Narrator: Vivian C. | New York, USA
I lived on the fourth floor of a small apartment building. One evening I opened my front door and found a staircase going up where the corridor should have been.
It was narrow, white-painted, with black rubber treads. A bare bulb hung above the first turn. I could hear someone vacuuming farther up.
I shut the door. Waited. Opened it again. Same stairs.
My apartment was normal behind me. Dishes in the sink, television paused, my cat waiting to be fed. I called the super. No answer. I called my neighbor across the hall.
She said she was standing outside my door. She could see my doormat, but the door was closed. I was holding it open with my foot. I could hear her phone voice and, very faintly, her actual voice through the wall to my right.
Then the vacuum switched off.
Somebody at the top of the stairs said, “Leave it open.”
I slammed the door and turned both locks. My neighbor began hammering on the other side. She’d heard it shut.
When I opened it, she was there in the corridor, still holding her phone. We went into her flat. She made tea and asked careful questions about whether I’d eaten, whether I’d slept. I answered them because I would have asked the same things.
My cat would not approach the door for several days. I was relieved to have company in that, even company I couldn’t explain it to.
