The Apartment Below

NIGHT ONE

I moved into the apartment on Willow and Ninth because it was cheap, not because it was good. The ceiling cracked like a map of old veins, the walls smelled faintly of mildew, and the radiator hissed like it resented being alive. Still, in a city where rent could devour your sanity, it felt like a small victory — a space of my own.

For the first week, it was fine. The neighbors were quiet, the street noise was tolerable, and the creaks in the walls blended into the hum of the city. Then, on the eighth night, I heard it — a faint tapping sound coming from the apartment below mine.

It wasn’t random. It had rhythm.

Three taps. A pause. Two taps. Another pause. Then a long scrape, like something dragging along the floor.

At first, I told myself it was plumbing, or rats, or the thousand other excuses city dwellers use to avoid thinking too hard about the noises in old buildings. But the pattern repeated. Every night, between 2:11 and 2:19 a.m., like clockwork.

NIGHT THREE

By the third night, curiosity got the better of me. I went downstairs to check.

The door to the apartment below — 2B — was sealed with a padlock. The kind landlords use when a unit’s been condemned or abandoned. A thin piece of paper, yellowed and curled, hung from the frame. The notice was so faded I could only make out two words:

UNSAFE STRUCTURE.

That didn’t make sense. Someone was definitely in there.

When I asked the building superintendent, a heavyset man named Lyle, he barely looked up from his cigarette.

“No one’s lived in 2B for years,” he said.

“But—”

“Place flooded a while back. Mold got everywhere. Landlord won’t even go in. Don’t make up stories, kid.”

He said it like I’d accused him personally.

That night, the tapping came again. Louder. Closer. I pressed my ear to the floor and froze. It wasn’t tapping anymore — it was knocking. Slow, deliberate knocks, echoing up through the boards.

And then, a voice.

“Let me out.”

NIGHT FOUR

I didn’t sleep.

The next morning, I checked the hallway outside 2B. The padlock was gone. The door stood slightly ajar, darkness yawning behind it.

I should’ve walked away. Called Lyle. Something. But something about that open door felt like an invitation — not a threat, but a request.

The smell hit me first: rot and rust. The kind of scent that clings to your tongue. The floor was warped, covered in black patches of mold. Wallpaper peeled in long, curling strips, revealing a surface underneath that looked… wet.

The furniture — if it had ever been there — was gone. The only thing left was a chair, overturned in the center of the room. And carved into the floor, beneath it, were the same marks I’d heard in the night: three long scratches, two shorter ones, and a single gouge trailing off into darkness.

When I touched the floor, it was warm.

Something moved beneath my hand.

NIGHT FIVE

I ran back upstairs. Slammed the door. Locked it.

But the knocking didn’t stop. It moved with me. Through the floorboards, up the walls, into the pipes. By evening, I could hear whispering through the vents — voices overlapping, begging, crying, laughing.

At midnight, I saw something move under my door. A shadow — not cast, but alive.

It seeped through the cracks, rising up from the floor like smoke. I couldn’t see a face, but I felt the cold shape of it, inches from mine.

“You opened it,” it whispered.

I remember screaming. I remember the room going black. And then — nothing.

AFTERMATH

They found me three days later, locked inside my apartment, muttering the same pattern over and over again:

Three knocks. Two knocks. One drag.

The police broke down the door of 2B. It was empty. No mold. No chair. No carvings. Just dust.

But Lyle swears he heard it too. Every night now, between 2:11 and 2:19 a.m.

The sound of someone tapping from below.

End