The Night Switch

My partner, Lena, and I moved into the top-floor unit of the Brindle Building about eighteen months ago. It’s a converted warehouse, all exposed brick and high ceilings, with wide plank floors that creak in the heat. We have a spacious main bedroom with an ensuite, and a smaller study that we use as a guest room, its bathroom just across the hall. The building has only three floors, and we’re alone up here except for the unit next door, which has been quiet since we arrived—we’ve never even seen the occupant.

At first, it was little things. I’d get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and notice the small brass sconce above the hall mirror was glowing, casting a sickly yellow light over the dark wood. I’d switch it off, thinking I’d left it on by accident. But it kept happening—every few nights, that light would be on when we woke, even though neither of us remembered turning it on. Lena insisted she never touched it. I started making a point of turning it off right before bed, saying, ‘Alright, I’m killing it now,’ just to have a witness. But in the morning, it would be on again. Not flickering, not dimmed—just on, as if someone had flicked the switch with deliberate intent.

Then the sounds began. Not the usual groans of an old building settling, but a soft, rhythmic tapping from the wall we share with the neighbor. It wasn’t loud, but it was persistent, like someone drumming their fingers in a pattern. It always started around 2 AM, and it would go on for hours, sometimes keeping me awake. When I mentioned it to the building manager, he gave me a strange look and said, ‘Oh, no one’s lived next door for years. Must be pipes.’ But I knew it wasn’t pipes. The tapping followed a rhythm—three taps, pause, two taps, pause, three taps again. I started tapping back, just to see what would happen. And one night, after I tapped, the wall fell silent. Then I heard a muffled laugh from behind the drywall. It was high-pitched and too close, as if whoever was there had pressed their mouth right against the plaster.

I tried to convince myself I was imagining things. Lena was away on a work trip for two weeks, and I was alone. I kept the hall light on all night, not out of superstition, but because the darkness made the tapping worse. One night, I woke to a sound like a door slamming. I got up, heart pounding, and went to investigate. The hall light was off, but I could hear a faint scratching from inside the guest room. I pushed the door open and froze. The desk chair by the window was turned to face the door, and on the seat lay a small, brass key—the kind that fits an old skeleton lock. I’d never seen it before. And the scratching continued, coming from the ceiling, as if something was scrabbling inside the ductwork.

When Lena returned, I showed her the key. She laughed it off, saying it must have fallen out of a pocket or something. But I saw her face when she looked at the guest room door—there was a thin, dark line running from the doorknob to the frame, as if it had been opened and closed many times in the dark. That night, I decided to put the key in the hallway linen closet, just to get rid of it. But when I opened the closet door, I saw something that made my blood run cold: the closet was lined with old, faded wallpaper that I’d never noticed before, and on it, drawn in a child’s crayon, was a crude figure of a person standing in a hallway, with a big black circle for a head. Above it, in wobbly letters, were the words ‘Beware the Night Switch.’

I showed it to Lena, and this time, she didn’t laugh. She studied the drawing, then turned to me, her face pale. ‘That’s not crayon,’ she said. ‘It’s dried blood.’ She pulled out her phone and took pictures, then called the building manager, who came up with a maintenance man. The maintenance man peeled back the wallpaper to reveal bare plaster. There was no drawing. No blood. Just the cold, smooth wall. ‘This closet was added last year,’ he said. ‘Nothing was here before.’

That night, we decided to sleep with the hall light on, and the guest room door firmly shut. But as we lay in bed, I heard the tapping again, and this time, it was coming from inside our bedroom wall, right behind the headboard. I whispered to Lena, ‘Do you hear it?’ She nodded, gripping my arm. The taps were faster now, frantic, and then they stopped. A moment later, the hall light clicked off, plunging the entire apartment into darkness. And from the guest room, we heard a soft, childlike voice say, ‘Where did you put my key?’