The Scrapbook of Scars

Leo lived on the fifth floor. His apartment was 502. The building was old and looked too neat, like everything was lined up perfectly.

The weird stuff started with the elevator.

It always made a loud clank when it opened. Lately, it would clank, and then Leo would hear fast footsteps. Someone walking quickly away from his door.

He would look through the peephole. Nothing. The hallway was empty. The elevator was gone.

It happened every night at 3:07 AM. Always the same time.

He tried not to hear it, but his mind always woke up right before 3:07 AM.

One night, the steps happened. Clank-whoosh. Pitter-patter. Leo threw his door open, ready to yell.

The hallway was empty, except for a spot on the carpet near the stairs. It looked like spilled coffee, but dry. He didn't remember seeing it before.

The next night, the stain was closer to his door. It was like someone was leaving a small, dark mark every time they left the elevator.

By the sixth night, the mark was right in front of his apartment door. It wasn't a smudge anymore. It was a clear, dry handprint.

Leo started shaking. He stared at his door, then at the other doors: 501, 502 (his), 503, 504.

Wait.

He backed up. There was a fifth door now.

It was tucked into the wall, totally dark brown, just like the others. He had walked this hallway for years. It was never there.

He put his hand on the wood. It was freezing cold. He leaned in and listened. He expected silence.

Instead, he heard a weak, scratchy gasp sound from inside.

Then, the elevator opened behind him. Clank-whoosh. The footsteps started again. But this time, they came toward him. Slowly. Tap... tap... tap...

He spun around. The hall was empty. The elevator was gone.

He looked back at the new door. It had a fresh handprint on it.

And the voice inside spoke. It was soft, like old paper, but Leo heard it clearly:

"You found my door, Leo. Thanks for showing me where yours is."

Leo backed away from the fifth door. He scrambled to his own apartment, 502, and slammed it shut. He locked the deadbolt, the chain, everything.

He stood against the door, breathing hard. He kept hearing that voice: "You found my door, Leo. Thanks for showing me where yours is."

What did that mean?

He checked his window. It was five stories down to the street. He looked at his phone—no signal. The building was known for bad reception, but usually he had one bar. Now, zero.

He tried to calm down. Maybe he was super tired. Maybe the door had always been there, just hidden by the dark wood. Maybe the handprints were just dirt.

Then he thought about the time: 3:07 AM.

If the footsteps walked away, and the handprint showed up right afterward... someone was coming out of that fifth door, walking down the hall, and touching his own door before going back inside.

But tonight, the footsteps had walked toward him.

He tiptoed to the peephole. He saw the hallway. Nothing. The fifth door looked exactly the same, quiet, dark, and tight against the wall.

He went to the kitchen and got a glass of water. As he drank, he looked at his hand. He noticed a small, faint, red mark on his palm.

It looked exactly like the center of the handprints on the carpet.

Leo dropped the glass. It didn't break. It was a cheap plastic cup.

He realized he hadn't touched the handprint on the carpet. He had only seen it. He had only looked at the fifth door.

But he had touched his own door. He had braced himself against it when he ran in.

He went back to the front door, looking at the wood where his hand had been. Nothing. No mark.

He looked at his own hand again. The red mark was brighter now. It felt hot.

Suddenly, the knob of his apartment door, 502, began to turn. Slowly. Quietly.

Leo froze. He knew he had locked it. He could hear the faint click of the lock spinning.

He took a step back. The door stopped turning. Silence.

Then, from the other side, came a soft, tapping sound. Not loud. Just one finger, tapping gently on the wood, right where his head was.

"I need you to open it, Leo. You found the key." The voice was the same dry, crackling sound, but closer now.

Leo backed further into the room. He didn't move. He couldn't move.

The tapping stopped. There was a pause.

Then, the doorknob spun quickly, and something slammed hard against the wood, making the whole frame rattle. A low, wet sound came from the other side, like someone sighing deeply through a piece of cloth.

"We have all the time in the world now."

The voice stopped. The slamming stopped. Only Leo's fast heartbeat filled the quiet apartment.

He stood there for maybe five minutes, staring at the door. It was just wood again. Normal. But the locks were still in place. So how did the knob turn?

He realized something important. When the voice spoke, it only mentioned his door. It didn't try to go through the wall or crawl under the gap. It just wanted the lock opened.

Leo slowly, quietly, moved to the kitchen drawer. He pulled out the biggest knife he had. Not to fight, but just to hold.

He went to the front window again. Five stories. Too high. He looked down. The streetlights made long, thin shadows.

He looked up at the ceiling. He was on the top floor. No one was above him.

Suddenly, a loud, heavy drag sound came from the ceiling. Like a big piece of furniture being pulled across bare wood.

But he was on the top floor.

Leo dropped the knife. He looked up. The ceiling was white plaster. Nothing wrong. But the drag sound came again, moving from the living room, over his head, and stopping right above the hallway.

He backed up into the bedroom.

The light flickered once, twice, then went totally out. Blackness.

Leo fumbled for his phone. No signal, but the screen glowed. 3:15 AM.

The darkness felt heavy, like a wet blanket. The power wasn't just out; it was gone. The emergency lights in the building didn't even turn on.

Then he heard something new. A soft, scraping sound. It was coming from the hallway, outside his door.

It sounded like fingernails slowly dragging down the wood, from top to bottom.

Scrape... scrape... scrape...

It started at the top of the door, went down to the floor, and then started again at the top. It was very, very slow.

Leo held his breath, listening. He realized the scraping was following the path of the door frame. It was outlining the door.

He knew what was happening. It was mapping out the edges.

Finally, the scraping stopped.

The voice came again, even closer, but now it sounded like it was right next to his ear, not through the wood.

"The frame is not as strong as the locks, Leo."

Leo looked at the door. He couldn't see anything in the darkness except the faint glow of his phone screen.

Then, from the spot right where the peephole was, a tiny, thin line of yellow light appeared. It was moving, carving a clean cut through the wood.

A thin, dark object, sharper than any knife, was slowly sawing the peephole open.

Leo dropped to his knees, shaking. He heard the hiss-hiss-hiss of wood dust falling to the floor on the other side.

After a long, painful minute, the hole was wide enough.

The line of yellow light stopped moving.

A single, huge, pale eye appeared in the hole. It was totally white, with no iris, and it was looking directly at the space where Leo was hiding on the floor.

"Hello," the voice whispered.

Leo didn't scream. He didn't even move. He was still crouched on the floor, the pale, huge eye filling the new hole where the peephole used to be. The eye didn't blink. It just stared, totally white, like a hard-boiled egg.

The voice was closer than ever. "Hello," it said again, soft as dust.

Leo slowly, slowly, moved his hand. He was trying to find the knife he dropped, feeling around the floor in the dark.

The eye followed the movement of his hand perfectly. It knew exactly where he was.

"That won't help, Leo," the voice whispered. "Not now."

Then, a sound came from the ceiling again. The heavy drag sound. It was coming closer, like something huge and flat was being pulled across the floorboards directly above him.

Drag... Drag...

It stopped right over the bedroom.

Suddenly, the plaster ceiling above his bed cracked. Not a little hairline crack, but a huge, spiderweb crack that ran from corner to corner. Plaster dust drifted down.

Leo looked up, terrified. The thing was trying to get in from the roof, too.

He scrambled back to the wall, away from the bed. He had nowhere to go. The door was being watched by the eye, and the ceiling was about to break open.

The voice spoke again, coming from the hole in the door: "You have my key, Leo. I need the music."

Music?

Leo finally understood. The footsteps at 3:07 AM weren't running away. They were running to the fifth door, delivering something. And then, the door was opening and leaving a handprint.

The handprints.

He looked down at his own hand. The red mark was hot. It looked like a stamp.

He had to get out of the apartment. He couldn't wait for the ceiling to fall or the door to be sawed open.

He grabbed the plastic cup from the floor and threw it with all his strength at the door.

SMACK!

The eye didn't flinch. It just watched. But the noise made Leo feel a tiny bit braver.

He ran for the kitchen window. It was small, but he might fit.

As he reached it, the thing in the ceiling made a huge, wet ripping sound.

Leo looked back. A black, slick thing was peeling down from the ceiling. It looked like wet, stretched-out skin, tearing away from the plaster.

He turned back to the window, pushed it open, and started climbing through.

As his legs swung outside, he heard the voice from the door, no longer soft, but a loud, dry shriek:

"No! You can't leave! The music! The music is in your hand, Leo! Bring it back!"

The last thing Leo saw before he pushed off the ledge and started falling was the dark, slick shape dropping from the ceiling, and the giant white eye staring out of the door, both of them pointed right at the red mark on his hand.

He didn't know if he would survive the fall. But staying meant a slow, musical death.

Leo landed hard, but not on concrete. He hit the thick branches of a large, old maple tree that grew too close to the building. The branches slowed him down just enough.

He didn't scream. He didn't even feel the pain at first, only the cold, wet soil hitting his back when he finally tumbled to the ground.

He lay there for a long time, looking up at the black silhouette of the fifth floor. No lights came from his apartment. Everything was quiet.

Finally, a police siren wailed in the distance. Someone must have called about the power going out.

Leo pulled himself up. His leg hurt badly, but he could put weight on it. He limped away from the building, not looking back. He walked toward the sound of the siren, needing the noise, needing the other people.

A week later, Leo was in a hospital bed. Broken ankle, a few cracked ribs. The police and doctors kept asking him questions about the power outage and why he jumped.

He just said, "I panicked in the dark."

He never told them about the fifth door, the footsteps, or the white eye. They would think he was crazy.

A nurse came in with a fresh bandage for his ankle.

"You're lucky to be alive," she said, wrapping the gauze tightly. "But we noticed something strange about your hand."

Leo looked at his palm. The red mark was gone.

"What is it?" he asked, feeling sick.

"Not your hand, dear," the nurse corrected. "Your wedding ring finger."

Leo looked down. He wasn't married. He never wore a ring.

But on his left ring finger, there was a perfect, dark red circle burned into his skin.

"It looks like you were wearing a ring that was too hot," the nurse said, looking puzzled.

Leo didn't answer. He knew what it was. The mark was exactly where the silvery thread—the one the entity called "music"—would go.

He had escaped the apartment, but he hadn't escaped the puzzle. The thing behind the door knew he had taken the key (the red handprint) and now expected him to return with the music (the thread).

He was being branded.

Later that night, the hospital room was quiet. Leo was drifting off when he heard it.

A soft, familiar grinding cough.

The elevator outside his hospital room door was arriving.

He tensed up, looking at the clock on the wall. It was 3:07 AM.

Clank-whoosh. The elevator opened.

Leo heard the muffled sound of footsteps walking away from his door—light, hurried steps, like someone realizing they were in the wrong place.

He closed his eyes, gripping the sheets. He knew what was coming next.

He heard the footsteps stop down the hall. Then, he heard the faint, dry voice, closer now than it was in his apartment. It wasn't whispering to him through a door. It was coming from the air vent above his head.

"You can't finish the song in the dark, Leo. I'll bring you light."

Leo looked at the hallway door. Under the gap, he saw a thin line of yellow light start to grow. It wasn't the hall light. It was coming from something small, moving slowly toward his room.

He knew that light. It was the sharp object, the saw, the key, slowly carving a clean cut through the wood of his hospital room door.

He had run five floors down, but he had just let it follow him up to the second floor.

He was waiting for the eye to appear when a new sound started in the hallway outside: the rhythmic, gentle tapping of a cane, coming closer and closer to his room.

Leo held his breath, hoping it was a nurse.

The tapping stopped right outside his door.

The light under the gap stopped carving.

And the dry, papery voice spoke one last time, very clearly, from right outside his door:

"You never should have left the fifth floor. It was meant to be the final note."