The Neighbor Who Was Watching Through the Wall

I rented a unit in an old subdivided house, and from the first week I could not shake the feeling of being watched in my own bedroom. It was not a ghost feeling. It was a person feeling, that prickle on the back of your neck when someone is looking at you. But I lived alone, and my door and windows were locked, and I told myself it was nerves in a new place.

The bedroom shared a wall with the next unit, which the landlord said was vacant. On that wall hung a framed picture that had been there when I moved in. I never questioned it.

One night the feeling was so strong I got up, turned on the light, and really looked at the room, and behind the frame, in the gap where it hung slightly off the wall, I saw it: a small hole drilled clean through the plaster, at the exact height of the bed, angled to see it.

I did not sleep in that room again. I called the landlord, and the police, and when they opened the "vacant" unit next door, they found a chair set up against the shared wall, positioned at the hole, a folded blanket on it, an empty cup, and a phone charger plugged into the outlet. Someone had been living in the empty unit, quietly, for who knows how long, sitting in that chair, watching me through the wall.

They did not find him that night. He had a way in through a basement door the landlord did not know was unlocked. I moved out within the week and I still, years later, check the walls of every room I sleep in, and I hang nothing over a hole I have not looked behind. The feeling of being watched, it turns out, is worth listening to.