Chapter 3: The Unseeing Landlord

Alex scrambled away from the bathroom, his bare skin sticking to the grimy linoleum floor. He huddled by the couch, the phone clutched in a white-knuckled grip, his only connection to a world that still, presumably, made sense. The sound of the shower was an incessant, mocking hiss from the other room, a constant reminder of the violation. He had to turn it off. He couldn’t think with that noise.

But the thought of stepping back into that room, even for a second, sent a wave of nausea through him. He imagined reaching into the tub and feeling that same, wet, rasping touch wrap around his wrist.

He couldn’t.

He took a ragged breath, trying to force the panic down. He needed to sound normal. Sane. A man with a simple plumbing issue, not a man who was losing his mind. He scrolled to his landlord’s number, the name ‘Mr. Henderson’ glaring at him from the screen. Henderson was a man who communicated primarily through sighs and eviction notices. Convincing him of anything would be a monumental task.

What could he even say? ‘Excuse me, Mr. Henderson, but I think there’s a Lovecraftian horror living in my drain, and it just licked me.’ They’d have him in a straitjacket before Henderson even hung up the phone.

No. He had to lie. A believable lie. A blockage. A noise. Something mundane.

His thumb hovered over the call button, trembling. He squeezed his eyes shut, the image of that slow, deliberate lick searing itself onto the backs of his eyelids. It wasn't a choice anymore. He pressed the button.

The phone rang twice before a gravelly, impatient voice answered. "Yeah?"

"Mr. Henderson? It's Alex Mercer. From 5B."

A long, weary sigh crackled through the speaker. "What now, Mercer? The rent check cleared yesterday, I saw it."

"No, it's not about the rent," Alex said, his own voice sounding thin and reedy. "It's the shower. In the bathroom. There's… there's a problem with the drain."

"A problem? What kind of problem? Clogged again? I told you people to get a hair trap."

"It's not just clogged," Alex pushed on, the words tumbling out in a rush. "There's a noise. A sound coming from it. And… and a vibration. Like something is stuck in the pipes, something big. And last night, the water backed up and… something touched me." He cringed at the last part, knowing he’d already said too much.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Alex could picture Henderson perfectly: a portly man in a sweat-stained undershirt, his brow furrowed in annoyance at being disturbed.

"Touched you," Henderson repeated, his voice flat and utterly devoid of belief. "The water touched you. In the shower. Right."

"No, it was solid!" Alex insisted, his voice rising with a desperate edge he couldn't control. "Please, you have to come look. Something is wrong."

Another sigh, this one longer and more theatrical. "Fine. I'm in the middle of something. I'll be up in an hour. Don't call me again." The line went dead.

An hour. He had to wait an hour. Alex dropped the phone and wrapped his arms around himself, shivering despite the suffocating heat. He finally found the will to stand on shaky legs. He had to make the scene look right. He couldn't let Henderson see the ripped-down shower curtain; that was a one-way ticket to losing his security deposit and being labeled a lunatic.

He crept to the bathroom doorway and peered inside. The water was still running. The room was filled with a fine mist. The torn curtain lay in a heap on the floor. Steeling himself, he darted in, his eyes screwed half-shut, and wrenched the tap shut. The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the frantic pounding of his own heart. He snatched up the ruined curtain and its plastic rings, shoved them into the cabinet under the sink, and fled the room, slamming the door behind him. He didn't stop until he was pressed against the opposite wall of his small living room, breathing in ragged gasps.

The hour that followed was the longest of his life. He managed to pull on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, but every creak of the building, every gurgle from a neighboring apartment’s plumbing, sent a fresh spike of terror through him. He paced the worn patch of carpet in his living room, a caged animal waiting for a zookeeper who didn't believe in monsters.

Finally, a heavy, deliberate knock echoed through the apartment.

Alex flung the door open. Mr. Henderson stood there, looking exactly as Alex had pictured, only more so. His shirt had a fresh coffee stain on it, and he held a rusty toolbox in one hand and a cheap, plastic-cased flashlight in the other. He smelled of stale Folgers and irritation.

"Alright, Mercer, where's this monster in the pipes?" he grunted, pushing past Alex into the apartment.

"In here," Alex said, his voice barely a whisper, gesturing towards the closed bathroom door.

Henderson lumbered over and shoved the door open. He flicked on the light, flooding the small, tiled room with a harsh, fluorescent glare. He glanced around, his lip curling in mild disgust at the state of the place. "So?"

"The drain," Alex urged, pointing with a trembling finger. "In the tub."

With the groan of a man whose knees had long since given up, Henderson knelt beside the tub. He flicked on his flashlight, its yellowy beam weak and pathetic, and shone it down the drain. He peered into it for no more than three seconds.

"See anything?" Alex asked, his voice tight with a mixture of hope and fear.

"I see a drain, kid," Henderson said, not looking up. He tapped the metal grate with a thick finger. "It's a little grimy. You should pour some Drano down here once in a while." He stood up, his knees cracking in protest. He walked over to the wall and twisted the shower tap. Water gushed out, splashing into the tub with perfect, mundane force. He watched it swirl and vanish down the drain without the slightest hint of a backup.

"See? Drains fine," he declared, turning the water off. "Perfect flow. No clog."

"But the noise," Alex pleaded. "The feeling. It was real. I felt it!"

Henderson turned to face him, and for the first time, Alex saw not just irritation in the man's eyes, but a weary pity that was a thousand times worse. "Kid, it's a hundred degrees in this building. The pipes are old. They bang. They gurgle. Sometimes the pressure shifts and they make weird vibrations. It's an old building. Things make noise."

He took a step closer, lowering his voice into a conspiratorial, patronizing tone. "Look, you look tired. Stressed out. This heat can get to you, make you imagine things. You probably just had a leg cramp or something. Happens to the best of us."

The words hit Alex like stones. He wasn't just being dismissed; he was being diagnosed. Henderson wasn't a handyman looking at a pipe; he was a psychiatrist looking at a patient. The isolation Alex felt before was nothing compared to this. He was standing three feet from another human being, describing a terrifying, real event, and being told it was a figment of his heat-addled imagination.

"It wasn't a cramp," Alex said, his voice hollow.

"Okay," Henderson said, raising his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. He clearly wasn't going to argue with the crazy tenant. "Well, there's nothing I can do. The plumbing is working as intended. Call me if a pipe actually bursts." He turned and walked out of the bathroom. "And get a shower curtain. Don't want to be causing water damage."

Alex followed him numbly to the door.

"Next time, make sure it's a real emergency before you call me, Mercer," Henderson said, not bothering to make eye contact. "I've got better things to do."

He pulled the door shut behind him, the final, definitive click of the latch echoing in the sudden, oppressive silence of the apartment.

Alex stood frozen in the middle of his living room, staring at the door. The last ember of hope, the belief that the outside world could offer any sort of help or validation, had just been snuffed out. Henderson hadn't just seen nothing; he had refused to even look.

He was alone. Completely and utterly alone.

His gaze drifted from the front door back to the closed bathroom door. Henderson's dismissal hadn't made the threat go away. It had magnified it. The creature in his drain wasn't just a physical threat anymore. It was a secret he was forced to keep, a madness only he could see. If he couldn't rely on anyone else, then he would have to find the answers himself.

He had to look. He had to see what was down there. He had to face it.