What Sleeps Beneath the Door Chapter 1:
The Window Opposite Mine The window opposite mine is always half-open, even in winter. Frost clings to the glass, a delicate lace that fades by noon, but the window stays cracked, as if the air inside is too thick, too heavy to breathe. I don’t know who lives there. Not really. Sometimes I see a figure—a silhouette leaning, pausing, like someone looking for a lost thought. Once, a flash of silver hair, and I imagined an old woman. But it could be anyone. The light is always soft, the kind that turns faces to shadows. I watch the window because it reminds me of something I can’t name. Maybe it’s the silence, the way it breathes with me. Or maybe it’s because in this building, with its echoing corridors and chipped tile floors, silence has a way of telling stories. My own window is clear, spotless, but it shows nothing. Just the street below, cracked asphalt, a leaning lamppost with a flickering bulb. Nothing changes there, except the seasons. And yet I keep looking.
Maybe because if you watch long enough, everything begins to move. Even the stillness. I was ten when my father taught me that. We were on the balcony of our old flat, the one with the peeling green paint and the railing that trembled if you leaned too hard. He told me to look—really look—at the sky. And I did. At first, it was just blue, a wide empty blue. But then I saw it—the way the clouds stretched, the tiny movements, the slow dance of light and shadow. “Nothing is still,” he’d said, his voice a low whisper against the wind. “Even silence moves. Even shadows.” I still think about that. About him. About how he saw the world, as something restless beneath the surface. I wonder if he saw me that way too—restless, even when I seemed calm.
He’s gone now. Not dead, just… gone. A door that closed without a sound. A window that never opened again. And I’m here, watching this other window, searching for something that doesn’t have a name. Across the street, the figure moves again. This time, a hand reaches out, draws the curtain slightly. Just a fraction. But it’s enough. A shift in the shadows, a breath caught between the glass and the cold. I lean forward, waiting. But the curtain falls still, and the light behind it dims. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. My own window reflects my face now, pale and ghostly, a whisper of someone half-forgotten. A door slams somewhere down the hall, a distant echo. I pull away from the glass, letting the street settle back into its empty hum. My phone vibrates—Ina, asking if I’m free tonight. I’m not. Or maybe I am, but I won’t be. The window opposite stays half-open.
And I stay here, watching, waiting, feeling the air grow colder without ever touching it. Chapter 2: The Postman Always Hurries Now The postman never used to hurry. He walked the cracked steps of our building like they were sacred, each footfall a slow, deliberate promise. Even the old women on the third floor would wave and smile at him, though they smiled at no one else. But now he rushes. I see him through the peephole, a blur of faded blue and tired shoulders. He leaves the letters in a slanting heap, a chaotic sprawl of paper half-swallowed by the rusted mailboxes. The sound of his hurried steps fades before I can even open the door. This morning, I pick through the pile. Gas bills, supermarket flyers, a folded sheet for a charity drive. And then—one envelope that isn’t the same. Pale blue, almost translucent, the kind you don’t see anymore. No return address, but my name, written in a slanted, looping hand that looks… familiar. I stare at it for a moment, feeling the cold seeping through the tiled hallway floor into my bare feet. The air smells like dust and damp, a thick scent that never leaves this building. A shiver crawls up my spine, but I can’t tell if it’s
🔖 Labels : What Sleeps, What Sleeps – Extrait 1
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