Short horror stories

"Didn't you love it here?"

We met an agent who showed us this building, and when I tried to verify the price with her (the median price for most places we looked at), she said it was actually several hundred dollars cheaper than that. It was strange. Every other place we saw had lines of people and tons of competition, but strangely we were the only ones there. She immediately called us after we left and said we could have the apartment. We were ecstatic.

When we filled out all of our forms later, she mentioned there was a building manager who lived there. He was friends with the owner, who was a very old woman. He was also, very old, but we should give our rent checks to him and let him know if we needed anything.

Living there started off fine. The apartment was a little weird, and even had an electrical socket *in* the shower, which I tried to cover and make water proof. The manager though was strange. You couldn't say exactly why he was strange, but there was something... off about him. One day he would nod in our direction if we saw him and other days we would hear him mumbling incoherently at people that weren't there. The few times we went to him with a problem, he would start yelling, almost like in a different language. One day though we were startled by loud banging on our door. It was him. I was terrified and made my husband open the door. He screamed and raved about a note we left on a car that was blocking our garage door, which was apparently his car. He wasn't making any sense, but it was terrifying. He told us he would make us pay if we ever left a note on the car again.

Here's where the scary piece happens. I had been trying to avoid him as much as I could at this point. He seemed... unhinged somehow. There was a look in his eyes. Something wasn't right, and it was obvious he was very angry with us. One night I woke in the dead of the night to noise in our hallway. We had wood floors, and they creaked when you walked on them. They were creaking.

My husband was dead asleep. I had a history of being paranoid, so I closed my eyes and tried to fall back asleep, telling myself it was nothing. That's when the feeling of absolute horror and fear seized me. It's unlike anything I had ever felt before. Can't even describe it, except I was terrified, and I couldn't move. It was like I was paralyzed. I did manage to open my eyes, even though part of me didn't want to, and he was standing there, next to the bed, watching me. I laid there in complete panic, unable to move, and he stood there too, stock still, but kind of shadow-y. He shifted his feet, the floor creaked. He was breathing hard. I wanted to scream or do something, but I couldn't. It felt like it lasted forever. Finally, I just closed my eyes again, unable to even pray I was so scared. The floor creaked again. I opened my eyes, he was gone.

I laid awake the rest of the night. The horrible fear that pressed against me was gone and I was able to move again. Tears poured down my face the rest of the night. That was all I could do.

The next morning, I looked at the front door, and the latch was still set. No one would have been able to open the door from the outside and get in without breaking it. I tried to convince myself that it was just a terrible dream, but I knew I was awake. It happened. We moved shortly after that. When we went to give notice to the manager (neither of us would go seem him by ourselves, so we agreed to do it together), he smiled creepily and said, "Now that's a shame. You've been such good tenants." He looked at me. "Didn't you love it here?"