"How'd we hear a knock if there was no one there?" Leo muttered, leaning in closer to the laptop screen like he expected the girl to materialize out of thin air if he squinted hard enough.
Pete scoffed, shoving his shoulder. "C'mon, man. It's just some kid pulling a prank. Knock and run. Happens all the time in my building—little brats with nothing better to do."
If only it were that simple.
Jake and I had seen her. Clear as day. The black dress, the blood-red stilettos, that vacant stare that had sent chills down my spine. The living room camera was angled perfectly—facing the front door, capturing the hallway outside, even the elevator bank at the end of the corridor. It had caught every second of Jake yelling, every second of me standing there like an idiot.
But it hadn't caught her. Not a single pixel of her.
Jake and I went pale, our blood turning to slush in our veins. I couldn't even think straight, let alone form a sentence. The only thing running through my head was she wasn't there. She wasn't there. She wasn't there.
The footage rolled on. What should've been Jake chewing out the girl, what should've been her repeating that same dead-eyed question about Li Xiumei, was just… Jake. Yelling at empty space. Gesturing at thin air. Looking like a total lunatic. And me? Standing behind him, watching him lose his mind, like I was just as crazy.
Pete and Leo's laughs died out fast. They stood up, their faces going from amused to horrified in two seconds flat. Leo stumbled backward, tripping over the couch leg. "Boss… who the hell were you talking to?"
Jake couldn't answer. He was shaking so bad his teeth were chattering, his lips moving but no sound coming out. I had to step in, my voice a trembling mess. "There was a girl. Last night, too. Midnight exactly. Knocked, asked for Li Xiumei. Jake and I both saw her. But the cameras… the cameras didn't."
Pete's face drained of color. He scrambled over to the window, yanking the curtains open, like sunlight could chase away whatever was wrong with this house. But the windows were smudged, the sky overcast, and the light that seeped in was gray and weak. The living room stayed dim—oppressive, like it was holding its breath.
"How is that possible?" Leo whispered, his eyes darting around the room like he expected something to jump out at him. "Cameras don't just miss people. Not unless—"
He didn't finish the sentence. None of us needed him to. The word hung in the air, thick and toxic: ghost.
I couldn't shake it, either. If this house had a body buried in its walls, if that girl was something that shouldn't be walking the earth, was she Li Xiumei? And why was she looking for herself? Or was Li Xiumei someone else—someone who'd met a bad end in this very room? And what did the footprints mean? The way they'd changed direction, from leading into the master bedroom to leading out… was whatever was haunting this place getting stronger? Getting bolder?
We hit play again, the four of us huddled around the laptop like it was a lifeline. The footage showed exactly what I'd feared: Jake and me, both of us sleepwalking. Eyes closed, moving like puppets, marching straight out of the master bedroom at 2:00 AM on the dot. I'd unlocked the door—unlocked it—in my sleep, like I was letting something in. Or letting something out. Then we'd stumbled to the couch, Jake grabbing the remote, flipping on the TV, just like I had the night before.
Jake collapsed onto the floor, his legs giving out from under him. He stared at the screen, his face blank with terror, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Pete and Leo looked like they were about to throw up. The silence stretched on, broken only by the hum of the laptop and the distant wail of a siren somewhere outside.
I couldn't take it anymore. I stood up, walked into the master bedroom, and flopped onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. The others followed, their footsteps soft, like they were afraid to wake something up.
"Why didn't the cops find anything?" I said, my voice echoing in the small room. "If someone died here—if there was a murder—their files would've had something. They talked to neighbors, checked records. Nothin'. That only means one thing. Whoever died here… no one ever reported them missing. No one ever knew they were gone."
The words landed like a punch. Jake's face went whiter. Pete and Leo hugged each other, their shoulders shaking. A murder. A body hidden so well, no one had ever found it. And we were sleeping in the same room where it had happened.
"The Carters said they felt eyes on them," I went on, my eyes scanning the walls. "Only in here. That means whatever's wrong with this house, it's in this room. The footprints led here. The girl pointed here. This is ground zero."
"Dude, stop," Pete whimpered. "You're scaring us."
I didn't blame him. I was scaring myself. But I had to keep going—had to piece this together before it was too late. "I heard something else," I said, turning to Jake. "Last night. A scraping sound. Like someone was troweling wet concrete. Right next to my ear."
Jake stared at me, his mouth open. He didn't say a word. He didn't have to. I could see it in his eyes—he knew, now, that this wasn't stress. This wasn't a hallucination. This house was hungry.
"Where would you hide something?" I said, more to myself than anyone else. "Where would you put a pair of eyes so no one would ever find them?"
The others started searching—peering behind the curtains, checking under the bed, rapping on the walls like they expected them to hollow out. I stayed on the bed, lying there like the Carters had, trying to feel it—the weight of a stare, the prickle of someone watching.
The ceiling? Too thin. The wall by the nightstand? It backed onto the outside of the building—no room to hide anything. The window wall? Same thing. The wall facing the living room? Paper-thin, with the TV mounted on the other side. No way.
That left one wall: the one with the closet.
I sat up, frowning. "This room is too small."
Jake looked at me, confused. "What?"
"Master bedrooms are bigger," I said, getting off the bed, pacing the floor. "This is a hundred-plus-square-foot condo. The master should be the biggest room in the house. But this? It's the same size as the guest room. That's not right. No architect designs a master bedroom this tiny. Not unless…"
I trailed off, a cold realization washing over me.
Not unless part of it was hidden.
Not unless someone had walled off a section of this room. Built a wall over a doorway. Buried a secret in the drywall and the concrete.
I walked over to the closet wall, rapped my knuckles against it. The sound was dull—thud-thud-thud—not hollow. But that didn't mean anything. Not if they'd filled it with concrete first.
I pressed my palm against the wall, feeling the rough texture of the paint, the faint vibration of something that shouldn't be there.
And somewhere, in the quiet of the room, I swear I heard it—a soft, slow scrape. Like someone was troweling wet concrete. Right behind the wall. Right next to my ear.