The Girl Upstairs

Above my girlfriend's apartment, there is a noise.

It used to keep her up at night, a steady thump-thump-thump that she would complain about endlessly.

"What're they doing up there, rotating their bowling ball collection?"

"What're they doing up there, practicing for a line dance tournament?"

"What're they doing up there, re-enacting a Broadway production of STOMP?"

And so it went. We lived above a Chinese Restaurant, and were on friendly terms with the people who ran it below. One time, I asked them who the apartment above ours belonged to.

"No one," they said. "No one owns it."

"But there's people up there. We can hear them. At night."

The only shook their heads again, "No one OWNS it."

Coming down the stairs of our apartment one morning as I went to work, I met a young girl on the stairs coming down from the landing above ours.

"Good morning."

She nodded and smiled pleasantly, a small chinese girl, she was obviously in a hurry.

"Er, do you live upstairs?"

She nodded again, still smiling.

"Uhm, listen, do you think you could keep it down at night-"

She slid past me in the hallway, nodding and smiling all the while.

"I don't think they speak English," I told my girlfriend.

"Who?"

"The people above us."

"Did you meet them?"

"I met a girl on the landing."

"Was she cute?"

I shuffled my feet uneasily. "I don't know. Maybe."

"Hmm..." my girlfriend rocked back on her heels, rolling her office chair across the hardwood floor.

For the most part, we ignored it. Got used to it, I guess. And before we knew it, it was gone. No more thumping noise.

But then the roof started to leak. Well. Not the roof, at least not of the whole building, but rather of our apartment. Specifically, in the bathroom, into our bathtub, so at first we didn't even notice it. But then, my girlfriend looked up while taking a bath, and noticed a large, brownish stain spreading across the ceiling tiles.

She pointed it out to me in a bath-towel. "Was that stain there before?"

I shrugged. "Maybe."

"The land lord is going to take it out of our deposit if it wasn't."

She was right. I drummed my fingers on the counter of our porcelain sink. "We should document this. Go get a camera."

We tried calling our landlord, a small, balding Chinese man, but he hadn't picked up our calls since we put the deposit down. The last time the lease ran out, he had shown up, all smiles and bows, a strange woman following behind him.

"Who is she?" I asked my girlfriend after they left.

"His mistress, I think."

"What?"

"I met his wife once, and she's too old to be his daughter. So. Mistress."

"He brings his mistress around when he's signing leases?"

"It must be impressive."

I asked the people in the restaurant about the girl on the stairs, and the strange woman our Landlord brought around. They stared at me blankly, as if I was making shit up. When I wouldn't drop it, one of the younger line cooks took me aside.

"You should drop it. She's bad news."

"Who?"

"Both of them."

"What do you mean?"

He tapped impatiently against the side of a stove with a pair of chopsticks.

"Another cook. Got interested in the girl upstairs. Used to take her out sometimes. A few months ago? He quits. Leaves town."

"You think it was something the girl did?"

He looked around nervously, "No. I didn't say that."

The stain on the ceiling was getting larger. We sent our landlord a photo of it with our rent money, but he ignored that too. It wouldn't have been so bad, except for the thing in the walls.

We didn't know what to call it, so we just called it the thing in the walls. My girlfriend thought for sure it was rats, I insisted it was just a rattling water pipe. For 600 a month for two bedrooms, we couldn't exactly expect everything to be perfect.

"This is getting ridiculous though. I can't sleep because of it!"

"You have your prescription, take that. You're just a light sleeper."

"I hate this fucking apartment!"

She threw something at the mirror against the far wall, shattering it.

I met my friend, the line cook, in the hallway, tacking something up to his door. It was small piece of what looked like folded paper hanging from a string.

"What's that?" I was trying to be neighborly.

He smiled helplessly, "My aunt. She's very superstitious so-"

The door to his apartment opened, and out came a small little Asian lady, who proceeded to bustle and berate my poor friend the cook in angry-sounding Chinese.

He answered back, sounding tired while she fixed me with a strange look. Gesturing to me, she let out another spat of angry-sounding Chinese and handed me one of the small, paper talismans. Just as quickly as she had come, she ran back inside.

"What was that all about?"

He sighed, "She's very superstitious. You should hang that on your door, or I'll never hear the end of it.

I invited my friend and his fiancée one night for dinner, more or less on my girlfriend's insistence.

"We should be more neighborly. So they give us free egg rolls."

"Why eggrolls?"

"Eggrolls are delicious."

I set some curry cooking and asked my girlfriend to watch it while I showed my friend the stain in the ceiling.

"It's probably nothing, but I wish the landlord would do something about it. You know."

As i showed it to him, the color drained rapidly from his face. He charged out of the room, and began to speak hurriedly to his fiancée. He then dragged her back into the bathroom, where the stain had a similar effect on her.

"What? What is it?"

"Do you have any paper?"

"Sure, why?"

"Please. Just get some." He looked up so pleadingly that I felt obliged to go out and fetch some paper and a pen immediately. As soon as I returned he began rapidly to scribble on it. Frustrated, he turned it over and handed his fiancée the pen.

"My handwriting has never been good. She went to a better school than me in Shanghai." He said apologetically while his fiancée scribbled. She handed over the paper and then gestured to the stain.

"Well? Do you see it?" he asked.

I looked at the ceiling, then the paper, and then back again. The fiancée had drawn what looked like a Chinese character on the paper. Looking at the stain, I could now see it instantly. The stain, dark and circular as it was, was almost line for line identical to what the girl had written.

"What does it say?"

My friend's fiancée mumbled something low in Chinese under her breath.

"It says..." my friend trailed off.

"What?"

"It says 'Leave.' "

I sent my girlfriend to stay with my friend and his fiancée. I grabbed an aluminum baseball bat we kept under the bed and, steeling myself, walked up the stairs to the upper floor.

The door at the end of the hall was open. In the apartment, directly above ours was the same basic layout, but now devoid of any sign of living. No scuff marks on the hardwood, and a thin layer of dust covering everything.

In the main room, directly above our bathroom, there was a bathtub. It stood in the center of the hardwood floor, no other accouterments littered the floor. But on the walls... The walls were lined with mirrors. Dozens and dozens of mirrors, of every shape and size imaginable.

Gripping the bat in white knuckled hands, I advanced slowly into the room. Approaching the bathtub. Hesitating, I slowly peered over in a mirror to see if I could make up what it was inside the bathtub through the reflection. As I looked, I saw that the bathtub was filled with ice.

As I watched the mirror. I noticed the ice begin to move, ever so slowly. Something was emerging from the tub. First, fingers. Then, a hand, an arm, a face, the face of the girl from the hall. Transfixed I stared at the mirror as she rose up, out of the tub, naked, and with soundless steps walked towards me.

Fighting the urge to keep staring, I spun around to face her. The room was empty. Nothing stirred. Slowly, I turned once again to the mirror.

Looking in the mirror, I could see her, standing right behind me. She breathed, softly, beautiful tanned skin glistening with the ice-cold water. She wrapped her arms around me slowly, sliding her cold, impossibly cold hands under my shirt.

"What do you see in the mirror?"

Her face was pressed to the side of mine, nuzzling my neck.

"Do you know, what happens to mirrors when you dream?"

Her breath was hot on my face, the softness of her breasts pressed against my back.

"If you see a mirror in a dream. Do not look into it."

She whispered, softly leaning her head on my shoulder.

"For in a dream, mirrors have no light to reflect. And you will see some very strange things in mirrors."

She pressed against me, warm, soft, cold. My grip on the aluminum bat failed, and it clattered to the ground.

"Wake up."

"I'm not asleep."

"Are you sure?"

She holds me now, my face between her hands. I couldn't answer.

"It'd be better if you were. If I were a dream. If you could wake up. You are unlucky in that. You didn't recognize me on the stairs."

I shook my head, "No. I recognized you. How could I ever forget."

She laughed. High and clear, like a glass dish shattering. "You forget a lot of things, don't you? What you are. A tool. An instrument.:

She held my hand to the light. Flexing it. Watching it move. "There is a tradition, I think, while barbaric, serves our purpose."

She moved and there was a table beside her. a wooden block upon it, and a butcher's knife resting to the side.

A few nights later, my girlfriend had had enough. She sent me upstairs to deal with the thumping noise.

I went upstairs and followed the noise down the hall; the apartment at the far end; just like ours. I rapped, once, twice, quickly on the door. The thumping continued.

Again, I knocked on the door. Once, twice, than a third time, harder. As I knocked, there was a click, and the door slid from it's jamb a bit. Unlocked.

I sighed. I couldn't exactly leave empty-handed. I opened the door.

The apartment was a small, spartan affair. It was mostly empty, same hardwood floor and layout as ours, though the entry way and kitchen that mirrored ours was empty. The emptiness was total, no clipped coupons, no smell, no bits of food on the stove, no dishes in the sink. The thumping was coming from the bedroom.

Likewise, the bedroom was bare, but dark. It seems that whoever had been up here last had closed all the blinds, and any residual street light piercing through them only showed more bare floor. The thumping continued, louder. I felt around for the light-switch.

Sitting in the middle of the room was a large, burlap sack. As I turned on the light, it seemed to be the only thing in the room. The thumping stopped. Then, I realized it... something was moving inside the sack. It twisted and bent, humanoid outlines of a head, an arm, a torso pressed into the burlap as is shifted itself... thumping, thumping across the floor. Towards me.

"Oh fuck Oh fuck Oh fuck."

My girlfriend came up behind me, rubbing sleepily at her eyes as I rinsed my hands in the sink.

"So, who was up there?"

I washed the red from my hands, watching it swirl and gurgle down the drain.

"Nobody. Nothing was up there."