The Long Corridor

Seven years ago, when I was in third grade, my family moved into a flat on the seventh floor of an old building in a quiet suburb of Pune. The flat came to us through my mother’s employer, who owned the building and offered it to us so she could be closer to her office. It was a peculiar structure: only one flat per floor, and ours was a two-bedroom apartment with a corridor so long that I learned to ride my bicycle there. I adored that long hallway, with its polished wooden floor that creaked in a certain rhythm, and the way the afternoon sunlight would stretch and shrink the shadows as I pedaled back and forth. My mother called it a passage to nowhere, but to me it was a world of endless possibilities.

On the night it happened, my father was late from work, and I had school the next day. I had already brushed my teeth and changed into my pajamas, and I lay on my bed facing the wall, as was my habit. The light from the corridor, a dim yellowish glow, seeped under my door, casting a thin line of gold across the floor. I could hear the distant hum of the city, the occasional muffled car horn, and the soft ticking of the clock in the living room. I closed my eyes, trying to summon sleep, but my mind wandered to the endless corridor outside my door. It was then that I felt it: a warmth on my cheek, a distinct sensation of someone breathing directly onto my face. The breath was rapid, almost panicked, and I could feel the moisture of it on my skin. I froze, my heart pounding. Slowly, I opened my eyes, expecting to see a face, but there was nothing. The room was empty, the light under the door still steady, the silence unbroken.

I told myself it was just my imagination, the residue of a daydream about the corridor. But the next night, it happened again, at the same time, 11:15 pm. I was again facing the wall, and again I felt the hot, rapid breath on my face. This time, I didn’t open my eyes immediately. I lay still, my muscles tense, trying to listen. There was no sound of breathing, no rustle of clothing, nothing except the faint ticking of the clock. When I finally opened my eyes, the room was as empty as before. I started to dread sleep, and I began to stare at the wall for hours, trying to stay awake, but the exhaustion always won.

Desperate, I told my mother about the phantom breath. She dismissed it as a draft from the window or a figment of a child’s imagination. But I knew better. I decided to test it. One night, I placed a thin layer of flour on the floor beside my bed, a trick I’d seen in a movie. I lay facing the wall, my heart racing, counting down the minutes to 11:15. When the clock struck the hour, I felt the breath again, warm and quick on my cheek. But this time, I kept my eyes open, straining to see the flour. The breath continued, and then, in the faint light, I saw a small indentation in the flour, as if an invisible foot had stepped there, and then another, moving away from the bed toward the door. The indentations were tiny, almost like a child’s footprints, and they led out of the room into the corridor.

I was petrified, but curiosity overwhelmed my fear. I slipped out of bed, following the footprints in the flour, which were now faintly visible on the wooden floor of the corridor. They trailed down the long hallway, past the living room, past the kitchen, to the far end where a large mirror hung on the wall. The footprints stopped right in front of the mirror. I stood there, looking at my own reflection, the dim light casting long shadows. I noticed something odd: my reflection seemed to be smiling, but I was not. And as I watched, the reflection’s smile widened, and it raised its hand and beckoned to me, a slow, deliberate gesture.

I stumbled backward, my heart pounding in my ears. The reflection remained, its smile frozen, but its eyes flickered with a malicious glint. I turned and ran back to my room, slamming the door shut. I didn’t sleep that night, and I never faced the wall again. I told my parents, but they thought I was having nightmares. However, after that night, the breathing stopped. But every time I walked past that mirror, I felt a cold shiver, and I could swear I saw my reflection move a second after I did.

We moved out of that flat a few months later when my mother’s job transferred her to another city. I never spoke of it again. But even now, at night, when I turn to face the wall, I sometimes feel a ghost of a breath on my cheek, and I remember the small footprints leading to the mirror, and the smile that was not my own.