Upamanyu Biswas
Episode 6 of ‘Terror Tuesday: Extreme,‘ titled ‘Girl Next Door,’ revolves around Bird, a man with drug addiction who moves into an apartment with the help of his friend, Kie. After settling into his new surroundings, the protagonist happens across a set of mysterious house rules that, if not followed, result in strange, inexplicable phenomena. Additionally, the presence of a beautiful girl next door sets Bird on a path of danger as he finds himself drawn to her. The episode’s ending deals with the fallout of Bird’s growing concerns that the apartment and girl are both associated with the strange happenings late at night. Although the story ends on a definite note, the protagonist’s fate and the horror in his apartment are left ambiguously open. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Terrifying House Rules of Bird’s New Apartment
The story begins with Bird moving into a new building with the help of his friend, Kie. Before entering, Bird is assaulted by a vision of a dead girl lying on the gravel outside the building’s entrance. Shaking himself out of his reverie, the young man heads upstairs and settles in while Kie heads out. Bird learns that his neighbor in Apartment 406 is a stunning young girl named Jane, who briefly catches his eye. Unbeknownst to Kie, Bird is a drug user who got kicked out of his previous job because of his addiction. After Kie leaves, Bird drugs himself and lies down on the bed. He once again sees visions of Jane – this time more sensual in nature – finding himself increasingly drawn to her. When he wakes up on his bed, he is bemused to discover a set of handwritten house rules on his desk.
The rules dictate that he has to shut off the apartment’s lights when he hears strange happenings late at night. Bird disregards the rules, thinking it is a fake, exaggerated list left by his neighbor. However, he is unsure how it wound up on his desk in the first place. Late at night, Bird’s anxieties rise when, exactly as stated in the rules, loud bangings start echoing against his apartment door. Hastening to make them go away, he follows the rules and makes the house appear as devoid of life as possible by switching off the lights. Eventually, the sounds disappear. That night, Bird also sneaks across the balcony of his apartment to peek into Jane’s room. She appears to be having sex with a man, an act that Bird watches for a brief moment before their eyes meet, and he rushes back into his room.
Several other enigmas crop up the following day when he finds Jane sneakily staring at him through a crack in her apartment’s door. When Bird alerts the building’s security guard that there is a person trapped in the room, he dismisses this claim, stating that the apartment next to his has been empty for years. With no one seeking to help him on the matter, Bird decides to do it on his own by breaking into the room. However, he gets an even greater shock when he finds himself sitting on the toilet seat of the apartment. It turns out that he fell asleep and is dreaming or hallucinating the whole thing. By the end of the day, Bird is fully aware that something weird is happening in his apartment, and he needs to get to the bottom of it.
Who is the Girl in Apartment 406?
For large sections of the narrative, Bird’s obsession with Jane leads him to believe that there is something peculiar about her despite her alluring presence. She always appears to be slinking around him in the least expected moments. Additionally, she also haunts his dreams and visions, making him wonder if she is who she appears to be on the surface. Bird tasks his friend, Kie, to seek answers from the previous owner of the apartment. While discussing with the man, Kie realizes that the girl next door is not an inhabitant of Apartment 406 but the former resident of Bird’s apartment, who died through suicide many years before.
The previous owner and his wife used to live in Apartment 406. One day, the owner saw Jane come out of her apartment after his wife left the house to go to work. The two subsequently developed an affair, often sleeping with one another whenever the owner’s wife was not around. One night, after they had sex, the wife came back home and had a major fight with her husband. The two eventually decided to stop any contact with Jane as she was the reason for their relationship nearly breaking apart. She continued to stay in Apartment 407 but was shunned by the married couple. However, the owner helps her out one last time by leaving a set of house rules for her to survive the night when people come to her doorstep and start banging on it.
The men outside her door were likely sent by the owner’s wife, who wanted her flung out of the apartment. Later, she ended up jumping off the balcony of the apartment when she could no longer live with the guilt of her actions and the remorse she felt. Bird witnesses her fallen dead body the moment he walks into the building’s premises. Also, the same house rules that were written for Jane by the owner end up with Bird on the day he moves in. Furthermore, the sex scene he witnesses between Jane and another man on that same day was, in fact, her and the owner sleeping together when his wife wasn’t there. Therefore, the girl’s spirit haunts Bird, as she used to live in his apartment and had gone through a tragedy.
What Happened to Bird?
The episode’s final sequence leaves a taste of ambiguity on the surface. With a new set of house rules left under his door, Bird’s life well and truly spins out of orbit as he is assaulted by all manner of strange phenomena – from overflowing toilets and loud noises to the presence of strange ghostly figures within the room. He is told not to meet the eyes of any of these strangers and to stay confined within the room. However, as the night progresses, Bird comes to realize that he is, in fact, hallucinating everything around him. A separate scene unfolds that showcases that Bird is dead and his loved ones are attending his funeral. Meanwhile, locked in his apartment, Bird has no clue why he is being subjected to the torment of the new house rules.
While it may not be evident right from the get-go, Bird’s fate has already been determined prior to the new house rules coming into effect on the last night of the episode. During the sequence, Bird witnesses himself talking to Jane in the hallway from an earlier moment, who invites him to join her in Apartment 407. The future Bird watches his past self walk obediently behind Jane and head toward the balcony. Jane looks back to give the observing Bird a mischievous smile before leading his other self to the balcony’s railing, where she jumps off. His past self does the same, implying that Bird had actually jumped off the building that night, just like Jane had years ago. She encourages him to follow in her footsteps and end his life in the same way.
Therefore, the funeral procession that Bird hallucinates is, in fact, the real deal. His horror lies in realizing that he is already dead and there is no way for him to change the outcome of events. He becomes a haunted spirit in Apartment 407 in a similar fashion to Jane, witnessing those close to him mourn his loss while being unable to contact them. It is possible that Bird’s haunting was a combination of both his drug use and the spectral presence of Jane, who constantly stalked him in the apartment’s interior. Ultimately, the result of his stay in the cursed apartment was to join the ranks of those before him and become a specter himself, who lies in wait for the next inhabitants of Apartment 407.
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