Chapter 2: The Midnight Knock
The front door creaked open as I pushed it inward, and the overhead lights blazed to life—flooding the space with a harsh glow that highlighted just how lavish the place was.
A hundred-odd square feet of polished hardwood floors, granite countertops, and floor-to-ceiling windows. Even I, a guy who'd seen his fair share of nice homes, felt a twinge of envy. The layout was perfect—open, airy, quiet as a tomb day and night, not a peep of street noise to be heard. The only flaw? The terrible natural light. That's why the units in this building were priced lower than the rest of the complex. A steal, if you didn't mind living in perpetual twilight.
I slipped on a pair of disposable slippers and got to work setting up the cameras—one in every room, corners where the lens could catch every inch of the space. I fired up my laptop, and the feeds popped up one by one, crisp and clear. With that done, there was nothing left to do but wait.
Bored out of my mind, I pulled up a browser and typed in a dumb search query: Why do I feel like someone's watching me at home?
Turns out, the internet had a lot to say about that.
Forum posts rambled about how that "being watched" feeling wasn't just paranoia—it was proof of something from another dimension, something that could see you even if you couldn't see it. People with strong sixth senses, they claimed, were the ones who picked up on it. And that something? A ghost. A vengeful one, usually, who'd met a violent end in the very house where you were staying.
Oh, and the cherry on top? After midnight—子时, the posts called it—you were never supposed to open the door. Not for anyone. Not for anything. If you did, bad things would happen. Real bad.
I snorted and closed the tab. Back when I was a kid, I'd have eaten that crap up, then run to Jake to spin it into some over-the-top horror story. But I was an adult now. A realtor, for Christ's sake. I dealt in facts, not fairy tales.
I killed a few hours playing mobile games, then called it a night around eleven. I'd never been a picky sleeper—could conk out on a park bench if I had to. Within minutes, I was dead to the world.
How long I slept, I didn't know. But then the knocking started.
For someone who slept like the dead, I hated being woken up. Once, when I was a teen, my dad had worked the night shift and forgotten his keys. He'd banged on our front door for hours while I snoozed away. The next morning, he'd chased me around the house with a belt before dragging me to school.
But this knocking? It was relentless. Loud. Insistent, like whoever was on the other side planned to pound until the door splintered into pieces.
Grumbling, I hauled myself out of bed, my feet hitting the cold floor. "Who the hell is it?" I yelled, stomping toward the door. "You lose your keys or something?"
The words were out of my mouth before I registered what I'd said.
This wasn't my apartment. This was 502 Maplewood Estates—a house I didn't own, in a neighborhood I barely knew. And my apartment was a tiny one-bedroom, just me and my couch. No one else had a key.
Who the hell was knocking at midnight?
No answer came from the other side. My skin prickled. I leaned in, pressing my eye to the peephole.
A girl was standing there. Young, maybe in her early twenties. She was dressed head to toe in black—tight pants, a cropped hoodie, nothing too out of the ordinary. Except for the shoes. Bright red stilettos, the kind that clicked loud enough to wake the dead on a quiet street. And she was stunning. Long dark hair, sharp cheekbones, eyes that seemed to glow in the dim hallway light.
My hand hovered over the doorknob, ready to twist it open and ask what the hell she wanted. But then—boom—that stupid internet post popped into my head.
After midnight, never open the door.
Midnight was eleven to one. I'd climbed into bed at eleven. Which meant it was well past midnight now.
My fingers froze on the metal. It wasn't that I believed the hocus-pocus. It was common sense, right? A guy alone in a strange house at 1 a.m. Opening the door for a random hot girl in red heels? Not the smartest move. Safety first, or whatever.
I cleared my throat, raising my voice so it wouldn't shake. "Who are you? What do you want?"
Her voice drifted through the door, cold as ice, no hint of apology for waking me up. "Is Li Xiumei here? I need to see Li Xiumei."
Li Xiumei? The name meant nothing to me. The current owner was Mr. Henderson, a guy whose wife's name was Margaret. The Carters, the couple who'd bought the place, were Tom and Lisa. No Li Xiumei. Not now, not ever, as far as I knew.
And even if she was some long-lost relative, there was no way I was calling Henderson at this hour.
"I think you got the wrong unit," I called back. "No one named Li Xiumei lives here. Try another floor."
Silence. Again.
I pressed my eye to the peephole once more. She was still there. Same spot, same pose, staring straight at the door like she could see right through it to where I stood. Like she was waiting.
A chill crawled up my spine. Freak show. Total and complete freak show. I backed away from the door, grabbed my phone and my pack of cigarettes, and ducked into the bathroom. I sat on the toilet for a solid fifteen minutes, scrolling mindlessly through social media, until I worked up the nerve to check again.
When I peeked through the peephole this time, she was gone.
"Thank God," I muttered, letting out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. I trundled back to the master bedroom, ready to crash again.
The rest of the night passed without a hitch. I slept like a log, dead to the world until the need to pee jolted me awake. My eyes were still half-closed, my brain still foggy, when I heard it—the faint murmur of a television.
Wait a second.
The master bedroom didn't have a TV. The TV was in the living room, clear across the house. How the hell could I hear it from here?
And then I realized something else. The bed beneath me was soft—too soft. The master bedroom mattress had been rock-hard, a cheap thing Henderson had left behind. This was… plush. Like the couch in the living room.
My eyes flew open.
I wasn't in the master bedroom.
I was on the living room couch. The TV was on, casting a flickering blue glow across the walls. The remote was sitting on the coffee table beside me, like someone had set it there for me.
Panic surged through me, cold and sharp. I'd gone to bed in the master bedroom. I'd never left it. So how the hell had I ended up here?
The TV's light caught something on the floor, and I leaned forward, my heart hammering in my chest.
Puddles of wet concrete. Smears of it, trailing across the hardwood floors like footprints. And not just any footprints—these were narrow, pointed at the toe, the shape of a stiletto heel. Red stilettos.
My blood turned to ice.
I followed the trail of concrete footprints with my eyes. They led straight from the front door—the front door—all the way to the master bedroom. And then they stopped, right at the threshold, like whoever had made them had vanished into thin air.
The master bedroom door was wide open.
I didn't think. I didn't breathe. I just grabbed my phone, jumped off the couch, and bolted for the front door. I didn't even bother with my shoes—my bare feet slapping against the cold concrete hallway, my lungs burning as I ran. I sprinted down the stairs, out of building 3, out of Maplewood Estates entirely, until I collapsed onto the curb outside the complex, gasping for air.
What the fuck was that?
Who had moved me to the couch? Who had turned on the TV?
And those footprints—concrete footprints, like someone had walked through a construction site before stepping into the house—they matched the red stilettos that girl had been wearing.
Had she snuck in? Had she moved me? But how? The door had been locked, hadn't it? I'd locked it myself after she left. And how could one girl move a grown man across the house without waking him up?
None of it made sense. None of it added up. But one thing was clear—I wasn't going back inside that house. Not alone. Not ever again.
My hands were shaking as I pulled up Jake's contact info and hit dial. The phone rang once, twice, three times before he picked up, his voice groggy with sleep.
"Ethan? It's three in the morning. What the hell do you want?"
I opened my mouth to speak, but all that came out was a ragged, terrified whisper.
"Jake. You need to come here. Right now. Something's wrong with this house. Something's really wrong."