04 Feb The Smiling Man in Apartment 3A

PART I

I used to be a janitor. Not the kind with a company name stitched on the pocket—just a guy with a ring of keys, a mop bucket, and a boss who barely remembered I existed until something flooded, broke, or started stinking up the place. I worked in a lot of buildings back in the day—offices, strip malls, a bowling alley once—but the worst by far was The Canterbury Arms.

It wasn’t just a dump. It was rotting. A six-story corpse of a building squatting at the corner of Lawton and 8th, waiting to be condemned. The pipes groaned. The heat barely worked. Half the units had windows so warped from moisture they wouldn’t open anymore, and the ones that did rattled all night when the wind blew off the lake. There were always roaches, rats, and squatters sneaking into the basement, and at least twice a month, somebody called in a welfare check on one of the tenants. Sometimes the cops had to break down the door and carry out a body.

The pay was garbage, but I needed the job. It was 1997, I had a kid on the way, and janitor work was the only thing I was halfway good at. So I kept my mouth shut, kept my head down, and did my best to ignore the weird stories about Apartment 3A.

Back then, The Canterbury Arms had about sixty tenants on paper, but I only ever saw maybe half that number. People came and went at odd hours, avoiding each other, avoiding me. They weren’t the chatty type—except for Mrs. Hendersen. She was in her seventies and lived on the second floor with her husband, and if you so much as looked in her direction, she’d talk your ear off.

“You see him yet?” she asked me my first week.

I was fixing the radiator in the hall, trying to keep my sleeves from getting soaked in rusty water. “Who?”

“The old man in 3A.” She dropped her voice, glancing at the stairs. “Been here longer than anyone. Doesn’t talk. Just sits there, grinning.”

I assumed she was exaggerating. Every building has its oddballs, right? Some guy in his seventies who liked to sit outside and watch the world go by wasn’t exactly a ghost story. But she wasn’t wrong.

I saw him that night.

Apartment 3A was on the third floor, facing the street. There was a tiny balcony attached, just a five-foot slab of concrete with a rusted railing, and sure enough, there he was. An old man, dressed in a brown cardigan and slacks, perched on a plastic chair like he was waiting for something. His back was ramrod straight, his hands folded in his lap.

And he was smiling.

It wasn’t a polite smile. It wasn’t even a friendly smile. It was wide—teeth fully visible, cheeks pulled so tight it looked painful. The kind of grin a ventriloquist dummy has when the puppeteer forgets to reset the mouth.

I told myself it wasn’t that weird. Maybe the guy was senile. Maybe he had some kind of disorder. Either way, it was none of my business.

Then I noticed something else.

It was cold. A late October wind had rolled in, slicing through the city like a knife. Most tenants had their windows shut tight—but not him. His balcony door was open behind him, sheer curtains fluttering in the draft. The light inside 3A was off. No lamp, no TV, no glow of a kitchen bulb.

He just sat there, grinning.

I looked away and kept moving.

* * * * * *

Two weeks later, I found out he never left that chair.

I usually finished my shift around ten, and if I had time, I’d grab a beer from the bodega across the street before heading home. One night, as I was walking out, I caught a glimpse of the third floor. The Smiling Man was still there, sitting in the dark, grinning at nothing.

When I walked out of the shop twenty minutes later, he hadn’t moved.

When I came in the next day, he was still there.

At first, I thought maybe he was dead. But then, just as I was about to turn away, he blinked.

I told myself it wasn’t my problem. I wasn’t a social worker. Besides, the guy wasn’t hurting anyone.

But the building’s tenants didn’t feel the same way.

I overheard two of them—Mitch and Carla, the couple in 3B—arguing in the hall one night. Carla wanted to break their lease. Mitch didn’t want to eat the deposit.

“I’m not staying here another month!” Carla hissed. “I hear him, Mitch!”

“Babe, he doesn’t even talk.”

“Not talking,” Carla argued. “Laughing.”

That made me pause.

“He laughs,” she continued. “Low, like… like a chuckle. But it doesn’t stop.”

Mitch must’ve noticed my expression because he turned to me. “Hey, you work here, right?” I nodded. “Look, man, that guy in 3A is creeping my girlfriend out. Can you just—I don’t know—check on him?”

I told them I wasn’t his caretaker. If they had a problem, they could talk to the landlord.

Carla shook her head. “The landlord won’t do anything. Says the guy’s paid up through next year.”

That surprised me.

I’d never seen anyone come in or out of 3A.

That night, after my shift, I stayed late and watched the balcony. I wanted to see if he moved. I wanted to prove to myself that he was just some eccentric old man, and I’d let the stories get to me.

At exactly 8:00 PM, he walked onto the balcony and sat down.

By 9:00 PM, he hadn’t twitched a muscle.

By 10:00 PM, he still hadn’t moved.

By midnight, I was cold and tired, and I decided I’d wasted enough time.

Then I saw him in the lobby and nearly dropped my keys.

He was standing there, just inside the building’s glass doors. Same brown cardigan. Same too-wide grin. I snapped my head up, looking at the third floor.

He was still on the balcony.

My stomach dropped.

I looked back at the lobby. It was empty.

I left for the night—but I didn’t sleep well.

PART II

I wasn’t the only one who saw him that night.

The next morning, Danny, the delivery guy, came by to drop off a package for one of the tenants. He was young, maybe twenty, and always wore a beanie no matter the weather. Usually, he didn’t hang around longer than it took to scribble a signature, but that day, he lingered.

“Hey, man,” he said, shifting on his feet. “I’ve got a weird question.”

I was plunging a clogged sink in the first-floor hallway. “Shoot.”

“That old guy. The one who’s always smiling?”

I looked up. “What about him?”

Danny hesitated. “I saw him last night. But… the thing is, I saw him at the grocery store, too. Over on Clark and Division.”

I frowned. That was at least twenty blocks away. “You sure it was him?”

“Dude,” Danny said, giving me a look, “I saw him at the checkout, smiling just like he does up there. He didn’t buy anything. He just… stood there, grinning.”

I swallowed.

“When I got back here,” he continued, “he was already on the balcony.”

A cold, sour feeling settled in my gut.

“Maybe he’s got a twin,” I muttered, even though I didn’t believe it.

Danny gave a nervous laugh. “Yeah, man. Maybe.”

He left in a hurry.

* * * * * *

By the end of the week, people started leaving.

Mitch and Carla packed up in the middle of the night. They didn’t bother to tell the landlord. Didn’t even break their lease officially. Just shoved their stuff into a beat-up sedan and drove off. They never looked back.

Two days later, Mr. Hendersen, the old man on the second floor, had a stroke. His wife called 911 in hysterics, saying she woke up to find him standing in the middle of the bedroom, staring at the door with his mouth open. She swore she heard something moving in the apartment, shuffling out of sight, just before she turned on the light.

The paramedics loaded him onto a stretcher. Mrs. Hendersen left with him and never came back.

After that, I started keeping count.

Seven tenants left over the next month.

Most didn’t say why. One of them—a college kid named Eric—admitted he’d been hearing laughter in the hallways late at night. He said it sounded like it was coming from right outside his door, but when he looked, nobody was there.

The landlord didn’t care. “More vacancies,” he grumbled when I mentioned it. “Easier on my taxes.”

That was when I realized he wasn’t interested in fixing the problem—if he even saw it as a problem.

I tried to ignore it. I told myself it was just paranoia. People see one weird thing and let their minds run wild. Maybe it was stress, or a coincidence—though I didn’t really believe that.

And then the footprints happened.

* * * * * *

It was the middle of the night when Mr. Ellis, the tenant in 2F, woke up to find muddy footprints on his bedroom floor. He called me up first thing in the morning, furious.

“You let some drunk break into my place?” he barked when I knocked on his door.

I blinked. “What?”

“The footprints, man!” He yanked the door open. “Come look!”

I stepped inside and froze.

The prints started at the entrance, trailed down the hall, and stopped directly beside the bed. The dirt was still damp, with flecks of it smudged across the hardwood.

The strangest part? There was only one set, and no second trail leading back out.

Ellis must have seen my expression, because his voice dropped. “I locked the door before I went to bed.”

I checked. Sure enough, the chain lock was still in place, and there were no signs of forced entry. Not so much as an open window.

“Maybe you tracked it in earlier,” I suggested.

He shook his head. “I took my shoes off at the door. Didn’t even leave the apartment yesterday.”

I didn’t have an answer for him.

But as I walked back down the hall, a thought crept into my head.

What if the footprints weren’t made by someone breaking in? What if they were already here?

That night, I made a decision.

I was going to access Apartment 3A.

PART III

I told myself it was just a maintenance check.

If the landlord asked, I’d say there was a complaint about the plumbing. Maybe a leak. I’d knock, wait, and if no one answered, I’d let myself in, take a quick look around, and be out in less than five minutes.

That was the plan.

But as I stood outside Apartment 3A, key poised over the lock, I felt uncertainty settle deeply in my gut.

Whatever’s in there, I thought, it’s waiting for you.

The hallway was empty. Most of the tenants on this floor had already left. The only sound was the distant hum of the building’s ancient boiler rattling through the pipes.

I knocked—no answer. I knocked again, harder this time. Silence.

I slid the key into the lock, expecting resistance. Instead, the knob turned easily—too easily, like it had already been unlocked.

I hesitated for a moment. Then, bracing myself, I pushed the door open.

The stench hit me first—a thick, rancid smell, like something that had been left to rot in a sealed-off room for years.

I stepped inside.

The apartment was empty.

No furniture. No decorations. No dishes in the sink. Not even a mattress on the floor.

Just four walls, a bare ceiling, and a warped, sagging floor.

The carpet had been ripped up at some point, leaving behind a layer of stained plywood. Dark streaks bled outward from the corners, like something had seeped into the wood long ago and never fully dried.

The only thing in the apartment was a chair, which sat directly in front of the balcony door, facing the street.

I swallowed, stepping forward. The smell was worse inside—cloying and thick, like it had seeped into the walls. There was a metallic edge to it, something both wet and stale.

I scanned the room. There were no lights, no clocks, and no food. Not a single sign that anyone lived here, or that anyone ever did.

I stepped closer to the chair. The wood was old, polished smooth from years of use. A groove had been worn into the floor beneath it, like the weight of a body had sat there for so long that it changed the shape of the apartment itself.

I turned toward the hallway leading to the bedroom and found the door ajar. Inside, the closet door hung slightly open.

Something shifted behind it.

I froze.

It was faint—so faint I almost convinced myself I imagined it—but I heard it.

A soft rustling, like fabric sliding against fabric.

I swallowed hard and steeled myself. Then, slowly, I reached for the closet door.

I hesitated only a second before pulling it open.

At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at.

Then the shapes resolved.

Teeth.

Rows and rows of teeth embedded into the walls.

Not piled, not collected.

Grown.

The flesh around them was gray and leathery, stretched too tight, cracked and dry like the skin of something long dead but refusing to decay.

They weren’t human—not fully.

Some were too large, too sharp, curving back into the wall at strange angles. Others were blunt and jagged, or shattered into pieces, like they’d been used.

My stomach lurched.

Then, behind me, I heard low, drawn-out laughter, a chuckle that didn’t stop. The sound of a thousand voices pressed together.

I turned.

And I saw The Smiling Man—standing in the center of the empty apartment.

PART IV

He stood exactly as I’d seen him on the balcony, wearing a brown cardigan and pressed slacks, his hands folded neatly in front of him.

And he smiled, that same unsettling grin. Except this time, his eyes were locked onto me.

I couldn’t move.

The laughter hadn’t stopped. It wasn’t coming from him—not directly from his mouth, anyway. It was everywhere. It was in the walls, the ceiling, and the floor beneath my feet. It was inside the building itself.

Then he twitched.

It wasn’t a natural movement. He didn’t step forward. Like a marionette on unseen strings, he jerked like something had tugged him. All the while, his feet never lifted off the ground.

The laughter grew louder. Instinctively, I stepped back, bumping into the closet door.

His head tilted, the skin of his face pulling too tight over his cheekbones—and then, for the first time, he spoke.

I cannot describe the sound. It wasn’t just one voice. It wasn’t even ten—it was hundreds. Maybe thousands. All layered on top of each other, speaking in a chorus that didn’t match, with syllables out of sync and too many words trying to be spoken at once.

“You see what I let you see,” the voices said.

I bolted.

I didn’t go for the door. I went for the balcony.

It wasn’t smart or planned. Just instinct.

I didn’t think, I just ran.

* * * * * *

The glass should’ve shattered when I hit it, but it didn’t. Instead, it rippled, like the surface of a pond.

And just like that, I was falling.

I hit the pavement outside hard—not from three stories up, but from ground level.

Inexplicably, I landed on my feet, stumbling into the street, and found myself staring up at the balcony of Apartment 3A.

He was still sitting there, grinning, like he’d never moved at all.

I turned and ran.

I didn’t go home that night.

I didn’t sleep. I just drove.

I had no idea where I was going, and I didn’t care. I kept driving until my brain stopped buzzing and I could breathe again.

By morning, I decided to quit. No two weeks’ notice, no explanation—just gone.

When I went back for my final paycheck, the landlord didn’t ask why. He didn’t even look surprised. He just handed me the envelope and said, “Don’t go in there again.”

I didn’t.

I didn’t even look at the building when I left.

But as I turned the corner, I felt something. A prickling—like I was being watched. I glanced back, and there he was, perched on the balcony—grinning down at me.

And for the first time, he waved.

PART V

I tried not to think about The Canterbury Arms after I left. But I couldn’t help it. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his grin. Every time I drifted off, I jolted awake with the sound of that awful, layered laughter echoing in my skull.

I spent two weeks jumping at shadows, refusing phone calls, and barely leaving my apartment except to buy groceries. My girlfriend at the time—Marcie—asked what was wrong and why I was so jumpy. I couldn’t give her a straight answer. How do you explain to someone that you might’ve seen a person-shaped thing that existed in two places at once, or that you fell through a balcony door like it was made of water?

I tried to shrug it off. I tried to pretend it was just a bad dream—but I couldn’t.

One morning, while nursing my third cup of coffee, I caught myself staring at the phone. Part of me wanted to call the cops or some government agency and babble out everything I’d witnessed. Another part of me knew that would be useless.

I could already picture the conversation: “Yes, Officer, I saw a ghost, or a monster, or something, sitting on a balcony and also in the lobby at the same time. And it spoke with the voices of hundreds of people. And the walls were full of teeth. Sure. Of course, I’m sober.”

They’d lock me up on a 72-hour hold, or worse, and that’d be the end of it.

A few days later, I found something in an old storage box that changed everything: a small spiral notebook I’d used when I first got hired at The Canterbury Arms. Back then, I took notes on daily tasks—leaky faucets, stuck windows, floor repairs. It was mostly mundane scribbles. But near the back, I’d recorded the names of all the tenants, their apartment numbers, and any little details that might help me remember who was who.

Scrawled in the corner was a note about 3A: “Old man. Doesn’t talk. Landlord calls him ‘Mr. G.’ Paid for a year, all cash.”

I stared at that last part: Mr. G.

I didn’t recall ever hearing that name from the landlord. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I might have overheard it instead—maybe from a conversation in passing or a piece of mail. Either way, that was the first and only time I’d ever written down anything resembling a name for that occupant.

Suddenly, I had a glimmer of direction. If I could figure out who “Mr. G” was, maybe I’d find a clue as to what was actually going on in that apartment.

I started digging.

* * * * * *

I drove to the public library downtown, where they kept old property records and newspaper clippings. I told myself I wouldn’t do this—that I didn’t need to do this—but the truth was, if I didn’t find answers, I’d never sleep right again.

With help from a bored librarian, I located the microfiche for the local paper from the late ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. I spent hours scrolling through old articles, scanning for references to The Canterbury Arms, to weird incidents, to anything that might mention a “Mr. G.”

I found a few small blurbs about the building’s frequent code violations: roaches, rats, and broken windows. One piece from 1981 talked about a near-collapse of the front steps. Another from 1989 mentioned a city council debate on whether to condemn the place entirely.

But nothing about “Mr. G,” or any other occupant, for that matter.

Finally, I got tired of squinting at the microfiche. I asked the librarian if they had any old property ledgers or lease agreements for The Canterbury Arms. She produced a dusty binder from the county archives, the stiff spine cracking when we opened it.

That was where I found something intriguing: a roster of owners for the building, going all the way back to 1932, when it was first converted from a smaller Victorian structure into an apartment block. The Canterbury Arms had changed hands at least six times. Among the records were names, dates, and sale prices. I jotted down anything that looked relevant, including half a dozen references to “unusual tenant turnover.”

Then I spotted a note in the margin of a 1950s ledger: “3A occupant: G—???”

The name was smudged, as though erased. The partial letter G was followed by scribbled lines. I stared at it for a long time, trying to make sense of it. Could the occupant have been there that far back?

A chill crawled up my spine. According to that note, someone with a name starting with G was in 3A in 1955.

That would mean he’d been living there decades longer than I thought.

By the time I left the library, my head was swimming. If the occupant of 3A had truly been there since the 1950s—maybe longer—then how old would that make him? At least in his 90s, by my estimates. Possibly even older. But the man I saw on the balcony, while aged, didn’t seem that ancient.

Of course, who was I kidding? There was nothing normal about him. Not his smile, not the way he appeared in two places at once, and certainly not the impossible closet of teeth. I nearly had a panic attack just thinking about it.

I drove around aimlessly, trying to process everything. Finally, I parked in a grocery store lot near my apartment and just sat there, staring at the swirl of cars and pedestrians. None of them seemed disturbed by anything. They went on with their day—shopping, laughing, living. Meanwhile, my world had been cracked open by the realization that something was living in The Canterbury Arms, pretending to be an old man, perhaps for generations.

Eventually, I realized there was one person left I could talk to about this. And as much as I hated the idea, I knew I had to try.

I went back to The Canterbury Arms in broad daylight, wearing a baseball cap low over my forehead so nobody would recognize me. Not that there were many tenants left to see. By then, the building looked even more run-down—like it had aged a decade in the few weeks since I’d been gone.

Inside, the hallway lights buzzed, flickering in and out. I passed by peeling wallpaper and a carpet that reeked of mildew. I half expected to see the grin peeking around the corner, but the only living thing I saw was a stray cat scrounging for mice near the stairwell.

The landlord’s office door was shut. I knocked.

There was no answer.

I tried the knob. As expected, it was locked.

“Hey, old man, open up!” I called out, using more bravado than I felt. “I know you’re in there!”

Nothing.

Frustrated, I was about to leave when I heard shuffling footsteps behind me. I whirled around to see the landlord himself standing at the end of the hall. He was dressed in the same rumpled slacks and collared shirt as usual, looking more tired than ever.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” he said flatly.

“I need answers,” I told him. “About 3A. About Mr. G.”

He looked at me without blinking. “You quit.”

“I know. But—just tell me what you know. Please.”

For a moment, I expected him to brush me off. Then his gaze flicked to the side, as if checking the dark corners for eavesdroppers. Without a word, he walked past me, unlocked his office, and led me inside.

He didn’t offer me a seat. He barely seemed to notice me once we were in. He shuffled behind his battered desk, rummaged through piles of papers, and finally extracted a manila folder with no label.

“Here,” he said, shoving it toward me. “Take a look.”

Inside were copies of old documents—leases, mostly. And not just from the last few years, but decades’ worth. I nearly choked when I saw the familiar scrawl: “3A occupant—Paid in Cash,” repeated again and again, next to dates that spanned from the early 1960s all the way to the late 1990s.

“But… that’s impossible,” I said. “The same occupant? This can’t— You knew about this?”

He sank into his chair, exhaling slowly. “Knew about it before I ever became landlord. My father owned the place. His father owned it before him.”

I shook my head. “You’re telling me your family’s known there was something in that apartment for decades?”

He shrugged a bony shoulder. “Longer than that, probably.”

I flipped through the documents. Each lease was signed with some variation of a single letter and a scribble—like a G, then a dash, then nonsense. The occupant was never specifically named. The handwriting varied slightly, as if the occupant changed it from time to time. The rent amounts changed with inflation, but they were always in neat monthly increments, always paid on time—or, more precisely, left somewhere for the landlord to find.

“What is he?” I asked, my voice cracking. “A demon? A ghost?”

The landlord just stared at me with sunken eyes. “Your guess is as good as mine, kid. But he’s older than this building. My grandpa used to say the structure was put up around him… that something else used to stand here, a place folks avoided. When my family bought it, they discovered an occupant nobody remembered renting to. And for some godforsaken reason, they let him stay.”

“But why? You can’t just let a… thing live here without telling anyone.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “Can’t I?” He gestured at the threadbare walls. “You see how empty it is now? People left because of him. People died, or got sick, or… who knows. But the city’s never once shut us down. Inspectors come and go, but they don’t find anything. Or if they do, they don’t talk about it.”

I shuddered, remembering the closet of teeth. “He’s hurting people.”

He shrugged again. “I tried to get rid of him once. Boarded up 3A. He just showed up in the hallway. The next night, the boards were gone, and he was back on the balcony. I don’t do that anymore.”

Anger and disbelief collided in my chest. “So you just let it keep happening?”

“I inherited this place,” he said quietly. “Figured I’d run it until it was condemned, and then it wouldn’t be my problem anymore. You think anyone will believe you if you go running your mouth? I never told a soul—except for the folks like you who found out on their own. You want to try to stop him? Be my guest. All I know is, I’m done.”

A wave of nausea washed over me. This man—this entire family—had known for generations. They’d allowed unsuspecting tenants to move in, to be terrorized or worse, because they couldn’t bring themselves to face what lived in 3A.

I left the office without another word. My body was shaking from a stew of rage, fear, and revulsion. I wanted to burn the place down, but some deep instinct told me that would only make it worse. If what I’d seen in that apartment could bend reality—if it could laugh through walls—it might survive any fire, and then what?

I stumbled outside, blinking in the harsh sunlight. Everything felt unreal. Cars rolled by, horns blaring. A woman on the sidewalk gave me a concerned look, probably noticing how pale I was. I didn’t care. My mind was stuck on one fact:

The occupant of 3A had been there for decades, maybe longer, feeding on the fear, confusion, and misery of the building’s tenants. It had paid just enough rent to remain undisturbed, while the building around it decayed.

I drove home with my heart pounding so hard I thought I might pass out. Once I got there, I locked every door, closed every curtain, and fought the urge to watch every shadow. The illusions of normal life seemed paper-thin after what the landlord told me.

That night, the nightmares came again. I dreamed of rotting walls lined with teeth, all of them chattering in that layered laughter. I dreamed of walking into an empty room, only to find The Smiling Man turning his head toward me, grinning with a mouth that never ended.

When I woke, drenched in sweat, I knew I wasn’t done. I should have left it alone, but how do you let something like that go? I couldn’t just walk away and pretend it didn’t exist. I had to know more.

* * * * * *

Over the next several days, I dove into local history even deeper. If The Smiling Man was older than the building, maybe there was something about the land itself—some event or tragedy—that gave rise to… whatever he was.

Finally, I found a clue in an old city planning document, dating back to 1897. It referenced a small cluster of houses that once stood on the same block. One of them was the site of “repeated disturbances” among residents, who reported seeing a phantom occupant drifting through rooms at night. The house was eventually torn down. In its place, another structure was built. That one later gave way to The Canterbury Arms.

I also found a letter from a local historian, published in a 1920s newspaper, which mentioned old Native American legends about dark entities lurking near the lake’s edge. According to the legend, these beings imitated human shapes but could only do so if people feared them, or believed them to be real. The letter was vague, but it sent a chill down my spine. Was The Smiling Man some version of that old legend, still anchored to that lot?

The more I read, the more I felt I was peering into a void that stretched back centuries. Something was there, on that land, long before the city sprang up around it. And it took root in every building that rose on the spot, feeding on the people who passed through.

I thought back to the landlord’s words: “You think anyone will believe you if you go running your mouth?” Probably not. But something in me refused to let this go. I needed to understand.

So I did the unthinkable: I went back to The Canterbury Arms at night. I had no plan, and no real idea of what I expected to find—but I’d pieced together enough scraps of local lore to guess that The Smiling Man might show me the truth if I confronted him. Or it. Or whatever it was.

It was nearly midnight when I parked across the street. The building loomed against the sky, windows like dead eyes. A single flickering light shone from the lobby, but the third-floor balcony was dark. For a second, I thought maybe The Smiling Man was gone. A surge of relief—and disappointment—washed over me.

Then I saw him step out, slow as ever, and take his seat on the balcony. Even from this distance, I could see the glint of teeth.

I took a deep breath, mustered every scrap of courage (or stupidity) I had, and marched inside. The front door was unlocked, same as ever. The hallway was silent, the air stale. I passed the landlord’s office without stopping. He’d be no help.

The elevator was out of order—of course, it was—so I started climbing the stairs. Every step felt heavier than the last. By the time I reached the third floor, my shirt was soaked with sweat.

The hallway to 3A stretched before me, lit by a single overhead bulb. Paint peeled from the walls in curling strips. Water stains formed eerie shapes across the ceiling. And at the end of the corridor, the door to 3A stood wide open.

He wanted me to come in.

I clenched my jaw and forced my feet forward.

The stench was the same as before. A stagnant, rancid odor that stuck to my throat. I could see that empty living room again—bare walls, the single wooden chair. But this time, something else awaited me.

The walls shifted. My eyes struggled to focus, like the paint itself was in motion. For a second, I saw shapes—faces pressing from the inside, their mouths frozen in silent screams. I shook my head, blinking. When I looked again, they were gone, replaced by old plaster and chipped paint.

The laughter started, that suffocating wave of sound without a single source. It rolled across my mind, inescapable. I pressed my hands to my ears, but it did no good. My vision blurred as I fought the urge to run.

Then he stepped forward—from the bedroom, or from the shadows themselves, I couldn’t tell. He didn’t so much walk as glide, ankles bending in impossible angles, hands folded politely over his stomach. His mouth stretched across his face like a slash carved into clay.

In that layered voice, he spoke again, “I was here before you. Before them.”

My knees threatened to buckle. The storm of voices battered my ears, each word overlapping the next.

“Before walls. Before floors. I have worn many faces.”

I tried to steady myself. “Why? What do you want?”

His eyes—those black pits—focused on me. Or rather, through me.

“You see what I allow.”

I felt a strange pressure behind my eyes, like something was pushing into my head, rummaging through my thoughts. The shapes on the walls flickered again. Through a dizzy haze, I caught a glimpse of the closet door. It was open. The gleam of those embedded teeth flickered in the darkness.

“What are you?” I whispered.

A ripple passed through him, bending his outline for the briefest moment. For an instant, his face was young, then old, then female, then male, then something else entirely. The voice battered me again.

“I am what is left when the living move on. I am memory, fear, shape. I was once a hush in the trees, and the hush became a house. Then an apartment. Now, you look for me here, in these walls.”

My head spun. Was I hallucinating? Dreaming?

“People saw you in different places,” I said. “At the same time.”

“Time.” The voices stretched the word, turning it into a low hiss. “I do not bend to your hours. You bend to mine.”

A wave of dizziness nearly took me off my feet. I heard an echo in my mind—what the landlord said, about not being able to get rid of him. This thing had been haunting that patch of land for generations.

“You’re—feeding on them,” I said, my voice trembling. “On us.”

The grin widened, showing those impossibly white teeth.

“You come. You give me shape. I remain.”

Suddenly, I understood: every frightened tenant, every rumor, every whispered tale—they gave it power. They made it real. Maybe it was some ancient spirit or an echo from a darker age. Or maybe it was something altogether beyond human comprehension. But it thrived on belief, and on fear.

I felt a scream building in my throat, but I refused to give it a voice. I wouldn’t let it have my fear, even if I was shaking from head to toe. I locked my jaw, forcing myself to stand taller.

“You’re not a man,” I said.

It cocked its head.

“You never were,” I continued, my voice wavering. “You’re just a parasite. You wear us, and make us see what we expect. But you can’t survive without us.”

The thing’s features rippled again, flickering in and out of focus. The laughter surged, shaking the walls, making the teeth in the closet clack and gnash. For a moment, the floor felt like it was tilting. I clutched the doorframe, fighting the urge to collapse.

Then I stumbled back, out of the apartment, and into the hallway. The laughter dulled to a faint murmur behind me.

I looked back, breathing heavily. He stood at the threshold, arms at his sides. The grin was less a smile and more of a gash now, a tear in the fabric of his face.

“You remain a part of this,” the voices said, softer now but no less chilling. “You have seen me. I have seen you. You will never truly leave.”

I stumbled down the hallway, not daring to look back again. My vision swam. The entire building felt alive—beating like a heart, each corridor a twisted artery. I could hardly tell which way was out.

At the stairs, I paused, sucking in a breath. Then I forced myself onward, down the steps, past the flickering light, and out into the cool night. The instant my feet touched the pavement, I bolted for my car. I didn’t care who saw me. I had only one thought: escape.

* * * * * *

I don’t know how long I drove. By the time I got home, dawn was beginning to break. I collapsed on my couch and stared at the ceiling, mind racing. I’d learned the truth: the Smiling Man of 3A was no occupant; he wasn’t even human. He was something dark and ancient, feeding on fear, confusion, and attention.

And now he knew me.

And according to the Smiling Man, I would never be free.

And it was only a matter of time before he caught up to me.