I Sincerely Believe I Was Almost Murdered Yesterday Afternoon

I am always on call for maintenance emergencies. It is a great way to pick up some extra money at a higher rate. It is always interesting what some people consider an emergency, or even related to maintenance. The call I took yesterday afternoon was legitimately within the realm. They called and said water was coming through their ceiling and onto their furnace from the unit above. Water leaks are one of the calls I like the least. If someone's heat is not working, I can at least figure it out without a ton of pressure. When water is leaking, every second you spend driving to the location and every second you spend trying to figure it out, the problem is getting worse and more damage is being done.

I arrived at the caller's apartment at around 1:30pm, Saturday, 11/27/21. He showed me where the water was coming through and I was immediately thrown off. Each unit has a closet that contains their water heater and their gas furnace. Upper and lower units have these closets stacked above each other. I assumed it was related to the water heater in the unit above before I even got there, but the water was mainly coming through the side wall, not from where the water heater would be sitting. I let him know I would not be able to do anything from his unit and would be fixing it in the unit above. I asked if he knew which unit was above his, he let me know it was unit 2...

I will now interrupt the account to fill in backstory on why I was not thrilled it was unit 2. I had been to this unit one month prior. I had never met either of the tenants before that day. I was called to let the police into unit 2 for a welfare check on someone. He was an older guy and lived in the unit with his brother, that was all I knew

When I arrived the officer was waiting and we walked up to the unit. The officer gave the door several solid knocks, waited about 60 seconds and then tried again. He asked if I knew either tenant and I informed him that I did not. They never call in maintenance, despite living there for years, so I never had any reason to meet them. After trying to knock some more he asked me to open the door. I opened the door and stepped aside for the officer. The unit was pretty tidy, but still dirty. It is hard to evocate the right idea without just showing someone a photo, of which I have no appropriate reason to take. Everything is in order, organized, and nothing is obviously dirty... But it is. There appears to be a very thick layer of dust over everything in the living room and kitchen. It is pretty sparsely furnished, but in a stylistic way. The closed curtains give everything a dingy yellow hue. The odor that met us was not death, luckily. It did not smell good, but not horribly offensive either. You know you don't like it, but it isn't going to make you shy away from the job. It is a small two bedroom apartment. You enter in the living room, the kitchen is on the right just past the coat closet. Directly across from the entry door is the bathroom, which was open. On either side of the bathroom is a bedroom that can barely fit a queen bed and a dresser. The bedroom doors and bathroom door equal the length of the hall. You can see the bathroom door, but neither bedroom door from the entrance. A man of average height could knock on both hollow-core bedroom doors at once if they stretched a bit. This is not a large apartment. After standing there for a moment, the officer asked me if I could hear "that." I nodded. I could hear it well. Someone was clearly watching television quietly in the bedroom on the left past the living room. Why do I say someone was watching it? The sound of a TV alone should not even indicate anyone is present. There was something else though. You could feel someone on the other side of the wall. No one has to tell you someone is there, you can just feel it. The officer began to walk into the unit, loudly announcing himself. No response. He began to knock on the bedroom door. From the other side of the door, a man very calmly asked "Who is it?" "*******'s Police, can you come out here please, I need to talk to you."

Then. Nothing. For about twenty seconds we heard absolutely nothing except for the TV. The officer turned to me and gave me a confused look. I just shrugged making a face that said, "Your guess is as good as mine, dude." So he knocked on the door again.

"Who is it?" "*******'s Police!... Sir, I need you to come out here, please!" A man sluggishly came out of the room and showed no signs of confusion, curiosity, or surprise. His entire demeanor gave off this vibe that he just observed the situation as a fact with no emotional or social input being necessary. Since neither of us knew the man by his face, the officer started asking him if he was [Name omitted]. All of his answers ranged from confirmation, to confusion at the question, to short answers that made us think it was his brother we were looking for. No matter how clearly the officer asked a question, the man answered in very short sentences that almost answered the question. But not quite. It was like watching a poorly written remake of "Who's On First." The officer looking like he wanted to throw his radio in a river and start a new life. I probably could have left at this point, but was captivated by the bizarre display. Were the apartment not the visual representation of a horror movie set in the afternoon, it would have been almost comical. It wasn't though. It was unnerving. During this back and forth, the officer kept asking about his brother who also lived there. It quickly became confusing as to if the brother was who he was looking for or the man in front of him. So the officer kept knocking on the other bedroom door intermittingly while talking with him. The officer asked when he had seen his brother last and he said, "Umm... Yesterday maybe? I'm not sure when I saw him last." It is worth noting that this man was neither high or drunk. It came out in the back and forth that he had a severe brain injury and that is why the officer was sent to do a welfare check when this man stopped showing up to his doctor appointments. At this point we are fairly positive this is the individual being sought and his behavior is explainable by that injury. The man never acknowledged that he had a brain injury, and did not acknowledge that he knew who the doctor was, but if you were there, you would have came to the same conclusion. Finally the officer decides he's just going to pop the lock on the bedroom door with a pin to check if anyone was there or alright since this man could not answer to that and he seemed to hope if the brother was present this would all start making sense. The door opens and this other man is just sitting on his bed staring at the door. He appears entirely uninterested in the commotion that has been going on for about ten minutes now, in front of his bedroom door. The officer asked if he was okay and the guy was just like, "Yeah, I'm fine." No noticeable reaction to the locked door being opened and a cop standing there. No acknowledgement to the knocking, loud announcing, conversation with his brother, the officer shouting through the door before opening it, or me standing there. Nothing. None of this seemed to mean anything to either of them. The strange encounter was getting to both of us, but at this point I was of no further use and asked permission to leave. The officer said I was fine to leave, so I did.

Now back to our leak in the wall. I'm standing in front of the door to unit 2, knocking as we had the month before. I have to enter and stop the water, but I am very uncomfortable. After waiting a while I unlock and open the door. I let it swing open while loudly announcing myself to no response. I can hear the TV in that bedroom though. Softly playing a college football game. Everything is as it was before, except this time I'm alone. I'm not concerned outright by the prospect of encountering this odd man because he seems about as non-threatening as anyone I have ever met. I walked back towards his bedroom while announcing myself loudly. The door to the bedroom is cracked and I knocked on it. The door swung open and he was just sitting in a computer chair watching the game. I explained who I was and why I was there. He just looked at me as if it were normal that I was in his house and had always been there. Absolutely no surprise that I was in his house, through his locked door, at his bedroom. He finally gets up to come find the leak with me. I wanted him to so he would know what's going on. I did not get a good sense of his height from the first encounter as I never got within ten feet of him. He stood about 6 foot 3inches by my best estimate. To describe him is hard because he is just so plain. He is near 60 years old. A little pudgy in the waist and joules. A salt and pepper mustache. Thinning hair. Slouched shoulders. Dark bags under his eyes and some dated glasses. I noticed what appeared to be an old wound on the side of his forehead and wondered silently if that was the visual remainder of his head injury.

We walked over to the closet that held the water heater and furnace and the floor of the closet was completely dry. I noticed the wall looked damp and could hear a dripping. Certain I located the issue as a broken water line in his wall, I let him know I would have to be in and out of his apartment to get tools and parts to repair it. I began to cut open the wall and as I figured out the issue I had to make a fairly large hole in the wall to get to the inconveniently placed break in the copper pipe. In normal circumstances I could have had it fixed in about 15 minutes and been gone. Due to the location being in a wall, behind the water heater, above head level, and behind a 2x4, this was a uniquely annoying pipe break. Now, how I fixed it and the rest of the maintenance end is not important to the story, so I will forego those boring details. I gave these to illustrate the point that while I'm laser focused working on this, I'm in a closet, standing on my tip toes, trying to reach over the water heater to work on the pipes. I am in there and straining. Why does this matter? Because my attention is fully occupied and I am left completely blind to anything going on behind me. At one point about thirty minutes in, I'm turning around to swap tools and this man is just standing behind me, staring at me. I am a jumpy person, but thankfully for my pride, I did not startle. I said "Oh, hey there. What's going on." He blandly replied, "Just seeing how it's going." He never stops staring, but as I bend down to grab my tool, I notice he has some heavy object in his left hand, held by the side of his thigh. He then walked away without saying anything and sat back down in his room to watch the game. I thought this was quite odd, but perhaps he just grabbed something from the kitchen and was bring it back to his room. I did not get a good look at the object. I brushed it off as a crazy thought and went back to working. I had to run in and out of the apartment a few times and run to the store after that. Each time I came back in, he never acknowledged me or even turned to look at me. He just kept watching the game. So I'm continuing to work and trying to problem solve the new line I'm running, when I get this weird feeling. I feel like someone is behind me staring at me. Sure enough, I turn around and he is about four feet behind me. Standing there. Looking at my head. Not my eyes. After the last time, I looked down to his left hand and saw something odd in it. Held to his side was an object I have never seen before, so I don't know what to call it. It appeared to be a heavy metal coiled spring-like object that he was holding by some handle. The handle could not be seen, but it was gripped with all fingers and the metal coil came between his ring finger and middle finger. It was large, clearly a metal like galvanized steel or iron, and it was about four inches long. While staring at it, I asked him "What are doing?" He just blandly replied "Seeing how it's going." Then after a few seconds of him standing there, slack jawed, he walked back to the bedroom and sat down to watch TV.

Needless to say, my discomfort was increasing. I believe this happened one more time with a different object, but I cannot be certain because from that point on, it is a bit of a blur. I got everything fixed as fast as I could, got the water turned back on, checked for leaks, explained to him what was done and that two of us would be by Monday to make certain there were no leaks after pressure was held for a while. Two of us, because I will not go back there alone, nor send anyone alone. In between my last few back and forth runs to turn the building water on, I made certain other tenants knew where I was and what I was doing without making it known why. Just a "Hey, I'm working on this in unit 2 and I'll have the water back on as soon as I can. If you need anything or notice anything, come get me in unit 2." After clearing the call, I just sat in my van wondering if I was crazy. He didn't DO anything. He didn't seem hostile. He didn't use a threatening tone or say anything to make me feel threatened. None-the-less, I am entirely convinced he was contemplating murdering me, and had I been there much longer, he may have. I can imagine the police entering, my body laying in the hall, him watching TV, the police telling him to exit the room, and him just turning around with a blank look asking "What's going on?"

I intended to post this last night, but was too tired as I had several more calls after that. In the morning my wife said she had to wake me up last night, which I do not remember, because I was screaming in my sleep. I have vivid nightmares often enough, so it is not that odd. I do not remember any bad dreams last night, though. While I do not think it is related to the day, I do wonder a bit if it was. How close of a call was it?