Book Of Creepypastas #2

Room 1C

I lived in unit 1B in an apartment building. It was on the second floor, at the end of a hallway that leads to the other units, and I had the whole thing to myself. And for a while, it was pretty good. Quiet building, decent rent, no problems with the landlords or other tenants. But a couple of months ago, the unit right above me–1C–started to get noisy.

It sounded like a little kid playing and stuff, running around and all that. But the weird thing is, it only happened at night, around 11pm or later. I ignored it for as long as I could, but I have to get up early to work, so eventually I had to say something. One night when the kid was really loud, probably around midnight, I went upstairs and stood at 1C's door. Yup, he was definitely in there, running around and playing or something.

I knocked on the door, and right away, the kid stopped running. I guess it was one of those times when kids get caught doing something bad, they freeze up and play dumb. I actually smiled when I thought that, and I wasn't mad or anything... but no one answered the door. So I knocked again, and said, "Hey, could you please keep it down? I can't sleep."

No one answered. But the kid had stopped running, so whatever, I went back to my flat. As I left, I could have sworn I heard something... it was like a giggle but combined with a series of rapid, low-pitched clicks. I ignored it and went to sleep.

But a few days later, the kid was back at it. All hours of the night he was running up and down, making a Hell of a racket. I didn't want to go and knock on the door again, so the next morning, I went to the management office in town. They gave me the paperwork to file a noise complaint, and I filled it out then and there. But as I handed it back to the lady at the front desk, she took one look at it, and said, "Umm... 1C is vacant." I asked her what unit was above 1B, and she said 1C. And I was sure that was where the noise was coming from, but she checked her records, and sure enough, 1C was vacant. In fact, she still had the keys in a little set of cubbyholes behind her desk.

There were a couple of other people in the office, and they started to look at me like I was crazy. I didn't want to create a scene, so I left and did my best to ignore the kid, or whatever it was, for the next couple of days.

But one night I woke up, and not because the kid was making noise. Something wet was dripping onto my face. I got up and turned the lights on, and saw that the ceiling right above my bed was leaking water... really dusty, dirty water. I called management's emergency number and they sent a repairman over right away.

And I was pretty pissed off. My bed was soaked and filthy, I couldn't get back to sleep, and I had work in a couple of hours. So when the repairman came over, I went with him up to 1C. He had the keys, so we didn't have a problem getting in.

There was about an inch of dust everywhere, and the moment we went in, it started to fly all over the place. I felt it coating my lips and the inside of my mouth and nose when I breathed. And it was pretty chilly, even though it was the middle of spring and probably seventy degrees outside. So the repairman and I pulled our shirts over our noses and headed through the living room and into the bedroom, which was right above in my bedroom. There was a trail of water leading from the attached bathroom, and when we followed it, we saw that a faucet was on and the sink had overflowed.

I looked back in the living room. My footprints were there, and the repairman's, but that was it. We shut off the faucet and since the repairman didn't seem too interested in talking to me, I let him vacuum up the water and fix the floor by himself. But I had to know what was going on. Had someone broken in? There's a drainpipe right next to the window in the bedroom, and it faces an alley, so I opened the blinds to check it out.

But the window was locked from the inside, and it wasn't broken or anything. The only weird thing about it was that there was a single, dusty handprint on the inside pane, but the moment I breathed on it, it vanished. It was getting pretty early by then, so I headed out to get whatever sleep I could. I didn't see anything else in the unit, but I'm pretty sure I heard something clicking as I left. Maybe it was the floor.