The Empty Apartment

I was eight when we lived in the Meridian Apartments, a sprawling complex of identical beige buildings that all looked the same from the outside. My sister Lena and I shared a bedroom, and our neighbor, a girl named Marta who was also eight, often came over to play. Our apartment was on the third floor, a cramped two-bedroom with a tiny kitchen and a living room that doubled as a dining area.

One rainy Saturday, our father, the only adult home, was reading a newspaper at the kitchen table while Lena, Marta, and I played a board game on the living room rug. The game was ‘Chutes and Ladders,’ and we were arguing about whose turn it was when Dad stood up, folded his paper, and said, ‘I need to run out and get some milk. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. You three stay put.’ We barely acknowledged him, our eyes glued to the dice.

He left, and the apartment fell into the usual quiet, punctuated by the patter of rain on the window and the occasional clatter of dice. Ten minutes passed, maybe fifteen. I was about to send my yellow pawn down a chute when we all heard heavy footsteps from directly above us. Our upstairs neighbors, the Kowalskis, were an elderly couple who never made noise, but the footsteps were unmistakable, pacing across the ceiling. Then came the sound of water running, a faint rush from the pipes, as if someone had turned on the kitchen tap.

Lena looked up, frowning. ‘Dad’s back?’ she said. Marta shrugged. I hadn’t heard his car pull into the parking lot, but the complex had a back entrance. ‘I’ll go check,’ I said, rising. I went to the front door and looked through the peephole, but the hallway was empty. I unlocked the door and stepped out, expecting to see Dad coming up the stairs, but no one was there. The corridor was silent, lit by a flickering fluorescent light at the far end.

I walked to the end of the hall, past our door, and peered down the stairwell. Nothing. I turned to go back, but as I reached our door, I felt a strange sensation, a prickling on the back of my neck. I spun around, but the hallway was still empty. Yet the feeling of being watched was so intense that I could swear I heard a faint exhale right behind my ear. I shoved the door open and slammed it shut, my heart hammering.

‘What is it?’ Lena asked. Marta’s eyes were wide. ‘There’s nobody up there,’ I said, my voice shaky. ‘The water’s not running, the faucet is off.’ They both stared at me. ‘But we heard it,’ Marta said. So we sat back down, but we didn’t touch the game. We just listened. The apartment was dead quiet, except for the rain. Then we heard it again: footsteps, slow and deliberate, directly above our heads, followed by the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor.

We huddled together, our board game forgotten. I kept glancing at the ceiling, expecting to see a crack or a shadow, but there was nothing. The footsteps stopped. Then, a floorboard creaked in the hallway just outside our door. We froze. The doorknob jiggled, once, as if someone had tried to turn it and found it locked. Then silence.

We stayed in the living room, not daring to move, for what felt like an eternity. Finally, we heard the familiar rumble of Dad’s car in the parking lot below, and moments later, his key in the lock. He came in, looking bedraggled from the rain, holding a carton of milk. ‘You kids are quiet,’ he said, setting the milk on the counter. ‘We heard noises upstairs,’ I said. He frowned. ‘The Kowalskis are out of town, I saw them leave this morning. Their apartment is empty.’

He checked the upstairs apartment, which was indeed locked and dark. We never heard the footsteps again, but from that day on, whenever I was alone in the apartment, even just for a few minutes, I would catch myself listening, waiting for the sound of water running or the creak of a floorboard. And sometimes, I would swear I could feel eyes on me, watching from the corner of the room where there was nothing at all.