The Woman In Apartment 7

Then you throw in. Absolutely amazing tools like a vacation. I try to convince me otherwise period. It's not even a question. Caribbean Beach all the way is hands-down???? Absolutely amazing pool so maybe I'll get around here. Question mark. Or Epcot. Perfect location. I am. How many kilometers around the temple. THE WOMAN IN APARTMENT 7

A Psychological Thriller of Secrets, Lies, and a Missing Neighbor

Chapter 1

The radiator in Mara Ellison’s bedroom clicked twice, then the scream began.

It came through the wall at 12:17 a.m. - a raw, tearing sound that seemed to climb out of someone’s throat and scrape along the pipes. Mara froze with one hand on the lamp. The other still held the book she had been pretending to read.

The scream stopped.

For three seconds, the building returned to its usual midnight noises: the elevator cables settling somewhere below, a car passing on Bellwether Street, the faint hiss of heat behind the plaster.

Then it came again.

This time it broke halfway through, collapsing into a wet, strangled cry.

Mara dropped the book.

Apartment 7.

She knew the sound came from there. The apartment sat directly across the hall, its door visible from the narrow entryway of her own place whenever she opened it. No one had lived there - not officially - for almost six months.

She stood, listening.

A third scream never came.

Mara looked at the digital clock. 12:18. Her pulse had begun to beat in her throat, but beneath the fear was something harder and more insistent. She needed to know whether she had really heard it.

She crossed the bedroom, stepping over the book, and opened her apartment door.

The hallway lights were on, though one of the bulbs near the stairwell flickered with a faint electrical buzz. The carpet smelled of dust and old detergent. Apartment 7 waited opposite her, its brass number dulled beneath a film of fingerprints and grime.

Mara leaned into the corridor.

“Hello?”

Her voice seemed absurdly small.

No answer.

She glanced toward the stairs. Empty. The elevator doors stood closed at the end of the hall, reflecting a thin, distorted version of her in their metal surface. She was barefoot, wearing gray sleep pants and a black camisole, her hair loose around her shoulders. In the elevator’s reflection, she looked like someone who had wandered into the wrong building.

She should have called the police.

The thought arrived clearly. So did the answer: not yet.

If she called and the scream had been a television, a pipe, a dream, she would become the woman in 3B who reported noises that did not exist. The building had enough stories about her already. She had heard them in the laundry room when people assumed she was upstairs.

Mara stepped into the hallway.

The floorboards gave a soft complaint beneath her feet. Apartment 7 was only eight paces away, but the distance lengthened as she crossed it. She watched the gap beneath the door. No light. No movement. The old lock had been changed after the previous tenant left, though Mara had never seen anyone enter to do it.

She stopped in front of the door.

The metal was cold beneath her knuckles when she knocked.

Once.

Twice.

“Is someone in there?”

Silence.

Mara pressed her ear to the wood. At first she heard nothing but the blood moving inside her head. Then, from somewhere beyond the door, came a faint sound.

A scrape.

Not a voice. Not footsteps. Something dragging lightly across a hard surface.

Mara pulled back.

“Hello?” she said again, louder. “I’m calling the police.”

The scrape ceased.

She reached for her phone, which she had left charging beside the bed. The screen would take her thirty seconds to retrieve. Thirty seconds was nothing. Thirty seconds was everything.

A sharp knock sounded from the apartment below.

Mara flinched so violently her shoulder struck the wall.

“Who’s there?” a man called.

It was Mr. Vale from 5A, his voice thick with sleep and suspicion.

“It’s Mara,” she called back. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“The screaming.”

A pause followed. She pictured him standing behind his own door, deciding whether she was worth opening it for.

Then he said, “No.”

The answer was too quick.

Mara looked at Apartment 7. The door remained still, featureless except for the brass plate and the black keyhole.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure I want to go back to sleep.”

His door opened a fraction. One pale eye appeared in the gap.

“Did you see anyone?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then leave it.”

“What if someone’s hurt?”

“Then they’ll make noise again.”

The door closed.

Mara stared at it, anger cutting through the fear. She had expected him to come upstairs. She had expected another human presence to make the hallway less narrow, less watchful.

Instead, she was alone.

Her phone was still in her bedroom. She could call from there. She could lock herself in and wait for sirens. But the unanswered scrape behind Apartment 7 had lodged beneath her ribs.

She turned back toward her door.

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