Behind me, something breathed.

It wasn’t an adult’s breath.

It was tiny.

Wet.

Like when a child has cried so much that they run out of air, and their chest just hitches.

I wanted to turn around.

I swear on my mother’s grave I wanted to.

But Rebecca’s voice was still scraping against the inside of my head.

“Don’t turn around.”

So I kept staring at the water tank.

Staring at the black lid.

Watching the rusted wire move slowly, as if something inside were untangling it with absolute patience.

“Ethan?” the name slipped out of me.

The breathing behind me stopped.

The entire rooftop went dead silent.

No dogs.

No cars.

Not even the buzz of the lightbulb.

Nothing.

Then I felt something cold touch my calf.

I lowered my gaze without moving my neck.

A tiny hand.

Small.

Purplish-blue.

With peeling, torn fingernails.

It was gripping my sweatpants.

I didn’t scream.

Not because I was brave.

Because fear clamped my throat shut, as if someone had shoved a wet rag deep down my windpipe.

The little hand squeezed.

And a voice, pressed right against my back, whispered:

“It’s not me.”

I felt my knees buckle.

“Who are you?” I barely managed to ask.

The voice returned, but now it sounded like many voices speaking all at the same time underwater.

“The ones who are missing.”

Then the cell phone vibrated in my hand.

Another audio message.

This time it didn’t say “Becky 2A.”

It said:

“Mom.”

My mother had been dead for nine years.

I dropped the phone.

It fell face up on the concrete.

The screen lit up on its own.

The audio began to play.

First came a song.

A lullaby.

The very same one my mom used to sing to me when I was a kid and was afraid to sleep alone.

Then, her voice:

“My boy… don’t turn on the water.”

The water tank slammed.

THUD!

The lid jumped.

The wire snapped taut.

The tiny hand let go of my sweatpants.

And that’s when I ran.

I don’t know how I reached the stairs without turning around.

I flew down them two at a time, slipping, hitting the walls, feeling something behind me dragging its wet feet.

Slosh.

Slosh.

Slosh.

Like barefoot soles on concrete.

When I hit the second floor, I banged on the first door I saw.

Apartment 2B.

Old Man Arthur.

An old guy who sold bootleg DVDs and slept with a machete under his bed.

“Arthur! Open up! Open up, please!”

Nobody answered.

I pounded harder.

“Open the damn door!”

From inside, his voice came out muffled:

“Who is it?”

“It’s Matthew! From 4C!”

Silence. Then slow footsteps.

The peephole went dark.

“I can’t open it for you,” he said.

“What?”

“Rebecca told me not to open the door for anyone coming down wet.”

I looked down at myself.

My legs were soaked.

Not from rain.

Not from the blanket.

From black water.

My sweatpants were dripping as if I had waded up to my waist in a cistern.

“Arthur, please…”

His voice trembled.

“She sent me an audio message, too.”

The blood drained completely from my face.

“When?”

“At 2:17.”

Every single door down the hallway began to crack open.

A sliver of light.

An eye.

A chain lock holding fast.

The building was awake.

Everyone had heard it.

Everyone had received something.

Mrs. Gable, from 3A, was weeping behind her door.

“My son called me,” she said. “My son is out in California, Matthew… but he spoke to me with a little boy’s voice.”

Mrs. Miller was praying with a rosary.

Darnell, who never believed in anything, was sitting on his doorstep with a handgun, white as a sheet.

“My dad talked to me,” he murmured. “He told me the water tank wasn’t filled with water.”

From upstairs came a loud slam.

THUD!

Then another.

THUD!

And then, a sound I will never forget.

Laughter.

Children’s laughter.

Many of them.

Tiny.

Joyful.

But muffled and choked.

As if they were laughing with mouths full of mud.

Mrs. Gable shrieked and slammed her door shut.

I bolted down to the central courtyard.

The building smelled even worse down there.

The stench was rolling down the pipes.

Rotten water.

Rust.

Sweet, decaying flesh.

And something else.

Something ancient.

In the middle of the courtyard stood Rebecca’s sister.

The one who had cried out of obligation at the funeral.

Her name was Nancy.

She was wearing a pink bathrobe, slippers, and her hair was a mess.

In her hand, she held Rebecca’s cell phone.

Not a call.

Not a text.

The physical phone.

The one that was supposed to be turned off, lost, packed away with her things.

“Where did you get that?” I asked her.

Nancy raised her face.

Her eyes were swollen, but not from crying.

From not sleeping for years.

“It was on my nightstand,” she said. “It rang all by itself.”

The phone vibrated.

Everyone standing in the courtyard backed away.

Nancy looked at the screen.

“It’s her.”

“Don’t answer it,” Old Man Arthur called down from the stairs.

Nancy answered.

She put it on speaker.

At first, all we heard was water dripping.

Then Rebecca.

But she didn’t sound dead anymore.

She sounded awake.

“Nancy.”

Her sister covered her mouth.

“Becky…”

“Tell them not to open the water tank.”

“What did you do, Rebecca?” Nancy sobbed. “What did you do with Ethan?”

The static crackled.

And when Rebecca spoke again, her voice wasn’t a plea anymore.

It was pure rage.

“I didn’t leave him there.”

Nancy stopped crying.

“No…”

“You did.”

The courtyard froze solid.

Nancy lowered the cell phone slowly.

We all stared at her.

Mrs. Miller crossed herself.

“What is she saying?”

Nancy began to shake her head.

“No. No. It wasn’t like that.”

The cell phone spoke again, even though Nancy no longer had it to her ear.

“Ethan saw something he shouldn’t have.”

The screen flickered.

Suddenly, it wasn’t just audio anymore.

It was video.

You could see the rooftop.

But not the rooftop from tonight.

The one from four years ago.

It was pouring rain.

The yellow lightbulb was swinging in the wind.

Ethan appeared in the frame, skinny, wearing a dinosaur t-shirt, standing right next to the black water tank.

“Auntie?” the boy was saying. “Why are you pouring that into the water?”

The camera shook.

We couldn’t see who was filming.

But we could hear Nancy.

Younger.

Harsher.

“Go downstairs, Ethan.”

“I’m going to tell my mommy.”

Then another shadow appeared.

A man.

Nancy’s husband.

Roger.

The one who had vanished from the building a week after the boy disappeared.

The one we all thought had skipped town because of debts.

Roger grabbed Ethan by the arm.

The boy screamed.

“Let me go!”

Nancy said:

“Shut him up. He’s going to get us in trouble.”

The video cut off right as Roger lifted the boy up.

Nancy fell to her knees.

“I didn’t mean to… I didn’t mean to…”

Darnell raised his gun.

“What did you do to him?”

Nancy wept with her hands flat on the concrete.

“Roger was stealing gasoline. He was storing it in drums. That night he was mixing chemicals to mask the smell. Ethan saw us. He said he was going to tell Rebecca. Roger panicked. He just wanted to lock him away for a little bit. Just for a bit.”

“In the water tank?” I asked, a wave of nausea hitting me.

Nancy looked up at me.

And in her face, I saw the truth before she even spoke.

“The water tank was empty.”

Upstairs, something slammed again.

THUD!

Nancy screamed.

“I told him to take him out! I told him! But the police showed up over some other matter, we all ran, and when we came back… when we came back, he wasn’t crying anymore.”

Mrs. Miller covered her ears.

“Lord Jesus, have mercy…”

“Roger said if we talked, they’d lock us all up. That I’d go to prison too. That Rebecca would never forgive me. That it was better to say his father took him.”

“And Rebecca?” I asked.

Nancy wiped her nose with her sleeve.

“She knew.”

Nobody breathed.

“When?”

Nancy looked at her sister’s phone.

“Since the first month.”

I felt my heart sink into my chest.

“That’s why she went up every night.”

Nancy nodded.

“She found one of his shoes stuck behind the tank. She showed it to me. She asked if I knew anything. I swore I didn’t. That night she told me she was going to open it.”

“And?”

Nancy closed her eyes.

“Roger had already come back. He threatened her. He told her if she opened that water tank, he would make other kids from the building disappear. Rebecca stopped talking. But she kept going up. Every single night. Like she was waiting for Ethan to answer her.”

The cell phone vibrated again.

Rebecca’s voice came out soft, gentle.

“He did answer me.”

The back staircase began to drip.

First a little bit.

Then in torrents.

Black water cascading down from the roof, step by step.

But it wasn’t falling normally.

It was crawling.

As if it were searching for feet.

Mrs. Gable screamed from upstairs:

“It’s backing up through the drains!”

Doors flew open.

Neighbors running.

Children crying.

People grabbing bags, religious statues, blankets.

But the main gate of the complex—that blue iron gate that was always open—slammed shut.

CLANG!

The padlock snapped shut on its own.

Trapped.

The courtyard erupted into screams.

Nancy crawled toward the stairs.

“Rebecca! Forgive me!”

The black water pooled up to the first floor.

And then we saw the tracks.

Not one.

Not two.

Dozens.

Tiny wet footprints coming down the walls, down the steps, along the railings.

Children.

So many children.

Some from the building.

Some not.

Footprints of different sizes.

From different years.

As if that water tank hadn’t just kept Ethan.

As if it had been a mouth.

As if it had been swallowing for a very long time.

Darnell fired his gun into the air.

The bullet blew out an overhead light.

Darkness shattered over us.

And in the gloom, standing on the second-floor landing, Ethan appeared.

Or what was left of him.

He was still six years old.

The same dinosaur t-shirt stuck to his body.

His skin bloated.

His eyes pitch black, filled to the brim with water.

His mouth open, but not to scream.

To let out a dark, thin trickle that leaked down his chin.

Nancy saw him and soiled herself.

“Ethan…”

The boy tilted his head.

“My mommy is tired of waiting.”

Behind him, Rebecca appeared.

In her gray bathrobe.

Her hair loose.

Her face pale with the recent coldness of death.

But her eyes…

Her eyes were alive with agony.

She didn’t look at anyone else.

Only at Nancy.

“I asked you for one thing, sister,” she said. “Just one. Not to lie to me about my son.”

Nancy began to beat her chest.

“Forgive me, Becky. Forgive me. I was scared.”

Rebecca took a step down.

The water rose to our ankles.

It was ice-cold.

“I was scared too.”

She took another step.

“But I looked for him.”

Another.

“I cried for him.”

Another.

“I listened to him scratch for four years.”

Nancy shrieked:

“It was Roger! He put him in there! He killed him!”

Rebecca smiled.

A sad, hollow smile.

“Roger is already in the water tank.”

Nancy’s phone illuminated.

A photo appeared on the screen.

Roger.

Inside the water tank.

His mouth wide open, his eyes torn out, his hands pressed flat against the black walls, as if he had tried to claw his way out for days.

Nancy vomited.

Rebecca reached the courtyard.

The water covered her feet, but her bathrobe didn’t get wet.

Ethan walked beside her, holding her hand.

For a second, they looked completely normal.

A mother and her son walking down to get bread.

A neighbor and her little boy.

A life that had been stolen from them.

Rebecca looked at me.

I felt her gaze pierce right through me.

“Matthew.”

“Yes,” I said, crying without even realizing it.

“You actually listened.”

I didn’t know what to say.

She pointed toward the main gate.

The padlock fell to the ground with a heavy thud.

“Get the children out.”

Nobody moved.

Rebecca raised her voice.

“Now!”

The scream made the windows rattle.

We all snapped out of it.

We scooped up kids.

Pushed open doors.

Helped the elderly out.

The water followed us, but it didn’t catch us.

As if Rebecca were holding it back by pure force of will.

I carried Mrs. Gable’s granddaughter and ran out into the street.

The cold East Baltimore air hit my face like a blessed slap.

People were coming out crying, praying, barefoot.

From the outside, we looked back at the dark apartment building.

Only the rooftop had light.

The black water tank was silhouetted against the night sky.

Nancy didn’t make it out.

Nobody helped her.

Not because we didn’t want to.

Because when she tried to cross the threshold, the water grabbed her by the ankles.

She screamed.

She dug her fingernails into the concrete floor.

“Matthew! Help me!”

I took a step forward.

Rebecca appeared behind her.

She shook her head.

Not with hatred.

With exhaustion.

Nancy was dragged backward inside.

Her screams echoed up the stairs.

First floor.

Second.

Third.

The roof.

Then we heard the lid of the water tank burst open.

A heavy splash.

A shriek.

And then silence.

The police arrived half an hour later.

The firefighters went up at dawn.

I was sitting on the curb, wrapped in a blanket, with my dead phone in my hand.

When they opened the water tank, they didn’t find Nancy.

They didn’t find Roger.

They didn’t find Ethan.

Only clean water.

So clean you could see right to the bottom.

And at the bottom, arranged in a perfect circle, were children’s shoes.

Twenty-seven pairs.

Some brand new.

Others rotted away.

Some from decades ago.

Among them, a tiny blue flip-flop with a dinosaur on it.

Ethan’s.

The apartment complex was condemned and boarded up.

They said it was a contaminated water leak.

They said mass hysteria.

They said Nancy had skipped town out of guilt.

They said a lot of things, because people need normal words to be able to sleep at night.

I never went back to live there.

I moved in with an aunt in Queens, New York.

I changed my number.

I threw my old phone away.

But sometimes, at 2:17 in the morning, any phone near me will vibrate.

It doesn’t matter if it’s mine.

It doesn’t matter if it’s turned off.

First comes the static.

Then water.

Then Rebecca.

She doesn’t sound scared anymore.

She sounds at peace.

She always says the exact same thing:

“Thank you for not opening it.”

And afterward, you can hear Ethan, a little further off, like he’s playing on a rooftop that no longer exists.

“Mommy, can we go now?”

The first time it happened, I cried.

The second time, I prayed.

The third time, I finally understood.

Rebecca didn’t want us to open the water tank to find her son.

She wanted us to get the living out before the dead collected what was theirs.

Because there are places that don’t just keep secrets.

They ferment them.

And when they finally burst, water doesn’t come out.

Everything people thought they had buried comes pouring out instead.

So, if early some morning you ever hear scratching inside a water tank, don’t go near it alone.

Don’t ask who’s in there.

Don’t press your ear against it.

And for the love of God, whatever you do, don’t open the lid.

Sometimes the dead aren’t asking for help.

Sometimes they are just letting you know they are already coming for someone.