Sound helps. So does being alone.

The Tenant
Before You

A notebook left behind in an upstairs room in Aminabad, Lucknow. Read it top to bottom. Don't skip.

Stories With Diwakar

To whoever takes the room next,

I'm leaving this because Mrs Sharma downstairs won't talk about the room, and somebody should. I was here eleven weeks. The rent is low for a reason.

I've typed the rules on the sheet by the door. Follow them better than I did.

— R.

Rules for the upstairs room

1. Mrs Sharma lives downstairs. She never comes up. If someone comes up the stairs, it is not her.
2. The bathroom tap turns on by itself at 3:10. Let it run.
3. If someone knocks three times, don't answer. If they knock four times, answer quickly.
4. Don't count the people in the photograph on the wall.
5. The mirror fogs up even in May. Don't wipe it.
6. Whatever happens, finish reading.
7. Stop scrolling back up. It notices when you go back.

Rule three. Keep your sound on for this part.

The bulb blew on day forty. R. kept writing in the dark, so you'll have to read in the dark too.

Drag your finger across the black.

The bulb went at 3:10. The tap started at the same moment.

Something is sitting on the other bed. There is no other bed.

I can hear it breathing in the gaps between mine.

If you read this with a light, it can see you too.

Those eyes aren't in R.'s notebook. And they moved when you found them.

Rule five. The mirror fogs up even in May. Don't wipe it.

You're going to wipe it anyway. Drag your finger across the glass.

behind
you

It was writing from the other side while you wiped from this one. Look again: the one standing in the doorway is gone. From the mirror, anyway.

Rule four. Don't count the people in the photograph on the wall.

Tap each person to count them.

Sharma family, this terrace, 1971

Counted: 0

You didn't tap the fifth one. It counted itself. Mrs Sharma says there were four of them that summer, and the photo was never reprinted. She says it a little too quickly.

The last page isn't R.'s.

Look at the handwriting. It's the same hand as the first page. Now scroll up and check whose name is at the bottom of that one.

Stories With Diwakar If you heard knocking while reading this, that was the building. Probably.