The Third-floor Tenant

I’ve lived in this three-story Victorian house on the edge of a town called Ashford Hollow for as long as I can remember. It’s the kind of place where neighbors wave but never linger, and the most exciting thing that happens is the annual pumpkin festival. But our house had a secret, one that only I knew, and it started when I was about seven.

We had a cat, a Maine Coon named Marmalade, who was too lazy to chase a mouse. But on certain nights, he’d stand at the bottom of the stairs, his fur bristling, and yowl. I thought it was just his old age, but then the footsteps started. They came from the third floor, which we never used because the stairs were too steep and the door was always locked. I’d wake up to the sound of heavy steps creaking across the floorboards above my ceiling, back and forth, like someone pacing.

I told my parents, but they dismissed it as the house settling. ‘Old houses make noises,’ my father would say, not looking up from his newspaper. So I learned to live with it. But as I grew older, the footsteps grew bolder. They’d descend the stairs to the second floor, pause outside my door, then retreat back up. Once, I heard a voice, muffled and low, humming a tune I didn’t recognize. I pressed my ear to the floor, and the humming stopped.

When I was sixteen, I decided to investigate. I picked the lock on the third-floor door, expecting cobwebs and dust. Instead, I found a fully furnished room, pristine and untouched, as if someone had just stepped out. An old phonograph sat on a table, its needle resting on a record. I lifted the needle, and a scratchy voice began to sing: ‘Come up, come up, my little one, the moon is full, the night is done.’ I slammed the needle back, my heart pounding. I never told anyone.

Last year, my parents went on a cruise and left me alone for two weeks. The footsteps became a nightly ritual, pacing from one end of the third floor to the other. I tried to ignore them, but one night, they came down the stairs, slow and deliberate, stopping at the bottom. I lay frozen in bed, listening to the floorboards in the hallway sigh under an invisible weight. The door to my room creaked open, and I felt a cold draft. A shape, darker than the shadows, stood in the doorway. It didn’t move, but I heard breathing.

Summoning all my courage, I whispered, ‘Who are you?’

The shape stepped closer, and I saw a face, gaunt and pale, with eyes that reflected the moonlight like glass. It opened its mouth, and the voice from the phonograph said, ‘You’ve let me in, dear. Now you must stay.’

I woke up the next morning in my bed, but the third-floor door was wide open. I went up, and the room was empty, save for a writing desk with a leather-bound journal. I opened it, and the pages were filled with handwriting that matched mine, recounting every night I’d heard the footsteps, ending with today’s date and a single line: ‘I am here now.’

Since then, I’ve felt a presence in the house, always just at the edge of my vision. The footsteps have stopped, but I know it’s waiting, patient, now that it has a name. I’ve never told anyone, because who would believe that the house on Maple Street has a tenant on the third floor, and he wears my face.