Chapter 2

The next morning found Cody standing outside Apartment 13 as Mrs. Krokomar fumbled with a ring of keys, muttering and cursing in Russian as she tried each one in turn. Finally, one of the inserted keys turned in the lock.

"Ah!" she cried, triumphantly. She began to open the door, and then paused. "By the way, place might need little spring clean -- haven't had time to do since last tenant."

Cody nodded, agreeably. "I don't mind." Despite his reservations, he was feeling enthusiastic about his new situation -- it seemed like it might be the start of a run of good luck, given what had happened when he'd gone to work earlier that morning.

"What you doing here?" his boss had demanded when he came in, a few minutes before his shift was scheduled to start."You did not take apartment I find for you?"

"Uh, no -- I mean, yeah, I did," Cody had said, "I haven't gotten moved in yet, but I'm on the schedule today so--"

Roman waved him off, seeming oddly irritated by his employee having arrived to work on time. "No, no, no! Take day off --eh, no, take two days! Three! I still pay you. Get cozy in new place, then come back."

With his spirits buoyed by Roman's inexplicable generosity, he'd gotten a load of his possessions together, and returned to the Pandora Arms. These became somewhat less buoyant, however, as Mrs. Krokomar opened the door to his new home and he saw inside. His jaw dropped.

The apartment seemed to be fully furnished, which would have been a pleasant surprise, had all of said furnishings, not to mention virtually every surface, not been completely coated with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.

"When did the last tenant move out?" he asked, incredulously.

Mrs. Krokomar paused, thoughtfully. "Eh, was about...2003."

Cody frowned.

She shrugged. "What? I am busy woman. Lots to do." She gestured to the room. "So, dust, yes, but no rat, no roach, no bedbug. That I guarantee. Anyway, is all yours. I think they took most of last tenant's stuff besides furniture, but anything left, you can have."

"They?" Cody asked.

She waved a hand vaguely. "Somebody. After he go. Don't remember." Fumbling with her keyring again, she slid off the apartment key, and pressed it into his palm, closing his fingers over it and then giving it a little pat for good measure. "Alright, I leave you to it. If you have problem with lights, problem with pipes, talk to Pavel."

"Pavel?" he asked, as the old woman began to waddle away.

"Superintendent. Basement apartment." she called over her shoulder, before slipping out through the door and closing it behind her.

Mrs. Krokomar made her escape before Cody could ask any more questions, and he turned back to his new abode with a resigned sigh. It didn't take him long to decide that there was no point moving any of his own stuff in before he put the long-abandoned apartment in order, as everything would just get covered with dust.

He rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He found an ancient but functional canister vacuum in the closet, along with a couple packages of bags for it, which greatly assisted in exhuming his apartment from its dusty grave.

Beneath the undisturbed layer of grime, it turned out to be rather nice. The apartment's main living space and kitchen were on the small side, but it included a fairly spacious bedroom and bath, plus a small extra room that looked like the previous tenant had used it as an office.

And, to his surprise, Mrs. Krokomar hadn't been lying about it being free of vermin -- he didn't see so much as a spider, despite the ubiquitous cobwebs layered over everything in the room.

Hours later, he collapsed into the old rolling chair in the office to catch his breath, and mopped his brow with the back of his sleeve. Though it had taken most of the day, he'd managed to get the apartment more or less clean, and most of it seemed to be in working order, apart from a few light bulbs that had to be replaced.

While seated in front of the desk, he casually perused the drawers, finding them empty apart from a ream of blank printer paper. When he opened the top drawer, however, he heard something clatter onto the floor. Frowning, he slid back his chair and bent over to pick it up.

It was a USB flash drive, its gray plastic casing yellowed with age.

"128 MB...?" he mumbled, incredulously, reading the faded label. It really was old. It also had a few brittle strips of Scotch tape clinging to it. Apparently, it had been taped to the underside of the drawer, but time had dried out and weakened the adhesive.

After curiously turning it over in his hand a few times, he pocketed the drive, and then reluctantly rose from his chair. While cleaning, he had found that one of the taps in the kitchen sink wasn't working, and so it seemed like it would be good time to meet Pavel.

He rode down to the basement on the elevator, which despite being of an open design and bearing a faded notice that it had last been inspected at the end of the previous century, seemed to be in good working order.

He could say the same for the condition of the basement. The lights on the lowest floor seemed dim, with some occasionally flickering. From the end of the hall, he thought he faintly heard a sound like rushing water.

Cautiously, he crept down the hallway, passing several unmarked doors that he suspected opened on various utility rooms. At the end of the hall a door labeled "MAINTENANCE" hung slightly open, and the room beyond seemed to be source of the strange sound.

He knocked on the door, and to his surprise it swung inward easily at his touch, revealing the room's occupant.

Inside, seated a desk with a layer of dust almost as thick as the one that had covered his new apartment, sat the hairiest man Cody had ever seen. He had a full beard of curly gray that seemed to almost form a perfect sphere around his head, in combination with his unkempt tangle of curly gray hair. The thin old man wore a gray long-sleeved work shirt with "Pavel" embroidered on the breast, but gray curls poked out from the cuffs, and also adorned the back of his bony hands and his knuckles.

This atypical hirsuteness, however, was not what Cody found most disturbing. The man was staring blankly at an ancient TV set atop his desk...despite the fact that the TV set only displayed static, and made no sound except the white noise he'd mistaken for running water.

Cody swallowed. "Uh...hi. Pavel?"

Pavel gave no response -- not so much as a blink.

"I, um, I have a tap in my kitchen that...that, uh..." Cody began, but trailed off, as he saw a strand of saliva slowly descend from the corner of the old man's slightly open mouth, and stretch out into a long dangling thread of drool.

"You know what, i-it probably just needs a new washer or something. I'll take care of it." he said, hastily, before backing out of the room, and then walking very briskly back to the elevator.