Storage Room

I recently moved in with my girlfriend. She lives in a Khrushchev-era building on the fifth, top floor. It's a two-bedroom apartment, and the only other residents are her grandmother and her mother, who is rarely home because she's mostly at work (she's a doctor). Space is tight, so we bought an air mattress to have some privacy and put it in the living room. We sleep on it.

One day, my girlfriend and I returned from the movies quite late. We went in, drank tea, smoked a cigarette, and went to bed. I sleep on the left side of the bed, and my face is directly opposite the storage room door. It's a typical Khrushchev-era storage room, where people usually store all sorts of unwanted junk for years to be thrown out during the spring cleaning. I've seen my girlfriend rummaging through it a couple of times, looking for her clothes, and I even went in there once while cleaning to put away bags of books. I remember I couldn't fall asleep for a long time. I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about something. The girl was snoring quietly at my side. Finally, little by little, I began to doze off. I don't know how much time passed, but I was awakened by rustling sounds coming from the door. At first, I thought it was the cat. I opened my eyes and peered into the darkness. I looked at the door, both sides. The cat was nowhere to be seen, but I heard a light tapping sound on the other side of the door, as if someone was running their fingers along it, searching for the doorknob.

I felt my insides tighten. Suddenly, the sounds died down. I peered through the darkness at the door. At first, I didn't notice anything, but when I looked down, I was speechless with horror. Below, from the crack between the door and the floor, fingers were sticking out, carefully probing the door from the outside. I froze, afraid to take another breath. They were ordinary human fingers—or so it seemed to me. It felt like someone had slipped a hand under the door to feel it.

The hand suddenly disappeared into the doorway, but not a couple of seconds later it reappeared, this time feeling the floor. I felt sick with fear, everything inside me froze, and tears streamed from my eyes. Then the hand disappeared again and immediately began gently pushing the door from the inside. Lord, thank my girlfriend for her habit of locking the pantry with a deadbolt... I jumped out of bed and turned on the light. The door didn't move, everything was quiet—but the slight but noticeable movement of the door from its original position confirmed that this wasn't a dream. I shook my girlfriend awake and told her we were coming to my place right now. I continued shaking all night.

 I never told the girl what really happened—I just said I was tired of her cat urinating everywhere. Maybe she figured something else was going on, but she didn't say anything. The strange thing is, her family has lived here for years, and no one has ever seen anything, or if they have, they don't report it...