It never used to happen. I never used to be afraid.
For months on end I would spend nights awake listening. Every so often I'd hear it. Three little knocks coming from somewhere. I had always figured it was raccoons or something, but the probability of raccoons being on the eleventh floor of an apartment building was low.
I lay in bed looking at the corners of my room for some comfort; they were pitch black and always looked kind of eerie to me. A dim light from the moon was gently displayed on the ceiling. I had a lot of stuff on my mind. My best friend, Neil had disappeared recently, he'd been kidnapped a few months ago and police are still searching for clues. Ever since that day I stayed awake until I can see the first rays of the sun and then get a few hours of sleep in before going to school. I had gotten used to the lack of sleep and only need a cup of coffee in the morning to get me started. But I wish I could put everything behind me for just one night, just to get a good nights sleep.
We had been out all night, bar hopping from what I remember, and we had been having some fun. We were drunk enough to get the idea to find some hookers and take them back to our place, so we were stumbling around asking people if they wanted to sleep with us. I remember the two girls that actually accepted the offer, I'm pretty sure they we're just as drunk as us.
We all got back to our apartment and went into our own rooms. The next morning I woke up with the worst hangover I've ever had and realized what I'd done. The girl, Susie I think, was still sleeping next to me. I didn't want to wake her up so I got up carefully and went into the kitchen. Our apartment was pretty nice, I'd been living there for two years now and made it into one of the best places for parties or just sitting around. Each room had a completely different look to it. My TV room was wallpapered with designs straight from the sixties, along with a beanbag chair and two big black leather couches. Out the window you could see most of the city on a clear day. The kitchen was small, but it got the job done. The only things in it were a microwave, fridge, dishwasher and a big grey marble counter. Neil had moved in about a year ago, he got kicked out of his house and needed somewhere to stay. We agreed that we'd split the cost for everything and it would work out, which had been going well since. We'd both find cool stuff to put up on the walls or pretty much anything that could improve the look of the place.
After my breakfast I went to see whether Neil was awake yet, when I looked in his room the only person there was the girl he had been with the night before. She was in the corner of his room hiding behind the backboard of his bed. She looked pale and she had been crying. I asked her what was wrong but she didn't reply. She just kept looking at the wall and crying.
"Where's Neil?" I asked again.
Still no response, this had started to get me uncomfortable about the whole situation. I started to walk towards her and stopped. She had a knife covered in blood. I looked above her and realized that there were symbols or something on the wall, drawn in blood. I dropped my coffee and backed off.
She looked up and sniffled.
"What the hell is going on?" I asked, slowly creeping towards the door.
She began to stand up. Once she was on her feet I could see what she had done to her legs, she had slashed some parts of her flesh completely off, to the point where blood-soaked bone could be seen. At that point I flipped. I had no idea what was going on, I had no idea where my friend was, and I had no idea what this chick was going to do next. I expected she'd try to stab me or something, but she walked up to me and stood there. I tried not to stare at her legs, as they dragged across the floor leaving a trail of crimson blood behind her. I looked at her eyes and there was something weird about them. Her pupils weren't there. It was just light green and white. I realized I had a disgusted look on my face and straightened out. She was about a foot away from me and she stopped. She lifted the knife to my face and her lips started to move. No sound was coming out; just a soft rasp. I tried to understand what she was saying but I couldn't make it out. Suddenly, she stopped and brought the knife closer to my face.
"Gone." It was the last thing she said. And then she plunged the knife into my chest.
I woke up in the hospital in the most incredible pain I have ever felt. Later I learned that after she stabbed me I fell back and hit my head off the side of a bookshelf beside the door. Somebody heard the thud from below me and went to see what had happened. I was lying in a pool of blood barely alive when the paramedics came to take me to the hospital. Both girls were gone, and so was Neil. Cops had been searching all over the city to find all of them but they never did. A month passed and I had almost fully recovered, so they sent me home. The police had taken care of all of the blood, and they had run a DNA test. The blood was mostly Neil's. When they told me that I figured they had killed him. But there was no body. Police say that they must have removed him before I was awake, but it makes no sense to wait around for me to wake up.
It had been three months since his murder or whatever you want to call it, and the strange sounds had begun to get louder and more often. Every time I would hear it I would sit up and try to figure out what it was, but every time I moved it stopped. One night I was waiting to hear the sounds and sure enough they were there, except they sounded closer than usual. I had heard it in the ceiling and in other rooms, but this time it was coming from right beside me. I bolted out of bed and turned on the light. There was nothing there. I crawled back into bed cautiously and tried to fall asleep, but the knocking came back. This time it wasn't really knocking though, more like a banging and scraping. It sounded like there was someone inside the wall. I flipped again, but this time figured I needed to do something about it. I ran to the kitchen and pulled a small crowbar out of the top junk drawer, then ran back into my room. The banging had become so rapid and loud it sounded like a jackhammer on the other side. I began to hack at the dry wall with the crowbar leaving little holes in it. As soon as I saw something inside the wall the banging stopped. I kept taking out pieces of the wall and was hit with a wave of disgust. The smell of rot drifted out of the gaps in the wall and made me want to puke. I grabbed a flashlight and looked inside and saw a shoe. I tore down the entire panel piece by piece and looked up. It was Neil. He had been rotting there for what looked like a few months and he was hanging from the top of the wooden frame by a noose.
Since then I don't sleep very well.