The Man in the Fourth Floor Window

I never understood why people found my apartment unsettling. It was a modest one-bedroom on the fourth floor of an old brownstone, with peeling paint and a radiator that clanked like a marionette. But to me, it was a sanctuary. The windows faced a quiet courtyard, where a single gnarled oak tree scraped its branches against the glass during storms. I had lived there for three years, and aside from the occasional draft, nothing ever felt out of place.

One evening in late autumn, my cousin Maya and her friend Lin came over. We sat in the living room, wrapped in blankets, swapping eerie tales over cheap wine. The conversation drifted to the supernatural, and Maya, always eager for a scare, recounted a story about a ghost that haunted her college dormitory. Lin listened intently, occasionally interjecting with her own theories. As the night deepened, the wind picked up, and the tree outside began to claw at the window. I glanced at my watch; it was past midnight. We decided to call it a night, and I flicked off the living room lights before retreating to my bedroom.

About twenty minutes later, as we were settling down on the sofa and cushions in the living room, Lin excused herself to use the bathroom. On her way back, she paused at my bedroom door, which I had left ajar. The room was pitch black, but she swore she saw the silhouette of a man lying on my bed, covered up to his chin with the blanket. She froze, assuming it was me, but then remembered I was still in the living room. Puzzled, she hurried back to us and whispered, ‘There’s someone in your bedroom.’ Her face was pale, and she seemed genuinely shaken.

I went to check, expecting to find nothing—perhaps a trick of the light from the streetlamp filtering through the curtains. I pushed the door fully open and flipped the switch. The room was empty, the bed neatly made. ‘You must have seen a shadow,’ I said, laughing it off. But Lin insisted, ‘It wasn’t a shadow. I saw a person, clear as day.’ Maya looked at me with wide eyes, and we exchanged uneasy glances. No one else was in the apartment—my mother was in the kitchen, visible from where we sat, and my brother was at work. We were the only ones there.

We tried to brush it off, attributing it to an overactive imagination, but the atmosphere had shifted. The cozy warmth of the living room now felt oppressive. To lighten the mood, Maya suggested we play a game of cards. We sat on the floor around the coffee table, and I dealt the deck. As we played, I noticed the window behind Maya reflected the hallway, and for a split second, I saw the reflection of a tall figure standing at the end of the corridor. I whirled around, but no one was there. My heart hammered. Maya and Lin saw my reaction and turned. ‘What’s wrong?’ Maya asked. ‘I thought I saw something,’ I admitted, my voice trembling.

We decided to leave the apartment, to get some air and shake off the uneasy feeling. We grabbed our coats and headed for the door. Just as I reached for the handle, the light in the hallway flickered, and the distinctive sound of footsteps echoed from the staircase—slow, deliberate, ascending. We froze, waiting for a neighbor to appear, but the footsteps stopped just outside the door. A moment later, a faint knock came. I peered through the peephole. The hallway was empty. ‘It’s nothing,’ I whispered, but my hand shook as I unlocked the door. We stepped out, and the door swung closed behind us with a final click.

We hurried down the stairs, the dim bulbs casting long, dancing shadows. Halfway down, Lin gasped and pointed upward. On the landing above, a figure stood—a man in an old-fashioned coat, his face obscured by a wide-brimmed hat. He didn’t move; he just watched us. We scrambled down, not daring to look back, and burst onto the street. The cold night air hit us, and we ran toward the corner, only stopping when we were breathless.

We returned to my apartment the next morning, determined to prove it was all in our heads. The door was unlocked, which I knew I had locked. Inside, everything was as we left it—except for one detail: on my bed, neatly arranged, lay a single black feather. I had never seen anything like it. The window was slightly ajar, and a chill breeze stirred the curtains.

Weeks passed, and I tried to forget the incident, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had followed us home. I started seeing glimpses of a man in the corner of my eye—on the subway, in shop windows, even in my own apartment. The last straw was when I found a note on my pillow, written in a spidery script: ‘I know you see me.’ I moved out shortly after, but even now, in a new city, I sometimes catch that same silhouette, standing at the edge of my vision. My new room is ordinary, yet I can’t help but feel a presence—waiting. I never understood why people found my old room strange, but now I do: it was never the room. It was me.