The Tap Dance Above

Two cops bust through the door, twist my arms behind my back, and pin me hard against the mattress.

My neighbor is screaming his head off about me tapdancing in the middle of the night.

The smart noise monitor on the wall flashes a blinding red, its piercing alarm ripping through the midnight quiet. I slowly peel back the blanket.

They freeze, staring dead at my empty pant legs. I don't even have legs.

Chapter 1 "Who else could it be?" Garth, my neighbor, kicks my doorframe like a raging bull and shoves his finger in my face. Spit flies from his mouth, nearly hitting my cheek.

I grip the wheels of my chair and roll back a couple of feet. "I'll say it one more time. I didn't make any noise." "Save the bullshit!

You're the only freak in this whole complex who stays up all night.

If you make that godawful racket again, I'm calling the HOA tomorrow and getting you evicted!" Pierce, the older cop standing behind him, frowns.

He holds up a hand. "Sir, calm down.

We're here to solve the problem." Reid, the younger cop, slams a black monitoring terminal stamped with a police badge onto my coffee table. "This is an acoustic logger.

It's already synced with dispatch.

If the noise crosses the red line tonight, we'll arrest you for disturbing the peace right then and there." Garth lets out a harsh laugh. "Let's see if this creep tries his little stunt tonight." Pierce escorts Garth out into the hall, then glances back at me. "Sorry to wake you.

We'll get to the bottom of this." I nod and shut the door. It's already eleven at night. I roll my chair into the bedroom, drag myself onto the mattress, and pull up the covers.

I stare at the ceiling. Dead silence. These past three months have been pushing me straight to the edge of sanity. My name is Declan. I lost both my legs in a car wreck a year ago.

I make a living doing freelance translations online. My sleep schedule is a mess, but I definitely don't tapdance at midnight.

But Garth, the guy living directly underneath me, pounds on my door every single day. He claims I start tapdancing right at midnight, making so much noise his kid can't sleep.

I've explained it a million times. He doesn't buy a word of it. The apartment manager tried to mediate twice. Garth just pointed at my wheelchair and scoffed, "Drop the act!

I see you in that chair during the day, but who knows if you strap on prosthetics and throw a damn party in here at night!" I don't know what the hell is going on in his head.

This classic victimblaming garbage makes me sick. He just wants an easy target to vent his own miserable, failed life on. I'm exhausted.

I close my eyes and force myself to try and sleep. I don't know how much time passes before a violent pounding on my front door jolts me awake. "Open up! Declan!

Open the door!" Pierce's voice booms from the hall. My heart spikes. Before I can even react, my bedroom door bursts open. The two cops storm inside.

Pierce rips the blanket off me and pins me hard against the mattress. "Don't move!" My brain shortcircuits. "Officer, what's going on?" "Cut the crap!" Garth marches in right behind them.

He points toward the living room, a sick, vindictive smirk plastered across his face. "A hundred decibels! The monitor almost blew out!

And you still claim you aren't dancing!" I blink against the harsh lights, disoriented. I just point down at my legs. The cop holding me down follows my finger. He freezes.

From the upper thighs down, my pajama pants are just two empty strips of fabric. The smirk drops off Garth's face. His jaw slacks.

He stumbles backward, step by step, until his knees give out. He collapses onto the floor. "Your legs… your legs…" The room plunges into a dead, suffocating silence. Right then.

Tap. Tap, tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. A crisp, frantic series of footsteps echoes from the ceiling, directly above all of our heads. The sound is bizarre. It's not a normal walking stride.

It has a sharp, erratic rhythm—fast, then slow—like someone stomping hard on hardwood floors. It's exactly what Garth described. A tap dance.

Chapter 2 Pierce, the older officer, is the first to snap out of it.

He releases his grip on me, his expression turning dead serious. "Who lives upstairs?" I shake my head. "I've only been here six months.

I don't know them." The younger cop pulls out his phone and quickly taps the screen. "Unit 1201.

Registered to a Miriam, female, sixtyeight." Pierce presses the radio mic on his shoulder. "I need backup.

Grab the building superintendent and secure the entrance to 1201 immediately." Garth is still paralyzed on the floor.

He points a trembling finger at the ceiling, his lips quivering. "A ghost… it's a ghost…" Pierce ignores him and turns back to me, his tone shifting. "Declan, we apologize.

We made a mistake." I wave it off, but a cold sweat is already clinging to my back. This isn't the first time I've heard that noise. It used to be faint.

I just brushed it off as normal apartment creaks and groans. I never imagined it could spike to a hundred decibels.

A minute later, the super and another patrol cop rush up the stairs, breathing hard. "Officer Pierce, Miriam left for her son's place out of state last month.

Said she'd be gone for half a year. The unit is empty!" the super blurts out. "Empty?" Pierce's brow furrows deep. The tapping on the ceiling keeps going. Taptap. Taptaptap.

It's like it's answering the super. The blood drains from everyone's faces.

Garth's teeth are literally chattering. "Officer… there's something wrong with this building…" "Let's check it out." Pierce makes the call.

The group swarms out of my apartment and heads straight for the stairs. I grip my wheels and roll out into the hallway to watch. They cluster around the door to 1201.

Pierce pounds a heavy fist against the wood. "Police! Is anyone inside?" Nothing. Only the rhythmic stomping bleeding through the gap under the door.

The super fumbles with his master key ring. His hands shake so badly he can't even line up the lock. "Give me that." Pierce snatches the key and shoves it into the cylinder.

The door clicks open. A thick wave of stale dust rolls out into the hall. The unit is pitch black. Pierce clicks on his tactical flashlight, the harsh beam cutting through the dark.

Every piece of furniture in the living room is draped in white sheets. A heavy, undisturbed layer of dust coats the floor. No one is living here.

But the second the flashlight beam sweeps across the center of the room… the tapping stops. The world drops into absolute silence.

The kind of dead quiet that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The younger cop steps in and feels along the wall, flipping the light switch.

Under the harsh fluorescent glare, the empty room looks even more sinister. They sweep every corner. Bedroom. Kitchen. Bathroom. Nothing.

Every window is locked tight from the inside. Pierce checks the balcony. The dust on the floor out there is unbroken.

Not a single footprint. "That's impossible…" the super whispers. Garth leans heavily against the doorframe, looking like he's about to pass out. Pierce steps back out into the hall.

He locks eyes with me, his expression grim. "Declan. Are you absolutely certain the noise you heard was coming from upstairs?" I nod hard. "Dead certain." He goes quiet.

Everyone goes quiet. They just trade looks, a suffocating, invisible dread bleeding into the hallway.

Chapter 3 Right at that moment. "Meow—" A cry echoes from the direction of the bedroom in 1201. Every single one of us jumps. Pierce spins around and storms right back inside.

A moment later, he steps out holding a skeletal black cat. "Just a cat." Reid lets out a breath. "No." Pierce shakes his head, pointing at the animal's paws. "Look." We lean in.

The cat's four paws are capped with tiny, hardplastic thimbles. Like some kind of protective covers. Pierce sets the cat down on the floor. It takes a few steps. Tap. Taptap.

The exact same tapdancing sound we just heard. "What the hell is this?" Reid stares, his jaw slack.

Pierce's face turns grim. "Someone intentionally locked the cat in here and capped its claws. It's a sick psychological game, designed specifically to drive you insane." "Who?

Why the hell would anyone do that?" "Miriam's son." Pierce connects the dots instantly. "Super, do you have his contact info?" "Yeah, yeah!" The super scrambles to pull up his phone.

Garth stares at the black cat pacing the hallway, the color draining from his face. It finally hits him that he's been harassing me over nothing for three straight months.

He walks up to my chair, opening his mouth, but no words come out. Finally, he dips his head in a stiff, awkward bow. "I'm sorry." I don't say a word.

Pierce hands the cat off to Reid to take down to the station, gives Garth and me a brief rundown, and tells us to go back to sleep. He promises to keep us in the loop.

The crowd clears out, and the hallway drops back into dead silence. I roll back into my apartment and lock the door.

Even though we found the source, the knot in my stomach only pulls tighter. Why would Miriam's son do something like this? Just a prank?

My gut tells me it's nowhere near that simple. I barely sleep a wink that night. The next morning, my phone jolts me awake.

It's Pierce. "Declan, we can't get through to Miriam's son. His phone goes straight to voicemail. We pulled his file.

Name is Ian, thirtytwo, unemployed." "What about Miriam herself?" I ask. "Can't reach her either. We checked Ian's last known address.

Neighbors say he hasn't been home in nearly a month." A cold weight drops in my chest. "Officer, something isn't right here." "We agree." Pierce's tone is heavy. "We've officially opened an investigation.

If you hear anything else, or see anything out of place, call me immediately." "I will." I hang up, the adrenaline already kicking in. I can't just sit here.

I roll my chair over to the window and tilt my head back, staring up at the glass of 1201. Heavy drapes block out the entire frame. I can't see a damn thing inside.

But the hairs on my arms stand up. I can feel a pair of eyes burning into the back of my neck. For the next few days, the apartment above me is dead quiet. Not a single sound.

Garth posted a public apology to me on the community's Facebook page, and even showed up at my door holding a sixpack of beer. I rejected him through the locked door.

I don't have the energy to deal with him. My entire focus is locked on the ceiling. On the fifth night, I'm working late at my desk. It's pushing midnight again.

Chapter 4 A heavy thud erupts from the ceiling. Thump. Like a dead weight hitting the floorboards. My heart slams straight into my throat.

I snatch my phone, thumb hovering over Pierce's contact. Right then. Thump. Another one. Then comes a sickening, grinding sound.

Scraaaape… Scraaaape… Like someone dragging a massive, heavy sack across the floor, inching forward.

The sound scrapes from the direction of their living room toward the bedroom, dragging all the way until it stops directly over my head. I hold my breath.

I don't dare move a muscle. The only sound in my apartment is the frantic hammering against my ribs. Ten minutes bleed by. The scraping starts again.

This time, it pulls away from right above me, grinding back toward the living room. Then, another dull, heavy impact. Thump. After that, dead silence. My grip on my phone slips.

My palms are drenched in cold sweat. I don't call the cops. Because I know it's useless right now. They can't get in.

First thing the next morning, I call Pierce and give him the rundown of the noises. He goes quiet on the other end for a long time. "Declan, don't panic.

We're rushing a search warrant to force entry into 1201. Try not to stay in the apartment today.

Get out of there for a while." "Understood." I hang up, but my mind is already made up. I can't just sit on my hands and wait.

I crack open my laptop and search: mini drone, camera and mic. I need to see exactly what the hell is inside 1201 with my own eyes. The drone gets delivered that same afternoon.

I spend an hour mastering the controls. Once it gets pitch black outside, I draw my curtains tight, leaving only a tiny crack in the window.

The drone is tiny, no bigger than the palm of my hand. The rotors run nearly silent.

This set me back two grand, but right now, I just want to use it to rip the disguise off the bastard upstairs.

I ease the joystick forward, guiding it out the window gap, and send it slowly climbing up the side of the building.

The heavy drapes in 1201 are pulled tight, but there's a decent gap in the blinds behind them.

I adjust the angle, hovering the drone right outside the glass, and line the lens up perfectly with the slit. The live feed pops up on my screen. It's the living room.

Just like the cops saw that night, the furniture is draped in white sheets, a thick layer of dust coating the floor. But there's one massive difference.

The white sheet in the dead center of the room has been thrown back. It exposes a massive, vintage brown wooden trunk. The thing looks incredibly heavy.

A huge, heavyduty brass padlock is clamped over the latch. My stomach drops. That heavy thud last night… was it this trunk?

I nudge the controls, pushing the camera in closer to get a better look. The second the lens locks onto the wood… The trunk shudders. A tiny, faint movement.

I assume my eyes are playing tricks on me. I stare dead at the screen, unblinking. A few seconds later, it rocks again. This time, it's undeniable.

My scalp prickles like a thousand needles. There's something inside that trunk! It's alive! My mind instantly flashes to the black cat with the capped claws.

Did Ian lock some kind of live animal in there? I swallow the rising bile in my throat and keep watching. A faint, muffled noise bleeds through the drone's mic. Breathing.

Rapid, suffocating, choked breaths. Like someone gasping for air, but absolutely terrified to make a sound. My hands start to shake. That is definitely not an animal.

Chapter 5 I suck in a harsh breath, forcing the frantic racing in my chest to steady. I need proof. Solid, undeniable proof.

I nudge the joystick, easing the drone closer to the glass. Just a few more inches to get a clearer audio feed.

The lens is barely four inches from the pane when it happens. "Who's there?!" A man's voice explodes from inside the room. My hand jerks. The drone nearly clips the window.

The live feed shakes violently. A dark silhouette lunges out from the bedroom. It's Ian. He's back. He whips his head around, his gaze finally snapping dead onto the window.

He sees the drone. His face twists into something monstrous. He snatches a claw hammer off the floor and smashes the glass like a crazed thug! Smash. The feed cuts to dead black.

Signal lost. I jolt upward in my chair, my heart hammering against my ribs like a jackhammer. He saw me. I smash Pierce's contact on my phone. "Pierce! Ian is in 1201!

He's back!" "There's a trunk in there, and someone is alive inside!" I yell, the words tumbling out in a frantic rush. "Declan, calm down! We're two minutes out!

Lock your door and do not come out!" Pierce's voice is tighter than I've ever heard it. I drop the phone and roll straight for the front door.

I flip the deadbolt and drag my heavy hallway cabinet tight against the wood. A massive crash shakes the ceiling. Ian is tearing the place apart. He's coming down for me.

I spin my wheels, retreating into the furthest bedroom, my knuckles turning white around the handle of a kitchen knife.

A few minutes later, the wail of sirens cuts through the night. I let out a breath. The cops are here.

Heavy boots pound up the stairwell, followed by Pierce's booming command. "Ian! Open the door!

You're surrounded!" Nothing but silence from upstairs. "Breach it!" A deafening slam echoes as 1201's door is kicked in. Then comes the rush of boots and officers shouting orders.

But I don't hear Ian's voice. He isn't in there. A sickening dread pools in my gut. Right then, someone knocks on my door. Thump. Thump. Thump. Slow.

Deliberate. "Declan, it's Pierce." It sounds like Pierce. But I freeze. My peephole is pitch black. Someone is standing outside, covering the lens with their hand.

Pierce and his team are all upstairs.

Outside the door, a blade scrapes against the metal, setting my teeth on edge. "Listen, cripple, keep your mouth shut, or I'll chop off the rest of you and stuff it in the trunk." The blood freezes in my veins.

It's Ian. He was never up in 1201. He knew the cops would rush the top floor, so he slipped down to trap me inside my own apartment. "Open up.

I know you're in there." His tone is dead flat, laced with a quiet, unhinged madness.

I press my entire body weight against the door, swallowing every breath. "Not gonna open it, huh?" He lets out a low chuckle. "You really think this piece of wood is gonna stop me?" Metal grinds against metal.

He's picking the lock. My heart lodges in my throat. I scan the room, desperate for a weapon. I only have the kitchen knife.

I grip the handle so hard my palm slicks with cold sweat. Chapter 6 "Pierce! Pierce! He's at my door!" I scream, straining my vocal cords until they burn.

Heavy boots hammer against the ceiling. "Declan! Hold on! We're coming down!" Pierce's voice booms through the floorboards. Hearing the cops, Ian speeds up. Click.

The deadbolt disengages. He picked the lock. He shoves the door, but it jams hard against the heavy hallway cabinet. "Move!" Ian slams his entire body weight against the wood.

The cabinet shudders and scrapes across the floor with every brutal impact. Pierce and a squad of officers surge down the stairwell. "Ian!

Stand down!" Ian glances over his shoulder. He doesn't stop. He throws his shoulder into the door with a sickening crunch. Bang. The cabinet screeches back another inch.

Through the crack, I catch a glimpse of his face. His eyes are blown wide, laced with pure, rabid malice. "Take him down!" Two officers tackle him, pinning Ian hard to the linoleum.

He thrashes beneath them, fighting like a cornered animal.

Pierce rushes to my door and shoves the cabinet aside. "Declan, you good?" I nod slowly, my limbs feeling like dead weight. "The trunk…" I point a shaking finger at the ceiling. "Upstairs." Pierce snaps into action.

He leaves two men to hold Ian down and leads the rest straight back up to 1201. I grip my wheels and follow them out into the hall. Unit 1201 is wide open.

The living room is trashed. The shattered plastic remains of my drone lay scattered across the floorboards.

Every pair of eyes locks onto the massive brown trunk in the center of the room.

Pierce steps up and yanks on the heavy brass padlock. "It's jammed." He shoots a glare back down the stairwell at Ian.

Ian grins, baring his teeth. "You're never getting that open." Pierce doesn't waste another breath. "Get the bolt cutters!" An officer sprints back down the stairs.

While we wait in the suffocating silence, the trunk starts making noise again. It isn't shifting this time. It's tapping. Tap. Tap. Tap. Slow. Deliberate. Rhythmic.

Like someone rapping their knuckles against the inside of the heavy wooden lid. Everyone in the room hears it.

Reid, the younger cop, yells down the stairs at Ian, "What the hell did you lock in there?!" Ian just shuts his eyes and goes dead silent.

A minute later, the officer returns, hauling heavyduty hydraulic bolt cutters. Snap. The thick brass lock gives way.

Two cops step up, dig their fingers under the edge, and heave the massive lid open. The second the trunk cracks open, the air is sucked right out of the room