The Tenant in the Light

In the summer of 1994, we moved into a rented flat on the top floor of a three-story building in the arid outskirts of Juárez. The building was called La Casa de las Sombras, though I later learned that was just a nickname the locals gave it because of its perpetually dim interior. We were on the third floor, where the sun should have streamed in through the wide windows, but somehow the rooms remained in a perpetual twilight, as if the light itself was being absorbed by the walls. Our landlord, Señor Vargas, lived on the same floor with his wife, their three-year-old son, and an eight-month-old daughter. I was nine, and from the moment I stepped inside, I felt a crawling unease, like something watched from the corners. My parents dismissed it as nerves from moving.

The flat had a peculiar layout: a long central hallway led to the bedrooms, with the kitchen and bathroom branching off. The bedroom I shared with my brothers faced the courtyard, but the window seemed to look out onto a wall of nothing, just a gray haze. At night, the silence was too deep, broken only by the occasional creak of the building settling. I often woke to the sensation of being watched, but when I turned on the lamp, the room was empty. My younger brother, Miguel, complained of nightmares: a man with no face standing at the foot of the bed. We tried to tell our parents, but they laughed it off, attributing it to our vivid imaginations.

One night, a week after we moved in, we were jolted awake by the sound of water running and muffled cries. I crept out of bed and saw my parents already at the end of the hall. They were looking into the bathroom, which was partially open, and I saw Señora Vargas holding her baby over the sink, her face twisted in exhaustion or despair. In the doorway stood the boy from the adjacent unit, a kid named Andrés, who was about my age. He was unzipping his pants and urinating directly onto the infant’s head. The baby was squirming and crying, and Señora Vargas seemed paralyzed, her eyes wide but unfocused. My father stepped forward, shouting, ‘What are you doing?’ Andrés turned his head, his face utterly blank, as if he were in a trance. He zipped up and walked away without a word. My mother rushed to take the baby from the stunned mother, who started sobbing uncontrollably, repeating, ‘It’s him, it’s him, the little one.’

That incident was the first crack. The next day, Señor Vargas confronted Andrés’s parents, but the boy claimed he had no memory of the event. The parents, a young couple who had recently moved in, were mortified and apologized profusely. But I noticed Andrés’s eyes held a glint of something ancient, not childish mischief. He often played alone in the courtyard, muttering to himself, and once I saw him stare at the baby with a smile that made my blood run cold.

Over the following weeks, strange things escalated. The building’s lights would flicker even when the power was stable. Dishes would slide off counters. My mother found her rosary beads broken in the kitchen, the beads scattered in a perfect circle. The baby, whom they called Lupita, would cry incessantly, but only in the late hours, and her cries were not human; they were guttural, almost like a growl. One night, I woke to see a misty figure standing at the foot of my bed, featureless but radiating malevolence. I tried to scream, but my voice was gone. The figure pointed a long finger toward the wall, and I saw it was pointing at a small crack in the plaster—a crack shaped like a twisted smile. When the figure dissipated, I touched the crack, and it was warm, pulsating like a living thing.

I finally confided in my friend, a girl from the first floor named Rosa. She told me the building had a dark history: a previous landlord had murdered his entire family in the third-floor bathroom, and then hung himself in the basement. The souls of the dead were said to linger, seeking to claim new victims. She warned me to stay away from the bathroom, and never to look directly into any mirror after midnight. I dismissed it as superstition, but that night, I couldn’t resist the urge to peer into the bathroom mirror. My reflection was there, but behind me, the shower curtain was partially open, and I saw a shadowy figure—tall, thin, with long arms—standing in the tub. I spun around, but the tub was empty. When I looked back, my reflection wasn’t me. It was a gaunt man with hollow eyes, and he grinned, showing rows of needle-like teeth. I stumbled backward, and the light flickered out.

That night, I heard Lupita scream. I ran to the Vargas’s room and found Señora Vargas clutching the crib, but the crib was empty. The baby was lying on the floor in the corner, her tiny limbs contorted as if broken, but when I yelled, she turned her head and looked at me with eyes that were pitch black. Andrés was kneeling beside her, humming a lullaby that was wrong, in a minor key that made my skin crawl. Señor Vargas rushed in, and at that moment, the entire building shook, and the lights blazed on. Andrés blinked, confused, and looked at Lupita, then cried out, ‘What’s she doing here?’ In his hands, he held a kitchen knife, but he dropped it as if he had just woken up.

My parents decided we had to leave immediately. We packed what we could and fled to a relative’s house. But the memory lingers. I’m now an adult, and I still cannot look at my own reflection without a shiver. And sometimes, in the dead of night, I hear the faint sound of a baby’s laughter echoing from the corner of my bed, and I know that in that building, something still owns a piece of my soul.