When I first moved out of my parent’s house, I struggled to get approved for an apartment. It turns out, most landlords don’t like it when your background check shows no rental history. I found this to be a pretty frustrating contradiction: you needed rental history in order to rent an apartment, but you couldn’t get rental history without first renting an apartment. Later, I learned this was the favorite contradiction of the adult world, as I encountered the same thing when it came to work experience and finding a job.

  It was by pure luck that I stumbled upon Derek’s building when he had a ‘room for rent’ sign posted. Derek didn’t believe in ‘background checks’ or ‘credit scores’ or any of the things that serve as barricades for young people starting off on their own. He only believed in ‘vibes’ and ‘gut feelings.’ During my first meeting with him, we spent twenty minutes debating whether pineapple belonged on pizza before Derek decided I seemed like a good guy and offered me the apartment.

  My duties as building manager have caused me to become more familiar with the other tenets of the apartments, and I’ve come to realize what a strange collection of individuals can result from having zero background checks and going solely by feeling. Ms. Dorris in 3C collected cats. Not just as pets (though she has plenty of those), but in the forms of plushies, figurines, artwork, and a shirt that said, “I’m not a crazy cat lady, just crazy.” Francis in 1B was a French immigrant who seemed to have learned English by watching old western movies, and spoke in a mix of heavily-accented cowboy speak and French idioms. “Hey there, partner, do you want to mosey on off with some of my baguettes? I reckon I made too many – Avoir les yeux plus gros que le ventre – eh, I mean to say, my eyes are mighty bigger than my stomach.”

  For the most part, they seemed like nice enough folk, and it made me appreciate Derek’s way of doing things a little bit more. But as a crouched over the dead refrigerator in apartment 3D, I couldn’t help but feel some kind of background check for the residents might be worthwhile.

  “It made a most frightful noise last night,” Julliard, the apartment’s sole resident, said in a raspy, whispery voice. “I was in my evening repose when I heard the dreadful sound. It was as if someone was being murdered. To my relief, it was merely this appliance, and a not a person, which had met its untimely demise.”

  The way Julliard spoke sent a chill down my spine. It didn’t help that the man looked like he had stepped out of a 1930’s vampire movie, with his pale skin, sunken yellow eyes, and pointed nose. Nor did the dim lighting in his apartment. Julliard claimed he was sensitive to bright lights, so all of his lights were on dimmers which he kept at low settings. I needed to use my phone’s flashlight to get a good enough view of the fridge to confirm that it was, indeed, not working. Unplugging it and plugging it back in had done nothing to fix it, which was the extent of my technical expertise.

  “I’ll have to call in the handyman to take a look at it,” I said, eager to leave this apartment. Never thought I’d be yearning for the sunlight.

  “Please,” Julliard implored. “This is a most urgent matter.”

  I don’t think Julliard had blinked once the entire time I had been there, nor had his eyes ever left me. It felt like being watched by a predator.

  “Of course,” I replied, trying not to sound nervous. “I’ll call him right now.”

  I resisted the urge to dial 911 as the strange man observed me, instead hitting the number for Boji’s.

  I’d had a few conversations with the hard-of-hearing handyman since my first back-and-forth with him, and I felt like I’d perfected the volume that was needed to have a conversation with him. It was just one octave short of full-on-yelling. Any louder and he’d get mad at me for screaming, any softer and the conversation wouldn’t go anywhere. I cleared my throat as the phone rang and focused on that perfect pitch.

  “HELLO THIS IS KIT FROM DEREK’S BUILDING!” I yelled as soon as I heard the call get picked up. “WE NEED THE HANDYMAN TO APARTMENT 3D TO LOOK AT THE FRIDGE!”

  I heard a squeal that definitely didn’t sound like it came from the usual person I spoke to, which was followed by a clattering sound, like someone dropping the phone. Then silence.

  “Uhm … hello?” I meekly said to the silence.

  There was some more clattering. Finally, a voice replied to me. A woman’s voice I was not familiar with. “Hello? I’m sorry about that. I’m not used to people yelling into my ear.”

  My cheeks went red with embarrassment. “No, I’m sorry. The guy who usually answers this line is pretty hard of hearing. This is Boji’s, isn’t it?”

  “Oh. Yes, that’s my father,” the woman replied. “He’s away on a work-call right now, so I was helping him out.”

  “That makes sense. Again, I’m really sorry about yelling. I just need to get the handyman over here as soon as possible to look at this fridge.”

  “Give me just a moment.”

  I looked over to Julliard. In the moment of confusion and humiliation I had nearly forgotten the unsettling nature of his presence, but seeing those unblinking eyes on me quickly reminded me.

  “So, unfortunately, he is already booked with jobs during the day for the next three days,” the woman informed me after a short break. “Earliest he could come would be over the weekend.”

  “Unacceptable,” Julliard said, leaving me to wonder how he was able to hear the other side of the conversation on my phone. “I have a delivery of – red meat – that I am expecting two days hence. The cost was grave. I will not have it spoil due to a faulty appliance.”

  I nervously repeated Julliard’s urgency to the handyman’s daughter, though I paraphrased a bit.

  “If it’s urgent, he could make an evening visit,” she informed me. “He’s available tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night…” Julliard repeated, again seeming to have no problem picking up everything from my phone. “I have plans to visit one of my favorite local haunts that night, and I will likely not return till the morn.”

  “I can let the handyman in if you won’t be here,” I volunteered.

  Julliard thought about this. “I’m not terribly fond of allowing strangers to wander about my abode unsupervised. Who knows what kind of trouble one can get into if they begin to poke around in places they have no business being in.”

  “That could be a bit of an issue,” I admitted.

  With the dim lighting of the apartment, I hadn’t gotten a great look around, but my imagination ran wild with what kinds of things Julliard might keep hidden away in the shadows.

  “The one who owns this building has vouched for your integrity, however,” Julliard continued. “If you promise to keep an eye on this handyman of yours during his time here, I am willing to place my trust in you.”

  “I suppose that’s fine,” I replied. Normally I wouldn’t want to waste an evening watching someone work, but it was better than me having to do the work myself. Plus, it got me out of this situation faster.

  “Tomorrow evening works,” I said to the woman on the phone.

  “Great. I’ll let my father know as soon as he gets back.”

  “And again, I’m really sorry about the yelling.”

  “No, it’s fine. Yelling over the phone at some stranger is a totally normal thing to do.” By the tone of her voice, she did not, in fact, think it was normal. “Please let us know if you have any other issues. Goodbye.”

  I sighed as I put my phone away. Lately, I did not seem to be making a lot of good first impressions. Though I’m not sure if I ever made any.

  “Thank you for your timely assistance in this matter,” Julliard whispered at me. “I will be relying on you to safeguard my possessions and privacy while I am away. Do not disappoint me.”

  Another chill. “I won’t.”

  “By the way, I must say that I was most impressed with the volume of your shouting voice,” Julliard added. “I imagine, even in a soundproofed room, if you screamed bloody murder, you could still be heard from outside.”

  “Th-Thank you? Uh, I really should be going.”

  “Of course. Don’t let me keep you. Life is far too short. Go out there and live it, young one.”

  I walked as quickly as I could without bursting into a full sprint out of that apartment. It was only after I was safely outside and several steps away from the door that I finally allowed myself to breathe again.

  There wasn’t much time for me to relax before someone called my name, causing me to jump. Fortunately, it was just Derek.

  “There you are, Kit,” my landlord said, seemingly oblivious to how startled I was. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.

  Uh-oh. What did I do? Besides having my phone off that first week. And lying about being a martial artist. And following a little girl into her apartment and then getting pepper sprayed by her mom. Besides all that.

  “What is it, Derek?” I asked, trying not to give away anything he didn’t already know.

  “Just wanted to let you know that you’re doing a great job, man.” He patted me on the shoulder. “Everyone who’s met you has been really impressed about like, how you go there and talk to them. You’re a real people person, you know?”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  That was news to me. “Oh. I thought it was something bad.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Cause you said you ‘had a bone to pick with me.’”

  “Oh.” Derek looked thoughtful. “I guess that is what you say when you got a problem with someone. What do you pick when you’re happy with someone? Apples? Apple-picking is a pretty positive activity.”

  “Maybe oranges?” I suggested. “Hey, Derek, while I got you here, what do you know about the guy who lives in 3D?”

  “Julliard? He’s chill. I think he’s a musician or something.”

  “A musician?” I hadn’t seen any instruments while I was in there. Not that I had looked very hard.

  “Yeah. When he moved in, he got special permission to do a bunch of soundproofing work on his apartment. Said it was so he wouldn’t disturb the neighbors with his work. So I figure, must be a musician.”

  I recalled what Julliard said about me screaming in a soundproofed room. Well, I didn’t need sleep tonight, anyway.

  “Thanks, Derek,” I said, not wanting to hear anything else that might further freak me out.

  “No worries. Keep up the good work, man.”

  I spent most of the next day trying to ignore my nerves by playing games. It didn’t work very well. In fact, every time my character on screen died a brutal death, I couldn’t help but imagine it happening to me. Perhaps horror games weren’t the right call.

  Eventually it came time to meet with the handyman. As I waited outside apartment 3D in the darkness and quiet of the early evening, it occurred to me that I had no idea what this guy even looked like. I’d talked to him a few times on the phone, but I’d always scheduled him to arrive when one of the residents of the unit he needed to work in would be home. I wondered what kind of person he was.

  My question would be answered shortly when a beat-up pickup truck thundered into the neighborhood. It swerved into the parking lot and came to a screeching halt across two parking spaces.

  The man who stepped out of the truck was ancient. His face was rough as old leather, full of hard lines and rough edges. He had greasy silver hair tied back into a loose ponytail. The overalls he wore were stained in various dark fluids that I did not want to even try to identify.

  He walked with a slight limp as he approached me, toolbox in hand. “You Kit?”

  I held out my hand to him. “That’s me. And you must be Boji.”

  “Huh?” He didn’t shake my hand. “You can call me that if you like, but it’s like calling everyone who works at McDonald’s Ronald. It’s a business name, son. An abbreviation of my actual name. It’s about branding.”

  “Oh…” I put my hand down awkwardly. “What should I call you, then?”

  “Bob-Jim’s my typical monicker.”

  “Bob-Jim?” The name caught me off-guard.

  The handyman snorted. “If that’s too much for your little brain to remember, you can just call me Bob or Jim. Take your pick. Or, if you want to get all fancy, you can call me by my legal name, Robert-James. But if you call me Bobby or Jimmy, I’ll hit you in the back of the head with a two-by-four.”

  How did this conversation wind up like this? “I’ll keep that in mind. We should probably get inside so you can look at that fridge.”

  “I’d be in there already if you quit yapping,” Bob-Jim replied as he started limping over towards the apartment. “Young folk these days, always chattering like they got nothing better to do.”

  I felt like I wasn’t the one talking too much, but it didn’t seem worth arguing. Using the master key for the building, I opened the door to Julliard’s apartment. The darkness inside was oppressive. Not that it seemed to bother Bob-Jim much, who pushed past me without hesitation.

  “The kitchen’s right down this hall,” I started to say, but the handyman was already turning the wrong way. “Hey, we’re not supposed to go to over there.”

  “I know where everything is, son,” he replied. “Pisser’s this way, and I drank three Diet Coke’s on the way here.”

  Bob-Jim let himself into the restroom, leaving me momentarily alone in the dark apartment. I decided to go turn on some lights to make the place somewhat less terrifying. The light switches were unfortunately not in the same place as they were in my unit. I wandered forward down the hall, feeling along the walls for a switch.

  My hands instead found something hard and cold. Like some kind of slick metal. I recoiled, not sure what I had touched. Hopefully not something that Julliard would be upset with me getting my fingerprints on.

  Just as I thought that, I heard a footstep behind me. I spun, startled, expecting to see Julliard ready to pounce on me for touching his things.

  The handyman gave me an unamused look. “Why are you dancing around in the dark, son? We need some lights on in here.”

  Either from prior knowledge or impressive instinct, Bob-Jim walked straight to one of the dimmer switches. He cranked it up as far as it went, and the apartment was filled with light.

  I was expecting the light to reveal a menagerie of gothic designs, twisted sculptures, and maybe a few instruments of violence. But the reality was, the apartment seemed very normal. Perhaps a bit sparse on the furnishing, but nothing struck me as out of the ordinary. I went looking for the mystery object I had brushed my hand against and found a picture frame. It showed a younger looking Julliard along with a woman and a young girl. His family, perhaps? All very, routinely, normal.

  It suddenly felt very silly, how nervous and suspicious I had been of Julliard. He was just a regular guy after all. Even if he had a bit of a strange way of speaking.

  Bob-Jim made his way to the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing as an observer. Should I help him move the fridge? Did he need me to hold his tools? Ultimately, I decided to just take a seat at the table and silently watch him work, figuring he would ask me if I was supposed to do something. Despite his advanced age, he didn’t seem to have any trouble moving the fridge away the wall by himself, or lowering himself to his hands and knees to begin work on the bottom of the fridge.

  Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. The only noise came from the clattering of tools as the handyman worked. The longer things went, the more awkward I felt just sitting there in silence. And so, I made the terrible decision to try and strike up a conversation.

  “So how long you been doing this kind of work?” I asked.

  “Long enough, son,” Bob-Jim replied. “And I don’t appreciate you questioning my credentials like that.”

  “What? No, I wasn’t trying to question you, I was just –“

  “I know what you were trying to do.” He snorted. “You young folk are all the same. Think you know everything about the world. No respect for those that came before. Let me tell you something, son. In my life, I’ve been all over, and I’ve worked many jobs. And any one of those jobs, I could do better than you.”

  I was sure he could. In anything except maybe the stock room.

  He got up and grabbed his tools.

  “All finished?” I asked.

  “Almost. The problem was caused by a power spike, which also ended up tripping the circuit that the fridge was plugged into. Need to figure out where the circuit breaker is so I can reset it.”

  “Isn’t it in the bedroom closet?” That’s where it was in my apartment.

  “Possibly. For some reason, the brilliant electricians who wired up this building decided to put the circuit breakers in different places in each apartment. Only way to find it is to look around a little.”

  All those nerves which had been dispelled suddenly came flooding back. Julliard had been very specific about ‘poking around.’

  “I don’t know if we should be looking around,” I tried.

  “Got to if I’m going to finish the job. You can sit here if you’re squeamish.”

  It was tempting. At least then I would have some plausible deniability. But I had promised Julliard that I would keep an eye on the handyman while he was in here, and somehow, I felt if I didn’t, he would know. So, I ended up following Bob-Jim as we invaded the sanctuary of Julliard’s bedroom.

  I did my best not to look around as we made our way to the closet. I did notice a theme of ‘black.’ Black sheets on the bed. Black curtains. Black paint on the walls. The guy certainly had a favorite color.

  If Bob-Jim noticed, he didn’t give any sign. He just went straight to the closet and began looking for the circuit breaker.

  “You know, my daughter told me about how you yelled at her on the phone,” the handyman said as he scanned the closet’s walls.

  “Oh. Uh…” How do I respond to that? I didn’t think he would be thrilled if I told him I was yelling because he was always so hard of hearing on the phone.

  “You don’t got to play coy with me, son. I know what you were doing.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course I do. I’ve been around for a long time. I did quite of bit of scream-flirting myself back in the day.”

  I knew I shouldn’t ask, but I couldn’t help myself. “Scream-flirting?”

  “Young folk call it something different these days? I’m talking about when you yell compliments in a woman’s face to grab her attention.”

  “There’s no way that works.”

  The handyman walked back to me, got within an inch of my face, and then screamed, “I LIKE YOUR DRESS – IT REALLY BRINGS OUT THE COLOR IN YOUR EYES – DO YOU WANT TO GRAB A DRINK WITH ME?!”

  His voice was as loud as a train crash. I recoiled and was left with ringing in my ears.

  He smirked, satisfied. “Impressed? That voice landed me quite a few dates back in the day. Also, a stint as the lead singer in a metal band for a couple years.”

  I was still too busy reeling from the assault on my ear drums to come up with a response.

  “But let me give you a word of warning, son,” the handyman continued. “While I appreciate your style, you need to steer clear of my daughter. It is for your own good. You don’t want to know what happened to her last boyfriend.”

  Given he had already threatened to beat me with a two-by-four, and that we were currently in a soundproofed apartment, it was probably not a great idea to ask for clarification. I just nodded my agreement.

  “Good,” Bob-Jim declared. “Now, the circuit breaker’s not in here. Let’s go take a look in the storage closet in the foyer.”

  I was glad to be out of Julliard’s bedroom and back out into a space it was more appropriate for us to be. That relief quickly turned into horror as the door to the storage closet was opened.

  Inside were two coffins. A large one and a small one. Around them was a bunch of what I could only describe as cult paraphernalia. Candles, pentagrams, strange golden figurines. One of those big glass orbs used by fortune tellers to see the future. What were they called? Crystal balls?

  The picture in the living room. The woman and child I had assumed to be his family. An adult-sized coffin and a child sized one. My mind raced, putting it all together. What kind of occult bullshit had I stumbled into? And how was I going to keep Julliard from learning what I had seen?

  Bob-Jim didn’t seem to be phased at all by the discovery, which was shocking in itself. Even if he hadn’t pieced together what I had, surely stumbling upon two coffins should warrant some kind of reaction.

  Instead, he casually bent over and flipped a switch on one of the coffins that I had not seen. They burst open, and two skeletons popped up. And began to sing.

  They did the Mash!

  They did the Monster Mash!

  The Monster Mash!

  The handyman chuckled. “This guy is really into Halloween, eh?”

  Upon closer inspection, I came to realize that all those ‘occult’ items I had been so freaked out by were actually cheap plastic décor items, the kind of things you would find at any supermarket in the weeks leading up to Halloween. I guess the fake spiderwebs should have given it away.

  “Ah, there’s the circuit breaker,” Bob-Jim triumphantly declared. “This will just a second now.”

  True to his word, it took him just a moment to flip the switch in the circuit breaker. Afterwards, he returned to the kitchen to check that the fridge was now working.

  “That did it,” he declared as he felt the cold air coming from the fridge. “I’ve been telling Derek he needs to get an electrician out here. A lot of the wiring in this building is old and needs replacing. Otherwise, you’re going to keep seeing these little power surges.”

  “I’ll bring it up to him.” I wondered if that was part of my job, now.

  “Ah, well. More work for me anyway.”

  He gathered up his tools and we made our way outside. It was only after I locked Julliard’s front door that I felt I could finally relax.

  “Well, I’m going to mosey,” Bob-Jim said as he made his way back to his truck. “Feel free to call whenever you need me. And try not to work so hard. You strike me as someone who takes his job too serious. You want to live to be my age, you got to learn to take it easy.”

  I believe the loud roar of the engine of his truck drowned out my laughter as the handyman peeled out of the parking lot.

  With that done, I didn’t really think much more about it, and soon put Julliard and the unresolved strangeness surrounding him out of my mind. Until one morning a week later.

  As I was about to step out to grab breakfast at the nearby café, I noticed someone had slipped a note under my door. The text on it was done with incredibly elaborate penmanship and written in blood red ink.

  I know you touched my Hallow’s Eve ornamentations.

  I am very disappointed.

  I looked for a lesson to be taken from all this, perhaps a new rule to add to my growing list. If there was one, it completely eluded me.

  Ah, well. I decided to just grab breakfast and hope I wouldn’t be murdered later.