The footsteps behind me are a sound I still hear in my sleep. The walk from the bus stop to my apartment is only eight minutes. I’ve done it a thousand times without a second thought. That night, it felt like the longest walk of my life.
I noticed them about halfway home. Behind me, steady and even, matching my pace exactly. At first I told myself it was just another person who’d gotten off the same bus, heading the same direction. There’s nothing strange about that. The street was empty otherwise — no cars, no other pedestrians, just me and the footsteps and the low electric hum of a single streetlight overhead.
I walked a little faster, just to see. The footsteps sped up too, closing none of the distance but keeping perfect time with mine.
My chest tightened. I slowed down, almost to a stop, and pretended to check something on my phone. The footsteps slowed. Then they stopped completely.
The Test
When I started walking again, they started. When I stopped, they stopped. There was no more pretending it was a coincidence. Someone was matching me, deliberately, step for step, staying just far enough back that I could never quite catch them in the corner of my eye.
I was only two minutes from my building now, but I didn’t want to lead whoever it was straight to my front door. So I made a decision. I slid my keys out of my pocket and worked the longest one between my fingers, the way my sister had taught me years ago. Then I spun around fast — ready to scream, ready to run, ready to swing if I had to.
The street behind me was empty. No one was there. Just the long, dark stretch of sidewalk I’d just walked, the buzzing streetlight, and the black shadows between the parked cars. Nothing moved.
The Voice at My Ear
I almost laughed out loud with relief. My imagination. It had just been my own footsteps echoing off the buildings the whole time, the way sound bounces strangely on a quiet night. I shook my head at myself and turned back toward home—
And a voice, very close, right beside my ear, close enough that I should have felt the warmth of breath, whispered: “Why did you stop?”
There was no one there. There was no one in front of me, no one beside me, no one I could see in any direction up or down that empty street.
There had never been anyone behind me. That was why I couldn’t catch them when I turned around. He hadn’t been following me at all. He had been walking beside me, perfectly in step, the entire way home — close enough to touch, close enough to whisper, the whole time I thought the danger was somewhere behind.
I ran the last two minutes to my door and bolted it behind me. I don’t walk home in the dark anymore. And when I absolutely have to, I never, ever stop walking — because now I know the danger was never the footsteps I could hear. It was the ones I couldn’t.
