Hide and Seek

I fell asleep with the TV on again. It’s blaring when I wake up—the sound of a woman, crying. Her daughter was murdered in the woods. Or something. I’ve only caught onto a few words, rubbing the sunlight out of my eyes and pulling down the bedsheet slowly, not wanting to give away the warmth. It’s a cold winter. I yawn, and look up, and see a face in my vent staring down at me. A human head. It smiles in the dark, through the slats.

I should scream, I think, but instead I yawn again. I stretch my arms. It’s Saturday and the countdown to work on Monday morning has already begun.

I won’t have my weekend disturbed. I need my peace.

The pan in the kitchen sizzles with butter. There’s the smell of bacon grease, coffee. I knife the block of gouda, pull out two pieces of sourdough. I think about Cindy from HR as a press the sandwich into the pan with my spatula, feel it burn. There was spittle dotting the papers on her desk; a strange lack of hygiene in a woman who smells strongly of soap. I try not to think about her while I’m eating. The grilled cheese is perfect—evenly melted with thick slices of bacon. There’s a satisfying crunch when I bite. I take a gulp of my coffee and inhale, closing my eyes. I think about the earnings report due on Monday, until I summon the will to force it out of my mind. I’m trapped in a game of hide and seek with my thoughts. I’m doing both the hiding and seeking, and I’m winning and losing.

And that makes me realize: these days, nothing is solely a win or a loss. Everything is some ratio of both. For example, I’m spending the weekend alone in my apartment, wearing pajamas and speaking to no one. It’s almost exactly split, fifty-fifty, between the two.

I suppose the face in my vent tips my morning slightly toward the losing side. Still, there’s an upside: this place is haunted. I could sell tickets for people to see the face. There might be a line out the door, with people holding up their phones in the hallway, live streaming with excited, spit-pocked faces. No phones allowed inside, of course. I’ll be interviewed on NBC, CNN, a family special on ABC. Thousands of people will discuss me. There might be reality TV opportunities; a show for ghost hunters. Maybe with a dating component. Some kind of telepathic connection between me and a psychic investigating my one bedroom in Bed-Stuy—a soft-spoken man who isn’t afraid of death. I can’t think of anything hotter. He’ll read my mind and tear through my thoughts; I won’t have to say a word to him. He’ll just show up and know exactly what to do.

My hand drifts down the front of my pajama pants but stops at the waistband. I feel a twinge of anxiety—there was something I was supposed to do this weekend, but I can’t remember it. Then Cindy, the earnings report, an upcoming client presentation crowd in my head. I sigh, lean back into my couch. Another false start.

As I have that thought, I turn around and see the face from my vent staring at me from my bedroom. Only half of it is visible, peeking around the doorframe. It’s smiling. Or maybe it’s a different head—it’s hard to tell. Maybe there’s more than one specter here.

Regardless, it’s clear it wants a show.

You dirty bastard, I say, and turn back around.

I try to remember that I was supposed to get done this weekend. There’s going to be an all-hands meeting on Monday morning that I should prep for. That’s not it, though. I look around the room, an open space that contains my living room, kitchen, doorway. It’s filthy—dirty plates on the counter, foggy wineglasses, a smudged antique mirror. That’s right, I think, I was supposed to clean up. I sketch out a gameplan: first, I’ll scrub the counters and sink until they shine. I’ll throw out rotting food lying around and set the garbage bag by the door. I’ll mop the floors, wipe down the mirrors, get down on my hands and knees and polish the corners of the room with a toothbrush. An intoxicating lemony scent. The whole place will be so spotless I’ll be able feel it, like chugging a glass of sparkling water. When I’m done, I’ll open the windows and the freezing winter air will clean me from the inside out.

After I’m done with the apartment, I’ll wash my body. I’ll lather my hair with shampoo, let it sit for five minutes while I scrub my legs and feet with soap. The water will be as hot as it can go; the steam will enter my lungs and burn away the toxins. My abdomen and breasts will disappear in the condensation on the mirror. My face will be gone. And in the steaming fog I’ll have no thoughts. Only my hands will remain, unconscious things, wiping away dirt and sweat, shaving closely against my skin with a razor. By the time the water is turned off and I’m once again visible in the mirrors, I’ll be a different person.

I lie back onto the couch, sigh. Everything is too soiled. It’s too much; I don’t have the willpower to do all that. There’s work on Monday and I need to rest to be able to withstand it. There’s a permanent dip where I sit; I imagine one morning it will turn into a sinkhole. Besides, I think, I need to conserve my energy for what I have to do this weekend.

I turn around, expecting to see the face in the doorway, but its empty. I walk into my bedroom and lie down on my bed. For a few minutes, I don’t look into the air vent. But curiosity gets to me and I glance up and see it there, right where it was, except its nose and lips feel closer now. They’re pushed up against the slats. I realize that, like the mouth, the eyes are smiling at me. They have a glint to them. It makes me feel like it’s thinking of something clever; I wonder if it can speak. And that makes me think: I’ll be able to charge more than I thought for visitors to come see it. How much would someone pay to hear a talking head? Two hundred, at least. With any luck, I’ll be able to quit my job and become a full-time content creator.

The thought makes me smile, until my phone rings beneath my pillow. I’m surprised it hasn’t run out of battery yet. I sleep with it next to me every night, poking the screen, stalking acquaintances on social media. Cindy’s Instagram profile was the last one I was looking at. It’s mostly dedicated to her pets. She owns four parakeets and, shockingly, a rattlesnake—another mystery. Everyone at the office hates Cindy because of the way she fires people but I feel a deep need to understand how she ticks. She confounds me at every turn.

All of these things flit through my head until I realize my phone is still ringing. I pick it up and see that it’s my dad. I put it back down, shutting my eyes. I don’t have it in me to talk to him right now. Since my mom died last year, he’s been calling me every weekend, which in itself is fine. The problem is that neither of us have anything to say. Sometimes when our conversation lulls, we end up just sitting in silence, waiting for the other person to either speak or hang up. It’s an exhausting game of chicken. My mom was the one who always kept discussions going, placing a plate of sugar cookies on the table and telling us about someone she saw on the street. She smelled like clean laundry. That’s one of the things I miss most about her. I should be more sympathetic towards my dad; now that mom is gone, he doesn’t have anyone to keep him company. And neither do I, I realize.

I hear a sound above me, a clunky ehco, like shoes falling down a chute. My heart squeezes. My eyes are still shut. I have the feeling that when I open them, the face from the vent will be directly above mine. When I finally get the courage to look there’s nothing near me; I look up and see the face where it was, in the vent. Though it looks more firmly pressed against the slats and there’s now a hand next to it. Gray fingers poke through, the tips of them touching the air. Say something, I think, though I’m not sure if that thought is directed at the vent or myself.

I walk into the kitchen and lean against the counter. I hear someone walking towards me from the front of the room, but there’s no one there. Indentations in the shag carpet appear in the shape of feet, coming towards me in a straight line. I try and back away, but something catches the edge of my robe, pulling. I bite my lip. There are tendrils of heat crossing my chest, going upwards, and I realize that it’s an invisible hand, or maybe a face, touching me. I thought ghosts were cold. As if in response, a wet touch on the side of my neck makes me shiver.

My door buzzer sounds loudly, which for some reason makes whatever was just touching me disappear. I rest my head on the counter, breathing. There are crumbs from my grilled cheese getting in my hair. Whoever pushed the buzzer presses again, longer this time, as if he’s trying to wake me up. And I wonder why I assume it’s a he.

That’s it, I think, with a shudder. I was supposed to go on a date with Matt this weekend. Earlier in the week he’d asked me to hang out and said he’d swing by to pick me up. There was a brewery he wanted to show me—all locally sourced, eco-friendly craft beers. He claimed it was the best IPA he’d ever had. I don’t really like beer, but I enjoy listening to him talk. His desk is across from mine at the office; he’s in sales and spends most of his time on the phone talking to prospects. His voice is low and has a confident lilt, like he’s always on the edge of laughter. He has sandy hair and eyes, and large, spotless hands. On Friday he swiped his fingers along the desk in a friendly gesture and I noticed that there wasn’t a speck of dirt under his fingernails. It was hot. I wanted to say something, but he strolled by so quickly. He’d asked me out on Tuesday, but we never confirmed after that. We never set a time—or did he say 3pm? I can’t remember. I’d check our text messages but my phone is still on my bed. The buzzer sounds again, and I walk to the door and look out through the peephole.

For some reason, I expect the hallway to be empty, for the buzzer sounding to be the trick of a ghost. But when I look out, he’s still standing there, with a six-pack tucked under his arm. His hair is combed; he looks showered.

I glance down at myself; there’s dust on the floor, on my feet. My armpits have a tang of body odor, and my face is unwashed. The place is littered with garbage. I’m in no state to let him in, so I just stand there, watching a shadow cross over his face. He takes out his phone and sends a text. I feel heat at my back, and pressure on my shoulder blades, as if there are two hands forcing me to the door. I lay my cheek to the side and crush my ear to the wood. I imagine that if Matt pressed his ear to the other side, he’d hear my heartbeat. The heat spreads to the rest of me, and without warning, I’m burning all over, and my breath comes out ragged.

Open it, Matt, I think. Break down the door and get in here already. I can’t take it.

After a couple minutes, Matt lifts an eyebrow and turns back around. He opens the door at the other end of the mustard-colored hallway and takes the stairs.

I slide down to the floor, breathing heavily. Across the room, a face smiles from the doorway to my bedroom. There’s a hand curled around the doorframe.

Well, you got your show, I say. Happy?

It smiles a bit wider and runs a tongue across its teeth, a tongue that is strangely pink.

I yawn. Saturday is flying by and soon it’ll be Sunday, which gives me a limited amount of time to prep the earnings report. The added prospects of scouring the apartment, showering, calling my dad back, and texting Matt an apology pile up in my head. I don’t know how I can possibly get it all done by Monday. And on top of that, there was the other thing that I was supposed to do this weekend.

As I lean back against the door, the head across the room slides back into my bedroom, out of view. It happens slowly, almost as if it’s being pulled by someone else back there. I’m mesmerized by the smoothness of the motion until I see something else that makes my blood run cold. There’s a man in the window across from me, sitting on the fire escape. It’s the one full length window in the apartment. I recognize him; he’s the homeless man I pass by every morning on the way to the office. A silent man who’s never spoken to me, even when I’ve talked to him. I assume he’s a mute. I usually drop whatever spare change I have into his cup. On Friday, though, I put in everything I had in my wallet—$87.40. I was feeling high—another hellish week was over. When I did this, he clapped his hands enthusiastically.

Just his shoulders and face are visible in the window. He’s streaked with mud, and his gray hair is matted down. There’s an orange glow to his skin. After a few moments, I realize that’s because the sun is setting behind him. His eyes are wide and his mouth is open in an expression of surprise—genuine surprise that turns to a look of pleasure. He’s glad to have found me.

I see you! He shouts.

He raises his hands and lifts himself up until his naked body is in view, glimmering. He presses his hands against the window and I think, oh god, he’s going to break in and kill me.

I glance at my bedroom. It probably isn’t a good idea to hide in there. I run into the closet and lock the door, burrowing into the coats. Outside, I hear the sound of the man grunting and fiddling with the window. He’s trying to open it. I shiver and back into a corner, tucking my feet underneath me. After a few minutes, the apartment is finally quiet again. I sigh. Maybe he gave up and went home to his patch of concrete. He must have gotten excited when I gave him all that money and followed me to my building, hoping to get more. Or possibly he just wanted to express appreciation for my generosity. There’s a crack of light under the closet door and just as I’m catching my breath, I see fingers curling underneath the door. Thick, orange-tinted fingers, as if the sunset is trapped inside of him. I can’t scream, or move. I stay still and the hand retracts, gradually, all the life gone from it.

My mom started seeing things before she died.

She was touched, my dad said on the phone, during one of our long, mostly silent talks.

I wanted to tell him how much I hated that idea—being touched. It sounded like she was molested. Like she caught a disease. But I was quiet, thinking of her hands pressed against the table as if to keep it from floating away. Her fingers digging in. There was water seeping under the bathroom door the night she died. I was in the house, visiting. I think she waited to do it until I was there. She left the sink running and the water spilled down the stairs, all the way to the kitchen, where my dad and I were having our morning coffee. It had been running for hours and we didn’t notice. I remember the puddle touching the edge of my sock, seeping in. I knew by then she was dead—could feel it coming. And my first thought was: isn’t that like us. We just let it seep in.

Outside the door, I hear feet slapping on the wood floor. Grunting, the sound of cabinets being opened and shut. He’s still here. All this because I gave him everything in my wallet. I curl my hands around my knees and shut my eyes. I think about everything I’m still going to have to do if I survive this, and it feels tiresome. The doorknob to the closet rattles; he’s trying to get in again. Eventually he tires and it’s silent again. It’ll be Sunday soon which means only one day left before the work week. There’s the earnings report I need to put together—but what do we sell? I’m having trouble remembering. And I also haven’t remembered the thing I was supposed to this weekend.

There’s something in the closet with me, a heat crawling up my ankles—hands reaching between my legs. I tunnel further back into the coats. From this angle I can see it; a face in the left-hand corner. In the dark I can only make out of the edges, the outlines of eyes and a mouth. What I know for sure is that this face isn’t smiling. It’s frowning. It hates me; it wants me dead. It was waiting for me to notice it before it moved, and now it’s emerging from the shadows. My pajama pants are wet. I look down and realize I’m sitting in a puddle of urine.

Mom, I cry. Mommy, please.

The night she died my mom asked to talk to me. She said there was someone following her—a man. I brushed her off. I was busy with work and didn’t have the time for the paranoid fantasies she indulged in. She’d seen many men before, many ghosts of men. I didn’t like when she got like that. I preferred it when she acted normally.

The face is close to mine now, wearing an angry expression. It has no body, it’s just a head chopped off at the neck, a jagged cut as if it was self-inflicted. Its mouth is moving but no words are coming out. The doorknob is rattling again.

I press my hands to my ears and squeeze my eyes shut, but then a louder sound slams through. A heavy knocking on my front door.

There are men’s voices calling out: Ms. Brooks, hello? Are you in there?

There’s more knocking. I open my eyes and the face is gone. There’s daylight glimmering beneath the door frame. I open the closet door and peek out. The night has passed; it’s Sunday. The homeless man is gone, and the place looks the same as before. I feel a wave of relief. I walk to the front door and look through the peephole. There are four firemen there, looking quizzical. They’ve stopped knocking and seem to be thinking. One of them scratches underneath his helmet. Another, standing in front, leans close to the door, framing his mouth with his hands.

Ms. Brooks, if you’re there, we’re coming in now. We just want to make sure you’re alright.

I want to tell them to stop, but before I can say anything, two of them slam their shoulders into the door. They pound into it until it breaks open with a crack. There’s a puff of dust as they step inside.

Sorry, I say, I was planning on cleaning up the place this weekend. I wasn’t expecting any company.

One of the firemen looks at me, lifting his eyebrows. Then he takes off his helmet and jerks his head towards the bedroom.

They said it was coming from in there, he says.

I can already smell it, another mentions.

The four of them trudge through the living room, and I trail behind them. I don’t understand, I say, did someone report me for a bad smell? I can’t control what gets into the vents.

My voice is wavering, though. I realize I’m wringing my hands like my mom used to. They’re walking to my bedroom. I’m scared of what’s in there—what they will find. I have the feeling that I’ve let something terrible happen.

I talk to their backs: Um, excuse me, is this legal? Can you be here without my permission?

They go into the bedroom. Two of them cover their noses with their hands as they get close to the vent. They huddle up beneath it, looking up.

I don’t mean to be rude, I say to them. You have to understand, I’m quite busy. I have work tomorrow. Did my dad tell you to come because I didn’t answer his call? Well, I was planning on getting back to him. I’ll ring him right now and we can get this sorted.

Get the ladder, the leader says.

Another man walks out and comes back with a short metal ladder, which the leader uses to reach the ceiling vent. I don’t dare look up. The face that’s been haunting me must still be there. He unscrews until the metal top pops off. There’s a snapping sound and something large slides out of the hole into his arms. A gray hand flops against his back. The fireman standing next to him bends over and vomits onto the floor.

I sink to my knees. From here I can’t see the thing he’s holding.

Oh god, I say. What happened?

The leader swears and loses his balance on the way down. The thing falls from his arms and lands in front of my knees. It happens too fast for me to look away. There’s just the thud of a body falling against the floor, face-up. The head rolls slightly so it’s looking directly at me. I touch the face—open the eyes.

How did she get up there, one of the firemen asks through his fingers.

I don’t know, I answer.

Must have been through the roof, another one says. A kid in Trenton offed himself that way last summer.

I wrap my hands around the neck and lift it up. I look into my own eyes. There was something I needed to do but I can’t recall what it was. It was a cold winter. I lift up my rotting face so I can look at it once more before they take it away.

By Sara Paolozzi