Echoes from Apartment 12B

Maya didn’t believe in ghosts. Not in the way they were shown in horror movies. What frightened her more were the things people left behind—unspoken words, unfinished arguments, and untold truths buried in the dust of empty rooms.

So when she signed the lease for Apartment 12B, she wasn’t thinking about spirits. She was thinking about rent. It was cheap—too cheap for that part of the city. The landlord shrugged when she asked why.

“Old building,” he said. “People move on quickly. That’s all.”

Maya didn’t push. She needed the place.

The apartment was modest. A narrow hallway, a living room with creaky floors, and a bedroom that caught the morning sun. It even came with some old furniture: a bookshelf, a lamp with a cracked base, and a full-length mirror leaning against the wall like it had been forgotten.

The first night passed quietly—too quietly. Maya blamed the thickness of the walls. But by the second night, she noticed something strange.

The mirror.

Every time she walked past it, she felt a small chill on the back of her neck, like someone had just exhaled near her skin. Once, she thought she saw movement in it—a flicker of red, like the hem of a dress vanishing behind her. But when she turned around, she was alone.

She started noticing more objects—ordinary things that didn’t feel ordinary.

A teacup with a chipped rim, resting perfectly on the windowsill, even though she had never touched it. A faded postcard tucked behind the bookshelf, with handwriting that said, "He knows now. I can't stay." No address. No signature.

Maya asked the landlord about the previous tenants.

He waved his hand. “People leave. City life’s not for everyone.”

“But why?” she asked.

He smiled without warmth. “Maybe they heard the apartment talking.”

Over the next few days, the apartment changed. Or maybe Maya did. She began hearing things—not loud or obvious, but soft and persistent.

Whispers. A child's giggle behind the bathroom door. The distinct sound of someone sighing in the kitchen.

Then came the scratches on the bedroom wall. Horizontal lines, like someone had counted down the days.

She tried to ignore it. She turned up the music, opened the windows, filled the room with light. But light didn’t erase the memories—it only made them visible.

The final straw came one night when she returned home late from work. The apartment was dark, but she could see something on the mirror. Words. Written in what looked like condensation, though the glass was dry.

“GET OUT. HE STILL LIVES HERE.”

Maya froze. Her breath caught in her throat. She slowly reached for the light switch—but as soon as the light came on, the message vanished.

The next day, she didn’t go to work. Instead, she searched every inch of Apartment 12B. Under floorboards, behind cabinets, inside the old vents. She found a small, rusted tin box wedged inside the wall behind the mirror.

Inside: an old cassette tape, a Polaroid photo, and a torn notebook.

The photo showed a woman—maybe in her late twenties, standing in the apartment, her smile uneasy. Behind her, a man stood in the doorway, half-shadowed.

Maya felt her stomach twist.

The notebook told the story. The woman’s name was Lena, and she had lived in Apartment 12B a year ago. The man in the photo—her ex—had followed her after she left him. No one believed her. She wrote about hearing footsteps, missing items, and messages appearing on the mirror. Eventually, she stopped writing.

The last page simply read:

“If anyone finds this, please listen. This apartment keeps the past. The objects—every one of them—is a piece of me. Of what happened here. Don’t ignore the signs. He isn’t gone. He never left.”

Maya didn’t sleep that night.

In the early hours of the morning, she heard the creak of the front door. She hadn’t left it unlocked.

She grabbed her phone, but there was no signal. The hallway was pitch black. Only the faint light from the window lit the living room.

That’s when she saw it.

A figure. Standing just beyond the mirror.

Not in it—beyond it.

As if the mirror was no longer a reflection, but a window. The man stared at her, his face obscured by shadow, unmoving. Then, slowly, he lifted his hand and pointed—first at her, then at the floor.

Maya looked down.

There, in the dust near her feet, were footprints.

Fresh ones.

She left that night.

She didn’t pack. She didn’t look back. She told the police what she could, showed them the notebook, the cassette, the photo. But the box was missing. The apartment, cleaned. The mirror, gone.

No evidence. No suspect. No case.

Maya didn’t care.

Because she now knew what Lena meant. The objects weren’t just haunted.

They were witnesses.

And some memories weren’t forgotten.

They were just waiting.