Chapter 3: The Predecessor's Tale

Chapter 3: The Predecessor's Tale

The words on Jonah’s phone screen glowed with an obscene authority in the dark of his car. It sounds like it’s already chosen you. The message wasn't a threat; it was a diagnosis.

For a moment, pure, unadulterated paranoia seized him. Was this a prank? Some sick joke orchestrated by a rival? But the specificity of it, the mention of the door, the uncanny understanding of his situation—it felt chillingly authentic. His desire for an explanation, any explanation that wasn't his own impending madness, was a physical ache. This was his only lead.

His thumbs, slick with sweat, typed out a reply. I need to know what you’re talking about. We have to meet.

The response from AtticCat1290 was almost instantaneous, as if the person on the other end had been waiting, holding their breath.

The Daily Grind on 4th. Tomorrow. Noon. I’ll find you.

The next morning, Jonah walked into the coffee shop feeling like a man on his way to an execution. The place was aggressively normal, an assault of cheerful decor and the hiss of an espresso machine. The air was thick with the scent of burnt coffee and steamed milk. Students hunched over laptops, and a pair of mothers tried to corral their toddlers near the pastry case. It felt like a different universe from the creeping dread that had infested his own.

He ordered a black coffee he didn't want and took a seat at a small table in the corner, his back to the wall. He scanned the faces of the patrons, every one of them blissfully unaware of the silent, chittering things that haunted the edges of his vision.

“Jonah?”

He looked up. A woman stood before him, her hands clutching the strap of her purse so tightly her knuckles were white. She was gaunt, with a bony frame that seemed too fragile for the oversized sweater she wore. Her blonde hair was thin, and her wide, fearful eyes darted around the coffee shop as if expecting an attack. She looked like a ghost haunting her own life. This was AtticCat1290. This was Claudia.

“You’re… her?” he asked, his voice rough.

She gave a curt, jerky nod and slid into the opposite chair without asking. She didn’t order anything. She just sat there, picking nervously at a loose thread on her cuff.

“I was the tenant before you,” she said, her voice a low, hurried whisper. “I ran a small online stationery shop out of there. Custom letterpress. It was my dream.” She spoke the word ‘dream’ as if it were a profanity.

“What happened?” Jonah leaned forward, his coffee forgotten.

Claudia flinched, her eyes fixing on something over his shoulder for a second before snapping back to him. “It started the same way. The whispers. The feeling of being watched. Then… the visions.” She shuddered, a full-body tremor. “For me, it was doctors. Men in surgical scrubs. I’d see them standing in the corner of my eye. Sometimes, just a flash of a green mask or the glint of light off a large… a large needle.”

Her deep-seated phobia, Jonah realized. The building had found hers, just as it had found his. The cockroaches. The symbol of his most profound failure and disgust.

“It got worse,” she continued, her words tumbling out faster. “It followed me home. I couldn’t sleep. I’d wake up and there’d be one of them, standing in the dark at the foot of my bed, just watching me. I thought I was losing my mind. I saw doctors, went on medication. Nothing worked. Because it wasn’t in my head. It was in the building.”

“The door,” Jonah said, the word feeling heavy in his mouth. “The one marked PASSWORD.”

Claudia’s eyes widened, a flicker of shared trauma passing between them. “Yes. The whispers started telling me to go back. They said the game was ready. I was so tired, so terrified… I would have done anything to make it stop. One night, I went. The door was locked, just like always. But as I stood there, the word… it just came to me. It felt like a memory that wasn't mine. I whispered it, and the door…”

“It opened,” Jonah finished for her, a cold pit forming in his stomach.

“It opened,” she confirmed, her voice cracking. “And I went down. There’s no sub-basement, Jonah. Not really. It’s… an arcade.”

Jonah stared at her, the memory of Wham! Arcade and the red-headed boy rising in his mind like bile. “An arcade?”

“It was impossible. Glowing and humming, like it was brand new. Rows of cabinets, each with a different name. Butcher’s Block. Bookworm’s Revenge. Spiritual Sickness. They were all the urban legends I’d read about online. Each machine was a tombstone for a past victim.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “Then I found mine. At the end of a row. It was called HOSPITAL NIGHTMARES!! It had my name on the high score screen.”

This was it. The turning point. The moment his nightmare was given a name and a set of rules.

“The whispers explained it. The building… it’s a parasite. It feeds on failure and fear. It traps people in a cycle. You are tormented by your greatest fear until you’re broken enough to play the game.”

“Play the game for what?”

Claudia finally met his gaze, and for the first time, Jonah saw not just fear in her eyes, but a profound, soul-deep grief. “You don’t play for yourself. You play for the person who came before you. The machine you play is themed to their torment. I wasn’t playing HOSPITAL NIGHTMARES!! for me. I was playing it for the man who had the space before I did. A man who was terrified of hospitals.”

The horrifying logic began to click into place. A chain. A sick, predatory cycle. “And what happens when you play?”

“If you win,” she said, her voice barely audible, “their haunting stops. They’re set free. The building lets them go. But the curse passes to you. You are now the one whose life depends on the next player.”

The unspoken half of the equation hung in the air between them, thick and suffocating.

“And if you lose?” Jonah asked, though he already knew the answer.

Claudia’s face crumpled. A single tear traced a path down her gaunt cheek. “If you lose, the building takes its payment. The person you were playing for… they die. Instantly. And the building resets. It finds someone new. Someone desperate. Someone like you.”

The cheerful noise of the coffee shop faded into a dull roar in Jonah’s ears. He was no longer just a haunted man. He was a player. He had been chosen. Claudia was sitting before him, a living ghost, her life now tethered to the next game. A game he would be forced to play.

“I played,” Claudia whispered, the confession tearing from her. “I’m not good at video games. I panicked. The figures on the screen, the doctors with the giant syringes… it was too much.” Her eyes were hollow, staring into a memory only she could see. “I lost, Jonah. It was over in less than a minute.”

A horrifying, final question formed on Jonah’s lips. “What happened to him? The man you were playing for?”

Claudia closed her eyes, her face a mask of anguish. “His wife posted about it on a community forum a week later. He was a retired accountant in Arizona. He dropped dead of a massive, unexplained heart attack. At the exact time, on the exact night, that my game ended.”

She finally looked at him, her expression one of pitiful, desperate warning.

“I’m next on the machine, Jonah. My life is the jackpot. And you… you’re the next player.”