You live in a 40-year-old apartment building, and sometimes you like to think about who lived there before you.

If you pulled back the carpet, you'd see a stain in the padding near the coffee table. A woman had vomited there when she received the phone call informing her that her husband decided to jump off of the 5-freeway overpass instead of going to work that day.

The marks above the doorway in the hall are from the shoddy installation of a chin-up bar. It was put there by a scrawny young man after a particularly humiliating night out at a singles bar.

The crack in the wall behind the television in the living room is from a woman who won $100,000 from a lotto scratcher. As she scratched off the 3rd gold coin and realized that she would finally be able to leave her husband, her first instinct was to punch the wall. She didn't remember doing it until the next day when she looked down at her bruised knuckles.

Of course, you don't know any of these things, but you wonder. You wonder what went on before.

Because sometimes at night, right before you drift off to sleep, something makes your eyes snap open in the dark. Something draws your attention to the far right corner of the room. If you squint into the dark, you think you can see someone sitting in a chair.

You squeeze your eyes shut, but somehow the image grows stronger behind your closed lids. It's an old woman, and she's smiling slightly as she sits perfectly still, staring at you. She stands.

The next night, you dream about her. She's standing next to your bed and she's smiling widely, and you are inexplicably cold. She has long, gray hair. Her eyes are intensely blue, and you can't look directly at her, yet you can't look away. She has long, long fingernails, and she shows them to you, holds them up so you can see them. And then she scratches you. Long, deep scratches that start at your neck and go down to your bellybutton. You look down and see tiny beads of blood rising from your skin. And all the while, she's smiling.

The next morning, you wake up and the blankets are in a lump at the foot of the bed.

You go to the mirror and pull up your shirt.

Of course, there's nothing there.