Chapter 2: The Neighbors Before

Chapter 2: The Neighbors Before

Sleep didn't reclaim Leo. He lay awake until the first weak, grey light of dawn seeped through the massive window, his body rigid, his ears straining against the silence. The memory of the deadbolt sliding home replayed in his mind—a crisp, metallic sound that was impossible to mistake for a settling pipe or a vivid dream.

Finally, driven by a desperate need for proof, he slipped out of bed. The floorboards were cold beneath his bare feet. He crept to the front door, his heart hammering against his ribs. His hand trembled as he reached for the deadbolt. It was exactly as he’d heard it last: firmly locked. He twisted it, slid it back, and pulled the door open to an empty, silent hallway. He hadn’t imagined it.

A day of unpacking stretched before him, a mountain of cardboard and bubble wrap that felt insurmountable. The apartment, which had seemed full of potential just yesterday, now felt like a cage. Every shadow seemed to stretch a little too long, every creak of the old building sounded like a footstep. He blasted music through his phone speaker, but the oppressive quiet seemed to absorb the notes, leaving an anxious hum in their place.

By midday, the loneliness was suffocating. He needed to see another person, to hear a voice that wasn't just in his head. He remembered Kiwi’s offer of help. He grabbed his heaviest box, filled with books, and positioned himself in his open doorway, grunting with exaggerated effort as he tried to lift it. It was a flimsy excuse, but it was all he had.

As if on cue, her door, 1000K, opened. “Need a hand with that, Atlas?”

Kiwi stood there, a lopsided grin on her face. Today the white side of her hair was braided, while the black side fell loose over her shoulder. She wore a faded denim jacket covered in patches. Her presence was like a switch being flipped, flooding the grim hallway with light.

“I’m starting to think my book collection has a gravitational pull of its own,” Leo said, forcing a laugh and gratefully setting the box down.

“The eternal struggle of the literate,” she quipped, stepping over to help him nudge the box inside. “Tell you what. You help me figure out why my Wi-Fi router is staging a protest, and I’ll treat you to the best takeout this neighborhood has to offer. My tech skills top out at turning it off and on again.”

“Deal,” Leo said, relief washing over him. It was the perfect excuse for company.

Her apartment was a vibrant, chaotic reflection of her personality. Colorful tapestries hung on the walls, plants spilled from every available surface, and shelves overflowed with books and vinyl records. It felt lived-in, warm, and most importantly, safe. After a few minutes of fiddling with cables and resetting the router, he had her back online.

“You’re a lifesaver,” she declared, already pulling up a menu on her phone. “Pizza? It’s the universal language of ‘I can’t be bothered to cook’.”

They sat on the floor of Leo’s living room amidst a sea of half-unpacked boxes, the greasy cardboard pizza box a makeshift table between them. For a while, things felt normal. They talked about music, about their dead-end jobs, about the strange freedom of living alone for the first time. Leo found himself relaxing, the knot of fear in his stomach slowly loosening. Her laughter was easy and genuine, and he felt a magnetic pull toward her, a simple desire to be near her energy.

He knew he had to ask. He had to know if what he was experiencing was just new-apartment jitters or something more.

“So,” he began, trying to sound casual as he picked a stray piece of pepperoni off the box. “You mentioned yesterday this place has a… reputation?”

Kiwi’s smile didn’t vanish, but it faltered. She stopped mid-chew, her gaze turning serious. She swallowed slowly before answering. “Yeah. I guess you could say that.”

“It’s just… this building is noisy,” Leo pressed, testing the waters. “Lots of creaks and groans. And the locks are weird. My front door…” He trailed off, not wanting to sound completely unhinged.

The shadow he’d seen in her eyes yesterday returned, deeper this time. She put her pizza slice down. “Leo… have you noticed anything else? Anything… specific? A smell, maybe?”

The question hit him like a physical blow. “Coffee,” he breathed. “Sometimes. Faintly. And bleach. When I first moved in, the whole place smelled of bleach.”

Kiwi’s face went pale under her piercings. She stared at him, her hazel eyes wide and filled with a somber understanding that terrified him.

“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this,” she said, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “Abernathy would have my head. But you need to know. It’s about the people who lived here before you.”

Leo leaned forward, every nerve ending tingling with dread. “What about them?”

“It was a family,” she said, wrapping her arms around her knees. “The Thornes. A man, his wife Elara, and their son, Caleb. He was maybe fourteen. I didn't see them much. They kept to themselves. The kid and his mom looked… scared. All the time. Like ghosts, you know? You’d see them in the hall and they’d just shrink against the wall.”

She took a shaky breath. “The husband was a different story. Big guy. Always looked angry. You could hear him through the walls sometimes. Yelling. The sound of things smashing. Then it would go quiet. And then… you’d smell the coffee.”

“The coffee?” Leo prompted, his blood running cold.

“All the time,” she confirmed, her gaze fixed on the wall they shared. “At all hours of the day and night. It was this thick, overpowering smell, like they were brewing pots of it nonstop. At first, I thought it was weird. But after a while… I started to think they were trying to cover up another smell.”

A suffocating silence settled over the room, broken only by the distant wail of a siren. Leo thought of the fresh, clean wall in the spare room, a stark white patch on a dingy canvas.

“What happened to them, Kiwi?”

“They vanished,” she said flatly. “One day, they were just… gone. The husband told Abernathy they had a family emergency and had to leave in a hurry. But it was weird. No moving truck, nothing. Weeks went by. Then, a relative of Elara’s who hadn’t heard from her in a month called the police.”

Kiwi’s voice trembled. “The cops had to break down the door. They said the apartment was empty. No furniture, no clothes, nothing. But the whole place reeked of bleach, just like you said. And when they pulled up the carpets in the bedroom and that little spare room… they found bloodstains. A lot of them. Someone had tried to scrub them out of the floorboards, but they couldn’t get it all.”

Leo felt the pizza turn to acid in his stomach. The sense of being watched, the disembodied sounds, the door opening on its own—it all coalesced into a single, horrific point.

“Did they ever find them?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

Kiwi shook her head, her black and white hair swaying. “Never. Not the husband, not Elara, not Caleb. No bodies, no suspects, nothing. The case went cold. Abernathy had the place professionally cleaned, patched the walls, and put it back on the market as fast as he could.”

The words hung in the air, heavy and poisonous. Leo’s gaze was involuntarily drawn down the short hallway towards the closed door of the spare room. The room with the pristine, freshly painted wall. The wall that didn't match.

The building’s groans no longer sounded random. The faint scent of coffee was no longer a quirk. And the feeling of being watched now had a name. Two names. Elara and Caleb.

He wasn't living in a new apartment. He was living in a crime scene. A tomb. And as he stared at that closed door, he felt a sudden, bone-deep certainty that the previous tenants had never truly left at all.