I wasn’t expecting peace when I moved here.
I just wanted quiet.
A one-bedroom apartment in a weather-beaten three-story building near the edge of the city. Cracked paint, rusted gates, and the sort of silence you don’t get in the heart of town. The kind that makes you notice your own heartbeat. That was all I needed.
Ikenna Nwosu. 27. Web designer. Recently displaced. Emotionally frayed. Still nursing the bruises of something I refused to name.
The landlord was an old man with a limp and a wariness in his eyes. He barely spoke when he handed me the keys.
“Top floor. Apartment 7A. Don’t make noise.”
I nodded. He didn’t ask about my past. I didn’t offer it.
Three days in, I was starting to settle. The apartment was clean enough, if you ignored the peeling ceiling and the way the lights flickered at night. I had my bed, my desk, my laptop, and a cupboard full of instant noodles.
Then she whispered my name through the wall.
“Ikenna.”
I paused mid-bite, spoon hovering above my cereal bowl. The voice was soft. Feminine. Deliberate. It came from the wall that connected to 7B.
My heart beat once, heavy. I never told anyone my name here.
I leaned forward, listening.
Silence.
I stood slowly, ears straining, every nerve alert.
Then again.
“Ikenna… I know you’re there.”
My mouth dried. My fingers tightened around the spoon.
I moved to the wall. Pressed my ear to it.
Nothing.
Just the hum of the fridge and my own shaky breathing.
I told myself I imagined it. New places played tricks on the mind. Maybe it was a neighbor watching a show. Maybe I misheard.
But I still locked the windows that night. Bolted the door. Pulled the curtains so tightly that no light bled through. My dreams were full of whispers.
The next morning, I laughed it off over tea.
Paranoia. That was all.
By noon, I needed bread. The corner shop was two blocks away.
As I walked out, she was standing at the gate.
Slim. Brown-skinned. Shoulder-length braids. Hoodie too big for her. Big, dark eyes that didn’t blink enough.
She was just there, like she had always been there.
“Good morning,” she said.
Her voice was the same. Soft. Even.
I hesitated. Nodded. Tried to pass.
Then: “Ikenna.”
I froze mid-step.
“Excuse me?”
She tilted her head.
“You told me your name,” she said. “That night. On the bus.”
I stared at her. “I didn’t come on a bus.”
She blinked slowly. “You don’t remember.”
I felt something tighten in my chest. “No. I don’t.”
She smiled. It was a small, pained smile. Like she pitied me.
“That’s okay. You will.”
Then she turned and walked up the stairs toward the second floor.
I didn’t move. I didn’t even breathe.
My hands were shaking when I got back inside.
There was no bus. I came in a moving truck. Alone. Through the rain. I remembered every detail. No one sat next to me. I hadn’t spoken to a soul.
That night, I locked everything again. Double-checked the door. I left the lights on this time.
At 2:17 AM, I woke up gasping.
The air was thick. My sheets were damp with sweat. And on the wall facing my bed, in large, uneven letters, someone had written:
“You snore when you’re scared.”
I screamed.
Ran out into the hallway in bare feet, heart hammering, fists pounding on the landlord’s door.
He opened it, bleary-eyed, robe loosely tied.
“What is it?” he asked, voice dry with sleep.
“The girl!” I shouted. “From apartment 7B! She—she was in my room!”
His brow furrowed.
“Girl?”
“Brown skin! Hoodie! She knows things—my name, she was at the gate earlier—she wrote on my wall!”
The landlord stared at me for a long time. Then he said, voice cautious:
“Ikenna… 7B has been empty for two years.”
I blinked. “No, that’s not possible.”
He shook his head. “Tenant died in a fire. Young woman. Same description. It’s been locked since. We haven’t let it out.”
My stomach dropped.
“She… she talked to me.”
He studied me, then sighed. “Go back inside. I’ll check it in the morning.”
I didn’t sleep.
I sat by the window, watching her window.
At 3:42 AM, her curtains moved.
Just a little.
Like someone watching me from inside.
The next day, the landlord took out his keys and unlocked 7B.
Dust choked the air. The scent of burnt wood and old rot still lingered.
He let me step in first.
Everything was untouched. Charred remnants of furniture. A mirror cracked down the center. The corner of the room where the wall was burnt black—the same wall we shared.
There was no bed.
No clothes.
No signs of life.
Only a message on the opposite wall, written in faded marker:
“I tried to tell you. You never listened.”
I stumbled back.
“Close it,” I said. “Please.”
He didn’t ask questions.
He just shut the door.
But it wasn’t over.
The whispers came back. Every night. Louder.
She began to say other things.
“Ikenna, why did you forget me?”
“I waited.”
“Don’t you remember the fire?”
Once, she laughed. It was dry. Hollow. Not human.
And always, always my name.
I started digging. Looking for records. Newspaper archives. Death notices. Anything.
And I found her.
Adaora Nnamdi. 24. Died in apartment fire. June 3rd, two years ago. The article said the fire was ruled an accident. She was alone. Neighbors said she had no family. No visitors.
But her face…
Her photo was grainy, but it was her.
The girl from the gate.
The girl who whispered my name.
I’m losing track of time now.
My dreams are flooded with smoke. With shadows in the hallway. With a girl sitting across from me on a bus that never existed.
She says we made a promise.
She says I broke it.
She says I left her behind.
And now…
She wants me to remember.
I stopped leaving the apartment.
Food? I ordered it. Showered only when necessary. I stopped checking emails. Stopped taking calls.
Because every time I stepped near the hallway, I could feel her watching.
From behind the wall.
From inside the mirror.
From the shadows.
On the fifth night, I lost power.
The lights flickered, then died.
Total blackout.
Even the streetlamps outside seemed dimmer than usual, like the darkness was swallowing the light.
And that’s when I heard it again.
“Ikenna… come to me.”
It didn’t come from the wall this time. It came from inside the apartment.
I grabbed my phone. The flashlight barely pierced the dark.
“Where are you?” I whispered.
No answer.
Then I noticed the wall.
The one we shared with 7B.
There was a long, thin crack running down it now. New. Like a wound.
And from it, faintly, came a smell I hadn’t noticed before.
Burnt hair.
I moved closer, against every instinct.
My fingers trembled as I touched the wall.
It was warm.
Then—suddenly—the phone slipped from my hand and the light went out.
And I heard her behind me.
“Ikenna.”
I spun, fists up.
Nobody.
But there was a voice in my head now. Closer. Sharper.
“I remember you. I remembered first. Now it’s your turn.”
Then everything went still.
That night, I dreamed of the bus.
It was raining. Thunder outside. The windows fogged.
I was sitting in the back, my head against the glass. Alone.
Or so I thought.
Then I looked beside me—and there she was.
Adaora.
Smiling. Hoodie soaked. Fingers twitching on her lap.
“You said we’d run away,” she whispered.
“What?”
“You promised.”
My head throbbed. I felt like I was splitting in two.
“You said they wouldn’t follow us. You said we’d disappear. You said we’d be free.”
I shook my head. “I never—”
“Yes, you did,” she said, louder. “Before the fire. You promised you’d come back for me.”
Then flames began to crawl up the aisle of the bus. The windows turned red. The seats blistered.
She gripped my wrist tight.
“You left me there. You let me burn.”
I screamed.
I woke up choking on smoke.
But there was no fire. Just my apartment, dim and cold.
And on the wall: new writing.
“Do you remember now?”
I did.
Pieces at first. Then floods.
I was twenty-two. Angry. Living with my aunt after my mother died.
That’s when I met her. Adaora. She’d just moved into the neighborhood. Brilliant. Quiet. Lived with her uncle, who hit her sometimes. Nobody talked about it.
But I noticed.
We got close. Too close.
We talked about leaving. Starting new lives in another city. Away from pain.
I told her I had a plan.
But I never followed through.
The night she died, I was supposed to meet her. Help her run.
But I panicked. I didn’t show.
Later, I heard about the fire.
She’d locked herself in.
The police called it a terrible accident.
I called it a tragedy.
But I never admitted the truth: She waited for me. I didn’t come. And she died.
Now she wanted me to remember.
And she wanted more than memory.
The walls started bleeding black smoke. The lights flickered every night. I saw her reflection even when the mirror was turned to the wall.
My food spoiled in hours. My laptop fried.
I started burning my fingertips when I touched doorknobs.
She was seeping into my world.
And I knew I had to end it.
I went back to apartment 7B.
This time, with tools. My father’s old Bible. A lighter. Salt. Chalk.
I didn’t know what I was doing.
But desperation breeds invention.
The door creaked open. It smelled worse than before—ash and rot and something older.
Inside, everything was exactly as before.
Except the message on the wall had changed:
“Say it. Say you left me.”
I stepped in.
Took a deep breath.
And said it.
“I left you.”
Silence.
“I was scared. I ran.”
I swallowed hard.
“I told you we’d leave together. And then I abandoned you.”
My voice broke.
“You died because I didn’t show.”
And that’s when the room shifted.
The floor warped. The burnt walls began to pulse like lungs.
And she stepped out of the shadows.
Adaora.
Same hoodie. Same sad eyes.
But half her face was blackened, charred. Her hand crackled with embers.
“You remembered,” she said.
I fell to my knees.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
She stood before me, her face flickering with something between rage and relief.
“Sorry,” she echoed.
Then she smiled. Not the broken one.
A real one.
And slowly, her form began to unravel. Ash floating into the air like dandelions in the wind.
“I waited,” she said.
And she was gone.
I woke up on my apartment floor.
No smoke. No fire. Just early morning light through the curtains.
I stood, dazed.
Checked the walls.
No writing.
No whispers.
Just silence.
The landlord told me the power had returned. He looked relieved to see me upright.
“You looked like hell for a while,” he said.
I smiled. Just a little.
I still live here.
It’s quiet now.
But sometimes, I ride the bus late at night. The one I never took.
And I leave a seat open beside me.
Just in case.
