James didn't sleep.
He couldn't.
Even when he shut his eyes, the building breathed. It murmured, as though dozens of voices whispered just beyond the edge of sound. The ceiling creaked like bone. The air had weight. It felt like something was sitting on his chest - something invisible but ancient.
Zara had vanished by morning, leaving behind a trail of wet footprints that led from the wall to the wardrobe - and then stopped.
Jonah was gone too.
But something else had been left behind:
A box, resting on the center of James's dining table.
Wrapped in newspaper. Tied with twine. Still damp.
James approached it like a bomb.
He stood over it, heart thumping, eyes scanning every detail. The paper was old - not last week, not last year, but decades old. The headline read:
> "13 Dead in Cemetery Collapse: 'Graves Opened by Themselves'"
His name was on the byline.
James O. Atanda.
But he wasn't a journalist.
He'd never written an article in his life.
The twine came undone with one pull. Inside the box was something worse than he expected:
A key - old, rusted, shaped like an ankh.
And a small cassette tape, marked only with a number: 3B.
James blinked. Who the hell still used tapes?
But the key... something about it felt wrong, like it pulsed slightly in his hand. He dropped it on the table with a clink, then picked up the tape, inspecting it.
He needed answers.
And maybe Jonah had left this behind on purpose.
---
He found an old tape deck in the hallway - one of those ancient wall-mounted intercom systems, dusty and long forgotten.
It shouldn't have worked.
It shouldn't even have power.
But when James slid the tape in and pressed "Play," the machine clicked softly - and the tape began to spin.
Then came the voice.
> "If you're hearing this," a man said, voice low and brittle with age, "you're the new tenant in 3B. I was you, once. I didn't believe any of it either."
James froze. The voice was calm, precise, but hollow - like it had accepted something too terrible to explain.
> "My name was Victor Eze. I moved in back in 1989. Thought it was just an old apartment, cheap rent. Didn't care it was near a cemetery. But the longer I stayed, the more it changed. Not the apartment. Me."
> "You'll start to forget things. Your reflection won't match your movement. You'll hear whispers through the walls - they're not random. They're learning your name, your memories, your fears."
James clutched the player tighter.
> "I thought I could leave. I tried. But the doors only lead back inside. Even when I took the stairs, I found myself back in 3B. Sometimes with blood on my hands. Sometimes with... someone else's voice in my mouth."
The voice paused. Then:
> "There's a ritual. An old one. You've probably seen the ankh key by now. It doesn't unlock any door in the physical sense. It opens the gate beneath the building. The one we're all warned not to touch."
James's blood ran cold.
The hidden stairwell. The bone steps. The creature.
> "The ritual takes place on the seventh night. They say it lets one tenant escape - if the sacrifice is clean. But it never is. You lose more than you gain. You don't escape with your soul intact. If you even leave at all."
The voice grew weaker, as if the tape itself were rotting with every word.
> "If you want to live... don't listen to them. Don't trust the building. Don't trust the mirrors. And whatever you do - never answer the door at 3:33 AM. That's not a visitor."
The tape snapped.
POP.
Smoke curled from the player. The wall behind it blackened instantly, like the words themselves had burned a hole in time.
James staggered back.
His mind was racing.
Sacrifice. Ritual. Escape.
Was he really cursed? Trapped? Becoming something else?
He looked at the key again.
It now had fresh blood along the ridges.
And the newspaper wrapping - it had changed.
The headline now read:
> "NEW TENANT MISSING: Police Blame Suicide"
By James O. Atanda.
June 24th, 2025.
That was next week
James sat on the floor, the broken tape player smoldering beside him, its plastic shell melting into the wood. He didn't move. He didn't blink. He just stared at the newspaper headline with his name printed boldly at the top - dated next week.
> "NEW TENANT MISSING..."
It wasn't a warning.
It was a prophecy.
His fingers curled into fists. Something inside him - fear, rage, or raw defiance - began to boil. If this building wanted to erase him, trap him, devour him like it had the others, it would have to fight.
He wasn't ready to be another forgotten soul.
He stuffed the bloodstained key into his pocket and marched to the hallway.
---
The corridor outside 3B was unusually quiet. No flickering lights. No groaning pipes. Just silence - thick, unnatural silence. The kind that presses against your ears and makes your thoughts louder than they should be.
James descended the stairs cautiously.
He stopped at the ground floor, hesitating near the laundry room he'd never dared enter. The door was ajar, swaying slightly. Something in his gut screamed not to go in, but curiosity clawed deeper than fear.
He pushed the door open.
Darkness.
But not the absence of light - it was a living darkness, pulsing and moving like ink dropped in water. Still, he stepped inside.
The laundry room looked abandoned. Machines stood rusted and silent, their doors hanging open like broken mouths. Cobwebs clung to the ceiling like lace. But on the far wall, behind a rack of broken mops, was something he didn't expect:
A bricked-up doorway.
And carved into the bricks, barely visible beneath the grime, were names.
Faded, scratched in desperation, etched by fingernails or knives.
He squinted at the markings, running his hand along them slowly:
"NORA 3B - 1993"
"RAHEEM 3B - 2002"
"IMANI 3B - 2009"
"TUNDE 3B - 2014"
"ZARA 3B - 2019"
Each name followed by a symbol - an inverted ankh.
James felt sick. These were the previous tenants of Apartment 3B - every last one, etched like tombstones.
There was one more name at the bottom.
Fresher than the rest.
Scratched in his own handwriting.
"JAMES 3B - 2025"
His knees almost gave out.
He hadn't written this.
At least, not yet.
Then he saw something else - a seam between two bricks near the center of the wall. A whisper stirred behind it, like voices trapped just beyond the stone.
Without thinking, James pulled the key from his pocket and held it against the bricks.
The air trembled.
Then the bricks began to dissolve, not fall - dissolve like salt in water.
Behind them was a narrow passageway.
The floor was covered in cemetery dirt.
The walls were lined with urns - but not modern ones. These were made of bone, bound with leather straps and human teeth. The smell of death and incense was overpowering.
At the end of the hall stood a metal door. Rusted, tall, engraved with the same inverted ankh from the key. Beneath it, a plaque read:
> "Memory Room - Authorized Tenants Only"
James's hand shook as he reached for the handle.
Before he could open it, a voice stopped him.
Jonah.
Standing behind him, pale and shaking, holding something in his hands.
"Don't go in there, James."
James turned slowly. "Why not?"
Jonah's eyes glistened with something close to fear. "Because if you open that door... it remembers you."
James narrowed his eyes. "It already does."
Jonah stepped forward, revealing what he held.
A photo album.
He handed it to James with trembling fingers. "This was left behind by Tunde. He tried to leave too. Thought he could make it out with his memories intact. Look through it... and tell me what you see."
James opened the first page.
His throat tightened.
There he was. As a child.
Wearing a red sweater. Standing beside his mother. Holding a balloon.
But... this couldn't be. That photo had burned in a house fire when he was ten.
Next page - his first day at university. Except it was a moment he never remembered posing for.
Next - him asleep in 3B. Photographed from above. Eyes half open. Mouth whispering words he didn't recognize.
There were dozens of photos.
Moments he never lived. Others he did - but forgotten.
And each one had a timestamp burned into the corner.
> "MEMORY TAKEN"
Jonah's voice was like a whisper in a hurricane. "That's what it does, James. Every night, the building takes a little more. Not your soul. Not your blood. Your memories. And when it takes enough..."
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't have to.
James looked toward the Memory Room door again.
And this time, he wasn't sure he wanted to know what was inside.
James stood before the rusted door marked MEMORY ROOM, Jonah's trembling voice echoing in his mind.
> "If you open that door... it remembers you."
He gripped the ankh-shaped key, heart pounding. His past wasn't safe. His mind wasn't his. This building had been watching, collecting, rewriting him. And yet, the truth - the full truth - was on the other side of that door.
James shoved the key into the iron lock.
CLICK.
The door creaked open slowly, resisting, as though trying to keep its secrets hidden.
Inside was darkness, thick and absolute - until the moment James stepped through.
The lights came on by themselves.
Dim. Flickering. But enough to see.
It was a library. Or something like it.
Not of books - of memories.
Each wall was lined with drawers, floor to ceiling. Thousands of them. Each labeled with a name and a number. Each drawer humming softly, as though something inside was still alive.
A chilling breeze swept through the room - though there were no windows, no vents, no open paths.
Jonah stayed at the threshold, refusing to enter.
James stepped deeper inside.
Each drawer he passed bore a name he recognized:
Zara Odili – 3B – Complete
Tunde Ayodeji – 3B – Complete
Raheem Lawal – 3B – Complete
Victor Eze – 3B – Corrupted
And finally:
James O. Atanda – 3B – In Progress
His chest tightened. The drawer was slightly ajar.
As if waiting.
He pulled it open with shaking hands.
Inside was a glass orb, no bigger than a tennis ball, glowing faintly blue. Suspended inside were shifting images - floating memories playing on a loop.
His mother's face. His first kiss. The day he found out his father died.
But some things were missing - holes in the film reel. Important people with faces blurred. Places without names. Conversations cut off halfway through.
It was like someone had edited his life.
A low hum surrounded him. From the drawer. From the walls. From deep inside the structure of the building itself.
> "James..."
The voice again.
Only now it didn't come from the walls.
It came from inside the orb.
He leaned closer, staring at the swirling memories.
And then something reached out from inside the glass - not physically, but emotionally. A touch that wasn't a touch. A presence that felt like him, but older. More broken.
Hollowed out.
> "I am you," it whispered.
"I made it to the door. I crossed into the Room. But I couldn't finish what you must."
James stepped back.
The orb pulsed red.
Another image appeared - one he didn't recognize:
A ritual. Seven tenants. Each standing in a circle of salt. Candles flickering. A figure in the center, bound and gagged - screaming.
Then - blood.
So much blood.
Then darkness.
He staggered away from the drawer, heart slamming into his ribs.
Jonah was calling him from the hallway. "James! Get out of there. That room is alive. It feeds on you the longer you stay."
James turned to leave.
But the door slammed shut behind him.
He ran to it, pulling, pounding.
No use.
From the far wall came a soft grinding sound - like another drawer opening.
He turned.
And saw one marked:
> John A. Atanda – 3B – Fragmented
His breath caught.
That was his father's name.
He didn't remember much about him. He had always told himself it was trauma. Or time. But the drawer was proof.
The building had taken his father too.
James approached it, hand shaking, and opened the drawer.
Inside was an orb, cracked and dull. But it still pulsed. Still lived.
He touched it.
The room disappeared.
---
Suddenly he stood in a hospital room.
Dim lighting. Machines beeping. His father - younger, broken, coughing into a cloth soaked with blood.
> "They don't let you leave, James," the man whispered. "I tried. God knows I tried. But the building takes. It remembers. And eventually, it decides."
James reached out. "Dad...?"
The man looked up - his own face reflected in his father's eyes.
Then the vision shattered.
---
He was back in the Memory Room, gasping for breath.
The orb in his hand was now blackened, smoking.
And the walls... they had changed.
Every drawer now read:
> James O. Atanda – 3B – Updating
One by one, the drawers began opening, their contents glowing and pulsing.
The room was consuming him.
He bolted for the door, ramming his shoulder into it. It gave an inch - then another.
Jonah appeared on the other side, pulling it open with all his strength.
James stumbled out into the hall.
The door slammed shut behind him - and sealed, bricks reforming instantly where the entrance had been.
He collapsed to the floor, gasping.
Jonah leaned down. "You saw it, didn't you?"
James nodded slowly. "My father was here. This place... it took him. And now it's doing the same to me."
Jonah's eyes were hollow. "There's still one way out. One way to stop the memory drain. But you won't like it."
James looked up. "Tell me."
Jonah hesitated.
Then whispered:
> "You must complete the ritual. One soul in exchange for freedom. But it has to be someone... tied to you."
James's stomach turned.
"I don't know anyone here," he said.
Jonah's expression didn't change.
"Not yet. But you will. It always makes sure you do.