I moved into my apartment about six weeks ago. Studio, third floor, old building in a part of the city that used to be nice and is slowly deciding to be nice again. Rent was suspiciously reasonable but the landlord seemed normal, the walls seemed solid, and I needed a place fast after my lease fell through. I signed without thinking twice.
The first thing I noticed was how clean the bathroom was. Not landlord-clean. Obsessively clean. The grout between the tiles looked like someone had gone at it with a toothbrush. The mirror was spotless. The cabinet behind it had been wiped down inside and out.
Taped to the inside of the cabinet door was a piece of paper. Handwritten. Neat, small print. No signature, no date.
It said:
Rules for this apartment. Please follow them.
I took a photo of it because I thought it was funny. Sent it to a few friends. We laughed about it. Weird previous tenant with a flair for the dramatic. I threw the list away.
First two weeks were completely normal. I started to forget the list existed.
On the third week, I took a shower at midnight. I work late sometimes and I didn't think about it until I was already under the water. Nothing happened. I dried off, went to bed, and felt pleased with myself for not being superstitious.
The next morning the grout between the bathroom tiles was darker. Not dirty. Just darker. Like the color had shifted overnight from white to a faint grey. I told myself it was the lighting.
Four days later I heard the knocking.
I was brushing my teeth around 10pm and there was a distinct knock from somewhere inside the wall behind the shower. Two sharp taps. Then silence. Then two more.
I remembered the rule. Knock back twice. Never three times.
I didn't knock at all. Because I'm a grown adult and I don't knock on walls because a piece of paper told me to.
The knocking came back that night at 2am. Louder. Not from the bathroom wall. From the wall next to my bed. Two knocks. Pause. Two knocks. Pause. It went on for about forty minutes. I put in earbuds and eventually fell asleep.
The next morning the grout was darker again. Noticeably now. Almost charcoal in places. And there was a smell in the bathroom I couldn't identify. Faint. Wet. Like the underside of a rock in a river.
I started sleeping with the bathroom door closed.
The following Saturday night I got up to use the bathroom at around 3am. Half asleep, didn't turn the light on, just walked in and stood at the sink. I was washing my hands in the dark when I remembered rule three. Do not look at the bathroom mirror with the lights off.
I was already looking at it.
I don't know how to describe what I saw. My reflection was there. The shapes were right. My shoulders, my head, the outline of the sink. But something about the proportions was wrong. The reflection's head was tilted maybe two degrees more than mine. Not enough to be obvious. Just enough that the longer I looked, the more certain I became that I was not looking at myself.
I turned the light on and everything was normal. My face, my reflection, exactly as it should be. But my hands were shaking and I couldn't go back to sleep.
The next day I dug the photo of the rules out of my phone and read them again. I had broken three of the six. Shower after 11. Didn't knock back. Looked at the mirror in the dark.
I decided to follow the rest. Not because I believed in them. Because I was running out of explanations for the grout and the smell and whatever I saw in the mirror, and following some rules felt like doing something instead of nothing.
I skipped rule four because the drain hadn't made any breathing sounds. Rule five was coming up. First of the month. Leave a glass of water on the sink. Don't watch it.
I left the glass out on March 1st. Went to bed. Set an alarm for 3am because I'm an idiot and I wanted to see.
I didn't watch from the bathroom door. I just listened from bed with the door cracked open. For two hours nothing happened. At approximately 3:20am I heard something I will try to describe accurately.
It was the sound of water being consumed. But not drinking. Not the sound a human mouth makes. More like the sound of water being absorbed. A soft, continuous reduction in volume with no gulping, no breathing, no pause. Like the water was being pulled into something that didn't need to swallow.
It lasted maybe ninety seconds. Then silence.
In the morning the glass was empty. Bone dry. Not a drop left, not even a residue ring. And the glass was in a different position on the sink. I had left it on the right side. It was now on the left, closer to the mirror.
The grout was almost black.
I tried to find the previous tenant. My landlord gave me a name and I found her on social media after some digging. I messaged her. It took four days for her to respond.
Her message was short.
"You found the list?"
Yes, I said.
"Are you following the rules?"
I told her I broke three of them before I started following the rest. The shower. The knocking. The mirror.
She didn't respond for two days. Then:
"I need you to understand something. I didn't write those rules. I found them the same way you did, taped inside the cabinet, when I moved in. I followed them perfectly for three years. I never broke a single one. And nothing ever happened to me. Nothing. The apartment was quiet, the grout stayed white, the mirror was just a mirror."
"The rules work. Whatever is in that apartment respects them. But you broke three. I don't know what happens when you break them because I never did."
"The tenant before me broke one. Just one. The shower rule. She moved out after two weeks and wouldn't tell me what happened."
"You broke three."
I asked her what she thinks is in the apartment.
She said: "I don't think anything is IN the apartment. I think the apartment IS it. The walls, the pipes, the tiles, the mirror. It's all one thing. And the rules are the terms it set for living inside it."
"You broke its terms. I don't know what that means. But the grout changing color means it's angry. When I moved in, the grout was white. When the woman before me moved in, the grout was white. If it's turning dark for you, something has changed and it's not going back."
I haven't responded to her last message yet. That was three days ago.
The grout is completely black now. Every line between every tile in the bathroom. It happened overnight. I went to bed and it was dark grey. I woke up and it looked like someone had filled every seam with ink.
The smell is stronger. Not just the bathroom anymore. It's in the hallway outside the bathroom door. Wet stone. River water. Something underneath.
Last night I heard the drain. The breathing sound from rule four. Slow, rhythmic, unmistakable. Not mechanical. Not pipes. Something pulling air in and pushing it out, coming from the drain of my shower, and it didn't stop when I left the room and closed the door.
It's been going for nine hours now.
I'm sitting in my kitchen writing this. The bathroom door is closed. I can still hear it from here. Slow, steady, patient. Like something that was asleep for a long time and is now very much awake.
I don't know what to do. I can't afford to break my lease. I can't explain this to my landlord without sounding insane. I followed the remaining rules perfectly for three weeks and it hasn't mattered. Whatever this is, it's not following the rules anymore either.
I just want to know one thing. The woman before the woman before me. The one who broke just the shower rule and left after two weeks.
What did she see that made her leave that fast?
Because I broke three rules and I'm still here and I'm starting to think that's not because I'm brave. I'm starting to think it's because it hasn't decided what to do with me yet.
The breathing just got louder.