This one strikes a sense we often ignore — until we hear something that shouldn't be there.
I live on the fourth floor of an old building with no elevator. The stairs are worn marble, and I know them by heart: exactly nine steps per flight. I always count them — it's a nervous tic I've carried since childhood.
Last night I came home late. The front door creaked and the landing lights had blown out. I started climbing in the dark, counting silently the way I always do.
One, two, three... eight, nine. First landing.
One, two, three... eight, nine. Second landing.
On the third flight, something changed. I set my foot down after the ninth step, expecting the smooth flat marble of the landing. Instead, my foot met another step.
Ten.
I froze, my heart in my throat. I reached out into the darkness and touched the wall. The stone was damp, cold, and no longer felt like the plaster of my building. I turned on my phone's torch.
The light revealed a staircase that never ended. There were no more doors, no more landings. Only steps climbing upward and descending below, dissolving into a darkness that seemed to swallow the light itself.
I tried to go back down. I ran for minutes, counting.
A hundred, two hundred, five hundred steps. No front door. No way out.
Then I heard a sound rising from below.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.* Something — or someone — was climbing. It was counting too, but not with numbers. Each time its foot struck the marble, I felt a jolt deep inside my own chest.
I leaned over the banister to shine the light down the lower flights. The beam caught a figure ascending with an unnatural rhythm. It had no legs — only a set of limbs thin as needles, driving themselves into the marble without a sound. But the worst part was its head: it faced backward, staring up at me with eyes that were nothing but hollow black sockets filled with dust.
It reached *my* tenth step. It stopped. It began to sniff the air.
I've been climbing for hours. My legs are burning, my phone is at 1% battery. I don't know where this staircase leads — I only know that every time I stop to catch my breath, I hear that *tap, tap, tap* growing closer.
The thing is, I've just counted my ten-thousandth step, and ahead of me there is no longer a stair. There is a door. My front door.
But I can hear someone laughing on the other side of the peephole. And that laugh has my own voice.