Chapter 2: The Janitor's Commandments

Chapter 2: The Janitor's Commandments

Sleep offered no escape, only a replay of the tapping—a sound that had imprinted itself onto the inside of Willow’s skull. The following morning, she woke with a stiff neck and a resolution forged in terror and sleep-deprivation: she would find a logical source for the sound, or she would be forced to admit she was losing her mind. Admitting that was not an option.

Her first stop was Mr. Petrov’s office, a cramped, file-stuffed space in the lobby that smelled of mothballs and despair. He was squinting at a ledger, his face illuminated by the green glow of a banker's lamp.

“Mr. Petrov?” Willow began, her voice sounding small and reedy.

He looked up, his eyes holding a familiar, weary impatience. “Problem with the apartment?”

“Sort of. I… I’ve been hearing a noise at night. At my bedroom window.”

“A noise.” He said the word as if it were a foreign delicacy he found distasteful.

“Yes. A tapping sound. Three taps, right at midnight. It’s on the fourth floor, and there’s nothing outside my window. I checked.”

Mr. Petrov leaned back, the vinyl of his chair groaning in protest. He gave her a long, pitying look that made her skin crawl. “Miss Hayes, the Blackwood is over a century old. It creaks. It groans. The pipes sing, the wind howls. You’ll get used to it.”

“This isn’t the wind,” she insisted, her desperation making her voice sharp. “It’s specific. It’s like someone is knocking.”

“On your fourth-floor window.” He didn't even phrase it as a question, but as a confirmation of her delusion. “Perhaps you were dreaming. The stress of moving can do strange things to a person.”

Her history of “stress-induced hallucinations” hung in the air between them, an unspoken accusation. She felt her cheeks flush with heat. He was dismissing her, writing her off as another hysterical young woman. Defeated, she mumbled a thank you and retreated, the manager’s condescending smile following her out the door.

Her next attempt was on her own floor. She’d seen a woman with a small dog leaving 4D that morning. Steeling her nerves, she knocked. After a long moment, the peephole darkened.

“Hello?” Willow said to the sliver of wood. “I’m your new neighbor in 4B, Willow. I just had a weird question for you.”

Silence. Then, a muffled, hostile voice from the other side. “We don’t talk to new tenants. Keep to yourself.”

The peephole lightened and the clack of a deadbolt sliding home echoed in the hall. Willow stood there, stunned. Not just unhelpful—aggressively so. It was as if she’d broken some unspoken rule just by knocking.

Fine. If no one would help her, she’d just have to live with it. Live with the dread that began to build around eleven-thirty each night. Live with the knowledge that something was waiting outside her window.

A few days later, exhausted and on edge, she was heading out to grab groceries. The grand, spiraling staircase dominated the lobby, but Mr. Petrov’s initial warning about the “temperamental” elevator echoed in her mind. She’d been taking the stairs, but four flights were getting old. Today, she decided to risk it.

The elevator was a cage of tarnished brass and dark, carved wood. She pressed the call button and waited. As the machinery began to groan somewhere deep in the building’s guts, a rough hand suddenly clamped down on her arm.

Willow yelped, spinning around to see a man in a stained janitor’s uniform. He was old, his face a roadmap of wrinkles, but his grip was like iron. His eyes, however, were what held her. They were sharp, intelligent, and filled with a profound weariness, as if he’d seen the same stupid mistake made a thousand times.

“Don’t,” he rasped, his voice like gravel. He jerked his head towards the approaching elevator. “Not after dark. Not down.”

Willow stared at him, her heart rabbiting in her chest. “I… I was just going to the lobby.”

“Rule one,” the janitor said, completely ignoring her explanation. He finally released her arm, but stood barring her way. “Don’t take the elevator down after sundown. Take the stairs. Always.”

“Rule one?” Willow stammered, rubbing her arm. “What are you talking about?”

“Rule two,” he continued, his gaze intense. “Never answer your phone in the cage. Not a call, not a text. Don’t even look at it. You hear me?”

This was insane. He was insane. A senile old janitor spouting gibberish. “Okay…” she said, trying to humor him.

“Rule three. Don’t linger on the main stairs. Get where you’re going. It gets hungry.”

“The staircase… gets hungry?”

“And rule four,” he pressed on, his eyes darting around the lobby as if they were being watched. “If you ever find a gift at your door—a little box, a flower, anything—you leave it. You don’t touch it. You don’t acknowledge it. You walk away.”

He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “You live in 4B, right? The girl with the window tapper?”

Willow’s blood went cold. “How did you know that?”

The janitor just gave a grim, humorless shake of his head. “Some things in this building, they just want to be noticed. Best you don’t.”

Before she could ask another question, a loud voice shattered the tense silence. “Hey, gramps! Move it or lose it.”

A young man in a designer tracksuit, headphones around his neck, pushed past them. He exuded an air of arrogant entitlement. He sauntered onto the grand staircase, pulling out his phone and scrolling lazily as he began to descend.

The janitor—Robby, his name tag read—watched him go. He didn’t say a word. He just sighed, a deep, rattling sound of pure resignation. “He’s been warned,” Robby muttered, more to himself than to Willow.

Willow watched the young man stop halfway down the first flight, still engrossed in his phone. He was lingering. Just as Robby had warned against.

Then, it happened.

It started with a sound—a low, deep groan, not of metal or stress, but of living wood stretching. The plush red runner on the stairs began to bunch up, thickening like a constricting muscle. Willow’s mind refused to process what her eyes were seeing. The ornate wooden balusters along the railing twisted, their carved floral patterns elongating into something that looked horribly like grasping, wooden fingers.

The man in the tracksuit finally looked up from his phone, a confused expression on his face. “What the hell?”

The stair beneath his feet buckled upwards, throwing him off balance. The bunched-up runner shot out like a thick, crimson tongue, wrapping around his ankle. He screamed, a high, piercing sound that was abruptly cut off as he was yanked backwards. The wooden balusters snapped towards him, their splintered ends sharp as spears.

There was a sickening series of wet crunches, and then silence.

Willow stood, frozen, a silent scream trapped in her throat. Her mind was a riot of denial. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

As quickly as it had started, it was over. The runner smoothed itself out. The balusters retracted, settling back into their ornate, floral carvings. The wood ceased its groaning. The staircase was just a staircase again, empty and silent, gleaming under the lobby lights. There was no body. No blood. No sign that anything had ever happened.

Willow slowly turned her head to look at Robby. He was already back to leaning on his mop, his expression unchanged.

“He was new,” the janitor said, his voice flat. “They never listen.”

The world tilted on its axis. The tapping. The hostile neighbor. The janitor’s impossible rules. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t stress. It wasn’t her imagination. The Blackwood was not just an old building. It was a predator.

And Robby’s rules weren’t the ravings of a madman. They were commandments, the only thing standing between its tenants and a swift, impossible death.