Three Loud Bangs on the Door

Three loud bangs on the door startle Leslie out of her reverie. The noise reverberates through her empty apartment, bouncing off the parquet floor and past the unopened moving boxes. Rattling her bones. The echoes fade but never quite disappear. They sink into the mute white walls, drown in the shadow bog under the sofa.

She sets her bottle of water on the kitchen counter. Her muscles still ache, but the high of the jog is forgotten, and her sweat, pleasant a moment ago, runs cold.

It’s midday but the fierce bright only creeps in through her windows, scoring her living room floor. It never reaches the kitchen. She swallows hard and flicks the light switch, and the dull yellow bulb buzzes above her at sixty Hertz.

The air is heavy, suddenly still, and she rushes to the front door, throws it open. Foolish. The door chain isn’t engaged and she doesn’t even check who’s there. Dangerous behaviours for a single woman new to this part of town.

But there’s a change in pressure, almost a wind rippling past her, and she can breathe again.

A man stands on the other side of the door and he takes a step back. His surprise – his dimples – are adorable. Her heart flutters.

“Oh–” he says, forgetting what he was saying. His eyes dart over her, almost too fast for her to notice. But not quite.

Heat colours Leslie’s cheeks. She’s still in her jogging shorts, and the sweat soaked tee. But she knows she looks good in it. And the way his eyes linger a little too long, he knows it too.

“Yes?” she says. Always best to dive into discomfort. Only way to move forward in life. She flutters her lashes just a bit. Serve!

“Um.” He clears his throat. Grins and looks away. When she tucks a loose hair behind her ear, he runs his thumb along his chin. Also dimpled.

“Sorry to bother you,” he says, that school-boy smile tugging at his lips. “Um… I’m Mark.” He holds out his hand.

“Leslie,” she says, shaking without thinking. His palm is clean, strong. Hers is sticky with stale sweat. But he shakes and doesn’t flinch. Maybe he didn’t notice. Either way, he returns the serve and the ball is still in play.

“I’m your downstairs neighbour,” Mark says. “Uh, first off… I guess, welcome to the building!”

“Thanks! I like it here.”

“Yeah, it’s a great place.” His smile melts into a frown, and he hesitates.

“What’s up?” She frowns too. The sun’s in her eyes and she can’t see the ball.

“Look, I hate to be that guy, but I work from home, you know? It’s just, it was pretty loud today, right in the middle of a call with a client.”

She crosses her arms and leans against the door frame.

“I get it,” he says. “Working out is important. Could you maybe hold off until after four PM?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She doesn’t.

“It’s just, the stomping was pretty distracting.” He holds his hands out, shrugs. The ball hits the court.

“I think you have the wrong apartment, Mark.”

“Well,” he drags out, “I don’t think I do.”

“I haven’t been home all day.”

He frowns. She frowns. The ball rolls out of bounds, and they stand in silence for a while.

“Okay,” he says, rolling his eyes. She narrows hers. He retreats, and entreats, “Just please keep it down from now on.”

“It wasn’t me,” she says, but he’s already on the stairs going down. Why are people always accusing her of stuff like this? What’s wrong with everyone? It’s like this every time.

Leslie shuts her door, locks it. Mutters, “Asshole.”

***

Three loud bangs on the door two hours later. She puts her book down. This time the chain is engaged and when she looks out the peephole she sees Mark again. She snarls and cracks the door.

“What?”

His face bounces around worry, guilt, other things. She wants to hate it but those dimples catch her eye and won’t let go.

“Look, I just wanted to apologize,” he says. “I think… wow. Well, I think we got off to a terrible start. I was a real jerk.”

You were, she thinks.

“You’re new here, and I made these, um, baseless allegations. Please, let me make it up to you. How about dinner tomorrow?”

Her jaw almost drops. She undoes the chain and opens the door.

“Are you seriously asking me out? After that?”

He’s got his palms up, and his gaze down. “No, no, this just an apology-dinner. And a welcome-to-the-building dinner. Nothing more, I promise. Unless, you know… unless you decide it’s a date-dinner.” He grins that stupid charming grin. “I wouldn’t be opposed to that.”

“It’s definitely not,” she says, but she can’t help smiling herself, and, she fears, blushing. “Pick me up at six?”

“Will do.”

***

The next night, she returns to her apartment. New apartment. New job. New… boyfriend? She grins as her keys jangle, finally getting her door open.

No, too soon for that. But maybe, maybe. Mark’s fun, and they have things to talk about. And the kiss was nice. At his door. She refused his offer to escort her up another flight of steps. Too dangerous to have those handsome dimples right at her porch. Not on the first date. Which, she concedes, it was. And she giggles, because maybe.

She flicks her light on and kicks her heels off.

Three loud bangs on the door.

Her light champagne buzz turns sour. The darkness of the night presses through her windows. Her feet are cold on the parquet floor.

Through the peephole she sees a man. Shorter than Mark, older. Balding on top, but with wild curls elsewhere, and a roiling mustache. She opens the door a crack and he snorts loudly.

“Yeah, listen lady, you gotta keep the damn noise down, all right?”

“Excuse me?”

He runs his hands over his head and snarls. “All god damned night with the banging! The thumping! Right? Some of us have to work tomorrow, so please just have a shred of decency and keep it down!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Look, lady, I know the super! I’ll call the cops! Okay? I’m not nuts. This is your friendly warning. Just keep it the hell down, or I’ll get your ass thrown out.”

He stomps down the hall in his flip-flops before she can answer. His feet groan heavy on the stairs going up. Leslie shuts the door, lets out an impotent growl. Fear? Anger? Confusion? All of it.

She wasn’t home. It wasn’t her. Is this some stupid game that Mark’s playing? Why is every guy like that?

She grabs a bottled water from the fridge and downs it.

Maybe there’s a mistake. Maybe it’s one of her neighbours. After all, sound travels strangely through the walls. Tomorrow she’ll talk with them, get to the bottom of this.

***

Three hours later she’s still tossing in her bed, sheets soaked with sweat. Her mind races her heart. She’s hurt. Afraid. What if this is a prank? What kind of sick game are they playing? And who’s doing the playing?

And what can she do about it?

The silence of her apartment offers no answers.

And then it does.

There’s a ka-dunk, a muffled pile-driver miles away on a misty morning. Dull metal strikes dead metal. Again. And again. And again.

And it comes from her living room.

Leslie screams. She’s not thinking, just moving. She tears out of bed, flies through the kitchen, and is out her door never once looking back.

The next thing she knows, Mark is holding her tightly, her face buried in his chest. She’s bawling. There’s words she wants, words she needs, but she can’t find them. Did she run down the stairs? Is this his apartment?

His arms are strong, they protect her. She’s safe here. He sways with her and she allows him to calm her down. She takes a shuddering breath and the cup of water he offers. Only now does she notice he’s only wearing boxers. There’s sleep-blear in his eyes and a red welt all over his chest where she had pressed against him. Pressed into him. And her eyes linger on that chest.

There’s a scratch, too. A fresh line bleeding red. She notices she has her keys in her hand, in a death grip. She must have grabbed them as she ran. Unthinking. She must have injured him. Also unthinking.

Mark sits her down on his couch, sits opposite her, yawns. “Leslie, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers, blinking away tears. “I couldn’t sleep. I heard… I heard something.” Another shaky breath to keep from crying.

“You heard something?” She nods. “Could it be… like, something you ate? At the restaurant?”

Leslie shakes her head. “No. I heard something in my apartment.” She wipes her eyes. “I think you were right,” she barely whispers. “I think someone’s in there.” She places her hand over her mouth, afraid that by speaking it she makes it true.

There’s a moment of silence between them. Mark takes a deep breath, about to talk, but then they hear it.

Ka-dunk, ka-dunk, ka-dunk. Above them. Distant and yet close enough to touch.

Dust falls from the ceiling, and they stare at each other. Her eyes are wide and his are intense. They get up at the same time.

“Mark!” she whispers.

“Stay here,” he says, his voice iron.

“Where are you going?”

A wooden Louisville Slugger rests against the wall. He picks it up, tests the familiar grip. Grim satisfaction on his face.

“Stay here,” he says again. “I’m going to handle this.”

Mark leaves and Leslie sinks to the floor, covering her face. She couldn’t move even if she wanted to. She hears the noise in her apartment again, and then his distant footfalls on the stairs. A moment later, she hears him above her. There’s a muffled “Who’s there?” as he rushes from the kitchen to the living room. A fuzzy “Show yourself!” as he darts into the bedroom and bathroom. His bare feet squeak against the parquet floor. He moves again, to the living room, and there’s one more muffled, “Is that you–”

Ka-dunk.

And then there is silence.

It takes Leslie ten minutes to realize that there’s nothing more upstairs. Ten minutes without a single sound. Ten minutes of squirming, alone, on Mark’s floor. Where did the time go? She wants to crawl out of her own skin and hide somewhere, but she doesn’t know where.

She decides she needs to do something. Maybe Mark needs help. Maybe he’s injured. She thinks about calling the police, but how long would it take them to respond? Maybe Mark doesn’t have the time. She steels herself and picks up her keys. And she goes upstairs.

When she gets to the landing of her floor she sees the door to her apartment is open. Shadows spill out of it into the dim hall. Her heart pounds and her throat is dry. Each step she takes, the old floor creaks under her. She whispers “Mark?” but it’s so quiet even she can’t hear herself.

She approaches her door from an angle, and when she finally stands before it, she sees into her apartment. Nothing. Just her empty floor, her still-to-be-unpacked boxes, and nothing else. No intruder. No sign of Mark. No pool of blood. Just the bat, right at the threshold, and nothing else.

She takes the bat – you never know – and then flinches from the nothing in her apartment.

Because nothing is still something too. Standing at the door she finds each breath harder to take than the last, finds the sound of her own heartbeat growing dimmer and more distant. Finds the light at the edge of her vision growing quiet. Finds herself drawn to step inside.

She lunges for the doorknob, slams the door, and locks it. From the outside. And then she runs back down to Mark’s and slams the door there too.

***

Leslie places the shopping bag, heavy with groceries, beside the door, and she unlocks it. She steps inside, her heart hammering. Immediately she locks the door again, and her hand caresses the bat which has become her constant companion.

This is the first time she’s left Mark’s apartment in a week but she’s eaten everything he had. She’s wearing his oversized clothes, because hers are… elsewhere. She doesn’t think where. She doesn’t like to think where, but she can’t stop thinking about it either.

But she needs to get moving, to stop cowering. A week is long enough. She’s used up her sick days, and Mark’s not coming back. Mark is… again, she doesn’t want to think about that. And again, she can’t stop.

She managed to go shopping though. That was a triumph. Three or so hours outside. She can do this. Return to normal.

She snorts. What is normal about this? She lives in someone else’s apartment, because hers is… she doesn’t know what. But it’s been quiet for a week, so maybe whatever it is, is behind her. She knows her current arrangement can’t last, that eventually someone will notice something, but that’s a problem for another day. One step at a time.

She opens the fridge and grabs a carton of eggs from her grocery bag.

Three loud bangs on the door.

The carton falls on the floor, emitting a wet, subdued crunch. Leslie approaches the door, her hand trembling towards her bat. She sees a little old lady outside, the kind of adorable granny that would canvas a neighbourhood for a church fundraiser. Leslie exhales, feeling relief. She opens the door.

“Hello, dear,” the old woman says, with a beatific smile. “I’m Matilda, your downstairs neighbour. I hate to be a bother, but would it be possible for you to keep that thudding noise down? It’s been going on all afternoon.”