The Man in Apartment 9

For eleven nights,
someone knocked on my door
at exactly 2:17 a.m.

Three knocks.
A pause.
Then two more.

I never opened it.

On the twelfth night,
I looked through the peephole.

An old man stood outside,
soaked from the rain,
holding a photograph
against his chest.

I opened the door.

The corridor was empty.

Only the photograph remained,
lying on the floor.

It showed a young man
standing outside my apartment.

He had my face.

On the back,
someone had written:

He still doesn't remember.

I called the police.

They searched the building,
questioned the neighbors,
checked every floor.

Nobody had seen the old man.

Nobody remembered hearing knocks.

But the officer who returned my photograph
looked strangely uncomfortable.

"Do you live alone?" he asked.

"Yes."

He studied my face for a moment.

"How long have you lived here?"

"Three years."

He wrote something in his notebook
and left without another question.

The next morning,
I asked the building manager
about the previous tenant.

He stopped polishing his glasses.

"There was a man here before you,"
he said.

"What happened to him?"

The manager looked toward the staircase.

"He disappeared."

"When?"

"Three years ago.
The police searched everywhere."

I laughed nervously.

"Did he look like me?"

The manager put his glasses on.

"No," he said.

Then, after a pause:

"Actually, nobody remembers his face."

That night,
I stayed awake with every light on.

At 2:17,
the knocking returned.

Three knocks.
A pause.
Two more.

I opened the door immediately.

The old man stood there again.

This time,
he was not holding a photograph.

He was holding a key.

My key.

"Please," he whispered.
"We don't have much time."

"Who are you?"

He looked at me
with the exhausted tenderness
of someone who has answered
the same question for years.

"You have to come with me."

"Where?"

"Home."

I stepped backward.

"This is my home."

The old man closed his eyes.

"That's what you said last time."

He placed the key in my hand
and walked toward the staircase.

I followed.

We descended nine floors,
though I lived on the fourth.

At the bottom,
there was a door I had never seen before.

The old man unlocked it.

Inside was my apartment.

The same furniture.
The same curtains.
The same forgotten cup of tea
on the table.

Except everything was covered in dust.

And on the wall
hung a photograph of the old man
standing beside a young woman.

Behind them stood a little boy.

I recognized the woman.

My mother.

I recognized the boy.

Me.

But the old man—

The old man was the young man
from the photograph.

My face.
My eyes.
My hands.

Only older.

I turned toward him.

"What is this place?"

He sat down slowly.

"Our home," he said.
"Before the accident."

"What accident?"

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he whispered:

"The one you survived."

I tried to leave.

The door would not open.

I pulled at the handle
until my hands hurt.

Behind me,
the old man began to cry.

"I've tried everything," he said.
"I've told you the truth.
I've shown you the photographs.
I've brought you here eleven times."

I stopped pulling.

"Eleven?"

He nodded.

"Every time, you forget.
Every time, you return to the apartment.
Every time, you wait for me to knock."

My head began to hurt.

I looked at the photographs again.

The little boy was smiling.

For the first time,
I noticed the date beneath the frame.

It was eleven years ago.

And beneath the date
was a name.

Not mine.

My father's.

I turned toward the old man.

He was standing by the door now,
his hand resting on the handle.

"I am sorry," he said.

Then he opened it.

Beyond it was not a corridor.

It was a hospital room.

A woman sat beside a bed,
holding the hand of a man
whose face was hidden by shadows.

She was crying.

The old man stepped into the room.

The woman looked up.

"Did he remember?"

The old man shook his head.

She pressed the man's hand
against her forehead.

"I told you," she whispered.
"He isn't coming back."

I stood in the doorway,
unable to breathe.

The old man turned toward me
one final time.

"You were right about one thing,"
he said.

"What?"

"You have been living alone
for three years."

He looked at the bed.

"Because you have been here
for three years."

I followed his gaze.

The man in the bed
had my face.

A monitor beeped beside him.

A nurse entered,
adjusted a line,
and spoke gently to the woman.

"There's no change."

The old man took my hand.

For the first time,
his fingers felt warm.

"Come on," he said.
"It's time."

"Time for what?"

He smiled sadly.

"To wake up."

And then I understood
why the knocking always came
at 2:17 a.m.

Why nobody remembered the old man.

Why every photograph
showed someone who looked like me.

Why the apartment had never felt
quite like a home.

I had not been waiting
for a stranger to tell me
who he was.

I had been waiting
for someone to tell me
who I was.

And the most terrible part
was not that I had forgotten
my own life.

It was that somewhere,
in a room full of machines,
a woman who had loved me
for my entire life
was learning to live
without the person
I had become.

The old man squeezed my hand.

Then he whispered the words
I had heard eleven times before.

"Please, son.

Your mother has been waiting
for you to come home."

Now go back to the first line.

The knocks were never coming
from outside my door.

They were coming
from the only place
that still remembered
I was there.