The Hollow Thud

I was seventeen, living with my mother in a cramped apartment above a 24-hour laundromat in the bustling heart of Quezon City. Our building was old, a relic from the 1980s, with peeling paint and a rickety elevator that smelled of stale cigarette smoke. The laundromat hummed and thrummed below us day and night, a constant mechanical heartbeat that we had learned to ignore. Our unit was on the fourth floor, at the end of a long, drafty corridor, and our window overlooked a narrow alley crammed with parked motorcycles and overflowing trash bins.

That night, I was sprawled on my bed, trying to finish a history assignment, while my mother read a romance novel in her armchair. It was just past eleven, and the city’s usual cacophony of jeepney horns and distant karaoke was winding down. I remember thinking how quiet it had become, how I could actually hear the hum of the laundromat’s dryers as a low, steady drone. And then, out of nowhere, a sound erupted directly above me: a single, thunderous BANG, so loud that it seemed to shake the very bones of the building. My mother dropped her book, and I nearly fell off the bed.

We both froze, staring at the ceiling. The bang was not followed by the patter of scurrying rats or the thud of a dropped object. It was just… one isolated, explosive impact. My mother, ever the pragmatist, muttered something about ‘construction noise’ and ‘silly cats,’ but I could see the unease in her eyes. She suggested we try to get some sleep, but I lay awake, listening. The usual sounds returned, but they seemed different now, as if the silence after the bang was heavier, more attentive.

An hour passed. I had almost convinced myself it was a seismic tremor or a pipe bursting when I heard it again: three slow, deliberate thuds, each one making my heart skip. It wasn’t random; it was rhythmic, like a heavy weight being dragged across the floor overhead, followed by a pause, then another drag. Our ceiling began to groan, a sound like an old ship straining in a storm. My mother, now visibly shaken, said, ‘That’s not a cat. That’s someone walking. But there’s no one up there. The rooftop is sealed.’

The rooftop was indeed sealed. The building manager had shown us the padlock when we moved in, claiming it was for ‘our safety.’ So what was moving around up there? I suggested it might be someone squatting, but my mother shook her head. ‘The lock is new. I saw it today, still shiny.’ We began to argue about what to do, when a new sound joined the thuds: a faint, high-pitched scraping, like long fingernails dragging across a chalkboard. It came from directly above my bed, and it was moving slowly towards the window.

I remember a cold dread coiling in my stomach. We live on the fourth floor; the only way to the roof is a narrow metal ladder in the corridor, ending at a trapdoor. And that trapdoor was cemented shut, I’d seen the cracks myself. The scraping stopped directly over my head, and then all went silent. I held my breath, and my mother whispered, ‘What do we do?’ Before I could answer, a horrible, wet smell started seeping through the ceiling—a smell of rot and rust, like stale blood and soggy ashes.

Then, a sound I’ll never forget: a low, guttural hum, like a giant tuning fork being struck. It resonated in my chest, making my teeth ache. The light bulb in our room flickered, and I saw, just for a fleeting second, in the dark reflection of our window, a shape pressing against the ceiling from the outside—a dark, amorphous mass that seemed to ooze and pulsate. I blinked, and it was gone.

My mother grabbed my arm. ‘We’re leaving. Now.’ She pulled me towards the door, but we froze when we heard a noise behind us: a soft, wet slapping sound, coming from the corridor. We crept to the peephole and looked out. The corridor was empty, except for a faint trail of dark, viscous liquid that glistened under the flickering fluorescent light, leading from the ladder to our door.

We backed away, and as we did, the ceiling above us let out a long, slow creak, as if something was shifting its weight. Then, in a voice that was not human, but a horrible distortion of everything we knew, it whispered our names: ‘Maria… Juan…’ We lived alone; our neighbors wouldn’t know our names. But the voice knew.

We ran. We burst into the corridor, slipped on that wet trail, and scrambled down the stairs. The smell followed us, that rotting, metallic stench, growing stronger. At the bottom, we slammed into the laundromat door, but it was locked. We pounded, screaming for help, but the machines inside were roaring, drowning us out. We turned, and at the top of the stairs, backlit by the flickering hallway lights, we saw a silhouette. It was tall, impossibly thin, with limbs that seemed to bend backwards. It didn’t move; it just stood there, watching us, and then it slowly began to descend, its steps making the same heavy thumps we’d heard on the roof.

We bolted out the back fire escape, the metal shaking under our feet. We didn’t stop until we reached the main street, gasping for breath, the city lights finally drowning out the darkness. We never went back. We stayed with a friend, and when we returned weeks later to collect our things, the apartment was untouched, but the ceiling in our room had a large, dark stain, shaped vaguely like a handprint. The manager insisted nothing had happened, and the lock on the roof was still intact, still shiny. But as we left, I looked back, and I saw the window of our old room. There was a face there, pressed against the glass, pale and featureless. And it smiled.

To this day, I can’t sleep under any ceiling without checking for leaks of a different kind. And whenever I hear a single, loud bang from above, I hold my breath, praying it won’t be followed by three slow, dragging thuds—and the sound of my name, whispered in a voice that shouldn’t exist.