Chapter 3: The Uncanny Footprints
Jake was dead to the world when my call blared through his phone.
"Dude, check the time. It's like the middle of the night—you tryna pull an all-nighter or what?" His voice was thick with sleep, gruff and annoyed.
"Get over here now. Something's wrong. Something bad."
The line crackled, and I heard the distinct sound of him jolting upright in bed—springs squeaking, blankets rustling.
"Jake? What's going on?" A woman's sleepy murmur drifted through the speaker—his girlfriend, Chloe.
"Go back to sleep, babe. My boy's in trouble. I gotta bounce."
A second later, there was a thud of footsteps, the jingle of keys, and the scrape of a front door slamming shut. Sounded like he hadn't even bothered with shoes.
"Jake, don't hang up. I—I'm kinda freaked out here." My voice shook, way more than I wanted it to.
"Chill, Ethan. I'm already in the truck. Be there in ten."
Keeping the line open helped steady my nerves. I wasn't the type to scare easy—not before last night, anyway. But this? This was different. Every part of it reeked of something I couldn't wrap my head around.
I could maybe buy the whole "sleepwalking to the couch and turning on the TV" thing, even though I'd never sleepwalked a day in my life. But the concrete footprints? There was no way to explain those away. No way.
Twenty minutes later, headlights cut through the dark, and Jake's beat-up pickup skidded to a stop at the curb. He hopped out, wearing nothing but sweatpants and socks, hair sticking up in a mess.
"Alright, spill. Who's haunting you? A hot ghost chick? Did she try to hit on you?" He jogged over, concern edging out the half-joke in his tone.
I rambled through the whole story— the midnight knock, the girl in red stilettos asking for Li Xiumei, waking up on the couch, the TV blaring, the footprints. Every single detail poured out of me, fast and frantic.
Jake's eyes went wide. He leaned against a tree, scrubbing a hand over his face, and just stared at me for a solid minute.
"Bro. You're messing with me, right? This is some kind of prank?"
"Does it look like I'm pranking you?!" I snapped, gesturing at my bare feet, my rumpled clothes, the way my hands were still trembling. "I ran out of that house so fast I forgot my laptop! My laptop!"
Jake must've seen the genuine terror on my face, because he stopped joking. He hesitated for a second, then nodded.
"Okay. Okay, I believe you. Kinda. Let's go back inside. See if we can find these mythical footprints of yours."
My stomach dropped. The thought of stepping back into that house made my skin crawl—but I had to prove I wasn't crazy. So I followed him, my legs feeling like lead, back into Maplewood Estates, back into building 3, up the creaky stairs to 502.
Jake pushed the door open (I'd left it ajar when I bolted) and flipped on the lights.
The living room was spotless.
Polished hardwood floors, shiny and clean. Not a single smudge of concrete. Not a trace of the narrow, stiletto-shaped footprints that had been seared into my memory. Nothing.
Jake turned to me, arms crossed, an unimpressed look on his face. "Uh. Where are these footprints again? Did they evaporate?"
I pointed at the spot where they'd been—right by the couch, leading straight to the master bedroom door. "Right there! They were right there! Clear as day! I saw them!" My voice cracked, desperate.
Who the hell would've cleaned them up? And why? I'd only been gone twenty minutes. Someone would've had to break in, scrub the floors spotless, and bolt—all in the time it took Jake to drive over.
"Dude. You had me this close to believing in ghosts." Jake sighed, raking a hand through his hair. "Maybe the lack of sleep is messing with your head—"
"I'm not crazy!" I cut him off, yanking my laptop out of the duffel bag I'd dumped by the door. "The cameras. We'll check the cameras. They don't lie."
Jake's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, right. The cameras. Smart move."
I fumbled with the laptop, my fingers still shaking, and pulled up the footage. We skipped straight to 11 PM—the time I'd climbed into the master bedroom bed. The feed showed me settling in, turning off the lamp, and passing out cold.
Then, at exactly 12:00 AM—midnight—a shadow appeared at the front door. A sharp rap-rap-rap echoed through the speakers. The girl in black, her red stilettos glowing faintly in the dim hallway light, pressed her face to the peephole. Just like I'd described.
Jake leaned in, his eyes glued to the screen. "Okay. So the girl's real. Not a ghost. Yet."
I fast-forwarded the footage to 20x speed, my heart hammering in my chest. We watched the minutes tick by in a blur—me, still passed out in the master bedroom. The house, quiet as a grave. No one coming in. No one going out.
Then, at 2:47 AM, the feed glitched.
A flicker of static, bright and harsh, that lasted for exactly ten seconds. When it cleared, the master bedroom was empty.
And there I was—lying on the living room couch, dead asleep, the TV flickering to life beside me.
No movement. No sleepwalking. No explanation. One second I was in the bedroom, the next? I was on the couch. Like I'd been teleported.
But that wasn't the worst part.
As we leaned in, squinting at the screen, Jake let out a choked sound. I froze.
On the floor, right where I'd said they'd be, the concrete footprints glowed faintly in the TV's blue light. Narrow, sharp, perfect stiletto shapes—leading straight from the front door to the master bedroom. And then… stopping. Vanishing into thin air.
And then, right as the camera caught it, a single red stiletto heel appeared in the frame—resting on the threshold of the master bedroom, like someone had set it down and walked away.
The static hit again, this time longer—thirty seconds of white noise that drowned out everything. When it faded, the heel was gone. The footprints were gone. The floor was clean.
Silence hung in the air, thick and heavy. Jake stared at the screen, his face pale. I couldn't breathe.
Neither of us noticed the master bedroom door slowly creak shut.
Or the soft, breathy whisper that drifted out of the darkness, quiet enough to be mistaken for the wind.
"Li Xiumei is home."