My Neighbor Keeps Staring at His Door

Chapter 1: Door Closed

The first strange thing I noticed after Mr. Johnson disappeared was that his newspaper kept moving.

Every morning, the delivery boy threw it onto the same cracked square of concrete outside Apartment 14. By noon, it would be gone. Mr. Johnson’s curtains stayed closed. His car did not move. At night, no light showed beneath his door.

Still, the newspaper vanished.

I told myself the landlord collected it. Then I saw Monday’s paper lying there at seven in the morning and found the concrete bare when I checked again ten minutes later.

I had not heard a door open.

The other door stood wedged between Apartments 12 and 13 in the weak autumn sunlight. Its paint was the color of old teeth. It had no number or peephole. There should not have been space behind it. I had studied the windows and vents, trying to fit a hidden room where none could be.

Since the night Mr. Johnson stood before it, I had begun arranging my days around not looking.

I used the rear stairwell, tilted my blinds upward, and took out the trash before sunset—the kind of changes people make when they will not admit they are afraid.

Before moving into the complex, I had spent six years looking after my mother. Her illness began as forgetfulness and ended with her staring at me as if I had entered the wrong house. After she died, I packed what I could not throw away into three boxes and rented this apartment because nobody here knew me.

I had once planned to teach history. Instead, I worked in a warehouse office and ate lunch from the same blue container each day. My life had become quiet enough that nothing could be taken from it.