The Diary Under the Bed

The lease was up at the end of September.

Zhang Meng crouched in the empty bedroom, sweeping her phone flashlight under the bed to check for anything left behind. The light caught the corner of a dust-gray notebook.

It was the kind of A5 soft-cover notebook you could buy at any stationery shop, the cover printed with a faded cartoon cat. She lay flat on her stomach and dragged it out, flipping open the first page out of habit. The handwriting was neat, a ballpoint pen, the kind of hand a woman would have.

"July 3. First day in the apartment. The landlady, Sister Zhao, is really nice. She replaced the broken window screen for me. The neighborhood is old but quiet."

Zhang Meng's fingers went stiff.

She had moved in on July 3. The landlady was indeed named Zhao, and she had indeed replaced the window screen. Word for word.

But Zhang Meng had never kept a diary.

She knelt on the floor, her knees grinding against the hardwood, and kept reading.

"July 8. The kid downstairs is too loud. Still running around past 1 a.m."

That had happened to her too. Her first week in the building, the noise from the floor below kept her up. She had gone downstairs once and banged on the door. A young woman opened it, apologizing profusely, saying her son just had too much energy.

The diary went on. The next entry was something she had not experienced—

"July 12. The kid downstairs has gone quiet. Too quiet. I lay on the floor and listened for a while. There's a sound. Very faint. Like someone crying with a hand over their mouth."

Zhang Meng's left hand pressed flat against the floor without thinking.

She had seen that child. Her second week, coming home from work, she ran into the mother and son in the hallway. The little boy held his mother's hand and looked up at her. A perfectly normal kid, big eyes, a bit shy, ducking behind his mother's leg.

"July 19. I heard something behind the wardrobe. Not rats. A repetitive scraping sound, rhythmic, like someone scratching the wall with their nails. I moved the wardrobe."

"There's a crack in the wall. Very thin, maybe twenty centimeters long, right above the baseboard. It's hollow inside. Air seeps through. I pressed my ear against it and heard someone—or something—reciting a string of numbers, over and over. 8, 7, 3, 5, 2, 6. I listened for ten minutes. I couldn't listen anymore. Pushed the wardrobe back."

"July 20. I can't sleep. Got up at two in the morning. The wardrobe had been moved again. I am certain I pushed it back."

"July 21. The numbers are still reciting. I've started repeating them in my head without meaning to. Tonight I'm going to figure this out."

The handwriting changed. Not the same woman. The characters were larger, the strokes carrying force—a man's hand.

"August 15. I'm also a tenant. My name is Li Heng. The last tenant was named Zhou Min—she wrote the entries before mine. She didn't move out. She disappeared. The landlady says she left in the middle of the night. When I found this diary under the bed, I thought it was something she left behind and planned to hand it to the police."

"But I saw the crack."

"The numbers are 873526. I've memorized them already. Can't sleep at night. My mind is full of those six digits. I looked them up—they're an old local postal code. Used twenty years ago, long since decommissioned. Belonged to a neighborhood called Locust Tree Lane, demolished during urban renewal."

"August 20. I went to Locust Tree Lane. It's been razed and replaced with a shopping mall. But on parking level B3, there's a stairwell sealed off by construction hoarding. The demolition notice on it is dated 2004. I didn't climb over."

"August 22. The crack has grown. It was twenty centimeters. Now it's nearly forty. The wardrobe can't hide it anymore. Tonight I'm going to recite the numbers into the crack."

"August 23. I recited them and nothing happened. But I realized something—I never moved the wardrobe. I never have. Every morning I wake up and it's in its original position. I've never moved it."

"So who has been moving it."

The handwriting deteriorated here, the strokes shaking.

"August 25. Woke up this morning on my bed, facing the wall. The crack was right in front of my eyes. The wardrobe was on the other side of the room. I don't remember moving the bed here. But here I am. And my mouth was reciting something. My lips were wet, like I'd been at it for a long time."

"873526."

Only a few pages remained. Zhang Meng's hands were trembling, but she couldn't stop.

The handwriting changed again. Very thin, written in pencil, the characters small, as though the writer was afraid of being caught.

"October 3. My name is Chen Ting. The two before me—Zhou Min and Li Heng—both disappeared. I found out when I filed a report at the police station and the officer told me this address had two prior missing-person cases. I wanted to move out that night, but the landlady refused to return my deposit. She said those were just rumors. I stayed for the deposit. A month and a half's rent."

"October 8. I've seen the crack. I've heard the numbers. 873526."

"October 15. I've discovered something worse. We're not writing this diary. I mean—the handwriting is real, but the people writing might not know they're writing. Zhou Min's dates are from this July. Li Heng's from August. Mine from October. But look at the paper."

Zhang Meng looked down at the notebook in her hands. The pages were yellowed, as though they had been sitting there for years.

"This diary has to be at least five years old. But our handwriting appears in it. Everyone who moves in, without knowing it, without any control, records themselves in a diary that already existed. I tested it. I deliberately didn't write for a day. The next day I opened it, and new writing was there. My handwriting. But I have no memory of writing it."

"October 20. I went to look up the building's records today. This building was rebuilt on the site of the 2004 Locust Tree Lane demolition. Beneath its foundation, the old houses are still buried. The position of the old houses—directly above that sealed stairwell on B3."

"Who lived in the old house, the demolition files don't say. But I asked around. One old woman told me: Number 7, Locust Tree Lane. A single woman lived there with a child. The child was six the year of the demolition. For reasons unknown, mother and son never made it out."

"The old woman wouldn't say anything more. When I pressed, she only said: 'That year—nobody talks about it anymore.'"

"October 22. 873526. Number 7, Locust Tree Lane. It might have been the woman's postal code. Or the child's. Twenty years of reciting numbers, waiting for someone to answer."

"I looked up the others who disappeared. Zhou Min. Li Heng. There's one name that never appeared in the diary—a tenant who vanished three years ago. Song Jianping. Police records say: 'Departed late at night, did not take personal belongings.' Five people. With me, five."

"If you include the woman and the child, that's seven."

"October 24. Tonight the voice reciting numbers from the crack has changed. Not the original voice anymore. A new one, smaller, like someone learning. Eight—seven—three—five—two—six."

"Two voices now."

Zhang Meng snapped the diary shut. She didn't want to read any more. She got up, her legs unsteady, and walked along the wall to the living room, reaching for her phone to call the police.

Then she saw the mirror in the entryway.

In the mirror, she stood in the living room holding a notebook. But the notebook in her hands was closed—while in the mirror, it was open, turned to the last page.

Slowly, she turned the diary in her hands to the last page.

There was only one line. Not in any of the previous hands. Hers. But she had no memory of writing it. The handwriting was neat, identical to the signature she'd put on her lease the day she moved in.

"July 15. My name is Zhang Meng. Today is move-in—wait. No. I'm moving out."

She watched her own hand reach into her pocket and pull out a pen. The same pen she had used to sign the lease. She hadn't brought it with her, but there it was, in her pocket.

The nib touched the page.

"I've realized something. It's not me moving out—"

She tried to pull her hand back. It wouldn't obey.

"It's someone renewing the lease."

The pen stopped.

In the bedroom, the wardrobe made a soft sound. Like someone had pushed against it from the inside.

The numbers from the crack kept reciting. Not two voices now. Three. Four. Five.

Zhang Meng stood there, listening to the voices reciting the same string of numbers one after another, from the other side of the wall, from beneath the floor, from a very long time ago—

She realized she was standing on the balcony. She had no memory of walking there. The window was open. She was certain she had closed it that afternoon.

Downstairs, the child who had been silent for three months began to cry.

A very small sound. Like a hand was pressed over his mouth.

Zhang Meng looked down.

The balcony had no railing.

This building's balconies had never had railings. The day she moved in, the landlady, Sister Zhao, had said something to her. She had always thought it was a joke.

"This apartment's great in every way except one—it's a little greedy. Always wants to keep people."

The wind blew through, very cold.

The diary slipped from her hand.

Its pages fluttered in the night wind, turning to the last page. Below that final line, a few more characters had appeared, still in her handwriting.

"Zhang Meng, July 15, early morning—"

The writing stopped there.

The child downstairs had stopped crying too.