My neighbor’s wake was held yesterday, but early this morning she sent me a voice note asking me to go down to the water tank because “that’s where she left the boy.” The worst part was that she’s lived alone since her son disappeared four years ago.

The scratching inside the water tank stopped dead, and the silence felt heavier than the noise ever did. I wanted to pray, but I even forgot the words.

The phone was still in my hand, warm, vibrating slightly. Another voice note arrived. I didn’t want to hear it.

Then, something touched my heel.

It wasn’t a hand. It was more like small, wet fingers that rested for a second on my bare foot and then pulled away. I felt the water trickling between my toes. My instinct screamed at me to run, but Maru’s voice kept buzzing in my head: If he already saw you, do not turn around.

I stayed facing the water tank, watching as the lid lifted barely half an inch and then fell back down.

Scratch…

Scratch…

Like soft nails, not hard ones. As if something didn’t want to come out yet, but needed you to know it was still there.

With my eyes locked on the black rim of the tank, I managed to unlock the phone by pure reflex. The audio hadn’t played yet. I pressed it with my thumb without looking at the screen. Maru’s voice came out low, broken, her breathing ragged.

“It’s not my boy. Don’t speak kindly to it. Don’t ask its name. And if it says ‘Mommy’s here,’ don’t believe it.”

I felt my stomach drop. Downstairs, in the apartment courtyard, a hallway light bulb popped. Then another. Then everything went mute again. No dogs, no cars, no drunks on the street. Nothing. It was as if the entire neighborhood had pulled its head under a blanket.

The scratching stopped. And then I heard the laughter.

It was coming from behind me.

It was a child’s laugh, yes, but not from a game. It was a low, muffled laugh, like someone laughing with a mouth full of water. Tears filled my eyes from pure terror. Not because I was brave or stupid, but because the body sometimes weeps when it doesn’t know what else to do. I took a step back without turning, feeling around with my foot.

I stepped on something soft. A tiny foot.

The laughter cut off. And a voice, right against my waist, whispered:

“Don’t step on me, neighbor.”

I wanted to scream and I couldn’t. My throat closed up as if it were filled with dirt. I took another step, this time to the side, and hit the damp roof wall. The concrete was freezing.

“My mommy left me here,” the voice said. “She told me you were going to open up for me.”

I didn’t answer. I remembered everything they whispered in the building about Maru since her boy died. That she had become strange. That she talked to herself. That every night she went up to the roof with a glass of milk. That sometimes they found her sitting by the back water tank, hugging her legs, her gaze lost. That once they found her saying “he already ate, he’s already asleep,” even though she lived alone.

I never played along with the gossip. I felt sorry for her. After her son disappeared, the woman faded away bit by bit, like a candle’s flame. Thinner, quieter, hollower. But I never thought…

The child’s voice came back, closer to my ear.

“You have wrestler soles. Just like the man who came that night.”

My heart pounded so hard I felt dizzy. That night.

Four years ago, I was still working as a mover at the Hunts Point Market and I used to come home exhausted. That night, it rained hard. I remember going up to the roof because the drain was overflowing. I saw Maru by the water tank, yes. I also saw someone else. A man standing on the other side, half-hidden by the shadow of the laundry room. I thought it was a relative or the boy’s father, though Maru never mentioned either. The man went down the service stairs quickly when he heard me arrive. The only things I managed to see were his boots: wide soles, a diamond tread pattern.

Just like mine.

Not because they were the same ones. Because half the city wore cheap market boots. But in that instant, I felt the air leave my lungs.

“I didn’t open for you,” I managed to say, almost in a whisper.

The child let out a little giggle again.

“Not for me.”

The tank thudded from the inside. This time it wasn’t a scratch; it was a heavy blow. Then another. The lid lifted higher, pushed from within, and the old wire groaned until it nearly snapped.

My phone vibrated with a call. Not an audio. A call.

Maru Apt 3B

My legs buckled. I answered without thinking. At first, there was nothing but a simmering sound, like oil on a low heat. Then Maru’s voice, distant, as if speaking from a room full of water:

“Did he talk to you yet?”

I said nothing.

“Don’t answer him things I didn’t teach him,” she whispered. “He repeats to learn. And when he learns, he no longer needs the one he copied.”

The call cut off.

The child pressed his forehead against my back. I felt it. A cold little head. Wet hair. A smell of stagnant water and old bleach.

“I don’t like your voice,” he said. “I liked my mommy’s.”

And in that instant, I understood something worse than any ghost: whatever was behind me didn’t sound like a child because it was a child. It sounded like a child because someone had taught it how. Like a dark parrot. Like a void learning to fill itself with other people’s voices.

The wire on the water tank snapped. The lid hit the floor with a thud that echoed across the roof.

I didn’t turn around, but I saw the shadow move in front of me, stretched across the concrete by the dying moonlight. It wasn’t the shadow of a child. It was too long. Too thin. Like someone stuffed into a tight sack, with incredibly long arms and a tilted head.

Something wet dripped from the edge of the tank. Then something else. Then many things.

They were footprints. They marked themselves one by one on the floor, as if someone invisible were walking out of the water. They weren’t coming toward me. They were going toward the stairs.

Downstairs.

Toward the rooms.

I thought of the lady in 1A who slept with oxygen. Of the twins in 2C. Of the watchman snoring by the door. Of everyone down there, tucked inside their thin walls, not knowing that something had just climbed out of the building’s water tank.

“Maru,” I said to the dead phone, like a fool, “what do I do?”

And the answer came, but not from the phone. It came from the stairs. With Maru’s voice.

“Neighbor… bring him down with me.”

The child pulled away from my back. His splashing footsteps moved slowly away.

“Mommy’s here,” he crooned.

I didn’t know which of the two voices was worse: Maru’s rising from the darkness or the child’s answering her with that cheerful obedience. Because Maru was dead. And because the voice coming up the stairs didn’t sound tired or sad like in the audios.

It sounded happy.

I finally turned halfway around, slowly, my whole body shaking. The spot where I had felt the child was empty. There was only a small, dark, round puddle, and in the middle floated a blue marble.

I recognized it. I had given it to Maru’s son a week before he disappeared. He had shown it off to me all day, saying it had “a sky eye” inside. I picked it up with two fingers, and it was warm.

From the stairs, Maru’s voice was heard again, now on the last flight:

“Don’t let him go down alone.”

I finally peeked into the open water tank. I shouldn’t have. I knew it as soon as I did.

There was no water inside.

There was dirt.

Black, overturned, damp earth, like a freshly opened grave. And buried halfway, I saw a mud-covered toy, then a small child’s t-shirt stuck to the wall, then something white that at first I thought was plastic, until I understood it wasn’t.

I backed away with a gasp and bumped into someone. A freezing hand closed my fingers over the marble.

“Shhh,” Maru whispered in my ear. “If he already found you, we can still hide the others.”

I tried to break free, but she held me with a strength impossible for her thin body. Then I saw her out of the corner of my eye. She was wearing the same cream-colored dress she was buried in. Her makeup was smeared. Dirt was caked on her temple. And she had a wide, massive, maternal smile.

Only, she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking toward the stairs, where something was climbing up on all fours, leaving wet footprints—slowly, patiently, repeating with the voices of all the neighbors who had already woken up:

“Open up.”

“It’s me.”

“Don’t be long.”

“I’m cold.”

Maru pushed me against the rim of the water tank and shoved the marble into my mouth.

“Keep the eye for him,” she whispered. “I’ll keep him busy.”

And before I could spit it out, she let go of me and walked toward it with open arms, like a mother who finally sees her son return after years.

The last thing I heard before I reached into my pocket and felt another phone vibrating—one that wasn’t mine—was Maru’s voice, sweet and happy, saying:

“Finally, my love. This time I brought another one for you to stay.”

Part 3:

I didn’t spit it out.

Not because I was obeying Maru, but because as soon as I tried to move my tongue, I felt the glass pulsing inside my mouth—hot, alive—as if it weren’t a marble but a real eye, a tiny, wide-awake one, latching onto the center of my tongue to look out through me.

Maru advanced toward the thing climbing the stairs on all fours. She didn’t run. She didn’t hesitate. She walked straight ahead with that motherly smile that no longer distinguishes between relief and damnation.

The thing also stopped when it saw her.

I could barely breathe. I remained pressed against the rim of the water tank, with the black earth at my back and the smell of old dampness filling my nose. From where I stood, I could only see its hands: small, child-like hands, resting on the top step with an impossible delicacy. Then, the head emerged.

It wasn’t a child.

It was the idea of a child, stitched together from scraps. The forehead was too wide. The eyes were set too low. The mouth was poorly placed, as if someone had tried to assemble a face guided only by descriptions. The hair fell wet over its face, but it didn’t look like hair; it looked like slime, black threads stuck to the skull. And the skin… parts were smooth like a freshly bathed creature, while others were cracked, with dirt packed into the crevices.

“Mommy,” it said with a voice that wasn’t just one voice.

There was his own, thin and childish. Beneath it was Maru’s. Deeper still was the watchman’s. The lady’s from Apt 1A. And mine, too.

Maru opened her arms.

“Finally,” she whispered. “Now you finally recognize me.”

The thing tilted its head. It smiled. Something in its neck cracked like a damp branch breaking.

“No,” it said. “But you always let me in.”

And it lunged.

I didn’t see exactly what happened next. They became a single blur of black and cream—a heap of nails, wet fabric, and dirt. Maru didn’t scream. That was the worst part. Anyone else would have screamed. She didn’t. Instead, it sounded like she was humming a lullaby through her teeth, a “shhh, shhh, it’s okay, my love, it’s okay,” while the thing pinned her to the concrete.

I reacted late. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the other phone, the one I had felt vibrating that wasn’t mine. The screen was shattered and it was covered in mud. I recognized the faded floral case. It was Maru’s. I had seen it a thousand times in the building, always with a small prayer card of the Child Jesus taped to the back.

It was still vibrating. I answered.

There was no greeting. Only a gasp. Then Maru’s voice. But not the Maru on the roof. The other one. The real one. The tired one. The broken one. The dead one.

“If you are hearing this,” she said through the static, “it’s because I ran out of time.”

My entire body went cold. In front of me, the Maru in the cream dress was still struggling with the thing on the floor, leaving trails of wet earth as she writhed. But the voice on the phone kept talking, clear at intervals, as if it had been recorded in a hurry.

“I am not the first to see that thing enter the tank. Nor am I the first it has taken a child from. I learned too late. It doesn’t look for children because it likes children. It looks for them because they fit easily where no one checks. Because they cry with the right voice. Because a mother will open any door if she thinks she hears her own.”

The thing lifted its face from Maru. It saw me. Not my eyes—my intent. It saw me. And it smiled with a mouth smeared with dirt. I took a step back. The marble vibrated against my teeth.

“If I gave it to you,” the recording continued, “it was so it wouldn’t copy you completely. As long as you keep the eye, it looks at you from the inside and gets confused. It doesn’t quite know which voice to take from you first.”

The creature stood up. Maru lay below, motionless, her dress torn at the shoulder, her hands still stretched toward it as if she wanted to hold it again.

“Don’t go down,” the recording said. “Whatever happens, don’t let it reach the rooms. If it gets down there, it will knock door to door with the voice of whoever they love most. And there is always someone who opens.”

The creature took a step toward me. Then another. It didn’t come fast. It came steadily. As if it already knew that I was its prize, sooner or later.

“What do I do?” I tried to say, but with the marble in my mouth, only a stupid sound came out.

The recording answered anyway, as if she had heard me from another time.

“The dirt in the tank doesn’t imprison it. It feeds it. If it has already come out, give it back a name. A real one. One that belongs to it.”

The recording cut off.

I watched it approach while my head tried to find meaning. A real name. Which one? Maru’s boy had disappeared at age five. Everyone in the building called him “Kid,” “Shorty,” “Gordo,” “son.” Hardly anyone ever used his name.

The thing opened its mouth.

“Neighbor,” it said with the child’s voice. “I’m cold.”

The marble dug into one of my canines. And then I remembered. It wasn’t the name. It was the blue marble.

“The sky eye,” the boy had said that afternoon, running around the courtyard with his knees covered in dust. I had asked him what the marble’s name was, and he, very seriously, replied: “It doesn’t have a name. I am named Emmett.”

Emmett.

The moment I thought it, the thing stopped. Its long fingers twitched. I thought the name again with such force I felt my temples might burst.

Emmett.

The creature took a step back. The air on the roof suddenly plummeted, as if the entire night had been shoved down a well. A whimper came from inside the water tank. Not a growl. Not a moan. A whimper of a sleeping child having a nightmare.

“Emmett,” I managed to say, finally, even though I nearly swallowed the marble.

The thing doubled over. Its knees snapped backward. Its mouth opened too wide. From inside, not one voice emerged, but many, all at the same time, bursting against each other: Maru’s, the watchman’s, a woman’s I didn’t know, a very old man’s, a baby’s, and mine. All of them shrieked as if they were being squeezed.

“Emmett!” I shouted.

And this time, the name didn’t hit the thing. It hit the tank. The dirt inside began to move. First slowly, as if it were breathing. Then it seethed.

Hands. I don’t know how many. I didn’t want to count them. Tiny hands, large hands, hands with bitten nails, hands with fingers bloated from water—they began to peek out from the dirt and grab the rim from the inside. The creature let out a wordless howl and tried to run toward the stairs, but the concrete beneath its feet filled with thick, black mud that clung to its legs.

Maru, the one on the floor, opened her eyes. I could have sworn she was dead. But she opened them and looked at me without a smile, without madness—just like the neighbor she always was, just for a second.

“Again,” she told me, with the most human voice I heard all night. “Don’t let it take the name again.”

The creature yanked toward the stairs. Below, doors began to be heard. Thuds. Sleepy voices. A woman asking who was up there. A baby crying. The watchman coughing.

There was no time.

I grabbed the lid of the water tank as best I could. It weighed a ton. The broken wire scraped my hand. I lifted it to my waist while the thing struggled, half-sunk now in the mud pouring from the tank.

“Emmett,” I said again, and I felt someone else saying it with me.

I looked at Maru. She was on her knees, her face stained with dirt, repeating her son’s name as if she had forgotten it for years and only just remembered it at that moment.

“Emmett.”

Then every sound in the building went silent. Just like that, all at once.

And out of the tank came a boy. A real one. Not whole. Not solid. More like an image made of water, clear and trembling. The same bangs, the little t-shirt, the height of someone who should have grown but stayed behind waiting. He walked along the rim as if he weighed nothing and looked at Maru.

She stopped breathing. Not from fear. From love.

The boy didn’t smile. He didn’t cry either. He only reached out a hand toward the creature trapped in the mud.

“That isn’t me,” he said.

The voice was so simple it made me want to collapse.

As soon as he said it, the thing fell to pieces. Not flesh. Not bone. Voices. It shattered into voices. They shot out like black birds across the entire roof, shrieking, crashing into one another, looking for throats to crawl back into. Several headed toward the building’s courtyard. Others dove into the drains. One brushed past my ear and I heard my own childhood laugh—one I hadn’t remembered in decades.

Then it was over.

The mud stopped moving. The dirt in the tank settled. The boy’s water-figure grew thinner, more transparent.

Maru crawled toward him. They didn’t touch. They stayed facing each other, as if separated by glass.

“Forgive me,” she said.

The boy shook his head.

“Don’t look for me up here anymore.”

And he vanished.

Maru let out a tiny sound, worse than any scream. She was left with empty hands, staring at the place where she had seen him. I was still holding the lid of the tank, not knowing whether to put it on, throw it, or run.

Below, the sounds of the building were heard once more. A door opened. Someone shouted that there was water falling into the courtyard. A baby began to wail.

Maru turned toward me. She no longer wore a smile. She no longer looked dead. She looked exhausted.

“Put the lid on,” she told me.

I did. Together we settled the metal over the mouth of the tank. It weighed less than it should have. Or maybe I was just too numb to feel it. Maru picked up the broken wire and twisted it back around, clumsy, like someone tying up a grocery bag.

When we finished, I realized something. The other phone was no longer in my hand. It wasn’t on the floor, either. Neither was the puddle. Nor Maru’s body in the wake dress.

There was only her, panting, alive or seeming to be, with her temple covered in dirt.

“Is it over?” I asked.

Maru looked at me the way one looks at a child asking if the rain is over when the sky is still thundering. Then she pointed to my mouth.

I finally spat out the marble. It fell into my palm, still warm. But it wasn’t blue anymore. Inside the glass, something dark was moving, like a tiny pupil slowly turning.

Maru closed my fingers over it.

“No,” she said. “Now it just knows what it’s named.”

And downstairs, in some room in the building, someone knocked three times on a door with their knuckles, and a child’s voice, clear and obedient, asked:

“Mommy?”