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Mr. Henderson, our landlord, looked like a walrus who had been forced to wear a maintenance uniform. He was in the basement laundry room, wrestling with a coin-op dryer that had apparently decided to eat a tenant's quarters without drying their clothes.
"Look, the sensor is busted," Henderson grunted without looking at me. He wiped grease onto his pant leg. "I’ll order the part on Monday. Tell 'em to hang-dry their undies."
"Mr. Henderson, it’s about Unit B," I said. My voice came out tighter than I wanted. "Sarah’s apartment."
He sighed, finally turning to look at me. His eyes were watery and irritated. "What now? She playing music too loud? You two having a lover’s spat?"
"I think she’s hurt," I said.
Henderson rolled his eyes so hard I thought they might detach. "She’s a nurse, kid. She works weird hours. She’s probably passed out cold."
"Her phone has been ringing for three hours," I said, stepping into his personal space. This was usually my nightmare scenario—confrontation with an authority figure—but the sour smell from upstairs was still stuck in my sinuses, making me bold. "And there’s a smell. A bad one."
Henderson paused. The word "smell" is the magic keyword for landlords. It implies rot, sewage, or hoarders—all things that cost money.
"What kind of smell?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Like something… spoiled," I said. "And I knocked. She didn't answer. You need to open the door."
He scoffed, grabbing a heavy ring of keys from his belt. "I ain't opening a tenant’s door just because you’re nosy. That’s illegal without notice."
"It’s an emergency check," I lied, though I felt in my gut it wasn't really a lie. "If she’s had a medical emergency in there and you refuse to open the door, that’s a liability lawsuit waiting to happen. Negligence."
I threw the legal buzzwords out like confetti. I had no idea if they made sense, but Henderson hesitated. He looked at the ceiling, then back at me.
"Fine," he grumbled, pushing past me. "But if she’s just in there naked with a boyfriend, you’re taking the heat."
We walked up the stairs in silence. The rain battered the hallway window, casting moving shadows against the peeling paint. As we reached the second-floor landing, the air grew heavier.
Henderson stopped outside Sarah's door (Unit B). He sniffed.
"I don't smell nothing," he said, jamming a brass key into the lock.
"Just open it," I said.
The lock clicked. The bolt slid back. Henderson pushed the door open, and the sour scent rushed out to greet us, thick and cloying.
"Jesus," Henderson coughed, covering his mouth with his hand. "Did she leave the trash out?"
I didn't answer. I stepped past him into the apartment.
It was a mirror image of my own unit, but where mine was cluttered with cables and audio gear, Sarah’s was usually neat. Minimalist.
Now, it looked like a struggle.
Not a violent, furniture-smashing struggle, but a subtle, wrong kind of struggle. A floor lamp was tipped over against the couch. A stack of nursing textbooks had been knocked off the coffee table, splayed out like dead birds.
"Sarah?" Henderson called out. His voice lacked its usual gruffness. He sounded unsure.
The apartment was freezing. The window was cracked open a few inches, letting the damp air mix with the rot smell.
"She probably skipped out," Henderson muttered, walking toward the kitchen. "Last month’s rent was late. I bet she bailed."
I ignored him and walked toward the bedroom. The door was half-open.
My heart was doing a drum solo against my ribs. I pushed the door with my fingertips.
The room was empty.
The bed was unmade, the sheets tangled in a chaotic knot at the foot of the mattress. And there, on the nightstand, sat her phone.
Bzzzt. Bzzzt.
It lit up again. Mom calling.
"See?" Henderson called from the living room. "Clothes are gone. She packed a bag and left. Probably couldn't handle the stress."
"She didn't leave," I whispered.
I walked over to the nightstand. I picked up the phone. It was warm from charging. Who skips town and leaves their phone? Nobody. Not in 2026. You leave your dignity before you leave your smartphone.
22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQEL29V6zEc
I looked down at the floor. The hardwood was old, scarred with decades of scratches. But there were new marks near the bed.
Long, parallel gouges in the dust.
Like the bed had been shoved.
I looked at the bed frame. It was a heavy, iron thing. It was pulled about two feet away from the wall.
"Hey, Henderson!" I yelled. "Come look at this."
"I’m not looking at nothing," he shouted back. "I’m checking the fridge to see what’s rotting. God, it smells like something died in here."
I knelt down in the gap between the headboard and the wall. This was the shared wall. The other side of this plaster was my bedroom.
The smell was overwhelming here. It was concentrated, radiating from the wall itself.
I squinted. The wallpaper in Sarah’s room was a floral pattern, old and yellowing. But right in the center, about three feet from the floor—eye level if you were sitting on the bed—the paper was bubbling.
It looked like someone had picked at it.
I reached out, my hand trembling slightly. I caught the edge of the loose wallpaper with my fingernail and peeled it back.
It came away easily, a strip of dry, brittle paper falling to the floor.
Behind it, the plaster wasn't smooth.
There was a hole.
22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡajTqVBqg6Z
It wasn't a crack from the building settling. It was a perfect, circular hole, maybe a quarter-inch wide. It had been drilled.
I leaned in closer, holding my breath.
The edges of the hole were stained dark with grease.
My mind flashed back to the audio recording. The tapping. Tap. Tap. Scrape.
This wasn't just a hole in the plaster. I pulled my phone out and turned on the flashlight, shining it directly into the aperture.
The light didn't hit insulation. It didn't hit a wooden stud. It didn't hit the back of my drywall.
The light traveled into a void.
And then, for a split second, something reflected the light back at me.
It was wet. Glassy.
I recoiled, scrambling backward on the floor, my heels skidding on the wood. "Whoa!"
"What is it?" Henderson appeared in the doorway, looking annoyed. "You find a dead rat?"
I sat there, chest heaving, staring at that tiny black eye in the wall. The reflection was gone now. Maybe it was just a piece of glass? A nail head?
But my brain knew better. My brain is wired to recognize patterns, and I knew what I had seen.
"There's a hole," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "Someone drilled a hole behind her bed."
Henderson frowned, lumbering over. He squinted at the wall. "Termites, maybe. Or dry rot. This place is old, kid."
"No," I said, standing up. My legs felt like jelly. "That goes into the wall. There’s space in there."
"Don't be stupid," Henderson grunted. "It’s a firewall. Two layers of gypsum and a layer of brick. Solid."
He poked the hole with a fat finger, then wiped the dust on his pants. "I’ll get some spackle. Patch it up. We’ll keep her security deposit for the mess."
He turned to leave, dismissing the hole, dismissing the smell, dismissing Sarah.
"We need to call the police," I said.
"For what?" Henderson laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "For a missing tenant who left her phone? They won't file a report for twenty-four hours, and even then, she’s an adult. She’s allowed to leave."
He walked out of the bedroom. "I’m locking up. You get out too. And stop smelling the walls, it’s creepy."
I stayed for one last second. I looked at the hole again.
It felt like the hole was looking back.
I grabbed Sarah’s phone from the nightstand—a theft, I knew, but I couldn't leave it there—and hurried out of the room.
As I stepped back into the hallway, the door to Unit B clicked shut behind me. I heard Henderson locking the deadbolt.
I stood there in the dim corridor, clutching the phone. The screen lit up again.
One new voicemail.
I didn't play it. Not yet.
I went into my own apartment and locked the door. I threw the deadbolt. Then I slid the chain lock into place. Then I wedged a chair under the handle.
I went to my workstation and sat down. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely hold Sarah’s phone.
I looked at the wall in front of me. The same wall I had just been staring at from the other side.
Somewhere in the middle of that wall, in the darkness between her room and mine, there was a space that wasn't supposed to exist. A space big enough to hold a smell. Big enough to hide a drill.
And if there was a hole on her side...
I slowly turned my head to look at the vintage movie poster hanging above my desk. The Conversation, 1974. Gene Hackman listening to tapes.
It was pinned to the wall at the corners.
I stood up, walked over, and lifted the bottom right corner of the poster.
The plaster behind it was white and smooth.
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. See? You’re crazy. It’s just termites.
I let the poster fall back against the wall.
Tap.
It was soft. So soft I almost missed it.
Tap.
It came from right behind the poster.
My blood ran cold. I wasn't crazy. I was just looking in the wrong spot.
I wasn't the observer anymore. I was the subject.
I backed away from the desk, clutching Sarah’s phone like a weapon. The sour smell seemed to have followed me through the wall, faint but undeniable, ghosting through the electrical outlets of my own sanctuary.
I needed to hear what was on that voicemail.
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.