A (mostly true) short story

Every night at 6:03pm the music starts.

The first night we heard it, it annoyed us. After an entire day packed with moving boxes and driving miles to move more boxes, the both of us were weary, heavy-limbed and pitiful creatures with somehow more to unpack than we could’ve sworn we’d had initially.

I was halfway through filling a dresser with clothes we should’ve donated years ago when it began. At first I didn’t even notice, intent on what I was doing and assuming in the back of my mind it was emanating from the apartment above us, or next to us. The ceilings were high, but the walls of the building deceptively thin, despite what the realtor had assured us when we’d first viewed the place.

The base was a steady, three-note bop, something between synth and electrowave. It was something you could swear you’d heard before, but could never place. Too similar to most music of the genre, yet unidentifiable.

It was only after we’d heard the same notes repeating for over 10 mins that we really began noticing it. And it was really only after 12 mins straight of the music that we began to seek its origin.

We fanned out, scouring the apartment, ear to walls, necks bent in awkward angles. We’d catch the edge of it and follow until it grew louder, both of us culminating at the two windows in the front room. We looked out, across the resident’s parking lot, to the park opposite.

The trees were alive.

Dark limbs of unknown origins would detach themselves from the hedges before slipping back in. Laughter could be heard from across the field, the same three notes droning out beside them.

We breathed out. Just kids. We’d been afraid it would turn out to be rowdy neighbours we’d have to deal with for our entire tenancy. But if it was just kids in the park at night for lack of anything better to do, we could manage that. They’d get bored; move on to something else in a few nights or so, surely.

We were too optimistic, we later realized.

It was relentless. 6.03pm on the dot, every night, all night. The repetitive music, the maniacal laughter, we’d go to sleep and wake up with it still resounding in our heads to accompany us the rest of the day, until that night, when it would begin again.

We lasted a week before we called the police. We waited, peaking behind the curtains, as the cruiser pulled up and two pairs of torches beamed off into the trees. We snickered between us - that’ll teach those brats, it was never anything a quick brush with the law couldn’t solve.

Minutes later when the police knocked on our door and told us they’d found nothing we stared back in disbelief. How had they not heard the laughter, the music, seen the shadows in the trees - ?

The older officer hung back as they made to leave, his voice quietening, eyes shifting. We weren’t the first to call about it, he told us. Then why has nothing been done? we asked, Why not lock the park after dark or – The officer shook his head, pupils scanning the apartment building surrounding us. It would do no good, he replied, it’s not kids out there, not any more.

He left.

It was only through our own research, later, that we were able to piece together something that we were not entirely satisfied with, but an answer we could possibly live with.

The apartment building had been refurbished, our research told us, from a mental asylum that had burnt down a few years ago. The fire had demolished the interior and left nothing but the charred exoskeleton, the historic splendour of which had drawn us to the building in the first place.

The cause of the fire was unknown, but it had later been revealed that some village youth had been using the previously abandoned building for raves most nights, the night of the fire having been no exception. Fragments of some had been discovered, missing person posters what were remained of others.

It was the fine print at the bottom of the article that gave us pause.

The inquiry had estimated that the fire had commenced around 6:03 pm the night in question.

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just trying to get those brain juices flowing again. our first night in the asylum was loud to say the least.