Chapter 72
I don’t have Addison McGlocklin’s phone number or email address, but I can contact her on Messenger.
I keep it short, explaining who I am and why I’m reaching out—that I’m living in her old apartment and want to know if she ever experienced anything strange there—then I sit and stare at the computer screen.
But it’s unrealistic to think that she will reply right away.
It could be hours or even days before she sees my message, if she sees it at all.
There are no posts visible on her timeline because her profile is private, so I have no idea how often she’s active or if she even uses social media anymore.
Among my own friends on Facebook, plenty of them no longer engage for one reason or another.
All I can do is wait.
With nothing better to do, I turn on the TV and find a suitably distracting movie to watch.
When that ends and another film begins, I let it play.
I check my messages every once in a while, but there’s nothing from Addison.
Then, when I’m just about thinking it’s time for bed, she replies.
And she’s willing to talk. Even better, she’s given me her phone number.
San Francisco is three hours behind Boston, which means it’s only eight o’clock there.
I waste no time in calling.
When she answers, I introduce myself, then say, “Thank you so much for agreeing to talk.”
“You’re welcome, and honestly, I almost didn’t,” Addison replies. “I’ve spent the last three and a half years doing everything I can to forget about the Glendale. It wasn’t exactly a happy time in my life. But after what you said in your message . . .”
An image of that photograph on her Facebook page pops into my head. The one of Addison and her husband standing on the steps outside the building. They certainly seemed pleased enough to be moving in.
“Did something happen to you here?” I ask.
“Not me. My husband, Mark,” she says, and I can hear the strain in her voice.
“I adored living at the Glendale. It was a dream come true. The apartment was stunning, and I couldn’t believe our luck getting it for such a cheap price—we shouldn’t have been able to afford a place like that.
I was the happiest I’ve ever been . . . at least for the first few months.
But then Mark changed. It was subtle at first. He was moody.
Withdrawn. He wasn’t sleeping well, either.
To begin with, I thought maybe he was just overdoing it at work because we’d never taken on a financial commitment this large before and, well . . .”
“I get it,” I tell her, although I can’t help noticing what she said about being offered the apartment for a surprisingly low price. “It’s an enormous commitment, even if the place is undervalued.”
“Uh-huh. The apartment was a steal, an opportunity too good to pass up, but it was still right at the edge of what we could afford. But that wasn’t the cause of Mark’s increasingly dark moods.
The longer we were in that apartment, the weirder he was acting.
Like I said, at first I didn’t think much of it.
I put it down to stress. But before long, it was impossible to pass his behavior off as normal.
He was irritable. He’d start arguments with me over ridiculous things.
His behavior was becoming increasingly .
. . I don’t know how best to describe it . . . erratic.”
“Erratic, how?”
“Well, one incident has always stuck in my mind. I woke up one night in the early hours of the morning, and he wasn’t in bed.
At first, I thought he must’ve just gotten up to pee, or to get a glass of water.
But after a while, when he didn’t return, I got up to see where he was.
I found him sitting on the couch in the living room.
All the lights were off, and he was just staring into space.
I asked him what was going on, and he said that he was hearing voices and that they wouldn’t let him sleep. ”
“Voices?” I’m not sure what I was expecting when I called this woman, but this is getting just a little too real.
I haven’t heard any voices, but I have been hearing a crying baby that everyone tells me doesn’t live in the building.
I need air. I hurry through the dining room to the sliding door leading out onto the balcony and drag it open, then step out into the chilly air of an autumn night, even as Addison is replying.
“Yes. The voices of his dead friends who were killed in a boating accident a few years earlier. One of his friends owned a small yacht, and they decided to take it out, even though it was October, and the weather can turn on a dime. And it did. A sudden storm came in, and they couldn’t get back to shore.
The boat capsized, and he was the only one who survived.
He always blamed himself for their deaths, said he should have talked them out of going that day. ”
“But he only started hearing the voices after you moved into the Glendale?”
“Yes. He said they whispered to him when he was alone in the apartment, or when I was asleep. It got so bad, he became withdrawn. Moody. I was never sure which version of him I would get. The happy, carefree Mark that I knew previously, or the sullen, angry Mark who emerged after the voices started. It was like a festering darkness had taken hold of him, and I didn’t know what to do about it. ”
I’m silent for a few seconds while I decide what to say next. Then, even though I know that I’m treading on dangerous ground because they are clearly no longer together, I ask, “Is there any way I could talk to Mark? Could you give me his number perhaps?”
“That won’t be possible.” Addison hesitates. When she speaks again, her voice trembles. “He’s dead. He killed himself right there in that apartment.”