Chapter 2: The Listener

Chapter 2: The Listener

Sleep did not come again. After the final, spectral exhale faded, Leo remained a statue carved from fear, his eyes locked on the door. He stayed that way until the weak grey light of dawn seeped through the grime on his window, a dirty bandage on a fresh wound. Only then did his muscles unlock, protesting with cramps as he scrambled away from the door, his back hitting the opposite wall.

It was his imagination. It had to be. Stress, a new city, an old building full of drafts. He repeated the mantra all day at his mind-numbing data-entry job, his fingers clicking over the keyboard while his mind replayed the sound of that dragging footstep, the chilling finality of that breath. Logic was his shield, but it felt thin and brittle.

By the time he returned to the Blackwood, the sun was low, painting the sky in angry oranges and reds. A storm was still brewing, the air heavy and electric. The oppressive silence of the building felt different now. It wasn't empty; it was waiting.

He couldn't face another night like the last. His desire for a cheap apartment was rapidly being eclipsed by a more fundamental need: the desire for sanctuary. He stormed down the single flight of stairs to the landlord's office.

Mr. Abernathy was exactly where Leo had left him, hunched over his desk as if he’d never moved. He looked up as Leo burst in, his perpetually worried expression deepening into alarm.

“The noises,” Leo said, his voice tight. “You said there would be noises. You didn’t say someone would come down and stand outside my door.”

Abernathy’s pallor intensified. He swallowed, the motion of his Adam’s apple prominent on his thin neck. “I told you, Mr. Vance. It’s an old building. The sounds… they travel in strange ways.”

“This wasn’t a traveling sound,” Leo shot back, his frustration boiling over. “It was footsteps. Down the stairs, right to my door. And then…” he hesitated, the memory of the exhale making the hairs on his arms stand up. “Something else. Someone was there.”

The landlord’s gaze flickered away, an involuntary retreat. He began shuffling papers, his hands trembling slightly. “He… it… the building… it just wants attention,” Abernathy stammered, his words a tangled mess of pronouns. “The worst thing you can do is give it any. You hear something, you ignore it. You put on music. You think about something else. You must ignore it.”

The landlord’s fear was a confession in itself. It was more than pipes. It was more than a settling foundation. Abernathy knew what was up there. And he had rented the apartment to Leo anyway.

“Who is ‘he’?” Leo pressed, taking a step closer to the desk. “Who is on the third floor?”

“No one is on the third floor!” Abernathy snapped, his voice cracking with a desperate, brittle anger. He slammed a hand on his desk, sending a plume of dust into the air. “It’s off-limits! I told you the rules. Just stay in your apartment and leave it alone. It will leave you alone.”

Leo stared at the terrified man, the fight draining out of him. He wasn’t going to get any answers here. He was alone in this. Abernathy wasn’t a landlord; he was a warden, and Leo was a new prisoner who hadn’t learned the rules of the yard yet.

“Right,” Leo said, his voice cold with a newfound dread. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

He trudged back up to 2B, the landlord’s pathetic, fearful warning echoing in his ears. It will leave you alone. He didn’t believe that for a second.

That night, he prepared for a siege. He ate a cold sandwich, not daring to make a sound. He decided to try Abernathy’s advice, in a way. He would create his own reality, one where the sounds couldn't penetrate. He wedged the back of his only chair under the doorknob, a flimsy barricade that was more for his peace of mind than any real security. He laid out his sleeping bag in the corner furthest from the door, and this time, he was ready with his headphones. Before settling in, he filled the same glass from the night before to the brim with water and set it on the floor beside his head. A small, mundane anchor to the real world.

As the city outside quieted, the performance began.

It started with the dragging again, the slow, rhythmic limp from above. Scrape… drag… Scrape… drag… But tonight, it was accompanied by something new.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

It was a delicate, deliberate sound. A fingernail on a bare floorboard? A key against a pipe? It wasn't random. It followed the dragging, a perverse counter-melody. Leo jammed the headphones over his ears, cranking up a podcast. The voices of the hosts filled his head, a bubble of normalcy.

He lay there, focusing on the conversation, forcing himself to breathe. For a while, it worked. The world shrank to the two people chatting in his ears. But then, through a pause in their speech, he heard it.

Tap-tap.

The sound was fainter, but it was there. He held his breath. The pacing above had stopped. The tapping, however, continued, but its location had changed. It wasn't on the floor anymore. It sounded like it was on the walls now. Faintly, he heard the hosts of his podcast laugh at a joke, and from the wall beside him came a response.

Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

It was mocking him. It was listening to what he was listening to.

A wave of nausea rolled over him. He ripped the headphones off, plunging the room back into silence. The tapping stopped instantly. The entity, whatever it was, knew. It knew he was trying to block it out, and it was playing with him. The silence it left behind was worse than the noise, pregnant with smug, intelligent malice.

Exhaustion finally waged a war against terror and won. Leo’s body, pushed beyond its limits, gave in. He drifted into a heavy, dreamless sleep, the sheer weight of his fear acting as a sedative.

He woke with a gasp. The room was utterly still, bathed in the pre-dawn gloom. The chair was still wedged under the doorknob. No sound came from above, or from the hall. A profound sense of relief washed over him. He had survived another night. Maybe Abernathy was right. If he just rode it out, it would get bored.

He sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and froze.

His headphones were not on the floor where he’d thrown them in his panic. They were sitting on top of the cardboard box he was using as a nightstand, the cord coiled in a neat, perfect circle. It wasn't the work of someone fumbling in the dark; it was precise. Deliberate.

His blood ran cold. He scanned the room, his heart hammering. Everything else was as he had left it. The door was still secured. The window was locked. No one could have gotten in.

His gaze fell upon the glass of water he’d set beside him. He reached for it, his hand trembling, a final, desperate hope that this one small thing would be normal.

His fingers closed around the glass. It was empty.

Not just empty. It was impossibly, unnaturally bone dry. He tilted it, but no forgotten droplet ran down the side. He ran his finger along the inside curve, expecting to feel a slick of condensation, the memory of moisture. There was nothing. It was as if the water had never been there at all, the glass itself warm and dry to the touch, as though it had been sitting in the sun for hours.

Something had been in his room. It had stood over him while he slept. It had coiled his headphone cord with mocking neatness. And it had, somehow, without spilling a drop, without a sound, taken the water. It had been close enough to touch him. Close enough to drink. The violation was absolute. This wasn't a haunting. It was an invasion. And his small, dingy apartment was no longer his fortress; it was its pantry.