The Man on the Parapet

I am a forty-year-old Australian who has spent the last decade working as an engineer in São Paulo, Brazil. Last year, I moved into a high-rise apartment with my partner, a Brazilian architect named Clara. Our building, the Torre Aurora, is one of the tallest in the city, and from our living room on the 32nd floor, we have a clear view of the rooftops of several neighboring towers. It’s common to see maintenance workers or residents exercising on those flat, gravel-covered roofs, but something about the figure I saw one afternoon felt wrong from the very start.

It was a Saturday, and I was washing a pile of dishes after a late lunch when a flash of movement caught my eye. On the roof of the building directly across from us, maybe a hundred meters away, stood a man. He was tall, with pale skin that seemed to glow in the harsh sunlight, and he wore a mustard-yellow jacket and dark, form-fitting trousers. What made me freeze was his posture: he stood with his toes hanging over the edge of the parapet, his back perfectly straight, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. He wasn’t stretching or making phone calls; he was just standing there, staring straight ahead at our building. I assumed he was a daredevil, or perhaps someone in a crisis, so I put down the plate and grabbed my phone to alert the doorman. But when I looked back, he was gone.

I shrugged it off, telling myself he’d moved away or stepped down. But over the next two weeks, I saw him again—every day, at different times. In the morning with a coffee, he’d be there, motionless, facing our window. In the evening, when Clara and I watched television, I’d glance out and see his silhouette against the fading sky. He never moved, never blinked, or at least I never saw him blink. I started to feel like the whole apartment was being watched. Clara didn’t see him at first; she said I was imagining things, that the stress of my new job was getting to me. But then one night, she woke up screaming, saying she’d seen a man standing in our bedroom window, not on the roof across, but right there, on our 32nd-floor ledge. I raced to the window, but there was nothing—except, across the way, the man was there, and he seemed to be grinning.

That’s when things began to unravel. Our power started flickering at odd intervals, always when I was looking out at him. The elevators would stop on our floor, the doors opening to reveal an empty, silent hallway, even though we were the only ones on that floor. My computer would glitch, showing a static image of a rooftop, and in the corner, a tiny figure. Clara grew withdrawn, afraid to go near the windows. She started sleeping in the guest room, and I couldn’t blame her. I felt an inexplicable pull to the window, to the rooftop, and I began to understand the man’s stillness as an invitation—a grotesque kind of hospitality. The night I finally saw his face clearly, when the moon was full, I could have sworn it was my own reflection, but with the skin stretched too tight over the skull.

Two months passed, and I became obsessed. I spent hours with binoculars, watching him, waiting for him to move. He never did, not once, but the details around him changed. Sometimes he held a rope, sometimes a camera, and once, he held a small, white object that I realized too late was a child’s shoe. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was feeding on my attention, that each gaze I gave him siphoned a little more of my life away. I tried to capture him on my phone, but every photo came out blurred, with a dark smudge in the middle. I even took the elevator to the roof of our building to see if I could see him from above, but when I got there, the door to the rooftop was chained shut from the inside, and the chain was rusted, as if it hadn’t been opened in decades.

One evening, Clara told me she had to leave. She said she felt a presence in the apartment, a pressure in her ears, and she couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t blame her—I was terrified too, but I couldn’t leave that man. He was a mystery, and I had to understand him. After she moved out, I took to sleeping on the couch, facing the window, my eyes fixed on the building across. The man was always there, and as the days grew shorter, I began to see him closer. One night, he was no longer on the roof but on the fire escape of a building halfway between us. The next, he was on the ledge of a building next door. Then, one night when the power went out completely, I saw him in the darkness of my own living room, his mustard-yellow jacket glowing faintly like a beacon. He was standing right behind me, and I could hear his breath, slow and steady.

I spun around, but there was nothing. The power flickered back on, and I found myself on the floor, my phone in my hand with a video open. The video was timestamped at 3:33 AM, and it showed me, asleep on the couch, while the man stood over me, his face inches from mine. I do not remember filming that. I do not remember ever falling asleep that night. But the worst part was the last frame: the man’s face, my face, but with eyes that were pure white, and a mouth that opened wider than any human mouth should.

Now I sit here, in this empty apartment, and I have not seen the man for three days. I have not seen anyone. The building across is dark, its windows shattered, and the rooftop is bare. But I know he’s not gone. I feel him in the hum of the refrigerator, in the whisper of the air conditioner, in the reflection of the TV screen when I watch the news. Last night, I looked out the window and saw a figure on the roof of our own building, waving at me with a long, thin arm. And it was me. It was me standing there, in a mustard-yellow jacket, waiting for the next observer to come. I am writing this now because I need someone to know. Do not look out your window. Do not watch the rooftops. He will see you. And once he sees you, he will never let you go.