SEVENTEEN

The sound that roused Stephanie from sleep was the door to the neighbouring room opening. This was followed by the sound of feet padding out of the room and into the passage.

Stephanie rolled out of bed and ran to the door of her room.

She was sure the room beside hers was empty. There had been no light beneath the door when she passed the room to go to and from the bathroom earlier. To her knowledge, no one had entered the room since, and not a sound had passed through the shared wall. In fact, all evening following her shower, the entire first floor had remained silent.

Opening her own door a few inches she peered into the unlit corridor. All she could see was the distant stairwell window, nothing more than a dim rectangle of ambient light. But she could still hear the pad of feet, a sound issuing from further down the corridor.

Realizing the light in her room would alert her position to whoever was in the corridor, she opened her door wider, to fully reveal herself and to not appear sneaky. The flood of light from her room showed Stephanie an empty corridor and a lifeless landing at its end. Her entire coating of skin seemed to shrink as each hair follicle made itself known with a prickle of static.

How could this be?

The bathroom door shut.

Stephanie jumped.

Presumably it had been closed by her neighbour who must have just left the corridor to approach the bathroom from the landing. And been out of sight from the doorway of Stephanie’s room?

Possible.

Her neighbour might also have been asleep when Knacker had shown her the room earlier. Or had returned to the room while Stephanie showered or slept. The idea that she was meant to wake now, and had been awoken, had to be supressed.

She went back inside her room and retrieved her phone from the floor beside the bed. The time was twenty to eleven. So she hadn’t even been asleep for thirty minutes and immediately felt cheated by time; she dearly wished that dawn was only minutes away.

Stephanie returned to the door of her room and narrowed the gap, but left it ajar in the doorframe so she could better hear the neighbour come out of the bathroom. She was sure it was a young woman because of the lightness of the step.

She sat on the end of her bed to wait for the bathroom door to reopen; waited long enough to become uncomfortable with her own door remaining ajar for so long. While she waited, Stephanie pondered what the woman could be doing in the bathroom. Shower? Bath? Constipation? She waited another twenty minutes before becoming impatient, and then she marched through the passageway to the bathroom. She would not sleep tonight until she knew who was living in the room next door.

Outside of the bathroom, Stephanie cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me? Miss? I wonder how long you will be. I need to use the bathroom.’

There was no answer.

Stephanie knocked on the door.

No response.

Stephanie turned the plastic door handle. It was unlocked and opened onto an unlit room. Behind her, the landing light clicked out.

She turned in panic. Rushed across the landing in near darkness to flail at the wall with her hands, but could not find the switch that was somewhere beside the open kitchen door. She shuffled back to the outline of the bathroom doorframe, yanked at the light cord and lit up the empty, silent room.

Where are you?

This wasn’t possible. She’d heard her neighbour’s feet and the bathroom door close.

The other bedrooms were further up the corridor towards the front of the house. So had the girl crept back to her room and re-entered it without Stephanie hearing?

Not possible.

Stephanie hurriedly returned to her own room. Closed the door and locked it. She climbed back into bed and stared at the television without noticing what was on the screen.

Within minutes footsteps padded down the corridor, from the direction of the bathroom. Stephanie did not move. She held her breath so as to not make any sound at all.

The door of the room next door opened and closed.