The Apartment Upstairs

When Mia moved into the old brownstone on 17th Street, her landlord told her one thing: Don’t worry about the noise above. It’s just the pipes. But it wasn’t.

It was the apartment directly above hers that had stood empty for three years, since a young couple had died in what the authorities called a tragic accident — a faulty gas heater, they said. A silent tragedy, the sort that people forget about by the time the next headline arises. But Mia remembered. She’d read up on dirty walls before she signed the lease. She liked the morbid symmetry of it. She was alone; they had one another. She was fleeing from love; they had perished with it. At 2 a.m. every night, she'd hear footsteps—soft, rhythmically pacing, like someone walking barefoot back and forth. Once, she claimed to hear a laugh — low and fond, like someone laughing at an inside joke. Another time, the sound of a door opening … then closing. She reassured herself that it was the house settling.

But on Oct. 29, almost a year after she moved in, Mia was washing the dishes about 9:30 p.m. when she saw a light flickering from the upstairs window. Her heart seized. There was no power in that apartment. She knew — she’d already gone to the breaker box after the power had gone out in her unit weeks ago. The next night, she took the stairs.

The door to 3B was unlocked. The air within was chill with a hint of lavender and burnt toast. A thin layer of dust covered everything — except the kitchen table. And on the tray, there were two steaming cups of tea. A dusty turntable, a record playing soft jazz. No one was there.

She should’ve run. She should've called someone. But she didn’t. But according to the context, she shifts her appeal, chastising decorum and tone, and her family's lost estate, Marstow, which has a haunted wing.

There was silence in the room for a moment. Then the chair opposite her was pulled slightly back — only enough to let her know that someone had taken a seat.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked. A soft wind caressed her face, as though hands were drawing a strand of hair behind her ear.

After that night, Mia made her way to 3B in various ways. She began to speak more. About her ex, who left her because he insisted she didn’t know how to love. And the parents who never really saw her. About how loneliness didn’t sound like silence — it sounded like talking to yourself and laughing when you were humored. And always, the ghosts were listening.

One night, she left a note: "Did it hurt? Dying together? Or did love make it easier?"

By morning, the note was gone. Instead, there was a short reply, in faded ink, it was written: "Love doesn’t stop at death. That is why it’s a blessing and a curse.”

Mia wept, something she hadn’t done in years. Gradually, people began remarking that she seemed happier, lighter. She laughed more. She began dating again. Carefully. Honestly. She’d told them about the ghosts. Most laughed. Some left. But one stayed. Finally, when she moved out, she left the following teacup and note in 3B:

“Thank you for showing me how to love the living again.” After that, she never heard footsteps.

But at other times, as she passed the brownstone, she would glance up. And the light in the upstairs window would flicker once, as if in farewell.