sitting in the living room with the lights on. At 3:00 AM, the scratching started again. This time, it was louder, more frantic. I watched the table. The chairs began to shake. Then, as if pushed by an invisible hand, one chair slid back, and the table tipped, crashing to the floor. I screamed, and my brother ran out, but we found nothing out of place. The chairs were exactly where they’d been, and the table stood upright.

After that, we tried to ignore the furniture, but the presence grew bolder. Doors would open by themselves, and my mother’s keys would go missing, only to turn up under the table. The feeling of being watched never left. One day, I went to the caretaker to ask about the previous tenant. He was a wiry old man with rheumy eyes, and he spoke in a low voice. ‘The woman who lived there,’ he said, ‘she was a bit odd. Kept to herself. She used to just sit at that table for hours, staring at the wall. One night, the police came. Found her dead, sitting in that chair. Heart attack, they said. But she was only thirty.’

He paused, then added, ‘She had a dog, you know. A little thing. It went missing after she died. But sometimes, I hear a scratching at the door of that unit, like a dog wanting to come in.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my bed, listening for the scratching. At 3:00 AM, it came, but this time it was from inside the apartment. I got up and crept to the dining area. The table was vibrating, and on the floor beneath it, I saw the scratch on the floorboard widen, as if a claw was dragging a line. Then the wall behind the table began to thump, rhythmically, like a heartbeat.

I fled to the caretaker’s door, pounding until he answered. When I told him what was happening, he sighed and said, ‘The police found her dog locked in the wall. She must have sealed it in while renovating. They had to break the wall to get it out. It took a week before the knocking stopped.’

We moved out a month later, but before we left, I looked under the table one last time. The scratch was still there, but now there were two more, parallel, like claw marks. And from the wall, I swear I heard a faint, muffled whimper.