The Apartment Above Me

I moved into 4B at the end of October, when the air was cold enough to sting and the trees outside were little more than crooked black lines against the sky. The building was old—brick walls pocked with history, pipes that clanked like they had opinions. My friends warned me about the quirks of older apartments, but I wasn’t prepared for the first thing I noticed my very first night: the noise from the apartment above me. It wasn’t just footsteps—it was pacing, like someone walking in slow, deliberate circles.

At first, I chalked it up to a restless neighbor. The landlord, Mrs. Tannen, had mentioned a man named “Mr. Green” who lived upstairs, but she said it vaguely, as if his presence was just part of the building’s furniture. I never saw him in the hall. The mail slots were old brass, and the one marked 5B was always empty. But every night, without fail, the pacing began around 9 p.m., slow enough to count each step between my ceiling beams.

By the second week, the sounds had grown stranger. Sometimes it was dragging—like furniture being moved. Other nights it was a rhythmic tapping, too precise to be accidental. I pressed my ear to the wall once, feeling ridiculous, but I could swear I heard low humming. It wasn’t tuneful, more like a drone. I told myself it was nothing. In an old building, the mind can turn the settling of beams into ghost stories. Still, I started wearing earplugs to sleep.

One Thursday night, the pacing stopped suddenly at exactly 9:42 p.m., followed by silence so sharp it made my skin prickle. A minute later, there was a single knock—just one—on my ceiling. I froze. My first instinct was to knock back, but I didn’t. I told myself, firmly, that it had been something falling over. But the next night, the same thing happened: pacing, silence, one knock. The night after that, it was two knocks.

I finally asked Mrs. Tannen if Mr. Green was all right. She frowned in that way landlords do when they’d rather not be bothered. “He’s lived here a long time,” she said. “Quiet man. Keeps to himself. I wouldn’t bother him.” I pointed out that I’d never actually seen him. She shrugged. “Some people like privacy. You should respect it.” Her tone made it clear the subject was closed.

The knocks began to form a pattern. One night it was three, then two, then four. I started writing them down. I don’t know why—it just felt like they meant something. Soon I realized they weren’t random. They repeated every few nights in the exact same sequence. I tried to decipher it like a code, but it didn’t match anything obvious. And yet, the more I listened, the more I was sure it was intentional. I began staying up later, waiting for the knocks. The rest of my life—work, friends—started to blur at the edges.

One rainy night in December, there was no pacing. No knocks. The absence was unnerving. Around midnight, I heard something entirely new: a dragging sound that went on for nearly a full minute, followed by the creak of a window opening above me. I climbed onto my chair and pressed my palm to the ceiling, half-expecting to feel vibration. Nothing. The next morning, there was a thin line of water damage along one corner of my ceiling, as though something wet had seeped down overnight. I called Mrs. Tannen, but she said there was “no problem upstairs” and not to worry.

I didn’t see Mr. Green until two weeks later. It was early morning, and I was leaving for work when I heard footsteps in the stairwell. A tall man in a long, dark coat descended slowly, carrying a small wooden box. His face was pale, his eyes fixed on some distant point that wasn’t me. I opened my mouth to say hello, but before I could, he passed by, silent, and stepped out into the snow. The box left a faint, dark drip on the tile floor. When I got home that evening, I looked up at the building and saw that the apartment above me—5B—was dark. It’s been dark every night since.