“Humans have been here, but they were Luddites, and they wouldn’t like you. You should go now.”

Every morning I wake up — still tired, because I never sleep well — pull back my bedroom curtains, and see the house.

The paint, white once upon a time, is cracked and peeling all over. The roof shingles are flaking and charred from too many years under the San Diego sun. An oversized American flag still serves as a makeshift curtain in the three-panel picture window, its stars and stripes faded to a pale, uniform dinginess. On the porch sits an empty cat-food bowl and an old pair of men’s sneakers. They’ve been there for about two years now, possibly more, as if waiting for the cat or the man — Joe, I think his name was — to come back and make them useful again. But Joe is dead, and the cat was taken to the Humane Society a while ago. So I guess the bowl and the sneakers will just keep sitting there until somebody finally decides to throw them away.

“NOT HONKEY DOREY” written on the fence separating his property from the neighbor’s.

But who would be that somebody? A few relatives cleared out most of Joe’s house some time after he died. I walked over and talked to them about his cat and dog. Joe looked after a gray and white long-haired cat that would hang out on his porch. Every summer he’d clip her coat down haphazardly with scissors, presumably out of concern that she might be too hot with all that fur. He also had a little brown Chihuahua. The family didn’t know anything about the cat, but the dog had been taken in by some neighbors. I guess they decided to leave the cat’s bowl in case she came back and someone wanted to feed her. I’m not sure why they left the sneakers. 

Joe lived alone in the house, a classic North Park Craftsman: one story, with a simple low-pitched gabled roof, a large open front porch, etc.. His departure didn’t begin the decay: as far back as I can remember, the paint had always been peeling, the roof had always looked charred, and that flag had always been in the window. For years, I’d seen Joe on an almost daily basis — no shirt, stained cargo shorts hanging precariously around his hips — doing yard work with the slow, arthritic stiffness of a 70-something-year-old man. The yardwork didn’t have much effect; now and then, a new mound of junk would appear here or there, but it never seemed to look any better: just weeds and patches of dirt and a broken-down truck in the unpaved driveway. 

The tiny brown Chihuahua was always a few feet away while he worked, sniffing in the weeds. Joe would finish up whatever he was doing, then scoop the little dog into the crook of his arm and carry him inside. A couple of times a week, Joe would ride an old mountain bike around the neighborhood. The tiny brown Chihuahua would sit in a basket at the front, his little eyes squinting against the wind.  The dog was so small — even for a Chihuahua — that when I first saw him, I thought he was a puppy. But the months passed, and he never grew. One day, I passed Joe and the dog walking through the alley behind my building. I asked him how old the dog was. “Thirteen,” he muttered. The surly expression on his face told me, “Go away.” 

Several weeks after Joe’s family left, curiosity dragged me across the street. I didn’t think I’d find anything very interesting or valuable — probably just a dead animal in some corner getting eaten by maggots. But I couldn’t resist the urge to go look inside the house, to see how Joe had lived. I walked over in the middle of the afternoon, hoping the neighbors wouldn’t notice me poking around. Not that I was too worried. Most of them knew me from my daily walks with my cat, and would probably just figure I was being harmlessly nosy. People who walk their cats don’t usually come off as troublemakers.

The walls were intact. But they were just bare drywall panels and there were random bits of writing scrawled all over.

The front door and windows were bolted, so I went around back; when I got there, I discovered a gutted station wagon some yards behind the broken-down truck. At the rear of the house, immediately around the corner, there was a door that led under the house. At the other corner were a few narrow wooden stairs leading up to the first floor. At the back of the yard, which was strewn with the standard, old-man-living-alone junk — rakes, plastic pipes, metal sheeting, car parts, tools, a single, broken crutch, etc. — there was an open storage shed and a dilapidated little cottage.

There was no lock on the door leading beneath the house, just a piece of wood jammed against it to keep it closed, as if something inside might try to escape. I opened the door easily enough and went down a few concrete steps into something too unfinished to be called a basement. It was a misshapen space, about 10 feet by 15 feet, 6 1/2 feet in height, with some rough concrete for the floor. The ceiling was wooden planks — the underside of the first floor. Dusty light nudged its way in through a few windows. The air smelled of damp dirt and something else — harder to describe, a vaguely ominous, virgin smell that you rarely find anywhere anymore. I decided it was the smell of a place free of contemporary technology. There was no wifi here, no electricity running through the walls, no cable, not even a functioning landline. I don’t know for certain if I could smell these things, but I could certainly feel the lack of something in the air — a kind of charge, something that is nowadays ubiquitous. But this wasn’t the fresh, clean smell of a forest or the beach, either. It was the smell of “Humans have been here, but they were Luddites, and they wouldn’t like you. You should go now.” 

Just to the right of the steps was Joe’s bike, leaning against its kickstand among a couple of toolboxes and some milk crates filled with more junk. The dog’s basket still hung off the handlebars. Looking at the bike, I felt like I was looking at Joe and his little brown Chihuahua, as if his spirit somehow inhabited the bike. The rusted metal frame, the greasy chain, the worn seat. He was there, in them somehow, carrying his little dog in the crook of his arm. 

Of course, that was crazy. Spirits don’t inhabit bicycles. I tried to get back to a more practical frame of mind. For a few seconds, I considered taking the bike. After all, I needed one, and his relatives couldn’t have cared much about it if they’d left it behind. But then again, they hadn’t thrown it away or left it on the curb for someone to take. Maybe they were planning to come back for it? In any case, did I really want to be riding around on a dead man’s bike?

No. It was too morbid. And what if Joe’s spirit really was living in the bike? He might be a big old pervert-ghost and I might be sitting on his face every time I rode it. Disgusting. No. I’d leave the bike alone. But a few feet away, I spotted a couple of new-looking bike seats in one of the milk crates. They didn’t look used enough to be haunted, and I figured they might come in handy at some point, once I got a bike, so I took them and climbed back out into the yard and the San Diego sun.

I wanted to go back home. Something felt very wrong and ugly about the place. Maybe the bike really was haunted. Or maybe it was just the old, gutted cars, the junk in the yard, the way everything looked so worn and dirty. I tried to tell myself it was the family’s fault. They might have run out of time to finish the job of clearing things away — had to go back home for work or whatever — so they’d left behind a bit of a mess. But something told me what I was seeing was not what had been left behind by the family. The mess was already there when they arrived. 

But despite my urge to leave, I found myself compelled to finish checking out the place. I couldn’t let myself be so easily creeped out. It’s not like anything had jumped out at me. I hadn’t seen some misty figure in a corner. I hadn’t even seen any maggot-ridden dead animals. No, I would proceed. 

I walked over to the other corner of the house and climbed the rickety stairs up to a door; the original glass panels had been replaced by wire mesh. Rope had been looped and knotted through this mesh and then through a metal fastener on the wooden inner door. It wasn’t possible to open the outer door unless you undid the knot or cut the rope, neither of which I felt up to attempting. So I got on my tiptoes and peeked through the window at the top of the inner door. 

What I saw was a kitchen, but the kind of kitchen you would expect to see in a squatter’s house, one that had already been abandoned for about 10 years. The walls were missing paneling in some places so that you could see the inner wood frame. In other places, the paneling had been replaced by random pieces of plywood, plastic, and metal sheeting. There was a counter in the middle of the room and a range a few feet away on the right. Everything was filthy and stained. Above and below the range, the cabinets were missing doors. A piece of tarp hung across the window overlooking the yard. I couldn’t see into any other part of the house from where I stood, and I didn’t want to. 

I climbed back down the stairs and walked over to the shed. A drop-in bathtub lay on its side near the entrance. To the right stood a refrigerator missing its door. At the back, a large cooler had its lid propped open. I was glad to find it empty. Then I went over to the cottage. The door was bolted, but I could see through the windows, which were just above eye level. The front room was a small living room that connected to a separate kitchen and a hallway leading towards the rear. Near one window, there was a table littered with some plates, bowls, and hand tools. A few feet away, a shelf stood in the middle of the room, holding more tools, some calamine lotion, and a bottle of Head & Shoulders. There was no other furniture in the place. 

Here, at least, the walls were intact. But they were just bare drywall panels and there were random bits of writing scrawled all over: Lost between vouchers + compt [sic]; Renegers Reneagers [sic]; TIME; slumdog hophouse host; citizen arrest on neighbors mennece [sic] to society; A.K. NO BACKBONE; pure evil we ask god; ENVIORMENT [sic]; 10/1/2017 DOG DAY. Between the bits of writing, there were smears and stains, as if some scrawl had been washed off or painted over. A small picture of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper had been tacked up on one wall. I turned away from the window and decided to go home. As I walked out of the yard, I noticed NOT HONKEY DOREY written on the fence separating his property from the neighbor’s. No, I guess it wasn’t. 

So that’s how Joe had lived — in filthy squalor, writing on his walls. Was it poverty? Dementia? Both? And yet he took care of his little dog and cat. Rode his bike around the neighborhood, the little dog sitting in the basket.

***

Walking back to my building — some of the “affordable housing” in the neighborhood — I looked at my neighbors’ houses: million-dollar bungalows with fresh paint and clean siding, newish cars parked in front. The yards were neatly manicured: mowed lawns and carefully composed xeriscaping. Everywhere, rosemary, lavender, and rose bushes, the aggressive points of agave, yucca, and aloe. A few yards had fruit trees — orange, lemon, and loquat — whose fruit would eventually fall and rot on the ground because the residents couldn’t be bothered to gather it, put it in a box, and put the box on the sidewalk for passersby to take. I’m not sure they ever bother picking the fruit, even for their own consumption. 

I arrived at my building. The walkway was no longer lined by rich jade bushes as it had been when I moved in more than 10 years ago. Now there were only rocks. Around the courtyard, where there had been lush greenery — jade, angelina sedum, blue fescue, the vibrant flowers of ice-plant, a two-story loquat tree — there were only rocks or the plants put out by residents themselves. Torrey Pines Property Management (TPPM) had gotten rid of all the vegetation several years earlier. A neighbor said it was to save on landscaping costs. I believed him. They’d also gotten rid of the original coin washer and dryer, replacing them with smaller models that cost more per load. And every year, the rent increased by 10% — the maximum allowable amount. A few years back, before the current rent control law was passed, they’d raised it more than 20% in one year.

Inside, during the day, I can hear my upstairs neighbor walking back and forth. It sounds like constant stomping. It isn’t her fault, though. A few years ago, TPPM stopped putting carpeting in the apartments. Now there is nothing to pad footsteps or muffle noise unless the resident installs it at his or her own expense. And it doesn’t help that the walls are paper-thin. At night, through my bedroom wall, I can hear the snoring of the building’s 60-something-year-old former handyman. Ever since he stopped being the handyman, he has spent his days sitting at his computer while listening to conspiracy theories on right-wing talk radio. I know this because he keeps his apartment door open and I can see him sitting at a desk in the corner of his living room every time I pass by. I can also hear the radio shows going all day long through my bathroom wall. 

He’s a nice guy, though — never caused me any problems, at least not directly. I much prefer him to my other neighbor, the one I can hear snoring through my living room wall, the one who stalked me for two years and broke into my apartment using a key he stole from the ex-handyman while he was still the handyman. The stalking began after he helped me climb through one of my bedroom windows, which was about 15 feet off the ground. I’d locked myself out of the room, so it was either call a locksmith, which I didn’t want to pay for, or climb through the window. The only ladder I could find, borrowed from another neighbor, wasn’t high enough. I had to stack a milk crate on top to reach my window and then also jump a bit, which required someone to hold the milk crate steady and be present in case I fell and needed an ambulance. The stalker was the only person available to help. I didn’t think much of it. Up until that point, he had exhibited only a few bouts of creepiness, and we had generally been on polite, friendly terms. 

Well, I made the jump through the window, but not without momentarily tipping over on the ledge in the wrong direction and almost plummeting to my death. It was all very exciting. So exciting, in fact, that the stalker took it as a great bonding experience, one that meant henceforth we should talk to each other every time I left my apartment. Every. Time. He was fully capable of making this happen, because he was home all day, every day. And not because he worked from home, as I did. He was a retired veteran. He had no job. He also seemed to have no hobbies and no friends besides the handyman and the mailman. He’d spend nearly the entire day just hanging around the building’s courtyard trying to start conversations with the other neighbors, who generally were not interested. 

All day, through my living room window, I could hear him hanging around, desperate for company. If he ever went into his apartment, he left the door open like the handyman. When he heard the handyman get home from work in the afternoon, he’d go over to his place and hang out there for a while. Because I lived right next door and his door was always open, he could hear every time I opened my door to leave or enter my place. After the window adventure, this became his cue to pop out and try to start a conversation, following me to the mailboxes, to the garbage bins, to the laundry room...

After a few weeks, I started giving him a bit of the cold shoulder so he’d back off. He got the hint, but he didn’t exactly back off. He stopped trying to talk to me, but he continued coming out of his apartment every time he heard my door open. On cue, he’d pop out, except now he’d stand in the courtyard or in his doorway, glaring at me. Watching me. Every day. Multiple times a day. Nearly every time my door opened, there he was, watching and glaring. I ignored him, pretending not to notice. On some days, I’d open my door with no intention of going anywhere, just to fake him out.

This went on for about four months. Then I woke up one morning, walked into my kitchen and got a shock. Every few weeks, I would check my kitchen door, which opened onto a locked-off side passage of the building. It was actually two doors: a sliding glass inner door and a steel grate outer door. I would often open the glass door to let in air, but the outer door had been locked for 11 years. I had never even had a key. A couple of times, I’d asked the handyman to try to open it so I could use the passage to plant vegetables. Both times, he couldn’t find the key; somehow, it had gone missing.

Mild paranoia, the result of living alone as a woman, drove me to check the steel door every once in a while, just to make sure it was still locked. And this morning, it was not locked. The bolt was undone, and with just a slight push, the door opened.

I called the police and TPPM, who promptly sent over a locksmith. I asked the locksmith if the door’s lock had been tampered with. He said no, that it looked as if someone had used a key. I immediately knew who had opened the door. There was only one person who knew all my comings and goings, who was in the building all day, every day, watching me. And he was the only person in all of San Diego besides the guy I was dating (who didn’t have time to be a crazy stalker) who knew I had recently stopped hosting for Airbnb and was once again living alone. (With all his watching, he surely noticed that I no longer had guests coming through.) Only one person besides the handyman was ever in the handyman’s apartment and so only one other person had access to the building’s keys. And I’d seen him let himself in there even when the handyman was not home, using a spare key. 

I realized my neighbor was the reason the handyman’s key to my kitchen door had gone missing. He was the only person besides the handyman who ever used the locked side passage of the building. I had seen him there a few weeks earlier, looking around, even though there wasn’t much to look at — just a couple of dying plants and some old window bars. And who else would have any interest in breaking into my apartment? I live in a cheap, old building and drive a noisy, dented, ‘95 Honda Accord. Clearly, I do not have money. All my electronics and other belongings are of the oldest, cheapest, most basic kind; the kind of stuff you’d have trouble even giving away. No, the person who broke in was not interested in burglary. It was about intrusion, the sense of power derived from knowing they had violated my space, my privacy, the security of my home. It was a kind of psychological rape. 

Or maybe he had planned to attack me, or hurt my cats. Who knows?

I explained all of this to the police, told them about the months of stalking and the missing key. Unfortunately, because nothing seemed to have been stolen and there was no sign of forced entry, there was not enough evidence of a crime for me to press charges, or even file a police report. Or rather, I could file a report if I really wanted to, but nothing would come of it. 

Because I couldn’t press charges, TPPM did not have legal grounds for doing anything either. And I couldn’t move out because I didn’t have the two months’ rent plus security deposit that would be required if I moved someplace new. I was stuck living next to my stalker, who continued watching my every move for the next year and a half. But at least he couldn’t let himself into my apartment anymore. TPPM agreed to hold the copy of the new keys at their office instead of leaving them with the handyman.

After a year and a half, I finally lost my patience one day when he popped out, looking for me as usual. I told him off in the courtyard, loudly, so that the other residents would hear. He tried to laugh it off and then called out to the handyman for help. The handyman refused to get involved. After that, he stopped coming out whenever my door would open.

Then after a few weeks, he banged on my wall like a maniac when I practiced my piano, something I’d done for years without him or anyone else ever complaining. A few hours later, I knocked on his door, and when he came out, I told him off again. This time, I threatened to call the police and file a report of harassment for banging on my wall. I guess this must have scared him, because he never banged on my wall again.  Evidently, ignoring is not always the best way to deal with a stalker. Sometimes you have to mortify them.

I sometimes wonder why I’m surrounded by creepy old men. Did I accidentally step through some portal into North Park’s secret vortex of male tragedy? Is the universe trying to teach me something? Will I ever be able to escape this shit-hole? It’s not honkey dorey. Not at all. 

A couple of weeks ago, I went back to Joe’s place. Not much had changed except that the bike was gone and the dog’s basket was in a trash bin. Maybe his relatives had come back. I decided to take the basket home with me. As I left, I noticed a note stuck to the front door. The writing was messy, but legible, and read as follows (personal details changed to protect the individual’s privacy): Joey Griffiths, This is Shane. I stopped by to check on you. My address is XXXX Van Dyke Place, San Diego, CA 92116. (619)555-0090. I’ll try to find you later. I’ll come back. Love you Joey. Piper died but I got a new dog.

I called Shane when I got home.