As soon as midnight struck, I could always hear something under the floorboards—a nail tapping—a scratching coming from directly beneath me. It went on like this every night. I thought it was probably the building. Considering, it’s been standing there for over fifty years.
However, randomly one evening, when I came home faded off a round of tequila shots and plopped head first on my couch, I heard the knocking again over the street traffic outside my open window. Me being silly, and a bit tipsy, I responded to it. “Who’s there?” I said, giggling and started getting up to go to bed when the wind brushed the back of my neck. “You are!” A voice responded, sounding like me. I shot my eyes wide-open and froze, half raised off the couch. I did not blink. I did not breathe. I held my breath in until I heard the sound of a horn go off outside my living room window. I jumped up and sprinted really fast to my bedroom that my footsteps against the floor sounded like someone chasing behind me. I flew onto my mattress and yanked my cellphone out of my pocket and went to call my boyfriend, while barely able to steady the tremors in my fingers long enough to unlock it.I pressed down on Richard’s name and slammed the phone to my ear. “Hello?” I yelled, my voice sounded shaky. I didn’t give him a chance to resplendent. “Come over right now, something strange just happened. I think someone might be somewhere around my apartment. I’m not sure, I’m tripping out right now. I really need you.”“Call the police. I’m on my way.” I ended the call and held my phone to my chest, waiting impatiently for him to call back. Through my doorway I could see into the hallway and for some reason I turned my head and stared at the light in the hall and I saw a figure walk past it. I shut my eyes and counted to sixty and waited for my front door buzzer to crack through the speaker on my wall and when it finally did I could breathe once again.
All I kept thinking though, was I had to walk in the same direction I saw the shadow to let him come in. I called my boyfriend. “Richard, is that you downstairs?” “Yeah it’s me, buzz me in.” “Okay stay on the phone. I’m frigging scared right now. “Did you call the cops?” I stood up and ran to the front door. “No. Richard. Richard it’s something else. Something is here.” “What’s that?” He said. “Just come up… please, hurry up.” I opened the front door and buzzed him in and he came running out of the third floor stairwell to my apartment, where I was outside waiting for him, holding my cellphone to my ear. He was breathing heavy and his face had a bright redness all over it. “Are you okay?” He asked me while he panted.“Yeah. I’m okay.” I reached out and embraced him. “It’s just… something strange happened. Can you look around and sleep over tonight?”“Sure.”
While he investigated the noises I’ve been hearing, he began banging on the floorboards and the walls, laughing as he taunted me. He ran into a door hidden under the stairs. Richard turned and stared at me, walking towards it, and gripped his palm around the handle. “What’s in here, Rachael?” “I don’t know,” I said, brushing a strand of hair at the back of my ear. “I’m just seeing that.” He turned the knob clockwise and it kept spinning. He tried to pull it open. It was stuck, there was no give to the door, as though it was a part of the wall. “Leave it, Richard.” I told him. “It’s freaking me out.” He tugged at it one last time. “Stop it, Richard. Please” I slowly dragged him towards my bedroom. “I just want to go to bed and forget about tonight.” He followed me into my bedroom but wouldn’t stop looking at the door.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up with Richard lying next to me and went to use the bathroom. As I left my room and walked into the hallway, I heard something knock gently behind the hidden door. I walked closer, stood in silence and listened. A hollow, distorted sound came from behind the door.
Hee.
Hee.
Haw.
Haw.
It was a deep, gentle laugh of a child slowed down. “Help me,” something cried out. Out of pure instinct, I reached for the door and it opened as I twisted the knob. A string of light shone from the bathroom highlighted a dust particle slowly drifting onto a tiny shoe at the foot of the door. Another little one appeared and I could hear someone breathing in the midst of the darkness shadowing the entrance. I quickly backed away, the hidden door was open and blocking me from running into my room. “Richard !” I cried out, but there wasn’t any sound coming out of my mouth. The living room window slid down and slammed shut loudly as something crawled in from outside. I bolted for the front door but the room had grown, I kept on trying to move forward but I remained stuck inside in the same spot. I tried shouting and as I did that everything went pitch-black. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face and that’s when somebody whisper in my voice.
“I found the way back home.”
I don’t know what occurred next. The last thing I could recall was waking up that morning alone in my bed. I could have sworn Richard was over. I guessed at the time, I just had a quite vivid inebriated dream. I heard a knock as I got up. I started getting flashes of last night and thought it’s happening all over again. Then came another, more persistent, deliberate knock. “Open up, I brought breakfast.”
It was Richard. I jumped up to answer the door and when I did, he was standing right there with a smile on his face but he had someone else’s teeth and as I stared at him, wondering who was standing in front of me, a child dashed across the room and started laughing in a high-pitched tone.
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