Through The Crack

I wasn’t supposed to be awake.

The clock’s red digits glowed 3:07 a.m., painting my ceiling like a wound. I should’ve been asleep—my body heavy with exhaustion, my mind quiet—but the house had that wrong kind of silence, the kind that feels like it’s waiting for something.

I heard it first: a soft click, the sigh of a floorboard settling. Only, the sound came from downstairs. My roommate, Hannah, was working late that night—she texted me hours ago that she’d be on shift until sunrise.

So who was walking around our kitchen?

I told myself it was the fridge cycling, maybe the house contracting in the cold. I almost believed it, until the light under my door shifted.

Someone had turned on the hallway lamp.

My phone was on the nightstand. I didn’t move toward it. I just listened—heart thudding, breath shallow—as footsteps padded down the hall. They stopped outside my door.

A shadow fell across the strip of light beneath it. The kind of shadow that moved.

Someone was standing there.

I didn’t breathe for a full minute. Then, after an eternity, the shadow disappeared. The floorboards creaked again, retreating toward the stairs.

I slipped out of bed before I could talk myself out of it. The carpet was cold. Every step felt like it might scream.

Halfway to the door, I hesitated. There was a narrow gap where the hinges didn’t quite meet the frame—a sliver wide enough to see through if you pressed your eye close.

So I did.

Through the crack, I saw the back of a woman.

She was standing at the end of the hall, near the stairwell. Shoulder-length hair, same messy bun Hannah always wore. But something about the posture was wrong—too still, too straight. Her arms hung at her sides, fingers rigid. The lamp’s yellow light made her skin look grayish, like wax.

Then she tilted her head, slow as a hinge rusting open.

She was looking toward Hannah’s room. Not mine.

I should’ve opened the door, said her name, done something. But my body refused.

She started walking—soundless steps, like she’d memorized where the boards wouldn’t creak. She reached Hannah’s door and stopped. Her hand hovered above the knob. Then, without opening it, she lowered her head until her face was level with the keyhole.

And she looked through.

Something in me snapped cold. Because Hannah’s door doesn’t have a keyhole. It’s a modern latch—solid, smooth. But I could see her leaning forward, her eye pressed against something, as if there were a gap only she could see.

I backed away, too fast, and the floor groaned. The sound shot down the hall like a gunshot.

The woman froze. Then, still facing Hannah’s door, she whispered:

“I can see you.”

Not to Hannah. To me.

I didn’t think. I slammed my own door shut and locked it. My hands shook so badly I almost dropped the latch. For the next hour, I stood there, back pressed to the wood, waiting for the knob to turn. It never did.

By dawn, I convinced myself it was a hallucination. I’ve had insomnia for months; the mind plays tricks in that fog. Hannah came home around seven. She looked exhausted, keys jangling as she kicked off her shoes.

“Did you stay up all night?” she laughed.

I told her I’d had a weird dream. She didn’t ask more.

That should’ve been the end. But over the next few days, I started noticing things.

Little things, at first.

The hallway light left on when I knew I’d turned it off.

Hannah’s mug in the sink with lipstick I didn’t recognize.

And the mirror by the stairs—a warped antique we’d found at a thrift shop—began showing what looked like a second reflection. If I walked by too quickly, I’d catch it: someone standing a few feet behind me, just out of focus.

I started locking my bedroom door at night. Hannah teased me for it, but I didn’t care.

Then, one evening, Hannah got called into another overnight shift. I stayed on the couch, pretending to watch TV but really just listening. The house groaned, breathed, shifted. Around two a.m., the lights flickered once.

And then I heard it again:

That same soft click of the floorboard in the hall.

I muted the TV.

Another step. Closer.

I should’ve run. I should’ve called someone. Instead, I did what I’d done before. I looked.

The hallway was dim, only lit by the faint blue glow from the streetlamp outside. The mirror caught it—casting weird, bent light against the wall.

I didn’t see anyone.

But the mirror did.

In its reflection, a woman stood where the hall curved toward the bedrooms. Her body faced away, but her head was turned toward me, her cheek pressed against the wall as if she were trying to see through it. Like she was listening.

I turned around. The hall was empty.

When I looked back at the mirror, the woman was gone.

I slept with the lights on after that.

Three nights later, I came home from work and found Hannah sitting at the kitchen table. She looked pale, shaken.

“You were in my room last night,” she said.

I froze. “No, I wasn’t.”

Her eyes were wide. “I saw you. You were standing by the door. You had your hair down, and you were just—watching.”

I felt something sour climb my throat.

“Hannah,” I whispered, “I locked my door last night.”

We didn’t speak for a long time after that. Eventually, we stopped making eye contact altogether. It was easier not to talk about what we thought we saw.

But the thing about ignoring something wrong—it doesn’t make it stop existing.

Last week, I noticed a fine crack running down my bedroom doorframe. Not a scratch, but a thin vertical split, no wider than a hair. When I leaned close, I could see a darkness behind it, pulsing faintly, like breath.

This morning, I pressed my ear against it. I heard whispering.

I don’t tell Hannah anymore. She wouldn’t believe me.

But tonight, I’m sitting here with my phone flashlight and a screwdriver, staring at that crack. It’s grown wider. There’s light behind it now—soft, yellow light, like the hallway lamp from that first night.

I think there’s something on the other side.

I can’t stop myself from kneeling. My heart’s hammering so hard I can taste it.

Just one glance, I tell myself. Just to prove it’s nothing.

I put my eye to the crack.

And I see myself.

Standing in the hallway. Hair down. Still as wax.

Watching.

When I jerk back, the light’s gone—but the door isn’t whole anymore.

The split’s widening on its own, inch by inch, like it’s breathing, opening, waiting for me to look again.