Disturbing event

I haven’t been sleeping well. I blamed the new environment - I’m a creature of habit. But there have been distinctive noises in my place late at night that I can’t explain. To paraphrase John Irving they are sounds like something (or someone) trying not to make a sound. Those sounds just outside your conscience range, you heard something, you just can’t tell if it was a fridge or a car driving three blocks away or someone outside your bedroom door.

You lay still for an eternity hoping for a repeat or follow-up sound that will explain, the furnace kicking in, your neighbour getting into their car, but the repeat doesn’t happen until you start to fade again. You lose your concentration and again barely hear the sound. Eventually you have to get up and check, turn on the lights, check the locks and look in the dark corners before you can go to sleep, but the whole process delays your sleep a good half hour to hour.

This place has always had a bit of a strange energy to it, a weird sort of depressive mood, to go with the mild stink I can’t get rid of. I’d been blaming the smell on the filthy former tenant, who was also the former occupant of my job – so we joke about stinky at work, until someone casually mentioned “I wonder if it might be the guy who died in the bathtub…”

Turns out an old guy killed himself in his bathtub a few years ago and wasn’t found until the smell overwhelmed the neighbours. We’re not sure which of the quad-units it was, but it was in one of these connecting apartments.

I’m a practical/rational guy. I’ve never believed in ghosts and new agey energy crap, but I've seen things in my life that can’t be explained and it makes sense that there would be some connection between a place and someone who killed themselves. An unnerving question would be – did the strange energy come from the suicide or play a part in it?

So for the last few days I’ve been working on getting past this in my head, which can be a chore at 1am for a natural insomniac with the wind shifting the house all night.

Last night as I was drifting off I was startled awake by yelling and commotion. I sprung awake disoriented and was initially relieved to realise it was a fight or a party and not something…closer.

In 3 weeks I’ve never heard a noise in this neighbourhood past 10pm so I went to the window to check. Of course the noise stopped and I stood there like a dolt for several minutes. Every time I made a move to head to bed I’d think I was hearing something again. Sometimes they sounded like they might be angry out of control sounds, other times I’d think it was laughing and regular partying, so despite the unnerving feeling that it didn’t seem right at 2am on a weeknight I climbed into bed. Remember I haven’t been sleeping and I had to get up in 5 hours. I wondered about calling the cops as I fell asleep, but there had to be a bunch of closer houses if they needed to be called.

This morning in the light of day I forgot all about it until we got word at work that there'd been a fire half a block behind my house at 4:30am and I suddenly remembered waking again around that time but falling quickly back to sleep. The part time reporter ran over and took a picture of a slightly burnt apartment building and we thought that was that until a guy stopped by the office to ask if we knew anything. Crack newsroom that we are he knew 10x’s what we knew.

Apparently an 18 year old (whose name I’ll hold) lived there alone and was having a bit of a party when his mother’s 20-something boyfriend, who he regularly fought with, showed up. There was some kind of altercation but people believed things ended there. Today the entire street is blocked off and guarded by police and the head of the hospital and RCMP media contact, whom I have good relationships with, refuse to say anything about anything, and the young man (according to our interested party) is not around.

I’m trying not to jump to conclusions but if it had been a simple kitchen fire it seems the police would have been quick to mention that.

Anyway I’m feelin a bit spooked, regretting not calling the cops and fearing having to delve into this as a news story.