CHAPTER TEN
1095 Words
The rain didn’t stop.
It pressed against the windows in relentless sheets, a constant white noise that only made the silence inside the apartment more deafening. Leah stayed rooted to the spot, her fingers curled slightly as if still holding onto the echo of his presence.
He couldn’t have known.
She repeated it in her mind like a prayer—or maybe a curse—but the words didn’t soothe her. They only sharpened the edges of her unease.
Finally, she moved. Not because she wanted to, but because standing still made her feel exposed, like the walls themselves could lean in and listen. She locked the door, twisting the deadbolt hard, then checked it twice, her breath shaky.
The key was still in the bowl by the door.
She stared at it, a small, ordinary thing, but her mind twisted around the thought: What if he has another?
It was irrational. Or it should have been. Henry was…
She stopped there.
She didn’t have a word that fit.
She crossed the room to the small desk by the window, opening her laptop with hands that still trembled slightly. Work. Distraction. That’s what she needed. A spreadsheet, an email, something painfully normal.
But the screen lit up with a notification before she could type a single word.
One new message.
No sender. No subject. Just a small, pulsing icon.
Her first instinct was to close the lid. She didn’t.
She clicked.
It wasn’t an email—it was a single image. Grainy, like it had been taken in low light.
It took her a second to recognize the subject.
Her.
She was walking home from the subway last night. Same coat, same bag, head bent against the wind. The angle told her whoever had taken it was behind her.
Her stomach dropped.
No text, no explanation. Just the photo.
Her fingers hovered over the screen. She wanted to call someone—anyone—but the truth pressed down on her. Who could she call that wouldn’t tell her she was imagining it? That wouldn’t ask the questions she couldn’t answer?
The sound of the rain grew heavier, though she wasn’t sure if it was real or just her pulse in her ears.
Then—three slow, deliberate knocks on the door.
She froze.
No one called her name. No voice followed. Just the soft, rhythmic thud of knuckles against wood, spaced far enough apart to make her skin crawl.
She moved toward the peephole on instinct, her heart in her throat.
The hallway outside was empty.
Leah’s breath misted against the glass of the peephole.
Nothing.
The hallway was washed in the dim yellow glow of the overhead bulbs, shadows stretching long and thin toward the stairwell. There was no one there. No footsteps retreating. No voices. Just the hum of the old building and the rain muffling the outside world.
She stayed there for a long moment, barely breathing, as though her stillness might make her invisible.
Then she stepped back.
The knocks hadn’t been her imagination. She knew that sound. She had felt it in her chest. But if no one was there now, then where—
Her phone vibrated again.
Unknown Number: “You didn’t look fast enough.”
Her fingers went cold.
It wasn’t just the words—it was the image that followed. Another grainy photo. This one was from tonight.
She was standing at the peephole. The picture had been taken from the other side of the door.
Her breath caught. That was impossible—she had been looking out, watching, and she’d seen nothing.
The phone slipped from her hand and landed on the floor with a soft thud.
The air in the apartment felt heavier now, the shadows denser. Every creak of the floorboards, every groan of the old pipes made her flinch.
She backed away from the door, eyes darting to the windows. Fourth floor. Too high to jump. Too far to run without going past the hallway first.
Her laptop chimed again.
Another message. No sender.
This time, it was text. Just four words:
“He’s not who you think.”
Leah stared at the screen. She didn’t have to ask who “he” was. Her mind filled in the rest on its own. Henry.
Her thoughts spiraled. She remembered the way he’d watched her that first night, his gaze steady, unblinking—too steady. How his words had always felt weighted, like he was speaking and withholding in the same breath.
She thought of the strange way he knew things about her she hadn’t told him. The offhand comments that landed too precisely to be coincidence.
The key in the bowl by the door.
Her pulse spiked.
She grabbed her phone from the floor, scrolling frantically through her contacts before stopping on one name. Not a friend—an old co-worker. Someone removed enough from her life to feel safe. She started typing a message asking if she could crash there tonight.
Before she could hit send, her apartment went dark.
The sound of the rain vanished.
No—she realized, heart hammering—the rain was still there. She could hear it. But the sudden absence of the refrigerator’s low hum, the heater’s faint hiss, left the silence thick.
The power was out.
She stayed perfectly still, her phone screen casting a faint glow across her fingers.
A faint sound came from the hall.
Footsteps.
Slow. Unhurried. Drawing closer.
Her mind screamed at her to call someone, to run, but her legs wouldn’t move.
The footsteps stopped outside her door.
A pause.
Then—quietly, almost conversationally—a man’s voice:
“Leah.”
She knew that voice.
Every syllable was a shadow down her spine.
Henry.
But something in the tone was different. Colder. The kind of cold that didn’t belong to weather, but to the space between truths.
The phone slipped again, hitting the carpet this time with no sound.
“I think,” his voice continued, soft, deliberate, “we should talk about what you’ve been told.”
Her throat tightened. She wanted to ask what he meant, to say I don’t know what you’re talking about, but she couldn’t.
Because deep down, she knew exactly what he meant.
The silence stretched. The smell of rain drifted in through the doorframe, mixed with something faintly metallic.
Then, without another word, the footsteps moved away.
But Leah didn’t move until long after they’d faded into the building’s bones....because she had the terrible, gut-deep feeling that he wasn’t gone. Not really.
- Writer
