The Tenant’s Knife

When I moved into the basement flat on Marlowe Street, the realtor warned me about the damp, not the dead. The walls were thick, papered over with decades of landlord neglect, and the single high window let in a square of jaundiced light that never quite reached the corners. I told myself it was the city’s fault, that old town feeling, and I was too tired from my new job to care. My flatmate, Ravi, was a chef who worked nights, so we barely crossed paths. The first week, I blamed the building’s groans for the sounds I heard from the empty room next to mine.

Then, one Tuesday, I came home to find the TV on in the living room, volume low. The local news droned on, and I could have sworn I heard my own name in the traffic report—though that was probably my imagination. I turned it off and went to bed. The next morning, I asked Ravi if he’d been home early. He shook his head, wiping sleep from his eyes, and said he’d crashed at his girlfriend’s. I asked him three more times that week, and each time his answer was the same. I started locking my bedroom door at night, a habit I’d never had before.

The strange occurrences escalated. One night, I woke to the sensation of being pinned to my mattress. I was lying on my stomach, arms stretched out like a crucifix, and the air was thick with the smell of iron and wet wool. I couldn’t move my head, but my eyes darted to the corner where a shape seemed to coalesce—not human, but something about the size of a child, huddled and dark. I tried to say ‘get off,’ and the pressure vanished so suddenly that I gasped. The shape retreated into the shadows, and I was left trembling, drenched in cold sweat. I told myself it was sleep paralysis, but I had never experienced it before, and I knew I had been awake.

I started sleeping with the lights on, my kitchen knife under my pillow. Ravi mocked me gently, but I saw him check the locks before he left. Then, one night, I woke to a sound that isn’t in any sleep disorder: the clatter of cutlery in the kitchen. I crept down the hallway, my heart thudding, and found the drawer pulled open—the one with the steak knives. One was missing. I searched the entire flat, but found nothing. The next day, I called a locksmith and changed the locks, but the feeling of being watched only grew.

The final incident happened a week before I moved out. I was unpacking boxes in my bedroom when I noticed a small, leather-bound book wedged behind the radiator. It was a diary, and inside, someone named Eleanor had recorded strange occurrences much like mine: someone entering an empty flat, a weight on the bed, missing cutlery. Her last entry, dated three years ago, read: ‘I don’t know what it wants. It follows the living. The knife is for defense, but I fear it uses it for other things.’ I never found the knife, but I did find a carving on the inside of my closet door: a crude spiral, with a single word scratched beneath it: ‘stay.’

I moved out the next morning, leaving my deposit and most of my belongings. I never told Ravi what I found, but as I drove away, I saw a figure in my rearview mirror—standing at the window of my old flat, holding a knife. I haven’t gone back to that city since. But sometimes, in the small hours, I hear the faint sound of cutlery rattling in my kitchen, and I’m afraid to look.