2

Tonight it was different again. It was more muffled than usual, Steph thought. She was slightly disconcerted that she had attached such a common and almost comforting adjective like "usual" to the noise that had been haunting both her waking life and subconscious for what seemed like eternity, but was probably, more accurately, about three months.

It seemed closer. It was as if its epicenter was only inches from Stephanie's face this night. She forced her eyes open as she lay in bed, despite her better judgement. She wasn't surprised to be looking out onto an empty room. There was never anything tangible to substantiate the sound. It only made her more convinced that she was losing her mind.

She turned over and looked at Jason. He still lay sound asleep, breathing slowly in and out with an almost blissful contentedness about his face. She felt a pang of resentment at his ignorance, and it made her shudder to realize that they could be in the same room - in the same bed - and be having such drastically different experiences.

She shivered. She was angry. How could he not awaken? How could this banging, this rattling, this awful ever living sound NOT jolt him out of sleep? This unknown terror was practically consuming Steph, and yet it caused Jason not so much as to twitch or open an eye. She refused to believe that she was the only one who could hear this noise.

She'd gone to thirteen years of Catholic School, and had sworn off Ouija boards years ago after discovering that her older brother had been puppeteering a fake ghost version of their great grandmother in an attempt to scare Steph into trading her larger loft bedroom with his smaller main floor one. She didn't believe that something could be haunting her, and yet she also didn't think she had gone completely insane.

But it was becoming clear to her that this demon, figurative or otherwise, was meant to be endured by her alone. Maybe she should start to question her sanity, she thought as she lay in bed, but surely it was no coincidence that she always heard the sound at night. She'd seen enough television shows about ghosts and UFO's. People swear they've seen an apparition or that they've been taken aboard some space ship and prodded or what not. Experts explain away that these poor people have only just begun to fall asleep, and in a state of semi-consciousness they mistakenly think - or swear - they've seen something that they can't explain otherwise.

Stephanie made a conscious decision that this was the theory she'd cling to. She just wished that she could make herself believe it. Halfheartedly, she squeezed her eyes shut. She was going to make a wholehearted attempt to sleep away the situation she couldn't explain.

She found that the silence was even more oppressive than the noise.

She lay there, tense, listening to the dead air in the room. It was pregnant with anticipation. She peaked continuously at the alarm clock on her nightstand. Its green illuminated numbers seemed static.

Minutes passed. Five or ten. Maybe twenty.

Steph began to feel the sweet haze of sleep wash over her. She was dreaming of her childhood cat, Nuna. She was in her childhood house, sharing ice cream with Nuna, talking about the ineptness of Brad Pitt as an actor. It was quiet. It was safe.

It was two fifty three when she was torn from her daze by a rattle. It sounded as if someone was standing on her fire escape trying to shake open the window. She felt a sick relief that the noise that she had been attributing to something somehow supernatural might be a simple intruder. She reasoned that an armed man breaking into her bedroom was easier to dispose of than a ghost or demon or whatever the hell the noise might be. Especially because, at Jason's insistence, she kept his loaded Smith & Wesson .38 special in the drawer of her nightstand.

Against her better judgement, she slid the gun out of the drawer and arose to make sure that the window was locked. It could have been a gust of wind that shook the pane, she reasoned. Or it could have been an armed predator directly outside the window.

Sleep deprived and frustrated, Steph was ready to take her chances.

In the center of the window pane she saw it. It looked like an area of haze or condensation. She couldn't make out the shape of it. She immediately thought the opaque area looked like the shape of a hand, but the human eye often rushes to see a pattern or something discernible even in the most random visual display.

She walked to the window, brave and stupid with fear. It faded as fast as it had come. She dropped the gun into the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt, and slowly opened the window. She looked down at the fire escape. It was empty. It was silent. The street below appeared deserted. Shaken, she locked the window, drew the curtains, and shook Jason awake.

8.15

Seventeen times last night Steph was wretched out of sleep. It was becoming more consistent now in the frequency of visitations, more constant in the number of nights it would come and it even seemed to grow harsher and louder. It was angrier with each visitation.

For the first month or so, right around the time Steph had moved into the new building, it could be heard periodically. Usually it came at night, and it didn't seem at all unusual. Things seem easier to explain during the daylight, and at night even a skulking orange cat emerging from around the corner under a street light is enough to frighten the most cautious late night pedestrian.

It was innocuous enough. She'd actually assumed that it had something to do with the construction work going on still in the third floor laundry room. After all, it was a new building. Settling within the walls, noises, these things were to be expected.

The repair work was now long done and the guys with their loud tools had left months ago.

Although she felt silly, she had inquired about the odd sound to her fellow residents. She feigned nonchalance when describing the harsh banging metal-like noise. Did anyone, she asked, have a child deeply entrenched in drum lessons? Not that this noise could be mistaken for music. It sounded more, to her, like hollow tin.

No one was helpful. No one claimed to know what she was referring to. Steph couldn't decide if they were truthful. She suspected they were either ignorant, afraid, or hiding something from her, but these suspicions were based on nothing in particular. It could have very well been true that they honestly had no idea what she was talking about. She'd even become desperate enough to ask the Super, Ronny. He looked her up and down, as if she was a steak he wanted to throw some A1 sauce on and enjoy with a glass of red wine. He suggested he spend the night in her apartment to try and solve the mystery. Steph could have gagged. She may have gagged.

She had to go it alone.