Later Than You Think

The Light in Unit 6B

The first time Michael saw the light in Unit 6B, he assumed someone had left it on by mistake. It was a low, warm flicker, barely visible through the dusty blinds of the apartment across the courtyard. At 2:43 a.m., everything else was still and dark. The city buzzed faintly in the distance, but their building was dead silent.

Unit 6B had been empty for months.

Michael watched it from the narrow window over his kitchen sink, holding a glass of water he hadn’t meant to drink. His throat wasn’t dry. He wasn’t thirsty. He was just awake again, for no good reason.

He went back to bed, expecting it to be gone by morning.

It wasn’t.

The light stayed on the next night too. And the next. Michael started watching for it, not on purpose at first, but his eyes always drifted toward the window sometime after midnight. The flicker would be there, soft and strange, like candlelight — or a TV screen with the contrast turned down so low it barely made a dent in the dark.

Three weeks later, he started making notes. Times, dates, weather, changes in the glow. It never wavered. Always the same.

Michael didn’t talk about it. It would sound dumb, he knew that. People would say, Who cares? Maybe the landlord’s fixing it up. Maybe someone moved in quietly. All very rational things.

But one night, maybe the tenth or eleventh, something changed. Michael was turning off the kitchen light when he thought he heard a soft tap. Just once. Sharp, deliberate. He froze, listened — nothing. He walked to the window, heart thudding. The courtyard was empty, as always. The light in 6B flickered steady. But as he turned to go, he caught a flicker of movement — not in the apartment, but in the reflection on his own glass. A dark shape, like someone behind him. He spun around. Nobody there. He laughed. Out loud. But didn’t feel like finishing the laugh.

Michael worked from home, and his desk faced the courtyard. No one came in or out of 6B. The mailbox stayed empty. The windows never opened.

He finally asked Carol, the building manager, while pretending to complain about a leaky faucet.

“Unit 6B?” she repeated, tapping her tablet. “Still vacant. They had to rip out all the wiring last year, so it’s not even got power yet. Why?”

Michael shrugged. “Just seemed like someone might’ve moved in.”

“Nope,” she said, not looking up. “Nobody’s in there.”

He stood by the mailbox later that day and watched her leave. Then he walked across the courtyard and tried the door.

Locked.

Of course it was locked.

On the fifth Friday since the light appeared, Michael woke with a start. The room was silent, but he had the overwhelming sense that something had just happened.

He looked at the clock- 2:31 a.m.

His feet found the floor on their own. He crossed the apartment in the dark, the way you do when you know exactly where everything is.

The light was on in 6B. As always. Flickering faintly.

Except — something was different.

There was a shape in the window.

Michael stared, his heart slow and loud. The shape wasn’t moving. Just standing there, half-blocking the light. Watching back?

He blinked. The shape was gone.

The light remained.

Michael went back to bed but didn’t sleep.

He started dreaming in fragments after that. Half-memories. Half-nonsense. Always that flickering glow.

In one dream, he was outside the door to 6B, key in hand, and he heard a voice behind it say, “What time is it?” Just like that. Calm. Not demanding, not worried. Just curious.

He woke up sweating. His own voice echoed back at him — he’d whispered it aloud in his sleep.

By the eighth week, Michael's apartment was littered with sketches and notes. He’d drawn the layout of 6B as best he could remember from the open house last summer. He marked the corners of the room where he thought the glow originated. He bought a pair of binoculars and started documenting the flicker in twenty-minute intervals.

He hadn’t left the apartment in days.

It wasn’t obsession. Not quite. It was… itchiness. A constant low hum under the skin. The need to know.

His friends had stopped texting. Work had started sending polite nudges about deadlines.

He didn’t answer any of them.

One night, sometime in mid-April, the light didn’t come on.

Michael waited by the window for hours. Nothing.

He felt oddly sick. Dizzy, like the ground was tilting.

When the sky began to gray, he finally lay down on the couch.

At 7:14 a.m., the light blinked on — just for a second.

Then gone.

The dreams got worse after that.

He was back outside the door in each one. Always just about to open it. Always hearing that voice say, “What time is it?”

The final dream came on a cold Tuesday morning. He was standing in the hallway of the building, bare feet on the linoleum, the key in his hand again. The voice said-

“It’s time.”

Then he was inside.

He didn’t remember opening the door. He was just in.

The apartment was empty — no furniture, no fixtures. Only a soft flickering light filling the space, pulsing like a slow heartbeat. He stepped toward it, and as he did, the apartment seemed to stretch and blur, like it wasn’t a place anymore but a memory of one.

Then he saw himself.

Across the room, facing away, standing perfectly still.

The other Michael turned his head slightly. And in the same calm voice, he said-

“What time is it?”

He woke up standing at his window, palm flat on the glass. It was dark. The light in 6B was on.

He didn’t hesitate this time.

Michael crossed the courtyard barefoot. The concrete was cold and a little wet. No sound but the hum of the nearby streetlight.

The door to 6B opened when he touched it.

Inside, the air was still.

No furniture. No people. No signs of life.

Just the light.

It came from the far wall, leaking through a crack in the drywall, pulsing gently. Michael stepped closer, drawn without resistance.

The crack widened as he approached, like the wall was splitting open.

Behind it, he saw… something.

It looked like another apartment, but not quite. The angles were wrong. The light wasn’t natural — it shimmered like heat on pavement. The space rippled gently, as if seen through water.

And in the middle of it, a figure.

Not a shadow. Not a person.

But somehow… him.

It tilted its head.

And spoke.

“What time is it?”

Michael opened his mouth, but no words came.

The walls around him pulsed with light.

The floor tilted.

He stumbled forward—

When he came to, he was back in his apartment.

Morning sunlight poured through the window.

No flicker.

No glow.

Nothing.

Michael stood slowly. Everything was exactly where it had been.

Except for the note on his desk.

A single sheet of paper, written in his own handwriting, though he didn’t remember writing it.

It read-

“It’s always later than you think.”

He looked out the window.

Unit 6B was dark.

And empty.