They Told Me To Endure Her, Until They Faced Her Nightmare Too Chapter 01

Hannah Shaw, the tenant directly below me, supposedly sleepwalked after midnight.

She never touched the other apartments on the fourth floor. Instead, she marched up to the fifth, pounding a heavy metal wedge against my deadbolt again and again.

When I demanded she pay for the damage, she cried and said she wasn’t conscious.

The neighbors just wanted me to shut up and go to sleep.

“She has a medical condition. Cut her some slack.”

“It’s the middle of the night. Just let it go and go to bed.”

The first time around, I put up with it until I couldn’t close my eyes at night, and until sleep deprivation cost me an account I’d spent six months landing.

Then she filmed my breakdown on the stairs and played the victim, claiming I was harassing someone with a medical condition.

When I woke up, the clock had reset to the night my lock was first damaged.

This time, I didn’t argue.

I replaced my wood door with a hollow, uninsulated steel door.

The next time Hannah swung that metal wedge, the echo tore through the entire stairwell like a struck anvil.

……

Thud. Thud. Thud.

I sat straight up.

The red numbers on the nightstand read 2:17 AM.

I stared at the clock, my chest seizing up.

I had thrown that clock out in the life before this. By the end, seeing 2:17 anywhere triggered a panic attack.

Yet here it was.

Another dull blow hit the wood outside.

I ran to the foyer barefoot and looked through the peephole.

Hannah was standing in the hall in pink pajamas, gripping a heavy metal doorstop and bashing it into the strike plate of my lock.

It was really happening again.

I started a voice recording on my phone and shouted through the door: “Hannah!”

Her arm halted in midair.

Across the landing, Unit 5B opened, and Wendy leaned out into the hallway.

“What’s going on out here?”

Hannah turned her head slowly, her eyes blank.

It took her two full seconds to yank her shoulders up in mock terror.

The doorstop dropped to the floor with a clatter.

“Where… where am I?”

She glanced at Wendy, then at my door. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Summer, I’m so sorry. Was I sleepwalking again?”

Inside, my hands went cold.

I lived in 5A; she rented 4A directly below.

Our walk-up had six floors with two units on each landing.

To reach my door, she had to leave her apartment, walk through the hall, and take an entire flight of stairs up.

The first time around, her very first visit jarred my deadbolt loose.

When I asked for repair costs, she slumped in the stairwell and sobbed.

Wendy told me to let it go. Derek from the sixth floor told me to let it go.

In the group chat, total strangers suddenly found the time to lecture me about basic human decency.

After that, she came every single night.

Sometimes at one in the morning. Sometimes at three.

I would just drift off before the slamming tore me awake.

On the morning of my final client pitch, she hammered the lock for nearly thirty minutes before dawn.

Running on zero sleep, I botched the presentation and sent the wrong rate sheets.

Six months of work, gone in an instant.

When I finally snapped and confronted her in the hallway, demanding why she only targeted my door, she held her phone up and recorded me screaming.

The building chat decided I was crazy.

They said she couldn’t help it, and that I was the one bullying a vulnerable tenant.

In the end, I was the one forced out.

Now my eyes were open, right back where the nightmare started.

“Summer, open up,” Wendy’s voice called from the hall.

I slipped the chain into the latch and opened the door a crack.

“The lock is jammed.”

Wendy looked at the dented frame, then reached out to steady Hannah.

“Call someone in the morning. Look how shaken up she is.”

Slippers dragged against the concrete stairs above.

Derek came down from 6A with a coat thrown over his shoulders, scowling.

“Are we going to sleep tonight or what? I have to be up at six-thirty.”

I looked at him. “She was bashing my door in.”

“I know, but she’s out of it, isn’t she?” He yawned.

“You can’t reason with someone who isn’t conscious. Yelling only makes it worse.”

Not a single person blamed her.

Hannah wiped her cheeks and let Wendy guide her toward the stairs.

At the turn of the landing, she looked back once.

I unlocked my phone and typed into the search bar:

[Which door bangs the loudest?]