Story 5: “The Man Behind the Shower Curtain”

Story 5: “The Man Behind the Shower Curtain”

Ava lived alone for the first time in her life. She was proud — a studio apartment in the city, small but cozy. Her own furniture. Her own rules. Her own space.

It felt perfect.

At first.

It started subtly.

She’d wake up to small things being slightly... wrong. A mug not where she left it. Her phone halfway under the couch. The bathroom light on, though she was sure she’d turned it off.

She blamed it on stress. Work had been draining lately. Maybe she was just forgetting things. Maybe she needed more sleep.

But then came the water.

Every morning, she’d wake up to damp footprints on the bathroom floor. Long, narrow, slightly smeared. As though someone with wet feet had stepped out of the shower in the middle of the night.

Only Ava never took showers at night.

She checked for leaks. Asked the landlord. Nothing.

One night, around 1:30 a.m., she got up to use the bathroom. Half-asleep, she didn’t notice anything at first — until she sat down on the toilet and looked up.

The shower curtain was closed.

She always left it open.

Her heart started pounding. She reached for the curtain slowly, hand trembling. Pulled it aside.

Nothing.

Just darkness. The tub was dry. Empty.

She laughed it off. “You’re being dramatic,” she told herself, trying to quiet the fear.

But the next night, the curtain was closed again.

And when she opened it, there was water in the tub.

And long scratches on the inside of the porcelain — five parallel lines, as if something had been clawing to get out.

She stopped sleeping.

Started locking the bathroom door at night.

But that didn’t help.

One morning, the door was open — even though she remembered turning the lock.

And scrawled on the mirror, in foggy letters, were the words:

“I was here.”

She called her sister, begged her to come over. “I think I’m losing my mind.”

Her sister stayed the night, just to reassure her. They laughed. Drank wine. Watched movies.

That night, Ava let her sister take the bed and curled up on the couch.

At 3:42 a.m., she woke up to the sound of the shower turning on.

She froze.

Tiptoed to the bathroom.

The door was open. Steam billowed out.

And through the haze, she saw a tall, pale figure standing in the tub, facing the wall, the curtain half-drawn.

Dripping wet.

Not moving.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t run.

She just backed away.

And the moment she stepped out of the hallway—

The shower stopped.

The figure vanished.

Her sister never saw it. She thought Ava was sleepwalking. Delusional.

So she left the next morning.

Ava didn’t blame her.

She bought a motion-sensor camera and aimed it at the bathroom door.

That night, she left the lights on, the curtain open, the door closed.

She didn’t sleep.

In the morning, she reviewed the footage.

At 2:53 a.m., the camera captured the bathroom door slowly creaking open on its own.

And then…

A figure — tall, soaked, with impossibly long limbs — crawled from behind the curtain on all fours, spider-like, across the tile.

It paused just outside the bathroom.

Turned its head toward the camera.

And smiled.

Then it slithered backward, returning to the tub, and closed the curtain behind it.

Ava moved out that day.

But sometimes, in the homes she rents now, even when there are no curtains — no tubs — she still hears the slow hiss of a shower running in the middle of the night.

And every mirror, no matter how clean, fogs up with the same message:

“I was here.”

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