“I found the place kind of depressing.”
A’s father passed away from an illness shortly before his seventieth birthday, leaving his septuagenarian wife a widow.
A, who was forty at the time, was the couple’s only son. He’d left home and moved to another city some time ago and now worried about his mother living on her own.
“She seemed so lonely, all by herself in that house…”
Then one day, his mother called and told him she was moving into an apartment.
She would rather move somewhere new than stay in the house by herself. In an apartment, she and her neighbors could look out for one another.
A real estate agent helped her find a place in . It was built on land carved out from the side of a mountain, and the pictures online showed exquisite views. It seemed like a nice place for her to spend the rest of her days.
But when A toured the complex with his mother and the real estate agent, he began to change his mind. The first line of this article describes his thoughts at the time.
“There weren’t many people. It felt empty. The buildings themselves were large, and the complex had lots of them, but it seemed like only twenty percent of the rooms were occupied. I swear most of the windows didn’t have curtains.”
A didn’t like the place. It seemed deserted to him, but his mother appreciated the peace and quiet.
At the agent’s recommendation, A and his mother viewed a room on the third floor of Building Five, and they wound up signing a lease right then and there.
A’s work started getting busy just as his mother began the next chapter of her life in the new apartment, so he wasn’t able to visit her again until about six months later.
“The place still felt depressing. But my mom appeared to be doing fine, which was a relief. She said she’d even made some friends.”
Something about her seemed a little off, however.
“She kept staring blankly out the window whenever we weren’t talking. She didn’t really do anything else. I started to wonder if she might be developing dementia.”
Worried, A asked his mother what she was looking at; her answer was very brief.
“I’m waiting.”
She didn’t say any more.
That night, they heard a loud noise outside the window, interrupting their dinner. There was a thud and a crash at about the same time.
Surprised, A ran to the window. His mother, however, moved with unusual speed and beat him there.
Down below, he saw the body of a person twitching in a pool of blood, their arms and legs bent at odd angles.
After taking in the shocking sight, A turned toward his mother, and a wave of terror came over him.
She was staring down at the scene below, smiling.
After that, A sent her to live with some relatives until he could arrange for her to settle in with him. As he watched the moving truck take her things from the apartment and set off toward his house, a middle-aged woman called out to him from the park attached to the complex.
She introduced herself as someone from another building who knew his mother.
A informed her that his mother was moving and thanked her for looking out for her.
The woman replied, “I’ll miss her, but I think it’s for the best. She shouldn’t stay in a place like that…”
Apparently, it wasn’t the first time someone had committed suicide there. It turned out that a number of people jumped off the roof of Building Five every year. Among certain circles, it was quite notorious.
The jumpers weren’t people living in the apartment complex, either. Most of them came from far away just to end their lives. For some reason, it only happened at Building Five, so the other residents tended to keep their distance.
A was shocked to find out his mother had been living in such a place.
Just then, something occurred to A, and he asked if there had been any other suicides since his mother had moved in.
Apparently, two people had already jumped to their deaths.
When he heard that, A was convinced.
His mother had been waiting for someone to jump.