The Seventh Floor

I was nine when we moved into the Meridian, a crumbling pre-war building on the edge of the industrial district. The walls were thick, the radiators clanked like bones, and the hallway always smelled of stale cigarettes and boiled cabbage. My parents thought it was temporary, a stepping stone, but I knew the moment we stepped into apartment 7B that something was wrong.

The previous tenant, a night watchman at the old grain silo, had died there. They said he hung himself from the bathroom pipe, but no one would tell me the details. My room was off the kitchen, a narrow space with a single window that looked out onto a fire escape. The first night, I woke to a sharp pull on my hair, so real that I gasped. I opened my eyes and saw a man standing over me, wearing a dark canvas coat and a cap with a wide brim. His face was lost in shadow, but his hands were pale and long. He didn’t move. I pulled the blanket over my head and squeezed my eyes shut, and somehow, I fell back asleep. In the morning, I told myself it was a dream. But my hair was still tangled in a knot, as if someone had grabbed it.

Weeks passed. The incident faded, or I tried to forget it. Then one Sunday, we were in the living room, watching a movie on the old CRT. My father had just locked the front door with its two deadbolts. The TV was loud, but I heard a click, clear as a dropped coin. The door swung open slowly, letting in a draft of cold air, then slammed shut with a bang that shook the picture frames. We all stared. The locks were still engaged, the chain still hanging. My mother laughed nervously and said it was the wind. But there was no wind that night, and the door was heavy, warped by humidity.

A few months later, my mother’s friend, Ruth, came to stay with us for a week while her own apartment was fumigated. She took the fold-out sofa in the living room. The first night, I heard her pacing, then the creak of the floorboards as she went to the bathroom. In the morning, she was pale, dark circles under her eyes. She said she’d heard footsteps in the hallway all night, pacing back and forth, stopping outside her door. But the hallway was empty whenever she looked. She asked my father if he’d been walking around, and he said no, he’d been asleep since midnight.

Then, the strangest thing. One weekday, while I was at school and my parents were at work, Ruth was alone in the apartment. She was in the kitchen, making tea, when she heard a voice call her name. ‘Ruth…’ It came from the bedroom, a man’s voice, deep and muffled. She called out, ‘Is that you, Harold?’ thinking my father had come home. No answer. She went to the bedroom, but the room was empty. The closet door was open, and the mirror reflected the empty bed. She checked the entire apartment, rattled the front door—still locked from the inside. She called my mother at work, and my mother said my father was at a job site across town. Ruth packed her bag and left, and she never came back. She wouldn’t even talk about it on the phone.

For the rest of the time we lived there, I started to notice other things. The radio my mother kept on the kitchen counter would sometimes turn on by itself, static hissing like a voice trying to break through. She’d find it in different positions, the dial turned to a frequency that didn’t exist. One night, I woke up to the smell of burnt coffee and saw the silhouette of a man sitting in the armchair by the window, watching me. I never told anyone. I was afraid they’d think I was crazy.

We moved out at the end of the year, when my father got a better job. I never looked back. But sometimes, even now, when I’m brushing my hair and it catches on a tangles, I remember the tug, and I swear I hear footsteps in the hall, stopping just outside my door, waiting for me to open it.