The lobby was quiet. The vending machine hummed its stupid, cheerful tune. I stood at the bottom of the stairs, listening.
Above me, the floorboards of the second floor creaked.
Creak... pause... creak.
He was moving away from the window. He was moving toward the hallway.
I took the stairs two at a time, skipping the squeaky step I’d memorized over three years of living here. I reached the landing and pressed my back against the wall next to my door.
The hallway was empty. The door to my apartment was still slightly ajar, just how I’d left it when I bolted.
I held my breath and listened. My ears, trained to hear the difference between a pin drop and a needle drop, scanned the frequency spectrum of the apartment.
I heard the refrigerator compressor kicking on. I heard the rain tapping against the window.
I didn't hear breathing.
I swung the door open with my foot, raising the tire iron, ready to swing at anything that moved.
The living room was empty.
The curtains were still swaying slightly from where he’d touched them. The air was freezing—he must have opened the window to taunt me. But the smell was stronger now. That sour, curdled-milk stench was thick enough to taste.
I slammed the door shut behind me. I threw the deadbolt. Then the chain. Then I dragged my heavy bookshelf—the one loaded with technical manuals and vinyl records—across the floor and shoved it in front of the door.
I wasn't locking him out. I knew that now. He didn't use doors.
I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a roll of duct tape from the junk drawer. I went to the hallway vent—the one with the loose screw. I taped over it. Layer after layer of silver tape, crossing it like a spiderweb until the metal grate was completely sealed.
Then I did the bathroom vent. Then the bedroom vent.
I was sealing the hatches on a sinking submarine.
When I was done, I stood in the middle of my living room, chest heaving. I was wet, cold, and terrified. But I was angry, too. This was my space. I paid rent. I bought the groceries. I mixed the audio.
I pulled out my phone. 10% battery.
I needed to know where he went. If he wasn't in the room, and he wasn't in the hallway, he was back in the "Zero Space."
I sat at my computer desk, ignoring the wet patches my clothes were leaving on the chair. I woke up the screens. I didn't open my audio software this time. I opened a browser.
I typed City Planning Archive - Property Blueprints into the search bar.
The internet was slow, likely due to the storm, but eventually, the county clerk’s database loaded. I punched in my address.
1402 Industrial Ave.
The PDF loaded line by line. It was an old scan, dated 1955, with amendments from 1990.
I zoomed in on the second floor.
"Okay," I muttered, tracing the lines with my finger on the screen. "Unit A... Unit B."
The layout looked standard. My bedroom shared a wall with Sarah’s bedroom. My living room shared a wall with her living room.
But then I looked at the dimensions.
The outer brick walls of the building formed a rectangle that was fifty feet wide.
Unit A was twenty feet wide.
Unit B was twenty feet wide.
I blinked. I did the math again. 20 plus 20 is 40.
There was a ten-foot discrepancy.
I leaned closer to the screen, squinting at the pixelated architectural drawings. Between the two units, running the entire length of the building like a spine, was a shaded area labeled M.E. Chase / Industrial Ventilation (Sealed 1990).
"Mechanical Chase," I whispered.
It wasn't just a gap for pipes. In the original factory design, it was a service corridor. A narrow hallway where workers could access the steam pipes and electrical mains without entering the workrooms.
When they converted the factory into apartments in the 90s, the landlord—probably Henderson’s cheapskate dad—didn't pay to demolish the chase. They just drywall-ed over the entrances.
They sealed a ten-foot-wide dead zone right in the middle of the house.
I looked up at the wall. My eyes fixed on the vintage Conversation poster.
It wasn't a wall. It was a partition. And on the other side wasn't insulation or studs. It was a room. A room that ran the length of my entire apartment. A room with no doors and no windows.
A room where someone had been living.
"Unit Zero," I said aloud.
The realization hit me harder than the cold. Elias—the guy I’d seen in the window, the squatter—wasn't a ghost. He was an inheritance. He was part of the building’s architecture. He probably knew every squeaky board, every loose vent, every electrical wire.
And he had Sarah.
I looked at the waveform monitor on my other screen. The green line was flat.
Tap.
I jumped.
It came from the wall. Right behind the poster.
Tap. Tap.
It wasn't the sharp, aggressive tapping from before. It was weak. Fluttery.
I grabbed my headphones and jammed them onto my head. I swung the boom mic around, practically smashing it into the plaster. I cranked the gain.
"Talk to me," I hissed.
Through the static, I heard a sound that stopped my heart.
It was a whimper.
"...please..."
It was Sarah.
She wasn't dead. She wasn't gone. She was inches away from me.
"...hurt... leg... Mark..."
Her voice was thin, reedy, like she was afraid to speak above a whisper.
Then came another sound. A wet, clicking noise. Like a tongue against the roof of a mouth.
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
Then a raspy voice, sounding like it was grinding through gravel.
"Guest is awake."
I ripped the headphones off. The voice was so clear, so close, it felt like he had whispered directly into my ear canal.
I stood up, knocking my chair over.
He was mocking me. He knew I was listening. He was performing for me.
I looked around the room, frantic. What did I have? I had a tire iron. I had a microphone stand. None of that was going to get me through two layers of gypsum and a layer of lath and plaster.
I needed to get in there. I needed to breach the hull.
My eyes landed on the closet door.
Six months ago, I had tried to build a DIY vocal booth. I bought a bunch of heavy-duty construction gear that I used once and then shoved in the back of the closet because I was too lazy to return it.
I ran to the closet and threw the door open, digging through boxes of cables and old winter coats.
There.
Sitting at the bottom, covered in a layer of dust, was a four-pound lump hammer and a heavy-duty pry bar.
I grabbed the hammer. The wooden handle felt rough in my palm. It felt real.
I walked back to the shared wall. I ripped the Conversation poster down, crumpling Gene Hackman’s face and throwing it on the floor.
The wall was blank. Beige. Innocent.
"Mark?" Sarah’s voice came through the wall again, louder this time. She was screaming, but it was muffled, like she was underwater. "MARK! HE’S COMING BACK!"
A scuffling sound. A thud. Then a drag.
The adrenaline hit my system like a shot of pure voltage. My vision narrowed. The fear evaporated, replaced by a cold, hard clarity.
I wasn't a fighter. I wasn't a hero. I was a guy who fixed audio. I found the noise, and I eliminated it.
And right now, the noise was inside this wall.
I gripped the hammer with both hands. I planted my feet.
"Hang on, Sarah," I gritted out.
I didn't tap this time.
I swung.
The hammer head connected with the drywall with a deafening CRACK. Dust exploded into the air. The hammer punched through the first layer, sinking deep into the void.
I yanked it back. A jagged black hole stared at me.
From inside the darkness, the smell poured out—rotting food, human waste, and old, stale sweat.
And from deep in that darkness, a pair of eyes reflected the light of my computer monitors.
They widened.
He hadn't expected me to knock back.
I raised the hammer again.
"Eviction time," I yelled.
I swung for the studs.
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.