Never Turn Around

I live on the top floor of a five-story apartment building in a moderately big city. My apartment is a one bedroom with a fairly large living room with big windows out towards the street and the opposing building. That building has a small parking lot up front, so it is not directly across from mine, which I kind of like because of the privacy.

Being a night owl, I like to sit up late with my laptop. Sometimes I peek out the window at the building across, looking for lit windows and wondering if anyone else out there is doing the graveyard shift. Last night, I wish I hadn't.

I usually sit with my laptop facing the windows. For the last couple of nights I had, in the corner of my eye, been seeing a sparsely lit window in the building across and in it some sort of movement. Last night, my curiousness got the best of me, so I put my computer down and went over to the window to check it out. Surely enough, you could see someone waving, but just barely. The window was dimly lit, but you could definitely see some movement. I thought about it for a second and went to get a pair of binoculars. After some searching I found a pair and went back to the window, putting them to my eyes.

I located the window and got a better look at what was in it. It appeared to be a person, lit up by a candle. I couldn't make out the person's face, but he was waving. At me, apparently, because after I had locked onto him with the binoculars he stopped waving for a second and then pointed at me. I felt a chill go down my spine.

This was fucking creepy.

He pointed at me and then made a circling motion with his finger. He kept doing this over and over until I realized he was signaling for me to turn around. I reacted out of instinct and quickly turned around, as if I really were expecting something to lurk behind me. Nothing was there but darkness, obviously, so I chuckled to myself and turned back to the window with my binoculars only to find it empty, except for the candle slowly fading out.

I jumped back and dropped the binoculars on the floor, the noise of the impact spooking me even more. "What the fuck," I thought to myself as I went back to my computer. I put on some music to calm me down and surfed around a bit more until I looked at the time and realized it was about to get light out. I put my computer down and made my way through a small hallway that led to my bathroom. I didn't have any lights on, but as I approached the bathroom I noticed a flickering light underneath the door.

My body froze. Even if I did forget to turn off the bathroom light, a light bulb could not produce that kind of lighting. I slowly walked up to the door, took a deep breath, and lightly pushed the door open. I stepped inside and, to my horror, I found a candle sitting in the sink, revealing a message scribbled on the mirror.

"NEVER TURN AROUND"