The Hand on the Shoulder

The first time it happened, I blamed the bourbon. A long shift at the canning factory, the same metal-on-metal clang that followed me home, the cheap bottle I used to quiet it. I soaked in the tub until the water turned tepid, then cold, my head resting on a rolled-up towel. My eyes closed, but I wasn’t asleep—just drifting in that gray space between waking and dreaming.

Then, a whisper. Fast, like a man speaking in tongues, a torrent of syllables I couldn’t parse, all air and sibilance. It seemed to come from right behind my left ear, though the bathroom was empty. Before I could jerk awake, a hand pressed down on my left shoulder—firm, insistent, cold even through the steam. And a woman’s voice, clear and close, said, ‘Elena, wake up.’

My eyes snapped open. The water sloshed. No one was there. The bathroom mirror showed a dripping faucet, my own startled face, and the empty space behind me. I said, ‘I’m awake,’ aloud, just to fill the silence. My shoulder ached where the hand had been, as if a bruise were already forming.

I told myself it was exhaustion, the bourbon, the faulty pipes in that old building. But the whisper had a rhythm, a pattern, like a name repeated over and over. And the voice had not been mine. I lived alone, in a unit above a shuttered drugstore on Meridian Street. The landlord, Mr. Kowalski, had warned me about the building’s quirks—’drafty windows, noisy radiators, the occasional flicker in the hallway lights.’ He hadn’t mentioned the man in the walls.

A week later, it happened again. I was in the kitchen, slicing tomatoes for a sandwich. The radio hummed a commercial. Then, a woman’s voice, dry as fallen leaves, said, ‘Elena, don’t be fooled.’ It came from the radio’s speaker, but the dial was on FM, and no station plays that. I spun, knife in hand, but the kitchen was empty. The radio continued its cheerful jingle as if nothing had occurred.

I started taking notes. The times it happened: usually when I was tired, distracted, or half-asleep. The places: the bathroom, the kitchen, once in the hallway waiting for the elevator. The voice was always a woman’s, close to my ear, calling my name. The whisper was always a man’s, too fast to understand, coming from the opposite side. And always, a pressure on my left shoulder, like a touch that meant to wake me or warn me.

One night, I woke at 3 AM to a sound—not a voice, but a soft scraping, like something being dragged across the floor. I traced it to the closet in the spare room. I’d never used it; the door was painted shut when I moved in. Now, the paint was cracked, and the door hung ajar. Inside, the dark was complete, but I sensed a presence. I forced myself to close it, but as I did, a man’s voice, no longer a whisper but a hoarse shout, said, ‘Run!’ The hand slammed against the wood from the other side, and the door vibrated.

I fled to the bathroom, locking the door. The mirror reflected my terrified face, and behind me, the shower curtain swayed as if caught in a breeze. But the window was closed. The water in the tub—I hadn’t run it—was rippling on its own. The voice of the woman, calm now, said from the drain, ‘He’s been looking for you, Elena. He never left.’

I later learned the history of the building. It had been a family home before the drugstore, and a man had lived there with his wife and daughter. He had become paranoid, believing the walls were filled with spies. He whispered their names over and over, driving his wife mad. One winter, his wife died in the bathroom, her hand on her shoulder as if warding off a blow. The man disappeared, but my neighbors said they’d seen a shadow in the window at night, moving furniture in rooms that didn’t exist.

Now, I keep the lights on. I sleep with the radio playing. But tonight, as I drift off, I feel a faint pressure on my left shoulder, and a woman’s voice, barely a breath, says, ‘Elena, wake up.’ I open my eyes, but I don’t want to. Because when I do, I see a man standing in the corner, his lips moving too fast to follow. And he’s holding a photograph of a woman who looks just like me.