The basement stairs were not listed on the building map.
James had checked.
There were only supposed to be two sublevels - a laundry room on B1, and a storage area locked off on B2. But the key that the future version of himself had given him... it didn't fit any of those doors.
Not even close.
He found the third stairwell behind a crumbling panel in the boiler room, hidden behind a thick wall of cobwebs and forgotten time.
He didn't tell Musa.
Didn't tell anyone.
Something told him this wasn't a place even the elders dared enter.
His flashlight flickered as he stepped through the panel. The air grew thick, instantly humid, with the scent of rot and earth. The stairs leading down were made of stone, uneven and moist, as if they had been carved out of the building's flesh.
And beneath each step, he could hear breathing.
Not his own.
Not human.
Slow. Wet. Labored. Like lungs stitched from roots and filled with grave dust.
James descended carefully, one trembling foot at a time. The walls were covered in charcoal-black symbols, etched deep with what looked like nails. Some were still bleeding.
The key pulsed in his pocket, warm and faintly alive.
By the time he reached the bottom, he wasn't sure how long he'd been walking. Minutes? Hours?
Time didn't move correctly here.
At the base of the stairs was a narrow hallway - lined with doors.
All closed. All marked with a nameplate. But the names weren't English. They weren't even in letters he recognized. Just strange runes that shifted if he looked at them too long.
The fourth door pulsed.
James's heartbeat synced with it. Thump... thump... thump...
He walked forward, not entirely of his own will, and pulled out the key.
It slid into the lock smoothly - as if it had always belonged.
The door creaked open.
Inside was a room with no floor.
Only a wide hole, like an open wound, descending into blackness.
And around the edges were bones.
Dozens. Hundreds. Human. Animal. Infant. Elder. Each bone engraved with a mark. Each humming softly, as if remembering the pain of its last breath.
James didn't step forward.
He knew instinctively - this was the origin of the building. The seed from which all its madness bloomed.
A deep, wet voice slithered from the pit:
> "You came, little fire."
James stood still. "Who are you?"
> "The root. The mouth. The first stone laid in this cursed structure. I am what they buried to build above."
A wind rose from the hole, but it wasn't air. It was voices.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
All whispering his name.
"Why me?" he demanded. "Why show me this?"
> "Because you broke the mirror. You remembered something we could not consume. Now we must offer you a choice."
James clenched his fists. "I don't want your offer."
> "Yet here you are."
The bones at the edge of the hole began to rattle.
A form began rising from the depths - not solid, but not smoke either. A figure cloaked in funeral wrappings, stitched with teeth, dragging a broken bell behind it.
James staggered back, but the voice continued:
> "You are unrooted. A man with grief but no anchor. A vessel with potential. We can give you meaning. Give you peace. Let you leave this place and forget it ever existed."
The figure raised a hand.
Behind it, a vision appeared - James, standing in a new apartment in the city, laughing, successful, free. No shadows. No ghosts.
No guilt.
James stared at it.
His throat tightened.
> "All you must do is leave the key behind," the voice said gently. "Drop it into the pit. Let the past close. Let the door beneath the bones seal. Forever."
James reached into his pocket, hand trembling.
The key pulsed - but now it felt colder.
Like it didn't want to go.
James looked down at it, and in a flash - he remembered the photograph.
His future self.
Alone. Possessed. Cursed.
That was what happened when you pretended nothing happened.
He stepped away from the hole.
"No."
The air grew still.
> "You refuse?"
"I remember now," James said. "You offer peace, but only by devouring the truth. My pain doesn't end if I forget. It ends when I face it."
The voice growled - not in rage, but in amusement.
> "Then you are the first in decades to say no."
Suddenly, the hole began to close.
The bones screamed as they were dragged down. The air rushed inward like a vacuum, and the stone under James's feet cracked violently.
He turned and ran, climbing the steps two at a time as the world beneath him collapsed.
He barely made it through the panel before the stairwell sealed shut, stone slamming into stone behind him.
And in his hand, the key turned black - then disintegrated into ash.
James slammed the panel shut behind him and backed away from the boiler room, chest heaving. The key had turned to ash in his palm-
But the air still hummed with residual power.
The apartment building had noticed.
And now, it was rearranging the rules.
He ran up the stairs two at a time, anxious to get back to the familiarity of his room-his anchor in this madness.
But when he reached the third floor, his foot froze mid-step.
The hallway was different.
The flickering fluorescent lights were gone, replaced by yellowed incandescent bulbs in brass fixtures. The peeling walls were freshly painted in an ugly floral pattern. A faint tune played from somewhere down the corridor-
A radio. Crackling with old-school jazz.
James stepped forward slowly.
His shoes sank slightly into thicker carpet. The scent in the air wasn't mold or rust anymore-it was furniture polish, smoke, and a trace of lavender perfume.
His door-3C-was still there. But the number plate had changed.
It now read:
"McAllister Residence"
Underneath, scratched in delicate cursive: Est. 1994
James's hands trembled as he reached for the knob.
It turned easily.
No creak. No resistance.
Inside, the apartment was no longer his.
It had been redecorated-or rather, reset.
Thick velvet curtains hung over the windows, muting the already yellow light. A grandfather clock ticked in the corner. The couch was floral-patterned with lace doilies. A wooden dining table sat in the center of the room-
And someone was sitting at it.
James didn't move.
The man had his back to him, hunched over a cup of coffee. Black suit. Silver cufflinks. Neatly combed hair, despite visible tremors in his hand.
He turned slowly.
And James's blood turned ice.
"Daniel?"
The man looked up.
His brother's face. Exactly as he remembered it in his teenage years. Pale. Gaunt. But those eyes-wide and watery-hadn't aged a day.
"Hey, Jamie," the man said with a sad smile. "You took your time."
James stumbled forward. "No. No, you're not-Daniel's dead."
Daniel shrugged. "So are a lot of people in this place."
James stared at him, his heart pounding in disbelief.
"You're not real."
"I'm not fake either," Daniel said, sipping the coffee. "I'm what's left. The part you buried. The part you blamed yourself for."
James's knees buckled. He dropped into the chair across from him.
"I didn't know... I didn't think you'd-"
"You left," Daniel interrupted. "You went off to college. You were finally happy. And I-stayed behind. With Mom. With it."
James shook his head. "I didn't abandon you. You told me to go-"
"But you still felt guilty." Daniel leaned forward, eyes darkening. "You still hear my voice when you sleep. You remember how cold the lake was that day. How I disappeared under the water and never came back up."
James covered his face with his hands.
The memory hit like a knife.
A childhood fishing trip.
A dare.
Daniel jumping into the lake while James turned away for a moment to grab his phone.
Then silence.
Ripples.
And nothing.
"I looked for you," James whispered. "I-God, I looked for you until my feet bled."
Daniel reached out and touched his hand.
The contact was cold. Too real.
"But now you're here," Daniel said. "And you've opened the door. The building's root knows you're willing to remember. That makes you dangerous."
James looked up slowly.
"What does that mean?"
"It means it's going to try harder now," Daniel said. "To tempt you. To break you. Or to turn you into one of us."
He stood up.
The air around him shimmered like heat rising off asphalt.
James stood too. "Wait-don't go. Please. Let me talk to you. Let me explain."
But Daniel was already fading.
He gave one last, long look-half smile, half sorrow.
"I forgive you, Jamie," he said. "But the apartment won't."
And then he was gone.
The dining table, the curtains, the furniture-all vanished in a burst of static. The room snapped back to its usual state-dusty, cracked walls, and the faint stench of rot.
The only thing that remained...
Was a wet handprint on the seat across from him.
James collapsed against the wall, breath coming in short gasps.
It hadn't just been a hallucination. That was Daniel.
Or what the building had trapped in its folds of time and memory.
---
He picked up his phone with shaking fingers and called Musa.
"You were right," he croaked. "It's started."
"What did you see?"
"My brother. He's... he's stuck here. Or part of him is."
Musa was silent for a long time.
Then he said, "Then you're in deeper than I thought."
James sat up straighter. "What do I do?"
"You go further in," Musa said. "You find the oldest tenant. The one whose name is never listed. She was the first to live in the apartment. They say she talks to the building."
"Where is she?"
A pause.
"She lives in Room 1A. But the door only opens... when the apartment decides you're ready."
James hung up the call with Musa and stood in the center of his apartment, disoriented. The air was thicker now, like every wall was watching him. Listening. Breathing.
He made his way to the hallway, the thought of Room 1A weighing heavily on his mind. According to Musa, that room was never listed-never rented-and yet, it supposedly held answers.
The first tenant.
The one who spoke to the building.
The elevator was dead. Again.
The stairs were his only option.
As he descended toward the first floor, he noticed something was wrong.
Each step stretched longer than the last.
Not physically-but perceptually.
By the time he reached what should've been the second floor, he was sweating, his knees aching, his breath short. The stairwell spiraled endlessly downward like a maze folding in on itself.
He stopped at a landing, confused.
The brass placard on the wall read:
"Floor 1A"
Not Apartment 1A.
Floor.
There was only one door.
It looked like it hadn't been touched in decades. Heavy, iron-bound wood, with a thick knocker shaped like a skull missing its lower jaw. Carvings etched around the doorframe glowed faintly-a strange mix of Christian symbols, tribal sigils, and something older... darker.
James reached out and touched the doorknob.
It was cold.
He turned it slowly, and the door groaned open into blackness.
No lights. No sound. No warmth.
Only a voice.
> "Jamie..."
He froze.
That voice.
His mother's.
Soft. Warm. Tired. The way she'd sounded during her final weeks in hospice.
He stepped in.
The darkness wrapped around him instantly, swallowing the hallway behind.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, switching on the flashlight.
The beam flickered and danced across a hospital bed.
It was just sitting there in the middle of the room.
And on it...
His mother.
Exactly as she had been the last time he saw her-sunken cheeks, paper-thin skin, bones sharp under the sheets. Her eyes were closed. Machines beeped softly beside her, connected to tubes that ran not into her arm-but into the walls.
She opened her eyes.
"James," she whispered. "You came back."
James staggered forward, his flashlight shaking. "Mom? No-this isn't real. You died. I buried you. I remember the funeral."
She smiled, and her teeth were far too white. Far too sharp.
"I'm still here. The building remembered me. It remembers everyone."
James's throat tightened.
Tears filled his eyes, but his instincts screamed this is wrong.
"What is this place?" he asked, backing away.
His mother sat up slowly, bones cracking. The machines screeched, glitching in pitch and rhythm. The tubes ripped free from the walls with a sickening wet pop.
"This is where time dies," she whispered. "Where the forgotten rot and feed the stone."
Suddenly, her head snapped to the side.
Her voice changed.
Now it was layered-hers, Daniel's, and something else. Something ancient and hungry.
> "You were supposed to forget, James. Why won't you let us rest?"
The shadows surged forward from the corners of the room like liquid spiders, wrapping around her form. Her face melted, flickering between people-Daniel, his father, himself-until it became a blank, eyeless mask with a screaming mouth.
James turned and ran.
The door behind him was gone.
Now it was a hallway again-long, pale, endless.
He sprinted through it, heart thundering, the sound of footsteps multiplying behind him.
But they weren't chasing him.
They were ahead.
He skidded to a stop as dozens of doors appeared along the walls.
Each one marked with a name.
Names he knew.
Aunt Beatrice.
Mr. Langdon.
His high school math teacher.
The neighbor who vanished last year.
Each door pulsed with a faint heartbeat, as if alive.
One door opened by itself.
Room 1A again.
This time, the plaque read:
"Property of Mrs. Mercy Ekun."
First Resident.
First Sacrifice.
James stepped in cautiously.
The room was small. Simple.
An old woman sat in a rocking chair in the corner, wrapped in patterned fabric, her face a maze of wrinkles and scars. Her eyes were milky white-but they locked directly onto James the moment he entered.
She smiled.
"I've been waiting, child."
James hesitated. "Are you... Mercy?"
She nodded once. "They call me that. I've had other names. None of them matter anymore."
"You're the first tenant?"
She tapped her temple. "I was the first offering. They built this place on stolen ground. Stolen blood. Something underneath... needed to be fed. And I made a deal."
James swallowed hard. "Why me?"
She chuckled darkly.
"Because the building wants to grow. And it only grows through memory, trauma, pain. You are ripe, boy. And you are awake. That makes you valuable. Or dangerous."
James sat down across from her, the air buzzing.
"How do I stop it?"
She leaned forward.
"You can't. Not alone. But you can survive it. You can unravel its secrets, piece by piece. And maybe, just maybe, you can weaken it."
"How?"
Mercy reached into her sleeve and pulled out an old photo.
It was James.
A child, standing in front of the apartment building-with his mother beside him.
Only... he didn't remember that day.
"You've been here before," Mercy said. "You never left."
---