The Floor Above the Fridge

I had lived in that apartment for three years, and in all that time, the only thing that ever woke me at 3 AM was the old refrigerator’s compressor. But on that Tuesday night, after a long shift at the cannery, sleep was a distant shore. I lay on the pull-out couch in the living room, my phone’s glow a small raft in the dark. My roommates—all four of them—had gone to bed hours ago, their footsteps creaking the old wooden stairs like a ship’s timbers.

Our apartment was a converted Victorian, and I’d chosen the living room because it was farthest from the street noise. The sliding glass door looked onto a tiny, weed-choked courtyard, and through it, the dim hallway to the stairs was visible. The lower half of the wall was frosted glass, so anyone coming down the stairs appeared only from the waist down. It was a design quirk I’d always found quaint until that night.

At 2:47 AM, I put my phone down, the Korean gag show still flickering in my head. I closed my eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. The silence was thick, broken only by the occasional groan of the house settling. Then, I heard it: a soft, shuffling step on the stair treads. It wasn’t the heavy, purposeful stride of my roommate, Dave, who always thumped down for a midnight snack. It was slower, more deliberate, like someone testing each step before committing.

I froze, my heart hammering. From my angle, I could see the lower half of the stairs reflected in the glass. A figure descended—first the hem of a long, dark skirt, then thin ankles, then worn brown slippers. It was my landlady, Mrs. Gavril, who lived on the first floor. She was a quiet, gaunt woman in her seventies, with a habit of appearing at odd hours. But why was she here? Her room was on the ground floor, not upstairs.

I pretended to be asleep, my breathing shallow. The figure reached the bottom of the stairs and paused. I could see her feet turn toward the living room. She took a step, then another. The glass door was slightly ajar, and I felt a draft as she passed by, just outside the door. Her slippers made a dry, scuffing sound on the hardwood. I kept my eyes squeezed shut, afraid to see more.

She stopped at the kitchen threshold, which was just beyond the living room. I heard the fridge door open. The light spilt across the floor, a sickly yellow. Then a voice—low, gravelly, but clearly Mrs. Gavril’s—said, ‘He left his key again.’ There was a pause, then a sound I’d never heard before: a wet, tearing noise, like something being ripped apart. Then a low, guttural laugh, not human. My blood turned to ice.

I stayed rigid as a corpse for what felt like an eternity. The fridge door closed. The footsteps retreated, but this time they were different—heavier, as if whatever had been at the stairs was now something else. They passed the living room again, but this time they stopped right outside the glass door. I could see the shadow of legs, but they were too long, the joints angled wrong. The shadow lingered, and I heard a sniffing sound, like it was smelling the air.

Then the shadow moved away, and the stairs creaked again. But this time, the creaks were wrong, too—too many for one set of feet, as if several things were climbing. I waited, counting my heartbeats. When I finally dared to open my eyes, the hallway was empty. The kitchen light was off. The fridge was humming normally.

The next morning, I found Mrs. Gavril sitting in the courtyard, feeding pigeons. She smiled at me, her eyes milky. ‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked. I nodded, not trusting my voice. But as I walked to the kitchen, I noticed the fridge door was slightly ajar, and on the bottom shelf, where I kept a carton of milk, there was a small, perfectly round hole, as if something had been poked through. The milk was gone, but the carton was untouched.

I never told anyone, but I started locking my bedroom door. And every night, just after 3 AM, I hear the shuffle on the stairs. Sometimes, the shadow pauses at the glass door, and I see the long, crooked legs. But I never look up. I’ve learned that what comes down from that floor above the fridge is not my landlady. It’s something that wears her shape, and it’s always hungry.