It was in that apartment that I fully realized the oddities of the human mind. Those weeks marred by his incessant howling, the constant anxious rummaging, that amphetamine pacing. While I tried to sleep all I could hear were his deranged cries - the sound of torment made mad by unmitigated fear. When I moved in, the apartment was marketed as a sunny 1-bedroom, equipped with a unique stained-glass window in the bedroom, a large kitchen, and a balcony which led to a roof that provided a stunning view of the city. These things were all true. Once I had moved in, I found there was another, omitted item, that hadn't been discussed at my signing the lease: the man in the room downstairs.
I hadn't seen him, but I did see the entrance to his dwelling - which I had to walk past to get to my apartment on the next floor. The door was tarnished with a thick layer of vile filth, stained yellow and brown with the buildup of tar from intemperate cigarette consumption. It looked like something that should attract insects; small spiders and cockroaches. Strangely enough, I did find that a great deal of spiders made their way up through the floorboards and into my apartment. It was only after some time that I put the pieces together and realized they were emigrating from his room; they'd come up to die from the floor below. Sometimes, when I would come home late at night from work, tired and heavy with exhaustion, there would be that putrid odor lingering in the stairwell, waiting to unleash itself upon me. It reeked of decay and desecration.
It was one week after I had settled into this apartment that the sounds started. At first they reminded me of a kind of humming, or of someone with a weak voice faintly singing to himself, or to a child. Soon, though, it would reveal itself as the nightmarish cradle rocking it really was.
It must have been 2:30 in the morning when it woke me. I was in a sound sleep, a sleep that was nearly bulletproof, fortified by a whirlwind workweek and a vigorous daily exercise regimen. The haunting howls from the man in the room downstairs had literally induced a nightmare, ruthlessly rousing me, dropping me onto my head in a dark room inhabited by his iniquitous crooning. I felt like I was the resident of a psychiatric ward in an asylum. These were not the screams of an ordinary man; they were troubled and beastly, forlorn and demonic, bubbling and betrayed like a boiling crustacean. First I tried to ignore them, hoping maybe they were just night terrors that would pass after a few minutes. Hours later, after trying to sleep with headphones on and failing, after turning on my stereo in yet another failed attempt to drown out the noise, after pounding threateningly on the wooden floors, I realized I would have to visit that grotesque door downstairs.
Shirtless, I ventured down into the darkened stairway. It was now 4:30. I had to leave for work in an hour and a half. A seething fury goaded me as I stomped down the stairs, still disbelieving this had carried on this long. When I slammed my fist against his door, flakes of brown crust fell from the corners, dust knocked loose and hung in the air. Then, all sound stopped and I heard something metal skid across the floor inside. Uneven footsteps stumbled and then galloped toward the door. A shadow spilled out from underneath and sniffed at my feet. Suddenly, standing there without my shirt, I felt cold. The sound of his breathing scratched lightly against the door and I felt him peering out through the peephole. Puzzled, I stood and questioned my next move. Should I shout, bang against the door again, threaten to call the police, wait? My thoughts were interrupted by the abrupt continuation of his screams, somehow made louder by the dirty wooden door. A chloroform consternation choked me and I retreated upstairs, ready to call the police.
As I stared at the 3 digits, all white and glowing on my phone, the thought crossed my mind that the man was unwell. I mean, clearly. Would it be right to call the cops on someone with a mental handicap? Bring in the SWAT team for the disabled while you're at it. Or was I just making excuses to conceal my fear of calling the police and having to deal with them and him before going to work? What might I return to later that night? What if he was injured during a scuffle with the authorities?
Then the wailing got louder.
There was something about it that was almost contagious. The longer I was awake listening to it, the more psychotic I felt. Here I was wrestling whether or not to call the police! The whole thing felt so bizarre. Until I heard laughing. Hideous, carnal laughter that made my skin crawl; the kind that would make spiders crawl, too.
Yes. The man in the room downstairs was not well.
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