The Rusty Anchor

*This one came from the idea of intimacy being stolen by a witness you can't see. I wanted the horror to live in the space between two bodies, something that feeds on what should be private. Thanks for reading.*

Yara sat at the end of the bar at The Rusty Anchor with a whiskey she hadn't paid for yet, because Clare had seen her face and poured it without asking. She was forty-four years old and her daughter had been gone to college for three weeks now, and the apartment was too quiet, so here she was, dressed like a woman trying and failing not to try.

The date was supposed to start at eight. It was 8:12 and the guy, Wade, a painter she'd matched with online six months ago and never actually met, was late. She'd almost left twice.

Then the scream came through the wall.

Not through the door. Through the wall, because The Rusty Anchor shared a wall with the converted warehouse next door, and Yara's building and Jeffery's studio were all part of the same badly planned block. The sound was muffled but not muffled enough, a woman's voice rising up under the jukebox like something drowning coming up for air.

Clare didn't flinch. She'd owned the bar ten years and she'd heard everything the neighborhood had to offer.

"Jeffery's at it again," Clare said, wiping a glass that didn't need it. "That sound engineer. Runs recordings in his basement at all hours. Guess he got a new project."

"That sounded like a person," Yara said.

"Sounded like art," Clare said, and moved down the bar.

Yara drank her whiskey. It was the cheap stuff, twelve dollars a bottle behind the bar, and it burned in a way she figured she deserved. Three years since her last anything, a quick fling with a regular at this very bar who'd moved to Cleveland and never called, and before that it was just her marriage, twenty years of it, done. She wanted something raw. She had answered a message from a man whose profile said he painted and hated small talk for that reason.

The door opened at 8:19 and a man came in who looked like his pictures, which surprised her. Tall, gray coming in heavy at the temples, paint on the cuff of his jacket that he either didn't notice or didn't care about. Forty-six if his profile was honest, and he walked to the bar as though he had decided where he was going before he arrived.

"Yara," he said. "I'm Wade. I'm sorry, there was a wreck on the bridge."

"You're nineteen minutes late and you have paint on you."

"Emerald green. I've been painting my kitchen."

"Your kitchen is emerald green."

"It was white and it depressed me." He sat down and looked at the bottles. "Whatever she's pouring you, I'll have it."

Clare poured. They drank. Yara waited for the small talk he supposedly hated and he skipped it entirely, which she appreciated more than she could say.

"You look better than your photos," he said. "But your photos look like you're being held hostage."

"They were taken by my daughter before she left. She doesn't flatter anyone."

"How old is she?"

"Nineteen. At State. The house is so quiet I signed up for a dating app out of sheer cowardice."

He laughed at that, a real one, and she felt it land somewhere low. He told her about a gallery that had rejected him twice, about an ex-wife in Tucson he was on decent terms with, about how he liked his mornings alone and his nights loud, and he said it plain, no wrapping, and she found herself doing the same. She told him about the fling three years ago, told him she wrote for a trade paper covering city zoning like it was exciting, told him she hadn't been touched by anybody in longer than she wanted to count.

"That's honest," he said.

"I don't have the energy for anything else."

The scream came again, and this time it went on longer, and something scraped against the other side of the wall, a slow drag like furniture being moved by somebody with no strength left.

"Jesus," Wade said, turning on his stool. "What is that?"

"Neighbor's studio," Clare called without looking up. "Soundproofing is a joke in these buildings. Don't let it ruin your night."

Yara listened. The screaming had stopped, but under it now was a rhythmic thumping, wet-sounding, and she thought of a side of beef hitting a counter. She told herself it was bass frequencies through old brick. She was a journalist, she'd covered the zoning board, she knew what old warehouses turned into lofts and studios sounded like.

"Sounds like somebody's having a rough night or a great one," Wade said, and shrugged. "Kinky neighbors. Could be worse. Could be a polka band."

"You really don't hear it?"

"I hear it. I also don't care. People are weird and it's none of us." He turned back to her. "Now tell me why a journalist who hates her job writes about zoning."

They stayed another hour. The wet thumping came and went, and twice Yara heard the woman's voice again, low this time, almost conversational, then cut off mid-word like a machine losing power. The second time it stopped, the silence afterward was so complete she could hear the jukebox skip on the same two seconds of a song she'd heard a hundred times.

Wade talked about wanting to paint her. He said it blunt, no games, that she had a face like weather. She called him a liar and he said he'd never once lied to get a woman into bed, that it was the principle of the thing. She believed him, mostly because she wanted to.

At 10:40 they left. Clare said something about coming back, and Wade put his hand at the small of her back in the doorway and asked first, said "can I," simple as that, and she said yes.

The walk to her building was nine blocks and the night was cold enough to be honest. He told her about the wreck on the bridge, how he'd sat in it thinking about whether he even wanted to go on this date, and she told him she'd almost left twice. They laughed at that.

Her building sat in the converted warehouse district where the soundproofing was a rumor and everybody's business leaked through brick. She keyed them in, said "I'll warn you, my neighbor is eccentric," and thought about how that was the wrong word for Jeffery but the polite one.

The hallway smelled like old paint and somebody's takeout. Her apartment was third floor, and Jeffery's studio took the basement and part of the first floor, which meant she mostly heard him through the floor. Tonight she heard him through the wall.

Wade hung his jacket over a chair and looked around at her books, her daughter's empty room with the door open, the bare walls where she kept saying she'd hang something. He didn't comment on any of it, which she took as kindness.

They were standing in her kitchen when it came. Not a scream this time. A scraping, long and slow, right through the shared wall, like something heavy being dragged across concrete, and then a thud that was wet at the end of it. She felt it in her feet through the floor.

"That's not kinky," Wade said quietly.

"No," Yara said. "It's not."

* * *

They stood in her kitchen and listened. Wade had his head cocked like a man tuning a radio, and Yara realized she was holding her breath without deciding to.

Then the woman's voice came back, and this time it was close, like the woman had moved to the other side of her wall.

"Please. Please, I'll do whatever, just please."

Yara's skin went cold. Wade heard it too, she could see it in his face, the way the color dropped out of it. He was 46 years old and gray at the temples and he looked suddenly scared, really scared, which was a look she'd never seen on a man at all.

"That's a woman," he said. "That's a woman begging."

"I know."

"Should we call somebody? Police, nine-one-one, something?"

She should have said yes. She wanted to say she'd picked up the phone and been the person she always thought she was, the one who covered city council meetings and believed in institutions and procedure. Instead she stood there with her hand flat on the counter and listened, because the voice had stopped again and the silence behind it was worse. It was the kind of silence that had a texture. It pressed.

"Hello?" Yara said out loud, at nobody. At the wall. "Is somebody in there?"

Nothing. Not even the thumping. The building held its breath with her.

"Okay, that's it," Wade said, already reaching for his phone. "I'm calling."

Before he could, the sound came back, but wrong. It wasn't begging now. It was a low hum, almost musical, a held note that had harmonics in it she could feel in her fillings. It went on for maybe thirty seconds and then it climbed, pitch and volume together, until it wasn't a hum anymore, it was almost a chord, and then it cut off clean. Like a file ending. Like a track being closed out in a program.

"Jesus Christ," Wade said. He had his phone up, 9 half dialed, and he stood there staring at it. "What do I even say? There's a sound in a wall?"

Yara didn't answer him. She was already moving, down the short hall, and she pressed her ear flat against the plaster of the shared wall, the one that backed up to whatever part of the first floor Jeffery had claimed for his gear. The plaster was cool and gritty against her ear and she could hear her own pulse in it and under the pulse, faint, a dripping. Like a faucet in a big empty room. Like something being wrung out over a drain.

"Yara." Wade's voice behind her, low. "Get away from the wall."

She didn't get away from the wall. She stood there another ten seconds listening to the drip, and then she