After the divorce, she had nowhere to go.
Emily had lost everything—her house, most of her furniture, even her dog, Bailey. Her ex-husband, Thomas, had the money, the lawyers, and the better story. The court believed him. Or maybe they just didn’t care about her side.
With no family nearby and her savings drained from the legal battle, Emily did the unthinkable. She rented a storage unit on the outskirts of town and began living inside it.
It was a small, 10×10 metal box with no windows, a sliding door, and paper-thin walls. Technically illegal to live in, but no one patrolled after dark. She had a cot folded up in the corner, a camping lantern, and a cooler with some food. At night, she’d slide the door closed just enough to avoid detection but leave a sliver open to let air in.
The first few nights were miserable. The air smelled of dust and rust, and every creak of metal made her skin crawl. She kept her phone charged at a nearby Starbucks and used their bathroom to clean up in the mornings. It was a humiliating routine, but for now, it was survival.
On the tenth night, as she lay on her cot wrapped in a thrift store blanket, she heard it.
Knock. Knock.
It was soft, but unmistakable. Two slow taps from the other side of the wall.
She froze.
Her first thought was that someone else was living in the neighboring unit. That wasn’t uncommon—she’d read stories online about others who had resorted to the same desperate measure.
She waited, barely breathing.
Then came another knock.
Knock… Knock.
This time, it was followed by a low scraping sound, like something being dragged slowly across the floor.
Emily sat up, heart thudding in her chest. She considered calling out, but something about the silence that followed made her stop.
Maybe it was a raccoon. Or the wind.
Or maybe not.
The next day, she asked the front desk casually if anyone had rented the unit next to hers. The manager, a tired-looking woman named Marie, scrolled through her computer and shook her head.
“Nope. Been empty for a month,” she said. “You interested in upsizing?”
Emily forced a laugh. “Just curious.”
That night, she couldn’t sleep.
She lay still, staring at the ceiling, waiting.
Then—just past midnight—it came again.
Knock… Knock.
She crawled toward the thin wall and pressed her ear to the cold metal.
Silence.
Then a whisper.
Too faint to understand, but unmistakably human.
Emily scrambled back, eyes wide. She grabbed her phone and turned on the flashlight, sweeping it across the room. Nothing. Just the usual—her cooler, the cot, a few bags.
The whispering stopped, but she didn’t sleep at all that night.
By morning, she was determined to find out what was going on.
She waited until the manager took her lunch break, then walked quietly to the neighboring unit. The lock was still there, rusted and undisturbed. She tried peeking through the gap in the door, but it was too dark inside to see anything.
She knocked gently on the door.
Nothing.
Then, just as she turned to leave, something knocked back.
Tap. Tap.
Emily backed away slowly.
She didn’t come back until nightfall, and when she did, she brought a hammer and a small flashlight. Her plan was simple: she’d unscrew a few bolts from her unit’s back wall to get a look inside the neighboring one.
She waited until the area was quiet and then got to work. The screws came out easier than expected, and after about ten minutes, she had a small hole near the floor.
She held her breath and looked through.
At first, she saw nothing—just darkness. Then her eyes adjusted.
There was something in there.
A blanket. A pile of trash. Maybe an old mattress.
Then something moved.
Emily yelped and dropped the flashlight. It clattered against the concrete floor, and the beam shone through the hole.
A face.
Pale, gaunt, with deep-set eyes and a twisted mouth.
The face darted away as soon as the light hit it.
Emily slammed the metal plate back in place, bolted it shut, and scrambled to the front office.
Marie wasn’t there.
Emily pounded on the desk, called out, but no one came.
She turned to leave—maybe she’d call the police. But just as she stepped outside, her phone buzzed.
A message.
No caller ID.
It read:
“Don’t open the wall again.”
Emily’s blood ran cold.
Emily stood frozen outside the office, phone trembling in her hand. Her breath came in shallow gasps, and the sun was already setting, throwing long shadows across the parking lot.
The message stared back at her:
“Don’t open the wall again.”
No name. No number.
She looked around, scanning the lot for anyone watching her—nothing but silence and rows of metal units gleaming dully in the dying light.
Was it a prank? Some sick joke? But she had seen someone. Or something. That pale face…
She couldn’t stay here tonight.
Emily left the storage facility and spent the night in the all-night diner down the road. She bought a coffee, stared out the window, and jumped every time someone came through the door. When morning came, she returned to the unit, determined to pack her things and leave for good.
As she approached, she saw something that made her stop dead.
The bolt she had screwed back onto the wall the night before? It was gone.
The hole she had covered?
Open again.
Something—or someone—had unscrewed it from the other side.
She didn’t look inside. She just grabbed her bag, stuffed her cooler with whatever food she had left, and was about to leave when she noticed something else:
A paper. Slipped halfway under the cot.
She pulled it out slowly.
It was a page torn from a child’s notebook. A drawing, scrawled in black crayon: a stick figure inside a box, next to another stick figure with hollow eyes.
In the corner were words, uneven and shaky:
“HE SLEEPS BEHIND THE WALL.”
Emily dropped the paper like it had burned her.
She spent the next few days bouncing between places—libraries, cafés, parks. Anywhere but the storage unit. But she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Who was behind that wall? Why did they know she had looked? And why were they leaving her notes?
Curiosity gnawed at her.
Late one night, against all logic, she returned.
She told herself it was to grab her ID, which she had forgotten. But part of her knew it was more than that.
As she reached her unit, she found the sliding door already open.
Inside, her cot was untouched. Her things, undisturbed.
But there was something new.
Another note, this time pinned to the cooler with a rusted nail:
“He’s awake now.”
A noise came from the wall. A slow scraping. Then—
Knock.
But not from the side.
This time, it came from beneath the floor.
Emily backed up, eyes wide.
Another knock. Louder. Closer.
She turned to run—and then the door slammed shut behind her.
Pitch black.
She fumbled for her phone, but it was dead. Her breath caught in her throat.
Then came the whisper. Closer now. Inside the room.
“Emily…”
Her name, spoken in a voice not quite human.
“Emily, help me…”
She screamed. Fumbled with the door. It wouldn’t budge.
Behind her, something moved.
A rasping breath.
Then—
Silence.
The door flew open on its own, and she bolted into the night, never looking back.
The next day, Emily went to the police.
She told them everything—the face, the knocks, the notes. She even showed them the torn page and the crayon drawing.
The officer on duty was polite but skeptical.
“No one’s rented that unit in months,” he said. “We’ll check it out.”
They escorted her back, and a maintenance man pried open the sealed unit next to hers.
It was empty.
Dusty. Unused. Cobwebs in every corner.
No bed. No trash. No signs of life.
No hole in the wall.
Emily stared at it, her blood running cold.
“But… it was right there,” she whispered.
The officer gave her a look she’d seen too many times before.
Pity.
She didn’t argue. She just nodded, gathered her things, and left.
Weeks passed.
Emily found a women’s shelter and got back on her feet. She started working again, saving bit by bit, trying to forget what happened.
But some nights, she still heard it.
In her dreams.
The knock.
The whisper.
The face behind the wall.
She started seeing things too—shadows in corners, movement in her peripheral vision. A voice, sometimes, when the room was quiet.
Always the same words:
“He sleeps behind the wall.”
Emily finally convinced herself it had been a hallucination. A stress-induced breakdown. She had been living in a dark box, barely eating, barely sleeping—of course she’d imagined things.
Until the package arrived.
No return address.
Inside was a single object.
A photograph.
Black and white.
Grainy.
Of her.
Asleep on her cot in the storage unit.
Taken through the hole in the wall.
On the back, written in smeared black crayon:
“He’s not behind the wall anymore.”