The Staircase Behind the Screen

In the autumn of 2010, I was a sophomore at a university two hours from home. My cousin Liza and I often spent weekends at our aunt Rosa’s place, a sprawling old house on the outskirts of a town that had seen better days. The house had been in our family for generations, and it always smelled of mothballs and old wood. That particular Saturday, we were there for our usual karaoke night. Aunt Rosa had set up snacks in the living room, and the big TV was on, but we were more interested in the songbook and the mic.

The living room had an odd layout: the television was placed against the staircase that led to the second floor. The steps were wooden and creaked in certain spots, and there was a closet under the stairs where Aunt Rosa stored old photo albums and board games. We had grown up playing there, so the creaks were familiar, almost comforting.

As Liza belted out a love song, I got up to grab some chips from the coffee table. That’s when I saw him. A man, maybe in his thirties, with a gaunt face and sunken eyes, darted from the top of the stairs down to the half-open bathroom door next to the staircase. He was wearing a stained, white undershirt and brown trousers, and his movement was so quick it was almost a blur. I froze, the chip bag crinkling in my hand. The bathroom door clicked shut.

‘Liza, did you see that?’ I whispered, but she was lost in the song, swaying with the mic. I waited for the door to open again, but it didn’t. After a minute, I told myself it was just my imagination, maybe a trick of the light from the TV screen reflecting on the old wallpaper. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had seen someone I didn’t recognize in this house.

Later that night, when Liza went to get more soda from the kitchen, I heard a faint knocking from the bathroom. Tap-tap-tap. Then silence. I called out, ‘Hello?’ but there was no reply. I asked Aunt Rosa about it when she came to check on us. She looked puzzled and said, ‘There’s no one else here. Your uncle’s gone for the weekend, and I’m alone with you girls.’ She went to the bathroom and opened the door. It was empty, of course. She laughed it off, saying it was probably just the pipes.

But I couldn’t let it go. I had a creeping feeling that the figure I’d seen was the same shape I sometimes caught in the corner of my eye in that house: a tall, thin man who always vanished when I turned to look. Liza said I was just tired from college, but I knew what I saw.

A week later, I returned alone to pick up something I’d left behind. The house was quiet, the afternoon light filtering through dusty blinds. As I walked into the living room, I saw the bathroom door slightly ajar. I approached it, my heart thumping. Inside, on the mirror, was a message written in soap: ‘I see you.’ The handwriting was jagged, unfamiliar. I ran out of the house and called Liza, but she was busy. I didn’t go back for months.

When I finally told Aunt Rosa about the message, she grew pale. She admitted that the house had secrets: her husband’s grandfather had died in that bathroom decades ago, a recluse who was seen only as a fleeting shadow. She said, ‘Sometimes, the old ones linger.’ She had never told us because she didn’t want to scare us.

Since that day, I never sang karaoke there again. But sometimes, when I’m in a dimly lit room and the TV flickers, I catch a glimpse of a man waiting in a doorway, and I know he’s always been there, just beyond the screen of our normal lives.