James woke up with a scream lodged in his throat.
He was back in his apartment.
Alone.
No sign of the door to Floor 1A. No sign of Mercy. No rocking chair, no ancient woman with cataract eyes, and certainly no photo of his younger self.
Just the same cracked ceiling, the same mold-stained wallpaper, and the persistent sound of dripping from somewhere behind the kitchen walls.
He sat up slowly, wiping the sweat from his face.
Had it all been a hallucination?
A dream?
No.
The dream hadn't left something in his pocket.
He reached in-and pulled out the photo.
Old, faded, and curled at the edges. There he was-barely eight years old, wearing a red striped sweater he barely remembered owning. His mother stood beside him, one hand resting on his shoulder. They were in front of the building. Only now, seeing it with fresh eyes, he noticed the shadows in the windows behind them.
Watching.
Waiting.
And... a hand pressed against the glass. Not theirs.
He shoved the photo away, stood, and paced the room.
Mercy's words echoed in his mind.
> "You've been here before. You never left."
He checked the time-4:06 AM.
Still dark.
The air in the apartment was unnaturally still.
And then it changed.
A creaking above his head.
Floorboards flexing.
He paused. He lived on the top floor.
There shouldn't be anyone above him.
Another creak. He followed it to the window, slowly pulled the curtain aside.
Outside, the courtyard was fogged over, but he could just barely make out a figure standing still in the grass-long coat, still posture, face completely turned upward.
Facing his window.
No flashlight. No movement. Just watching.
James pulled back from the window, heart hammering. He blinked-and the lights in his apartment flickered once.
Then twice.
Then went completely dark.
He froze.
From the hallway... came the unmistakable sound of footsteps.
Soft. Measured. Walking toward his apartment door.
A knock.
Not violent.
Just... steady.
James backed away from the door.
The peephole was broken, had been since he moved in.
Another knock.
Then-
> "Package delivery for Mr. James."
The voice was familiar.
Too familiar.
He hadn't ordered anything. And that voice-
It sounded like his father.
But his father had died seven years ago.
He didn't move.
The silence outside the door stretched for nearly a minute.
Then, something slid under it.
A small envelope.
He stared at it like it was a snake.
Eventually, he knelt and picked it up with trembling fingers.
It was sealed in red wax, pressed with a strange symbol-like a combination of a spiral and an eye. He cracked it open.
Inside, one sentence was written in scratchy, elegant handwriting:
> "They just signed the lease."
James's breath caught.
He looked up-and every single light in his apartment blinked on at once.
The air vibrated, faintly electric.
His phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
He answered, holding the phone to his ear like it might burn him.
Silence.
Then a whisper:
> "She's here."
Click.
The call ended.
James bolted for the hallway, needing answers-needing to see who had moved in.
He reached the stairwell and looked down.
A woman stood on the landing below. Back to him. Dressed in a black coat, curly hair tied in a bun. A large duffel bag rested beside her.
She turned slowly.
Her face was pale. Sharp. Eyes dark and unreadable.
But James's blood ran cold.
Because it wasn't just her face he recognized.
It was the scar under her left eye.
One that he had seen before.
In a dream?
No.
In a memory.
On a girl he had once known... who had disappeared when they were children.
> "Amaka," he whispered.
She smiled. Coldly.
"You remember me."
James backed away.
"I... I thought you died."
"I did," she said softly. "And now I've come home."
Before he could react, the hallway lights flickered violently-and every door on the floor creaked open at once.
As if welcoming her.
James stared at Amaka, frozen in disbelief.
She didn't look older. Didn't look like someone who had vanished nearly two decades ago. In fact, she looked exactly the same as she had at age ten-only stretched into adulthood, as though the years had passed elsewhere for her.
"Amaka," James said again, louder this time, voice shaking.
She stepped closer. The hallway floor groaned beneath her boots. "I remember you too, James. You were the only one who cried when they said I was gone."
"You... died. We searched for weeks. My mother thought maybe you'd wandered off. The police-" He stopped. His thoughts swirled like fog. "How are you alive?"
Amaka didn't answer. Instead, she reached down and picked up her duffel bag.
"I never left this building," she whispered. "I was taken below. Into the belly of it."
James took a slow step back. "Taken by who?"
"Not who." Her eyes gleamed. "What."
She turned her head slightly, as though listening to something behind the walls.
"It doesn't like it when we call it a who. The building... it's older than names. Older than this land. Even the cement was poured over bones."
James felt his throat dry up. "You're saying the building is alive?"
Amaka smiled faintly. "It remembers pain. It feeds on it. That's why it let me out."
"Why you?" he asked. "Why now?"
She looked him dead in the eyes. "Because you woke it up."
A sudden, deep groaning came from the walls, like pipes cracking under pressure-but James knew it wasn't pipes. It was breathing.
Amaka brushed past him and walked toward the center of the hallway, where all the doors still hung open.
One by one, they slammed shut as she passed.
James followed her cautiously, keeping distance. "How are you still alive?"
She stopped and turned to him.
"I'm not. At least not all the way."
And then, calmly, she unbuttoned the top of her coat and pulled it aside.
James gasped.
Beneath her skin-along her collarbone and neck-were symbols. Burned into her flesh, spiraling and glowing faintly. Some pulsed with a sickly green light. Others shifted like they were still alive.
"I had to become part of it to survive," Amaka said. "I've been trapped beneath for nineteen years, talking to the walls, bargaining. Giving pieces of myself away."
James took another step back.
"You're working with it?"
"No," she said coldly. "I'm keeping it distracted."
There was a long silence. Then:
"It chose you," she added. "That's why the walls bend when you're near. Why the lights blink in your presence. You're a fracture-a scar. The building loves scars."
"I don't want any part of this," James said quietly.
She laughed, and the sound had a faint echo beneath it-as if another voice had laughed with her.
"It doesn't matter what you want. You're already inside its memory."
James clenched his fists. "Then how do I end this?"
Amaka stepped forward, her voice dropping into a low whisper. "There's a door. Beneath the basement. Beneath the foundation. It opens only when the building trusts you."
"I don't want its trust."
"You'll get it anyway," she said. "Because you're part of its story now. The more you remember, the deeper it digs into you."
James shook his head, trying to focus.
"I need answers. Proof. Something I can hold."
Amaka tilted her head, considering him.
Then she reached into her bag and handed him something wrapped in faded cloth.
"Open it."
James hesitated, then slowly unwrapped the bundle.
Inside was a child's shoe-tiny, red, with a cracked cartoon character face on the side.
"I wore that the day I vanished," Amaka said. "The day the building swallowed me. It gave this back to me the moment I woke up in the dark."
James stared at it, numb.
And then-
A loud crash echoed from down the hall.
Both of them turned.
The light at the far end flickered out.
Another crash.
Then a dragging sound.
Something was coming.
"I didn't come alone," Amaka whispered, eyes wide. "When the building lets something out... it always asks for something else in return."
The air grew thick, humming.
And then came the sound of laughter.
A child's laughter.
High-pitched.
Mocking.
Coming from inside the walls.
James gritted his teeth. "What the hell is that?"
Amaka's eyes were fixed on the far end of the corridor, where the darkness now moved like liquid.
"I think it's your turn to meet what's beneath," she said quietly.
The hallway was silent again-but not empty.
James could feel the change in the air. Like the breath had been sucked out of the building and replaced with something rotting and electric.
At the far end of the corridor, something shifted.
A shadow stepped forward from the dark.
Then another.
And another.
Shapes. Figures. Each one dragging its feet like its bones had forgotten how to walk.
James's mouth went dry.
"Amaka," he whispered, "what are those?"
She stared, her voice tight. "They're what the building forgets... and buries."
The shapes moved closer-lumbering and wrong, with limbs slightly too long and heads that jerked in unnatural motions. Their eyes glowed faintly with an amber haze, like candlelight trapped behind wet glass.
James took a step back, but the hallway behind them had started to twist-literally twist, the wallpaper warping, doorframes curving unnaturally like bones bending under pressure.
The building wasn't just haunted. It was alive-and now it was waking up hungry.
"Run," Amaka said.
But James was frozen. Because one of the figures-the third one-wasn't unknown.
It had his mother's face.
Bloated, pale, lips pulled into a stretched grin like skin pinned back by hooks. Her eyes were empty sockets, leaking something dark and thick.
"James," it moaned in a broken voice.
He stumbled backward in horror.
"She's not real," Amaka hissed. "It's wearing her. They all wear the ones we've lost."
The figure reached out, dragging her broken fingers along the walls, leaving bloody streaks in their wake.
James finally turned and ran.
He and Amaka sprinted down the hallway, the ceiling creaking overhead, the lights bursting one by one above them as the hallway screamed with pressure. Doors slammed open and shut, gaping like mouths trying to trap them inside.
They hit the stairwell.
But it wasn't the same.
Where the staircase once spiraled upward and downward like a normal apartment building, now it stretched down into blackness-dozens of levels below where the basement should've ended.
"Where the hell are we!?" James yelled.
"The building's folding," Amaka said. "Changing shape. We're inside its memory now."
Behind them, the moaning grew louder.
And closer.
James didn't hesitate. He plunged down the stairs.
The descent felt like it took hours, yet he never grew tired.
No matter how many flights he took, the stairs just kept going.
The wallpaper changed too-becoming older, stained, etched with strange glyphs. The air grew colder. Wetter.
After what felt like an eternity, they hit a landing.
A large iron door stood there.
It wasn't locked.
James reached for the handle, but Amaka stopped him.
"Once we go through," she said, "we can't come back. We'll be beneath it all."
"I need to know the truth," James said. "No more games."
She nodded.
They pulled the door open.
A wave of hot, stale air hit them-like opening a tomb sealed for centuries.
Inside was a narrow corridor, walls pulsing like a throat, floors soft underfoot.
Something dripped from the ceiling.
And ahead, in the center of the space, a well sat in the floor-ancient, surrounded by rusted chains and tall candles burning with black flame.
A voice echoed from it.
> "James..."
It was a whisper-but it was inside his head.
> "We remember you..."
He stepped forward, but Amaka held him back again.
"You don't speak to it. You listen. Or it'll take more than your voice."
But James's knees buckled. Visions surged through his mind-images of him as a child, standing in front of this very same well. Laughing. Reaching for something.
Something that reached back.
"This is where it started," he whispered.
Amaka was crying now.
"I tried to warn them. When I escaped, I told them you were the first. That you came here as a boy and opened something that should've stayed buried."
James couldn't breathe.
His memories were cracking open.
He remembered falling. A basement that wasn't a basement. His mother pulling him back-but not before he'd seen something in the water. Something that looked just like him.
And it had smiled.
The air shifted again.
The moaning had returned-but now it came from the well.
James stepped forward, holding out the old photo Mercy had returned to him. "Why did you choose me?"
The voice that answered came from every direction at once.
> "You were hollow. Hurt. Forgotten.
You came willingly. You left a piece of yourself behind...
Now we want the rest."
Suddenly the ground cracked, and from the well emerged a black hand, fingers long and jointless, nails clicking against the stone rim. A second hand followed.
Then the head.
It was James's face-but wrong.
Its mouth stretched too wide, eyes lidless and filled with ink. Its skin was cracked porcelain, and when it grinned, something moved behind its teeth.
Amaka screamed, pulling James back-but it was too late.
The creature lunged-and the flames in the candles extinguished all at once.
Darkness.
Then silence.