The horror in the bathroom

 Max and Alina are my good friends, and they are very serious. They are now married and live in their own apartment. And I'll tell you a story that happened to them back when they were looking for an apartment to build their "family nest" there. They searched for a long time, and so, our young couple found their ideal two-room apartment in a residential area near the city center, a supermarket nearby, both guys are close to work. And the price is quite average for this area. In general, there are some advantages. In their joy, they didn't even ask who owned the apartment, why they were selling the rest of the details. We decided to sign a contract to live in an apartment for a couple of months, and if some "pitfalls" do not surface, then they buy without looking. That was settled. I must say that there were no oddities at first. It was only when the apartment was being disinfected and cleaned that Alina noticed that there were small crosses painted on the upper doorjamb in the bathroom, as many as three of them. She didn't wash them, she thought that the previous tenants were believers, and this is such a talisman. And on the bathtub itself, there were streaks and small grooves, barely noticeable. It was like they were scratching and banging on the tub with something metallic. She told Max, who examined the scratches and shrugged his shoulders.: "Never mind, we'll change the enamel later." A couple of days later, we moved into our new home, everything was as it should be - the cat was allowed through the threshold first, the corners were crossed, the housewarming party was celebrated. It was only over time that they began to notice that it was uncomfortable to be in the bathroom. It's unpleasant to look in the mirror, as if someone else is watching, not your own reflection. The same feeling arose from the ventilation hole (I think many people were familiar with this feeling in childhood - as if some kind of noise was sitting there and shooting at you). Maxim, terribly embarrassed, even admitted that he covered this hole with a towel when he washed so that it would not be so scary. When Alina noticed this one day, she laughed at Max: "Oh, you! A big guy, but are you afraid? What nonsense! There is nothing like that. It's all nonsense." She said that, but she got goosebumps. It was after this statement that something happened to her that made her believe "all these nonsense." A couple of days later, when Alinka was taking a shower (sorry for such piquant details), she turned off the water and began shampooing her hair, while closing her eyes so that the soap foam would not get into her eyes. And now, he hears some kind of grinding going on in the bathtub. Not sonorous and metallic, but soft, barely audible. Shik-shik, shik-shik... "Maybe the neighbors are fixing the faucet. And the acoustics are good here," Alinka mused. But the sound didn't stop. "Or Max wants to scare you, so he's scratching at the door," But the sound is coming from the bathtub itself, right from under Alinka's feet. Curiosity got the better of her, and she opened one eye slightly. It was then that terror seized her. Two thin, apparently feminine fingers were sticking out of the drain hole. They bent over and simultaneously scratched the surface of the tub near the drain. Alinka's eyes widened. With a terrible inhuman scream, she flew out of the bathroom, ran into the room where Max was watching TV, and huddled in the farthest corner of the bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. Stunned, Max looked into the bathroom, but of course he didn't see anything strange. Chattering her teeth, the terrified Alinka told him everything as it was. And she flatly refused to go into the bathroom, even to wash the shampoo off her head. Then I had to tinker with a basin and a kettle in the kitchen. On the same day, the guys "took off" from there. We temporarily moved in with our parents, Max and his friends took out all the things from the apartment in a few days, since Alinka flatly refused to cross the threshold of this glorious apartment. The guys then tried to figure out what could have happened there - maybe some kind of murder, or something else. They still hadn't found anything; the police had not reported this apartment. Max himself has one guess, they say, it is quite possible that someone was dismembered in the bathtub (or simply killed), which is why the notches on the surface of the enamel look like they were beaten with something sharp. Max Alinka does not tell this version. She says she still dreams about those fingers in not very pleasant dreams.