Arthur reached the fourth-floor landing with slower steps than usual while the stairwell lights flickered weakly behind him and threw uneven shadows across the stained concrete walls beside the doors. His breathing still had not fully settled after the sounds from upstairs, and he disliked that fact more than he wanted to admit because losing composure solved absolutely nothing in stressful situations. The grocery bag hanging from his hand suddenly felt much heavier than before. Arthur shifted it slightly and looked down the long apartment hallway stretching ahead of him.
Every hallway looked strange at night.
This one looked wrong.
The overhead lights buzzed softly while only every third bulb actually worked, leaving long sections of the corridor buried in darkness broken apart by weak yellow patches reflecting off peeling wallpaper and old carpet stains. Several apartment doors stood slightly open even though Arthur clearly remembered most of his neighbors being obsessive about locks and hallway safety. One door farther down the corridor swung gently back and forth every few seconds despite the complete lack of wind inside the building.
Arthur stared at that door longer than necessary.
Apartment 4B.
Mr. Levinson lived there.
Or had lived there.
Arthur suddenly realized he had not seen him in weeks.
That thought joined several other uncomfortable thoughts already sitting heavily inside his chest, and together they formed something Arthur could no longer dismiss as ordinary stress or exhaustion. The entire building felt abandoned in a way apartment buildings were never supposed to feel. Even empty apartments usually made noise somehow. Pipes creaked. Televisions hummed faintly through walls. Somebody coughed or argued or dropped dishes in the kitchen.
This place sounded dead.
Arthur started walking carefully down the hallway toward his apartment while trying not to look too long into the dark sections between working lights. His shoes pressed softly against the old carpet runner, producing almost no sound at all now compared to the sharp echoes from the stairwell below. Halfway down the corridor he noticed scratch marks running along the wallpaper beside apartment 4B's open doorway.
Long scratches.
Deep ones.
Arthur slowed immediately.
The marks covered the wall from waist height nearly to the ceiling, cutting through wallpaper and drywall underneath like something sharp had dragged itself repeatedly along the surface while moving through the hallway. Arthur felt another cold pulse move through his stomach while staring at them because the scratches near the top looked much too high for any normal person to make comfortably.
Then he noticed the smell.
The scent drifting from apartment 4B reminded him of spoiled meat left too long inside a broken refrigerator mixed with damp carpet and something metallic underneath both. Arthur grimaced hard enough that his eyes watered slightly while instinctively stepping farther away from the doorway. Every instinct he had told him not to look inside.
Unfortunately, Arthur had always hated unfinished thoughts.
He stopped directly beside the open doorway and looked carefully into the apartment interior while one hand tightened around the grocery bag hard enough to hurt slightly. The living room beyond looked almost completely dark except for weak flashes of light spilling through rain-covered windows from outside. Furniture sat overturned across the floor. Deep gouges covered the walls near the ceiling. Something dark stained the carpet in uneven patches that Arthur's brain refused to identify properly.
Then something moved inside the apartment.
Arthur physically flinched backward.
The movement vanished immediately afterward, but he knew he had seen it clearly this time because the shape had crossed directly through one of the weak patches of light near the back hallway. It looked tall. Thin. Wrong in ways his brain still struggled to process into anything human.
Arthur took another step backward automatically.
His pulse hammered painfully against his ribs now while cold sweat gathered beneath his collar despite the freezing hallway air around him. He should leave. Immediately. Go downstairs. Call somebody. Police maybe, though part of him realized with growing horror that he had not actually seen a functioning police officer all day.
The realization hit harder than expected.
Arthur suddenly remembered the overturned police car outside again and felt something cold settle heavily into the middle of his chest. He had spent the entire day forcing normal explanations over things that no longer looked remotely normal once viewed together instead of separately. Empty streets. Crushed cars. Dark buildings. No people. Strange movements. The smell outside. The silence.
Something was happening.
Something big.
And Arthur had absolutely no idea what it was.
Inside apartment 4B, the thing near the back hallway slowly moved again.
Arthur saw more of it this time.
Long arms.
Bent posture.
Skin stretched tightly enough over its body that parts of the ribcage showed clearly beneath the surface whenever weak light crossed it. The creature crawled halfway into view while staring directly toward the apartment doorway with pale eyes that reflected the hallway lights faintly in the darkness.
Arthur stopped breathing.
The thing looked hungry.
Not angry.
Not animalistic.
Hungry in the worst possible way, like it had been starving for a very long time and had just realized food was standing nearby. Arthur felt pure terror lock every muscle in his body hard enough that even his fingers went numb around the grocery bag.
The creature tilted its head slightly.
Then it smiled.
Arthur finally moved.
He stumbled backward hard enough to slam one shoulder painfully into the hallway wall while the grocery bag swung wildly from his hand and nearly split open against the impact. Fear crashed through him all at once now, sudden and absolute, completely destroying the thin layer of rational explanations he had spent all evening desperately trying to maintain around reality.
That was not a person.
That was not a drug addict.
That was not stress.
Something inside apartment 4B was fundamentally wrong.
Behind Arthur, stretched long beneath the hallway lights, his shadow slowly rose higher against the wallpaper while the thing hidden inside it focused silently on the starving creature crouched within the apartment darkness. The hallway temperature dropped several degrees instantly. The creature inside apartment 4B felt it immediately.
So did Arthur.
Cold spread through the hallway fast enough that Arthur suddenly saw his own breath fog faintly in front of his face despite the building's stale indoor air. The creature's smile vanished instantly afterward while every inch of its body went completely rigid in the darkness beyond the doorway.
Then terror replaced hunger.
The creature recoiled so violently that it smashed into the hallway wall inside the apartment hard enough to crack drywall while scrambling backward deeper into the darkness near the rear rooms. Arthur stared in disbelief while the thing practically threw itself away from the doorway as though something worse than death had suddenly appeared nearby.
OH, NOW YOU WANT TO LEAVE, the entity inside Arthur's shadow snarled silently while reality bent softly around the hallway lights overhead. YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THAT BEFORE STARING AT HIM LIKE A %^$#ING HAPPY MEAL.
Arthur did not hear any of that.
He only stood frozen against the hallway wall while trying desperately to understand why the creature had suddenly panicked. The thing inside apartment 4B kept retreating deeper into the darkness while making low sounds that almost resembled frightened whining underneath its uneven breathing.
Then the hallway lights flickered hard.
Every bulb went dark simultaneously.
Arthur's heart nearly stopped.
For one terrible second complete darkness swallowed the hallway entirely while rain hammered against distant windows somewhere beyond the building walls. Arthur could hear movement inside apartment 4B again. Fast movement. Closer movement.
Then the lights returned.
The hallway stood empty.
Apartment 4B's doorway still hung open exactly where it had been before, but the creature itself had completely vanished somewhere deeper inside the apartment darkness. Arthur stayed perfectly still several more seconds while his pulse hammered so hard he could hear blood rushing inside his ears.
Then another sound reached him.
Soft footsteps.
Behind him.
Arthur turned slowly enough that every muscle in his neck hurt from tension while the weak hallway lights buzzed overhead. At the far end of the corridor, partially hidden between flickering patches of yellow light and shadow, a tall figure stood motionless near the stairwell entrance.
Arthur stared at it.
The figure stared back.
It looked almost human at first glance except for the proportions, because its arms hung too low beside its body while the shape of its shoulders bent forward slightly in ways that did not match normal posture. Arthur could not clearly see its face beneath the darkness covering that section of hallway, but he could feel it watching him.
Neither of them moved.
Rain tapped steadily against the building outside while weak fluorescent lights buzzed overhead and the smell from apartment 4B drifted heavily through the stale hallway air between them. Arthur slowly became aware that he was still holding the grocery bag despite the fact that his hand had gone completely numb several minutes ago.
The figure took one step forward.
Arthur immediately stepped backward.
Then his apartment door unlocked behind him.
Arthur nearly screamed.
He spun around fast enough to lose balance slightly while the door to apartment 4D slowly creaked open several inches behind his shoulder. Warm yellow light spilled softly across the hallway carpet from inside the apartment along with the faint smell of coffee.
Arthur froze completely.
His apartment should have been dark.
He had left for work that morning.
No lights.
No coffee brewing.
Nothing.
Very slowly, Arthur looked back toward the far end of the hallway.
The tall figure near the stairwell was gone.