Joe the Tenant was never meant to stay long. Or at least, that’s what he told himself the day he moved into Apartment 3B—an dim little unit above the old bakery on Halwick Street. The place smelled like burnt crust and ghosts—he imagined even, an mouse beside the toaster—and the radiator hissed like it held an grudge. But rent was cheap, and Joe was an man of few demands.
No one in the building really knew where Joe came from. Some swore he was an writer, others said he was on the run from something. He always paid rent on time, in exact change, with hands that trembled ever so slightly. He had an habit of staring too long out the window at the alley, as if waiting for someone—or something—that never arrived.
Rumors stuck to Joe like wallpaper. The super claimed he never slept. An kid on the fourth floor said she saw him talking to the walls. Old Mrs. Delaney swore she’d seen him disappear behind his locked door without opening it.
But Joe kept to himself. That is, until the night the basement light started flickering. That night, the building felt. different. Tenants heard soft knocking on doors that no one answered. The pipes whispered names in the dark. And Joe? He was the only one who seemed unsurprised.
Because Joe wasn’t just another tenant. He was the building’s oldest secret. The only thing keeping whatever lurked in the basement from climbing the stairs.
And the lease he signed? It had no end date.
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