Footsteps Behind the Wall

The first time Mira heard the footsteps, she blamed the old building.
Her apartment in Halliston Heights had a habit of making strange noises—pipes cooling, wood bending, air shifting through tight spaces. It was the kind of place where you either learned to ignore sounds or drove yourself mad trying to interpret them.

But these footsteps were different.

They came at exactly 2:17 a.m., always the same time, always the same slow pattern.
Three steps.
Pause.
Two more steps.
A soft thud, like someone leaning against the wall.

At first, Mira tried to laugh it off. “Old building stuff,” she muttered, pulling the blankets over her head. But when the pattern repeated itself night after night, she felt the unease forming a knot in her stomach.

On the seventh night, she pressed her ear to the wall.

The footsteps stopped—almost like they sensed her listening.

That was when the whisper came.

A soft, breathy help me.

Mira stumbled back so quickly she knocked over the lamp beside her bed. She didn’t sleep the rest of the night. She sat upright on the couch, staring at the wall as though expecting it to speak again.

The next morning, bleary-eyed and clutching a coffee she barely tasted, she marched downstairs to the building manager.

“Something’s inside my wall,” she said.

Mr. Forrester, a tired-looking man who had been the manager since the 1980s, raised an eyebrow. “Mice?”

“It whispered,” she snapped.

His expression didn’t change much. He’d probably heard stranger things from tenants over the decades, but he agreed to send someone to look at the apartment “within two business days.”

Mira didn’t wait.

That night, she dragged her flashlight from the drawer, moved her bed aside, and tapped the plaster along the back wall. Most of it was solid, but a small section near the corner sounded hollow.

The footsteps came again—2:17 on the dot.

This time she didn’t freeze. She pressed her palm flat against the wall.

“Who’s there?” she whispered.

But no whisper came. No reply. Just the same slow footsteps and that familiar soft thud.

She couldn’t take it anymore.

She grabbed a screwdriver and hammered it into the hollow patch. The plaster cracked. A second strike chipped it open. Dust floated into the air, and something cold brushed her fingers.

She pulled back instantly.

Her flashlight beam shook as she leaned closer to the hole. Inside, instead of insulation or wiring, she saw darkness—a narrow space she didn’t realize existed.

A hidden passage.

Her heart thudded so loudly she almost didn’t hear the next sound.

Breathing.

Not hers.
Not faint.
Right there.

She staggered away, bumping into the doorframe. For a moment she thought about running out of the apartment entirely, but curiosity—the dangerous kind—pulled her back.

She widened the hole enough to see through.

Something moved.

A frail figure, wrapped in what looked like an old hospital gown, crouched in the narrow hidden corridor between the walls. Long hair covered most of their face, and thin arms hugged their knees. They didn’t look up, didn’t acknowledge her at all.

They just rocked slightly, whispering to themselves.

Mira’s voice broke. “Are… are you trapped?”

The figure stopped rocking. Slowly, they lifted their head.

Eyes clouded with confusion and fear stared out at her.
Then came the whisper she'd heard for nights:

“Help me.”

The police arrived within minutes after her frantic call. They forced open a maintenance panel Mira had never noticed near the stairwell, revealing the same cramped corridor she had discovered.

The figure—a woman—was carried out on a stretcher. Pale, trembling, dehydrated, but alive.

Mira wrapped her arms around herself as officers questioned her.
“No, I don’t know who she is.”
“No, I didn’t know there was a passage behind the walls.”
“Yes, I heard footsteps every night.”

When the ambulance left, Mr. Forrester appeared beside her, his face drained of color. “I… I didn’t think anyone was inside.”

“What do you mean?” Mira demanded.

He swallowed. “This building used to have a small psychiatric wing in the 1960s. They created hidden corridors so nurses could move between rooms quickly without disturbing patients. After the wing closed, the corridors were sealed… or so we thought.”

The room tilted. Mira steadied herself against the wall—the same wall she’d heard footsteps behind for nights.

“So she’s been there how long?” she asked, horrified.

Mr. Forrester rubbed his forehead. “We’ll have to wait for the investigation. But someone could’ve kept her there recently… or she might have been hiding. Or forgotten.”

Forgotten.
The word echoed like a cold draft in Mira’s chest.


hat night, the apartment was silent. No footsteps. No whispers.
But Mira couldn’t sleep.

She lay awake thinking of the woman in the walls, wondering how many cries for help had gone unheard before hers.

In a building full of people, someone had been alone in the darkness—unseen, unheard—for who knew how long.

Mira thought she’d feel safe again once the mystery was solved, but instead she felt something else: