My neighbor was buried yesterday at noon, but today at 2:17 AM, she sent me a voice note begging me to go up to the roof. The voice belonged to Clara—broken, wet, alive. I dropped my glass. My dog started whining in front of the stairs. And when I opened text messages, I saw that the message came from the very number her husband swore had been buried with her.

“Martin…”

The voice came out muffled, scraping through the damp cinder blocks.

I took a step back. I felt my heart pounding in my throat.

“Clara…”

From the other side, a weak groan was heard—like someone breathing inside a plastic bag.

“Don’t make any noise… please…”

My legs were shaking. I looked toward the rooftop door, expecting to hear footsteps, expecting Steven to appear with that dead smile. But there was only the wind.

I approached the newly built wall and touched the cinder blocks. They were still damp.

My God. They had bricked her in alive.

“I’m going to get you out,” I whispered.

“No… listen first…”

Her voice was cut off by a coughing fit. Something thudded from within.

Thump. Thump.

“He doesn’t work alone…”

I felt an icy chill in my chest. Down on the street, a patrol car passed by. Its blue lights illuminated the roof for a brief second, and I remembered the audio message: “Don’t call the patrol car on the corner. They’re on his payroll.”

Clara spoke again:

“The woman they buried… it isn’t me…”

I froze. Suddenly, the red bracelet made sense. The closed casket. The strange smell during the wake. It wasn’t Clara they had buried.

I heard a door open downstairs. Footsteps. Coming up the stairs. Fast.

My dog started barking from inside my apartment, sounding desperate.

Clara began to cry behind the wall.

“He’s coming…”

I looked around. There was only the shovel, the lime, the water tanks, and the sleeping city below us. I grabbed the shovel.

The footsteps were coming up faster now. First floor. Second floor. Third floor.

I smashed the shovel against the cinder block. Once. Twice. Three times. The mortar barely cracked.

“Martin!” Clara whispered. “Hurry!”

The rooftop door flew open. Steven appeared, panting. He held a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. He didn’t look surprised; he just looked tired.

“I knew you’d stick your nose into this,” he said calmly.

The flashlight blinded me.

“She’s alive!” I screamed at him. “You son of a bitch, she’s alive!”

Steven smiled. But it wasn’t the smile of a normal person. He smiled like someone who had lost his soul years ago.

“For now.”

Then he raised the weapon.

“Step away from the wall.”

I didn’t move. The shovel shook in my hands.

“Who did you bury?” I asked.

For the first time, something shifted in his expression. It wasn’t fear; it was pride.

“Her sister.”

Nausea hit me. I remembered the woman who had arrived late to the wake. The one screaming outside. The one who wanted to see the body. Holy God.

“She figured it all out,” Steven said. “Clara was already packed and ready to leave… but the stupid bitch came back for her things.”

Clara started banging from inside, harder.

“MARTIN!”

Steven aimed toward the wall.

“Shut up.”

He fired. The blast exploded across the entire roof. The cinder block sprayed dust, and a scream echoed from behind it.

I reacted without thinking. I threw the shovel at him. It struck his arm, and the gun fell, spinning across the wet floor.

We lunged at each other. Steven was stronger—much stronger. He punched me in the face, and I felt something snap inside my nose. I fell backward, the taste of blood filling my mouth.

He pinned me down, getting on top of me.

“People like you always want to play the hero,” he spat at me. “But out here, nobody saves anybody.”

He tried to strangle me. Black spots blurred my vision. And then…

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The wall began to break apart on its own. A hand reached out from between the cinder blocks—bloody, thin, trembling. Clara’s hand.

Steven froze.

She pried open a hole large enough to show an eye. A swollen, bruised eye, filled with pure hatred.

“I told you…” she whispered, “…that you weren’t going to bury me again.”

Steven shrieked. He scrambled backward, and I took the opportunity to kick him off me.

The gun was still lying near the water tank. I bolted toward it, but so did Steven. We reached it at the exact same time, wrestling for it. The metal was slick from the rain.

Yes, it was raining. I hadn’t even noticed. A storm had broken out over the city. Lightning flashes illuminated the surrounding buildings. Clara kept tearing down the wall with her bare hands.

Then Steven managed to wrest control of the gun. He pointed it directly at my head.

“You should have kept your mouth shut, neighbor.”

Clara finally emerged from the breach, covered in blood and mortar dust. She could barely stand, but she smiled—a broken smile.

And she said something I will never forget:

“Look behind you.”

Steven turned his head just a fraction. And he saw the woman standing next to the water tank. The red bracelet glinted on her wrist.

The sister. The woman from the casket. Or what was left of her.

Her face was caved in. Her eyes were stretched open much too wide. She was still wearing her funeral dress. Water streamed from her hair down to her feet.

Steven stopped breathing.

“No…” he whispered.

The woman tilted her head. And she began to walk toward him. Barefoot. Twisted. Her bones popping with every single step.

I wanted to run. I swear to God I did. But I couldn’t move.

The roof filled with a horrific stench—wet earth, formaldehyde, rotting flesh.

The sister raised a hand, showing the same red bracelet from the casket. Steven began to cry, for real this time.

“I didn’t mean to kill you… you forced me to…”

She touched his face, and he screamed like a slaughtered animal. The gun discharged into the air, and then he fell to his knees. The dead woman embraced him slowly. Like a wife. Like a mother. Like death itself.

And then, both of them fell from the roof.

The impact below sounded wet, distant, and final.

Silence. Only rain.

Clara collapsed against me. She was shaking so violently I thought she would break.

“Let’s go…” she whispered.

We made our way downstairs as best we could. The neighbors opened their doors just a few inches, peeking out, crossing themselves, and shutting them again. Nobody wanted to know.

Down on the street, Steven lay dead. His neck was twisted, his eyes wide open. But the other body wasn’t there. There was only the red bracelet resting on the wet pavement.

The police arrived twenty minutes later—the exact same cops from the patrol car. They asked us strange questions. Much too strange.

“How much had you guys been drinking?” “Are you sure about what you saw?” “Was Clara just hysterical?”

But when they found the hidden space behind the wall… everything changed.

There was blood. Chains. Medications. And photos. Dozens of photos of other women—beaten, bound. Some had dates written on them; others didn’t.

The cops stopped playing dumb. One of them actually vomited.

They quickly linked Steven to cold-case disappearances spanning back years—women from various neighborhoods across the city. They never found the others, nor did they ever locate the sister’s body. The cemetery records insisted she had been buried, but when they exhumed the grave…

The casket was empty.

Completely empty. Except for some damp earth and fingernail scratch marks on the inside lining.

Clara disappeared two days later without saying goodbye, leaving everything behind. She only left a note slipped under my door:

“Thank you for listening to the thumping.”

Eight months have passed. I don’t live in that building anymore; they demolished it after human remains were uncovered inside a cistern. Now I rent a tiny room over in Queens. I try to sleep. I try to forget.

But some nights, at exactly 2:17 AM, my phone vibrates. It’s always from the same number: Clara 3B.

I never answer. Never.

Because the last audio message lasted eleven seconds. And even though the voice belonged to Clara… whatever responded from right behind her wasn’t human.

It was a wet, heavy breath, and a woman’s voice saying:

“There are still the others left.”