The Door Across the Hall

I lived on the fourth floor of an old apartment building.

Across from my apartment was a small door.

Apartment 407.

It had been empty for as long as I could remember.

The landlord told me nobody had lived there for ten years.

Then one night, I noticed the lights were on.

I assumed someone had rented it.

But the next morning, the door was locked.

No furniture.

No name on the mailbox.

Nothing.

The following night, the lights came on again.

I asked the landlord.

He looked confused.

"That's impossible."

I showed him a photograph.

He became pale.

"Don't go inside."

Naturally, that made me even more curious.

A few days later, he finally told me the story.

A young woman had lived there ten years earlier.

She disappeared one night.

Nobody knew where she went.

The apartment had remained untouched since then.

But there was something the landlord had never told the police.

The woman had a little daughter.

The girl disappeared too.

I searched old newspaper archives.

Eventually, I found an article.

The girl had been found three months later living with relatives in another city.

The mother was never found.

I contacted the family.

They told me something unbelievable.

The woman had left because she was escaping an abusive relationship.

She had planned to return for her daughter.

But she never did.

Years later, her daughter had become an adult and moved back to the city.

She rented the apartment.

She had been turning on the lights every night.

Not because she believed her mother was there.

But because it was the only place where she still felt close to her.

The mystery wasn't a ghost.

It was someone trying to find home.