Chapter 3: The Handprint on the Glass

Chapter 3: The Handprint on the Glass

The police were worse than useless.

Two officers, weary and cynical with the particular brand of exhaustion that only the graveyard shift can bestow, had stood in his living room, their heavy boots scuffing the floor. They shone powerful flashlights out his window, the beams cutting through the darkness to illuminate the same empty alley, the same stained brick wall.

“See, son? Nothing,” the older one, Officer Mills, had said, his voice thick with a patronizing calm Leo found more infuriating than an accusation. “No body, no ropes, no broken scaffolding. Not even a pigeon.”

“He threw himself backward,” Leo insisted, the memory of that triumphant, malevolent smile burned onto the inside of his eyelids. “He just… vanished.”

“You been drinking tonight, sir?” the younger cop asked, his pen hovering over a small notebook. “Taking any medication that might make you… confused?”

The ghost of Mr. Henderson’s wheezing laugh echoed in his ears. A window washer? Kid, look at this place. He was a joke to his landlord, a crank to the police. He was alone. Utterly. After they left with a thinly veiled warning about the penalties for filing false reports, Leo dragged his heavy wooden dresser in front of the window, creating a barricade that was as much for his own sanity as it was for any physical protection.

Sleep became a forgotten country. He called in sick to work, his voice a ragged croak he barely recognized. His apartment, once a shabby refuge, had transformed into a cage. The hours bled into one another in a gray smear of terror and hyper-vigilance. He survived on stale crackers and tap water, too afraid to open his front door for more than a few seconds. Every creak of the old building was the old man’s footstep; every sigh of the wind was the precursor to that awful, rhythmic sound. He was a prisoner on the fifth floor, and the walls were closing in.

After three days of this self-imposed confinement, teetering on the jagged edge of a complete breakdown, a desperate need for control seized him. He couldn’t fight the phantom, but he could fight the filth. He shoved the dresser aside, the screech of its legs on the floor a scream of defiance. He found a bottle of Windex under the sink and a roll of paper towels and attacked the window.

He scrubbed with a frantic energy, erasing the city grime, his own greasy fingerprints, the fog of his panicked breath. He was taking back this small square of his world, making it clean, making it his. When he was done, the glass was clearer than it had been since he’d moved in. He stepped back, chest heaving, a tiny, hollow victory thumping in his chest.

And then he saw it.

The morning sun, weak and watery, slanted through the glass at just the right angle. There, on the outside of the pane he had just meticulously cleaned on the inside, was a handprint. It was faint, a ghostly outline made of fine, gray dust, almost invisible. But it was undeniably there. The long, skeletal shape of fingers and a narrow palm, pressed against the glass from the outside, five stories up. It was exactly where the old man had rested his hand while weaving his lies about a sick daughter.

Leo stared, his blood turning to ice water in his veins. This wasn't a hallucination. A dream couldn't leave a physical trace. He wasn't crazy. The relief of that validation was instantly consumed by a far greater terror. It was real. All of it.

That night, huddled in a blanket on his sofa, as far from the window as he could get, he heard it again.

Scrape. Drag. Pause.

He flinched, his body tensing for the assault. But the sound was wrong. It was muffled, distant. He scrambled to the window, his heart in his throat, and peered around the edge of the dresser. The glass was empty. The night outside was still.

He held his breath, listening. There it was again, a faint, ghostly echo. Scrape. Drag. It wasn't coming from his window. He crept to his front door, pressing his ear against the cold, painted wood.

It was coming from across the hall. From Apartment 5B.

The apartment had been vacant for almost a year, ever since old Mrs. Gable’s son had moved her into a nursing home. It was empty. Dark. Silent. Yet the sound was unmistakably coming from within, as if someone was dragging a squeegee not against the outside of a window, but against the inside of the door. The thing wasn't just outside anymore. It was in the building. It was on his floor.

A new, active kind of fear propelled him. He fumbled with the locks on his door, his fingers clumsy and slick with sweat. He had to see. He pulled the door open a crack and peered into the dim, stale light of the hallway.

The scraping stopped the instant the latch clicked. The hallway was empty, silent save for the ever-present hum of the building's ancient wiring.

As he was about to retreat back into his cage, he heard footsteps on the stairs. He froze, every muscle coiled. The door from the fourth-floor stairwell opened and a young woman stepped into the hall. She had a sharp, stylish haircut and wore glasses that framed intelligent, concerned eyes. She was carrying a canvas tote bag overflowing with books. He recognized her from the mailboxes—Maya Chen, 4G. The graphic designer.

She saw him immediately, a haggard shape peeking from a darkened doorway, and her casual gait faltered. He knew how he must look: unshaven, wild-eyed, a man unravelling at the seams. Her expression shifted from surprise to a cautious, professional sort of concern.

“Hey,” she said softly, stopping a few feet from his door. “Everything okay up here? You look…” She trailed off, too polite to say like you’re losing your mind.

“Fine. Just… a draft,” Leo mumbled, his voice gravelly from disuse. He started to close the door.

“Wait,” she said, taking a hesitant step forward. “This is going to sound really weird, but have you been hearing strange noises? At night?”

Leo’s hand froze on the doorknob. He opened the door wider. “What kind of noises?”

Maya pushed her glasses up her nose, looking slightly embarrassed. “I don’t know. Whispers. Like a really faint, staticky mumbling. It’s been keeping me up. The weird thing is, it sounds like it’s coming from my ceiling.” She pointed a finger upward. “Right from… well, right from under your apartment, actually.”

The pieces clicked into place with an audible, sickening snap in Leo’s mind. The dusty handprint on his window. The scraping sound from the vacant apartment across the hall. And now whispers, emanating from his floor, seeping down into the apartment below.

He looked from Maya’s worried face to the dark, silent door of 5B, and then back again. The horror wasn’t just his anymore. It wasn't a secret locked behind his window. It was bleeding through the floorboards, whispering through the vents, echoing in the empty spaces of the building. His terrifying secret was no longer his own. And in sharing it, even unknowingly, he might have just dragged his neighbor into the dark with him.