it had been loud enough to be a human trying to dig their way out with a spoon, and it wasn’t my fault that, for the first night in a week, Calvin had managed to sleep deeper than the dead the one time I’d have preferred he easily woke, thank you very much.
I pressed my ear against the wall and listened. At first there was nothing but that strange, fishbowl hum that seemed to exist in the bit of space between Neighbor A and Neighbor B in a densely populated urban environment—but then I heard it. A shifting or scratching that was just too fucking big to be a rat. I leaned back and pounded once on the wall.
Silence.
Calvin might have thought I was being ridiculous, but our loft mirrored 4A across the hall. Maybe he’d heard the thing last night. We’d only been tenants for six months, but 4A had lived here for years, as far as I could tell. He’d be acquainted with any potential animal, man, ghost, or curse roaming between the walls.
I hurried to the closet, slipped on my loafers, grabbed the basket of dirty laundry, and went downstairs. I snatched my phone from the table on my way out the door, and once in the hall, knocked on 4A.
The chain lock made a shiiick as it was undone, a deadbolt turned, and 4A poked his head out. “Oh. Locked out again?”
You come home one time without your phone, keys, or shoes, and your neighbor never lets you live it down….
I held the basket against my hip and raised the keys in my other hand. “No, I’m good. I just had a question.”
“I need to get ready for work.”
“It’ll be quick.”
He sighed a bit melodramatically and leaned against the doorjamb.
“Have you heard any strange sounds in our shared wall, up in the loft?”
“Like your headboard two nights ago?”
I felt my face immediately warm. “Er—”
4A raised both hands and smacked the back of one against his other palm, emulating the rhythmic beat of me having my brains fucked out of my skull on Saturday night.
“We pulled the bed away from the wall.”
4A frowned and lowered his hands.
“And I slipped that apology note under your door the next morning. What do you want from me?”
“Goodbye.” He shut the door.
So much for that angle of investigation.
I made my way down to the basement. I found someone else’s wet clothes that’d been left in the wash overnight, rolled my eyes, and tossed the garments onto the long table against the far wall—a nice, passive-aggressive way of saying “fuck you, this is a shared space.” I spent another minute holding my phone toward the ceiling, moving in small circles, searching for a signal strong enough to pay for the load, then hiked back to the apartment.
The building was quiet—no heat clanking through the piping, and most residents seemed to have already left for work. I reached the fourth-floor landing and slowed as I moved down the hall. I put a hand on the wall outside our apartment and pressed my ear against it.
“The cough’s a mere nothing,” I quoted Fortunato. “It will not kill me. I shall not die from a cough.” And when Montresor would have uttered his knowing and chilling, “True—true,” there was a loud scramble on the other side of the drywall. I yelped, jumped backward, and pointed an accusing finger at the wall. “How’d you get down here from the loft?” I protested.
It took a moment for me to remember I was standing in the hallway, shouting at the wall like an actual insane person. I shook myself, retrieved my keys, and went inside. Dillon was standing near the table where I’d been munching cereal, head cocked, staring just to the right.
“You heard it too?” I shut the door. “No one else does.” I tossed the laundry basket to the floor. “What the fuck is it?”
Dillon turned his head to the other side, as if weighing an answer he was unwilling to share.
“A lot of help you are,” I grumbled.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I half expected a psychic text from Calvin to tell me to call the damn super and stop trying to convince myself a person was stuck in the wall, but it was instead a notification from our bank. I brought the screen close and read: Suspicious Activity—did you approve a transaction from account ending x5555 for $902.37? Reply YES or NO.
“Holy shit.” I tapped NO and sent the text. An immediate