The Neighbor Who Didn’t Exist

I live alone on the seventh floor of an old apartment building, where the wooden floors creak and the elevator hums in a familiar rhythm. In the mornings, sunlight filters through the dusty curtains, casting thin streaks across the floor. At night, the hallway lights spill pale, wavering light through the cracks in my door. At first, I felt peaceful.

But then, over the past few weeks, I began to hear footsteps from the empty apartment next door.

At first, I thought it was just normal building noises: wooden floors expanding or contracting with temperature, wind seeping through window cracks, or furniture shifting quietly. I even laughed at myself for being overly sensitive. But one night, around 2 a.m., I woke suddenly with a chilling sensation—something was watching me.

It wasn’t a noise that woke me. It was a feeling. A weight pressing on my chest.

Then, the footsteps came. Slow. Clear. Heavy. Step by step, moving down the hallway toward my door. Between each step was a pause long enough for my heart to catch up. When they stopped outside my door, I realized I was holding my breath, as if any sound I made would alert whatever was there.

I sat on the edge of the bed, listening to every detail. These footsteps were not the usual creaks of wood—they had a deliberate rhythm, like someone walking carefully. I could hear faint breaths slipping through the door crack, and occasionally the soft rustle of paper or fabric, seemingly harmless, yet terrifying in the still darkness.

Memories of my childhood surfaced. Nights spent hiding under blankets, listening to my parents move about, feeling the wind whistle through the window. That feeling then and now overlapped so perfectly that I could no longer distinguish reality from memory.

Minutes passed. The footsteps stopped completely.

I drew a deep breath and switched on my desk lamp. Its warm yellow glow spread slowly across the room, as if hesitant itself. Familiar objects appeared: my chair, the desk, the curtain. Yet the corners of the room—where the light could not reach—remained dense and oppressive, so dark it felt as though, if I stared long enough, they might start moving.

I looked into the shadows and remembered my old apartment in another city. I had slept there with the same unsettling feeling: someone standing very close, silently, just watching. Doing nothing else. Just looking.

The footsteps started again, this time faster. More urgent. Almost matching the rhythm of my own heartbeat. I turned on my recorder. I switched on the camera. The screens showed nothing. Silence. Only the pounding of my chest.

As I moved closer to the shadowed corner, a cold draft brushed my shoulder—light, clear, like an invisible hand gliding past. Every sense told me I was not alone, even though I could see nothing.

A few days later, while tidying my desk, I discovered an old photograph. Its edges were curled, the paper yellowed. In it stood a person in the apartment next door. They wore exactly the same clothes I was wearing that night. But the number in the corner of the photo froze me—ten years ago, when I had lived in a completely different city, in a completely different apartment.

I studied the face in the photo. The eyes were not entirely mine. They were emptier, colder—but they were staring straight at me, through time, as if they had already known I would be standing here, at this very moment.

From that moment on, every sound in my apartment became strange. I could hear each breath—whether mine or someone else’s. Footsteps were counted, deliberate, ritual-like, ticking off the minutes. The yellow light from my desk lamp each evening still spread as usual, but the corners of the room seemed darker, heavier, learning to exist alongside me.

Now, I do not dare open the door to the empty apartment. I do not step into the hallway. But in the quietest moments of the night, when the world shrinks to just my heartbeat and breath, I still hear the footsteps.

Steady. Certain.

And I know the neighbor—or rather, a part of me—has never left.