Chapter 2: The Landlord's Laugh

Chapter 2: The Landlord's Laugh

Dawn broke gray and cheerless, filtering through the grime on the windowpane like strained soup. Leo hadn't slept. He’d spent the hours after the scraping stopped sitting on his bed, a kitchen knife clutched in his sweaty palm, watching the window as if the old man might reappear at any moment. But the night had remained silent, leaving Leo alone with the ringing in his ears and the frantic, jackhammer rhythm of his own heart.

In the merciless light of day, the entire event seemed preposterous. A floating window washer? An invisible harness? His sleep-deprived brain, he reasoned, must have finally snapped and projected his anxieties into a waking nightmare. The memory of that flash of cold anger in the man’s eyes felt like a splinter of ice in his mind, but he tried to push it away. There had to be a logical explanation.

His desire for one—for any anchor in the sea of his exhaustion—propelled him out of his apartment and down two flights of stairs to the landlord's door. Mr. Henderson’s office was a cramped, smoke-stained closet that smelled of stale cigars and desperation. The landlord himself, a portly man with a comb-over that was more of a flyover, looked up from his racing form with undisguised annoyance.

“Vance. Fifth floor. Rent’s not due for another week,” he grunted.

“It’s not about the rent,” Leo said, his voice hoarse. “I just… I had a question. Did you hire window washers for the building? For a night shift?”

Mr. Henderson stared at him for a long moment, then let out a wheezing, phlegmy laugh that shook his jowls. “Window washers? Kid, look at this place. Do I look like the kind of proprietor who springs for professional window washing?” He gestured vaguely at the grimy window behind him, which was opaque with years of city soot. “I haven’t paid to have a window washed in a decade. Costs too much. Tenants want a clean window, they can dangle out there and do it themselves. Not my problem.”

The blunt dismissal should have terrified Leo. Instead, a wave of profound relief washed over him. It was proof. Hard, undeniable proof that he had imagined the whole thing. It was a hallucination, a stress-induced phantom. He felt foolish, but the relief was so potent it was almost intoxicating.

“Right. Okay. Sorry to bother you,” Leo mumbled, backing out of the office.

“Just have the rent on the first, Vance,” Henderson called after him, his attention already back on his paper.

Leo walked back up the stairs, the landlord's mocking laughter echoing in his ears. He wasn't being haunted; he was just losing his mind. And somehow, that was a more comforting diagnosis. He could deal with that. He could try to sleep more, drink less coffee, maybe see a doctor. He felt a fragile peace settle over him for the first time in twenty-four hours. That night, after a grueling shift where the mundane reality of stocking shelves felt like a comforting balm, he fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

It lasted until 3:17 AM.

Scrape. Drag. Pause.

The sound ripped him from his slumber with the violence of a physical blow. This was no dream. The sound was real, it was at his window, and his brief, fragile peace shattered into a million pieces of pure, cold terror.

He forced himself to the window, his body trembling. The man was there again. He looked worse tonight, if that was possible. His coveralls were darker, as if soaked with rain, and his face seemed even more sunken. He had his hands pressed to the glass in a gesture of desperate pleading.

When he saw Leo, his face crumpled into a mask of theatrical grief.

“Oh, thank God,” the reedy voice crackled through the glass, thick with a manufactured sob. “Son, you have to help me. It’s my little girl. My Clara.”

Leo’s blood ran cold. This was different. This wasn't a casual request for water. This was an assault.

“She’s so sick,” the man wailed, his voice rising in pitch. “The fever won’t break. I need money for her medicine. The pharmacy won’t give me any more on credit. Just a few dollars. Whatever you can spare. Please, for the love of God, she’s all I have.”

Leo stared, frozen. Every fiber of his being screamed at him that this was a lie, a grotesque performance designed to prey on his most basic sense of decency. He remembered the predatory flicker in the man's eyes from the night before. This pathetic, weeping creature was a mask, and a monstrous one at that.

“I… I don’t have any money,” Leo lied, his voice barely a whisper.

“Then food!” the man begged, his knuckles rapping softly on the glass. “Just a piece of bread! I haven't eaten in two days, trying to save every penny for my little girl. Just open the window a crack. Toss something out. Anything. Please.”

The raw, manipulative power of it was suffocating. It was a perfect trap. To refuse felt monstrously cruel, a condemnation of a sick child. But to agree, to slide the latch and open that gap… that felt like suicide. The primal dread from the night before was back, coiling in his stomach like a nest of snakes.

He was being pushed to a limit he didn't know he had. His exhausted mind, frayed and thin, couldn't take the pressure. He was a prisoner in his own home, being psychologically tortured by an impossible thing outside his window. Anger, hot and sharp, finally pierced through his fear.

“No,” Leo said, his voice firming. He backed away from the window, his eyes never leaving the weeping figure. He fumbled for his phone on the nightstand. His hands shook so badly he could barely unlock the screen.

“I’m calling the police,” he said, his voice loud and clear, projecting through the glass. “I’m telling them there’s a man harassing me. They’re on their way.”

The weeping stopped. Instantly.

The old man’s grief-stricken face melted away. The downturned mouth straightened, then curled slowly, unnaturally, into a wide, chilling smile. It was a smile of triumph, of immense satisfaction, utterly devoid of warmth or humanity. The sunken eyes, once pleading, now glinted with an ancient and profound malice. He looked at Leo as if he were a particularly interesting insect pinned to a board.

Then, with a casual, almost jaunty motion, the old man threw himself backward into the night.

He didn't fall. He didn't tumble. He launched himself into the five-story drop of empty air as if he were pushing off the side of a swimming pool. He didn’t scream or flail. He simply vanished into the darkness below.

Forgetting himself, forgetting all his fear, Leo lunged at the window. He slammed his palms against the cool glass, his breath fogging the pane as he stared wildly down into the alley. He expected to see a broken body, a crumpled shape in the refuse.

There was nothing.

The alley was empty. There was no scaffolding, no harness, no ropes. No body. No trace that anyone had ever been there.

The impossible truth slammed into Leo with the force of a physical impact: there was never anything for him to stand on.

He stumbled back from the window, a strangled gasp escaping his lips. He was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth chattering in a room that was suddenly, dreadfully cold. The landlord’s laugh echoed in his memory, a bitter counterpoint to the silent, screaming terror that now filled every corner of his mind. This wasn't a dream. This wasn't his sanity fraying. This was real. And it was standing on nothing at all, right outside his window.