I broke my leg in a car accident last week and had been stuck at home recovering, unable to go anywhere. Just as I was starting to go stir-crazy, a couple moved into the house next door—the one that had been empty for ages.

I pressed my ear to the wall, catching every sound of them making love, and even recorded quite a bit. Still, I never expected something so sinister to happen.

The man next door sounded exactly like my dead husband! I moved my phone closer to the wall and listened carefully. Suddenly, a scream exploded through the wall.

“Lindy, you’ll die for this!”

My scalp went numb.

My husband was mute. The only time he ever spoke in his life… was the night I forced his head into a bucket of water. How did the man next door know my husband’s last words before he died?

I was so startled that I dropped my phone directly onto my plastered, broken leg. The noise next door stopped. All that remained was dead silence and my own heartbeat, hammering like it might burst out of my chest.

No way. It was absolutely impossible.

Zach, that mute bastard, had been dead for a month. I made sure his body was completely gone.

By now, it would have turned to mud. If he could talk, he would have been in heaven, screaming at me, not standing next door playing ghost.

I grabbed my phone. My fingers trembled as I tapped the screen. It was the audio file I had secretly recorded earlier.

Perhaps it was just my mind playing tricks on me, or just some hallucination brought on by painkillers.

I pressed play. The progress bar moved.

Only a harsh, static buzz came through. It sounded like a bad connection or some kind of interference. There was nothing else.

There was no man’s roar, no woman’s moan, not even that chilling curse—“Lindy, you’ll die for this.”

I turned the volume all the way up, pressing my ear almost against the speaker, but there was only that dead, electric hiss. What happened?

I bought this phone less than six months ago and spent over 3,000 dollars on it. It usually recorded with sounds that were crystal clear, so why did it fail at the worst possible moment?

I flung the phone onto the bed. The hiss seemed to crawl around in my brain.

This old apartment had walls thinner than paper. If someone really shouted my name next door, I would have heard it even without recording it.

I had to find out who was there.

Even if Zach did come back from the dead, I would kill him all over again.

I grabbed my crutch and, despite the stabbing pain in my leg, inched toward the door. The corridor outside was dark and narrow, crammed with the neighbors’ junk. It smelled of mold and rotting leftovers.

I pressed my ear to the door while holding my breath, straining to catch any sound from the apartment across the hall.

There was only silence. It was too quiet.

It was like that heart-wrenching scream from earlier had been swallowed by the iron door, leaving nothing behind. Perhaps I had just imagined it.

I had been taking a lot of painkillers for this leg. My brain was probably foggy. Zach had only recently died, so I might be scaring myself out of guilt.

I spat on the ground, silently calling myself a coward. There were no ghosts, only unpaid debts and insurance money yet to collect.

I turned around to head back to my bed. My crutch struck the floor with a sharp clack. Then, the shadow under the door shifted. Someone was standing on the other side.

I held my breath and peeked through the peephole.

The corridor’s motion-sensor lights had been broken for years. It was pitch-black, and there was only a sliver of light leaking past the door across the hall. In the weak glow, a pair of black shoes sat neatly on the concrete outside my door.

It was Zach’s favorite pair of shoes. The ones he wore the night he died. The same ones I had thrown into the fire for his damned parents.

Cold sweat soaked the back of my shirt. I stared at the shoes. My hands gripped the crutch until it was slick with sweat.

No.

If Zach had truly come back as a vengeful spirit, he would not leave the shoes at the door. He would have walked straight through the walls to strangle me.

Someone was playing tricks.

I yanked the door open, and the shoes continued to lie there. Their tips pointed at my threshold as though they were waiting to step inside.

I swung my crutch and sent them rolling into a pile of moldy boxes in the hallway.

“Who the hell is messing with me? Show yourself!”

I yelled down the empty corridor. My voice echoed, triggering the motion lights on the lower floor, but my level stayed pitch black.

The electric drill sound continued from next door. The iron door stayed shut, sealed like a coffin. There was no response.

A surge of anger rose in my chest. I pounded the door with my crutch.

“Anyone in there? Open up!”

The door rattled under my blows. My palms turned red, but no one answered.

Just then, the landlord, Mr. Wesley, came up the stairs carrying a birdcage. He froze for a moment when he saw me.

“Whoa, Lindy! Your leg’s broken and you’re still banging on doors? What’s going on?”

I shot a glance at Mr. Wesley and pointed at the door across the hall. “When was this apartment rented out? Who’s living there?”

Mr. Wesley shifted the birdcage behind his back. He was keeping it a secret from his wife, and I had even helped cover for him before.

“Just a couple of days ago. A blind woman. I felt sorry for her, so I gave her a discount.”

Blind woman?

I frowned. “Just a blind woman? No one else? No man?”

Mr. Wesley shook his head like a rattle. “Nope. Just her. Lindy, maybe you miss your husband too much? She’s disabled. What man would be with her?”

My ears rang, and my nerves screamed in protest.

Just a blind woman? There was no way a blind woman could handle carpentry!

Mr. Wesley’s teasing words echoed in my mind, but I could not focus on anything he said as I turned back into my apartment. Who screamed like that last night? Where was that electric drill noise coming from?

Could that blind woman really have been moaning in her apartment alone in the middle of the night? Impossible! There had to be a man!

I had not been sitting long when someone knocked on my door again.

This time, it was Officer Zane. Lately, he had been stopping by almost daily, claiming routine follow-ups on Zach’s disappearance. However, he was trying to pry information out of me.

“Lindy, how’s your leg?”

The moment he stepped inside, his eyes darted around the room, sharp as a hawk’s. It was as though he wanted to lift every tile on the floor to see what was hidden beneath.

I pointed to my plastered leg and forced out a few tears. “No one’s taking care of me. I can’t recover any quicker on my own. Officer Zane, when are you going to find Zach? Day after day, there’s no sign of him. I’m really worried…”

He did not answer me. Instead, he walked around the room, sniffing the air.

“Some neighbors complained yesterday that there’s a strange smell on this floor.”

A chill ran through me, yet I wore a mask of innocence on my face.

“I’m a wounded woman with no one to look after me. The trash hasn’t been taken out in days…”

Officer Zane stopped at the bathroom door, staring at the tiled wall for a long time. The wall hid the space behind the bathroom. It was a little crawl space I had built myself when I expanded the bathroom. It was also where Zach was now.

“It’s not the smell of trash. It smells like… a dead rat rotting in the wall.”

He turned to look at me and gave me a faint, unsettling smile.

I could feel the hairs on my neck stand on end. I quickly waved it off. “Could be. Apartments like this always have dead rats. Maybe it’s from the blind woman next door.”

He stared at me for a long moment before slowly turning away.

“Alright.”

He turned around to leave, and I secretly let out a sigh of relief, until he spoke again.

“But Lindy…”

I straightened in my seat. He turned around. His eyes pierced me so sharply that I could barely breathe.

“Don’t worry. There will be news about Zach sooner or later. I will find him, alive or dead.”

The last four words carried weight that made me feel like he had discovered something I did not even know. Then, he left without lingering. The door clicked shut.

One, two, three seconds… There was nothing.

Finally, I let my tensed nerves relax and collapsed onto the couch, gulping for air. That smell was definitely getting worse. At this rate, it would not stay hidden for long.

I needed to know exactly what was going on next door.

Was that blind woman really blind? What were the sounds I heard?

The walls in this old apartment were fragile, crumbling like cookies. I found a tiny watchmaker’s drill and picked a small, inconspicuous crack in the shared wall, drilling slowly and carefully.

Half an hour later, I had made a hole. I pressed my eye to the tiny opening. The blinds in the next apartment were drawn, leaving the room dimly lit.

A pile of wood sat in the center, and a half-finished shoe cabinet stood nearby. It was identical to the one at my door.

A man in a blue shirt bent over a drill, focused on the wood in front of him. That figure, that posture—it was unmistakably Zach.

As my heart pounded, the man stopped. His head rotated like a mechanical part, snapping a full 180 degrees. The face staring back was ghostly pale. There was no nose, no mouth, only one eye.

It was a crudely made prosthetic eye, staring fixedly through the tiny hole I’d drilled.

I jerked back in fright and toppled off the chair. My tailbone slammed into the floor. The pain nearly knocked the wind out of me.

I knew that eye too well.

Zach lost one eye to illness when he was a child, and that was the prosthetic he had worn ever since. It was cheap and poorly made, mostly white with very little black, so it always looked creepy.

The night I killed him, that prosthetic eye popped out and rolled across the floor. I was so disgusted that I kicked it under the bed.

Now, it was on the face of the man next door, staring at me through the wall.

I gasped, clutching a fruit knife from the table with white-knuckled hands. There were no ghosts in this world. It was all just a human playing tricks.

That man was definitely not Zach. Zach’s body was in the wall behind me. If he were not unkillable, he would be nothing but a skeleton by now.

Was it the blind woman? Or her accomplice?

Whoever it was, they clearly knew something. They were trying to scare me, trying to make me slip up.

Not a chance!

I had a micro camera set up by my door, pointing down the hallway. I had originally used it to check if Zach was sneaking women into the apartment. I never thought it would come in handy like this.

I watched my phone screen all day. Finally, the blind woman left. She wore sunglasses and carried a cane, stumbling a bit as she walked. She definitely looked blind.

However, the man with one prosthetic eye was not with her.

No sooner had she gone than a delivery guy knocked on my door. “Lindy, right? Your package.”

I frowned. I had not ordered anything in weeks to save money. Where did this come from?

As soon as I signed for it, a wave of putrid, bloody stench hit me.

It was a blue shirt, covered in dark brown mud stains, with several obvious tears. How could it be this shirt?!

This was what Zach had been wearing the night I killed him. I had taken it off, planning to burn it, but I must have shoved it into a trash bag and thrown it out in a panic.

I flipped over the shipping label. The sender’s address was this building. In the sender’s name, one name was printed clearly:

[Lindy.]

I mailed a dead man’s clothes to myself?

This was pure, brazen provocation!

That blind woman. It had to be her!

She must have dug the shirt out of some trash pile. She wanted me to know. She wanted me to know she knew.

Well, if she was playing games, I would play to the bitter end.

While she was still out, I took out a master key I had prepared long ago.

I had been living in this building for years. I knew these old locks inside and out. All it took was a few twists and they would open.

Dragging my broken leg behind me, I crept to her door and glanced around to make sure there was no one around. I inserted the key and twisted it.

The door opened with a click.

I pushed the door open. A wave of cold air hit me. With the curtains drawn tight, the room was so dark I could not see my own hand in front of me. I turned on my phone's flashlight and swept the beam across the room.

There was no drill, no one‑eyed man, and no signs of life. The living room was empty, except for a pile of wood in the center.

I stepped closer. My scalp prickled. They were not just pieces of wood. They were mannequins! The entire room was filled with wooden mannequins.

More than a dozen of them stood in a circle. Their cheeks were painted bright red, and their black eyes fixed on the table in the center. On that table was a black tape recorder.

My hand trembled as I pressed play.

Static crackled. Then, there came a voice. It was a voice I knew better than my own nightmares.

“Die, you bastard! The insurance money is mine! Go to hell!”

The voice was rough and vicious, punctuated by heavy, ragged breathing and the gurgling sound of water. It was my own voice. It was the words I had shouted while pressing Zach’s head into the bucket.

My blood ran cold, like someone had thrown me straight into an icy lake. Where did this recording come from? It had only been the two of us that night.

I had checked. His phone had been in the living room. It had not been anywhere near us.

Where did this come from? Had there been another recording device in my apartment all along?

I bolted out the door like a madwoman, not even bothering to close it properly. I stumbled back into my own apartment. I locked the door, dove onto the couch, and ripped open the cushions.

I sliced through the fabric underneath with a fruit knife. There was nothing, just a few coins and layers of old dust.

I stormed into the bedroom, tore off the mattress, emptied the nightstand, and even pried open the outlet covers to check. How could there be nothing?

I was drenched in sweat, and the apartment looked like a tornado had ripped through it.

That damn bug? It was like it did not even exist.

Then, the sound of a cane striking the floor came from outside the door. The blind woman was back. My fear turned into rage.

No matter where the recording came from, she had the original. If she died, no one would ever know.

I grabbed my knife and flung open the door. She stood there, fumbling with her keys. Then, she turned at the sound.

I pressed the tip of the knife against his neck and hissed in a low voice, “Who the hell are you? What do you want?”

Her sunglasses hid most of her face. She looked dazed as she took a fearful step back, and her voice trembled. “W-What did you say? I just moved here. I don’t know you.”

“Cut the crap!” I stepped closer. The knife tip was nearly pressing against her nose.

“Where did that recording come from? What the hell are all those mannequins in the room? And was that one‑eyed man just you in disguise?”

The woman looked dumbstruck all over.

“W-What recording are you talking about? My name’s Maya… I’m a massage therapist. I usually just listen to the radio. Maybe you have the wrong person?”

She pulled out her phone from her pocket with shaking hands.

“Miss, if you don’t lower the knife… I’ll call the police!”

What she said hit me like ice water.

The police were already watching me. If they came now, walked into my apartment, saw the mess on the floor and smelled the lingering stench of a corpse, I would be finished.

If that blind woman actually called the police, it meant she was not afraid of an investigation. That recording could already be hidden or backed up somewhere else.

I clenched my teeth, glared at her, and pulled the knife back.

“Fine. Just wait. If you dare release that thing, I’ll make sure you die without even knowing how.”

I slammed the door shut and leaned against it, gasping. Something was not right.

The recording sounded like me, but the tone was a little stiff, and some words seemed stitched together.

I had argued on live streams before and said things far worse than this. Those videos were online for anyone to see. What if it were synthesized? What if she had deliberately made a fake recording to scare me?

As long as I did not admit it, it could not be evidence.

Still, why me? Was it just for fun? Or was it really about Zach?

While my mind raced with possibilities, a sudden, piercing noise came from next door.

The sound of a drill bore into the wall. The vibration shook the dust loose from my walls.

The worst part was that the drill sounded like it was aimed directly at the bathroom wall. The one hiding Zach’s body!