The Porcelain Grip

I moved to a converted warehouse in Rotterdam last autumn, a labyrinth of repurposed industrial space. My room was on the fourth floor, a long corridor with a dozen other doors, and at the end, a communal kitchen with a glass double door that led to a small, rusted balcony. The layout meant that from the stove, you could see the entire hallway reflected in the glass, a distorted mirror of the daily shuffle.

It started with flickers. A shape moving past the glass, a suggestion of a person when I knew the hallway was empty. I’d turn, and there would be nothing but the dusty floorboards and the humming fluorescent lights. I dismissed it as a trick of the light, a lingering shadow from the old industrial lamps outside. I wasn’t one to believe in things unseen. I had lived alone for years, in crumbling city apartments, and my skepticism had hardened into armor.

The noises began in the dead of night. Not the usual creaks of a settling building, but a low, rhythmic scraping. It sounded like something heavy being dragged along the corridor, then pausing outside my door. I’d hold my breath, listening, and the sound would stop. Then, a whisper of air, as if someone had exhaled right against the keyhole. I convinced myself it was the neighbor’s radiator, or the wind whistling through a gap in the window frame. I had to believe that.

One night, I left my door slightly ajar to air out the room. I woke to a sensation of cold, pressing, and a distinct feeling that I was being watched. In the dim light from the window, I saw the door was wide open, and a silhouette, tall and impossibly thin, stood in the doorway. It was featureless, a void against the hall’s dim light. I blinked, and it was gone. I got up, my heart pounding, and checked the hallway—nothing but the hum of the building. I locked the door and didn’t sleep again.

A week ago, I woke to a strange stiffness in my left hand. There, on the back, were three deep, bruise-like marks, arranged in a perfect arc. They were not painful, but the skin felt strangely smooth, like porcelain. I tried to scrub them off, but they remained. They looked like fingerprints, but no human hand had three equally spaced fingers in that pattern. I showed them to my neighbor, a pragmatic nurse, who said it looked like a reaction to something, perhaps an allergic irritation. But I knew.

Last night, I stayed up, determined to catch whatever was tormenting me. I sat in the dark, facing the door. Hours passed. Just as my eyelids began to droop, I saw it. Not in the glass, but in my room. A figure, pale as bone, materialized from the corner. Its face was a smooth, white void, but its hand reached out, long and thin, with only three fingers. It moved toward me, and I was frozen, paralyzed. The hand hovered over my left hand, and I felt a cold, firm pressure. The marks began to burn.

I screamed, and the figure shattered like glass, spraying into a thousand shards that melted into the floorboards. My neighbor banged on the wall, and I sat there, panting, my hand throbbing. When I finally looked down, the marks had deepened, now etched into my skin like grooves in a porcelain doll. I haven’t slept since. But I know now the marks are a claim. Something is marking me, taking a piece of me, and it’s not done. The glass door reflects more than just the hallway now—it reflects the space between where I am and where it wants me to be.