The Hollow Stairwell

It was the autumn of my junior year, and the leaves had turned brittle and brown, crunching underfoot like dry bones. I was dating a guy named Marcus, who I’d met through my cousin Lena. We were a terrible match, but at seventeen, I mistook his possessiveness for devotion. My best friend, Jules, had just started hanging out with me more, filling the spaces where Marcus’s attention left me hollow. The three of us, plus Lena, would often end up at her family’s old row house on Mulberry Street, a narrow three-story building that had been in their family for decades. The house was drafty, with radiators that clanked and moaned, and the stairwell that connected the floors was a dark, cramped shaft of wood and plaster.

I remember the night clearly because of the frost that had started to crust on the windows, and because Jules had worn a bright yellow scarf, the kind you’d see on a ski slope. We were in Lena’s basement, which her dad had converted into a den with a worn-out couch and a CRT television. The floor was concrete, and the walls were lined with old shelves holding dusty board games. We were playing a game of Monopoly that had gone on too long, and Marcus was cheating, moving his token when he thought we weren’t looking. Jules caught him, and he laughed it off, but there was a strain in the air. Lena suggested we take a break and get some air, so we decided to go up to the second floor, where her bedroom was, to look out the window at the street.

I was the last to leave the den, and as I started up the stairs, I noticed something odd. The stairwell felt colder than it should, despite the heat that was blasting from the radiator at the top of the landing. The steps were worn in the center, and the wooden railing was loose, wobbling when I gripped it. Halfway up, there was a small window that overlooked the alley between the houses. The glass was frosted, and I could see the vague shape of a fire escape and a dumpster below. But as I paused, I saw something else—a silhouette of a person standing on the other side of the window, just outside on the fire escape. The figure was tall, gaunt, and motionless. I blinked, and it was gone.

I shook it off, thinking it was a trick of the light or my imagination, and hurried up to join the others. Lena’s bedroom was cozy, with posters of bands I didn’t recognize and a pile of laundry on a chair. We spent a few minutes looking out at the street, watching the occasional car pass, its headlights sweeping across the frosty lawns. Marcus kept trying to put his arm around me, and I kept shrugging it off. Jules was leaning against the window frame, her yellow scarf glowing in the dim light. I glanced out the window myself, and that’s when I saw the figure again. It was standing at the end of the street, under the flickering streetlamp, looking up at our window. It was too far to see details, but I felt a chill run down my spine. ‘Do you see that?’ I whispered, pointing. The others looked, but by then, the figure had stepped into the shadows.

Lena said it was probably just our neighbor Mr. Kowalski, who was known for walking his dog at night. But Mr. Kowalski was a stocky man, and this figure was thin and long-limbed. The mood in the room shifted. Marcus suggested we go back downstairs, saying he was cold, but I didn’t want to. There was something about that window that drew me, and I had the sudden urge to go down to the first floor, near the front door, to see if I could catch the figure again. Jules and Lena agreed, and we headed down the hall, leaving Marcus behind with an annoyed look.

We descended the main staircase, which was wider and more open, but as we reached the landing between the second and first floors, I heard a noise. It was a soft thump, like a door closing somewhere below. Then I heard footsteps, slow and deliberate, coming up the stairs. Jules froze. ‘Did you hear that?’ she said, her voice tight. Lena’s face went pale. We all stood there, listening. The footsteps stopped, and then there was a creak, like someone leaning on the stair. I looked down the stairwell, expecting to see the landlord or Marcus playing a prank, but the stairs were empty, lit by a yellow bulb that cast long shadows.

Then the door at the bottom of the stairs creaked open, and a gust of cold air swept up, carrying with it the smell of damp earth and rotting leaves. I could see the front door, and beyond the doorstep, the porch light was off. But there was a shape on the porch, a dark figure that seemed to fill the doorframe. It stood there, unmoving, and I felt a primal fear grip my heart. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. Jules grabbed my arm, and we retreated back up the stairs, stumbling into Lena’s room and slamming the door. We locked it, and I fell back against the wall, breathing hard.

Marcus was still in the room, and he asked what was wrong. I described what I’d seen, but he laughed it off, saying it was probably a vagrant. But I saw his hand tremble as he dialed his phone, pretending to call the police. We waited in that room for what felt like hours, listening for any sound, but the house was silent except for the ticking of the radiator. Eventually, we all fell into an uneasy sleep, huddled on the bed and floor.

I woke up the next morning to sunlight filtering through the curtains, and the memory of the night seemed like a dream. But when I looked out the window, I saw something that made my blood run cold. On the front lawn, just below the porch, there was a patch of frost in the shape of a person, lying as if it had fallen from the sky. The frost was undisturbed, but in the center, there was a small indentation, like a hand had pressed into the grass. I pointed it out to the others, but by the time we went outside, the frost had melted, leaving only a dark mark on the ground.

I never learned what that figure was, but for the rest of my year in that house, I avoided the stairwell. I would take the long way through the dining room, even if it meant walking through the kitchen where the old pipes made strange noises. And every night after that, as I lay in my bed, I could swear I heard the sound of the front door creaking open and closed, and the soft, deliberate footsteps on the stairs, coming up to the second floor, then stopping right outside my door. I would lie there, frozen, waiting for the handle to turn, but it never did. Soon after, I ended things with Marcus, and my visits to Mulberry Street ceased. But to this day, whenever I see a stairwell, especially one that is dark and narrow, I feel a cold knot in my stomach, and I remember the hollow sound of those footsteps, and the face I almost saw in the window—a face that had no eyes, just empty, black sockets that seemed to stare into the depths of my soul.