The Tenant of Larchmont Manor

After I graduated university, my savings were a thin whisper against the cost of living, and I found myself in the sprawling, aging city of Mercer, where the brick facades of old mansions had been carved into rabbit-warren apartments. My friend Theo and his new wife, Mira, were ecstatic to find a place in the Larchmont Manor, a crumbling Victorian relic that had been gutted into units. I went with them to view a two-bedroom on the third floor, the kind of place with peeling floral wallpaper and radiators that clanked like ghostly pipes. As soon as I stepped into the living room, a wave of nausea hit me, so abrupt and physical that I had to steady myself against the doorframe. The air felt wrong—heavy, as if something unseen had pressed its fingers against my chest. I mumbled an excuse about a queasy stomach and waited in the hallway, my skin crawling. Theo and Mira loved it, chattering about the high ceilings and the bay window, and I said nothing. They signed the lease that afternoon.

A month later, we gathered at our friend Dante’s loft for a dinner of cheap wine and microwaved pasta. Theo, laughing, raised his glass and said, ‘We think our apartment is haunted.’ Mira rolled her eyes but smiled, then told the story: one night, as they lay in bed reading, the bedroom light flickered, then snapped off. When Theo got up to check the fuse box, the light came back on by itself, casting a dim, sickly glow. ‘It happens every night now,’ Theo added, ‘always at 3:11 AM, like clockwork.’ My throat tightened. I remembered that feeling in the living room—the sense of being watched by something older than the building itself. Over the next weeks, I visited them often, always wary, and each time I crossed their threshold, the oppressive dread returned. They dismissed it as old pipes and ‘nerves’ from my low blood sugar, but I noticed other things: their cat, a skittish tabby, refused to enter the living room, hissing at the corner where the wallpaper was darkest. And Mira, once a sound sleeper, now woke every night at 3:11, drenched in sweat, convinced someone had whispered her name.

One evening, I came over to help them hang shelves. As I knelt to tighten a screw in the living room, I felt a cold draft course through the room, yet the windows were sealed shut. Then, from the corner, came a faint, rhythmic scratching—like fingernails dragging down the inside of the wall. I froze, my hand trembling on the drill. ‘Did you hear that?’ I asked. Theo shrugged, ‘It’s been doing that for weeks. Probably rats.’ But as he said it, the scratching stopped, and a low, guttural hum emanated from the floorboards beneath our feet. Mira’s face went pale; she whispered, ‘That’s not rats.’ The humming grew louder, and the room’s temperature plummeted. I saw my breath mist. Then, from the bay window, the curtains swayed, though no air stirred. A shadow, darker than the dim light, detached itself from the wall and coalesced into the shape of a tall, gaunt man— featureless except for two hollow pits where eyes should be. It stood there, motionless, facing us. Theo shouted, ‘Get out!’ We scrambled backward, and as we reached the hallway, the entity dissolved with a sound like a sigh. We fled the apartment, never to return.

Weeks later, I received a frantic call from Theo. They had moved out, but the landlord refused to return their deposit, citing ‘damages’—the bedroom door, he claimed, was found clawed from the inside, and the living room wall had a series of deep scratches spelling ‘LARCHMONT’ over and over. Theo laughed nervously, but his voice cracked. ‘I saw it again,’ he whispered. ‘Last night, in our new place. A tall, gaunt man, just standing at the foot of our bed. It said, in a voice like gravel, ‘You brought me here.’ That was the last time I spoke to Theo. He and Mira vanished a week later, their apartment abandoned, the door padlocked. When I drove past Larchmont Manor last week, the windows on the third floor were boarded up, but I swear I saw a silhouette—tall, gaunt—watching me from behind the boards. I haven’t slept in three days. Every time I close my eyes, I hear that hum, and I feel the cold pressing in, and I know, with a certainty that hollows my bones, that it followed me home.