Sound in the Ceiling

“I told you, Mr. Reich, my room is haunted.”

“Nonsense, Miss Eran!” the middle-aged landlord grumbled as he and two women strode down the sidewalk, heading towards the house, “This apartment was only finished a few months ago! How can a ghost already settle in?” 

The tenant, Miss Eran, was not satisfied with his answers. She glanced up at the building, and saw a man walking out of the door. As her friend was trying to explain the case to Mr. Reich, Eran raised her voice and the man squinted in their direction, “Ever since I moved in, weird things kept happening time after time, and if you can’t give me a better solution, I’ll go find another apartment instead.”

 It was in the late afternoon. The sun shone behind them, casting shadows twice as long as their original heights. Now as the man walked towards them, Eran decided to make the conversation audible, forcing him to overhear more of the conversation and ruining Mr. Reich’s “best place for home” advertisement for the apartments. She cleared her throat, ignored her friend’s warning look, and exclaimed her complaints.

“First, there was this rotten smell in the empty room, and bugs, hundreds of them: cockroaches, spiders, as if entire generations have lived in the walls. Then after we cleaned the room (mind you, it took no less than a week), the windows were making noises at night; And now there’s that tapping noise. You know what I think? It’s either a ghost or a man in the wall.”

The man gave the company a strange look before he passed, which made Mr. Reich nervous, as he turned and watched the man shaded by the sunlight, “I’m sorry about your situation, but you’re scaring the other tenants whose apartments are fine to live in.” He added in a whisper, “Besides, I heard this man had some mental issues ever since his girlfriend went missing a year ago. I don’t want troubles from a lunatic.”

“I wonder why I’m not insane after all the abnormality,” Eran muttered as they entered the building. She moved into this apartment with a friend a month ago, and the building was still half-empty. The only neighbor she knew was a foreigner next door, who she had never seen. The apartment was simple: a kitchen island, a living room with a sofa and a TV, a common bathroom, and two bedrooms. Eran’s room was closest to the bathroom, located on the left of the door. Living on the first floor also gave them a garden outside the bedroom windows; but for now, it was only part of the lawn in front of the building.

While chatting with her friend about accommodating the new apartment, Mr. Reich paced between the bathroom and the bedroom door, looking up at the ceiling until his neck was sore. He could still smell the scent of the paint faintly, but there was no sound at all. He looked at Eran, who was checking her phone and unaware of his impatience. At last Mr. Reich asked doubtfully, “Pardon me, Miss Eran, but where is this noise that you were talking about?”

The reply was a tap on the phone, and Eran handed it to him to play the recording. As Mr. Reich put his ears close to the phone, his eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped. 

Behind the white noise, there came a continuous sound, similar to light footsteps of someone going upstairs. As it went on, it became more dull, like knockings on a wooden table. If he didn’t know the truth, Mr. Reich would believe it was a person who was making the noise.

He replayed the recording before handing the phone back to Earn, took a deep breath, and tried to sound assured. “Indeed there are some problems with the ceiling construction, which I will contact the plumber to help you tomorrow.” In his mind, he quickly went through the list of tenants but could remember no one living directly above this apartment. 

Outside the windows, the sun withdrew its last light. Sweat came to Mr. Reich’s forehead.

“In the meantime, I wish you a nice evening, Miss Eran.” Without waiting for a reply, he hurried off towards the door, making a note to only visit during the daytime. 

Eran’s friend followed him to send the guest away but found Eran holding the phone in a tight grip. “You were there,” she murmured, turning to face her friend, “You heard that noise with me at two a.m. at night; You saw that when I shouted ‘Who’s there?’ the knocking became faster. There is something between the walls. There has to be!” Her last few words came out as a wail. 

Her friend hugged her, promising that everything would be fine. Then she hesitated and suggested switching rooms, but Eran only shook her head and said she didn’t want to trouble her as well.

“It’s alright, there’s nothing supernatural in this house.” Her friend assured her.

Four hours later, Eran was on her bed, lying on her stomach, and spending the last minute before sleep checking messages. The night was clear and quiet, so she left the curtains up to see the crescent moon in the sky. The only sound she heard was the rustling of the grass in the garden.

Her phone rang and it was a message from her friend in the next room. I just know that our foreign neighbor was the guy we saw on the street today.

Eran raised her brows at the information.  Can’t believe we live next to him. What a nice choice for an apartment.  She tapped “send” and smirked at her sarcasm. Having some evening desserts and reading did raise her spirit a bit, and that tapping noise hadn’t sounded today.

Mr. Reich told me he actually lost his girlfriend while visiting here, which kinda explains why he came back.

What a guy, Eran thought, imagine looking for your lost girlfriend for two years, how much love and dedication will that need.

A new message followed. By the way, I found this on the Internet. It might explain the  sound you’re hearing. It was a web page titled something about marble noise, and Eran clicked on it. She read for a while, her face got redder every minute. At last, she shut her phone and lay face-down on the bed, greatly embarrassed.

It turns out that strange noises inside of walls were common. Eran buried her face into the pillow as she pondered over the article. It was even called marble sound, created by those pipes and water and air. Not a ghost, no, not at all. She rewound the events in the past few days and was more certain about her stupidity. If it was really a man or a ghost, why did the sound only begin to bother her last night?

“I am overreacting,” Eran concluded self-mockingly, “Ever since I moved in, I’ve been too cautious about everything. Ghosts? Ha! I would look more like a ghost in my white blanket!”

The window hummed softly in agreement. This was just a new house, Eran thought, it was normal to have some odors, some bugs, and some strange noises.

She stiffened.

There was something off that she noticed at first, but became distracted by the tapping. The smell from that wall, similar to rotten meat; The flies that she found near the same place; The window that uttered in the quietness.

It was a windless night, but she could still hear the grass rubbing against each other and crushing under some weight. 

The window gave a louder cracking and the room grew colder.

When Eran turned over, she saw a gleam of silver flashing under the faint moonlight.

The next morning, The sun was shining over the house, casting a beam of sunlight through the opened window onto the red blanket. 

On the other side of the wall, the neighbor was sitting on his bed, grinning forward, “Good morning, sweetheart.”

A streak of light fell in front of him, lighting up the flies and maggots on the wall. Beneath them was an oily shape of a body.