The Unspent Hours

At sixteen, I moved into a place that smelled of other people’s lives, a basement flat in a crumbling Victorian that had been split into warrens of rented rooms. My landlords, a couple named Dana and Felix, lived upstairs with their two cats, and I had the lower floor: a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. It was October, and the radiators clanked like old bones.

The flat had been cheap because of the damp and the strange acoustics, but I was young and desperate for independence. I worked at a diner a mile away, and on this particular Tuesday, I had an early shift. I left at 5:30 AM, before dawn, and the only sound was the hiss of the streetlights and the skitter of leaves. Dana and Felix were still asleep above me, or so I assumed.

I returned at 6:15 PM, exhausted, my feet aching. I walked in, dropped my keys on the hook, and went straight to the bathroom. I flicked on the light, did my business, and noticed nothing unusual: the mirror was clear, the air cool. I changed into sweats, made a plate of spaghetti, and ate on the couch, scrolling through my phone.

At 7:20, I needed to pee again. I pushed open the bathroom door and was hit by a wall of steam. The air was thick and wet, like a sauna. The mirror was fogged, completely white. Droplets ran down the tiles. The shower curtain was still, but the bathroom felt alive, humming with residual heat.

I stepped back, my heart quickening. I checked the shower: it was dry, no puddles on the floor, no damp towel. The vent was clear. I called Dana.

‘Did you come down here today?’ I asked, my voice tight.

‘No,’ she said. ‘We were out all day. Just got back. Why?’

‘Someone used the shower. The bathroom is full of steam.’

There was a pause. ‘That’s impossible. We don’t have keys to your flat,’ she said, but her voice was uncertain.

I hung up and stood in the doorway, watching the steam curl and vanish. By the time I went to brush my teeth an hour later, the mirror was clear again.

I tried to shrug it off, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the steam had a shape, a moment of presence. The next morning, I left a thin film of talcum powder across the bathroom floor before work, a silly trap. When I returned, there were wet footprints in it, leading from the tub to the sink, but they were too small, like a child’s, and they had no toes, just smooth blobs.

I didn’t tell Dana or Felix about the prints. I was afraid they’d think I was crazy. But that night, I heard the water running at 3 AM. I lay in bed, listening to the pipes groan. I got up and crept to the bathroom, pressing my ear to the door. Inside, there was the sound of breathing, slow and heavy, and then a voice, so faint I could barely make it out, saying ‘Not yet.’

I pushed the door open. The room was dark, and the air was cold, but the shower was on, a thin drizzle. No one was there.

I started keeping odd hours, avoiding the bathroom after dark. But the steam would come at random times, always when I was home, always when I least expected it. One evening, I walked in and the mirror was fogged, but this time, there was a message written in the condensation, in a child’s handwriting: ‘Why did you come home?’

I ran upstairs and pounded on Dana and Felix’s door. Felix opened it, looking annoyed. I showed him a photo of the mirror. He paled.

‘That’s the same handwriting,’ he whispered.

‘The same as what?’ I asked.

He exchanged a look with Dana. She nodded. He told me that the previous tenant, a single mother named Iris, had drowned her son, Elian, in that bathtub five years ago. She’d left the water running and the room full of steam, a kind of memorial. They’d never told me because they thought it was just a sad story.

I moved out the next week. But the steam followed me. In my new apartment, I’d come home and the mirror would be fogged. I’d check the temperature, and the air would be warm, but only in the bathroom. And once, I caught a whiff of something, like lavender soap from the old flat.

It never spoke to me again. But every time I step into a hot shower, I feel a pair of invisible eyes on my back, and I hear that whisper: ‘Not yet.’