A Paranormal Activity Story

The first time Mara saw them, she thought the neighbors had left a television on.

Not because of the picture. There wasn’t one. Just that thin, tinny sound old speakers make when the volume is low and the song has too much cymbal in it. It came through the wall behind her bed, a scratchy little rhythm with a woman singing somewhere far away, and under it—faint, regular—the soft thud of feet.

She froze with one sock in her hand.

The apartment next door had been empty for three months. Mr. Kessler from 2B had died in March, and his daughter had cleared the place out over two weekends, carrying framed prints and cardboard boxes that sighed at the bottom. Since then the unit had sat dark. No welcome mat. No new lock. No one.

The music stopped.

Mara waited, sock hanging from two fingers, listening to the pipes tick in the wall.

Then it started again.

Not louder. Closer.

She crossed the room and put her ear to the wallpaper, to the faded stripe where somebody years ago had painted over a crack and done a bad job of it. The plaster felt cold. The song wavered in and out, muffled as if it were playing inside a closet. Beneath it came a scuff, then another, then a quick brushing slide.

Dancing.

She almost laughed at herself for thinking it, but once the thought landed she couldn’t shake it. Not pacing. Not moving furniture. Dancing. Two sets of steps, one heavy and dragging half a beat behind, the other light and fast, circling.

“Mama?” she called.

From the kitchen: “If you’re looking for your lunch money, I already put it by the fruit bowl.”

“Mama, listen.”

No answer but the smack of a cabinet shut. Mara stayed where she was. The song had a beat you could count if you wanted to. One-two-three, pause. One-two-three, pause. It sounded old. The kind of thing her mother played on Sundays when she scrubbed the stovetop and got quiet.

Mara backed away from the wall.

Her room was narrow enough that three steps took her to the doorway. She stood there for a second, looking back at her bed, her school cardigan folded over the chair, the stack of library books she hadn’t finished because every story this week seemed to crawl instead of move. Nothing in the room had changed. The cheap glow-in-the-dark stars still clung to the ceiling over her pillow. Her backpack lay open on the floor with one math worksheet peeking out like a white tongue.

Then something passed across the wall.

Not across the room. Across the wall itself.

A shadow moved over the yellowed stripes, long and black and shaped like a shoulder, though there was no light in her room bright enough to cast it. Another shadow followed, thinner, tilting in toward the first as if a hand had caught a waist. They slid together soundlessly while the music crackled on.

Mara’s mouth went dry.

“Mama.”

This time it came out sharp enough to cut. Her mother appeared at the end of the hall with a dish towel over one shoulder and flour on her wrist.

“What?”

Mara pointed.

The shadows were gone.

The music went on for three more beats and clicked off.

Her mother looked at the wall, then at her. “You’re going to miss the bus.”

“There’s someone in there.”

“In the empty apartment.”

“Yes.”

Her mother stepped into the room and stood where Mara had been standing. She listened with her head bent slightly, eyes on nothing. Mara knew that look. It meant her mother was measuring what kind of problem this was and whether it could wait until after work.

After a moment she knocked once on the wall with her knuckles. “Hello?”

Silence.

She knocked again, harder. The sound came back flat.

“You heard it,” Mara said.

“I heard pipes.” Her mother smoothed the towel between her hands. “This building makes noises. Mr. Salazar downstairs swears his radiator sings.”

“It was music.”

“Then somebody had a radio on.”

“There’s nobody there.”

Her mother’s face changed by a degree. Not enough to name. Just enough that Mara saw it and wished she hadn’t.

“Get your shoes on,” she said.

“Mama—”

“Now.”

Mara did, because that tone never helped to fight. She sat on the edge of the bed and jammed her heel into one sneaker, glaring at the wall as if glare alone could force it to give something back. The room smelled faintly of dust and the coconut oil her mother used on her hair. In the hall, a floorboard creaked.

Not in their hall.

On the other side.

Mara looked up.

Her mother had gone still. The dish towel slipped from her hand and landed without a sound.

Then, through the wall, clear as if someone had put their mouth right against the plaster, a woman’s voice said, “Again from the top.”