Don’t Make a Sound

That light lasted less than a second.

I snapped my head around. The end of the hallway was pitch-black again, like my eyes had just been fooled by the stairwell light. Except the lights on this floor were a cold, white fluorescent. There was no way that warm, yellow glow could’ve leaked through a door crack.

I backed into 5A, locked up, and wedged the folder I’d brought home from last night’s late hours at the firm behind the door. It was stupid and it wouldn’t stop anything, but it would tell me if someone had pushed the door open.

At 2:17 a.m., a broken, stop-start clack of heels woke me.

Not downstairs. Not next door. Right outside my door, in the hallway. Tap. Two seconds. Tap, tap. Like someone was trying to walk quietly and couldn’t keep the rhythm.

I grabbed my phone, hit record, and went to the door. The sound was coming from the far end, getting softer, until it seemed to settle around the stretch by 5B.

I cracked my door open.

The hallway was black.

This old building’s corridor lights were sound-activated. Most days, a cough would trigger them. I clapped three times. Nothing. The dark pressed against the walls like something solid. Only at the far end was a hair-thin line of light, lying low along the floor.

I opened the camera and aimed it down the corridor. On the screen, it was all grain and that one thin line, so far away it looked like a smudge on the lens. The footsteps were gone. It was so quiet my own breathing felt like it was bothering someone.

“Hello?” I asked, keeping my voice down.

No answer.

I should’ve shut the door, called the police, or at least waited for daylight. But I stared at that line of light on my screen and pictured the property office’s favorite expression—You’re imagining things—and something in me pushed forward out of pure spite. If I went back now, everyone would tell me tomorrow it was the building, insomnia, my mind.

Barefoot on the carpet, I moved as silently as I could. The farther I went, the more stale the air felt, like trapped heat that hadn’t cleared past the fire door. My phone’s flashlight couldn’t reach the end. All I could make out was the outline of 5B’s frame, and that sliver of light so thin it was almost a hallucination.

Up close, the first thing I saw was the patch of dust wiped clean beside the doorknob, clearer now than it had been at night. Like someone had just touched it.

Then I heard something shift inside.

Not pipes. Not wind. Something soft dragging across the floor, then stopping. Less than two feet from me, with only the door in between.

My throat tightened, but I still lifted my hand and touched the panel. The wood was cool—not freezing. Like there really was some kind of heat source on the other side.

“If you need help—”

I didn’t finish.

A woman’s voice came from behind the door.

Close. Close enough to sound like she had her mouth against the wood.

“Don’t make a sound.”

I went rigid.

It wasn’t an echo down the corridor. It wasn’t bleed-through from next door. And it wasn’t a sentence my brain invented. The voice was crushed down low, raw and urgent, like she barely dared open her mouth.

I backed up half a step without thinking, nearly dropping my phone. Inside, there was a small thump—like a hand hitting the door—then complete silence.

I stared at the light under the door, my heart hammering hard enough to hurt. A few seconds later, the hallway lights flicked on— not from the motion sensor, but like the entire floor’s power had just been reconnected. One cold-white tube after another shuddered to life. The warm glow under 5B vanished. 5B turned back into what it was supposed to be: an empty door that had been sealed for years.

I almost ran back to 5A.

After sunrise, I replayed the video and audio I’d recorded three times. The video was still just darkness and a blurred point of light at the end. The audio had the footsteps, then my unfinished sentence, and finally a woman’s low whisper, right up against the door: “Don’t make a sound.”

At nine on the dot, I went downstairs and demanded the property office pull the security footage. Sam wasn’t in yet. The manager, Linda, was in the office with a coffee. After I told her what happened, she didn’t ask to hear the recording first.

She looked at me.

“You’re saying someone was in the sealed 5B last night?”

“Not ‘it sounded like,’” I said, setting my phone on her desk. “I recorded a voice.”

Linda opened the file. Her face barely moved. When it finished, she said, “There’s no footage from the camera at the end of the hall last night.”

“What do you mean, no footage?”

“The system log shows black screen from 1:50 a.m. to 3:08.” She turned the monitor toward me. “Right in the window you’re talking about.”

She paused, then added in a lighter voice, “Maya, the circuit over by 5B has been dead for a long time. You need to calm down first.”