The Upstairs

It sounded like a metronome. Rhythmic, measured, rigid ticking of melting icicles hitting a rusty window AC unit. End of March was not settling into its spring self, gently rising to high 40s, and violently tumbling into single digits with blizzards. It was as unpredictable as Julie’s sleep schedule as of late. She looked at her bed, sighed, and walked out, turning on all the lights as she went. “Melting means warmer”, Julie muttered, looking for the light switch in the garage. Taking a second too long to find it made her heart jump into her ears with deafening thumps, and even as the yellow wobble of light finally illuminated the space, the thuds remained, walloping her eardrums from the inside. Her fairly neat garage still smelled dirty. Julie thumbed a corner of a cardboard box mindlessly, feeling the cold from the concrete floor consuming her toes. The box was wet, more wet than she initially thought. Julie fought through the resistance of not wanting to deal with this, even after she saw the dark spot growing on the box, because she wanted to deal with mold even less. The delicate and frustrating game of Jenga to remove this particular one, sitting at the bottom of a rather imposing tower of her copious moving boxes, took way too long, but now she was ready to throw it out, go back to her bedroom, climb under the covers and pretend to sleep like she was ten again and her parents caught her reading past her bedtime. The weight of the box was wrong. She lifted it with her knees, of course, expecting nothing but wet cardboard, maybe some packing peanuts distended by water, but something felt much denser than that. Julie thwacked the box back down and opened it. The smell was not great. Something black nestled around a bubble-wrapped something else at the bottom, with, of course, that silverware and plates she thought she forgot to pack. With one mystery solved and memories of using Thomas the Tank Engine cutlery for a month floating on by, next on the hit parade was this gross bubble-wrapped thing. Julie didn’t have gloves, but she was not about to leave this for another day, this was going into the dumpster now, mold exposure be damned. She held her breath and pinched the edge of the bubble wrap sticking out of the black gunk with her fingers and lifted it. As a silver rattle rolled out of the bubblewrap mess mid-air, despite a nostalgic recognition, Julie realized she was hoping for it to shatter as it hit the floor. 
	Moving always took a lot out of her. Endless boxes and mental gymnastics worthy of a seasoned Tetris player, back strain of a burnt out power lifter, and kaleidoscope of cities, towns, states, blurring into a single colorful smudge, were familiar by the fifth move, but not easier. Today marked a year since she moved here. A quiet town, with little to say, but a loud voice to say it anyway. Dangerously close to the Great White North, it sat nestled in a valley, surrounded by rivers, lakes, and mountains. It somehow, in part, bore a strange resemblance to the Wild West with ranches and horses, and an occasional cow that blocks the one lane highway if you accidentally hit one of the back roads on your way to find the only Chinese food place in the thirty mile radius. Anna told her about the Fortune Garden, and although the occasional cow-caused traffic was inevitable, their hot and sour soup was well worth it. 
	They met the first day Julie arrived, as she was listlessly shoving the last box into the garage with her foot, a small shadow fell onto the dirty snow in the driveway, and a delicate but loud voice cut through the cold air with “Hi! You must be our new neighbor!” Julie was not ready nor emotionally equipped to meet the neighbors, or anyone for that matter. She drove the U-Haul for 3 days, barely sleeping, raring to be somewhere else, and while the destination has been set in her Google maps, it seemed to matter less than the actual act of leaving. She was leaving, not running. Running implied a need, leaving implied a want. She wanted to be somewhere else now. And apparently this somewhere else had a really chipper neighbor. “I’m Julie!” Julie exclaimed, hoping that the verbal enthusiasm would distract from the apathy that may have been seeping through her pores. A lithe blonde woman, matching Julie’s presented eagerness, extended her hand, stepped forward, slipped on a patch of black ice and fell on her ass posthaste. “I’m Anna” the crumpled pile with a hair bun groaned, and as Julie fought the urge to laugh and attempted to rush over to help, Anna hopped up and giggled. “Well that’s one way to make an impression, and I am not even drunk yet!”, her laugh echoed through the caul-de-sac, making Julie twitch. Julie was clumsy herself, but not in this cute, almost ethereal way, if she fell, she fell hard, and sure as shit she was not hopping back up with more zeal for life. Fighting through the chaos of awkward and unexpected, Julie extended her hand. “Well, its 5 o’clock somewhere!” Ew. Why. Why was THAT the choice her mouth made? Was the brain participating in this interaction? Now she will have to relive this for at least a month, or maybe until she moved again. Anna giggled again, her eyes drifting from Julie’s surely matted hair to her disheveled attire. To Julie’s surprise, Anna kept the welcoming speech short, offered help, and to Julie’s dismay somehow also gently terrorized Julie into a “get together” for the coming weekend. As Anna sashayed off, Julie was left trapped between rage at being a pushover and exhaustion. Sleep. She probably just needed sleep. 
	The “get together” yielded a few kitchen items Julie has somehow failed to pack, a lot of information about her new neighbors, and a wicked hangover. Although the gifted plate, spoon and fork were plastic and bore Thomas the Tank Engine’s sham of a smile, Julie was grateful. Money was tight and without any immediate job offers, Julie was attempting to make her savings last as long as possible. Her head throbbed as the previous evening swirled around her. Between the first and the fifth glass of wine, Julie learned that Anna and her husband Chris were from Tennessee, that they’ve been married for three years, and are trying to get pregnant; siblings were discussed, hobbies, exes, with some hopes and dreams sprinkled in. Julie stuck to her usual script. One older brother, dad passed away when they were young, mom lives in California, ex-husband back in Georgia, no kids. When asked for the reason for her move here, Julie joked, saying something about being fascinated by Canada, but being too suspicious of their geese to actually enter the country, leaving the question unanswered. She preferred it that way. The upstairs strangers do not need a philosophical discussion about her constant need to move, to move away. 
	Despite Julie’s best efforts, they did not stay strangers for long. By the time May rolled around, Chris was cooking out on their little balcony grill for the three of them, and as newly pregnant Anna sipped her mocktails, she shared too many details about birthing plans and her physiological changes, while making sure that Julie never remained without a drink in her hand. Anna allowed Julie to talk very little, maybe it was because she simply liked to talk, but Anna’s voice seemed to drown out anyone else’s without any effort or maliciousness. Chris seemed to prefer it that way too. He was tall, a slight hunch in his shoulders from years of probably making himself appear smaller, and slightly brooding facial features made him appear moody, despite his always pleasant interactions. His voice was soft, and compared to Anna’s bell of a tone, bordered on a whisper. Julie first saw them about twice a month, then every weekend, then it seemed she was sitting on their upstairs patio practically every day. Time became scrambled, days tantamount. Their interactions always carried the same tone of small talk, some occasional gossip Anna heard, TV-shows, more pregnancy talk. Julie didn’t mind. It meant less talking, but she was nearing dangerously close to zoning out mid conversations. Staring down at her own little patio, her apartment, her world seemed so much smaller, and somehow still gray, and despite spring being in full swing, her tiny patch of grass in the yard remained brown, like it was never released from under the weight of winter ice. When Julie didn’t react to Anna’s facetious announcement on calling her baby Ethel, or laugh at Anna being at I-don’t-wear-pants-anymore stage of pregnancy joke, Julie was immediately called out and reprimanded by yet another horrible fact about what pregnancy does to your nipples. 
	As Anna’s first trimester rolled on, she began to allow herself some frivolities. One prime example of an unfortunate side effect of the privilege of a growing baby bump was that Anna began calling her Jules. Julie hated that. Her ex called her Jules. But despite that information, Anna was relentless in her purported adulation, explaining that Julie in fact, was a jewel, she just didn’t know it. Other than this tasteless development, nothing else has changed in Anna’s demeanor. No panic, no fear, no concern, not even a shred of doubt whether she was going to be a good mom. Endless hours of online research apparently did not send her into a wild panicked stupor about fissures and tearing, day care, or cost of diapers. As her newly designated friend Jules decided to panic for her, but despite asking leading questions, in hopes to at least illuminate possibilities of a lot less rainbows-and-sunshine scenarios about the whole process, Anna remained unchanged in her radiant bliss. Until July. 
	Summer nights were humid and the window AC units did not produce enough air to allow for a restful sleep. Julie always struggled with it anyway, but now she barely managed to get two hours a night, and sometimes not consecutively. This left her sweaty, uneasy, and angry; too unfocused to read, too tired to watch TV, too awake to rest. Her entire body was left to hear, feel, think. Aside from a gurgling in her stomach, or the sound her tongue made scraping against her bottom teeth, her ears picked up flies banging themselves on windows panes, electricity buzzing through lightbulbs, rhythmic clicking in the AC unit, and what sounded like faint moaning. Night after night, annoyed that even after the act has already yielded the desired effect, the upstairs still continued to copulate, Julie began leaving her TV on, to drown the joy of lovemaking out. One afternoon after too many margaritas, Julie did make a lighthearted comment about it, along the “good for you guys” line, just to make Anna aware that she can, in fact, hear her, and she should, in fact, be quieter. To Julie’ surprise Anna was lighthearted right back in her “yeah I wish, but we haven’t fucked since I peed on the damn stick” retort. No blush to her face, no darting of the eyes to avoid contact, no sign of her lying. Unless Anna was that good at lying, but most people weren’t, Julie knew that for sure. Something resembling a shadow did cross Anna’s face as she said that, though. Was that a hint of sadness, a sign of first cracks of reality in their rock-solid foundation? Julie laid in her bed that night, now actively searching for that sound. The moaning, or was it whining? Wailing? Muffled howling? Anna’s and Chris’ bedroom was right on top of hers, she knew that. She moved the clock out and turned anything else off in the room to allow for silence to guide her ears. The sound eventually became clear enough that Julie was able to hear that it moved. From right above her bed, to above the tv across it, to the hallway outside of her bedroom, and then, disturbingly, to the outside of her window. Julie decided to stop drinking for a while. 

	One of the nights a thud startled Julie awake. 3:21 am. Same sound, now coupled with what sounded like scraping that moved as well, but separate of the moaning, which no longer sounded human. Julie shoved her head under the pillows and laid there until sunrise. She saw a little less of Anna towards the end of July. When Julie went upstairs, shockingly of her own volition (but probably by mere habit at this point), Anna opened the door only slightly, and asked for a raincheck. She was disheveled, dark circles under her eyes, clothes that looked like they smelled less than clean, and a weird dark mark on her forehead. Anna looked like Julie felt. This was not good. Slight feeling of schadenfreude was replaced by concern almost immediately and Julie demanded that she sees Anna soon. After a few days of avoidance, Anna knocked on Julie’s door minutes after Chris’ footsteps thundered down the stairs. They went back up to their place, sat in a messy living room while Anna explained why the last few weeks have been rough. Both Chris and her have stopped sleeping well. Chris suffered from nightmares that he began remembering now, so not only did he wake up screaming, now he told Anna why he was screaming, which made Anna want to scream too. Chris woke up because a dark mass in the corner of their bedroom watched him and Anna sleep for what seems like en eternity, but moving closer with every breath and eventually would violently plunge itself onto Chris and begin to strangle him. He woke up screaming, gasping for breath, and terrified of his rightfully terrified wife, who was trying to comfort him. It went as far as Chris swinging at Anna like a crazed windmill, hitting her in the forehead with his fist. Anna was at her wits’ end, and before Julie could refuse, she poured her a whiskey. Anna said they’re brining someone to cleanse the house, and as Julie fought her urge to argue about the upcoming mambo jumbo ritual, she simply settled for being satisfied that Anna is not going to throw herself off of one story balcony. Julie went back home and faced her own battle with sleep. Whiskey helped to fall asleep, but not to stay asleep. Julie pried open her crusty eyelids and looked at the clock, 3:04 am. Same sound moved around the ceiling, now accompanied by scraping, tapping, and a sound that can only be described as her popcorn ceiling shifting under an immense weight: tearing, ripping, crackling. Then a loud thud, like some thing, some one got thrown onto the floor. Intensified wailing followed. Julie wanted to run upstairs to check on Anna, but passively reached for her phone instead.

J: U ok? Sounded like something fell down. Hard.

A: …

Julie stared at the ellipsis until it disappeared, and somewhere in between a quiet panic and putting on her pants, she fell asleep. As the sun hit her face, Julie sat up startled, and was immediately trying to remember which corner was Anna’s and Chris’s bed located. Which corner was that dark mass demon thing in? Julie believed that she didn’t believe. So why was the hair on her neck standing up? 
	August brought more heat, more sleepless nights, more sounds, more self medicating and a lot less Anna. Actually, no Anna at all. Time blurred, so it may have been two or three weeks after the revelation of a creepy-crawly-monster-in-my-corner when Julie stepped out of her front door, tripped on some papers blown in by wind, and struggle-bussed upstairs to knock on Anna’s door. Julie realized that she never got an update on the “cleansing”, and judging by some packages and mail piling under their door, Anna never gave her one. Julie ran back down and checked her phone. No texts, no phone calls, no note. Anna vanished just like she appeared, annoyingly and without an explanation. 
	Julie made a trek to the leasing office, and asked a very heavily perfumed lady at the front if her upstairs neighbors left a forwarding address. Through her tortoiseshell glasses the front desk lady glanced up, somehow in slow motion, pausing at Julie's stained t-shirt, and dismissively asked if Julie was inquiring about the upstairs across the landing, and not right above her. Julie repeated the unit number with less certainty now, watching the perfumed witch click clack on the oldest keyboard known to man. The front desk gatekeeper sighed and with obvious disdain repeated that the only upstairs unit occupied in Julie's little building was across the landing from what Julie knew as “Anna's place”. No occupants in the last nine months in the unit above her. Julie felt her voice claw its way out of her mouth and ask about the noises. The wicked witch of the Three West Rentals pulled her lips into a rope and announced that she will send a maintenance guy to check it out. Probably pipes. Yup. Pipes. In the bedroom. At 3 am. Julie's brain was becoming increasingly loud, repeating those words over and over as she backed out of the leasing office and up until she slammed her own front door behind her. She heard the maintenance guy come up, shockingly timely. She saw his van pull up, she watched him go upstairs. She heard him unlock the door, walk around, turn on faucets, then turn them off. He opened and closed the windows, checked the balcony door, and after twenty minutes scampered down the stairs, announcing into his walkie-talkie that he was done, everything appears to be okay, unit unoccupied, no signs of life. No signs of life. Julie dragged herself to the bedroom and plopped face down on her bed. The nights seemed longer, noises louder. Every thought about Anna was punctuated by a screech, or a thud, or a moan. Julie just wanted to sleep, she wanted silence, she wanted for the alcohol to do its damn job and let her eventually black out. Days were filled with working mostly on that. Nights were reserved for paralyzing fear, for staring at her bedroom corner, wondering when that thing from Anna’s place going to migrate to hers. She stared at shadows around her, recognizing that none of them really seemed to move. They all just remained there, night after night, as Julie listened to the ceiling groan and lament. 
	She remembered making sounds like like that. The day after her mother in law proudly presented a silver rattle that has been passed down generations and patted Julie’s belly, Julie laid in the ER, surrounded by rhythmic beeping, and “I’m so sorrys”. Somewhere in between “thrombophilia” and “genetic factors” she managed to glance down and everything fell silent. That silence never left. No one really told Julie how loud silence can be. Trapped in the metronome of her heartbeat, she felt her world move further away with each thump. She didn’t want to shower, she didn’t want to sleep, she didn’t want to be in the confines of her mute yet somehow screaming mind. She wanted to hear him play the piano again, she wanted to hear her cat knock something off the table, she wanted to hear the tiny heartbeat in her belly as the nurse beamed at her. She wanted to hear anything but her own screams bouncing off the walls of their house and shattering into million pieces. She wanted to hear anything but his voice growing colder and flatter when he attempted to comfort her for months after, she wanted to hear anything but “I can’t do this anymore”. 
	She wondered about genuine silence. She wanted it. She wanted those minutes right before the dawn in the early summer, stillness laying on the grass, everything bating its breath before the first real ray of the sun. Or maybe she wanted that negative decibels anechoic chamber in Minnesota silence. All she knew, she could no longer hear the upstairs wailing rip her world apart without going insane. It wasn’t really well thought out. Amidst what sounded like a howling demon was cracking her ceiling in two, Julie grabbed a pencil and thrust it into her left ear. The searing heat of the first jab didn’t stop her from repeating it on the other side. Julie passed out immediately from the pain, finally getting her blackout.  
	Damp and cold March air swept through the apartment with force, shoving its way through every room, jabbing Julie awake. Her head felt like it was smashed between two boulders repeatedly, and the sticky cold blood has formed a sizable puddle on the carpet. Coming to was slow, but jarring, and as she stumbled through the living room Julie heard it again. The howling, the scratching; thuds and moans remained, now amplified by the blood rushing to her head. Julie was now fully awake and horrified by the ironically ear-splitting cries that sounded off inside her head. She stood motionless, stunned by the magnitude of her new reality. And as she watched the wind dance through the string lights on the patio, creating a cacophony of shadows, Julie exhaled, and let them upstairs, knowing they were already there.