The Woman in Apartment 6B

I moved into Apartment 6B on a gray Thursday afternoon, dragging boxes up three flights of stairs because the elevator had been out for years. The building manager, a man who smelled faintly of wet paper and spoke in coughs more than words, had only three things to say to me:

1. Rent’s due in cash, always the third.

2. Don't mess with the fuse box in the hallway, it’s temperamental.

3. If you hear anything from the unit next to yours—don’t answer.

He said the last one quickly, like he was embarrassed it had come out. I laughed, thinking it was some kind of joke, maybe a dig at a noisy neighbor. He didn’t laugh back. Just cleared his throat into a yellowed handkerchief and walked off down the hallway.

6B was small, sure, but not terrible. The windows were warped, the floorboards bowed like they were holding a breath, and the radiator clanked like a prison pipe every night at 2 a.m., but it was mine. My first solo place. I unpacked that first evening with pizza on the counter and a glass of cheap wine. I even made a toast, to new beginnings.

At around midnight, I heard the first knock.

It wasn’t on my door, but through the wall to the left. Sharp and distinct—three quick raps. I froze, wine glass half-raised. I waited, holding my breath, but nothing followed. No voices. No footsteps.

Just a deep, pressing silence.

I told myself it was the pipes or maybe an old building shifting in its joints. Cities are noisy. You get used to it. But the next night, the knocking came again.

Three knocks. Always at midnight. Always on the left-hand wall—the one shared with 6A.

I tried to ask the neighbors about the woman in that apartment, but no one wanted to talk. Not the old woman who knitted in the lobby, not the wiry guy with the dachshund who always pretended to be on the phone. One young woman, maybe in her twenties like me, gave me a tight smile and said, "She’s been there a long time," and then quickly walked off without explaining what the hell that meant.

Curiosity gnawed at me. I started listening more intently. Sometimes I’d hear footsteps, slow and deliberate, pacing back and forth. Other times it was soft weeping. One time I heard humming—tuneless, mechanical, like someone pretending to be human.

But the worst was the whispering.

It started one night when I couldn’t sleep and sat reading by the radiator. I thought it was coming from the hallway at first, but then I realized—it was right behind the wall.

I pressed my ear against it.

"Please... I’m still here," came the whisper.

I backed away, heart punching at my ribs. The voice had sounded broken. Desperate. Female.

The next day, I asked the building manager directly. I told him I needed to know who was in 6A.

He sighed like I’d asked him to dig his own grave. “No one lives there. Not anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

He rubbed his temples. “She moved in back in the 80s. Lived alone. Kept to herself. One day, she just... disappeared. Locked from the inside. Nothing stolen. No signs of a break-in. Police said maybe she went crazy, ran off. But then—”

“Then what?”

“She kept knocking.”

I should have left then. Should’ve packed up my life and found a place with working plumbing and no ghosts. But you tell yourself it’s just stories. People make up shit all the time, especially in buildings this old.

So I stayed. Even when the knocks became more frequent. Even when I started dreaming of a pale face pressed against the wall, mouth moving but making no sound. I stayed when the whispering turned into pleading.

One night, I snapped.

I yelled through the wall. “What do you want from me?!”

The knocking stopped.

For days, there was nothing. No footsteps. No humming. No whispers.

Then, on the fourth night, I heard a knock—on my front door this time.

Three times. Sharp.

I stood there, trembling. I didn’t look through the peephole. I didn’t ask who it was.

I opened it.

There was no one there. Just an envelope on the floor, yellowed and soft like it had been soaked in water and dried again. My name was written on it. Inside was a single photograph.

A blurry picture of me, standing in the kitchen. Taken from the other side of the wall.

I dropped it. Slammed the door. Barricaded myself in my bedroom and didn’t sleep that night.

Now, the knocks are everywhere. The walls. The floor. Sometimes I hear breathing from inside the closet, under the sink, in the drain.

I don’t think she wants to leave. I think she wants me to stay.

Forever.