Tom loved the house immediately and the landlord gave him an application to establish character and employment and they parted ways. A few days later, Tom was moving in.

To make the house feel like home he borrowed the couch from his parents that he'd been sleeping on plus a chair and a television, then bought dishes and groceries and a small table which would double as a desk when he was on the computer. His parents had an old box spring, which he bought a mattress for and Tom suddenly had a real bed again He liked the house the first couple of days. He liked the feeling of coming home to a place that was his. He liked the quiet. On the third night, however, the quiet closed in around him like a coc.o.o.n and he had to escape and go for a drive. That too proved to be too solitary as he found himself driving past restaurants where he and Julie had eaten or stores where they'd shopped, and while those places were full of people in the midst of living, none of them were Tom. The emptiness had followed him. So he went home and went to bed, hurrying the process of morning and work, which always kept him busy and too preoccupied to think about how much he hated his new life.

That was the night he thought he heard mice, scratching behind the walls, scurrying through the plaster and lathe, trying to get out.

It didn't take much to convince him to get out of bed and go buy poison right away. Thirty minutes later, the green blocks were in place and Tom was back in bed.

The next day the workers returned to the house and his loneliness was gone.

He met the lead man, Henry, and they shook hands and Tom asked if there was anything he could do and Henry said, "Just don't touch anything and let us know if the dust gets to be too much."

"I will," Tom said. He met the two other workers, shook eagerly, glad to have more than his own presence in the house for a change, but Rodney and Taylor--those were the names of the workers--didn't seem interested in letting Tom into their club, so he went back down to his part of the house and tried to decide what to cook for dinner. A frozen pizza would do, but he had a better idea and he went upstairs and asked, "Anyone up for pizza? My treat."

At "My treat," Rodney and Taylor both said, "h.e.l.l yeah," but Henry shook his head and said, "No, we can't do that. Thanks, though."

"You can, really," Tom said. "I'm ordering one anyway, and it's just me; I'm not going to eat the whole thing tonight.."

"We'll help," Rodney said from behind a drywall lift.

"Alright," Henry agreed. "Fine. If you say so. Thanks. Now you two get that ceiling up, no one eats anything until it's all up."

Tom nodded and returned to the first floor, smiling inside, and for the first time in a long while, feeling like he was part of the world again.

The workers left that night with full bellies, leaving Tom and an empty pizza box behind. Tom took a bath, then spent an hour watching television with the volume too loud as he tried to fill the house with voices and laughter. Then at one point he heard Henry walking around upstairs. He wondered at first what the man could be doing up there, then decided he'd probably forgotten something and had come back for it. Tom went up to say hi and help him look if Henry wanted him to.

He pushed through the plastic and went upstairs, but the grand room at the top of the stairs was empty. Tom looked in what would be the dining room, asking "You forget something?" But the dining room was empty, too. So were the kitchen, the bathroom and the study.

He heard something out in the hall and thought it was the plastic being rustled, so he went out to look and found the front door standing open. The storm door was shut, and Tom cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed his face to the gla.s.s, but didn't see Henry or either of the other two outside.

"That was quick," he said. "Guess he found it." He closed and locked the door and went back downstairs, deciding he might as well go to bed.

Tom didn't do well living alone. He had never done it before, had always had roommates or lived with a girlfriend, and so didn't have years worth of tricks to pa.s.s the time and stave off the solitude that seemed to plague his every lonely moment in this house, binding him like a straitjacket.

On the days the workers didn't show, he started movies he never finished or went for drives to nowhere or, more often than not, just went to bed sometimes two hours earlier than normal.

He came to hate being alone in the house. So when the noises began, he told himself it was his own wishful thinking, his own loneliness, creating companions where none existed.

First were the footsteps. Someone walked back and forth over his head, up and down the second-to-third floor stairs. But in his heart, Tom knew it was just random sounds houses make at night that his mind was distorting into something else because he wished so much he had someone to talk to.

The night after the footsteps, after the workers left for the evening (two hours of which time Tom had spent upstairs just observing and soaking in the companionship), he heard drunken weeping, which he told himself was a b.u.m crying over a wasted life in the empty lot next door to the house. In this part of town, he a.s.sured himself, the homeless were many, and that lot belonged to no one as far as he knew, so it was entirely possible.

The third night he stayed up as late as his eyes could stand, watching television with the light on, sitcom after sitcom, each set decorated with vibrant colors, each character dressed in perfectly "regular" clothes, each line delivered with stark precision. It was like attending a party where everyone was happy and every corner lighted and no one ever heard anything that wasn't there, and they never left him alone or told him they just didn't want to be with him anymore.

He woke late in the night, disoriented and frightened to find himself in this strange place. When he finally realized where he was he turned off the television and crossed the hall to go to bed. But halfway there, he stopped in the dark hall and listened. He'd heard footsteps out here just now. He knew he heard it. He leaned in and turned the living room light back on, but the hall was empty.

Tom stood there in the semi dark, waiting, wondering. He was alone. But he felt eyes on him just the same. Someone was here, staring directly at him, and whoever it was, they were just as desperate as he was. He felt this in his veins.

Then he said, "No. Not real," and he went into the bedroom and shut the door, leaving the living room light on all night so a slim bar of white seeped in under the door.

Before he was finally able to find sleep again, he thought he heard one or two steps ascending the staircase.

He soon came to realize that, despite his protests of the night in the hallway, the noises were very real. They never became obnoxious or overwhelming, but they were there, and when he was woken in the middle of the night by the front door opening and closing again, he lay in the dark, terrified he would then hear those footsteps coming down to the first floor, praying they would go upstairs.

On that particular night, they went nowhere, and that image of something just standing there on the landing, all night, that was even worse.

On that night, he broke down and called Julie.

He'd been wanting to for a while, but had been putting it off. Now he felt justified; she was responsible for his situation, after all.

She answered on the second ring, her voice still heavy with sleep.

"It's me," he said, then realized "it's me" might not carry the same weight if she was seeing someone else, and he didn't know if she was. Then again, maybe someone else was there with her. He regretted calling.

"Tom? What are you doing up?"

"I don't know," he lied. "I just woke up and felt like I needed to talk to you."

"Is anything wrong?"

He was still in bed and he pulled the cover up to his shoulder and wrapped it around him, settled his head into the pillow and held the phone to his opposite ear.

On the landing and throughout the house all was quiet.

"I guess that depends on how you look at it, huh?"

"G.o.d, Tom, I'm not waking up at whatever time it is so you can tell me what a b.i.t.c.h I was."

"That's not why I called," he said. "Nothing's wrong. I just wanted to talk."

Julie was silent, waiting for him.

Now that he had her here, what next? He wasn't going to tell her about the noises, he just needed some human contact and hers was the number he dialed.

After ten seconds, Julie said, "Look, if you're not going to talk, I'm going back to sleep. Sounds like you need to do the same."

"Do you miss me?" he asked. Again, regret settled in immediately.

"Don't do this. Just go back to sleep, okay? We'll talk eventually."

"Yeah," he said, already knowing her answer to his question. "Sure. Good night--." He had to stop himself before calling her babe.

Julie hung up and Tom lay there in bed looking at the display on his phone. Those few seconds with Julie had lifted his burden somewhat, but it had also only made him want more. He scrolled through the contacts in his phone, but didn't find one person he felt comfortable calling at this time of night just to talk, and that realization hit home like a sledgehammer. Even his parents were out; a call at this time of night just because he was lonely and he'd never hear an end to her insistence he should come back and stay with them.

"Jesus," he told the house. "All these numbers and not one friend."

He'd never felt so . . . singular in all his life. Nor so alone.

There was crying again, but this time it came from upstairs and there was no convincing himself it was from anywhere else.

Tom couldn't stay in the house and continue to live with its noises without knowing what they were. So after nearly a week of wondering who was walking around upstairs after the workmen left, he asked them. The main room on the second floor was finished and they'd moved into the kitchen. It was small and cramped and Tom didn't spend a lot of time in there with them. He was supposed to occupy the house, not pester the crew working to restore it. So he didn't stay upstairs too long, just invited them to help him with some Chinese food. He knew how long they worked before taking their breaks, so he knew when to bring it up. When everyone dug in, he asked his question.

"So did the previous owners die in the fire here when the place went up?"

"No," Henry said around a mouthful of noodles. "They all made it out and moved away, I think."

"Guy I know, Charley, worked with the guy who lived here," Rodney said. "They were from Texas before they came here. He thinks they moved back there."

"Well that's good," Tom said.

"No, what you're hearing isn't the previous owners, it's probably the one before them. This place was empty for a long time before they came here and torched it. Whatever you're hearing moving around, it's not them."

This stopped Tom and he paused for a second before asking, "Whatever I'm hearing?"

"It's no secret," Henry said. "But we don't pay any attention to it. Whatever it is, it's long dead. Can't hurt you if you just ignore it."

"You knew about it?" Tom asked.

"Of course, who in Angel Hill doesn't?"

"Me!" Tom said louder than he'd intended.

Henry shrugged and ate some more noodles.

"And the landlord knows?"

Rodney and Taylor were both nodding.

"And he didn't say anything?"

Rodney and Taylor both shrugged.

"What about full disclosure?"

"You're not buying the place," Henry said. "You're living here free, he doesn't have to tell you anything."

Tom was stunned, both by the revelation and Henry's att.i.tude. Yes, Tom was here rent free, but Henry's words and tone stung a little, as if relegating Tom to the role of hired help, only his compensation wasn't in wages, but in room and board. Which, when he thought about it, was actually the case. But still.

"Well, it's a little hard to ignore when it's right over my head all night," Tom said. "He should have said something before I moved in."

He went back downstairs soon after, his mood ruined.

The men left a couple of hours later and Tom dreaded hearing that front door close, because he knew the footsteps would start soon after.

As he tried to find something to watch on television, debating whether to put in a movie or go out for a while, Henry's words kept repeating in his head. Just ignore it. How was he supposed to do that?

No, he thought, I can't ignore it. But I can confront it.

Given the things he'd had to confront in his own life lately, Tom thought facing what may or may not be a ghost should be child's play. He waited a few more minutes, staring blankly at the TV screen while he worked up his courage. Finally he stood up from the couch and, before he could give himself a moment more to think about it, he set himself in motion.

He went upstairs and stood in the middle of the grand room, which was above his bedroom. He wondered if anything would happen with him here, the whole watched pot syndrome. He listened and waited, expecting any second to hear footsteps clumping past him.

Instead, he heard them overhead, on the third floor.

He looked up and quickly took off up the stairs, hoping--no, not hoping, that was too enthusiastic a word; trying was more like it--trying to get up there before what- or whoever it was could disappear. The footsteps met him at the top of the stairs and when Tom got there he stopped, unable to take that last step onto the floor. He just stared at the darkness, his heart beating like a rabbit's and his stomach expecting to drop when some ferocious and decayed visage rushed him from the darkness.

But nothing came out of the darkness. Tom just stood there, knowing that whatever was walking up here had stopped at the top of the stairs and in whatever dimension it existed it was probably staring him down right now.

A chill crept up his back. He swallowed and felt a dry click in his throat. His eyes scanned the dark, but there was nothing to see up here.

Finally he took in a breath and asked in a voice dry and brittle, a question that took all of his strength and one, if he was being honest, he didn't want answered.

"What do you want?"

From out of nowhere, from the air in front of him, came the reply.

Tom's heart sank and everything he'd been through since moving in came at him in a rush of emotion and he went to his knees with his face in his hands and cried. When he was done, he went back downstairs, but only for a minute. Then he came back up.

The crew didn't work on the house for a few days. Henry had traveled out of town for his daughter's wedding, and when he got back he took another day off before returning to work. When he and his crew showed up, the house was hot. Summer had come to Angel Hill and a stink hung in the air. Their voices broke up the stillness in the house as they opened the door and all filed in together.

Rodney complained, "I can't wait to get this place done and be out of here."

"I hear that," Taylor said.

"That's up to you two," Henry said. "Up to how much time you waste. Get to work and leave that guy alone. I want to be on that third floor by next week."

They shoved the plastic aside, then everyone froze as the sight hanging from the third floor banister registered in their minds. He'd tied an extension cord to the banister, the other end around his neck, and lowered himself over the side. On the stairs below him Henry found Tom's note.

"There was a sense of loneliness during my entire stay in this house. At first I thought it was my own, brought on by a recent break-up after two years together. I'd never lived alone before and in this big house, once the guys left at night, the solitude always came crashing in. So I thought it was just me.

"But when I came upstairs and felt that presence before me and asked what did it want . . . its answer was one I immediately recognized as I'd felt that very same thing almost every night I spent in this house.

"*Company,' it said. That's all it wanted. It didn't want to be alone in this house anymore. In that moment, I felt the pain it felt and I understood how deeply it hurt. Every night I spent in this house, that's all I wanted, too. Just some company. Another presence to fill some of that empty s.p.a.ce, another voice to break up the silence, another mind to interact with.

"I cried when it spoke that word, but they weren't tears of pain or loneliness. It was joy at having found someone who would be able to make it go away. That's not asking too much, is it?"

Henry put the note back where he found it and said, "Naw, that's not too much. I*m sorry for not noticing." He lowered his head and gave Tom a moment of silence before taking out his phone and calling 911. While he reported the death, he felt the presence around him. He always felt it. But like he'd told Tom, you had to learn to ignore it. This time it was stronger, though, and he knew it was because the presence wasn't alone anymore. And then he had a feeling burn through him, as if it hadn't been a presence at all--not like he'd thought. He felt the house open up, then close in around him again and suddenly feel very small despite its three floors. And then it was big once more, only not just big, cavernous, full of stark, empty rooms with walls that echoed and corners that swallowed light and even with Rodney and Taylor just a few feet away, Henry felt totally alone in the house. He felt it like a solid object, as if the loneliness were touching him, weighing on him. But it had what it wanted and maybe, for a while, that would be enough. Maybe now it wouldn't be so restless. Maybe now the crying would stop.

END.

AFTERWORD.

The novel you've just read, THE THIRD FLOOR, is very loosely based on a true story. While the main events of the story didn't happen, many of the smaller occurrences did.