Apartment 203 in Houston

Ben and Hannah got married in their early twenties, with nothing but love and hope. Coming from a poor rural Arkansas town with little land to work on, they took the Greyhound to Houston, Texas. They packed only a few clothes, a cheap rice cooker, and the belief that with hard work, they would “stand on their own two feet.”

Mrs. Parker, the owner of a cheap apartment complex at the end of a side street off I-45, rented them apartment 203. It was a four-room apartment of about ten square meters, with patchy walls that leaked in heavy rains, but the price was reasonable. “When you first come to the city, you can stay here temporarily, and then when you have more money, you can think about it,” Ben encouraged his wife.

In the early days, the two worked shifts at a garment factory in the industrial park. At night, they would cook a simple meal, sit under the pale white neon lights, and tell each other stories about their work. Hannah often joked: “When we have money, we will go back to the countryside to open a grocery store; you sit and sell, I will go get the goods.” Ben laughed, seeing that dream as both near and far.

From the third month, around 3am every night, they began to hear the sound of the lock being rattled. At first, Ben thought it was the wind or mice. But one day, he woke up and clearly saw the lock bolt turning slightly, as if someone was testing the key. He got up, turned on the light, opened the door — the hallway outside was dark, empty.

Hannah was worried, Ben reassured her: “It must be the wind.” A few nights later, Hannah herself heard the sound of metal clanking. She held her husband’s trembling hand: “Someone is trying to open our door.”

They were scared. Not only because of the few shabby clothes, but also because there was money in the closet that he had saved to send back to his hometown.

Ben decided to take the old phone hidden near the door and secretly filmed it. The next morning, he opened the clip again and was stunned: a figure in a black coat and a baseball cap was bending over to insert the key. The face was in the dark, but the way he walked was uncomfortably familiar.

In the afternoon, when Mrs. Parker came to collect the electricity and water bill, Ben showed her the clip. After watching it, her face turned pale:

— Oh my god… the key to room 203 is only kept by me and my uncle and aunt… How did it get into the key?

Ben asked cautiously:
— Please check… does anyone in your house frequent this area at night?

Mrs. Parker’s eyes wavered slightly. She suddenly thought of Tyler — her youngest son who occasionally helped her change locks and fix light bulbs. He often went out at night and spent lavishly these days. But she shook her head:
— Let me check. Don’t worry.

Ben and Hannah returned, still feeling uneasy.

A few days later, the whole apartment building was in chaos. Early in the morning, the neighbors smelled a strange burning smell coming from apartment 203. When no one answered the door, they broke the lock.

The scene made everyone weak: Ben and Hannah lying motionless on the bed, their faces purple. Next to them was a half-burnt charcoal pot, ash scattered about.

The police quickly arrived. Preliminary report: death by CO suffocation from the charcoal. But when they searched the room, they found a piece of paper trembling on the wooden table, scrawled in the handwriting:

“Mrs. Parker… don’t rent 203 to anyone else. They have the key. Sorry.”

Mrs. Parker read, her hands and feet cold. The two words “they” haunted her, making her shiver.

The forensic examination later concluded: in the victims’ lungs there was not only CO, but also traces of phosgene — a toxin that could be related to some cheap insecticides. This showed that before they suffocated, they had inhaled other toxic gases.

Investigators suspected that this was a murder staged as a suicide. But how did the killer get in? The lock had no signs of forced entry.

The answer was revealed when they carefully examined the wooden cabinet. At the bottom of the cabinet, an old USB appeared. Inside were clips of Ben secretly recording over many nights. The figure of the person who opened the door gradually became clear: a familiar figure, a face that was briefly revealed when the hallway light flashed — it was Tyler, Mrs. Parker’s son.

The investigation expanded. It turned out that Tyler had secretly copied the key while helping his mother change the locks of the apartments. He had colluded with a group of thieves who specialized in targeting the rooms of poor, unwary workers. They used chalk or a thin strip of tape to mark the door, even stretching a thin thread across the crack to identify him at night.

Ben and Hannah discovered it, filmed it, and planned to report it to the homeowner. Afraid of being discovered, Tyler devised a plan to “silence” him: he took advantage of the night, soaked the charcoal with chemicals from a cheap insect spray, and placed it right next to the crack of the door; the toxic fumes seeped into the room, causing the couple to become unconscious. After that, he staged the crime scene to look like a desperate suicide.

Unexpectedly, in the last seconds, Ben managed to leave a message — evidence that would incriminate him.

Tyler was arrested. At the police station, he bowed his head and stammered, “I didn’t mean to kill… I just wanted to scare them away.” But the evidence was too clear.

The day Tyler was handcuffed and led away, Mrs. Parker collapsed. The woman who lived her whole life on rent money never thought that tragedy would come from her own child.

Neighbors sympathized with the gentle couple and donated money to bring their bodies back to their hometown in Arkansas. Everyone whispered about their last words, as if they were a message from the other side.

Later, the apartment building was almost abandoned. Apartment 203 was sealed with yellow tape saying “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS”. Passersby shuddered at the mention of the case.

Some people rumored that apartment 203 was “haunted”, but those who understood the story knew: evil does not come from ghosts, but from human greed and cruelty.

Mrs. Parker lived the rest of her life in torment. Every time she passed that door, she seemed to hear the choked words echoing:

“Don’t rent apartment 203 to anyone else…”

The deaths of Ben and Hannah were not mysterious, but crimes committed by acquaintances. The messages they left were both evidence and warning — helping the truth to be revealed. And that tragedy reminded her that the scariest thing is not the devil, but human greed.