The Third Tenant

I had been living in my converted attic flat for nearly three years, a single room with sloping ceilings and a narrow kitchenette tucked under the eaves. My life had shrunk to fit its dimensions: work, sleep, repeat. When my girlfriend, Claire, moved out, the space grew vast and unwelcoming. I’d wake in the small hours, certain I’d heard her breathing, or catch a glimpse of movement in the corner of my eye that was never there when I turned. I told myself it was just the loneliness, that I was listening for a ghost of my old life.

After six months, I reconnected with Claire. We’d been drinking, and she agreed to stay over, but before settling in, she popped out to grab a sandwich from the kebab shop across the street. It was a wild, blustery night, and as I lay in bed waiting for her return, the wind rattled the front door of the building like an angry fist. My loft sits at the top of a narrow stairwell, and that door was just below, at the bottom. The noises were incessant: the groan of the hinges, the slap of the loose mail flap, and something else – a faint, rhythmic scratching, like fingernails on wood.

I tried to ignore it, telling myself it was just the branches of the sycamore tree scraping against the side of the house. But the scratching moved, it traveled up the wall, following the staircase, until it was right outside my door. I froze, listening. The wind howled, and in the brief calm between gusts, I heard a voice, thin and reedy, as if filtered through a mouthful of grit: ‘Let me in.’ My blood turned cold. The voice didn’t sound like any of my neighbors. It sounded like it came from inside my own head, yet the words were too distinct.

I mustered the courage to approach the door and looked through the peephole. The stairwell was empty, save for the flickering fluorescent light that had been on the fritz for months. I opened the door a crack, and the wind snatched it from my hands, slamming it against the wall. There was no one there. But as I reached to pull it closed, I noticed something carved into the wooden frame, just at eye level: a crude symbol, like a circle with a line through it, and underneath, the date ‘1961’. I’d never seen it before, and I’d lived here for almost three years. I slammed the door and locked it, my heart pounding.

When Claire returned, I was sitting on the floor, back against the bed, shaking. She thought I was being paranoid, a product of the whiskey and the wind. She slept soundly, but I did not. I lay awake, staring at the door, and I felt the air in the room shift, becoming thick and cold. The sensation of being watched was overwhelming, and I could swear I heard a slow, deliberate breathing from the corner near the wardrobe, a spot that was always in shadow.

The next morning, I tried to rationalize it. I blamed the acoustics, the stress of seeing Claire again, the lingering bitterness of our breakup. But neither of us cared to investigate the mark I’d found. We spent a tense day together, and by evening, I was almost convinced it was all in my head. Then the doorframe incident happened again: as Claire reached for her coat, I saw her hand pass through the spot where the symbol was, and the mark seemed to pulse, as if it were alive. She didn’t notice, but I did.

I began to research the history of the building, and discovered that my flat was once the home of a reclusive artist named Edmund Vale, who had lived here in the late 1950s. He had been found dead in 1961, the year carved on my doorframe, after hanging himself. The records were sparse, but neighbors reported hearing scratching from his flat, and a door that would rattle even on the calmest nights. I also learned that the building was notorious for strange incidents, the most bizarre being that the door to the loft had been discovered open one morning, even though it had been bolted from the inside.

I became obsessed, or perhaps it became obsessed with me. I started to see him – not a full figure, but a silhouette at the edge of my vision, a shadow that didn’t match the furniture. I heard his voice in the wind, a faint ‘Let me in’ that repeated nightly. I started to lose weight, couldn’t sleep, and my work suffered. Claire visited less and less, put off by my agitation. I knew I had to do something. I tried to cover the symbol with paint, but it bled through, like a stain from the other side. I tried to board up the door, but the wood warped, and I found the board splintered one morning, scattered across the landing.

One night, in a last act of desperation, I decided to sleep on my couch, which was directly beneath the wardrobe. I left the light on, a feeble shield. I must have dozed off, because I woke to a sound – a slow, deliberate creak, like a door opening. My eyes snapped open to see the wardrobe door swinging inward on its own. Inside, there was no clothes, no shelves, only a black void that seemed to breathe. And in that void, a voice, not thin this time, but full and resonant: ‘You’ve let me in.’

I didn’t wait to see what came out. I bolted out of the flat, down the stairs, and into the street, not stopping until I reached the all-night cafe at the corner. I called Claire, my hands shaking, and told her to never come back to my place. She thought I’d lost my mind, and in a way, I had. I never returned. I left everything behind, moved to another city, and changed my number. But even now, as I write this, I can hear a faint scratching at my new door, and when I look through the peephole, the landing is empty. And sometimes, when the wind howls, I hear my landlord talking to other tenants, asking about the marks left on their doorframes, and they all tell him the same thing: ‘It was there when I moved in. I always assumed it was just part of the house.’