WHAT WAITS IN THE DARK
1441 Words
The walk back to Emberly’s apartment felt like traversing a tunnel that narrowed with every step. The city around her barely registered: the hiss of buses, the low conversations spilling from bars, the distant wail of a siren. Everything blurred into background noise behind the thundering of her own heartbeat.
She kept glancing over her shoulder.
She couldn’t help it.
Every passing pedestrian looked like a threat.
Every shadow seemed to move.
Every reflected figure in a window made her stomach flip.
But she didn’t turn back.
Couldn’t.
Because Elias lived right across the hall.
Sweet, awkward, gentle Elias who always offered to carry her groceries. Elias who knocked on her door when he heard her nightmares. Elias who once waited with her at 3 AM while the super came to fix her broken lock.
If the stalker went after him, it would be her fault.
And Emberly couldn’t carry that guilt too.
Not again.
Not after everything she already carried.
The air turned colder as she reached her street. The lamppost outside her building flickered, then died, plunging the entrance into shadow. Emberly paused on the sidewalk, breath turning shallow.
Something felt wrong.
Something felt different.
The building seemed darker.
Quieter.
Like it was holding its breath.
soft breeze brushed past her, but the night was still.
That breeze wasn’t the wind.
Emberly’s pulse spiked.
She forced herself forward.
One step.
Another.
The door to the lobby was cracked open.
Her hand trembled as she pushed it wider.
The lobby lights were dimmed.
The elevator numbers weren’t glowing.
Dead power on her floor.
Of course.
Of course he would isolate her.
Her footsteps echoed faintly against the grimy tiled floor as she approached the stairs. The stairwell seemed endless, each level darker than the one before.
She kept her gaze low.
If she looked up, she was afraid she’d see someone watching from the landing above.
Three flights.
She climbed each one with her breath caught somewhere between her ribs.
When she reached her hallway, she froze completely.
Her apartment door was open.
Just a sliver.
Just wide enough.
A cold prickle crawled up her arms.
Either someone broke in—
—or someone never left.
She swallowed, her throat dry and tight.
“Elias?” she whispered, barely louder than a breath. “Elias, are you here?”
Silence answered her.
Then, from inside her apartment—
A soft thud.
Something falling.
Her breath hitched.
“Elias?” she tried again, voice shaking.
No answer.
Her hands trembled violently as she pushed the door open.
Her living room looked normal at first glance. Too normal. Nothing overturned. Nothing stolen. The lamp still glowed faintly in the corner. Her couch cushions untouched.
But the strange tension in the air lingered, like the room was pretending to be calm.
Then she saw it.
A single object on the coffee table.
Something she hadn’t left there.
A cassette tape.
Old.
Black plastic.
A handwritten label in red ink:
“PLAY ME.”
Her stomach twisted painfully.
“No…” she whispered. “I’m not doing this…”
But her feet moved anyway.
She approached the table with the slow, hesitant steps of someone approaching a sleeping predator.
Next to the tape was something else—a small, rusty tape recorder.
She hadn’t owned one.
She had never seen it before.
Her hands shook as she picked up the recorder.
It was warm.
As though someone had just been holding it minutes ago.
Her throat tightened.
She pressed play.
Static spat through the speaker.
Then a voice.
But not the stalker’s voice.
Her mother’s.
“Emberly?”
The voice trembled, cracking.
“If you ever find this… it means he came back.”
Emberly staggered backward, hands clamping over her mouth.
No.
No, this was impossible.
Her mother had never left her a recording.
Her mother barely spoke of what happened the night their house burned down.
The static grew, then her mother’s terrified breath filled the speaker.
“I tried to protect you. I tried to make you forget. You were so small, Emberly. You didn’t understand what he wanted…”
Emberly’s vision blurred.
Her legs weakened.
She collapsed onto the edge of the couch, clutching the recorder, unable to breathe.
Her mother continued, voice shaking.
“He chose you. He always chose you.”
A sob caught in Emberly’s throat.
“He said you were the one he’d been waiting for. That the nightmares were the beginning, not the end.”
A crash sounded from down the hall—her bedroom.
Emberly shot to her feet, heart slamming against her ribs.
Someone else was inside her apartment.
Her mother’s voice kept playing, but Emberly’s attention shot toward the darkened hallway.
“Run,” her mother whispered from the recorder. “If you’re hearing this… run. Because he remembers you. He remembers everything.”
A soft, slow creak echoed from her bedroom doorway.
As though someone were pushing it open.
Her skin went rigid.
She couldn’t move.
She couldn’t breathe.
Footsteps followed—heavy, deliberate.
Coming closer.
Her mother’s voice broke on the recording.
“I’m so sorry, Emberly. I’m so, so sorry. I tried to hide you from him. But he always finds his way back.”
Emberly stumbled backward toward the door, her trembling hands searching for the knob.
The footsteps grew louder.
Closer.
Her mother’s last words cracked with terror:
“Don’t let him speak to you. Don’t answer him. Don’t—”
The tape cut off.
The apartment fell silent.
Emberly’s breath came in small, shaking gasps.
The bedroom door was now fully open.
A tall shadow stretched across the hallway.
Then—
A voice.
Deep.
Cold.
Unfamiliar.
Yet somehow horrifyingly familiar.
“Emberly…”
Her heart stopped.
The shadow stepped forward.
She didn’t see a face.
Just height.
Shape.
A presence that filled the entire hallway like a living nightmare.
Her numb fingers finally closed around the doorknob.
She jerked the door open and sprinted into the hallway.
She didn’t look back.
She couldn’t.
Her shoes slapped the floor as she ran for Elias’s door.
She hammered her fist against it.
“ELIAS! Open the door! Please, please open—”
The hallway behind her creaked.
She turned.
The shadow now stood inside her doorway.
Tall.
Still.
Watching.
Her breath ripped out of her lungs.
“Elias!” she screamed.
Finally, the door flew open.
Elias stood there, eyes wide with confusion and alarm.
“Emberly? What the—”
“Inside!” she screamed, shoving him back. “Lock it—lock it now!”
Elias stumbled but obeyed, slamming the door behind them and twisting the lock.
Emberly slid down the wall, gasping for air.
Elias crouched beside her.
“Talk to me. What’s going on? You’re shaking—”
“He’s here,” she whispered. “The man. The one from my childhood. He’s in my apartment.”
Elias’s face paled.
“Your apartment—? Emberly, I didn’t see anyone—”
She grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t. Don’t say that. You didn’t see him because he doesn’t want you to see him.”
Elias swallowed.
“Who? Who are you talking about?”
Emberly trembled violently, her nails digging into her palms.
“The man who watched me when I was a child,” she whispered. “The man my mother tried to make me forget.”
Elias froze completely.
And Emberly knew he believed her.
Not because he understood.
Or because he’d seen anything himself.
But because of the sheer terror in her voice.
Elias took a shaky breath.
“Okay. Okay. You’re safe here. We’ll call the police—”
“No,” Emberly snapped, shaking her head violently. “No police. He’ll disappear. He always disappears.”
Elias hesitated. “Then what do we do?”
Emberly wiped her tears with shaking hands.
She didn’t know.
She had no answers.
No plan.
No escape.
Only one truth:
He had returned.
And he wanted her to remember everything.
Everything she had buried.
Everything her mother had hidden.
Everything she was terrified to face.
Elias placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Emberly… you’re not alone anymore.”
She met his eyes.
And for the first time in years, someone’s presence felt real. Solid. Human. Safe.
But safety was a lie.
Because through the wall—through the thin space between Elias’s apartment and hers—
A noise sounded.
A slow, deliberate knock.
Coming from her side.
Then a whisper, faint but unmistakable:
“Emberly…”
Elias flinched.
Emberly froze.
The voice was real.
And it had followed her here.
- Writer
