The third night, she couldn’t even pretend to be asleep. She lay with her eyes locked on the ceiling because at 1:52 a.m. the sound had returned. It wasn’t a scrape this time but a distinct shift, like weight moving, the particular give of something heavy settling onto a surface that wasn’t built to hold it.
“Who’s out there?” she whispered, her throat dry. It still sounded like it was coming from just beyond the living room. At one point, she caught a faint smell threading in from that direction—something like sweat gone stale, not quite hers, not quite anything she could place. “Is someone there?” she called out louder, but the apartment remained deathly quiet.
She thought about getting up and pressing her ear to the door near the carpet, but terror froze her. Some deep instinct told her that whatever was making the sound would stop the moment she moved, and she wanted answers. When it didn’t come again, she finally slept, the sound feeling smaller in the morning daylight, manageable enough that she still didn’t call the police.