u/TCHILL_OUT

Part 1

CW: contains gore

The following afternoon, I drove to the police station.

Every step inside felt heavier than the last, as if unseen eyes were following me. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, sending sharp waves of panic through my tattered mind. I jumped when the woman at the desk called my name.

As I was led toward the back, I noticed the way the officers were looking at me. What started as passing looks hardened into long stares. I knew what they were thinking. I was still wearing my pajamas. My flip-flops were smeared with blood, still seeping from my ripped-up feet.

I knew I looked like shit. It was a miracle I was still awake, let alone still standing. I’m sure they felt the same.

My throat tightened as I swallowed. Then I stepped forward, toward the officer assigned to me, trying to hide how badly my hands were shaking.

“Have a seat.” He said, gesturing to an empty chair across from him.

I sat without hesitation. The chair felt too small for some reason. Exposed. Like I had a spotlight on me.

“I’m Officer Kearney,” he said in a deep, soothing voice. “I’ll be taking down your statement today.”

He studied my face for a moment longer than felt necessary before sitting upright in his chair.

“Now, tell me what’s been going on, son.”

His eyes softened as he leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk.

“Please,” I said, “there’s something… I mean… someone in my apartment.” I stumbled over my words. The more I tried to explain, the more insane it sounded. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince him or myself at that point. “I know how this sounds,” I rushed on. “And I know what you’re thinking. I am not imagining this. I need help. I can’t go back. I won’t. Not until it’s gone.”

He didn’t respond. He just stared at me in silence, eyes narrowing and widening in thought, as if he were studying a puzzle. Then, without looking away, he reached across the desk, picked up his pen, and began to write.

His movements were smooth and confident. The product of repetition built up over years of police work. But his face didn’t match it. His eyes flicked between me and the paper, balancing fear against delusion, deciding which one I was more likely to present.

I kept talking.

The words continued to spill out of me in uneven waves, the urgency in my voice growing with each scratch of his pen. I knew I was running out of time and credibility.

Finally, he stopped writing.

His face softened as he pulled the pen away and set it down carefully, as if sudden movement might cause his thoughts to unravel. He let out a long, exasperated sigh and nodded.

“Alright.” He muttered as he stood up and grabbed his keys. “Let’s see what you’re so worked up about.”

Outside, the cold air bit deep into my skin. It should’ve snapped me back to reality. Instead, it only revealed a much deeper chill beneath the surface. One that was slowly crawling its way back up my spine.

I was going back.

I rode in the back of the cop car, trying to focus on the low hum of the engine and the steady rhythm of passing streetlamps… anything to keep my thoughts away from where we were going.

When that failed, I focused on breathing. On reminding myself constantly that I wasn’t alone anymore.

It didn’t work.

No matter what I tried, the isolation continued to weigh heavily on my mind. The officer sitting next to me might as well have been a million miles away. I could feel his presence physically, but it didn’t offer any comfort.

As the building came into view, a sharp pain ran through my stomach, as if trying to tell me that I’d made a terrible mistake by coming back.

We arrived at an anti-climactic scene. Nothing was out of place.

In the evening light, the place looked harmless. We made our way inside and climbed the stairs to the third floor without a word.

Stepping into the hallway felt like we were entering an endless void that was quickly closing in behind us. The light from the stairwell died at the corner, plunging the corridor into pure darkness. The overhead lights above each apartment door were completely dead, leaving the long strip of carpet ahead drenched in pitch black.

Officer Kearney pulled a large flashlight from his belt and clicked it on. The beam sliced forward, cutting through the shadows and landing squarely on my apartment door.

“That’s it,” I said, voice shaky.

We walked to the door slowly, letting the cone of light guide us until we were standing in front of it.

It looked normal. Locked with no sign of forced entry or disturbance.

A thick layer of dust covered the doorknob. I’d only been gone for a day, and yet it looked as if no one had been in or out in weeks. The place honestly looked abandoned.

My hands shook as I fumbled with my keys, dropping them once. Then again. The metal slipped through my fingers like they didn’t belong to me anymore.

For a moment, it felt like I no longer had control of my hands. Like something else was trying to take over my body.

Officer Kearney shifted the flashlight, pulling it from the door to the side of my face. The brightness burned my eyes, snapping me back to reality.

“You alright, son?” he asked, a slight concern filling his voice.

“Y…Yeah, I’m ok,” I lied, trying not to show how scared I truly felt. “Just nervous, is all.”

The hallway felt like it was squeezing in around me.

I forced myself to slow down and breathe. I closed my eyes and concentrated on slowly gathering myself until the trembling eased enough for me to regain control.

When I opened my eyes, the light had returned to the door, fixed on the knob.

I slid the key into the slot and turned it. The lock gave way with a heavy clunk, and I pushed.

The door finally opened.

A strong, metallic scent rushed out to meet us, flooding the hallway and crawling deep into my lungs before I could stop myself from breathing it in.

Officer Kearney recoiled instantly.

“Whoa,” he exclaimed. “What is that?”

I looked back at him and shook my head. “I have no idea.”

He pulled his flashlight up and aimed it into the apartment. The beam cut through the inky black void, stopping just past the doorway. It revealed the faint outlines of shapes and shadows lurking beyond the threshold as it passed over them.

The air turned heavy, carrying the strange odor as it spilled into the hallway. It smelled like old rust and copper. Like the smell you get after handling a bunch of old pennies.

Pure darkness bled out of the room, pressing against us, cold and damp as if it were reaching out for us to claim us as its own.

“What’s going on in here?” he asked, voice low.

He stepped forward, sweeping the flashlight through the apartment. The beam settled on a corner, seemingly darker than the rest of the room.

A shadow lingered there, moving in strange ways, twisting and writhing like smoke caught in a sudden draft. The light died against it, absorbed into its undulating, smoky form, splitting the space around it like a river’s current is forced around a boulder.

We were transfixed. Drawn helplessly toward it, as if it had taken hold of our minds, demanding we come closer.

Then it breathed.

A low, rasping exhale echoed through the apartment.

The sound was so sudden… so loud, that it even made Officer Kearney flinch. I knew from the beginning that he had dealt with and seen almost everything as a cop, but I was sure he hadn’t seen or heard anything like this before.

This was something completely different.

The raspy groans poured out of the black mass. They slithered across the floor and along the walls, like a parasite seeking a host.

It clawed at the inside of my skull, scraping away any semblance of reason and sanity I had left, leaving raw terror to fill the space.

The officer’s flashlight caught it for a moment, just long enough to reveal its impossible movement. Then, without warning, the light flickered and died, plunging us into darkness.

My heart shot up into my throat, pounding so hard I thought it might burst.

“Ahh, c’mon, you fuckin’ thing. Work, damn you!” Officer Kearney snarled, smashing the flashlight against his palm.

I was frozen. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.

Suddenly, the hallway turned frigid. My breath rose in clouds, encircling my head.

The darkening void thickened until I could barely make out Kearney’s silhouette in the doorway. The sound of the flashlight thudding against his palm masked all other noises. Then, as if the answer to a prayer, the light clicked on, coating the door frame in light.

“There we go!” Kearney exclaimed, pointing it back inside.

Even with the light, I could feel it. Something was very wrong here.

Somewhere behind us, wood creaked. Slow, heavy footsteps followed, pacing along the hallway between my apartment and 3A.

My body went numb. I recognized them immediately.

They were the same footsteps I’d heard every night since the calls started.

We both jerked toward 3A.

The door stood there, silent and ordinary.

But then, I noticed something was wrong.

It was open.

Just a crack. Not enough to see inside. But enough to set off every alarm in my brain.

That door had never once been opened since I moved in. Never.

But now… it was.

Almost imperceptibly, it began to widen. The screeching hinges pierced the silence, announcing the arrival of something unseen within.

Something was coming.

Before we could react, the flashlight died again.

“Goddammit!” Kearney snapped, striking it against his palm.

Preoccupied with his frustration, I didn’t see it slip from behind the door. It slithered into the hallway unnoticed, silently stalking us.

In the pitch black, I felt something brush past my leg.

It wasn’t air or fabric.

It felt like skin. Cold, slick, and wet.

My stomach twisted into knots.

In that moment, I wanted nothing more than for that light to come back on. My heartbeat quickened, slamming into my ribs as the acrid taste of adrenaline filled my mouth. I closed my eyes, trying to calm myself and steady my breathing as Kearney worked on the light. Every second felt like an eternity.

Finally, the flashlight clicked back on, and Officer Kearney aimed it into 3A. The light washed the inside of the apartment.

It wasn’t what I expected.

The image I’d held in my mind of apartment 3A being just another normal room was gone, replaced instantly by something far worse. It was twisted and warped in ways my mind refused to accept… like looking into hell itself.

The walls bowed inward, stretched, and split like overworked muscle. Crimson streaks ran along the floorboards, sticky and wet, glistening like fresh blood in the pale light.

Phone cords hung from the ceiling in tangled clusters, twitching violently, all trailing through the cracked, crumbling walls of apartment 3A, as if they were the pulsing veins of some unholy creature.

Then, suddenly, a phone rang from somewhere.

The old landline beside my bed screamed to life, its metallic bell shrill and violent as it smashed against its receiver.

Each ring felt like a hammer driving a spike deep into my skull, one after the other.

Somehow, I knew with perfect certainty, it wasn’t calling me. I could feel it, calling through me, using my consciousness as the handset.

The shadow peeled itself from the corner and flowed toward the torn wall, its shape elongating, stretching like fluid as it poured into the center of the hallway.

The walls between the two apartments splintered, collapsing and falling away with a wet, grinding shudder.

It wasn’t a room.

It was an immense cavity lined with sagged, pulsating veins that resembled old phone cords. They throbbed and shook with every ring, quivering as though the walls themselves were alive.

The floor flexed and rumbled under our feet, as if it would give way at any moment.

“You answered me,” a voice whispered directly into my skull.

Officer Kearney unholstered his pistol and aimed at the writhing mass, hands trembling. He steadied his nerves, leveling it on one of the large veins, and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the thick, fetid air, striking the hulking mass with a sharp crack, but it did nothing.

There was no hole. No disturbance.

It just vanished, as if it had never existed in the first place.

The immense thing trembled in response, twisting and turning violently as if mocking his feeble attempt to hurt it.

He tightened his grip, raising back up to eye level. He pressed his finger firmly against the trigger and began to squeeze.

I readied myself for the report, covering my ears in anticipation. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Before either of us could react, a black mist began to rise in his hands, causing him to yell in fear. Small particles drifted into the air like smoke as the pistol slowly disappeared before our eyes, quickly dissolving into thin air, defying the laws of physics.

An ear-piercing ring filled the room, so loud it nearly rattled the walls.

It was back.

The phone had displaced itself and was now settled on the wall behind us, ringing incessantly.

The darkness sprang outward, using shock and confusion to its advantage so it could move unnoticed. It surged forward with unnatural speed, slamming into Kearney like a freight train, lifting him into the air. His spine arched backward with a sickening snap. His uniform tore open as his ribs splayed outward, puncturing through flesh and fabric like jagged claws.

Blood erupted in hot, pulsing sprays, splattering across what remained of the floor in glittering arcs that coruscated under the flickering flashlight.

It wasn’t just a shadow. It was alive.

It proceeded to use Kearney like a plaything, forcing itself into every orifice. His face twisted in pain as he tried to scream, eyes rolling back into his head, as the black, undulating mass exploded from his mouth, eyes, and ears, swallowing the last light of life from his face.

His jaw dislocated with a wet, sickening pop, stretching inhumanly wide. His throat bulged outward, as if something inside was clawing its way out, tearing through skin and muscle alike.

It shot through his body as if exploring a maze, causing it to convulse violently, limbs jerking in rhythmic spasms.

It was as if he were a puppet being controlled by some otherworldly force.

The darkness hollowed him from the inside, slowly stripping away everything that made him human.

It finally began unfurling out of Kearney’s body, turning his skin grey and slack. His veins blackened beneath the surface, snaking outward like ink diffusing in water.

When the darkness finally withdrew, it did so slowly, like something reluctant to let go of the prey it had been feeding on.

What it left behind were remnants of what had once been Officer Kearney, reduced to almost nothing.

He was slumped against the lower kitchen cabinets, spine twisted and curved, chin resting against his chest. His arms dangled loosely at his sides, fingers twitching briefly against the floor before going still. His uniform was soaked across the torso with blood and something else. Something darker.

It looked thinner than blood, reminding me of oil or grease, soaking into his skin like a sponge.

His eyes were open now.

Open and empty.

His mouth hung wide in a scream that had clearly shredded his throat raw, and yet, all I could hear was the ringing phone. I stared into Officer Kearney’s lifeless eyes as the bells consumed me. I could feel my mind slipping from consciousness.

Then, without warning, the ringing stopped.

The silence that followed pressed against my ears, heavy and intense, growing louder than the bells could ever be. I felt something slither up my side, curling around my neck and settling right next to my ear.

“You don’t belong to it.” It whispered.

I couldn’t move. It felt like I was strapped in a vise, being squeezed from all sides. It held me in place, as its cold breath traced down the side of my neck.

“But you answered.”

Something in me snapped loose, like the last shred of sanity I was still holding onto had been broken.

It loosened its grip, allowing me to move my feet. I stumbled backward, nearly slipping on the blood-slick tile as I bolted for the door. The hallway outside felt stretched and narrow, like the walls had leaned inward to watch the show.

I made it halfway down the corridor before dropping to my knees. I had no more strength to run or fight. It had taken everything I had left.

The ringing quickly came back. It never truly stopped when I left the apartment. It just moved.

It was inside me, filling my head and chest.

At that point, I knew that I was now a slave to it. I could feel it. It wanted to use me for something. It had to. Why would it have let me live if it didn’t have bigger plans for me? I guess Officer Kearney didn’t fit the narrative.

When backup arrived, I was still on the floor.

I remember the first officer rounding the corner with his weapon drawn, shouting commands before he even fully saw me. I must have looked insane, sweating through my shirt, hands shaking violently.

My body wouldn’t allow any words to come out, nor would it allow me to look him in the eyes.

All I could do was stare through him and down the hallway.

They ordered me onto my stomach, pushing my face into the hallway carpet. I don’t remember resisting, but I remember the cold shock of the handcuffs squeezing my wrists.

“Where is he?” one of them demanded.

My teeth were chattering so hard that I felt them begin to crack. I could barely breathe, let alone answer his questions.

“He’s… He’s in there,” I finally managed. “That room... He’s… He’s not…”

They didn’t wait for me to finish. Two officers entered my apartment while the other four entered apartment 3A.

I lay there in the hallway, cheek burning against the carpet, waiting and listening for what they might find.

“It’s clear.” One of them called out.

An officer grabbed my arms and pulled me to my feet. As he marched me toward apartment 3A, the emotions all came flooding back at once. The vision of Officer Kearney’s ravaged body lay front and center in my mind, torturing me with every step.

I began to hyperventilate.

As we turned across the threshold, I closed my eyes tight, not wanting to relive that nightmare.

We stopped abruptly as the officer yanked me backwards.

“Where is he?” He asked.

‘Where is he?’ I thought to myself, ‘He’s right there on the floor... dead.’

Confused and apprehensive, I opened my eyes. I’d expected to see a giant, writhing black mass surrounded by Kearney’s remains. Instead, I was met with a much more terrifying scene.

The apartment was spotless.

There were no dark shadows, no phone cords, no blood on the cabinets… not even the smallest speck of dust was out of place.

More importantly, there wasn’t a body on the floor. Officer Kearney was nowhere to be found.

It was as if whatever that thing was had cleaned up after itself.

They searched the apartment thoroughly, combing through every room and every closet. They checked the windows, the fire escape, and even the ceiling panels, but found nothing.

Somehow, I knew they wouldn’t.

Officer Kearney was gone.

They looked at me differently after that. I could see the picture settling into place in their heads. A fellow officer went inside an apartment with a civilian, and now that officer was missing.

All signs pointed at me. I was the only one they could blame.

One of them read me my rights before I fully processed what was happening. I kept trying to explain, desperately trying to tell them about the darkness and the phone.

“What phone?” one of them asked.

“There was a phone on the wall in 3A. It was ringing.” I responded.

They told me there was no landline registered to 3A and that it had been vacant for quite some time, which I already knew in the back of my mind.

I started to doubt myself.

Had I really just imagined all of it? If so, where was Officer Kearney?

They took me in that night.

At the station, they separated me immediately. I sat in a small room with gray walls and a metal table bolted to the floor. The adrenaline had burned off by then, leaving behind a torturous clarity that forced me to relive everything.

I knew exactly how this looked. I kept replaying it in my head from their perspective.

Officer Kearney enters apartment 3A with me present. Minutes later, I am found alone in the hallway staring blankly at nothing, no sign of a struggle, no body, no blood.

Just me.

I was rolling the story over in my head when two large officers entered the room.

They were dressed nicely in khaki pants, both wearing white button-up shirts with red ties.

The first one grabbed a chair and slid it over in front of me, sitting down inches from my feet. He opened his notebook and clicked his pen.

“Hello, Robert. My name is Detective Jenkins, and this is my partner Detective Thompkins.”

Detective Jenkins gestured to his partner, who gave me a half-hearted smile.

“We’re here to get your side of the story, alright?” he said, clearly trying to make me feel like they were on my side. “I want you to think back over the last twenty-four hours and walk us through it in detail. Let’s start with the morning you came into the police station.”

They dug through my mind, peeling back piece by piece, desperately searching for answers that I couldn’t give them.

That first interrogation lasted eight hours.

They were calm at first, almost sympathetic, treading lightly with their questions. However, as time passed, I could feel the doubt building between us.

“Walk us through it again,” Jenkins said.

And I did.

I walked them through every single detail… the unknown number, the opening doors, and even the footsteps at night. I covered everything I could remember, silently pleading with them to believe me.

They remained silent as I spoke. It wasn’t until I mentioned the whisper I’d heard in the hallway that they even moved once.

Detective Thompkins leaned back in his chair and sighed.

They thought I was crazy. I knew that much. But even so, they continued to press, probing my story over and over, hoping for something to change.

By the third day, the tone had shifted.

I was shown the hallway security footage, which showed Officer Kearney entering 3A, with me following right after him. Once we both had disappeared into the apartment, the door slammed shut, leaving only the dimly lit hallway visible to the camera.

Thompkins sped through the next section of footage, which contained six straight hours of empty hallway. In that time, nobody else came in or out. It was like time had shifted, warping my sense of reality.

To me, what felt like thirty seconds spent in that room was actually several hours.

Without words, they inserted the next tape. I think they knew how fragile my mind was in that moment and didn’t want it to break just yet.

The next tape was Officer Kearney’s body-cam footage. It had started recording to their remote server the moment he drew his weapon.

It began with him rushing through the living room. He paced across the floor for a few seconds with his weapon drawn before stopping and firing blindly into the kitchen wall. His camera dropped out right after that, displaying nothing but static.

All that could be heard was a faint, continuous hiss against the background.

They played it for me three times.

“Explain that.” They said.

But I couldn’t.

All I could do was sit there, staring at the static, racking my brain on where all of the cords, veins, and darkness had gone in the footage.

The longer I thought about it, the more I started to lose grip with reality.

Months passed like that.

They never charged me with anything. Honestly, they couldn’t even if they wanted to. There was no body, no physical evidence. Other than a video showing Officer Kearney entering that room, it was like he had never been there at all.

That fact alone wasn’t enough to exonerate me.

They combed every piece of footage they could, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of me doing something to harm Officer Kearney.

I slept in one of the police station’s holding cells for the duration of their investigation. The lady at the front desk was kind enough to loan me a blanket and a small pillow to keep my head off the cold stainless-steel bench. I wasn’t going back to the apartment, and sure as hell didn’t have the money to rent another place. They already had me in their grasp, so I figured I’d make it easier for everyone by staying.

They kept taking me back for questioning, each time with a new detective, employing new tactics. Some tried intimidation, while others tried patience. Every way a detective could extract information from someone, I saw it.

One detective slid a legal pad across the table and asked me to draw the phone I claimed to have seen, and I did.

I took my time, thoroughly sketching every detail I could remember. From the sickly yellow plastic down to the coiled cord and faded numbers.

Weeks of interrogation later, and desperate for literally any evidence to tie me to Officer Kearney’s disappearance, they searched 3A again.

This time, they found dust caked thick on every surface as if the place hadn’t seen life in decades.

The entire room was like this. All except for one spot on the kitchen table.

At the center of it sat a small, rectangular space, suspiciously clean against the surrounding grime, as if something had long rested there. Alongside it, a faint crescent-shaped indentation curved across the wood, displacing the dust around it. Delicate coiling impressions trailed between the two dustless patches, revealing the unmistakable outline of a phone, frozen in time.

That’s when their certainty started to crack. Everything I had told them since the day they brought me in pointed to that phone. I was the one who answered it, and now it was gone.

They stopped asking me where I hid the body and started asking me about the phone.

“Where is it now?” One detective asked. “Who called you on it?”

“Why a phone?” Another asked.

I was berated by questions day and night. They no longer wanted to know why, or if, I had killed Kearney, but why the phone had chosen me… and why the room had chosen him.

Six months after Officer Kearney disappeared, they released me pending investigation.

Legally, they couldn’t hold me any longer, but I could tell that there was no love lost in the separation.

There were no apologies. Only warnings not to leave town while they, quote unquote, figured everything out.

I’m writing this now because for half a year, I was the primary suspect in the disappearance and presumed murder of Officer Kearney. As I am sure you are probably aware of by now, I didn’t kill him.

But I did see the thing that did.

And whatever it is, it’s still connected to me. I can feel it.

The whole time I was being questioned, the ringing never stopped. Whether I was in a holding cell or sitting down for another psych evaluation, that same incessant ringing rattled its way through my brain.

Now, every night at 2:17 a.m., I wake up.

Sometimes it’s just the feeling, like pressure against my ear. But sometimes, it goes deeper than that. For example, what happened three nights ago.

I woke up with my hand curved inward up toward my ear, fingers clenched around nothing but air. My ear had gotten unnaturally cold, as if a piece of ice was being pressed against it.

Then, as if it were coming from within my mind, a voice crept forward, worming its way out of my head and swirling around my hand like a gust of wind.

“You don’t belong to it.” It said in a soft, almost amused whisper.

“But you keep answering.”

Several sleepless nights later, and here I sit, typing out my story as if it will become some long-lost memoir of pain or a cautionary tale for people who will never know how deep this truly goes.

Because of this, I’m starting to understand something that the detectives never will.

It doesn’t need wires or walls. It doesn’t even have to be in the same room with you.

All it needs is someone who’s already picked up once.

And I did.

Part 1

CW: contains gore

The following afternoon, I drove to the police station.

Every step inside felt heavier than the last, as if unseen eyes were following me. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, sending sharp waves of panic through my tattered mind. I jumped when the woman at the desk called my name.

As I was led toward the back, I noticed the way the officers were looking at me. What started as passing looks hardened into long stares. I knew what they were thinking. I was still wearing my pajamas. My flip-flops were smeared with blood, still seeping from my ripped-up feet.

I knew I looked like shit. It was a miracle I was still awake, let alone still standing. I’m sure they felt the same.

My throat tightened as I swallowed. Then I stepped forward, toward the officer assigned to me, trying to hide how badly my hands were shaking.

“Have a seat.” He said, gesturing to an empty chair across from him.

I sat without hesitation. The chair felt too small for some reason. Exposed. Like I had a spotlight on me.

“I’m Officer Kearney,” he said in a deep, soothing voice. “I’ll be taking down your statement today.”

He studied my face for a moment longer than felt necessary before sitting upright in his chair.

“Now, tell me what’s been going on, son.”

His eyes softened as he leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk.

“Please,” I said, “there’s something… I mean… someone in my apartment.” I stumbled over my words. The more I tried to explain, the more insane it sounded. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince him or myself at that point. “I know how this sounds,” I rushed on. “And I know what you’re thinking. I am not imagining this. I need help. I can’t go back. I won’t. Not until it’s gone.”

He didn’t respond. He just stared at me in silence, eyes narrowing and widening in thought, as if he were studying a puzzle. Then, without looking away, he reached across the desk, picked up his pen, and began to write.

His movements were smooth and confident. The product of repetition built up over years of police work. But his face didn’t match it. His eyes flicked between me and the paper, balancing fear against delusion, deciding which one I was more likely to present.

I kept talking.

The words continued to spill out of me in uneven waves, the urgency in my voice growing with each scratch of his pen. I knew I was running out of time and credibility.

Finally, he stopped writing.

His face softened as he pulled the pen away and set it down carefully, as if sudden movement might cause his thoughts to unravel. He let out a long, exasperated sigh and nodded.

“Alright.” He muttered as he stood up and grabbed his keys. “Let’s see what you’re so worked up about.”

Outside, the cold air bit deep into my skin. It should’ve snapped me back to reality. Instead, it only revealed a much deeper chill beneath the surface. One that was slowly crawling its way back up my spine.

I was going back.

I rode in the back of the cop car, trying to focus on the low hum of the engine and the steady rhythm of passing streetlamps… anything to keep my thoughts away from where we were going.

When that failed, I focused on breathing. On reminding myself constantly that I wasn’t alone anymore.

It didn’t work.

No matter what I tried, the isolation continued to weigh heavily on my mind. The officer sitting next to me might as well have been a million miles away. I could feel his presence physically, but it didn’t offer any comfort.

As the building came into view, a sharp pain ran through my stomach, as if trying to tell me that I’d made a terrible mistake by coming back.

We arrived at an anti-climactic scene. Nothing was out of place.

In the evening light, the place looked harmless. We made our way inside and climbed the stairs to the third floor without a word.

Stepping into the hallway felt like we were entering an endless void that was quickly closing in behind us. The light from the stairwell died at the corner, plunging the corridor into pure darkness. The overhead lights above each apartment door were completely dead, leaving the long strip of carpet ahead drenched in pitch black.

Officer Kearney pulled a large flashlight from his belt and clicked it on. The beam sliced forward, cutting through the shadows and landing squarely on my apartment door.

“That’s it,” I said, voice shaky.

We walked to the door slowly, letting the cone of light guide us until we were standing in front of it.

It looked normal. Locked with no sign of forced entry or disturbance.

A thick layer of dust covered the doorknob. I’d only been gone for a day, and yet it looked as if no one had been in or out in weeks. The place honestly looked abandoned.

My hands shook as I fumbled with my keys, dropping them once. Then again. The metal slipped through my fingers like they didn’t belong to me anymore.

For a moment, it felt like I no longer had control of my hands. Like something else was trying to take over my body.

Officer Kearney shifted the flashlight, pulling it from the door to the side of my face. The brightness burned my eyes, snapping me back to reality.

“You alright, son?” he asked, a slight concern filling his voice.

“Y…Yeah, I’m ok,” I lied, trying not to show how scared I truly felt. “Just nervous, is all.”

The hallway felt like it was squeezing in around me.

I forced myself to slow down and breathe. I closed my eyes and concentrated on slowly gathering myself until the trembling eased enough for me to regain control.

When I opened my eyes, the light had returned to the door, fixed on the knob.

I slid the key into the slot and turned it. The lock gave way with a heavy clunk, and I pushed.

The door finally opened.

A strong, metallic scent rushed out to meet us, flooding the hallway and crawling deep into my lungs before I could stop myself from breathing it in.

Officer Kearney recoiled instantly.

“Whoa,” he exclaimed. “What is that?”

I looked back at him and shook my head. “I have no idea.”

He pulled his flashlight up and aimed it into the apartment. The beam cut through the inky black void, stopping just past the doorway. It revealed the faint outlines of shapes and shadows lurking beyond the threshold as it passed over them.

The air turned heavy, carrying the strange odor as it spilled into the hallway. It smelled like old rust and copper. Like the smell you get after handling a bunch of old pennies.

Pure darkness bled out of the room, pressing against us, cold and damp as if it were reaching out for us to claim us as its own.

“What’s going on in here?” he asked, voice low.

He stepped forward, sweeping the flashlight through the apartment. The beam settled on a corner, seemingly darker than the rest of the room.

A shadow lingered there, moving in strange ways, twisting and writhing like smoke caught in a sudden draft. The light died against it, absorbed into its undulating, smoky form, splitting the space around it like a river’s current is forced around a boulder.

We were transfixed. Drawn helplessly toward it, as if it had taken hold of our minds, demanding we come closer.

Then it breathed.

A low, rasping exhale echoed through the apartment.

The sound was so sudden… so loud, that it even made Officer Kearney flinch. I knew from the beginning that he had dealt with and seen almost everything as a cop, but I was sure he hadn’t seen or heard anything like this before.

This was something completely different.

The raspy groans poured out of the black mass. They slithered across the floor and along the walls, like a parasite seeking a host.

It clawed at the inside of my skull, scraping away any semblance of reason and sanity I had left, leaving raw terror to fill the space.

The officer’s flashlight caught it for a moment, just long enough to reveal its impossible movement. Then, without warning, the light flickered and died, plunging us into darkness.

My heart shot up into my throat, pounding so hard I thought it might burst.

“Ahh, c’mon, you fuckin’ thing. Work, damn you!” Officer Kearney snarled, smashing the flashlight against his palm.

I was frozen. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.

Suddenly, the hallway turned frigid. My breath rose in clouds, encircling my head.

The darkening void thickened until I could barely make out Kearney’s silhouette in the doorway. The sound of the flashlight thudding against his palm masked all other noises. Then, as if the answer to a prayer, the light clicked on, coating the door frame in light.

“There we go!” Kearney exclaimed, pointing it back inside.

Even with the light, I could feel it. Something was very wrong here.

Somewhere behind us, wood creaked. Slow, heavy footsteps followed, pacing along the hallway between my apartment and 3A.

My body went numb. I recognized them immediately.

They were the same footsteps I’d heard every night since the calls started.

We both jerked toward 3A.

The door stood there, silent and ordinary.

But then, I noticed something was wrong.

It was open.

Just a crack. Not enough to see inside. But enough to set off every alarm in my brain.

That door had never once been opened since I moved in. Never.

But now… it was.

Almost imperceptibly, it began to widen. The screeching hinges pierced the silence, announcing the arrival of something unseen within.

Something was coming.

Before we could react, the flashlight died again.

“Goddammit!” Kearney snapped, striking it against his palm.

Preoccupied with his frustration, I didn’t see it slip from behind the door. It slithered into the hallway unnoticed, silently stalking us.

In the pitch black, I felt something brush past my leg.

It wasn’t air or fabric.

It felt like skin. Cold, slick, and wet.

My stomach twisted into knots.

In that moment, I wanted nothing more than for that light to come back on. My heartbeat quickened, slamming into my ribs as the acrid taste of adrenaline filled my mouth. I closed my eyes, trying to calm myself and steady my breathing as Kearney worked on the light. Every second felt like an eternity.

Finally, the flashlight clicked back on, and Officer Kearney aimed it into 3A. The light washed the inside of the apartment.

It wasn’t what I expected.

The image I’d held in my mind of apartment 3A being just another normal room was gone, replaced instantly by something far worse. It was twisted and warped in ways my mind refused to accept… like looking into hell itself.

The walls bowed inward, stretched, and split like overworked muscle. Crimson streaks ran along the floorboards, sticky and wet, glistening like fresh blood in the pale light.

Phone cords hung from the ceiling in tangled clusters, twitching violently, all trailing through the cracked, crumbling walls of apartment 3A, as if they were the pulsing veins of some unholy creature.

Then, suddenly, a phone rang from somewhere.

The old landline beside my bed screamed to life, its metallic bell shrill and violent as it smashed against its receiver.

Each ring felt like a hammer driving a spike deep into my skull, one after the other.

Somehow, I knew with perfect certainty, it wasn’t calling me. I could feel it, calling through me, using my consciousness as the handset.

The shadow peeled itself from the corner and flowed toward the torn wall, its shape elongating, stretching like fluid as it poured into the center of the hallway.

The walls between the two apartments splintered, collapsing and falling away with a wet, grinding shudder.

It wasn’t a room.

It was an immense cavity lined with sagged, pulsating veins that resembled old phone cords. They throbbed and shook with every ring, quivering as though the walls themselves were alive.

The floor flexed and rumbled under our feet, as if it would give way at any moment.

“You answered me,” a voice whispered directly into my skull.

Officer Kearney unholstered his pistol and aimed at the writhing mass, hands trembling. He steadied his nerves, leveling it on one of the large veins, and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the thick, fetid air, striking the hulking mass with a sharp crack, but it did nothing.

There was no hole. No disturbance.

It just vanished, as if it had never existed in the first place.

The immense thing trembled in response, twisting and turning violently as if mocking his feeble attempt to hurt it.

He tightened his grip, raising back up to eye level. He pressed his finger firmly against the trigger and began to squeeze.

I readied myself for the report, covering my ears in anticipation. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Before either of us could react, a black mist began to rise in his hands, causing him to yell in fear. Small particles drifted into the air like smoke as the pistol slowly disappeared before our eyes, quickly dissolving into thin air, defying the laws of physics.

An ear-piercing ring filled the room, so loud it nearly rattled the walls.

It was back.

The phone had displaced itself and was now settled on the wall behind us, ringing incessantly.

The darkness sprang outward, using shock and confusion to its advantage so it could move unnoticed. It surged forward with unnatural speed, slamming into Kearney like a freight train, lifting him into the air. His spine arched backward with a sickening snap. His uniform tore open as his ribs splayed outward, puncturing through flesh and fabric like jagged claws.

Blood erupted in hot, pulsing sprays, splattering across what remained of the floor in glittering arcs that coruscated under the flickering flashlight.

It wasn’t just a shadow. It was alive.

It proceeded to use Kearney like a plaything, forcing itself into every orifice. His face twisted in pain as he tried to scream, eyes rolling back into his head, as the black, undulating mass exploded from his mouth, eyes, and ears, swallowing the last light of life from his face.

His jaw dislocated with a wet, sickening pop, stretching inhumanly wide. His throat bulged outward, as if something inside was clawing its way out, tearing through skin and muscle alike.

It shot through his body as if exploring a maze, causing it to convulse violently, limbs jerking in rhythmic spasms.

It was as if he were a puppet being controlled by some otherworldly force.

The darkness hollowed him from the inside, slowly stripping away everything that made him human.

It finally began unfurling out of Kearney’s body, turning his skin grey and slack. His veins blackened beneath the surface, snaking outward like ink diffusing in water.

When the darkness finally withdrew, it did so slowly, like something reluctant to let go of the prey it had been feeding on.

What it left behind were remnants of what had once been Officer Kearney, reduced to almost nothing.

He was slumped against the lower kitchen cabinets, spine twisted and curved, chin resting against his chest. His arms dangled loosely at his sides, fingers twitching briefly against the floor before going still. His uniform was soaked across the torso with blood and something else. Something darker.

It looked thinner than blood, reminding me of oil or grease, soaking into his skin like a sponge.

His eyes were open now.

Open and empty.

His mouth hung wide in a scream that had clearly shredded his throat raw, and yet, all I could hear was the ringing phone. I stared into Officer Kearney’s lifeless eyes as the bells consumed me. I could feel my mind slipping from consciousness.

Then, without warning, the ringing stopped.

The silence that followed pressed against my ears, heavy and intense, growing louder than the bells could ever be. I felt something slither up my side, curling around my neck and settling right next to my ear.

“You don’t belong to it.” It whispered.

I couldn’t move. It felt like I was strapped in a vise, being squeezed from all sides. It held me in place, as its cold breath traced down the side of my neck.

“But you answered.”

Something in me snapped loose, like the last shred of sanity I was still holding onto had been broken.

It loosened its grip, allowing me to move my feet. I stumbled backward, nearly slipping on the blood-slick tile as I bolted for the door. The hallway outside felt stretched and narrow, like the walls had leaned inward to watch the show.

I made it halfway down the corridor before dropping to my knees. I had no more strength to run or fight. It had taken everything I had left.

The ringing quickly came back. It never truly stopped when I left the apartment. It just moved.

It was inside me, filling my head and chest.

At that point, I knew that I was now a slave to it. I could feel it. It wanted to use me for something. It had to. Why would it have let me live if it didn’t have bigger plans for me? I guess Officer Kearney didn’t fit the narrative.

When backup arrived, I was still on the floor.

I remember the first officer rounding the corner with his weapon drawn, shouting commands before he even fully saw me. I must have looked insane, sweating through my shirt, hands shaking violently.

My body wouldn’t allow any words to come out, nor would it allow me to look him in the eyes.

All I could do was stare through him and down the hallway.

They ordered me onto my stomach, pushing my face into the hallway carpet. I don’t remember resisting, but I remember the cold shock of the handcuffs squeezing my wrists.

“Where is he?” one of them demanded.

My teeth were chattering so hard that I felt them begin to crack. I could barely breathe, let alone answer his questions.

“He’s… He’s in there,” I finally managed. “That room... He’s… He’s not…”

They didn’t wait for me to finish. Two officers entered my apartment while the other four entered apartment 3A.

I lay there in the hallway, cheek burning against the carpet, waiting and listening for what they might find.

“It’s clear.” One of them called out.

An officer grabbed my arms and pulled me to my feet. As he marched me toward apartment 3A, the emotions all came flooding back at once. The vision of Officer Kearney’s ravaged body lay front and center in my mind, torturing me with every step.

I began to hyperventilate.

As we turned across the threshold, I closed my eyes tight, not wanting to relive that nightmare.

We stopped abruptly as the officer yanked me backwards.

“Where is he?” He asked.

‘Where is he?’ I thought to myself, ‘He’s right there on the floor... dead.’

Confused and apprehensive, I opened my eyes. I’d expected to see a giant, writhing black mass surrounded by Kearney’s remains. Instead, I was met with a much more terrifying scene.

The apartment was spotless.

There were no dark shadows, no phone cords, no blood on the cabinets… not even the smallest speck of dust was out of place.

More importantly, there wasn’t a body on the floor. Officer Kearney was nowhere to be found.

It was as if whatever that thing was had cleaned up after itself.

They searched the apartment thoroughly, combing through every room and every closet. They checked the windows, the fire escape, and even the ceiling panels, but found nothing.

Somehow, I knew they wouldn’t.

Officer Kearney was gone.

They looked at me differently after that. I could see the picture settling into place in their heads. A fellow officer went inside an apartment with a civilian, and now that officer was missing.

All signs pointed at me. I was the only one they could blame.

One of them read me my rights before I fully processed what was happening. I kept trying to explain, desperately trying to tell them about the darkness and the phone.

“What phone?” one of them asked.

“There was a phone on the wall in 3A. It was ringing.” I responded.

They told me there was no landline registered to 3A and that it had been vacant for quite some time, which I already knew in the back of my mind.

I started to doubt myself.

Had I really just imagined all of it? If so, where was Officer Kearney?

They took me in that night.

At the station, they separated me immediately. I sat in a small room with gray walls and a metal table bolted to the floor. The adrenaline had burned off by then, leaving behind a torturous clarity that forced me to relive everything.

I knew exactly how this looked. I kept replaying it in my head from their perspective.

Officer Kearney enters apartment 3A with me present. Minutes later, I am found alone in the hallway staring blankly at nothing, no sign of a struggle, no body, no blood.

Just me.

I was rolling the story over in my head when two large officers entered the room.

They were dressed nicely in khaki pants, both wearing white button-up shirts with red ties.

The first one grabbed a chair and slid it over in front of me, sitting down inches from my feet. He opened his notebook and clicked his pen.

“Hello, Robert. My name is Detective Jenkins, and this is my partner Detective Thompkins.”

Detective Jenkins gestured to his partner, who gave me a half-hearted smile.

“We’re here to get your side of the story, alright?” he said, clearly trying to make me feel like they were on my side. “I want you to think back over the last twenty-four hours and walk us through it in detail. Let’s start with the morning you came into the police station.”

They dug through my mind, peeling back piece by piece, desperately searching for answers that I couldn’t give them.

That first interrogation lasted eight hours.

They were calm at first, almost sympathetic, treading lightly with their questions. However, as time passed, I could feel the doubt building between us.

“Walk us through it again,” Jenkins said.

And I did.

I walked them through every single detail… the unknown number, the opening doors, and even the footsteps at night. I covered everything I could remember, silently pleading with them to believe me.

They remained silent as I spoke. It wasn’t until I mentioned the whisper I’d heard in the hallway that they even moved once.

Detective Thompkins leaned back in his chair and sighed.

They thought I was crazy. I knew that much. But even so, they continued to press, probing my story over and over, hoping for something to change.

By the third day, the tone had shifted.

I was shown the hallway security footage, which showed Officer Kearney entering 3A, with me following right after him. Once we both had disappeared into the apartment, the door slammed shut, leaving only the dimly lit hallway visible to the camera.

Thompkins sped through the next section of footage, which contained six straight hours of empty hallway. In that time, nobody else came in or out. It was like time had shifted, warping my sense of reality.

To me, what felt like thirty seconds spent in that room was actually several hours.

Without words, they inserted the next tape. I think they knew how fragile my mind was in that moment and didn’t want it to break just yet.

The next tape was Officer Kearney’s body-cam footage. It had started recording to their remote server the moment he drew his weapon.

It began with him rushing through the living room. He paced across the floor for a few seconds with his weapon drawn before stopping and firing blindly into the kitchen wall. His camera dropped out right after that, displaying nothing but static.

All that could be heard was a faint, continuous hiss against the background.

They played it for me three times.

“Explain that.” They said.

But I couldn’t.

All I could do was sit there, staring at the static, racking my brain on where all of the cords, veins, and darkness had gone in the footage.

The longer I thought about it, the more I started to lose grip with reality.

Months passed like that.

They never charged me with anything. Honestly, they couldn’t even if they wanted to. There was no body, no physical evidence. Other than a video showing Officer Kearney entering that room, it was like he had never been there at all.

That fact alone wasn’t enough to exonerate me.

They combed every piece of footage they could, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of me doing something to harm Officer Kearney.

I slept in one of the police station’s holding cells for the duration of their investigation. The lady at the front desk was kind enough to loan me a blanket and a small pillow to keep my head off the cold stainless-steel bench. I wasn’t going back to the apartment, and sure as hell didn’t have the money to rent another place. They already had me in their grasp, so I figured I’d make it easier for everyone by staying.

They kept taking me back for questioning, each time with a new detective, employing new tactics. Some tried intimidation, while others tried patience. Every way a detective could extract information from someone, I saw it.

One detective slid a legal pad across the table and asked me to draw the phone I claimed to have seen, and I did.

I took my time, thoroughly sketching every detail I could remember. From the sickly yellow plastic down to the coiled cord and faded numbers.

Weeks of interrogation later, and desperate for literally any evidence to tie me to Officer Kearney’s disappearance, they searched 3A again.

This time, they found dust caked thick on every surface as if the place hadn’t seen life in decades.

The entire room was like this. All except for one spot on the kitchen table.

At the center of it sat a small, rectangular space, suspiciously clean against the surrounding grime, as if something had long rested there. Alongside it, a faint crescent-shaped indentation curved across the wood, displacing the dust around it. Delicate coiling impressions trailed between the two dustless patches, revealing the unmistakable outline of a phone, frozen in time.

That’s when their certainty started to crack. Everything I had told them since the day they brought me in pointed to that phone. I was the one who answered it, and now it was gone.

They stopped asking me where I hid the body and started asking me about the phone.

“Where is it now?” One detective asked. “Who called you on it?”

“Why a phone?” Another asked.

I was berated by questions day and night. They no longer wanted to know why, or if, I had killed Kearney, but why the phone had chosen me… and why the room had chosen him.

Six months after Officer Kearney disappeared, they released me pending investigation.

Legally, they couldn’t hold me any longer, but I could tell that there was no love lost in the separation.

There were no apologies. Only warnings not to leave town while they, quote unquote, figured everything out.

I’m writing this now because for half a year, I was the primary suspect in the disappearance and presumed murder of Officer Kearney. As I am sure you are probably aware of by now, I didn’t kill him.

But I did see the thing that did.

And whatever it is, it’s still connected to me. I can feel it.

The whole time I was being questioned, the ringing never stopped. Whether I was in a holding cell or sitting down for another psych evaluation, that same incessant ringing rattled its way through my brain.

Now, every night at 2:17 a.m., I wake up.

Sometimes it’s just the feeling, like pressure against my ear. But sometimes, it goes deeper than that. For example, what happened three nights ago.

I woke up with my hand curved inward up toward my ear, fingers clenched around nothing but air. My ear had gotten unnaturally cold, as if a piece of ice was being pressed against it.

Then, as if it were coming from within my mind, a voice crept forward, worming its way out of my head and swirling around my hand like a gust of wind.

“You don’t belong to it.” It said in a soft, almost amused whisper.

“But you keep answering.”

Several sleepless nights later, and here I sit, typing out my story as if it will become some long-lost memoir of pain or a cautionary tale for people who will never know how deep this truly goes.

Because of this, I’m starting to understand something that the detectives never will.

It doesn’t need wires or walls. It doesn’t even have to be in the same room with you.

All it needs is someone who’s already picked up once.

And I did.

Part 1

CW: contains gore

The following afternoon, I drove to the police station.

Every step inside felt heavier than the last, as if unseen eyes were following me. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, sending sharp waves of panic through my tattered mind. I jumped when the woman at the desk called my name.

As I was led toward the back, I noticed the way the officers were looking at me. What started as passing looks hardened into long stares. I knew what they were thinking. I was still wearing my pajamas. My flip-flops were smeared with blood, still seeping from my ripped-up feet.

I knew I looked like shit. It was a miracle I was still awake, let alone still standing. I’m sure they felt the same.

My throat tightened as I swallowed. Then I stepped forward, toward the officer assigned to me, trying to hide how badly my hands were shaking.

“Have a seat.” He said, gesturing to an empty chair across from him.

I sat without hesitation. The chair felt too small for some reason. Exposed. Like I had a spotlight on me.

“I’m Officer Kearney,” he said in a deep, soothing voice. “I’ll be taking down your statement today.”

He studied my face for a moment longer than felt necessary before sitting upright in his chair.

“Now, tell me what’s been going on, son.”

His eyes softened as he leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk.

“Please,” I said, “there’s something… I mean… someone in my apartment.” I stumbled over my words. The more I tried to explain, the more insane it sounded. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince him or myself at that point. “I know how this sounds,” I rushed on. “And I know what you’re thinking. I am not imagining this. I need help. I can’t go back. I won’t. Not until it’s gone.”

He didn’t respond. He just stared at me in silence, eyes narrowing and widening in thought, as if he were studying a puzzle. Then, without looking away, he reached across the desk, picked up his pen, and began to write.

His movements were smooth and confident. The product of repetition built up over years of police work. But his face didn’t match it. His eyes flicked between me and the paper, balancing fear against delusion, deciding which one I was more likely to present.

I kept talking.

The words continued to spill out of me in uneven waves, the urgency in my voice growing with each scratch of his pen. I knew I was running out of time and credibility.

Finally, he stopped writing.

His face softened as he pulled the pen away and set it down carefully, as if sudden movement might cause his thoughts to unravel. He let out a long, exasperated sigh and nodded.

“Alright.” He muttered as he stood up and grabbed his keys. “Let’s see what you’re so worked up about.”

Outside, the cold air bit deep into my skin. It should’ve snapped me back to reality. Instead, it only revealed a much deeper chill beneath the surface. One that was slowly crawling its way back up my spine.

I was going back.

I rode in the back of the cop car, trying to focus on the low hum of the engine and the steady rhythm of passing streetlamps… anything to keep my thoughts away from where we were going.

When that failed, I focused on breathing. On reminding myself constantly that I wasn’t alone anymore.

It didn’t work.

No matter what I tried, the isolation continued to weigh heavily on my mind. The officer sitting next to me might as well have been a million miles away. I could feel his presence physically, but it didn’t offer any comfort.

As the building came into view, a sharp pain ran through my stomach, as if trying to tell me that I’d made a terrible mistake by coming back.

We arrived at an anti-climactic scene. Nothing was out of place.

In the evening light, the place looked harmless. We made our way inside and climbed the stairs to the third floor without a word.

Stepping into the hallway felt like we were entering an endless void that was quickly closing in behind us. The light from the stairwell died at the corner, plunging the corridor into pure darkness. The overhead lights above each apartment door were completely dead, leaving the long strip of carpet ahead drenched in pitch black.

Officer Kearney pulled a large flashlight from his belt and clicked it on. The beam sliced forward, cutting through the shadows and landing squarely on my apartment door.

“That’s it,” I said, voice shaky.

We walked to the door slowly, letting the cone of light guide us until we were standing in front of it.

It looked normal. Locked with no sign of forced entry or disturbance.

A thick layer of dust covered the doorknob. I’d only been gone for a day, and yet it looked as if no one had been in or out in weeks. The place honestly looked abandoned.

My hands shook as I fumbled with my keys, dropping them once. Then again. The metal slipped through my fingers like they didn’t belong to me anymore.

For a moment, it felt like I no longer had control of my hands. Like something else was trying to take over my body.

Officer Kearney shifted the flashlight, pulling it from the door to the side of my face. The brightness burned my eyes, snapping me back to reality.

“You alright, son?” he asked, a slight concern filling his voice.

“Y…Yeah, I’m ok,” I lied, trying not to show how scared I truly felt. “Just nervous, is all.”

The hallway felt like it was squeezing in around me.

I forced myself to slow down and breathe. I closed my eyes and concentrated on slowly gathering myself until the trembling eased enough for me to regain control.

When I opened my eyes, the light had returned to the door, fixed on the knob.

I slid the key into the slot and turned it. The lock gave way with a heavy clunk, and I pushed.

The door finally opened.

A strong, metallic scent rushed out to meet us, flooding the hallway and crawling deep into my lungs before I could stop myself from breathing it in.

Officer Kearney recoiled instantly.

“Whoa,” he exclaimed. “What is that?”

I looked back at him and shook my head. “I have no idea.”

He pulled his flashlight up and aimed it into the apartment. The beam cut through the inky black void, stopping just past the doorway. It revealed the faint outlines of shapes and shadows lurking beyond the threshold as it passed over them.

The air turned heavy, carrying the strange odor as it spilled into the hallway. It smelled like old rust and copper. Like the smell you get after handling a bunch of old pennies.

Pure darkness bled out of the room, pressing against us, cold and damp as if it were reaching out for us to claim us as its own.

“What’s going on in here?” he asked, voice low.

He stepped forward, sweeping the flashlight through the apartment. The beam settled on a corner, seemingly darker than the rest of the room.

A shadow lingered there, moving in strange ways, twisting and writhing like smoke caught in a sudden draft. The light died against it, absorbed into its undulating, smoky form, splitting the space around it like a river’s current is forced around a boulder.

We were transfixed. Drawn helplessly toward it, as if it had taken hold of our minds, demanding we come closer.

Then it breathed.

A low, rasping exhale echoed through the apartment.

The sound was so sudden… so loud, that it even made Officer Kearney flinch. I knew from the beginning that he had dealt with and seen almost everything as a cop, but I was sure he hadn’t seen or heard anything like this before.

This was something completely different.

The raspy groans poured out of the black mass. They slithered across the floor and along the walls, like a parasite seeking a host.

It clawed at the inside of my skull, scraping away any semblance of reason and sanity I had left, leaving raw terror to fill the space.

The officer’s flashlight caught it for a moment, just long enough to reveal its impossible movement. Then, without warning, the light flickered and died, plunging us into darkness.

My heart shot up into my throat, pounding so hard I thought it might burst.

“Ahh, c’mon, you fuckin’ thing. Work, damn you!” Officer Kearney snarled, smashing the flashlight against his palm.

I was frozen. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.

Suddenly, the hallway turned frigid. My breath rose in clouds, encircling my head.

The darkening void thickened until I could barely make out Kearney’s silhouette in the doorway. The sound of the flashlight thudding against his palm masked all other noises. Then, as if the answer to a prayer, the light clicked on, coating the door frame in light.

“There we go!” Kearney exclaimed, pointing it back inside.

Even with the light, I could feel it. Something was very wrong here.

Somewhere behind us, wood creaked. Slow, heavy footsteps followed, pacing along the hallway between my apartment and 3A.

My body went numb. I recognized them immediately.

They were the same footsteps I’d heard every night since the calls started.

We both jerked toward 3A.

The door stood there, silent and ordinary.

But then, I noticed something was wrong.

It was open.

Just a crack. Not enough to see inside. But enough to set off every alarm in my brain.

That door had never once been opened since I moved in. Never.

But now… it was.

Almost imperceptibly, it began to widen. The screeching hinges pierced the silence, announcing the arrival of something unseen within.

Something was coming.

Before we could react, the flashlight died again.

“Goddammit!” Kearney snapped, striking it against his palm.

Preoccupied with his frustration, I didn’t see it slip from behind the door. It slithered into the hallway unnoticed, silently stalking us.

In the pitch black, I felt something brush past my leg.

It wasn’t air or fabric.

It felt like skin. Cold, slick, and wet.

My stomach twisted into knots.

In that moment, I wanted nothing more than for that light to come back on. My heartbeat quickened, slamming into my ribs as the acrid taste of adrenaline filled my mouth. I closed my eyes, trying to calm myself and steady my breathing as Kearney worked on the light. Every second felt like an eternity.

Finally, the flashlight clicked back on, and Officer Kearney aimed it into 3A. The light washed the inside of the apartment.

It wasn’t what I expected.

The image I’d held in my mind of apartment 3A being just another normal room was gone, replaced instantly by something far worse. It was twisted and warped in ways my mind refused to accept… like looking into hell itself.

The walls bowed inward, stretched, and split like overworked muscle. Crimson streaks ran along the floorboards, sticky and wet, glistening like fresh blood in the pale light.

Phone cords hung from the ceiling in tangled clusters, twitching violently, all trailing through the cracked, crumbling walls of apartment 3A, as if they were the pulsing veins of some unholy creature.

Then, suddenly, a phone rang from somewhere.

The old landline beside my bed screamed to life, its metallic bell shrill and violent as it smashed against its receiver.

Each ring felt like a hammer driving a spike deep into my skull, one after the other.

Somehow, I knew with perfect certainty, it wasn’t calling me. I could feel it, calling through me, using my consciousness as the handset.

The shadow peeled itself from the corner and flowed toward the torn wall, its shape elongating, stretching like fluid as it poured into the center of the hallway.

The walls between the two apartments splintered, collapsing and falling away with a wet, grinding shudder.

It wasn’t a room.

It was an immense cavity lined with sagged, pulsating veins that resembled old phone cords. They throbbed and shook with every ring, quivering as though the walls themselves were alive.

The floor flexed and rumbled under our feet, as if it would give way at any moment.

“You answered me,” a voice whispered directly into my skull.

Officer Kearney unholstered his pistol and aimed at the writhing mass, hands trembling. He steadied his nerves, leveling it on one of the large veins, and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the thick, fetid air, striking the hulking mass with a sharp crack, but it did nothing.

There was no hole. No disturbance.

It just vanished, as if it had never existed in the first place.

The immense thing trembled in response, twisting and turning violently as if mocking his feeble attempt to hurt it.

He tightened his grip, raising back up to eye level. He pressed his finger firmly against the trigger and began to squeeze.

I readied myself for the report, covering my ears in anticipation. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Before either of us could react, a black mist began to rise in his hands, causing him to yell in fear. Small particles drifted into the air like smoke as the pistol slowly disappeared before our eyes, quickly dissolving into thin air, defying the laws of physics.

An ear-piercing ring filled the room, so loud it nearly rattled the walls.

It was back.

The phone had displaced itself and was now settled on the wall behind us, ringing incessantly.

The darkness sprang outward, using shock and confusion to its advantage so it could move unnoticed. It surged forward with unnatural speed, slamming into Kearney like a freight train, lifting him into the air. His spine arched backward with a sickening snap. His uniform tore open as his ribs splayed outward, puncturing through flesh and fabric like jagged claws.

Blood erupted in hot, pulsing sprays, splattering across what remained of the floor in glittering arcs that coruscated under the flickering flashlight.

It wasn’t just a shadow. It was alive.

It proceeded to use Kearney like a plaything, forcing itself into every orifice. His face twisted in pain as he tried to scream, eyes rolling back into his head, as the black, undulating mass exploded from his mouth, eyes, and ears, swallowing the last light of life from his face.

His jaw dislocated with a wet, sickening pop, stretching inhumanly wide. His throat bulged outward, as if something inside was clawing its way out, tearing through skin and muscle alike.

It shot through his body as if exploring a maze, causing it to convulse violently, limbs jerking in rhythmic spasms.

It was as if he were a puppet being controlled by some otherworldly force.

The darkness hollowed him from the inside, slowly stripping away everything that made him human.

It finally began unfurling out of Kearney’s body, turning his skin grey and slack. His veins blackened beneath the surface, snaking outward like ink diffusing in water.

When the darkness finally withdrew, it did so slowly, like something reluctant to let go of the prey it had been feeding on.

What it left behind were remnants of what had once been Officer Kearney, reduced to almost nothing.

He was slumped against the lower kitchen cabinets, spine twisted and curved, chin resting against his chest. His arms dangled loosely at his sides, fingers twitching briefly against the floor before going still. His uniform was soaked across the torso with blood and something else. Something darker.

It looked thinner than blood, reminding me of oil or grease, soaking into his skin like a sponge.

His eyes were open now.

Open and empty.

His mouth hung wide in a scream that had clearly shredded his throat raw, and yet, all I could hear was the ringing phone. I stared into Officer Kearney’s lifeless eyes as the bells consumed me. I could feel my mind slipping from consciousness.

Then, without warning, the ringing stopped.

The silence that followed pressed against my ears, heavy and intense, growing louder than the bells could ever be. I felt something slither up my side, curling around my neck and settling right next to my ear.

“You don’t belong to it.” It whispered.

I couldn’t move. It felt like I was strapped in a vise, being squeezed from all sides. It held me in place, as its cold breath traced down the side of my neck.

“But you answered.”

Something in me snapped loose, like the last shred of sanity I was still holding onto had been broken.

It loosened its grip, allowing me to move my feet. I stumbled backward, nearly slipping on the blood-slick tile as I bolted for the door. The hallway outside felt stretched and narrow, like the walls had leaned inward to watch the show.

I made it halfway down the corridor before dropping to my knees. I had no more strength to run or fight. It had taken everything I had left.

The ringing quickly came back. It never truly stopped when I left the apartment. It just moved.

It was inside me, filling my head and chest.

At that point, I knew that I was now a slave to it. I could feel it. It wanted to use me for something. It had to. Why would it have let me live if it didn’t have bigger plans for me? I guess Officer Kearney didn’t fit the narrative.

When backup arrived, I was still on the floor.

I remember the first officer rounding the corner with his weapon drawn, shouting commands before he even fully saw me. I must have looked insane, sweating through my shirt, hands shaking violently.

My body wouldn’t allow any words to come out, nor would it allow me to look him in the eyes.

All I could do was stare through him and down the hallway.

They ordered me onto my stomach, pushing my face into the hallway carpet. I don’t remember resisting, but I remember the cold shock of the handcuffs squeezing my wrists.

“Where is he?” one of them demanded.

My teeth were chattering so hard that I felt them begin to crack. I could barely breathe, let alone answer his questions.

“He’s… He’s in there,” I finally managed. “That room... He’s… He’s not…”

They didn’t wait for me to finish. Two officers entered my apartment while the other four entered apartment 3A.

I lay there in the hallway, cheek burning against the carpet, waiting and listening for what they might find.

“It’s clear.” One of them called out.

An officer grabbed my arms and pulled me to my feet. As he marched me toward apartment 3A, the emotions all came flooding back at once. The vision of Officer Kearney’s ravaged body lay front and center in my mind, torturing me with every step.

I began to hyperventilate.

As we turned across the threshold, I closed my eyes tight, not wanting to relive that nightmare.

We stopped abruptly as the officer yanked me backwards.

“Where is he?” He asked.

‘Where is he?’ I thought to myself, ‘He’s right there on the floor... dead.’

Confused and apprehensive, I opened my eyes. I’d expected to see a giant, writhing black mass surrounded by Kearney’s remains. Instead, I was met with a much more terrifying scene.

The apartment was spotless.

There were no dark shadows, no phone cords, no blood on the cabinets… not even the smallest speck of dust was out of place.

More importantly, there wasn’t a body on the floor. Officer Kearney was nowhere to be found.

It was as if whatever that thing was had cleaned up after itself.

They searched the apartment thoroughly, combing through every room and every closet. They checked the windows, the fire escape, and even the ceiling panels, but found nothing.

Somehow, I knew they wouldn’t.

Officer Kearney was gone.

They looked at me differently after that. I could see the picture settling into place in their heads. A fellow officer went inside an apartment with a civilian, and now that officer was missing.

All signs pointed at me. I was the only one they could blame.

One of them read me my rights before I fully processed what was happening. I kept trying to explain, desperately trying to tell them about the darkness and the phone.

“What phone?” one of them asked.

“There was a phone on the wall in 3A. It was ringing.” I responded.

They told me there was no landline registered to 3A and that it had been vacant for quite some time, which I already knew in the back of my mind.

I started to doubt myself.

Had I really just imagined all of it? If so, where was Officer Kearney?

They took me in that night.

At the station, they separated me immediately. I sat in a small room with gray walls and a metal table bolted to the floor. The adrenaline had burned off by then, leaving behind a torturous clarity that forced me to relive everything.

I knew exactly how this looked. I kept replaying it in my head from their perspective.

Officer Kearney enters apartment 3A with me present. Minutes later, I am found alone in the hallway staring blankly at nothing, no sign of a struggle, no body, no blood.

Just me.

I was rolling the story over in my head when two large officers entered the room.

They were dressed nicely in khaki pants, both wearing white button-up shirts with red ties.

The first one grabbed a chair and slid it over in front of me, sitting down inches from my feet. He opened his notebook and clicked his pen.

“Hello, Robert. My name is Detective Jenkins, and this is my partner Detective Thompkins.”

Detective Jenkins gestured to his partner, who gave me a half-hearted smile.

“We’re here to get your side of the story, alright?” he said, clearly trying to make me feel like they were on my side. “I want you to think back over the last twenty-four hours and walk us through it in detail. Let’s start with the morning you came into the police station.”

They dug through my mind, peeling back piece by piece, desperately searching for answers that I couldn’t give them.

That first interrogation lasted eight hours.

They were calm at first, almost sympathetic, treading lightly with their questions. However, as time passed, I could feel the doubt building between us.

“Walk us through it again,” Jenkins said.

And I did.

I walked them through every single detail… the unknown number, the opening doors, and even the footsteps at night. I covered everything I could remember, silently pleading with them to believe me.

They remained silent as I spoke. It wasn’t until I mentioned the whisper I’d heard in the hallway that they even moved once.

Detective Thompkins leaned back in his chair and sighed.

They thought I was crazy. I knew that much. But even so, they continued to press, probing my story over and over, hoping for something to change.

By the third day, the tone had shifted.

I was shown the hallway security footage, which showed Officer Kearney entering 3A, with me following right after him. Once we both had disappeared into the apartment, the door slammed shut, leaving only the dimly lit hallway visible to the camera.

Thompkins sped through the next section of footage, which contained six straight hours of empty hallway. In that time, nobody else came in or out. It was like time had shifted, warping my sense of reality.

To me, what felt like thirty seconds spent in that room was actually several hours.

Without words, they inserted the next tape. I think they knew how fragile my mind was in that moment and didn’t want it to break just yet.

The next tape was Officer Kearney’s body-cam footage. It had started recording to their remote server the moment he drew his weapon.

It began with him rushing through the living room. He paced across the floor for a few seconds with his weapon drawn before stopping and firing blindly into the kitchen wall. His camera dropped out right after that, displaying nothing but static.

All that could be heard was a faint, continuous hiss against the background.

They played it for me three times.

“Explain that.” They said.

But I couldn’t.

All I could do was sit there, staring at the static, racking my brain on where all of the cords, veins, and darkness had gone in the footage.

The longer I thought about it, the more I started to lose grip with reality.

Months passed like that.

They never charged me with anything. Honestly, they couldn’t even if they wanted to. There was no body, no physical evidence. Other than a video showing Officer Kearney entering that room, it was like he had never been there at all.

That fact alone wasn’t enough to exonerate me.

They combed every piece of footage they could, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of me doing something to harm Officer Kearney.

I slept in one of the police station’s holding cells for the duration of their investigation. The lady at the front desk was kind enough to loan me a blanket and a small pillow to keep my head off the cold stainless-steel bench. I wasn’t going back to the apartment, and sure as hell didn’t have the money to rent another place. They already had me in their grasp, so I figured I’d make it easier for everyone by staying.

They kept taking me back for questioning, each time with a new detective, employing new tactics. Some tried intimidation, while others tried patience. Every way a detective could extract information from someone, I saw it.

One detective slid a legal pad across the table and asked me to draw the phone I claimed to have seen, and I did.

I took my time, thoroughly sketching every detail I could remember. From the sickly yellow plastic down to the coiled cord and faded numbers.

Weeks of interrogation later, and desperate for literally any evidence to tie me to Officer Kearney’s disappearance, they searched 3A again.

This time, they found dust caked thick on every surface as if the place hadn’t seen life in decades.

The entire room was like this. All except for one spot on the kitchen table.

At the center of it sat a small, rectangular space, suspiciously clean against the surrounding grime, as if something had long rested there. Alongside it, a faint crescent-shaped indentation curved across the wood, displacing the dust around it. Delicate coiling impressions trailed between the two dustless patches, revealing the unmistakable outline of a phone, frozen in time.

That’s when their certainty started to crack. Everything I had told them since the day they brought me in pointed to that phone. I was the one who answered it, and now it was gone.

They stopped asking me where I hid the body and started asking me about the phone.

“Where is it now?” One detective asked. “Who called you on it?”

“Why a phone?” Another asked.

I was berated by questions day and night. They no longer wanted to know why, or if, I had killed Kearney, but why the phone had chosen me… and why the room had chosen him.

Six months after Officer Kearney disappeared, they released me pending investigation.

Legally, they couldn’t hold me any longer, but I could tell that there was no love lost in the separation.

There were no apologies. Only warnings not to leave town while they, quote unquote, figured everything out.

I’m writing this now because for half a year, I was the primary suspect in the disappearance and presumed murder of Officer Kearney. As I am sure you are probably aware of by now, I didn’t kill him.

But I did see the thing that did.

And whatever it is, it’s still connected to me. I can feel it.

The whole time I was being questioned, the ringing never stopped. Whether I was in a holding cell or sitting down for another psych evaluation, that same incessant ringing rattled its way through my brain.

Now, every night at 2:17 a.m., I wake up.

Sometimes it’s just the feeling, like pressure against my ear. But sometimes, it goes deeper than that. For example, what happened three nights ago.

I woke up with my hand curved inward up toward my ear, fingers clenched around nothing but air. My ear had gotten unnaturally cold, as if a piece of ice was being pressed against it.

Then, as if it were coming from within my mind, a voice crept forward, worming its way out of my head and swirling around my hand like a gust of wind.

“You don’t belong to it.” It said in a soft, almost amused whisper.

“But you keep answering.”

Several sleepless nights later, and here I sit, typing out my story as if it will become some long-lost memoir of pain or a cautionary tale for people who will never know how deep this truly goes.

Because of this, I’m starting to understand something that the detectives never will.

It doesn’t need wires or walls. It doesn’t even have to be in the same room with you.

All it needs is someone who’s already picked up once.

And I did.

Part 1

CW: contains gore

The following afternoon, I drove to the police station.

Every step inside felt heavier than the last, as if unseen eyes were following me. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, sending sharp waves of panic through my tattered mind. I jumped when the woman at the desk called my name.

As I was led toward the back, I noticed the way the officers were looking at me. What started as passing looks hardened into long stares. I knew what they were thinking. I was still wearing my pajamas. My flip-flops were smeared with blood, still seeping from my ripped-up feet.

I knew I looked like shit. It was a miracle I was still awake, let alone still standing. I’m sure they felt the same.

My throat tightened as I swallowed. Then I stepped forward, toward the officer assigned to me, trying to hide how badly my hands were shaking.

“Have a seat.” He said, gesturing to an empty chair across from him.

I sat without hesitation. The chair felt too small for some reason. Exposed. Like I had a spotlight on me.

“I’m Officer Kearney,” he said in a deep, soothing voice. “I’ll be taking down your statement today.”

He studied my face for a moment longer than felt necessary before sitting upright in his chair.

“Now, tell me what’s been going on, son.”

His eyes softened as he leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk.

“Please,” I said, “there’s something… I mean… someone in my apartment.” I stumbled over my words. The more I tried to explain, the more insane it sounded. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince him or myself at that point. “I know how this sounds,” I rushed on. “And I know what you’re thinking. I am not imagining this. I need help. I can’t go back. I won’t. Not until it’s gone.”

He didn’t respond. He just stared at me in silence, eyes narrowing and widening in thought, as if he were studying a puzzle. Then, without looking away, he reached across the desk, picked up his pen, and began to write.

His movements were smooth and confident. The product of repetition built up over years of police work. But his face didn’t match it. His eyes flicked between me and the paper, balancing fear against delusion, deciding which one I was more likely to present.

I kept talking.

The words continued to spill out of me in uneven waves, the urgency in my voice growing with each scratch of his pen. I knew I was running out of time and credibility.

Finally, he stopped writing.

His face softened as he pulled the pen away and set it down carefully, as if sudden movement might cause his thoughts to unravel. He let out a long, exasperated sigh and nodded.

“Alright.” He muttered as he stood up and grabbed his keys. “Let’s see what you’re so worked up about.”

Outside, the cold air bit deep into my skin. It should’ve snapped me back to reality. Instead, it only revealed a much deeper chill beneath the surface. One that was slowly crawling its way back up my spine.

I was going back.

I rode in the back of the cop car, trying to focus on the low hum of the engine and the steady rhythm of passing streetlamps… anything to keep my thoughts away from where we were going.

When that failed, I focused on breathing. On reminding myself constantly that I wasn’t alone anymore.

It didn’t work.

No matter what I tried, the isolation continued to weigh heavily on my mind. The officer sitting next to me might as well have been a million miles away. I could feel his presence physically, but it didn’t offer any comfort.

As the building came into view, a sharp pain ran through my stomach, as if trying to tell me that I’d made a terrible mistake by coming back.

We arrived at an anti-climactic scene. Nothing was out of place.

In the evening light, the place looked harmless. We made our way inside and climbed the stairs to the third floor without a word.

Stepping into the hallway felt like we were entering an endless void that was quickly closing in behind us. The light from the stairwell died at the corner, plunging the corridor into pure darkness. The overhead lights above each apartment door were completely dead, leaving the long strip of carpet ahead drenched in pitch black.

Officer Kearney pulled a large flashlight from his belt and clicked it on. The beam sliced forward, cutting through the shadows and landing squarely on my apartment door.

“That’s it,” I said, voice shaky.

We walked to the door slowly, letting the cone of light guide us until we were standing in front of it.

It looked normal. Locked with no sign of forced entry or disturbance.

A thick layer of dust covered the doorknob. I’d only been gone for a day, and yet it looked as if no one had been in or out in weeks. The place honestly looked abandoned.

My hands shook as I fumbled with my keys, dropping them once. Then again. The metal slipped through my fingers like they didn’t belong to me anymore.

For a moment, it felt like I no longer had control of my hands. Like something else was trying to take over my body.

Officer Kearney shifted the flashlight, pulling it from the door to the side of my face. The brightness burned my eyes, snapping me back to reality.

“You alright, son?” he asked, a slight concern filling his voice.

“Y…Yeah, I’m ok,” I lied, trying not to show how scared I truly felt. “Just nervous, is all.”

The hallway felt like it was squeezing in around me.

I forced myself to slow down and breathe. I closed my eyes and concentrated on slowly gathering myself until the trembling eased enough for me to regain control.

When I opened my eyes, the light had returned to the door, fixed on the knob.

I slid the key into the slot and turned it. The lock gave way with a heavy clunk, and I pushed.

The door finally opened.

A strong, metallic scent rushed out to meet us, flooding the hallway and crawling deep into my lungs before I could stop myself from breathing it in.

Officer Kearney recoiled instantly.

“Whoa,” he exclaimed. “What is that?”

I looked back at him and shook my head. “I have no idea.”

He pulled his flashlight up and aimed it into the apartment. The beam cut through the inky black void, stopping just past the doorway. It revealed the faint outlines of shapes and shadows lurking beyond the threshold as it passed over them.

The air turned heavy, carrying the strange odor as it spilled into the hallway. It smelled like old rust and copper. Like the smell you get after handling a bunch of old pennies.

Pure darkness bled out of the room, pressing against us, cold and damp as if it were reaching out for us to claim us as its own.

“What’s going on in here?” he asked, voice low.

He stepped forward, sweeping the flashlight through the apartment. The beam settled on a corner, seemingly darker than the rest of the room.

A shadow lingered there, moving in strange ways, twisting and writhing like smoke caught in a sudden draft. The light died against it, absorbed into its undulating, smoky form, splitting the space around it like a river’s current is forced around a boulder.

We were transfixed. Drawn helplessly toward it, as if it had taken hold of our minds, demanding we come closer.

Then it breathed.

A low, rasping exhale echoed through the apartment.

The sound was so sudden… so loud, that it even made Officer Kearney flinch. I knew from the beginning that he had dealt with and seen almost everything as a cop, but I was sure he hadn’t seen or heard anything like this before.

This was something completely different.

The raspy groans poured out of the black mass. They slithered across the floor and along the walls, like a parasite seeking a host.

It clawed at the inside of my skull, scraping away any semblance of reason and sanity I had left, leaving raw terror to fill the space.

The officer’s flashlight caught it for a moment, just long enough to reveal its impossible movement. Then, without warning, the light flickered and died, plunging us into darkness.

My heart shot up into my throat, pounding so hard I thought it might burst.

“Ahh, c’mon, you fuckin’ thing. Work, damn you!” Officer Kearney snarled, smashing the flashlight against his palm.

I was frozen. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.

Suddenly, the hallway turned frigid. My breath rose in clouds, encircling my head.

The darkening void thickened until I could barely make out Kearney’s silhouette in the doorway. The sound of the flashlight thudding against his palm masked all other noises. Then, as if the answer to a prayer, the light clicked on, coating the door frame in light.

“There we go!” Kearney exclaimed, pointing it back inside.

Even with the light, I could feel it. Something was very wrong here.

Somewhere behind us, wood creaked. Slow, heavy footsteps followed, pacing along the hallway between my apartment and 3A.

My body went numb. I recognized them immediately.

They were the same footsteps I’d heard every night since the calls started.

We both jerked toward 3A.

The door stood there, silent and ordinary.

But then, I noticed something was wrong.

It was open.

Just a crack. Not enough to see inside. But enough to set off every alarm in my brain.

That door had never once been opened since I moved in. Never.

But now… it was.

Almost imperceptibly, it began to widen. The screeching hinges pierced the silence, announcing the arrival of something unseen within.

Something was coming.

Before we could react, the flashlight died again.

“Goddammit!” Kearney snapped, striking it against his palm.

Preoccupied with his frustration, I didn’t see it slip from behind the door. It slithered into the hallway unnoticed, silently stalking us.

In the pitch black, I felt something brush past my leg.

It wasn’t air or fabric.

It felt like skin. Cold, slick, and wet.

My stomach twisted into knots.

In that moment, I wanted nothing more than for that light to come back on. My heartbeat quickened, slamming into my ribs as the acrid taste of adrenaline filled my mouth. I closed my eyes, trying to calm myself and steady my breathing as Kearney worked on the light. Every second felt like an eternity.

Finally, the flashlight clicked back on, and Officer Kearney aimed it into 3A. The light washed the inside of the apartment.

It wasn’t what I expected.

The image I’d held in my mind of apartment 3A being just another normal room was gone, replaced instantly by something far worse. It was twisted and warped in ways my mind refused to accept… like looking into hell itself.

The walls bowed inward, stretched, and split like overworked muscle. Crimson streaks ran along the floorboards, sticky and wet, glistening like fresh blood in the pale light.

Phone cords hung from the ceiling in tangled clusters, twitching violently, all trailing through the cracked, crumbling walls of apartment 3A, as if they were the pulsing veins of some unholy creature.

Then, suddenly, a phone rang from somewhere.

The old landline beside my bed screamed to life, its metallic bell shrill and violent as it smashed against its receiver.

Each ring felt like a hammer driving a spike deep into my skull, one after the other.

Somehow, I knew with perfect certainty, it wasn’t calling me. I could feel it, calling through me, using my consciousness as the handset.

The shadow peeled itself from the corner and flowed toward the torn wall, its shape elongating, stretching like fluid as it poured into the center of the hallway.

The walls between the two apartments splintered, collapsing and falling away with a wet, grinding shudder.

It wasn’t a room.

It was an immense cavity lined with sagged, pulsating veins that resembled old phone cords. They throbbed and shook with every ring, quivering as though the walls themselves were alive.

The floor flexed and rumbled under our feet, as if it would give way at any moment.

“You answered me,” a voice whispered directly into my skull.

Officer Kearney unholstered his pistol and aimed at the writhing mass, hands trembling. He steadied his nerves, leveling it on one of the large veins, and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the thick, fetid air, striking the hulking mass with a sharp crack, but it did nothing.

There was no hole. No disturbance.

It just vanished, as if it had never existed in the first place.

The immense thing trembled in response, twisting and turning violently as if mocking his feeble attempt to hurt it.

He tightened his grip, raising back up to eye level. He pressed his finger firmly against the trigger and began to squeeze.

I readied myself for the report, covering my ears in anticipation. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Before either of us could react, a black mist began to rise in his hands, causing him to yell in fear. Small particles drifted into the air like smoke as the pistol slowly disappeared before our eyes, quickly dissolving into thin air, defying the laws of physics.

An ear-piercing ring filled the room, so loud it nearly rattled the walls.

It was back.

The phone had displaced itself and was now settled on the wall behind us, ringing incessantly.

The darkness sprang outward, using shock and confusion to its advantage so it could move unnoticed. It surged forward with unnatural speed, slamming into Kearney like a freight train, lifting him into the air. His spine arched backward with a sickening snap. His uniform tore open as his ribs splayed outward, puncturing through flesh and fabric like jagged claws.

Blood erupted in hot, pulsing sprays, splattering across what remained of the floor in glittering arcs that coruscated under the flickering flashlight.

It wasn’t just a shadow. It was alive.

It proceeded to use Kearney like a plaything, forcing itself into every orifice. His face twisted in pain as he tried to scream, eyes rolling back into his head, as the black, undulating mass exploded from his mouth, eyes, and ears, swallowing the last light of life from his face.

His jaw dislocated with a wet, sickening pop, stretching inhumanly wide. His throat bulged outward, as if something inside was clawing its way out, tearing through skin and muscle alike.

It shot through his body as if exploring a maze, causing it to convulse violently, limbs jerking in rhythmic spasms.

It was as if he were a puppet being controlled by some otherworldly force.

The darkness hollowed him from the inside, slowly stripping away everything that made him human.

It finally began unfurling out of Kearney’s body, turning his skin grey and slack. His veins blackened beneath the surface, snaking outward like ink diffusing in water.

When the darkness finally withdrew, it did so slowly, like something reluctant to let go of the prey it had been feeding on.

What it left behind were remnants of what had once been Officer Kearney, reduced to almost nothing.

He was slumped against the lower kitchen cabinets, spine twisted and curved, chin resting against his chest. His arms dangled loosely at his sides, fingers twitching briefly against the floor before going still. His uniform was soaked across the torso with blood and something else. Something darker.

It looked thinner than blood, reminding me of oil or grease, soaking into his skin like a sponge.

His eyes were open now.

Open and empty.

His mouth hung wide in a scream that had clearly shredded his throat raw, and yet, all I could hear was the ringing phone. I stared into Officer Kearney’s lifeless eyes as the bells consumed me. I could feel my mind slipping from consciousness.

Then, without warning, the ringing stopped.

The silence that followed pressed against my ears, heavy and intense, growing louder than the bells could ever be. I felt something slither up my side, curling around my neck and settling right next to my ear.

“You don’t belong to it.” It whispered.

I couldn’t move. It felt like I was strapped in a vise, being squeezed from all sides. It held me in place, as its cold breath traced down the side of my neck.

“But you answered.”

Something in me snapped loose, like the last shred of sanity I was still holding onto had been broken.

It loosened its grip, allowing me to move my feet. I stumbled backward, nearly slipping on the blood-slick tile as I bolted for the door. The hallway outside felt stretched and narrow, like the walls had leaned inward to watch the show.

I made it halfway down the corridor before dropping to my knees. I had no more strength to run or fight. It had taken everything I had left.

The ringing quickly came back. It never truly stopped when I left the apartment. It just moved.

It was inside me, filling my head and chest.

At that point, I knew that I was now a slave to it. I could feel it. It wanted to use me for something. It had to. Why would it have let me live if it didn’t have bigger plans for me? I guess Officer Kearney didn’t fit the narrative.

When backup arrived, I was still on the floor.

I remember the first officer rounding the corner with his weapon drawn, shouting commands before he even fully saw me. I must have looked insane, sweating through my shirt, hands shaking violently.

My body wouldn’t allow any words to come out, nor would it allow me to look him in the eyes.

All I could do was stare through him and down the hallway.

They ordered me onto my stomach, pushing my face into the hallway carpet. I don’t remember resisting, but I remember the cold shock of the handcuffs squeezing my wrists.

“Where is he?” one of them demanded.

My teeth were chattering so hard that I felt them begin to crack. I could barely breathe, let alone answer his questions.

“He’s… He’s in there,” I finally managed. “That room... He’s… He’s not…”

They didn’t wait for me to finish. Two officers entered my apartment while the other four entered apartment 3A.

I lay there in the hallway, cheek burning against the carpet, waiting and listening for what they might find.

“It’s clear.” One of them called out.

An officer grabbed my arms and pulled me to my feet. As he marched me toward apartment 3A, the emotions all came flooding back at once. The vision of Officer Kearney’s ravaged body lay front and center in my mind, torturing me with every step.

I began to hyperventilate.

As we turned across the threshold, I closed my eyes tight, not wanting to relive that nightmare.

We stopped abruptly as the officer yanked me backwards.

“Where is he?” He asked.

‘Where is he?’ I thought to myself, ‘He’s right there on the floor... dead.’

Confused and apprehensive, I opened my eyes. I’d expected to see a giant, writhing black mass surrounded by Kearney’s remains. Instead, I was met with a much more terrifying scene.

The apartment was spotless.

There were no dark shadows, no phone cords, no blood on the cabinets… not even the smallest speck of dust was out of place.

More importantly, there wasn’t a body on the floor. Officer Kearney was nowhere to be found.

It was as if whatever that thing was had cleaned up after itself.

They searched the apartment thoroughly, combing through every room and every closet. They checked the windows, the fire escape, and even the ceiling panels, but found nothing.

Somehow, I knew they wouldn’t.

Officer Kearney was gone.

They looked at me differently after that. I could see the picture settling into place in their heads. A fellow officer went inside an apartment with a civilian, and now that officer was missing.

All signs pointed at me. I was the only one they could blame.

One of them read me my rights before I fully processed what was happening. I kept trying to explain, desperately trying to tell them about the darkness and the phone.

“What phone?” one of them asked.

“There was a phone on the wall in 3A. It was ringing.” I responded.

They told me there was no landline registered to 3A and that it had been vacant for quite some time, which I already knew in the back of my mind.

I started to doubt myself.

Had I really just imagined all of it? If so, where was Officer Kearney?

They took me in that night.

At the station, they separated me immediately. I sat in a small room with gray walls and a metal table bolted to the floor. The adrenaline had burned off by then, leaving behind a torturous clarity that forced me to relive everything.

I knew exactly how this looked. I kept replaying it in my head from their perspective.

Officer Kearney enters apartment 3A with me present. Minutes later, I am found alone in the hallway staring blankly at nothing, no sign of a struggle, no body, no blood.

Just me.

I was rolling the story over in my head when two large officers entered the room.

They were dressed nicely in khaki pants, both wearing white button-up shirts with red ties.

The first one grabbed a chair and slid it over in front of me, sitting down inches from my feet. He opened his notebook and clicked his pen.

“Hello, Robert. My name is Detective Jenkins, and this is my partner Detective Thompkins.”

Detective Jenkins gestured to his partner, who gave me a half-hearted smile.

“We’re here to get your side of the story, alright?” he said, clearly trying to make me feel like they were on my side. “I want you to think back over the last twenty-four hours and walk us through it in detail. Let’s start with the morning you came into the police station.”

They dug through my mind, peeling back piece by piece, desperately searching for answers that I couldn’t give them.

That first interrogation lasted eight hours.

They were calm at first, almost sympathetic, treading lightly with their questions. However, as time passed, I could feel the doubt building between us.

“Walk us through it again,” Jenkins said.

And I did.

I walked them through every single detail… the unknown number, the opening doors, and even the footsteps at night. I covered everything I could remember, silently pleading with them to believe me.

They remained silent as I spoke. It wasn’t until I mentioned the whisper I’d heard in the hallway that they even moved once.

Detective Thompkins leaned back in his chair and sighed.

They thought I was crazy. I knew that much. But even so, they continued to press, probing my story over and over, hoping for something to change.

By the third day, the tone had shifted.

I was shown the hallway security footage, which showed Officer Kearney entering 3A, with me following right after him. Once we both had disappeared into the apartment, the door slammed shut, leaving only the dimly lit hallway visible to the camera.

Thompkins sped through the next section of footage, which contained six straight hours of empty hallway. In that time, nobody else came in or out. It was like time had shifted, warping my sense of reality.

To me, what felt like thirty seconds spent in that room was actually several hours.

Without words, they inserted the next tape. I think they knew how fragile my mind was in that moment and didn’t want it to break just yet.

The next tape was Officer Kearney’s body-cam footage. It had started recording to their remote server the moment he drew his weapon.

It began with him rushing through the living room. He paced across the floor for a few seconds with his weapon drawn before stopping and firing blindly into the kitchen wall. His camera dropped out right after that, displaying nothing but static.

All that could be heard was a faint, continuous hiss against the background.

They played it for me three times.

“Explain that.” They said.

But I couldn’t.

All I could do was sit there, staring at the static, racking my brain on where all of the cords, veins, and darkness had gone in the footage.

The longer I thought about it, the more I started to lose grip with reality.

Months passed like that.

They never charged me with anything. Honestly, they couldn’t even if they wanted to. There was no body, no physical evidence. Other than a video showing Officer Kearney entering that room, it was like he had never been there at all.

That fact alone wasn’t enough to exonerate me.

They combed every piece of footage they could, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of me doing something to harm Officer Kearney.

I slept in one of the police station’s holding cells for the duration of their investigation. The lady at the front desk was kind enough to loan me a blanket and a small pillow to keep my head off the cold stainless-steel bench. I wasn’t going back to the apartment, and sure as hell didn’t have the money to rent another place. They already had me in their grasp, so I figured I’d make it easier for everyone by staying.

They kept taking me back for questioning, each time with a new detective, employing new tactics. Some tried intimidation, while others tried patience. Every way a detective could extract information from someone, I saw it.

One detective slid a legal pad across the table and asked me to draw the phone I claimed to have seen, and I did.

I took my time, thoroughly sketching every detail I could remember. From the sickly yellow plastic down to the coiled cord and faded numbers.

Weeks of interrogation later, and desperate for literally any evidence to tie me to Officer Kearney’s disappearance, they searched 3A again.

This time, they found dust caked thick on every surface as if the place hadn’t seen life in decades.

The entire room was like this. All except for one spot on the kitchen table.

At the center of it sat a small, rectangular space, suspiciously clean against the surrounding grime, as if something had long rested there. Alongside it, a faint crescent-shaped indentation curved across the wood, displacing the dust around it. Delicate coiling impressions trailed between the two dustless patches, revealing the unmistakable outline of a phone, frozen in time.

That’s when their certainty started to crack. Everything I had told them since the day they brought me in pointed to that phone. I was the one who answered it, and now it was gone.

They stopped asking me where I hid the body and started asking me about the phone.

“Where is it now?” One detective asked. “Who called you on it?”

“Why a phone?” Another asked.

I was berated by questions day and night. They no longer wanted to know why, or if, I had killed Kearney, but why the phone had chosen me… and why the room had chosen him.

Six months after Officer Kearney disappeared, they released me pending investigation.

Legally, they couldn’t hold me any longer, but I could tell that there was no love lost in the separation.

There were no apologies. Only warnings not to leave town while they, quote unquote, figured everything out.

I’m writing this now because for half a year, I was the primary suspect in the disappearance and presumed murder of Officer Kearney. As I am sure you are probably aware of by now, I didn’t kill him.

But I did see the thing that did.

And whatever it is, it’s still connected to me. I can feel it.

The whole time I was being questioned, the ringing never stopped. Whether I was in a holding cell or sitting down for another psych evaluation, that same incessant ringing rattled its way through my brain.

Now, every night at 2:17 a.m., I wake up.

Sometimes it’s just the feeling, like pressure against my ear. But sometimes, it goes deeper than that. For example, what happened three nights ago.

I woke up with my hand curved inward up toward my ear, fingers clenched around nothing but air. My ear had gotten unnaturally cold, as if a piece of ice was being pressed against it.

Then, as if it were coming from within my mind, a voice crept forward, worming its way out of my head and swirling around my hand like a gust of wind.

“You don’t belong to it.” It said in a soft, almost amused whisper.

“But you keep answering.”

Several sleepless nights later, and here I sit, typing out my story as if it will become some long-lost memoir of pain or a cautionary tale for people who will never know how deep this truly goes.

Because of this, I’m starting to understand something that the detectives never will.

It doesn’t need wires or walls. It doesn’t even have to be in the same room with you.

All it needs is someone who’s already picked up once.

And I did.

Part 1

CW: contains gore

The following afternoon, I drove to the police station.

Every step inside felt heavier than the last, as if unseen eyes were following me. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, sending sharp waves of panic through my tattered mind. I jumped when the woman at the desk called my name.

As I was led toward the back, I noticed the way the officers were looking at me. What started as passing looks hardened into long stares. I knew what they were thinking. I was still wearing my pajamas. My flip-flops were smeared with blood, still seeping from my ripped-up feet.

I knew I looked like shit. It was a miracle I was still awake, let alone still standing. I’m sure they felt the same.

My throat tightened as I swallowed. Then I stepped forward, toward the officer assigned to me, trying to hide how badly my hands were shaking.

“Have a seat.” He said, gesturing to an empty chair across from him.

I sat without hesitation. The chair felt too small for some reason. Exposed. Like I had a spotlight on me.

“I’m Officer Kearney,” he said in a deep, soothing voice. “I’ll be taking down your statement today.”

He studied my face for a moment longer than felt necessary before sitting upright in his chair.

“Now, tell me what’s been going on, son.”

His eyes softened as he leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk.

“Please,” I said, “there’s something… I mean… someone in my apartment.” I stumbled over my words. The more I tried to explain, the more insane it sounded. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince him or myself at that point. “I know how this sounds,” I rushed on. “And I know what you’re thinking. I am not imagining this. I need help. I can’t go back. I won’t. Not until it’s gone.”

He didn’t respond. He just stared at me in silence, eyes narrowing and widening in thought, as if he were studying a puzzle. Then, without looking away, he reached across the desk, picked up his pen, and began to write.

His movements were smooth and confident. The product of repetition built up over years of police work. But his face didn’t match it. His eyes flicked between me and the paper, balancing fear against delusion, deciding which one I was more likely to present.

I kept talking.

The words continued to spill out of me in uneven waves, the urgency in my voice growing with each scratch of his pen. I knew I was running out of time and credibility.

Finally, he stopped writing.

His face softened as he pulled the pen away and set it down carefully, as if sudden movement might cause his thoughts to unravel. He let out a long, exasperated sigh and nodded.

“Alright.” He muttered as he stood up and grabbed his keys. “Let’s see what you’re so worked up about.”

Outside, the cold air bit deep into my skin. It should’ve snapped me back to reality. Instead, it only revealed a much deeper chill beneath the surface. One that was slowly crawling its way back up my spine.

I was going back.

I rode in the back of the cop car, trying to focus on the low hum of the engine and the steady rhythm of passing streetlamps… anything to keep my thoughts away from where we were going.

When that failed, I focused on breathing. On reminding myself constantly that I wasn’t alone anymore.

It didn’t work.

No matter what I tried, the isolation continued to weigh heavily on my mind. The officer sitting next to me might as well have been a million miles away. I could feel his presence physically, but it didn’t offer any comfort.

As the building came into view, a sharp pain ran through my stomach, as if trying to tell me that I’d made a terrible mistake by coming back.

We arrived at an anti-climactic scene. Nothing was out of place.

In the evening light, the place looked harmless. We made our way inside and climbed the stairs to the third floor without a word.

Stepping into the hallway felt like we were entering an endless void that was quickly closing in behind us. The light from the stairwell died at the corner, plunging the corridor into pure darkness. The overhead lights above each apartment door were completely dead, leaving the long strip of carpet ahead drenched in pitch black.

Officer Kearney pulled a large flashlight from his belt and clicked it on. The beam sliced forward, cutting through the shadows and landing squarely on my apartment door.

“That’s it,” I said, voice shaky.

We walked to the door slowly, letting the cone of light guide us until we were standing in front of it.

It looked normal. Locked with no sign of forced entry or disturbance.

A thick layer of dust covered the doorknob. I’d only been gone for a day, and yet it looked as if no one had been in or out in weeks. The place honestly looked abandoned.

My hands shook as I fumbled with my keys, dropping them once. Then again. The metal slipped through my fingers like they didn’t belong to me anymore.

For a moment, it felt like I no longer had control of my hands. Like something else was trying to take over my body.

Officer Kearney shifted the flashlight, pulling it from the door to the side of my face. The brightness burned my eyes, snapping me back to reality.

“You alright, son?” he asked, a slight concern filling his voice.

“Y…Yeah, I’m ok,” I lied, trying not to show how scared I truly felt. “Just nervous, is all.”

The hallway felt like it was squeezing in around me.

I forced myself to slow down and breathe. I closed my eyes and concentrated on slowly gathering myself until the trembling eased enough for me to regain control.

When I opened my eyes, the light had returned to the door, fixed on the knob.

I slid the key into the slot and turned it. The lock gave way with a heavy clunk, and I pushed.

The door finally opened.

A strong, metallic scent rushed out to meet us, flooding the hallway and crawling deep into my lungs before I could stop myself from breathing it in.

Officer Kearney recoiled instantly.

“Whoa,” he exclaimed. “What is that?”

I looked back at him and shook my head. “I have no idea.”

He pulled his flashlight up and aimed it into the apartment. The beam cut through the inky black void, stopping just past the doorway. It revealed the faint outlines of shapes and shadows lurking beyond the threshold as it passed over them.

The air turned heavy, carrying the strange odor as it spilled into the hallway. It smelled like old rust and copper. Like the smell you get after handling a bunch of old pennies.

Pure darkness bled out of the room, pressing against us, cold and damp as if it were reaching out for us to claim us as its own.

“What’s going on in here?” he asked, voice low.

He stepped forward, sweeping the flashlight through the apartment. The beam settled on a corner, seemingly darker than the rest of the room.

A shadow lingered there, moving in strange ways, twisting and writhing like smoke caught in a sudden draft. The light died against it, absorbed into its undulating, smoky form, splitting the space around it like a river’s current is forced around a boulder.

We were transfixed. Drawn helplessly toward it, as if it had taken hold of our minds, demanding we come closer.

Then it breathed.

A low, rasping exhale echoed through the apartment.

The sound was so sudden… so loud, that it even made Officer Kearney flinch. I knew from the beginning that he had dealt with and seen almost everything as a cop, but I was sure he hadn’t seen or heard anything like this before.

This was something completely different.

The raspy groans poured out of the black mass. They slithered across the floor and along the walls, like a parasite seeking a host.

It clawed at the inside of my skull, scraping away any semblance of reason and sanity I had left, leaving raw terror to fill the space.

The officer’s flashlight caught it for a moment, just long enough to reveal its impossible movement. Then, without warning, the light flickered and died, plunging us into darkness.

My heart shot up into my throat, pounding so hard I thought it might burst.

“Ahh, c’mon, you fuckin’ thing. Work, damn you!” Officer Kearney snarled, smashing the flashlight against his palm.

I was frozen. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.

Suddenly, the hallway turned frigid. My breath rose in clouds, encircling my head.

The darkening void thickened until I could barely make out Kearney’s silhouette in the doorway. The sound of the flashlight thudding against his palm masked all other noises. Then, as if the answer to a prayer, the light clicked on, coating the door frame in light.

“There we go!” Kearney exclaimed, pointing it back inside.

Even with the light, I could feel it. Something was very wrong here.

Somewhere behind us, wood creaked. Slow, heavy footsteps followed, pacing along the hallway between my apartment and 3A.

My body went numb. I recognized them immediately.

They were the same footsteps I’d heard every night since the calls started.

We both jerked toward 3A.

The door stood there, silent and ordinary.

But then, I noticed something was wrong.

It was open.

Just a crack. Not enough to see inside. But enough to set off every alarm in my brain.

That door had never once been opened since I moved in. Never.

But now… it was.

Almost imperceptibly, it began to widen. The screeching hinges pierced the silence, announcing the arrival of something unseen within.

Something was coming.

Before we could react, the flashlight died again.

“Goddammit!” Kearney snapped, striking it against his palm.

Preoccupied with his frustration, I didn’t see it slip from behind the door. It slithered into the hallway unnoticed, silently stalking us.

In the pitch black, I felt something brush past my leg.

It wasn’t air or fabric.

It felt like skin. Cold, slick, and wet.

My stomach twisted into knots.

In that moment, I wanted nothing more than for that light to come back on. My heartbeat quickened, slamming into my ribs as the acrid taste of adrenaline filled my mouth. I closed my eyes, trying to calm myself and steady my breathing as Kearney worked on the light. Every second felt like an eternity.

Finally, the flashlight clicked back on, and Officer Kearney aimed it into 3A. The light washed the inside of the apartment.

It wasn’t what I expected.

The image I’d held in my mind of apartment 3A being just another normal room was gone, replaced instantly by something far worse. It was twisted and warped in ways my mind refused to accept… like looking into hell itself.

The walls bowed inward, stretched, and split like overworked muscle. Crimson streaks ran along the floorboards, sticky and wet, glistening like fresh blood in the pale light.

Phone cords hung from the ceiling in tangled clusters, twitching violently, all trailing through the cracked, crumbling walls of apartment 3A, as if they were the pulsing veins of some unholy creature.

Then, suddenly, a phone rang from somewhere.

The old landline beside my bed screamed to life, its metallic bell shrill and violent as it smashed against its receiver.

Each ring felt like a hammer driving a spike deep into my skull, one after the other.

Somehow, I knew with perfect certainty, it wasn’t calling me. I could feel it, calling through me, using my consciousness as the handset.

The shadow peeled itself from the corner and flowed toward the torn wall, its shape elongating, stretching like fluid as it poured into the center of the hallway.

The walls between the two apartments splintered, collapsing and falling away with a wet, grinding shudder.

It wasn’t a room.

It was an immense cavity lined with sagged, pulsating veins that resembled old phone cords. They throbbed and shook with every ring, quivering as though the walls themselves were alive.

The floor flexed and rumbled under our feet, as if it would give way at any moment.

“You answered me,” a voice whispered directly into my skull.

Officer Kearney unholstered his pistol and aimed at the writhing mass, hands trembling. He steadied his nerves, leveling it on one of the large veins, and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the thick, fetid air, striking the hulking mass with a sharp crack, but it did nothing.

There was no hole. No disturbance.

It just vanished, as if it had never existed in the first place.

The immense thing trembled in response, twisting and turning violently as if mocking his feeble attempt to hurt it.

He tightened his grip, raising back up to eye level. He pressed his finger firmly against the trigger and began to squeeze.

I readied myself for the report, covering my ears in anticipation. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Before either of us could react, a black mist began to rise in his hands, causing him to yell in fear. Small particles drifted into the air like smoke as the pistol slowly disappeared before our eyes, quickly dissolving into thin air, defying the laws of physics.

An ear-piercing ring filled the room, so loud it nearly rattled the walls.

It was back.

The phone had displaced itself and was now settled on the wall behind us, ringing incessantly.

The darkness sprang outward, using shock and confusion to its advantage so it could move unnoticed. It surged forward with unnatural speed, slamming into Kearney like a freight train, lifting him into the air. His spine arched backward with a sickening snap. His uniform tore open as his ribs splayed outward, puncturing through flesh and fabric like jagged claws.

Blood erupted in hot, pulsing sprays, splattering across what remained of the floor in glittering arcs that coruscated under the flickering flashlight.

It wasn’t just a shadow. It was alive.

It proceeded to use Kearney like a plaything, forcing itself into every orifice. His face twisted in pain as he tried to scream, eyes rolling back into his head, as the black, undulating mass exploded from his mouth, eyes, and ears, swallowing the last light of life from his face.

His jaw dislocated with a wet, sickening pop, stretching inhumanly wide. His throat bulged outward, as if something inside was clawing its way out, tearing through skin and muscle alike.

It shot through his body as if exploring a maze, causing it to convulse violently, limbs jerking in rhythmic spasms.

It was as if he were a puppet being controlled by some otherworldly force.

The darkness hollowed him from the inside, slowly stripping away everything that made him human.

It finally began unfurling out of Kearney’s body, turning his skin grey and slack. His veins blackened beneath the surface, snaking outward like ink diffusing in water.

When the darkness finally withdrew, it did so slowly, like something reluctant to let go of the prey it had been feeding on.

What it left behind were remnants of what had once been Officer Kearney, reduced to almost nothing.

He was slumped against the lower kitchen cabinets, spine twisted and curved, chin resting against his chest. His arms dangled loosely at his sides, fingers twitching briefly against the floor before going still. His uniform was soaked across the torso with blood and something else. Something darker.

It looked thinner than blood, reminding me of oil or grease, soaking into his skin like a sponge.

His eyes were open now.

Open and empty.

His mouth hung wide in a scream that had clearly shredded his throat raw, and yet, all I could hear was the ringing phone. I stared into Officer Kearney’s lifeless eyes as the bells consumed me. I could feel my mind slipping from consciousness.

Then, without warning, the ringing stopped.

The silence that followed pressed against my ears, heavy and intense, growing louder than the bells could ever be. I felt something slither up my side, curling around my neck and settling right next to my ear.

“You don’t belong to it.” It whispered.

I couldn’t move. It felt like I was strapped in a vise, being squeezed from all sides. It held me in place, as its cold breath traced down the side of my neck.

“But you answered.”

Something in me snapped loose, like the last shred of sanity I was still holding onto had been broken.

It loosened its grip, allowing me to move my feet. I stumbled backward, nearly slipping on the blood-slick tile as I bolted for the door. The hallway outside felt stretched and narrow, like the walls had leaned inward to watch the show.

I made it halfway down the corridor before dropping to my knees. I had no more strength to run or fight. It had taken everything I had left.

The ringing quickly came back. It never truly stopped when I left the apartment. It just moved.

It was inside me, filling my head and chest.

At that point, I knew that I was now a slave to it. I could feel it. It wanted to use me for something. It had to. Why would it have let me live if it didn’t have bigger plans for me? I guess Officer Kearney didn’t fit the narrative.

When backup arrived, I was still on the floor.

I remember the first officer rounding the corner with his weapon drawn, shouting commands before he even fully saw me. I must have looked insane, sweating through my shirt, hands shaking violently.

My body wouldn’t allow any words to come out, nor would it allow me to look him in the eyes.

All I could do was stare through him and down the hallway.

They ordered me onto my stomach, pushing my face into the hallway carpet. I don’t remember resisting, but I remember the cold shock of the handcuffs squeezing my wrists.

“Where is he?” one of them demanded.

My teeth were chattering so hard that I felt them begin to crack. I could barely breathe, let alone answer his questions.

“He’s… He’s in there,” I finally managed. “That room... He’s… He’s not…”

They didn’t wait for me to finish. Two officers entered my apartment while the other four entered apartment 3A.

I lay there in the hallway, cheek burning against the carpet, waiting and listening for what they might find.

“It’s clear.” One of them called out.

An officer grabbed my arms and pulled me to my feet. As he marched me toward apartment 3A, the emotions all came flooding back at once. The vision of Officer Kearney’s ravaged body lay front and center in my mind, torturing me with every step.

I began to hyperventilate.

As we turned across the threshold, I closed my eyes tight, not wanting to relive that nightmare.

We stopped abruptly as the officer yanked me backwards.

“Where is he?” He asked.

‘Where is he?’ I thought to myself, ‘He’s right there on the floor... dead.’

Confused and apprehensive, I opened my eyes. I’d expected to see a giant, writhing black mass surrounded by Kearney’s remains. Instead, I was met with a much more terrifying scene.

The apartment was spotless.

There were no dark shadows, no phone cords, no blood on the cabinets… not even the smallest speck of dust was out of place.

More importantly, there wasn’t a body on the floor. Officer Kearney was nowhere to be found.

It was as if whatever that thing was had cleaned up after itself.

They searched the apartment thoroughly, combing through every room and every closet. They checked the windows, the fire escape, and even the ceiling panels, but found nothing.

Somehow, I knew they wouldn’t.

Officer Kearney was gone.

They looked at me differently after that. I could see the picture settling into place in their heads. A fellow officer went inside an apartment with a civilian, and now that officer was missing.

All signs pointed at me. I was the only one they could blame.

One of them read me my rights before I fully processed what was happening. I kept trying to explain, desperately trying to tell them about the darkness and the phone.

“What phone?” one of them asked.

“There was a phone on the wall in 3A. It was ringing.” I responded.

They told me there was no landline registered to 3A and that it had been vacant for quite some time, which I already knew in the back of my mind.

I started to doubt myself.

Had I really just imagined all of it? If so, where was Officer Kearney?

They took me in that night.

At the station, they separated me immediately. I sat in a small room with gray walls and a metal table bolted to the floor. The adrenaline had burned off by then, leaving behind a torturous clarity that forced me to relive everything.

I knew exactly how this looked. I kept replaying it in my head from their perspective.

Officer Kearney enters apartment 3A with me present. Minutes later, I am found alone in the hallway staring blankly at nothing, no sign of a struggle, no body, no blood.

Just me.

I was rolling the story over in my head when two large officers entered the room.

They were dressed nicely in khaki pants, both wearing white button-up shirts with red ties.

The first one grabbed a chair and slid it over in front of me, sitting down inches from my feet. He opened his notebook and clicked his pen.

“Hello, Robert. My name is Detective Jenkins, and this is my partner Detective Thompkins.”

Detective Jenkins gestured to his partner, who gave me a half-hearted smile.

“We’re here to get your side of the story, alright?” he said, clearly trying to make me feel like they were on my side. “I want you to think back over the last twenty-four hours and walk us through it in detail. Let’s start with the morning you came into the police station.”

They dug through my mind, peeling back piece by piece, desperately searching for answers that I couldn’t give them.

That first interrogation lasted eight hours.

They were calm at first, almost sympathetic, treading lightly with their questions. However, as time passed, I could feel the doubt building between us.

“Walk us through it again,” Jenkins said.

And I did.

I walked them through every single detail… the unknown number, the opening doors, and even the footsteps at night. I covered everything I could remember, silently pleading with them to believe me.

They remained silent as I spoke. It wasn’t until I mentioned the whisper I’d heard in the hallway that they even moved once.

Detective Thompkins leaned back in his chair and sighed.

They thought I was crazy. I knew that much. But even so, they continued to press, probing my story over and over, hoping for something to change.

By the third day, the tone had shifted.

I was shown the hallway security footage, which showed Officer Kearney entering 3A, with me following right after him. Once we both had disappeared into the apartment, the door slammed shut, leaving only the dimly lit hallway visible to the camera.

Thompkins sped through the next section of footage, which contained six straight hours of empty hallway. In that time, nobody else came in or out. It was like time had shifted, warping my sense of reality.

To me, what felt like thirty seconds spent in that room was actually several hours.

Without words, they inserted the next tape. I think they knew how fragile my mind was in that moment and didn’t want it to break just yet.

The next tape was Officer Kearney’s body-cam footage. It had started recording to their remote server the moment he drew his weapon.

It began with him rushing through the living room. He paced across the floor for a few seconds with his weapon drawn before stopping and firing blindly into the kitchen wall. His camera dropped out right after that, displaying nothing but static.

All that could be heard was a faint, continuous hiss against the background.

They played it for me three times.

“Explain that.” They said.

But I couldn’t.

All I could do was sit there, staring at the static, racking my brain on where all of the cords, veins, and darkness had gone in the footage.

The longer I thought about it, the more I started to lose grip with reality.

Months passed like that.

They never charged me with anything. Honestly, they couldn’t even if they wanted to. There was no body, no physical evidence. Other than a video showing Officer Kearney entering that room, it was like he had never been there at all.

That fact alone wasn’t enough to exonerate me.

They combed every piece of footage they could, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of me doing something to harm Officer Kearney.

I slept in one of the police station’s holding cells for the duration of their investigation. The lady at the front desk was kind enough to loan me a blanket and a small pillow to keep my head off the cold stainless-steel bench. I wasn’t going back to the apartment, and sure as hell didn’t have the money to rent another place. They already had me in their grasp, so I figured I’d make it easier for everyone by staying.

They kept taking me back for questioning, each time with a new detective, employing new tactics. Some tried intimidation, while others tried patience. Every way a detective could extract information from someone, I saw it.

One detective slid a legal pad across the table and asked me to draw the phone I claimed to have seen, and I did.

I took my time, thoroughly sketching every detail I could remember. From the sickly yellow plastic down to the coiled cord and faded numbers.

Weeks of interrogation later, and desperate for literally any evidence to tie me to Officer Kearney’s disappearance, they searched 3A again.

This time, they found dust caked thick on every surface as if the place hadn’t seen life in decades.

The entire room was like this. All except for one spot on the kitchen table.

At the center of it sat a small, rectangular space, suspiciously clean against the surrounding grime, as if something had long rested there. Alongside it, a faint crescent-shaped indentation curved across the wood, displacing the dust around it. Delicate coiling impressions trailed between the two dustless patches, revealing the unmistakable outline of a phone, frozen in time.

That’s when their certainty started to crack. Everything I had told them since the day they brought me in pointed to that phone. I was the one who answered it, and now it was gone.

They stopped asking me where I hid the body and started asking me about the phone.

“Where is it now?” One detective asked. “Who called you on it?”

“Why a phone?” Another asked.

I was berated by questions day and night. They no longer wanted to know why, or if, I had killed Kearney, but why the phone had chosen me… and why the room had chosen him.

Six months after Officer Kearney disappeared, they released me pending investigation.

Legally, they couldn’t hold me any longer, but I could tell that there was no love lost in the separation.

There were no apologies. Only warnings not to leave town while they, quote unquote, figured everything out.

I’m writing this now because for half a year, I was the primary suspect in the disappearance and presumed murder of Officer Kearney. As I am sure you are probably aware of by now, I didn’t kill him.

But I did see the thing that did.

And whatever it is, it’s still connected to me. I can feel it.

The whole time I was being questioned, the ringing never stopped. Whether I was in a holding cell or sitting down for another psych evaluation, that same incessant ringing rattled its way through my brain.

Now, every night at 2:17 a.m., I wake up.

Sometimes it’s just the feeling, like pressure against my ear. But sometimes, it goes deeper than that. For example, what happened three nights ago.

I woke up with my hand curved inward up toward my ear, fingers clenched around nothing but air. My ear had gotten unnaturally cold, as if a piece of ice was being pressed against it.

Then, as if it were coming from within my mind, a voice crept forward, worming its way out of my head and swirling around my hand like a gust of wind.

“You don’t belong to it.” It said in a soft, almost amused whisper.

“But you keep answering.”

Several sleepless nights later, and here I sit, typing out my story as if it will become some long-lost memoir of pain or a cautionary tale for people who will never know how deep this truly goes.

Because of this, I’m starting to understand something that the detectives never will.

It doesn’t need wires or walls. It doesn’t even have to be in the same room with you.

All it needs is someone who’s already picked up once.

And I did.

Part 1

CW: contains gore

The following afternoon, I drove to the police station.

Every step inside felt heavier than the last, as if unseen eyes were following me. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, sending sharp waves of panic through my tattered mind. I jumped when the woman at the desk called my name.

As I was led toward the back, I noticed the way the officers were looking at me. What started as passing looks hardened into long stares. I knew what they were thinking. I was still wearing my pajamas. My flip-flops were smeared with blood, still seeping from my ripped-up feet.

I knew I looked like shit. It was a miracle I was still awake, let alone still standing. I’m sure they felt the same.

My throat tightened as I swallowed. Then I stepped forward, toward the officer assigned to me, trying to hide how badly my hands were shaking.

“Have a seat.” He said, gesturing to an empty chair across from him.

I sat without hesitation. The chair felt too small for some reason. Exposed. Like I had a spotlight on me.

“I’m Officer Kearney,” he said in a deep, soothing voice. “I’ll be taking down your statement today.”

He studied my face for a moment longer than felt necessary before sitting upright in his chair.

“Now, tell me what’s been going on, son.”

His eyes softened as he leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk.

“Please,” I said, “there’s something… I mean… someone in my apartment.” I stumbled over my words. The more I tried to explain, the more insane it sounded. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince him or myself at that point. “I know how this sounds,” I rushed on. “And I know what you’re thinking. I am not imagining this. I need help. I can’t go back. I won’t. Not until it’s gone.”

He didn’t respond. He just stared at me in silence, eyes narrowing and widening in thought, as if he were studying a puzzle. Then, without looking away, he reached across the desk, picked up his pen, and began to write.

His movements were smooth and confident. The product of repetition built up over years of police work. But his face didn’t match it. His eyes flicked between me and the paper, balancing fear against delusion, deciding which one I was more likely to present.

I kept talking.

The words continued to spill out of me in uneven waves, the urgency in my voice growing with each scratch of his pen. I knew I was running out of time and credibility.

Finally, he stopped writing.

His face softened as he pulled the pen away and set it down carefully, as if sudden movement might cause his thoughts to unravel. He let out a long, exasperated sigh and nodded.

“Alright.” He muttered as he stood up and grabbed his keys. “Let’s see what you’re so worked up about.”

Outside, the cold air bit deep into my skin. It should’ve snapped me back to reality. Instead, it only revealed a much deeper chill beneath the surface. One that was slowly crawling its way back up my spine.

I was going back.

I rode in the back of the cop car, trying to focus on the low hum of the engine and the steady rhythm of passing streetlamps… anything to keep my thoughts away from where we were going.

When that failed, I focused on breathing. On reminding myself constantly that I wasn’t alone anymore.

It didn’t work.

No matter what I tried, the isolation continued to weigh heavily on my mind. The officer sitting next to me might as well have been a million miles away. I could feel his presence physically, but it didn’t offer any comfort.

As the building came into view, a sharp pain ran through my stomach, as if trying to tell me that I’d made a terrible mistake by coming back.

We arrived at an anti-climactic scene. Nothing was out of place.

In the evening light, the place looked harmless. We made our way inside and climbed the stairs to the third floor without a word.

Stepping into the hallway felt like we were entering an endless void that was quickly closing in behind us. The light from the stairwell died at the corner, plunging the corridor into pure darkness. The overhead lights above each apartment door were completely dead, leaving the long strip of carpet ahead drenched in pitch black.

Officer Kearney pulled a large flashlight from his belt and clicked it on. The beam sliced forward, cutting through the shadows and landing squarely on my apartment door.

“That’s it,” I said, voice shaky.

We walked to the door slowly, letting the cone of light guide us until we were standing in front of it.

It looked normal. Locked with no sign of forced entry or disturbance.

A thick layer of dust covered the doorknob. I’d only been gone for a day, and yet it looked as if no one had been in or out in weeks. The place honestly looked abandoned.

My hands shook as I fumbled with my keys, dropping them once. Then again. The metal slipped through my fingers like they didn’t belong to me anymore.

For a moment, it felt like I no longer had control of my hands. Like something else was trying to take over my body.

Officer Kearney shifted the flashlight, pulling it from the door to the side of my face. The brightness burned my eyes, snapping me back to reality.

“You alright, son?” he asked, a slight concern filling his voice.

“Y…Yeah, I’m ok,” I lied, trying not to show how scared I truly felt. “Just nervous, is all.”

The hallway felt like it was squeezing in around me.

I forced myself to slow down and breathe. I closed my eyes and concentrated on slowly gathering myself until the trembling eased enough for me to regain control.

When I opened my eyes, the light had returned to the door, fixed on the knob.

I slid the key into the slot and turned it. The lock gave way with a heavy clunk, and I pushed.

The door finally opened.

A strong, metallic scent rushed out to meet us, flooding the hallway and crawling deep into my lungs before I could stop myself from breathing it in.

Officer Kearney recoiled instantly.

“Whoa,” he exclaimed. “What is that?”

I looked back at him and shook my head. “I have no idea.”

He pulled his flashlight up and aimed it into the apartment. The beam cut through the inky black void, stopping just past the doorway. It revealed the faint outlines of shapes and shadows lurking beyond the threshold as it passed over them.

The air turned heavy, carrying the strange odor as it spilled into the hallway. It smelled like old rust and copper. Like the smell you get after handling a bunch of old pennies.

Pure darkness bled out of the room, pressing against us, cold and damp as if it were reaching out for us to claim us as its own.

“What’s going on in here?” he asked, voice low.

He stepped forward, sweeping the flashlight through the apartment. The beam settled on a corner, seemingly darker than the rest of the room.

A shadow lingered there, moving in strange ways, twisting and writhing like smoke caught in a sudden draft. The light died against it, absorbed into its undulating, smoky form, splitting the space around it like a river’s current is forced around a boulder.

We were transfixed. Drawn helplessly toward it, as if it had taken hold of our minds, demanding we come closer.

Then it breathed.

A low, rasping exhale echoed through the apartment.

The sound was so sudden… so loud, that it even made Officer Kearney flinch. I knew from the beginning that he had dealt with and seen almost everything as a cop, but I was sure he hadn’t seen or heard anything like this before.

This was something completely different.

The raspy groans poured out of the black mass. They slithered across the floor and along the walls, like a parasite seeking a host.

It clawed at the inside of my skull, scraping away any semblance of reason and sanity I had left, leaving raw terror to fill the space.

The officer’s flashlight caught it for a moment, just long enough to reveal its impossible movement. Then, without warning, the light flickered and died, plunging us into darkness.

My heart shot up into my throat, pounding so hard I thought it might burst.

“Ahh, c’mon, you fuckin’ thing. Work, damn you!” Officer Kearney snarled, smashing the flashlight against his palm.

I was frozen. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.

Suddenly, the hallway turned frigid. My breath rose in clouds, encircling my head.

The darkening void thickened until I could barely make out Kearney’s silhouette in the doorway. The sound of the flashlight thudding against his palm masked all other noises. Then, as if the answer to a prayer, the light clicked on, coating the door frame in light.

“There we go!” Kearney exclaimed, pointing it back inside.

Even with the light, I could feel it. Something was very wrong here.

Somewhere behind us, wood creaked. Slow, heavy footsteps followed, pacing along the hallway between my apartment and 3A.

My body went numb. I recognized them immediately.

They were the same footsteps I’d heard every night since the calls started.

We both jerked toward 3A.

The door stood there, silent and ordinary.

But then, I noticed something was wrong.

It was open.

Just a crack. Not enough to see inside. But enough to set off every alarm in my brain.

That door had never once been opened since I moved in. Never.

But now… it was.

Almost imperceptibly, it began to widen. The screeching hinges pierced the silence, announcing the arrival of something unseen within.

Something was coming.

Before we could react, the flashlight died again.

“Goddammit!” Kearney snapped, striking it against his palm.

Preoccupied with his frustration, I didn’t see it slip from behind the door. It slithered into the hallway unnoticed, silently stalking us.

In the pitch black, I felt something brush past my leg.

It wasn’t air or fabric.

It felt like skin. Cold, slick, and wet.

My stomach twisted into knots.

In that moment, I wanted nothing more than for that light to come back on. My heartbeat quickened, slamming into my ribs as the acrid taste of adrenaline filled my mouth. I closed my eyes, trying to calm myself and steady my breathing as Kearney worked on the light. Every second felt like an eternity.

Finally, the flashlight clicked back on, and Officer Kearney aimed it into 3A. The light washed the inside of the apartment.

It wasn’t what I expected.

The image I’d held in my mind of apartment 3A being just another normal room was gone, replaced instantly by something far worse. It was twisted and warped in ways my mind refused to accept… like looking into hell itself.

The walls bowed inward, stretched, and split like overworked muscle. Crimson streaks ran along the floorboards, sticky and wet, glistening like fresh blood in the pale light.

Phone cords hung from the ceiling in tangled clusters, twitching violently, all trailing through the cracked, crumbling walls of apartment 3A, as if they were the pulsing veins of some unholy creature.

Then, suddenly, a phone rang from somewhere.

The old landline beside my bed screamed to life, its metallic bell shrill and violent as it smashed against its receiver.

Each ring felt like a hammer driving a spike deep into my skull, one after the other.

Somehow, I knew with perfect certainty, it wasn’t calling me. I could feel it, calling through me, using my consciousness as the handset.

The shadow peeled itself from the corner and flowed toward the torn wall, its shape elongating, stretching like fluid as it poured into the center of the hallway.

The walls between the two apartments splintered, collapsing and falling away with a wet, grinding shudder.

It wasn’t a room.

It was an immense cavity lined with sagged, pulsating veins that resembled old phone cords. They throbbed and shook with every ring, quivering as though the walls themselves were alive.

The floor flexed and rumbled under our feet, as if it would give way at any moment.

“You answered me,” a voice whispered directly into my skull.

Officer Kearney unholstered his pistol and aimed at the writhing mass, hands trembling. He steadied his nerves, leveling it on one of the large veins, and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the thick, fetid air, striking the hulking mass with a sharp crack, but it did nothing.

There was no hole. No disturbance.

It just vanished, as if it had never existed in the first place.

The immense thing trembled in response, twisting and turning violently as if mocking his feeble attempt to hurt it.

He tightened his grip, raising back up to eye level. He pressed his finger firmly against the trigger and began to squeeze.

I readied myself for the report, covering my ears in anticipation. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Before either of us could react, a black mist began to rise in his hands, causing him to yell in fear. Small particles drifted into the air like smoke as the pistol slowly disappeared before our eyes, quickly dissolving into thin air, defying the laws of physics.

An ear-piercing ring filled the room, so loud it nearly rattled the walls.

It was back.

The phone had displaced itself and was now settled on the wall behind us, ringing incessantly.

The darkness sprang outward, using shock and confusion to its advantage so it could move unnoticed. It surged forward with unnatural speed, slamming into Kearney like a freight train, lifting him into the air. His spine arched backward with a sickening snap. His uniform tore open as his ribs splayed outward, puncturing through flesh and fabric like jagged claws.

Blood erupted in hot, pulsing sprays, splattering across what remained of the floor in glittering arcs that coruscated under the flickering flashlight.

It wasn’t just a shadow. It was alive.

It proceeded to use Kearney like a plaything, forcing itself into every orifice. His face twisted in pain as he tried to scream, eyes rolling back into his head, as the black, undulating mass exploded from his mouth, eyes, and ears, swallowing the last light of life from his face.

His jaw dislocated with a wet, sickening pop, stretching inhumanly wide. His throat bulged outward, as if something inside was clawing its way out, tearing through skin and muscle alike.

It shot through his body as if exploring a maze, causing it to convulse violently, limbs jerking in rhythmic spasms.

It was as if he were a puppet being controlled by some otherworldly force.

The darkness hollowed him from the inside, slowly stripping away everything that made him human.

It finally began unfurling out of Kearney’s body, turning his skin grey and slack. His veins blackened beneath the surface, snaking outward like ink diffusing in water.

When the darkness finally withdrew, it did so slowly, like something reluctant to let go of the prey it had been feeding on.

What it left behind were remnants of what had once been Officer Kearney, reduced to almost nothing.

He was slumped against the lower kitchen cabinets, spine twisted and curved, chin resting against his chest. His arms dangled loosely at his sides, fingers twitching briefly against the floor before going still. His uniform was soaked across the torso with blood and something else. Something darker.

It looked thinner than blood, reminding me of oil or grease, soaking into his skin like a sponge.

His eyes were open now.

Open and empty.

His mouth hung wide in a scream that had clearly shredded his throat raw, and yet, all I could hear was the ringing phone. I stared into Officer Kearney’s lifeless eyes as the bells consumed me. I could feel my mind slipping from consciousness.

Then, without warning, the ringing stopped.

The silence that followed pressed against my ears, heavy and intense, growing louder than the bells could ever be. I felt something slither up my side, curling around my neck and settling right next to my ear.

“You don’t belong to it.” It whispered.

I couldn’t move. It felt like I was strapped in a vise, being squeezed from all sides. It held me in place, as its cold breath traced down the side of my neck.

“But you answered.”

Something in me snapped loose, like the last shred of sanity I was still holding onto had been broken.

It loosened its grip, allowing me to move my feet. I stumbled backward, nearly slipping on the blood-slick tile as I bolted for the door. The hallway outside felt stretched and narrow, like the walls had leaned inward to watch the show.

I made it halfway down the corridor before dropping to my knees. I had no more strength to run or fight. It had taken everything I had left.

The ringing quickly came back. It never truly stopped when I left the apartment. It just moved.

It was inside me, filling my head and chest.

At that point, I knew that I was now a slave to it. I could feel it. It wanted to use me for something. It had to. Why would it have let me live if it didn’t have bigger plans for me? I guess Officer Kearney didn’t fit the narrative.

When backup arrived, I was still on the floor.

I remember the first officer rounding the corner with his weapon drawn, shouting commands before he even fully saw me. I must have looked insane, sweating through my shirt, hands shaking violently.

My body wouldn’t allow any words to come out, nor would it allow me to look him in the eyes.

All I could do was stare through him and down the hallway.

They ordered me onto my stomach, pushing my face into the hallway carpet. I don’t remember resisting, but I remember the cold shock of the handcuffs squeezing my wrists.

“Where is he?” one of them demanded.

My teeth were chattering so hard that I felt them begin to crack. I could barely breathe, let alone answer his questions.

“He’s… He’s in there,” I finally managed. “That room... He’s… He’s not…”

They didn’t wait for me to finish. Two officers entered my apartment while the other four entered apartment 3A.

I lay there in the hallway, cheek burning against the carpet, waiting and listening for what they might find.

“It’s clear.” One of them called out.

An officer grabbed my arms and pulled me to my feet. As he marched me toward apartment 3A, the emotions all came flooding back at once. The vision of Officer Kearney’s ravaged body lay front and center in my mind, torturing me with every step.

I began to hyperventilate.

As we turned across the threshold, I closed my eyes tight, not wanting to relive that nightmare.

We stopped abruptly as the officer yanked me backwards.

“Where is he?” He asked.

‘Where is he?’ I thought to myself, ‘He’s right there on the floor... dead.’

Confused and apprehensive, I opened my eyes. I’d expected to see a giant, writhing black mass surrounded by Kearney’s remains. Instead, I was met with a much more terrifying scene.

The apartment was spotless.

There were no dark shadows, no phone cords, no blood on the cabinets… not even the smallest speck of dust was out of place.

More importantly, there wasn’t a body on the floor. Officer Kearney was nowhere to be found.

It was as if whatever that thing was had cleaned up after itself.

They searched the apartment thoroughly, combing through every room and every closet. They checked the windows, the fire escape, and even the ceiling panels, but found nothing.

Somehow, I knew they wouldn’t.

Officer Kearney was gone.

They looked at me differently after that. I could see the picture settling into place in their heads. A fellow officer went inside an apartment with a civilian, and now that officer was missing.

All signs pointed at me. I was the only one they could blame.

One of them read me my rights before I fully processed what was happening. I kept trying to explain, desperately trying to tell them about the darkness and the phone.

“What phone?” one of them asked.

“There was a phone on the wall in 3A. It was ringing.” I responded.

They told me there was no landline registered to 3A and that it had been vacant for quite some time, which I already knew in the back of my mind.

I started to doubt myself.

Had I really just imagined all of it? If so, where was Officer Kearney?

They took me in that night.

At the station, they separated me immediately. I sat in a small room with gray walls and a metal table bolted to the floor. The adrenaline had burned off by then, leaving behind a torturous clarity that forced me to relive everything.

I knew exactly how this looked. I kept replaying it in my head from their perspective.

Officer Kearney enters apartment 3A with me present. Minutes later, I am found alone in the hallway staring blankly at nothing, no sign of a struggle, no body, no blood.

Just me.

I was rolling the story over in my head when two large officers entered the room.

They were dressed nicely in khaki pants, both wearing white button-up shirts with red ties.

The first one grabbed a chair and slid it over in front of me, sitting down inches from my feet. He opened his notebook and clicked his pen.

“Hello, Robert. My name is Detective Jenkins, and this is my partner Detective Thompkins.”

Detective Jenkins gestured to his partner, who gave me a half-hearted smile.

“We’re here to get your side of the story, alright?” he said, clearly trying to make me feel like they were on my side. “I want you to think back over the last twenty-four hours and walk us through it in detail. Let’s start with the morning you came into the police station.”

They dug through my mind, peeling back piece by piece, desperately searching for answers that I couldn’t give them.

That first interrogation lasted eight hours.

They were calm at first, almost sympathetic, treading lightly with their questions. However, as time passed, I could feel the doubt building between us.

“Walk us through it again,” Jenkins said.

And I did.

I walked them through every single detail… the unknown number, the opening doors, and even the footsteps at night. I covered everything I could remember, silently pleading with them to believe me.

They remained silent as I spoke. It wasn’t until I mentioned the whisper I’d heard in the hallway that they even moved once.

Detective Thompkins leaned back in his chair and sighed.

They thought I was crazy. I knew that much. But even so, they continued to press, probing my story over and over, hoping for something to change.

By the third day, the tone had shifted.

I was shown the hallway security footage, which showed Officer Kearney entering 3A, with me following right after him. Once we both had disappeared into the apartment, the door slammed shut, leaving only the dimly lit hallway visible to the camera.

Thompkins sped through the next section of footage, which contained six straight hours of empty hallway. In that time, nobody else came in or out. It was like time had shifted, warping my sense of reality.

To me, what felt like thirty seconds spent in that room was actually several hours.

Without words, they inserted the next tape. I think they knew how fragile my mind was in that moment and didn’t want it to break just yet.

The next tape was Officer Kearney’s body-cam footage. It had started recording to their remote server the moment he drew his weapon.

It began with him rushing through the living room. He paced across the floor for a few seconds with his weapon drawn before stopping and firing blindly into the kitchen wall. His camera dropped out right after that, displaying nothing but static.

All that could be heard was a faint, continuous hiss against the background.

They played it for me three times.

“Explain that.” They said.

But I couldn’t.

All I could do was sit there, staring at the static, racking my brain on where all of the cords, veins, and darkness had gone in the footage.

The longer I thought about it, the more I started to lose grip with reality.

Months passed like that.

They never charged me with anything. Honestly, they couldn’t even if they wanted to. There was no body, no physical evidence. Other than a video showing Officer Kearney entering that room, it was like he had never been there at all.

That fact alone wasn’t enough to exonerate me.

They combed every piece of footage they could, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of me doing something to harm Officer Kearney.

I slept in one of the police station’s holding cells for the duration of their investigation. The lady at the front desk was kind enough to loan me a blanket and a small pillow to keep my head off the cold stainless-steel bench. I wasn’t going back to the apartment, and sure as hell didn’t have the money to rent another place. They already had me in their grasp, so I figured I’d make it easier for everyone by staying.

They kept taking me back for questioning, each time with a new detective, employing new tactics. Some tried intimidation, while others tried patience. Every way a detective could extract information from someone, I saw it.

One detective slid a legal pad across the table and asked me to draw the phone I claimed to have seen, and I did.

I took my time, thoroughly sketching every detail I could remember. From the sickly yellow plastic down to the coiled cord and faded numbers.

Weeks of interrogation later, and desperate for literally any evidence to tie me to Officer Kearney’s disappearance, they searched 3A again.

This time, they found dust caked thick on every surface as if the place hadn’t seen life in decades.

The entire room was like this. All except for one spot on the kitchen table.

At the center of it sat a small, rectangular space, suspiciously clean against the surrounding grime, as if something had long rested there. Alongside it, a faint crescent-shaped indentation curved across the wood, displacing the dust around it. Delicate coiling impressions trailed between the two dustless patches, revealing the unmistakable outline of a phone, frozen in time.

That’s when their certainty started to crack. Everything I had told them since the day they brought me in pointed to that phone. I was the one who answered it, and now it was gone.

They stopped asking me where I hid the body and started asking me about the phone.

“Where is it now?” One detective asked. “Who called you on it?”

“Why a phone?” Another asked.

I was berated by questions day and night. They no longer wanted to know why, or if, I had killed Kearney, but why the phone had chosen me… and why the room had chosen him.

Six months after Officer Kearney disappeared, they released me pending investigation.

Legally, they couldn’t hold me any longer, but I could tell that there was no love lost in the separation.

There were no apologies. Only warnings not to leave town while they, quote unquote, figured everything out.

I’m writing this now because for half a year, I was the primary suspect in the disappearance and presumed murder of Officer Kearney. As I am sure you are probably aware of by now, I didn’t kill him.

But I did see the thing that did.

And whatever it is, it’s still connected to me. I can feel it.

The whole time I was being questioned, the ringing never stopped. Whether I was in a holding cell or sitting down for another psych evaluation, that same incessant ringing rattled its way through my brain.

Now, every night at 2:17 a.m., I wake up.

Sometimes it’s just the feeling, like pressure against my ear. But sometimes, it goes deeper than that. For example, what happened three nights ago.

I woke up with my hand curved inward up toward my ear, fingers clenched around nothing but air. My ear had gotten unnaturally cold, as if a piece of ice was being pressed against it.

Then, as if it were coming from within my mind, a voice crept forward, worming its way out of my head and swirling around my hand like a gust of wind.

“You don’t belong to it.” It said in a soft, almost amused whisper.

“But you keep answering.”

Several sleepless nights later, and here I sit, typing out my story as if it will become some long-lost memoir of pain or a cautionary tale for people who will never know how deep this truly goes.

Because of this, I’m starting to understand something that the detectives never will.

It doesn’t need wires or walls. It doesn’t even have to be in the same room with you.

All it needs is someone who’s already picked up once.

And I did.

CW: contains gore

My name is Robert. I moved into Sunnyside Apartments on Delaney Street because it was cheap, quiet, and close to my work. Simple as that.

Sunnyside was the kind of place people only lived in temporarily until they could either get back on their feet or find a better situation. Most of my neighbors were students, night-shift workers, or people who just wanted a low-cost place to escape to for a while. No one ever stayed long enough to learn anyone else’s name.

That suited me just fine.

I wasn’t there to make friends or form connections. I was just trying to live my life one day at a time, without any unnecessary drama.

The building itself was old but reasonably well-kept for what it was. The hallways were narrow, the walls thin and poorly insulated. Sound carried easily from one end of the floor to the other. At all hours, footsteps, arguments, and even quiet conversations from apartments several doors down carried through the walls. Privacy was never a guarantee.

The plumbing was the worst part. At night, the pipes knocked and rattled with steam, clanging loudly, as if someone were banging on them with a hammer every few minutes. I figured that was normal for a place that had been standing since 1948. I had rented apartment 3B.

Directly across from me was 3A.

It was empty when I moved in, which was unusual to me. Sunnyside rarely had vacancies. Even after an eviction, a new tenant usually moved in within days.

Brian, the landlord, noticed me staring as we passed it.

“Been empty a while,” he said. “Tenant apparently skipped out and left without a word. Pretty strange if you ask me… but people have their reasons for things, I guess.”

He unlocked my door and handed me the key.

“Any questions?”

“No,” I replied. “I think I’m good. Thanks.”

That wasn’t true.

I had questions. I just didn’t ask them. At the time, I didn’t think it mattered, and I really didn’t want to inconvenience the guy.

Looking back, I wish I had.

The first strange thing happened about two weeks after I moved in. I woke up at 2:17 a.m. to my phone buzzing on the nightstand. Still half-asleep, I leaned over and checked the screen.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I almost ignored it. But something about being jolted awake so suddenly made me answer without thinking.

“Hello?” I said, voice thick with sleep.

Static poured from the speaker. Beneath it, I heard the slightest sound of someone breathing. It was slow and steady, as if someone was holding the phone right next to their mouth.

The longer I listened, the more uncomfortable I got, causing every hair on my arm to raise in anticipation.

“Hello?” I said again, sitting up.

The breathing stopped. Then, through the static, I heard a faint creaking sound. A steady stream of cracks and pops followed, much louder than the breathing had been. It sounded like an old wooden door being pushed open.

Even through the fog of sleep, I remember thinking that there was no way it was coming from my phone. It took me a moment to realize why.

It wasn’t coming from the other end of the line.

It was coming from my kitchen door, down the hallway just outside my bedroom.

The hinges holding it were old and worn, producing an unmistakable sound when you opened it.

I hung up and pushed my back against the headboard as hard as I could. I stared into the dark hallway, unmoving, my heart pounding so hard it made my ears ring.

Eventually, I convinced myself it was just a coincidence. Probably just a neighbor’s door down the hall, aligned with a poorly timed prank call. My brain was still foggy, desperately scrambling to fill in the gaps with anything that sounded reasonable.

The next morning, I checked my call log.

There was nothing there.

I scrolled back and forth, refreshing over and over, each time seeing the same result. There was no call. No unknown number. No anything.

It was as if it had never happened.

It all felt like a blur, causing me to wonder if I had just dreamt everything or had some strange hallucination from lack of sleep.

I didn’t believe I had, but I had to rationalize it. I needed an explanation.

The rest of the day ticked by like normal, except for the fact that I was trying to push aside the memory of the morning’s events. Eventually, I was able to push it to the back of my mind and move on.

By the time I got home, exhaustion had taken over, having almost erased it from my mind completely.

Almost.

That night, I locked both the kitchen door and my bedroom door, not because of fear, but more so for my sanity. If it happened again, I wanted proof that I hadn’t just imagined it.

I plugged my phone in and climbed into bed, drifting off to sleep fairly quickly. I let myself believe it was over. Sadly, that wouldn’t last long because at 2:17 a.m., my phone rang. I froze.

The screen lit up the nightstand, washing the room in a pale blue light, displaying what I had dreaded seeing.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

Fear flooded my body as I slowly reached for the phone, hands trembling so badly I nearly dropped it. The moment I answered, I was met with static, followed by that same shallow, ragged breathing.

Then, the kitchen door creaked open.

There was no mistaking it this time. This was no longer just a coincidence. Someone was deliberately calling me at the same time every night. It had now become a pattern.

Even worse, someone had gotten into my apartment without me knowing.

I sat in my bed, staring at the faint silhouette of my bedroom door, too scared to move. Half of me wanted to call out and confront whoever or whatever was there. The other half was ready to run as fast and as far away as I could.

Eventually, everything went quiet.

I didn’t end up falling asleep until the sun started peaking over the horizon, too afraid, knowing someone had been in my apartment.

After that, the calls came every night.

Always at 2:17 a.m. and always from the same unknown number. The routine never changed. I’d go to sleep. I’d get woken up. I’d listen to the static, the breathing, and the creaky door. Then I’d lie awake until morning, too afraid to close my eyes again.

Over time, the sounds began to change. At first, it was just the kitchen door. Then came soft tapping, like fingernails on stone or wood. I even heard what sounded like fabric brushing against fabric, like someone brushing past the living room curtains.

The worst part was how familiar the sounds were.

Every noise matched something in my apartment. I knew exactly where the sound was coming from the moment I heard it. It was always just out of sight. From my bed, I could see about six feet down the hallway. The sounds always came from just beyond that, either inside the kitchen or the living room.

After the sixth night, I stopped answering the calls.

Despite my efforts, they didn’t stop.

My phone rang anyway, eventually going to voicemail. The little tape icon at the top of the screen indicated that whoever it was had actually recorded something, and yet, when I checked the next morning, there was nothing. There was no audio or timestamp. Just blank entries that vanished after a few hours.

I even called the phone company. They told me they couldn’t see any incoming or outgoing calls during the time I specified. Nothing at all.

That was when I stopped sleeping.

I shoved a chair under my bedroom door handle and kept the lights on all night, hoping that would be enough to keep whatever was happening to me at bay.

I kept telling myself there had to be a logical explanation for everything. If I could just figure it out, it would stop.

One morning, I opened the door into the hallway only to realize my nightmare was only just starting, evolving into something worse.

A trail of muddy footprints stretched across the floor.

They started near the front door, looped methodically around the kitchen, and ended in the hallway, right outside my bedroom.

I called Brian immediately. To my surprise, he didn’t sound upset or even concerned.

“Probably kids,” he said. “This neighborhood’s got its fair share of troublemakers.”

I just stood there, staring at the floor. There were literally bare, human footprints in my kitchen. Someone had broken into my apartment, walked through it, and then stood outside my door all night while I slept, and the best explanation he could offer was kids?

“What the fuck?” I yelled, letting the anger show in my voice. “Are you serious? Thank God, I locked my door, but there was literally an intruder in my apartment last night, dude. That’s a major problem.”

He went quiet. Long enough for the weight of my words to sink in. After a few seconds, he spoke again, his voice lower this time.

“Listen,” he said. “I didn’t think it would happen this soon, but… are you getting phone calls late at night?”

My stomach dropped. The anger vanished, replaced by something ice-cold slipping its way up my spine.

“You know about this?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve been pranking me this whole time. I swear to God, Brian, I might actually lose my shit if you’ve been behind this.”

Part of me thought it truly had been Brian behind it all. Another part of me, the sleep-deprived part, wasn’t sure what was even real anymore. I stayed silent, waiting for him to explain himself.

He exhaled sharply. I could feel the tension deepen between us as the cavalier and carefree tone in his voice quickly turned circumspect.

“Just… don’t answer them,” he said. “And stay out of 3A. There’s nothing in there. Hasn’t been for a while.”

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean? What does 3A have to do with any of this?”

I heard the line click before I could get an answer. He hung up before I could press further.

I got the sense that talking about it disturbed or hurt him more than he was willing to admit.

Scared or not, I needed answers. If Brian wouldn’t give them to me, I’d find someone who would.

That afternoon, I made my way down the hall and stopped outside my neighbor Sandra’s door. I hesitated a moment before knocking. She had lived in the building longer than anyone, especially me. If there was anyone who knew the secrets of that place, I knew it would be her.

The door latch snapped instantly after my first knock, the door jerking open with a force that made me flinch. Sandra filled the doorway, as though she had been standing there the whole time, waiting for me.

She was short, with wiry grey hair that stuck out in untamed clumps and skin that was sagging and wrinkled as if barely holding back the ravages of time. Her marble-grey eyes hung on me a second too long, looking me up and down as if she were testing my worth.

Behind her, the apartment stretched into a dim, cluttered mess, smelling of mildew and sweet rot. Books lay in piles across the floor, their pages warped and swollen with dampness. Something about the place made it hard to focus, like my eyes refused to settle on any one detail for too long.

When I mentioned the phone calls, her body stiffened. The color drained from her face, leaving her skin stretched ghostly pale across her cheekbones. She fixed her eyes on me, pursing her lips together as if she were pondering the right answer to give me.

“You’re in 3B,” she said.

It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. I hesitated, then nodded, offering a small, awkward smile that she didn’t return. She only stared.

The air between us thickened, doubt slowly creeping its way into my mind. I began telling myself that this was a mistake, that I had misjudged my approach.

Her eyes widened. She leaned closer, lowering her voice to a whisper until I could barely hear it across the threshold.

“Don’t answer,” she said. “Ignore it. All of it. The curiosity isn’t worth it.”

She pulled away abruptly, glancing down both ends of the hallway as if afraid someone might catch her speaking to me. When she was satisfied nobody had seen her, she spoke again, her voice growing firmer.

“The last person who lived in 3A had a problem,” she continued. “He started hearing things. Started seeing things, too. Things that weren’t always there.”

She paused, long enough to hint that there was more she wasn’t saying.

“Not long after that, an eviction notice showed up on his door. Then he just disappeared. I never saw him again after that.”

“Who was he?” I asked, almost reflexively.

Her gaze slid past me toward the stairwell. The longer we spoke, the more on edge she seemed, like talking about it made her a target.

“He said he was from Chicago,” she muttered. “Ended up coming to me for advice. About the calls. Kept saying people were walking around his apartment at night.”

She shook her head slightly, trying to hide the growing tension in her face.

“I told him to call the police. I mean, what else was I supposed to tell him?”

She looked up at me, as if seeking approval or agreement. Her expression wavered as the muscles in her face strained with indecision, unable to settle on a single emotion. At any moment, I felt she might break down and cry. Or scream. I wasn’t sure which, and neither was she, it seemed. She stood, suspended between what she wanted to feel and what she wanted me to see.

“He was a real pain in the ass, if you ask me,” she added. “Always going on and on about it. Strange guy for sure, but I’m nobody to judge.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

She exhaled, her wild gaze softening a bit.

“Don’t know. I just stopped seeing him after a while. One day, he was there. The next, he wasn’t.”

Then she stepped back, retreating into the dim light of her apartment. The conversation was over. At least it was for her. She was done with me and my questions, but I knew she was still holding something back. Whatever it was, she wasn’t ready, or willing, to share it with me.

“Did you know him well?” I tried one last time. “Were you close?”

Her jaw tightened, twisting her face into a frown. She gripped the edge of the door and shifted her weight to the side, halfway obscuring herself in the dark.

“No,” she said flatly. “And it’s time for you to leave.”

I didn’t argue. I thanked her and returned to my apartment, mulling over everything in my head. Everything she said lined up perfectly with what was happening to me.

There were only two possibilities at that point. Either I was the target of a very elaborate prank, or this was real, and I was dealing with something far beyond my understanding.

I had my doubts, but by the time I closed the door behind me in apartment 3B, I knew which one I believed.

I didn’t go to work that night. Instead, I sat on the couch with every light on, gripping my phone until my hand ached, as if squeezing it hard enough would somehow protect me. At 2:17 a.m., it buzzed. I didn’t answer, letting it go to voicemail and bracing myself for the same, unsettling sounds to follow.

They never came. Nothing happened.

For the first time in over a week, the entire apartment was quiet.

“Is it over?” I whispered.

I stood up and slowly walked toward the kitchen, relief washing over me as the tight grip of paranoia finally began to loosen. I stood in the kitchen for a moment, debating whether I could trust the quiet just yet. The apartment answered with the usual creaks and groans I’d grown accustomed to before the calls. When nothing else followed, I let my body relax, slowly, and turned back toward the couch.

The moment I sat down and let my guard slip, the phone buzzed, startling me. I flinched hard, losing my grip on the phone, sending it flying across the room. It hit the living room floor and skidded into the kitchen, clattering loudly as the screen flickered to life.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I let it ring. And ring. Over and over.

Whoever… or whatever it was, kept calling, leaving voicemails that were never truly there, treading a thick layer of dread across my mind each time.

Eventually, I just tuned it out and went to bed.

After talking to Sandra, I was convinced this was tied to the phone. It made sense. If it hadn’t been for that first phone call waking me on that first night, I probably would have just ignored it all. I picked it up and tossed it onto the couch. It buzzed softly against the cushion as I walked away. I left it there and headed to bed, hoping that by leaving it in a different room, I’d somehow be able to escape it.

I had to try something.

I went into my bedroom and climbed into bed.

Without the constant buzzing of my phone on my nightstand, sleep came much easier than I’d expected, my body giving in almost immediately. The room softened around me, sound draining away, as I sank lower and lower.

I’d almost made it to sleep when the shrill clang of an old phone shattered the silence. Its metallic peal sliced through the room, slamming into my eardrums, yanking me straight up in bed. Adrenaline surged through my veins like a sudden jolt of electricity, sharp and needling against my nerves as I whipped my head around toward the source.

An old landline was mounted on the wall beside the bed. Its long, coiled cord hung down beneath it, pooling loosely onto the floor. I’d never used it, and until that moment, I’d forgotten it was even there. Brian had insisted on keeping it there, claiming that it ‘added character’ to the place.

What a load of horseshit.

The handset rattled violently against the receiver, shaking as if possessed, desperately begging me to answer it. I didn’t touch it.

I couldn’t.

The relentless ringing bored a hole in my skull, gnawing at what little sanity I had left. I covered my ears. Deep down, I knew exactly what was waiting for me on the other end.

I didn’t need proof or confirmation.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the ringing stopped. The metallic echoes of the bells finally began to fade, dissolving into an anxious silence. I lowered my hands slowly, every muscle still tight, my mind weighing heavily with doubt and fear.

The quiet didn’t last long. I knew it wouldn’t.

It was replaced by slow, deliberate knocking coming from somewhere deep within the apartment. At first, it was faint, barely audible. I would’ve dismissed it had it not moved. It began to wander around the apartment, each knock sounding closer than the last, growing heavier and more persistent the more I listened to it. The pattern began to stretch and morph, strengthening with an unnatural rhythm. It built steadily, swelling into an intense pounding, landing hard enough to send a shiver through the walls, rattling the picture frames off their hooks.

Within seconds, it had reached my bedroom door.

Fear swallowed me whole. Each steady thud became an assault on my senses, sending violent tremors through my body.

I don’t remember grabbing my keys. I barely remember climbing out onto the fire escape.

The next thing I knew, I was scrambling barefoot down three flights of jagged metal stairs, skin tearing with every step. I hit the pavement and ran as hard as I could into the night.

My lungs burned, and my legs screamed, but I kept pushing. I ran until my body threatened to give up on me entirely.

Three blocks later, I slammed into a chain-link fence, finally giving myself a chance to rest.

My feet were shredded. Sweat poured down my face and chest, soaking my clothes.

“What the fuck was that?” I gasped, fighting for air.

After a few nauseating moments, I forced myself to turn back toward the complex. With every painful, blood-slick step, my mind screamed at me not to.

‘Just keep going and leave that place,’ it begged.

But everything I owned was still there. I couldn’t just leave.

When the building came into view, I made my decision. I was exhausted, scared, and shaking from pain, so I stayed in my car for the night. Before leaning the seat back, I slipped on a pair of old, white flip-flops I found under the seat. They were thin and worn, barely holding together, but enough to keep something between the ground and the raw, open wounds on my feet. Better than nothing at least.

The car felt safer than the apartment, but even so, sleep never came. I kept watch over the third-story windows, half-expecting to see something standing there, watching back.

CW: contains gore

My name is Robert. I moved into Sunnyside Apartments on Delaney Street because it was cheap, quiet, and close to my work. Simple as that.

Sunnyside was the kind of place people only lived in temporarily until they could either get back on their feet or find a better situation. Most of my neighbors were students, night-shift workers, or people who just wanted a low-cost place to escape to for a while. No one ever stayed long enough to learn anyone else’s name.

That suited me just fine.

I wasn’t there to make friends or form connections. I was just trying to live my life one day at a time, without any unnecessary drama.

The building itself was old but reasonably well-kept for what it was. The hallways were narrow, the walls thin and poorly insulated. Sound carried easily from one end of the floor to the other. At all hours, footsteps, arguments, and even quiet conversations from apartments several doors down carried through the walls. Privacy was never a guarantee.

The plumbing was the worst part. At night, the pipes knocked and rattled with steam, clanging loudly, as if someone were banging on them with a hammer every few minutes. I figured that was normal for a place that had been standing since 1948. I had rented apartment 3B.

Directly across from me was 3A.

It was empty when I moved in, which was unusual to me. Sunnyside rarely had vacancies. Even after an eviction, a new tenant usually moved in within days.

Brian, the landlord, noticed me staring as we passed it.

“Been empty a while,” he said. “Tenant apparently skipped out and left without a word. Pretty strange if you ask me… but people have their reasons for things, I guess.”

He unlocked my door and handed me the key.

“Any questions?”

“No,” I replied. “I think I’m good. Thanks.”

That wasn’t true.

I had questions. I just didn’t ask them. At the time, I didn’t think it mattered, and I really didn’t want to inconvenience the guy.

Looking back, I wish I had.

The first strange thing happened about two weeks after I moved in. I woke up at 2:17 a.m. to my phone buzzing on the nightstand. Still half-asleep, I leaned over and checked the screen.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I almost ignored it. But something about being jolted awake so suddenly made me answer without thinking.

“Hello?” I said, voice thick with sleep.

Static poured from the speaker. Beneath it, I heard the slightest sound of someone breathing. It was slow and steady, as if someone was holding the phone right next to their mouth.

The longer I listened, the more uncomfortable I got, causing every hair on my arm to raise in anticipation.

“Hello?” I said again, sitting up.

The breathing stopped. Then, through the static, I heard a faint creaking sound. A steady stream of cracks and pops followed, much louder than the breathing had been. It sounded like an old wooden door being pushed open.

Even through the fog of sleep, I remember thinking that there was no way it was coming from my phone. It took me a moment to realize why.

It wasn’t coming from the other end of the line.

It was coming from my kitchen door, down the hallway just outside my bedroom.

The hinges holding it were old and worn, producing an unmistakable sound when you opened it.

I hung up and pushed my back against the headboard as hard as I could. I stared into the dark hallway, unmoving, my heart pounding so hard it made my ears ring.

Eventually, I convinced myself it was just a coincidence. Probably just a neighbor’s door down the hall, aligned with a poorly timed prank call. My brain was still foggy, desperately scrambling to fill in the gaps with anything that sounded reasonable.

The next morning, I checked my call log.

There was nothing there.

I scrolled back and forth, refreshing over and over, each time seeing the same result. There was no call. No unknown number. No anything.

It was as if it had never happened.

It all felt like a blur, causing me to wonder if I had just dreamt everything or had some strange hallucination from lack of sleep.

I didn’t believe I had, but I had to rationalize it. I needed an explanation.

The rest of the day ticked by like normal, except for the fact that I was trying to push aside the memory of the morning’s events. Eventually, I was able to push it to the back of my mind and move on.

By the time I got home, exhaustion had taken over, having almost erased it from my mind completely.

Almost.

That night, I locked both the kitchen door and my bedroom door, not because of fear, but more so for my sanity. If it happened again, I wanted proof that I hadn’t just imagined it.

I plugged my phone in and climbed into bed, drifting off to sleep fairly quickly. I let myself believe it was over. Sadly, that wouldn’t last long because at 2:17 a.m., my phone rang. I froze.

The screen lit up the nightstand, washing the room in a pale blue light, displaying what I had dreaded seeing.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

Fear flooded my body as I slowly reached for the phone, hands trembling so badly I nearly dropped it. The moment I answered, I was met with static, followed by that same shallow, ragged breathing.

Then, the kitchen door creaked open.

There was no mistaking it this time. This was no longer just a coincidence. Someone was deliberately calling me at the same time every night. It had now become a pattern.

Even worse, someone had gotten into my apartment without me knowing.

I sat in my bed, staring at the faint silhouette of my bedroom door, too scared to move. Half of me wanted to call out and confront whoever or whatever was there. The other half was ready to run as fast and as far away as I could.

Eventually, everything went quiet.

I didn’t end up falling asleep until the sun started peaking over the horizon, too afraid, knowing someone had been in my apartment.

After that, the calls came every night.

Always at 2:17 a.m. and always from the same unknown number. The routine never changed. I’d go to sleep. I’d get woken up. I’d listen to the static, the breathing, and the creaky door. Then I’d lie awake until morning, too afraid to close my eyes again.

Over time, the sounds began to change. At first, it was just the kitchen door. Then came soft tapping, like fingernails on stone or wood. I even heard what sounded like fabric brushing against fabric, like someone brushing past the living room curtains.

The worst part was how familiar the sounds were.

Every noise matched something in my apartment. I knew exactly where the sound was coming from the moment I heard it. It was always just out of sight. From my bed, I could see about six feet down the hallway. The sounds always came from just beyond that, either inside the kitchen or the living room.

After the sixth night, I stopped answering the calls.

Despite my efforts, they didn’t stop.

My phone rang anyway, eventually going to voicemail. The little tape icon at the top of the screen indicated that whoever it was had actually recorded something, and yet, when I checked the next morning, there was nothing. There was no audio or timestamp. Just blank entries that vanished after a few hours.

I even called the phone company. They told me they couldn’t see any incoming or outgoing calls during the time I specified. Nothing at all.

That was when I stopped sleeping.

I shoved a chair under my bedroom door handle and kept the lights on all night, hoping that would be enough to keep whatever was happening to me at bay.

I kept telling myself there had to be a logical explanation for everything. If I could just figure it out, it would stop.

One morning, I opened the door into the hallway only to realize my nightmare was only just starting, evolving into something worse.

A trail of muddy footprints stretched across the floor.

They started near the front door, looped methodically around the kitchen, and ended in the hallway, right outside my bedroom.

I called Brian immediately. To my surprise, he didn’t sound upset or even concerned.

“Probably kids,” he said. “This neighborhood’s got its fair share of troublemakers.”

I just stood there, staring at the floor. There were literally bare, human footprints in my kitchen. Someone had broken into my apartment, walked through it, and then stood outside my door all night while I slept, and the best explanation he could offer was kids?

“What the fuck?” I yelled, letting the anger show in my voice. “Are you serious? Thank God, I locked my door, but there was literally an intruder in my apartment last night, dude. That’s a major problem.”

He went quiet. Long enough for the weight of my words to sink in. After a few seconds, he spoke again, his voice lower this time.

“Listen,” he said. “I didn’t think it would happen this soon, but… are you getting phone calls late at night?”

My stomach dropped. The anger vanished, replaced by something ice-cold slipping its way up my spine.

“You know about this?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve been pranking me this whole time. I swear to God, Brian, I might actually lose my shit if you’ve been behind this.”

Part of me thought it truly had been Brian behind it all. Another part of me, the sleep-deprived part, wasn’t sure what was even real anymore. I stayed silent, waiting for him to explain himself.

He exhaled sharply. I could feel the tension deepen between us as the cavalier and carefree tone in his voice quickly turned circumspect.

“Just… don’t answer them,” he said. “And stay out of 3A. There’s nothing in there. Hasn’t been for a while.”

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean? What does 3A have to do with any of this?”

I heard the line click before I could get an answer. He hung up before I could press further.

I got the sense that talking about it disturbed or hurt him more than he was willing to admit.

Scared or not, I needed answers. If Brian wouldn’t give them to me, I’d find someone who would.

That afternoon, I made my way down the hall and stopped outside my neighbor Sandra’s door. I hesitated a moment before knocking. She had lived in the building longer than anyone, especially me. If there was anyone who knew the secrets of that place, I knew it would be her.

The door latch snapped instantly after my first knock, the door jerking open with a force that made me flinch. Sandra filled the doorway, as though she had been standing there the whole time, waiting for me.

She was short, with wiry grey hair that stuck out in untamed clumps and skin that was sagging and wrinkled as if barely holding back the ravages of time. Her marble-grey eyes hung on me a second too long, looking me up and down as if she were testing my worth.

Behind her, the apartment stretched into a dim, cluttered mess, smelling of mildew and sweet rot. Books lay in piles across the floor, their pages warped and swollen with dampness. Something about the place made it hard to focus, like my eyes refused to settle on any one detail for too long.

When I mentioned the phone calls, her body stiffened. The color drained from her face, leaving her skin stretched ghostly pale across her cheekbones. She fixed her eyes on me, pursing her lips together as if she were pondering the right answer to give me.

“You’re in 3B,” she said.

It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. I hesitated, then nodded, offering a small, awkward smile that she didn’t return. She only stared.

The air between us thickened, doubt slowly creeping its way into my mind. I began telling myself that this was a mistake, that I had misjudged my approach.

Her eyes widened. She leaned closer, lowering her voice to a whisper until I could barely hear it across the threshold.

“Don’t answer,” she said. “Ignore it. All of it. The curiosity isn’t worth it.”

She pulled away abruptly, glancing down both ends of the hallway as if afraid someone might catch her speaking to me. When she was satisfied nobody had seen her, she spoke again, her voice growing firmer.

“The last person who lived in 3A had a problem,” she continued. “He started hearing things. Started seeing things, too. Things that weren’t always there.”

She paused, long enough to hint that there was more she wasn’t saying.

“Not long after that, an eviction notice showed up on his door. Then he just disappeared. I never saw him again after that.”

“Who was he?” I asked, almost reflexively.

Her gaze slid past me toward the stairwell. The longer we spoke, the more on edge she seemed, like talking about it made her a target.

“He said he was from Chicago,” she muttered. “Ended up coming to me for advice. About the calls. Kept saying people were walking around his apartment at night.”

She shook her head slightly, trying to hide the growing tension in her face.

“I told him to call the police. I mean, what else was I supposed to tell him?”

She looked up at me, as if seeking approval or agreement. Her expression wavered as the muscles in her face strained with indecision, unable to settle on a single emotion. At any moment, I felt she might break down and cry. Or scream. I wasn’t sure which, and neither was she, it seemed. She stood, suspended between what she wanted to feel and what she wanted me to see.

“He was a real pain in the ass, if you ask me,” she added. “Always going on and on about it. Strange guy for sure, but I’m nobody to judge.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

She exhaled, her wild gaze softening a bit.

“Don’t know. I just stopped seeing him after a while. One day, he was there. The next, he wasn’t.”

Then she stepped back, retreating into the dim light of her apartment. The conversation was over. At least it was for her. She was done with me and my questions, but I knew she was still holding something back. Whatever it was, she wasn’t ready, or willing, to share it with me.

“Did you know him well?” I tried one last time. “Were you close?”

Her jaw tightened, twisting her face into a frown. She gripped the edge of the door and shifted her weight to the side, halfway obscuring herself in the dark.

“No,” she said flatly. “And it’s time for you to leave.”

I didn’t argue. I thanked her and returned to my apartment, mulling over everything in my head. Everything she said lined up perfectly with what was happening to me.

There were only two possibilities at that point. Either I was the target of a very elaborate prank, or this was real, and I was dealing with something far beyond my understanding.

I had my doubts, but by the time I closed the door behind me in apartment 3B, I knew which one I believed.

I didn’t go to work that night. Instead, I sat on the couch with every light on, gripping my phone until my hand ached, as if squeezing it hard enough would somehow protect me. At 2:17 a.m., it buzzed. I didn’t answer, letting it go to voicemail and bracing myself for the same, unsettling sounds to follow.

They never came. Nothing happened.

For the first time in over a week, the entire apartment was quiet.

“Is it over?” I whispered.

I stood up and slowly walked toward the kitchen, relief washing over me as the tight grip of paranoia finally began to loosen. I stood in the kitchen for a moment, debating whether I could trust the quiet just yet. The apartment answered with the usual creaks and groans I’d grown accustomed to before the calls. When nothing else followed, I let my body relax, slowly, and turned back toward the couch.

The moment I sat down and let my guard slip, the phone buzzed, startling me. I flinched hard, losing my grip on the phone, sending it flying across the room. It hit the living room floor and skidded into the kitchen, clattering loudly as the screen flickered to life.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I let it ring. And ring. Over and over.

Whoever… or whatever it was, kept calling, leaving voicemails that were never truly there, treading a thick layer of dread across my mind each time.

Eventually, I just tuned it out and went to bed.

After talking to Sandra, I was convinced this was tied to the phone. It made sense. If it hadn’t been for that first phone call waking me on that first night, I probably would have just ignored it all. I picked it up and tossed it onto the couch. It buzzed softly against the cushion as I walked away. I left it there and headed to bed, hoping that by leaving it in a different room, I’d somehow be able to escape it.

I had to try something.

I went into my bedroom and climbed into bed.

Without the constant buzzing of my phone on my nightstand, sleep came much easier than I’d expected, my body giving in almost immediately. The room softened around me, sound draining away, as I sank lower and lower.

I’d almost made it to sleep when the shrill clang of an old phone shattered the silence. Its metallic peal sliced through the room, slamming into my eardrums, yanking me straight up in bed. Adrenaline surged through my veins like a sudden jolt of electricity, sharp and needling against my nerves as I whipped my head around toward the source.

An old landline was mounted on the wall beside the bed. Its long, coiled cord hung down beneath it, pooling loosely onto the floor. I’d never used it, and until that moment, I’d forgotten it was even there. Brian had insisted on keeping it there, claiming that it ‘added character’ to the place.

What a load of horseshit.

The handset rattled violently against the receiver, shaking as if possessed, desperately begging me to answer it. I didn’t touch it.

I couldn’t.

The relentless ringing bored a hole in my skull, gnawing at what little sanity I had left. I covered my ears. Deep down, I knew exactly what was waiting for me on the other end.

I didn’t need proof or confirmation.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the ringing stopped. The metallic echoes of the bells finally began to fade, dissolving into an anxious silence. I lowered my hands slowly, every muscle still tight, my mind weighing heavily with doubt and fear.

The quiet didn’t last long. I knew it wouldn’t.

It was replaced by slow, deliberate knocking coming from somewhere deep within the apartment. At first, it was faint, barely audible. I would’ve dismissed it had it not moved. It began to wander around the apartment, each knock sounding closer than the last, growing heavier and more persistent the more I listened to it. The pattern began to stretch and morph, strengthening with an unnatural rhythm. It built steadily, swelling into an intense pounding, landing hard enough to send a shiver through the walls, rattling the picture frames off their hooks.

Within seconds, it had reached my bedroom door.

Fear swallowed me whole. Each steady thud became an assault on my senses, sending violent tremors through my body.

I don’t remember grabbing my keys. I barely remember climbing out onto the fire escape.

The next thing I knew, I was scrambling barefoot down three flights of jagged metal stairs, skin tearing with every step. I hit the pavement and ran as hard as I could into the night.

My lungs burned, and my legs screamed, but I kept pushing. I ran until my body threatened to give up on me entirely.

Three blocks later, I slammed into a chain-link fence, finally giving myself a chance to rest.

My feet were shredded. Sweat poured down my face and chest, soaking my clothes.

“What the fuck was that?” I gasped, fighting for air.

After a few nauseating moments, I forced myself to turn back toward the complex. With every painful, blood-slick step, my mind screamed at me not to.

‘Just keep going and leave that place,’ it begged.

But everything I owned was still there. I couldn’t just leave.

When the building came into view, I made my decision. I was exhausted, scared, and shaking from pain, so I stayed in my car for the night. Before leaning the seat back, I slipped on a pair of old, white flip-flops I found under the seat. They were thin and worn, barely holding together, but enough to keep something between the ground and the raw, open wounds on my feet. Better than nothing at least.

The car felt safer than the apartment, but even so, sleep never came. I kept watch over the third-story windows, half-expecting to see something standing there, watching back.

CW: contains gore

My name is Robert. I moved into Sunnyside Apartments on Delaney Street because it was cheap, quiet, and close to my work. Simple as that.

Sunnyside was the kind of place people only lived in temporarily until they could either get back on their feet or find a better situation. Most of my neighbors were students, night-shift workers, or people who just wanted a low-cost place to escape to for a while. No one ever stayed long enough to learn anyone else’s name.

That suited me just fine.

I wasn’t there to make friends or form connections. I was just trying to live my life one day at a time, without any unnecessary drama.

The building itself was old but reasonably well-kept for what it was. The hallways were narrow, the walls thin and poorly insulated. Sound carried easily from one end of the floor to the other. At all hours, footsteps, arguments, and even quiet conversations from apartments several doors down carried through the walls. Privacy was never a guarantee.

The plumbing was the worst part. At night, the pipes knocked and rattled with steam, clanging loudly, as if someone were banging on them with a hammer every few minutes. I figured that was normal for a place that had been standing since 1948. I had rented apartment 3B.

Directly across from me was 3A.

It was empty when I moved in, which was unusual to me. Sunnyside rarely had vacancies. Even after an eviction, a new tenant usually moved in within days.

Brian, the landlord, noticed me staring as we passed it.

“Been empty a while,” he said. “Tenant apparently skipped out and left without a word. Pretty strange if you ask me… but people have their reasons for things, I guess.”

He unlocked my door and handed me the key.

“Any questions?”

“No,” I replied. “I think I’m good. Thanks.”

That wasn’t true.

I had questions. I just didn’t ask them. At the time, I didn’t think it mattered, and I really didn’t want to inconvenience the guy.

Looking back, I wish I had.

The first strange thing happened about two weeks after I moved in. I woke up at 2:17 a.m. to my phone buzzing on the nightstand. Still half-asleep, I leaned over and checked the screen.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I almost ignored it. But something about being jolted awake so suddenly made me answer without thinking.

“Hello?” I said, voice thick with sleep.

Static poured from the speaker. Beneath it, I heard the slightest sound of someone breathing. It was slow and steady, as if someone was holding the phone right next to their mouth.

The longer I listened, the more uncomfortable I got, causing every hair on my arm to raise in anticipation.

“Hello?” I said again, sitting up.

The breathing stopped. Then, through the static, I heard a faint creaking sound. A steady stream of cracks and pops followed, much louder than the breathing had been. It sounded like an old wooden door being pushed open.

Even through the fog of sleep, I remember thinking that there was no way it was coming from my phone. It took me a moment to realize why.

It wasn’t coming from the other end of the line.

It was coming from my kitchen door, down the hallway just outside my bedroom.

The hinges holding it were old and worn, producing an unmistakable sound when you opened it.

I hung up and pushed my back against the headboard as hard as I could. I stared into the dark hallway, unmoving, my heart pounding so hard it made my ears ring.

Eventually, I convinced myself it was just a coincidence. Probably just a neighbor’s door down the hall, aligned with a poorly timed prank call. My brain was still foggy, desperately scrambling to fill in the gaps with anything that sounded reasonable.

The next morning, I checked my call log.

There was nothing there.

I scrolled back and forth, refreshing over and over, each time seeing the same result. There was no call. No unknown number. No anything.

It was as if it had never happened.

It all felt like a blur, causing me to wonder if I had just dreamt everything or had some strange hallucination from lack of sleep.

I didn’t believe I had, but I had to rationalize it. I needed an explanation.

The rest of the day ticked by like normal, except for the fact that I was trying to push aside the memory of the morning’s events. Eventually, I was able to push it to the back of my mind and move on.

By the time I got home, exhaustion had taken over, having almost erased it from my mind completely.

Almost.

That night, I locked both the kitchen door and my bedroom door, not because of fear, but more so for my sanity. If it happened again, I wanted proof that I hadn’t just imagined it.

I plugged my phone in and climbed into bed, drifting off to sleep fairly quickly. I let myself believe it was over. Sadly, that wouldn’t last long because at 2:17 a.m., my phone rang. I froze.

The screen lit up the nightstand, washing the room in a pale blue light, displaying what I had dreaded seeing.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

Fear flooded my body as I slowly reached for the phone, hands trembling so badly I nearly dropped it. The moment I answered, I was met with static, followed by that same shallow, ragged breathing.

Then, the kitchen door creaked open.

There was no mistaking it this time. This was no longer just a coincidence. Someone was deliberately calling me at the same time every night. It had now become a pattern.

Even worse, someone had gotten into my apartment without me knowing.

I sat in my bed, staring at the faint silhouette of my bedroom door, too scared to move. Half of me wanted to call out and confront whoever or whatever was there. The other half was ready to run as fast and as far away as I could.

Eventually, everything went quiet.

I didn’t end up falling asleep until the sun started peaking over the horizon, too afraid, knowing someone had been in my apartment.

After that, the calls came every night.

Always at 2:17 a.m. and always from the same unknown number. The routine never changed. I’d go to sleep. I’d get woken up. I’d listen to the static, the breathing, and the creaky door. Then I’d lie awake until morning, too afraid to close my eyes again.

Over time, the sounds began to change. At first, it was just the kitchen door. Then came soft tapping, like fingernails on stone or wood. I even heard what sounded like fabric brushing against fabric, like someone brushing past the living room curtains.

The worst part was how familiar the sounds were.

Every noise matched something in my apartment. I knew exactly where the sound was coming from the moment I heard it. It was always just out of sight. From my bed, I could see about six feet down the hallway. The sounds always came from just beyond that, either inside the kitchen or the living room.

After the sixth night, I stopped answering the calls.

Despite my efforts, they didn’t stop.

My phone rang anyway, eventually going to voicemail. The little tape icon at the top of the screen indicated that whoever it was had actually recorded something, and yet, when I checked the next morning, there was nothing. There was no audio or timestamp. Just blank entries that vanished after a few hours.

I even called the phone company. They told me they couldn’t see any incoming or outgoing calls during the time I specified. Nothing at all.

That was when I stopped sleeping.

I shoved a chair under my bedroom door handle and kept the lights on all night, hoping that would be enough to keep whatever was happening to me at bay.

I kept telling myself there had to be a logical explanation for everything. If I could just figure it out, it would stop.

One morning, I opened the door into the hallway only to realize my nightmare was only just starting, evolving into something worse.

A trail of muddy footprints stretched across the floor.

They started near the front door, looped methodically around the kitchen, and ended in the hallway, right outside my bedroom.

I called Brian immediately. To my surprise, he didn’t sound upset or even concerned.

“Probably kids,” he said. “This neighborhood’s got its fair share of troublemakers.”

I just stood there, staring at the floor. There were literally bare, human footprints in my kitchen. Someone had broken into my apartment, walked through it, and then stood outside my door all night while I slept, and the best explanation he could offer was kids?

“What the fuck?” I yelled, letting the anger show in my voice. “Are you serious? Thank God, I locked my door, but there was literally an intruder in my apartment last night, dude. That’s a major problem.”

He went quiet. Long enough for the weight of my words to sink in. After a few seconds, he spoke again, his voice lower this time.

“Listen,” he said. “I didn’t think it would happen this soon, but… are you getting phone calls late at night?”

My stomach dropped. The anger vanished, replaced by something ice-cold slipping its way up my spine.

“You know about this?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve been pranking me this whole time. I swear to God, Brian, I might actually lose my shit if you’ve been behind this.”

Part of me thought it truly had been Brian behind it all. Another part of me, the sleep-deprived part, wasn’t sure what was even real anymore. I stayed silent, waiting for him to explain himself.

He exhaled sharply. I could feel the tension deepen between us as the cavalier and carefree tone in his voice quickly turned circumspect.

“Just… don’t answer them,” he said. “And stay out of 3A. There’s nothing in there. Hasn’t been for a while.”

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean? What does 3A have to do with any of this?”

I heard the line click before I could get an answer. He hung up before I could press further.

I got the sense that talking about it disturbed or hurt him more than he was willing to admit.

Scared or not, I needed answers. If Brian wouldn’t give them to me, I’d find someone who would.

That afternoon, I made my way down the hall and stopped outside my neighbor Sandra’s door. I hesitated a moment before knocking. She had lived in the building longer than anyone, especially me. If there was anyone who knew the secrets of that place, I knew it would be her.

The door latch snapped instantly after my first knock, the door jerking open with a force that made me flinch. Sandra filled the doorway, as though she had been standing there the whole time, waiting for me.

She was short, with wiry grey hair that stuck out in untamed clumps and skin that was sagging and wrinkled as if barely holding back the ravages of time. Her marble-grey eyes hung on me a second too long, looking me up and down as if she were testing my worth.

Behind her, the apartment stretched into a dim, cluttered mess, smelling of mildew and sweet rot. Books lay in piles across the floor, their pages warped and swollen with dampness. Something about the place made it hard to focus, like my eyes refused to settle on any one detail for too long.

When I mentioned the phone calls, her body stiffened. The color drained from her face, leaving her skin stretched ghostly pale across her cheekbones. She fixed her eyes on me, pursing her lips together as if she were pondering the right answer to give me.

“You’re in 3B,” she said.

It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. I hesitated, then nodded, offering a small, awkward smile that she didn’t return. She only stared.

The air between us thickened, doubt slowly creeping its way into my mind. I began telling myself that this was a mistake, that I had misjudged my approach.

Her eyes widened. She leaned closer, lowering her voice to a whisper until I could barely hear it across the threshold.

“Don’t answer,” she said. “Ignore it. All of it. The curiosity isn’t worth it.”

She pulled away abruptly, glancing down both ends of the hallway as if afraid someone might catch her speaking to me. When she was satisfied nobody had seen her, she spoke again, her voice growing firmer.

“The last person who lived in 3A had a problem,” she continued. “He started hearing things. Started seeing things, too. Things that weren’t always there.”

She paused, long enough to hint that there was more she wasn’t saying.

“Not long after that, an eviction notice showed up on his door. Then he just disappeared. I never saw him again after that.”

“Who was he?” I asked, almost reflexively.

Her gaze slid past me toward the stairwell. The longer we spoke, the more on edge she seemed, like talking about it made her a target.

“He said he was from Chicago,” she muttered. “Ended up coming to me for advice. About the calls. Kept saying people were walking around his apartment at night.”

She shook her head slightly, trying to hide the growing tension in her face.

“I told him to call the police. I mean, what else was I supposed to tell him?”

She looked up at me, as if seeking approval or agreement. Her expression wavered as the muscles in her face strained with indecision, unable to settle on a single emotion. At any moment, I felt she might break down and cry. Or scream. I wasn’t sure which, and neither was she, it seemed. She stood, suspended between what she wanted to feel and what she wanted me to see.

“He was a real pain in the ass, if you ask me,” she added. “Always going on and on about it. Strange guy for sure, but I’m nobody to judge.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

She exhaled, her wild gaze softening a bit.

“Don’t know. I just stopped seeing him after a while. One day, he was there. The next, he wasn’t.”

Then she stepped back, retreating into the dim light of her apartment. The conversation was over. At least it was for her. She was done with me and my questions, but I knew she was still holding something back. Whatever it was, she wasn’t ready, or willing, to share it with me.

“Did you know him well?” I tried one last time. “Were you close?”

Her jaw tightened, twisting her face into a frown. She gripped the edge of the door and shifted her weight to the side, halfway obscuring herself in the dark.

“No,” she said flatly. “And it’s time for you to leave.”

I didn’t argue. I thanked her and returned to my apartment, mulling over everything in my head. Everything she said lined up perfectly with what was happening to me.

There were only two possibilities at that point. Either I was the target of a very elaborate prank, or this was real, and I was dealing with something far beyond my understanding.

I had my doubts, but by the time I closed the door behind me in apartment 3B, I knew which one I believed.

I didn’t go to work that night. Instead, I sat on the couch with every light on, gripping my phone until my hand ached, as if squeezing it hard enough would somehow protect me. At 2:17 a.m., it buzzed. I didn’t answer, letting it go to voicemail and bracing myself for the same, unsettling sounds to follow.

They never came. Nothing happened.

For the first time in over a week, the entire apartment was quiet.

“Is it over?” I whispered.

I stood up and slowly walked toward the kitchen, relief washing over me as the tight grip of paranoia finally began to loosen. I stood in the kitchen for a moment, debating whether I could trust the quiet just yet. The apartment answered with the usual creaks and groans I’d grown accustomed to before the calls. When nothing else followed, I let my body relax, slowly, and turned back toward the couch.

The moment I sat down and let my guard slip, the phone buzzed, startling me. I flinched hard, losing my grip on the phone, sending it flying across the room. It hit the living room floor and skidded into the kitchen, clattering loudly as the screen flickered to life.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I let it ring. And ring. Over and over.

Whoever… or whatever it was, kept calling, leaving voicemails that were never truly there, treading a thick layer of dread across my mind each time.

Eventually, I just tuned it out and went to bed.

After talking to Sandra, I was convinced this was tied to the phone. It made sense. If it hadn’t been for that first phone call waking me on that first night, I probably would have just ignored it all. I picked it up and tossed it onto the couch. It buzzed softly against the cushion as I walked away. I left it there and headed to bed, hoping that by leaving it in a different room, I’d somehow be able to escape it.

I had to try something.

I went into my bedroom and climbed into bed.

Without the constant buzzing of my phone on my nightstand, sleep came much easier than I’d expected, my body giving in almost immediately. The room softened around me, sound draining away, as I sank lower and lower.

I’d almost made it to sleep when the shrill clang of an old phone shattered the silence. Its metallic peal sliced through the room, slamming into my eardrums, yanking me straight up in bed. Adrenaline surged through my veins like a sudden jolt of electricity, sharp and needling against my nerves as I whipped my head around toward the source.

An old landline was mounted on the wall beside the bed. Its long, coiled cord hung down beneath it, pooling loosely onto the floor. I’d never used it, and until that moment, I’d forgotten it was even there. Brian had insisted on keeping it there, claiming that it ‘added character’ to the place.

What a load of horseshit.

The handset rattled violently against the receiver, shaking as if possessed, desperately begging me to answer it. I didn’t touch it.

I couldn’t.

The relentless ringing bored a hole in my skull, gnawing at what little sanity I had left. I covered my ears. Deep down, I knew exactly what was waiting for me on the other end.

I didn’t need proof or confirmation.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the ringing stopped. The metallic echoes of the bells finally began to fade, dissolving into an anxious silence. I lowered my hands slowly, every muscle still tight, my mind weighing heavily with doubt and fear.

The quiet didn’t last long. I knew it wouldn’t.

It was replaced by slow, deliberate knocking coming from somewhere deep within the apartment. At first, it was faint, barely audible. I would’ve dismissed it had it not moved. It began to wander around the apartment, each knock sounding closer than the last, growing heavier and more persistent the more I listened to it. The pattern began to stretch and morph, strengthening with an unnatural rhythm. It built steadily, swelling into an intense pounding, landing hard enough to send a shiver through the walls, rattling the picture frames off their hooks.

Within seconds, it had reached my bedroom door.

Fear swallowed me whole. Each steady thud became an assault on my senses, sending violent tremors through my body.

I don’t remember grabbing my keys. I barely remember climbing out onto the fire escape.

The next thing I knew, I was scrambling barefoot down three flights of jagged metal stairs, skin tearing with every step. I hit the pavement and ran as hard as I could into the night.

My lungs burned, and my legs screamed, but I kept pushing. I ran until my body threatened to give up on me entirely.

Three blocks later, I slammed into a chain-link fence, finally giving myself a chance to rest.

My feet were shredded. Sweat poured down my face and chest, soaking my clothes.

“What the fuck was that?” I gasped, fighting for air.

After a few nauseating moments, I forced myself to turn back toward the complex. With every painful, blood-slick step, my mind screamed at me not to.

‘Just keep going and leave that place,’ it begged.

But everything I owned was still there. I couldn’t just leave.

When the building came into view, I made my decision. I was exhausted, scared, and shaking from pain, so I stayed in my car for the night. Before leaning the seat back, I slipped on a pair of old, white flip-flops I found under the seat. They were thin and worn, barely holding together, but enough to keep something between the ground and the raw, open wounds on my feet. Better than nothing at least.

The car felt safer than the apartment, but even so, sleep never came. I kept watch over the third-story windows, half-expecting to see something standing there, watching back.

CW: contains gore

My name is Robert. I moved into Sunnyside Apartments on Delaney Street because it was cheap, quiet, and close to my work. Simple as that.

Sunnyside was the kind of place people only lived in temporarily until they could either get back on their feet or find a better situation. Most of my neighbors were students, night-shift workers, or people who just wanted a low-cost place to escape to for a while. No one ever stayed long enough to learn anyone else’s name.

That suited me just fine.

I wasn’t there to make friends or form connections. I was just trying to live my life one day at a time, without any unnecessary drama.

The building itself was old but reasonably well-kept for what it was. The hallways were narrow, the walls thin and poorly insulated. Sound carried easily from one end of the floor to the other. At all hours, footsteps, arguments, and even quiet conversations from apartments several doors down carried through the walls. Privacy was never a guarantee.

The plumbing was the worst part. At night, the pipes knocked and rattled with steam, clanging loudly, as if someone were banging on them with a hammer every few minutes. I figured that was normal for a place that had been standing since 1948. I had rented apartment 3B.

Directly across from me was 3A.

It was empty when I moved in, which was unusual to me. Sunnyside rarely had vacancies. Even after an eviction, a new tenant usually moved in within days.

Brian, the landlord, noticed me staring as we passed it.

“Been empty a while,” he said. “Tenant apparently skipped out and left without a word. Pretty strange if you ask me… but people have their reasons for things, I guess.”

He unlocked my door and handed me the key.

“Any questions?”

“No,” I replied. “I think I’m good. Thanks.”

That wasn’t true.

I had questions. I just didn’t ask them. At the time, I didn’t think it mattered, and I really didn’t want to inconvenience the guy.

Looking back, I wish I had.

The first strange thing happened about two weeks after I moved in. I woke up at 2:17 a.m. to my phone buzzing on the nightstand. Still half-asleep, I leaned over and checked the screen.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I almost ignored it. But something about being jolted awake so suddenly made me answer without thinking.

“Hello?” I said, voice thick with sleep.

Static poured from the speaker. Beneath it, I heard the slightest sound of someone breathing. It was slow and steady, as if someone was holding the phone right next to their mouth.

The longer I listened, the more uncomfortable I got, causing every hair on my arm to raise in anticipation.

“Hello?” I said again, sitting up.

The breathing stopped. Then, through the static, I heard a faint creaking sound. A steady stream of cracks and pops followed, much louder than the breathing had been. It sounded like an old wooden door being pushed open.

Even through the fog of sleep, I remember thinking that there was no way it was coming from my phone. It took me a moment to realize why.

It wasn’t coming from the other end of the line.

It was coming from my kitchen door, down the hallway just outside my bedroom.

The hinges holding it were old and worn, producing an unmistakable sound when you opened it.

I hung up and pushed my back against the headboard as hard as I could. I stared into the dark hallway, unmoving, my heart pounding so hard it made my ears ring.

Eventually, I convinced myself it was just a coincidence. Probably just a neighbor’s door down the hall, aligned with a poorly timed prank call. My brain was still foggy, desperately scrambling to fill in the gaps with anything that sounded reasonable.

The next morning, I checked my call log.

There was nothing there.

I scrolled back and forth, refreshing over and over, each time seeing the same result. There was no call. No unknown number. No anything.

It was as if it had never happened.

It all felt like a blur, causing me to wonder if I had just dreamt everything or had some strange hallucination from lack of sleep.

I didn’t believe I had, but I had to rationalize it. I needed an explanation.

The rest of the day ticked by like normal, except for the fact that I was trying to push aside the memory of the morning’s events. Eventually, I was able to push it to the back of my mind and move on.

By the time I got home, exhaustion had taken over, having almost erased it from my mind completely.

Almost.

That night, I locked both the kitchen door and my bedroom door, not because of fear, but more so for my sanity. If it happened again, I wanted proof that I hadn’t just imagined it.

I plugged my phone in and climbed into bed, drifting off to sleep fairly quickly. I let myself believe it was over. Sadly, that wouldn’t last long because at 2:17 a.m., my phone rang. I froze.

The screen lit up the nightstand, washing the room in a pale blue light, displaying what I had dreaded seeing.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

Fear flooded my body as I slowly reached for the phone, hands trembling so badly I nearly dropped it. The moment I answered, I was met with static, followed by that same shallow, ragged breathing.

Then, the kitchen door creaked open.

There was no mistaking it this time. This was no longer just a coincidence. Someone was deliberately calling me at the same time every night. It had now become a pattern.

Even worse, someone had gotten into my apartment without me knowing.

I sat in my bed, staring at the faint silhouette of my bedroom door, too scared to move. Half of me wanted to call out and confront whoever or whatever was there. The other half was ready to run as fast and as far away as I could.

Eventually, everything went quiet.

I didn’t end up falling asleep until the sun started peaking over the horizon, too afraid, knowing someone had been in my apartment.

After that, the calls came every night.

Always at 2:17 a.m. and always from the same unknown number. The routine never changed. I’d go to sleep. I’d get woken up. I’d listen to the static, the breathing, and the creaky door. Then I’d lie awake until morning, too afraid to close my eyes again.

Over time, the sounds began to change. At first, it was just the kitchen door. Then came soft tapping, like fingernails on stone or wood. I even heard what sounded like fabric brushing against fabric, like someone brushing past the living room curtains.

The worst part was how familiar the sounds were.

Every noise matched something in my apartment. I knew exactly where the sound was coming from the moment I heard it. It was always just out of sight. From my bed, I could see about six feet down the hallway. The sounds always came from just beyond that, either inside the kitchen or the living room.

After the sixth night, I stopped answering the calls.

Despite my efforts, they didn’t stop.

My phone rang anyway, eventually going to voicemail. The little tape icon at the top of the screen indicated that whoever it was had actually recorded something, and yet, when I checked the next morning, there was nothing. There was no audio or timestamp. Just blank entries that vanished after a few hours.

I even called the phone company. They told me they couldn’t see any incoming or outgoing calls during the time I specified. Nothing at all.

That was when I stopped sleeping.

I shoved a chair under my bedroom door handle and kept the lights on all night, hoping that would be enough to keep whatever was happening to me at bay.

I kept telling myself there had to be a logical explanation for everything. If I could just figure it out, it would stop.

One morning, I opened the door into the hallway only to realize my nightmare was only just starting, evolving into something worse.

A trail of muddy footprints stretched across the floor.

They started near the front door, looped methodically around the kitchen, and ended in the hallway, right outside my bedroom.

I called Brian immediately. To my surprise, he didn’t sound upset or even concerned.

“Probably kids,” he said. “This neighborhood’s got its fair share of troublemakers.”

I just stood there, staring at the floor. There were literally bare, human footprints in my kitchen. Someone had broken into my apartment, walked through it, and then stood outside my door all night while I slept, and the best explanation he could offer was kids?

“What the fuck?” I yelled, letting the anger show in my voice. “Are you serious? Thank God, I locked my door, but there was literally an intruder in my apartment last night, dude. That’s a major problem.”

He went quiet. Long enough for the weight of my words to sink in. After a few seconds, he spoke again, his voice lower this time.

“Listen,” he said. “I didn’t think it would happen this soon, but… are you getting phone calls late at night?”

My stomach dropped. The anger vanished, replaced by something ice-cold slipping its way up my spine.

“You know about this?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve been pranking me this whole time. I swear to God, Brian, I might actually lose my shit if you’ve been behind this.”

Part of me thought it truly had been Brian behind it all. Another part of me, the sleep-deprived part, wasn’t sure what was even real anymore. I stayed silent, waiting for him to explain himself.

He exhaled sharply. I could feel the tension deepen between us as the cavalier and carefree tone in his voice quickly turned circumspect.

“Just… don’t answer them,” he said. “And stay out of 3A. There’s nothing in there. Hasn’t been for a while.”

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean? What does 3A have to do with any of this?”

I heard the line click before I could get an answer. He hung up before I could press further.

I got the sense that talking about it disturbed or hurt him more than he was willing to admit.

Scared or not, I needed answers. If Brian wouldn’t give them to me, I’d find someone who would.

That afternoon, I made my way down the hall and stopped outside my neighbor Sandra’s door. I hesitated a moment before knocking. She had lived in the building longer than anyone, especially me. If there was anyone who knew the secrets of that place, I knew it would be her.

The door latch snapped instantly after my first knock, the door jerking open with a force that made me flinch. Sandra filled the doorway, as though she had been standing there the whole time, waiting for me.

She was short, with wiry grey hair that stuck out in untamed clumps and skin that was sagging and wrinkled as if barely holding back the ravages of time. Her marble-grey eyes hung on me a second too long, looking me up and down as if she were testing my worth.

Behind her, the apartment stretched into a dim, cluttered mess, smelling of mildew and sweet rot. Books lay in piles across the floor, their pages warped and swollen with dampness. Something about the place made it hard to focus, like my eyes refused to settle on any one detail for too long.

When I mentioned the phone calls, her body stiffened. The color drained from her face, leaving her skin stretched ghostly pale across her cheekbones. She fixed her eyes on me, pursing her lips together as if she were pondering the right answer to give me.

“You’re in 3B,” she said.

It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. I hesitated, then nodded, offering a small, awkward smile that she didn’t return. She only stared.

The air between us thickened, doubt slowly creeping its way into my mind. I began telling myself that this was a mistake, that I had misjudged my approach.

Her eyes widened. She leaned closer, lowering her voice to a whisper until I could barely hear it across the threshold.

“Don’t answer,” she said. “Ignore it. All of it. The curiosity isn’t worth it.”

She pulled away abruptly, glancing down both ends of the hallway as if afraid someone might catch her speaking to me. When she was satisfied nobody had seen her, she spoke again, her voice growing firmer.

“The last person who lived in 3A had a problem,” she continued. “He started hearing things. Started seeing things, too. Things that weren’t always there.”

She paused, long enough to hint that there was more she wasn’t saying.

“Not long after that, an eviction notice showed up on his door. Then he just disappeared. I never saw him again after that.”

“Who was he?” I asked, almost reflexively.

Her gaze slid past me toward the stairwell. The longer we spoke, the more on edge she seemed, like talking about it made her a target.

“He said he was from Chicago,” she muttered. “Ended up coming to me for advice. About the calls. Kept saying people were walking around his apartment at night.”

She shook her head slightly, trying to hide the growing tension in her face.

“I told him to call the police. I mean, what else was I supposed to tell him?”

She looked up at me, as if seeking approval or agreement. Her expression wavered as the muscles in her face strained with indecision, unable to settle on a single emotion. At any moment, I felt she might break down and cry. Or scream. I wasn’t sure which, and neither was she, it seemed. She stood, suspended between what she wanted to feel and what she wanted me to see.

“He was a real pain in the ass, if you ask me,” she added. “Always going on and on about it. Strange guy for sure, but I’m nobody to judge.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

She exhaled, her wild gaze softening a bit.

“Don’t know. I just stopped seeing him after a while. One day, he was there. The next, he wasn’t.”

Then she stepped back, retreating into the dim light of her apartment. The conversation was over. At least it was for her. She was done with me and my questions, but I knew she was still holding something back. Whatever it was, she wasn’t ready, or willing, to share it with me.

“Did you know him well?” I tried one last time. “Were you close?”

Her jaw tightened, twisting her face into a frown. She gripped the edge of the door and shifted her weight to the side, halfway obscuring herself in the dark.

“No,” she said flatly. “And it’s time for you to leave.”

I didn’t argue. I thanked her and returned to my apartment, mulling over everything in my head. Everything she said lined up perfectly with what was happening to me.

There were only two possibilities at that point. Either I was the target of a very elaborate prank, or this was real, and I was dealing with something far beyond my understanding.

I had my doubts, but by the time I closed the door behind me in apartment 3B, I knew which one I believed.

I didn’t go to work that night. Instead, I sat on the couch with every light on, gripping my phone until my hand ached, as if squeezing it hard enough would somehow protect me. At 2:17 a.m., it buzzed. I didn’t answer, letting it go to voicemail and bracing myself for the same, unsettling sounds to follow.

They never came. Nothing happened.

For the first time in over a week, the entire apartment was quiet.

“Is it over?” I whispered.

I stood up and slowly walked toward the kitchen, relief washing over me as the tight grip of paranoia finally began to loosen. I stood in the kitchen for a moment, debating whether I could trust the quiet just yet. The apartment answered with the usual creaks and groans I’d grown accustomed to before the calls. When nothing else followed, I let my body relax, slowly, and turned back toward the couch.

The moment I sat down and let my guard slip, the phone buzzed, startling me. I flinched hard, losing my grip on the phone, sending it flying across the room. It hit the living room floor and skidded into the kitchen, clattering loudly as the screen flickered to life.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I let it ring. And ring. Over and over.

Whoever… or whatever it was, kept calling, leaving voicemails that were never truly there, treading a thick layer of dread across my mind each time.

Eventually, I just tuned it out and went to bed.

After talking to Sandra, I was convinced this was tied to the phone. It made sense. If it hadn’t been for that first phone call waking me on that first night, I probably would have just ignored it all. I picked it up and tossed it onto the couch. It buzzed softly against the cushion as I walked away. I left it there and headed to bed, hoping that by leaving it in a different room, I’d somehow be able to escape it.

I had to try something.

I went into my bedroom and climbed into bed.

Without the constant buzzing of my phone on my nightstand, sleep came much easier than I’d expected, my body giving in almost immediately. The room softened around me, sound draining away, as I sank lower and lower.

I’d almost made it to sleep when the shrill clang of an old phone shattered the silence. Its metallic peal sliced through the room, slamming into my eardrums, yanking me straight up in bed. Adrenaline surged through my veins like a sudden jolt of electricity, sharp and needling against my nerves as I whipped my head around toward the source.

An old landline was mounted on the wall beside the bed. Its long, coiled cord hung down beneath it, pooling loosely onto the floor. I’d never used it, and until that moment, I’d forgotten it was even there. Brian had insisted on keeping it there, claiming that it ‘added character’ to the place.

What a load of horseshit.

The handset rattled violently against the receiver, shaking as if possessed, desperately begging me to answer it. I didn’t touch it.

I couldn’t.

The relentless ringing bored a hole in my skull, gnawing at what little sanity I had left. I covered my ears. Deep down, I knew exactly what was waiting for me on the other end.

I didn’t need proof or confirmation.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the ringing stopped. The metallic echoes of the bells finally began to fade, dissolving into an anxious silence. I lowered my hands slowly, every muscle still tight, my mind weighing heavily with doubt and fear.

The quiet didn’t last long. I knew it wouldn’t.

It was replaced by slow, deliberate knocking coming from somewhere deep within the apartment. At first, it was faint, barely audible. I would’ve dismissed it had it not moved. It began to wander around the apartment, each knock sounding closer than the last, growing heavier and more persistent the more I listened to it. The pattern began to stretch and morph, strengthening with an unnatural rhythm. It built steadily, swelling into an intense pounding, landing hard enough to send a shiver through the walls, rattling the picture frames off their hooks.

Within seconds, it had reached my bedroom door.

Fear swallowed me whole. Each steady thud became an assault on my senses, sending violent tremors through my body.

I don’t remember grabbing my keys. I barely remember climbing out onto the fire escape.

The next thing I knew, I was scrambling barefoot down three flights of jagged metal stairs, skin tearing with every step. I hit the pavement and ran as hard as I could into the night.

My lungs burned, and my legs screamed, but I kept pushing. I ran until my body threatened to give up on me entirely.

Three blocks later, I slammed into a chain-link fence, finally giving myself a chance to rest.

My feet were shredded. Sweat poured down my face and chest, soaking my clothes.

“What the fuck was that?” I gasped, fighting for air.

After a few nauseating moments, I forced myself to turn back toward the complex. With every painful, blood-slick step, my mind screamed at me not to.

‘Just keep going and leave that place,’ it begged.

But everything I owned was still there. I couldn’t just leave.

When the building came into view, I made my decision. I was exhausted, scared, and shaking from pain, so I stayed in my car for the night. Before leaning the seat back, I slipped on a pair of old, white flip-flops I found under the seat. They were thin and worn, barely holding together, but enough to keep something between the ground and the raw, open wounds on my feet. Better than nothing at least.

The car felt safer than the apartment, but even so, sleep never came. I kept watch over the third-story windows, half-expecting to see something standing there, watching back.

CW: contains gore

My name is Robert. I moved into Sunnyside Apartments on Delaney Street because it was cheap, quiet, and close to my work. Simple as that.

Sunnyside was the kind of place people only lived in temporarily until they could either get back on their feet or find a better situation. Most of my neighbors were students, night-shift workers, or people who just wanted a low-cost place to escape to for a while. No one ever stayed long enough to learn anyone else’s name.

That suited me just fine.

I wasn’t there to make friends or form connections. I was just trying to live my life one day at a time, without any unnecessary drama.

The building itself was old but reasonably well-kept for what it was. The hallways were narrow, the walls thin and poorly insulated. Sound carried easily from one end of the floor to the other. At all hours, footsteps, arguments, and even quiet conversations from apartments several doors down carried through the walls. Privacy was never a guarantee.

The plumbing was the worst part. At night, the pipes knocked and rattled with steam, clanging loudly, as if someone were banging on them with a hammer every few minutes. I figured that was normal for a place that had been standing since 1948. I had rented apartment 3B.

Directly across from me was 3A.

It was empty when I moved in, which was unusual to me. Sunnyside rarely had vacancies. Even after an eviction, a new tenant usually moved in within days.

Brian, the landlord, noticed me staring as we passed it.

“Been empty a while,” he said. “Tenant apparently skipped out and left without a word. Pretty strange if you ask me… but people have their reasons for things, I guess.”

He unlocked my door and handed me the key.

“Any questions?”

“No,” I replied. “I think I’m good. Thanks.”

That wasn’t true.

I had questions. I just didn’t ask them. At the time, I didn’t think it mattered, and I really didn’t want to inconvenience the guy.

Looking back, I wish I had.

The first strange thing happened about two weeks after I moved in. I woke up at 2:17 a.m. to my phone buzzing on the nightstand. Still half-asleep, I leaned over and checked the screen.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I almost ignored it. But something about being jolted awake so suddenly made me answer without thinking.

“Hello?” I said, voice thick with sleep.

Static poured from the speaker. Beneath it, I heard the slightest sound of someone breathing. It was slow and steady, as if someone was holding the phone right next to their mouth.

The longer I listened, the more uncomfortable I got, causing every hair on my arm to raise in anticipation.

“Hello?” I said again, sitting up.

The breathing stopped. Then, through the static, I heard a faint creaking sound. A steady stream of cracks and pops followed, much louder than the breathing had been. It sounded like an old wooden door being pushed open.

Even through the fog of sleep, I remember thinking that there was no way it was coming from my phone. It took me a moment to realize why.

It wasn’t coming from the other end of the line.

It was coming from my kitchen door, down the hallway just outside my bedroom.

The hinges holding it were old and worn, producing an unmistakable sound when you opened it.

I hung up and pushed my back against the headboard as hard as I could. I stared into the dark hallway, unmoving, my heart pounding so hard it made my ears ring.

Eventually, I convinced myself it was just a coincidence. Probably just a neighbor’s door down the hall, aligned with a poorly timed prank call. My brain was still foggy, desperately scrambling to fill in the gaps with anything that sounded reasonable.

The next morning, I checked my call log.

There was nothing there.

I scrolled back and forth, refreshing over and over, each time seeing the same result. There was no call. No unknown number. No anything.

It was as if it had never happened.

It all felt like a blur, causing me to wonder if I had just dreamt everything or had some strange hallucination from lack of sleep.

I didn’t believe I had, but I had to rationalize it. I needed an explanation.

The rest of the day ticked by like normal, except for the fact that I was trying to push aside the memory of the morning’s events. Eventually, I was able to push it to the back of my mind and move on.

By the time I got home, exhaustion had taken over, having almost erased it from my mind completely.

Almost.

That night, I locked both the kitchen door and my bedroom door, not because of fear, but more so for my sanity. If it happened again, I wanted proof that I hadn’t just imagined it.

I plugged my phone in and climbed into bed, drifting off to sleep fairly quickly. I let myself believe it was over. Sadly, that wouldn’t last long because at 2:17 a.m., my phone rang. I froze.

The screen lit up the nightstand, washing the room in a pale blue light, displaying what I had dreaded seeing.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

Fear flooded my body as I slowly reached for the phone, hands trembling so badly I nearly dropped it. The moment I answered, I was met with static, followed by that same shallow, ragged breathing.

Then, the kitchen door creaked open.

There was no mistaking it this time. This was no longer just a coincidence. Someone was deliberately calling me at the same time every night. It had now become a pattern.

Even worse, someone had gotten into my apartment without me knowing.

I sat in my bed, staring at the faint silhouette of my bedroom door, too scared to move. Half of me wanted to call out and confront whoever or whatever was there. The other half was ready to run as fast and as far away as I could.

Eventually, everything went quiet.

I didn’t end up falling asleep until the sun started peaking over the horizon, too afraid, knowing someone had been in my apartment.

After that, the calls came every night.

Always at 2:17 a.m. and always from the same unknown number. The routine never changed. I’d go to sleep. I’d get woken up. I’d listen to the static, the breathing, and the creaky door. Then I’d lie awake until morning, too afraid to close my eyes again.

Over time, the sounds began to change. At first, it was just the kitchen door. Then came soft tapping, like fingernails on stone or wood. I even heard what sounded like fabric brushing against fabric, like someone brushing past the living room curtains.

The worst part was how familiar the sounds were.

Every noise matched something in my apartment. I knew exactly where the sound was coming from the moment I heard it. It was always just out of sight. From my bed, I could see about six feet down the hallway. The sounds always came from just beyond that, either inside the kitchen or the living room.

After the sixth night, I stopped answering the calls.

Despite my efforts, they didn’t stop.

My phone rang anyway, eventually going to voicemail. The little tape icon at the top of the screen indicated that whoever it was had actually recorded something, and yet, when I checked the next morning, there was nothing. There was no audio or timestamp. Just blank entries that vanished after a few hours.

I even called the phone company. They told me they couldn’t see any incoming or outgoing calls during the time I specified. Nothing at all.

That was when I stopped sleeping.

I shoved a chair under my bedroom door handle and kept the lights on all night, hoping that would be enough to keep whatever was happening to me at bay.

I kept telling myself there had to be a logical explanation for everything. If I could just figure it out, it would stop.

One morning, I opened the door into the hallway only to realize my nightmare was only just starting, evolving into something worse.

A trail of muddy footprints stretched across the floor.

They started near the front door, looped methodically around the kitchen, and ended in the hallway, right outside my bedroom.

I called Brian immediately. To my surprise, he didn’t sound upset or even concerned.

“Probably kids,” he said. “This neighborhood’s got its fair share of troublemakers.”

I just stood there, staring at the floor. There were literally bare, human footprints in my kitchen. Someone had broken into my apartment, walked through it, and then stood outside my door all night while I slept, and the best explanation he could offer was kids?

“What the fuck?” I yelled, letting the anger show in my voice. “Are you serious? Thank God, I locked my door, but there was literally an intruder in my apartment last night, dude. That’s a major problem.”

He went quiet. Long enough for the weight of my words to sink in. After a few seconds, he spoke again, his voice lower this time.

“Listen,” he said. “I didn’t think it would happen this soon, but… are you getting phone calls late at night?”

My stomach dropped. The anger vanished, replaced by something ice-cold slipping its way up my spine.

“You know about this?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve been pranking me this whole time. I swear to God, Brian, I might actually lose my shit if you’ve been behind this.”

Part of me thought it truly had been Brian behind it all. Another part of me, the sleep-deprived part, wasn’t sure what was even real anymore. I stayed silent, waiting for him to explain himself.

He exhaled sharply. I could feel the tension deepen between us as the cavalier and carefree tone in his voice quickly turned circumspect.

“Just… don’t answer them,” he said. “And stay out of 3A. There’s nothing in there. Hasn’t been for a while.”

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean? What does 3A have to do with any of this?”

I heard the line click before I could get an answer. He hung up before I could press further.

I got the sense that talking about it disturbed or hurt him more than he was willing to admit.

Scared or not, I needed answers. If Brian wouldn’t give them to me, I’d find someone who would.

That afternoon, I made my way down the hall and stopped outside my neighbor Sandra’s door. I hesitated a moment before knocking. She had lived in the building longer than anyone, especially me. If there was anyone who knew the secrets of that place, I knew it would be her.

The door latch snapped instantly after my first knock, the door jerking open with a force that made me flinch. Sandra filled the doorway, as though she had been standing there the whole time, waiting for me.

She was short, with wiry grey hair that stuck out in untamed clumps and skin that was sagging and wrinkled as if barely holding back the ravages of time. Her marble-grey eyes hung on me a second too long, looking me up and down as if she were testing my worth.

Behind her, the apartment stretched into a dim, cluttered mess, smelling of mildew and sweet rot. Books lay in piles across the floor, their pages warped and swollen with dampness. Something about the place made it hard to focus, like my eyes refused to settle on any one detail for too long.

When I mentioned the phone calls, her body stiffened. The color drained from her face, leaving her skin stretched ghostly pale across her cheekbones. She fixed her eyes on me, pursing her lips together as if she were pondering the right answer to give me.

“You’re in 3B,” she said.

It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. I hesitated, then nodded, offering a small, awkward smile that she didn’t return. She only stared.

The air between us thickened, doubt slowly creeping its way into my mind. I began telling myself that this was a mistake, that I had misjudged my approach.

Her eyes widened. She leaned closer, lowering her voice to a whisper until I could barely hear it across the threshold.

“Don’t answer,” she said. “Ignore it. All of it. The curiosity isn’t worth it.”

She pulled away abruptly, glancing down both ends of the hallway as if afraid someone might catch her speaking to me. When she was satisfied nobody had seen her, she spoke again, her voice growing firmer.

“The last person who lived in 3A had a problem,” she continued. “He started hearing things. Started seeing things, too. Things that weren’t always there.”

She paused, long enough to hint that there was more she wasn’t saying.

“Not long after that, an eviction notice showed up on his door. Then he just disappeared. I never saw him again after that.”

“Who was he?” I asked, almost reflexively.

Her gaze slid past me toward the stairwell. The longer we spoke, the more on edge she seemed, like talking about it made her a target.

“He said he was from Chicago,” she muttered. “Ended up coming to me for advice. About the calls. Kept saying people were walking around his apartment at night.”

She shook her head slightly, trying to hide the growing tension in her face.

“I told him to call the police. I mean, what else was I supposed to tell him?”

She looked up at me, as if seeking approval or agreement. Her expression wavered as the muscles in her face strained with indecision, unable to settle on a single emotion. At any moment, I felt she might break down and cry. Or scream. I wasn’t sure which, and neither was she, it seemed. She stood, suspended between what she wanted to feel and what she wanted me to see.

“He was a real pain in the ass, if you ask me,” she added. “Always going on and on about it. Strange guy for sure, but I’m nobody to judge.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

She exhaled, her wild gaze softening a bit.

“Don’t know. I just stopped seeing him after a while. One day, he was there. The next, he wasn’t.”

Then she stepped back, retreating into the dim light of her apartment. The conversation was over. At least it was for her. She was done with me and my questions, but I knew she was still holding something back. Whatever it was, she wasn’t ready, or willing, to share it with me.

“Did you know him well?” I tried one last time. “Were you close?”

Her jaw tightened, twisting her face into a frown. She gripped the edge of the door and shifted her weight to the side, halfway obscuring herself in the dark.

“No,” she said flatly. “And it’s time for you to leave.”

I didn’t argue. I thanked her and returned to my apartment, mulling over everything in my head. Everything she said lined up perfectly with what was happening to me.

There were only two possibilities at that point. Either I was the target of a very elaborate prank, or this was real, and I was dealing with something far beyond my understanding.

I had my doubts, but by the time I closed the door behind me in apartment 3B, I knew which one I believed.

I didn’t go to work that night. Instead, I sat on the couch with every light on, gripping my phone until my hand ached, as if squeezing it hard enough would somehow protect me. At 2:17 a.m., it buzzed. I didn’t answer, letting it go to voicemail and bracing myself for the same, unsettling sounds to follow.

They never came. Nothing happened.

For the first time in over a week, the entire apartment was quiet.

“Is it over?” I whispered.

I stood up and slowly walked toward the kitchen, relief washing over me as the tight grip of paranoia finally began to loosen. I stood in the kitchen for a moment, debating whether I could trust the quiet just yet. The apartment answered with the usual creaks and groans I’d grown accustomed to before the calls. When nothing else followed, I let my body relax, slowly, and turned back toward the couch.

The moment I sat down and let my guard slip, the phone buzzed, startling me. I flinched hard, losing my grip on the phone, sending it flying across the room. It hit the living room floor and skidded into the kitchen, clattering loudly as the screen flickered to life.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I let it ring. And ring. Over and over.

Whoever… or whatever it was, kept calling, leaving voicemails that were never truly there, treading a thick layer of dread across my mind each time.

Eventually, I just tuned it out and went to bed.

After talking to Sandra, I was convinced this was tied to the phone. It made sense. If it hadn’t been for that first phone call waking me on that first night, I probably would have just ignored it all. I picked it up and tossed it onto the couch. It buzzed softly against the cushion as I walked away. I left it there and headed to bed, hoping that by leaving it in a different room, I’d somehow be able to escape it.

I had to try something.

I went into my bedroom and climbed into bed.

Without the constant buzzing of my phone on my nightstand, sleep came much easier than I’d expected, my body giving in almost immediately. The room softened around me, sound draining away, as I sank lower and lower.

I’d almost made it to sleep when the shrill clang of an old phone shattered the silence. Its metallic peal sliced through the room, slamming into my eardrums, yanking me straight up in bed. Adrenaline surged through my veins like a sudden jolt of electricity, sharp and needling against my nerves as I whipped my head around toward the source.

An old landline was mounted on the wall beside the bed. Its long, coiled cord hung down beneath it, pooling loosely onto the floor. I’d never used it, and until that moment, I’d forgotten it was even there. Brian had insisted on keeping it there, claiming that it ‘added character’ to the place.

What a load of horseshit.

The handset rattled violently against the receiver, shaking as if possessed, desperately begging me to answer it. I didn’t touch it.

I couldn’t.

The relentless ringing bored a hole in my skull, gnawing at what little sanity I had left. I covered my ears. Deep down, I knew exactly what was waiting for me on the other end.

I didn’t need proof or confirmation.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the ringing stopped. The metallic echoes of the bells finally began to fade, dissolving into an anxious silence. I lowered my hands slowly, every muscle still tight, my mind weighing heavily with doubt and fear.

The quiet didn’t last long. I knew it wouldn’t.

It was replaced by slow, deliberate knocking coming from somewhere deep within the apartment. At first, it was faint, barely audible. I would’ve dismissed it had it not moved. It began to wander around the apartment, each knock sounding closer than the last, growing heavier and more persistent the more I listened to it. The pattern began to stretch and morph, strengthening with an unnatural rhythm. It built steadily, swelling into an intense pounding, landing hard enough to send a shiver through the walls, rattling the picture frames off their hooks.

Within seconds, it had reached my bedroom door.

Fear swallowed me whole. Each steady thud became an assault on my senses, sending violent tremors through my body.

I don’t remember grabbing my keys. I barely remember climbing out onto the fire escape.

The next thing I knew, I was scrambling barefoot down three flights of jagged metal stairs, skin tearing with every step. I hit the pavement and ran as hard as I could into the night.

My lungs burned, and my legs screamed, but I kept pushing. I ran until my body threatened to give up on me entirely.

Three blocks later, I slammed into a chain-link fence, finally giving myself a chance to rest.

My feet were shredded. Sweat poured down my face and chest, soaking my clothes.

“What the fuck was that?” I gasped, fighting for air.

After a few nauseating moments, I forced myself to turn back toward the complex. With every painful, blood-slick step, my mind screamed at me not to.

‘Just keep going and leave that place,’ it begged.

But everything I owned was still there. I couldn’t just leave.

When the building came into view, I made my decision. I was exhausted, scared, and shaking from pain, so I stayed in my car for the night. Before leaning the seat back, I slipped on a pair of old, white flip-flops I found under the seat. They were thin and worn, barely holding together, but enough to keep something between the ground and the raw, open wounds on my feet. Better than nothing at least.

The car felt safer than the apartment, but even so, sleep never came. I kept watch over the third-story windows, half-expecting to see something standing there, watching back.

CW: contains gore

My name is Robert. I moved into Sunnyside Apartments on Delaney Street because it was cheap, quiet, and close to my work. Simple as that.

Sunnyside was the kind of place people only lived in temporarily until they could either get back on their feet or find a better situation. Most of my neighbors were students, night-shift workers, or people who just wanted a low-cost place to escape to for a while. No one ever stayed long enough to learn anyone else’s name.

That suited me just fine.

I wasn’t there to make friends or form connections. I was just trying to live my life one day at a time, without any unnecessary drama.

The building itself was old but reasonably well-kept for what it was. The hallways were narrow, the walls thin and poorly insulated. Sound carried easily from one end of the floor to the other. At all hours, footsteps, arguments, and even quiet conversations from apartments several doors down carried through the walls. Privacy was never a guarantee.

The plumbing was the worst part. At night, the pipes knocked and rattled with steam, clanging loudly, as if someone were banging on them with a hammer every few minutes. I figured that was normal for a place that had been standing since 1948. I had rented apartment 3B.

Directly across from me was 3A.

It was empty when I moved in, which was unusual to me. Sunnyside rarely had vacancies. Even after an eviction, a new tenant usually moved in within days.

Brian, the landlord, noticed me staring as we passed it.

“Been empty a while,” he said. “Tenant apparently skipped out and left without a word. Pretty strange if you ask me… but people have their reasons for things, I guess.”

He unlocked my door and handed me the key.

“Any questions?”

“No,” I replied. “I think I’m good. Thanks.”

That wasn’t true.

I had questions. I just didn’t ask them. At the time, I didn’t think it mattered, and I really didn’t want to inconvenience the guy.

Looking back, I wish I had.

The first strange thing happened about two weeks after I moved in. I woke up at 2:17 a.m. to my phone buzzing on the nightstand. Still half-asleep, I leaned over and checked the screen.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I almost ignored it. But something about being jolted awake so suddenly made me answer without thinking.

“Hello?” I said, voice thick with sleep.

Static poured from the speaker. Beneath it, I heard the slightest sound of someone breathing. It was slow and steady, as if someone was holding the phone right next to their mouth.

The longer I listened, the more uncomfortable I got, causing every hair on my arm to raise in anticipation.

“Hello?” I said again, sitting up.

The breathing stopped. Then, through the static, I heard a faint creaking sound. A steady stream of cracks and pops followed, much louder than the breathing had been. It sounded like an old wooden door being pushed open.

Even through the fog of sleep, I remember thinking that there was no way it was coming from my phone. It took me a moment to realize why.

It wasn’t coming from the other end of the line.

It was coming from my kitchen door, down the hallway just outside my bedroom.

The hinges holding it were old and worn, producing an unmistakable sound when you opened it.

I hung up and pushed my back against the headboard as hard as I could. I stared into the dark hallway, unmoving, my heart pounding so hard it made my ears ring.

Eventually, I convinced myself it was just a coincidence. Probably just a neighbor’s door down the hall, aligned with a poorly timed prank call. My brain was still foggy, desperately scrambling to fill in the gaps with anything that sounded reasonable.

The next morning, I checked my call log.

There was nothing there.

I scrolled back and forth, refreshing over and over, each time seeing the same result. There was no call. No unknown number. No anything.

It was as if it had never happened.

It all felt like a blur, causing me to wonder if I had just dreamt everything or had some strange hallucination from lack of sleep.

I didn’t believe I had, but I had to rationalize it. I needed an explanation.

The rest of the day ticked by like normal, except for the fact that I was trying to push aside the memory of the morning’s events. Eventually, I was able to push it to the back of my mind and move on.

By the time I got home, exhaustion had taken over, having almost erased it from my mind completely.

Almost.

That night, I locked both the kitchen door and my bedroom door, not because of fear, but more so for my sanity. If it happened again, I wanted proof that I hadn’t just imagined it.

I plugged my phone in and climbed into bed, drifting off to sleep fairly quickly. I let myself believe it was over. Sadly, that wouldn’t last long because at 2:17 a.m., my phone rang. I froze.

The screen lit up the nightstand, washing the room in a pale blue light, displaying what I had dreaded seeing.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

Fear flooded my body as I slowly reached for the phone, hands trembling so badly I nearly dropped it. The moment I answered, I was met with static, followed by that same shallow, ragged breathing.

Then, the kitchen door creaked open.

There was no mistaking it this time. This was no longer just a coincidence. Someone was deliberately calling me at the same time every night. It had now become a pattern.

Even worse, someone had gotten into my apartment without me knowing.

I sat in my bed, staring at the faint silhouette of my bedroom door, too scared to move. Half of me wanted to call out and confront whoever or whatever was there. The other half was ready to run as fast and as far away as I could.

Eventually, everything went quiet.

I didn’t end up falling asleep until the sun started peaking over the horizon, too afraid, knowing someone had been in my apartment.

After that, the calls came every night.

Always at 2:17 a.m. and always from the same unknown number. The routine never changed. I’d go to sleep. I’d get woken up. I’d listen to the static, the breathing, and the creaky door. Then I’d lie awake until morning, too afraid to close my eyes again.

Over time, the sounds began to change. At first, it was just the kitchen door. Then came soft tapping, like fingernails on stone or wood. I even heard what sounded like fabric brushing against fabric, like someone brushing past the living room curtains.

The worst part was how familiar the sounds were.

Every noise matched something in my apartment. I knew exactly where the sound was coming from the moment I heard it. It was always just out of sight. From my bed, I could see about six feet down the hallway. The sounds always came from just beyond that, either inside the kitchen or the living room.

After the sixth night, I stopped answering the calls.

Despite my efforts, they didn’t stop.

My phone rang anyway, eventually going to voicemail. The little tape icon at the top of the screen indicated that whoever it was had actually recorded something, and yet, when I checked the next morning, there was nothing. There was no audio or timestamp. Just blank entries that vanished after a few hours.

I even called the phone company. They told me they couldn’t see any incoming or outgoing calls during the time I specified. Nothing at all.

That was when I stopped sleeping.

I shoved a chair under my bedroom door handle and kept the lights on all night, hoping that would be enough to keep whatever was happening to me at bay.

I kept telling myself there had to be a logical explanation for everything. If I could just figure it out, it would stop.

One morning, I opened the door into the hallway only to realize my nightmare was only just starting, evolving into something worse.

A trail of muddy footprints stretched across the floor.

They started near the front door, looped methodically around the kitchen, and ended in the hallway, right outside my bedroom.

I called Brian immediately. To my surprise, he didn’t sound upset or even concerned.

“Probably kids,” he said. “This neighborhood’s got its fair share of troublemakers.”

I just stood there, staring at the floor. There were literally bare, human footprints in my kitchen. Someone had broken into my apartment, walked through it, and then stood outside my door all night while I slept, and the best explanation he could offer was kids?

“What the fuck?” I yelled, letting the anger show in my voice. “Are you serious? Thank God, I locked my door, but there was literally an intruder in my apartment last night, dude. That’s a major problem.”

He went quiet. Long enough for the weight of my words to sink in. After a few seconds, he spoke again, his voice lower this time.

“Listen,” he said. “I didn’t think it would happen this soon, but… are you getting phone calls late at night?”

My stomach dropped. The anger vanished, replaced by something ice-cold slipping its way up my spine.

“You know about this?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve been pranking me this whole time. I swear to God, Brian, I might actually lose my shit if you’ve been behind this.”

Part of me thought it truly had been Brian behind it all. Another part of me, the sleep-deprived part, wasn’t sure what was even real anymore. I stayed silent, waiting for him to explain himself.

He exhaled sharply. I could feel the tension deepen between us as the cavalier and carefree tone in his voice quickly turned circumspect.

“Just… don’t answer them,” he said. “And stay out of 3A. There’s nothing in there. Hasn’t been for a while.”

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean? What does 3A have to do with any of this?”

I heard the line click before I could get an answer. He hung up before I could press further.

I got the sense that talking about it disturbed or hurt him more than he was willing to admit.

Scared or not, I needed answers. If Brian wouldn’t give them to me, I’d find someone who would.

That afternoon, I made my way down the hall and stopped outside my neighbor Sandra’s door. I hesitated a moment before knocking. She had lived in the building longer than anyone, especially me. If there was anyone who knew the secrets of that place, I knew it would be her.

The door latch snapped instantly after my first knock, the door jerking open with a force that made me flinch. Sandra filled the doorway, as though she had been standing there the whole time, waiting for me.

She was short, with wiry grey hair that stuck out in untamed clumps and skin that was sagging and wrinkled as if barely holding back the ravages of time. Her marble-grey eyes hung on me a second too long, looking me up and down as if she were testing my worth.

Behind her, the apartment stretched into a dim, cluttered mess, smelling of mildew and sweet rot. Books lay in piles across the floor, their pages warped and swollen with dampness. Something about the place made it hard to focus, like my eyes refused to settle on any one detail for too long.

When I mentioned the phone calls, her body stiffened. The color drained from her face, leaving her skin stretched ghostly pale across her cheekbones. She fixed her eyes on me, pursing her lips together as if she were pondering the right answer to give me.

“You’re in 3B,” she said.

It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. I hesitated, then nodded, offering a small, awkward smile that she didn’t return. She only stared.

The air between us thickened, doubt slowly creeping its way into my mind. I began telling myself that this was a mistake, that I had misjudged my approach.

Her eyes widened. She leaned closer, lowering her voice to a whisper until I could barely hear it across the threshold.

“Don’t answer,” she said. “Ignore it. All of it. The curiosity isn’t worth it.”

She pulled away abruptly, glancing down both ends of the hallway as if afraid someone might catch her speaking to me. When she was satisfied nobody had seen her, she spoke again, her voice growing firmer.

“The last person who lived in 3A had a problem,” she continued. “He started hearing things. Started seeing things, too. Things that weren’t always there.”

She paused, long enough to hint that there was more she wasn’t saying.

“Not long after that, an eviction notice showed up on his door. Then he just disappeared. I never saw him again after that.”

“Who was he?” I asked, almost reflexively.

Her gaze slid past me toward the stairwell. The longer we spoke, the more on edge she seemed, like talking about it made her a target.

“He said he was from Chicago,” she muttered. “Ended up coming to me for advice. About the calls. Kept saying people were walking around his apartment at night.”

She shook her head slightly, trying to hide the growing tension in her face.

“I told him to call the police. I mean, what else was I supposed to tell him?”

She looked up at me, as if seeking approval or agreement. Her expression wavered as the muscles in her face strained with indecision, unable to settle on a single emotion. At any moment, I felt she might break down and cry. Or scream. I wasn’t sure which, and neither was she, it seemed. She stood, suspended between what she wanted to feel and what she wanted me to see.

“He was a real pain in the ass, if you ask me,” she added. “Always going on and on about it. Strange guy for sure, but I’m nobody to judge.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

She exhaled, her wild gaze softening a bit.

“Don’t know. I just stopped seeing him after a while. One day, he was there. The next, he wasn’t.”

Then she stepped back, retreating into the dim light of her apartment. The conversation was over. At least it was for her. She was done with me and my questions, but I knew she was still holding something back. Whatever it was, she wasn’t ready, or willing, to share it with me.

“Did you know him well?” I tried one last time. “Were you close?”

Her jaw tightened, twisting her face into a frown. She gripped the edge of the door and shifted her weight to the side, halfway obscuring herself in the dark.

“No,” she said flatly. “And it’s time for you to leave.”

I didn’t argue. I thanked her and returned to my apartment, mulling over everything in my head. Everything she said lined up perfectly with what was happening to me.

There were only two possibilities at that point. Either I was the target of a very elaborate prank, or this was real, and I was dealing with something far beyond my understanding.

I had my doubts, but by the time I closed the door behind me in apartment 3B, I knew which one I believed.

I didn’t go to work that night. Instead, I sat on the couch with every light on, gripping my phone until my hand ached, as if squeezing it hard enough would somehow protect me. At 2:17 a.m., it buzzed. I didn’t answer, letting it go to voicemail and bracing myself for the same, unsettling sounds to follow.

They never came. Nothing happened.

For the first time in over a week, the entire apartment was quiet.

“Is it over?” I whispered.

I stood up and slowly walked toward the kitchen, relief washing over me as the tight grip of paranoia finally began to loosen. I stood in the kitchen for a moment, debating whether I could trust the quiet just yet. The apartment answered with the usual creaks and groans I’d grown accustomed to before the calls. When nothing else followed, I let my body relax, slowly, and turned back toward the couch.

The moment I sat down and let my guard slip, the phone buzzed, startling me. I flinched hard, losing my grip on the phone, sending it flying across the room. It hit the living room floor and skidded into the kitchen, clattering loudly as the screen flickered to life.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

I let it ring. And ring. Over and over.

Whoever… or whatever it was, kept calling, leaving voicemails that were never truly there, treading a thick layer of dread across my mind each time.

Eventually, I just tuned it out and went to bed.

After talking to Sandra, I was convinced this was tied to the phone. It made sense. If it hadn’t been for that first phone call waking me on that first night, I probably would have just ignored it all. I picked it up and tossed it onto the couch. It buzzed softly against the cushion as I walked away. I left it there and headed to bed, hoping that by leaving it in a different room, I’d somehow be able to escape it.

I had to try something.

I went into my bedroom and climbed into bed.

Without the constant buzzing of my phone on my nightstand, sleep came much easier than I’d expected, my body giving in almost immediately. The room softened around me, sound draining away, as I sank lower and lower.

I’d almost made it to sleep when the shrill clang of an old phone shattered the silence. Its metallic peal sliced through the room, slamming into my eardrums, yanking me straight up in bed. Adrenaline surged through my veins like a sudden jolt of electricity, sharp and needling against my nerves as I whipped my head around toward the source.

An old landline was mounted on the wall beside the bed. Its long, coiled cord hung down beneath it, pooling loosely onto the floor. I’d never used it, and until that moment, I’d forgotten it was even there. Brian had insisted on keeping it there, claiming that it ‘added character’ to the place.

What a load of horseshit.

The handset rattled violently against the receiver, shaking as if possessed, desperately begging me to answer it. I didn’t touch it.

I couldn’t.

The relentless ringing bored a hole in my skull, gnawing at what little sanity I had left. I covered my ears. Deep down, I knew exactly what was waiting for me on the other end.

I didn’t need proof or confirmation.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the ringing stopped. The metallic echoes of the bells finally began to fade, dissolving into an anxious silence. I lowered my hands slowly, every muscle still tight, my mind weighing heavily with doubt and fear.

The quiet didn’t last long. I knew it wouldn’t.

It was replaced by slow, deliberate knocking coming from somewhere deep within the apartment. At first, it was faint, barely audible. I would’ve dismissed it had it not moved. It began to wander around the apartment, each knock sounding closer than the last, growing heavier and more persistent the more I listened to it. The pattern began to stretch and morph, strengthening with an unnatural rhythm. It built steadily, swelling into an intense pounding, landing hard enough to send a shiver through the walls, rattling the picture frames off their hooks.

Within seconds, it had reached my bedroom door.

Fear swallowed me whole. Each steady thud became an assault on my senses, sending violent tremors through my body.

I don’t remember grabbing my keys. I barely remember climbing out onto the fire escape.

The next thing I knew, I was scrambling barefoot down three flights of jagged metal stairs, skin tearing with every step. I hit the pavement and ran as hard as I could into the night.

My lungs burned, and my legs screamed, but I kept pushing. I ran until my body threatened to give up on me entirely.

Three blocks later, I slammed into a chain-link fence, finally giving myself a chance to rest.

My feet were shredded. Sweat poured down my face and chest, soaking my clothes.

“What the fuck was that?” I gasped, fighting for air.

After a few nauseating moments, I forced myself to turn back toward the complex. With every painful, blood-slick step, my mind screamed at me not to.

‘Just keep going and leave that place,’ it begged.

But everything I owned was still there. I couldn’t just leave.

When the building came into view, I made my decision. I was exhausted, scared, and shaking from pain, so I stayed in my car for the night. Before leaning the seat back, I slipped on a pair of old, white flip-flops I found under the seat. They were thin and worn, barely holding together, but enough to keep something between the ground and the raw, open wounds on my feet. Better than nothing at least.

The car felt safer than the apartment, but even so, sleep never came. I kept watch over the third-story windows, half-expecting to see something standing there, watching back.