The voice crawled up my spine. It wasn’t a scream. It was a wet whisper, like a tired child’s breath, right against the back of my neck. I haven’t gone by my full name, Arturo, since my mother passed away. Everyone in the tenement calls me Turo. Only Rebecca, back when she still sold popsicles, called me Arturo because, as she put it, “names deserve respect, too.”
I didn’t turn around. Not because I was brave. But because the voice message had just commanded me not to. I looked down at the wet little footprints. They were small, barefoot, marked on the concrete of the rooftop as if a child had just stepped out of the water and stopped right behind me.
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The water tank sounded again. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. The voice repeated my name. “Arturo…”
Then, I ran. I nearly killed myself going down the stairs. I slipped on the third landing, slammed my knee against the wall, and kept going down, clutching my phone as if it were a bomb. I pounded on Mrs. Chayo’s door, unit 1B. “Open up! Please, open up!”
Mrs. Chayo came out in a floral robe, her hair in rollers, a black rosary hanging from her neck. She was the kind of woman in our Chicago neighborhood who had seen it all but still lit candles on Mondays because they say the saints listen to those whom the church no longer reaches. “What happened, Turo?” I couldn’t speak. I just played the audio for her. When she heard Rebecca’s voice, the color drained from her face. “That woman is buried,” she whispered. “There’s something in the tank.”
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She didn’t ask another question. She went to get Mr. Beto, the retired plumber from 3C. Then Mrs. Licha, who always found out everything before the people involved did. In less than ten minutes, five neighbors were in the courtyard, staring up at the stairs as if the rooftop were the mouth of a beast.
“We have to call the police,” Mrs. Chayo said. “If we call before we see for ourselves, they’ll come and play dumb,” Mr. Beto replied. “Just like four years ago.”
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No one argued with that. The night Emmett disappeared, two cruisers, three officers, and a detective with sleepy eyes had shown up. They checked the surface, asked if Rebecca had enemies, and eventually wrote down “possible family abduction.” Within a week, the file already smelled of dust.
In our neighborhood, even missing persons cases have office hours.
We went up together. Mrs. Chayo clutched her rosary. Mr. Beto carried a pipe wrench. I held my phone, recording. I didn’t know why. Maybe because, in this neighborhood, if you don’t record it, everyone later claims they saw nothing.
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The rooftop was the same. The yellow lightbulb. The old laundry basins. The wet blanket lying where I had dropped it. The black water tank at the back, huge, covered in dust, with rusted wire wrapped around the lid.
But the footprints were gone. “They were right here,” I said, my voice breaking. “I swear they were here.” Mrs. Chayo didn’t call me crazy. She just looked at the concrete and crossed herself.
The scratching returned. Scratch. Mrs. Licha screamed and covered her mouth. Mr. Beto approached slowly. “That’s no rat.”
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My phone vibrated in my hand. Another audio message. It played before I even touched the screen. Rebecca’s voice crackled with static. “Don’t call Mauro. He knows.”
We all froze. Mauro was the building manager. The one who collected the water fees, fixed locks, and decided who could hang clothes on the roof. He lived in the room by the entrance, always sitting on a stool, watching people pass by on the main street with the eyes of an old dog. Mauro had been the first to say Emmett’s father had taken him. Mauro had been the one to convince Rebecca “not to make a scene” because “in these parts, the more you look, the more you lose.”
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Mr. Beto tightened his grip on the pipe wrench. “That bastard…” He didn’t finish. From the stairwell, a thud. Then footsteps. Mauro appeared on the roof in a black hoodie, his face puffy from poor sleep. He didn’t look agitated like someone who heard noise by chance. He walked straight toward us. As if he’d been waiting for us to come up. “What are you doing here?” he asked. Nobody answered. His eyes locked onto the water tank. Then onto my phone. “Turn that off, Turo.” “No.” Mauro smiled without joy. “Don’t get mixed up in the affairs of the dead.” Mrs. Chayo stepped in front of me. “Rebecca sent voice messages.”
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Mauro’s face changed, just a little. But it was enough. “That woman was crazy,” he said. “Everyone knows it.” “She’s dead,” I replied. “And yet, she speaks more clearly than you.”
