The Unfinished Page

Finals week had turned my apartment into a tomb of highlighters and energy drinks. I was a junior at Ridgemont University, and this particular Friday night, my literary criticism paper was due by noon the next day. My roommate, Maya, had gone home for the weekend, leaving me alone in our third-floor walk-up near campus. The building was old, with creaky radiators and a hallway that smelled like boiled cabbage from Mrs. Kowalski’s unit downstairs.

I set up camp on the living room floor, surrounded by notes, my laptop, and a cold cup of coffee that had long since lost its purpose. To my right, a narrow hallway led to the kitchen and the back door, with two small rooms on either side—one was Maya’s, the other a storage closet we never opened. The bathroom was a tiny alcove off the kitchen, and its door faced the back door directly, creating a straight sightline from where I sat to the exit.

It was past one in the morning when my eyes started to blur. I rubbed them, glanced at the clock on my laptop, and groaned. The paper was only half-written, and the words on the screen seemed to rearrange themselves into meaningless patterns. I leaned back, stretching my neck, and that’s when I saw it—out of the corner of my right eye, something moved in the hallway.

At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, a car’s headlights sweeping through the window. But the movement was slow, deliberate, and it came from the bathroom door. I turned my head fully, and my blood went cold. A figure stood there, half-emerged from the bathroom, floating. It was a woman, or rather, the shape of one, draped in a white dress that hung to the floor, but the hem hovered at least five inches above the linoleum. Her hair was jet black, falling just past her elbows, obscuring her face. But I could feel her gaze on me, even through the shadows.

I wanted to scream, but my throat closed up. My heart pounded so hard I could hear it in my ears. The figure drifted forward, not walking, but gliding, as if on invisible rails. She moved from the bathroom door toward the back door, her path taking her directly across my line of sight. I was frozen, my eyes locked on her, my hands gripping the edge of my notebook so hard my knuckles turned white.

She passed the storage closet, and I noticed something odd. The air around her shimmered, like heat rising from asphalt, and the temperature in the room dropped several degrees. She didn’t make a sound—no footsteps, no rustle of fabric. The only noise was the faint hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen, which suddenly seemed deafening in the silence.

As she reached the back door, she paused. For a terrifying moment, I thought she might turn and look at me. But instead, she raised a hand, her fingers long and pale, and touched the door. The door, which was locked, creaked open all by itself, just a crack. Then, without another glance, she slipped through the gap and vanished into the darkness of the backyard.

The door swung shut with a click. The air warmed again. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, and I realized I was shaking. I tried to convince myself it was exhaustion, a hallucination born of sleep deprivation. I even laughed a little, but it came out hollow.

I couldn’t bring myself to move for a long time. When I finally did, I crawled over to the back door and checked the lock. It was still engaged. I peered out the window, but the backyard was empty, just the overgrown grass and the flickering streetlight beyond. I replayed the scene in my head, trying to find a rational explanation. Maybe a prank from a neighbor? But the figure was too solid, too distinct.

I didn’t sleep that night. I finished my paper at dawn, my fingers trembling over the keyboard. When I submitted it at noon, I felt a wave of relief, but it was short-lived. That evening, as I was making tea, I noticed something on the back door: a small, faded print of a hand, not mine, on the glass. It looked like it had been there for years, etched into the surface, palm facing inward.

I moved out a month later. But sometimes, when I’m in my new place, I catch a glimpse of a white figure in my peripheral vision—in the reflection of a window, in the corner of my eye at night. I never see it clearly, but I always feel the same chill, the same sense of being watched. And I can’t help but wonder if she’s still there, in that apartment, waiting for someone else to stay up too late, to be so tired that they see what they’re not supposed to see.

I stopped reading those stories on that website after that. Some things are better left unfinished.