Chapter 3: Behind the Peephole

Click-clack, click-clack—the footsteps echoed up and down the hallway.

It was the kind of noise you’d expect at a gala, not a run-down apartment complex at 1AM. The odd rhythm—first heavy and solid, then sharp and high—made every hair on my body stand up. I could feel the thuds through the floorboards, like the building itself was shivering.

I don’t know how long I stood there before the sound finally faded.

Swallowing hard, I pressed my eye to the peephole, desperate to see if the thing had left.

My palms were slick with sweat. Every instinct screamed for me to run, but I couldn’t pull away.

What I saw made my skin crawl.

Right outside my door, a creature of indeterminate gender hunched over, struggling to stand upright.

Its skin looked washed-out, almost blue under the harsh hallway fluorescents. It hunched its shoulders, shifting awkwardly, like the borrowed shoes were pinching. It paused, cocked its head, and stared down at its own feet as if just remembering it had them.

It stared down at itself, as if realizing the shoes would give it away, then slipped off both the dress shoes and the pink heels.

The way it peeled them off was all wrong—fingers too long, joints bending at weird, wrong angles, moving like a broken puppet.

Its fingers were thin and bony, nails pitch-black.

Its exposed skin was paler than any living person’s…

I watched, paralyzed.

Suddenly, it turned and stared right at me.

Our eyes met—if you could call those things eyes. I froze, breath stuck in my throat. My guts turned to ice water. Did it know I was behind the tiny peephole?

I slapped my hand over my mouth, terrified to make a sound.

No doubt about it.

401 was right.

This thing wasn’t human.

It had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but its face was twisted and grotesque, and its stare said one thing: I want to eat you.