Chapter 1- The Crying behind the wall...
The Crying behind the wall.
The building looked like something people forgot on purpose.
Six floors of cracked stone and blackened windows crouched at the end of a narrow street where the rainwater never drained. The brass numbers above the entrance had long since tarnished into a sickly green, and only half the bulbs in the lobby still worked. They flickered weakly, buzzing like trapped insects.
Mira Holloway stood outside with one suitcase in each hand. Is this a mistake?
It certainly smelled like one.
Mold. Dust. Old carpet. Something metallic underneath it all.
“Are you taking it or leaving it?”
The landlord’s voice dragged her from the thought. Mr. Hale stood in the doorway with a ring of keys hooked through one finger, impatience hanging from him like smoke. He was a skinny man with thin lips and beady eyes that never settled in one place.
Mira tightened her grip on the suitcase handles. “I’m taking it.”
“Then come on.”
He turned without waiting for her.
She followed him through the lobby, wheels bumping across cracked tile. The walls had once been painted cream, but years had yellowed them into the colour of old teeth. Portrait hooks lined the corridor, empty now. Whatever had hung there was gone.
Thank fuck, Mira thought.
She hated faces watching her.
.
The elevator had an iron gate and a handwritten sign taped across it.
OUT OF ORDER
“Third floor,” Mr. Hale said, already climbing the stairs.
By the time they reached the landing, Mira’s lungs burned. She blamed the stairs, not the familiar tightness that had lived in her chest for months.
The hallway upstairs was long and dim, lined with doors painted the same dull brown. A single overhead light blinked every few seconds, plunging everything into darkness between flashes and making eerie shadows on the wall.
Mr. Hale stopped at a door marked 8.
“This is you.”
He unlocked it and pushed inside.
The apartment was smaller than the photos online.
A narrow kitchenette. A sofa that looked older than she was. One bedroom. One bathroom.
The wallpaper peeled in the corners, revealing plaster beneath. Rain tapped steadily against the lone window overlooking the alley.
Still, it was clean enough.
And cheap enough.
And far enough from everyone who knew her name.
Mr. Hale held out the keys.
“Rent due on the first. No loud music. No pets. No guests staying more than two nights.”
“Right” Mira thought, as if anyone would visit me here. Not since everything happened. She was forgotten, like one of those old photos you get in the back of your grandparents’ drawers.
Mira took them.
“Anyone next door?”
He glanced toward the wall to the right of the living room. Just for a second.
Then he shrugged. “Keep to yourself and they’ll keep to themselves.”
Before she could ask anything else, he was gone.
The front door shut with a heavy click.
Silence settled over the room.
Mira stood in the middle of it, keys cold in her palm.
Start over.
That was what everyone had said.
Her doctor. Her aunt. The man with the kind eyes she couldn’t quite place. Then again, she was out of it for the first few months after her breakdown.
New place. New routine. New beginning.
As if pain could be left behind like an old forgotten doll.
She set the suitcases down and began unpacking.
Three shirts. Two pairs of jeans. Socks. Toiletries. A stack of library books she’d borrowed and never opened. A framed photograph turned face down before she placed it in the drawer.
She didn’t look at it.
By eight o’clock, the rain had become heavier, but the apartment felt too quiet. By then, every sound made her flinch.
The pipes knocking.
The wind whining at the window.
Footsteps somewhere above.
At eleven-thirty, she gave up pretending she would sleep and made coffee in a chipped mug. She knew she shouldn’t have coffee this time of night, but she was cold.
Steam fogged her glasses.
She stood in the kitchen, staring at the wall that separated her apartment from the next one.
Then she heard it.
Soft at first. So soft she thought it was the kettle settling.
A little hitching sound.
Then another.
A breath dragged in through tears.
Crying.
There it was again, muffled sobs from the other side of the wall.
A child.
She set the mug down too quickly. The hot coffee splashed over her hand, but she barely felt it.
The crying continued.
A Thin and desperate cry.
She crossed the room and pressed her ear to the wallpaper.
There was no mistaking it now.
A little girl, weeping quietly as though she’d learned not to be too loud.
“Hello?” Mira said.
The crying stopped.
It felt like her heart was beating in her throat
She knocked softly. “Hello? Are you okay?”
Nothing.
She knocked harder.
Silence stretched so long she thought she was hearing things and knocking on walls like a crazy person (Even though her doctor said you aren’t allowed to call someone crazy)
Then, faint as breath through a keyhole, came a whisper.
“Please...”
Mira jerked back.
“Please what?” she said, louder now. “Do you need help?”
No answer.
She grabbed her phone and looked at the screen.
No signal bars.
Fuck…Of course.
She marched into the hallway to find the neighbour’s door, but her breath hitched. Her door, Number 8, sat beside a vast, unbroken stretch of bare wall.
No Number 9. No door at all.
The overhead light gave a dying shudder, casting the hall back into that heavy, velvet silence. When the hum of the bulb finally groaned back to life, she wasn’t alone, an old woman stood at the far end of the corridor, as if she had been woven from the shadows themselves.
Mira gasped loudly.
The old woman with her faded blue robe that hung from her shoulders like a discarded sack, empty and shapeless, white hair pinned back severely. She watched Mira, her eyes were like polished glass, reflecting Mira but nothing of the woman behind them. Not blinking once.
“You shouldn’t stand there at night,” she said.
Mira swallowed hard. “I heard someone crying.”
The woman’s gaze shifted to the blank wall beside Mira’s door.
Then back to her.
“You hear a lot of things in an old building like this.”
But Mira whispered. “There’s someone in there. I heard the crying”
The old lady’s quietness was a physical weight, heavier than the damp air of the hallway. She didn’t look at Mira; she looked through her: “But there is no ‘there’, my dear.”
Mira took a step forward. “How long have you lived here?”
“Long enough.”
“What’s your name?”
The woman ignored the question. Her eyes narrowed slightly, tracing Mira’s face.
Something like recognition moved through them.
Then she said, very softly with sad eyes, “You came back.”
Before Mira could speak, the woman turned and shuffled away into the darkness at the end of the hall.
“Everyone calls me Mrs. Clara,” she called back.
The shadows at the far end of the hall didn’t just obscure her; they seemed to reach out and pull her in. A door clicked shut, a final, wooden heartbeat, and the corridor was empty again.
Mira stood alone beside the wall.
Her skin prickled.
She quickly went inside her apartment and locked her door, feeling like she might throw up at any second.
Then crying started again.
This time, it was directly behind her bedroom wall.
And it was louder.
