Chapter 5: The Voice in the Vents

Chapter 5: The Voice in the Vents

The discovery of the newspaper article had brought no comfort, only a terrifying clarity. The Beggar at the Glass. Knowing its name didn't make it less monstrous; it made it real, a fixture of the building's history, a predator with a century-long hunting ground. That night, a fragile alliance formed in the sterile brightness of Maya's apartment, they waited. Leo had refused to be alone in his own room, the knowledge of what festered in 5B making the space feel contaminated. They sat in Maya’s living room, a pot of tea growing cold between them, their eyes fixed on the clock on her laptop.

3:15 AM.

Leo’s muscles were wound into tight, painful knots.

3:16 AM.

He held his breath, the silence in the apartment a taut membrane stretched to the breaking point.

3:17 AM.

They waited.

And there was nothing. No scraping. No dragging. Just the low hum of the city and the frantic beat of Leo’s own heart. The appointed hour came and went in absolute, deafening silence.

A full minute passed. Then another.

"It's gone," Maya whispered, though her face was etched with doubt, not relief. "Maybe... maybe us finding out who he was... did something?"

Leo wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe it so desperately that his bones ached with the need for it. But he remembered the triumphant, malicious smile. This wasn't a creature that would be scared away by a library search. This was a change in tactics. The silence felt less like a reprieve and more like the moment a predator stops rustling in the undergrowth to begin its final, silent stalk.

Eventually, the exhaustion became too much to fight. Maya insisted Leo take her couch, while she locked her bedroom door. “We’ll figure this out in the morning,” she said, her voice a thin veneer of confidence over a well of fear.

Leo lay on her sofa, staring into the unfamiliar darkness. He didn't sleep. He listened. The silence was an enemy now, a blank canvas onto which his terrified mind could paint any sound it wished.

Around 4 AM, he heard the first whisper.

It was faint, a soft, wheezing murmur, and for a moment he thought it was the wind. But it came from the old, ornate air vent near the floor. It was a voice he knew better than his own. The voice of his mother.

"Leo, honey? It’s me."

He sat bolt upright, his skin prickling with cold. His mother was six hundred miles away in Ohio. He hadn't spoken to her in a month, a fact that sat like a stone in his gut.

"You sound so tired on the phone, sweetie," the voice cooed, a perfect, loving imitation of his mother's concerned tone. "You're working too hard. You're not eating. You're all alone up there. Why don't you let me in? I can take care of you. You just need to rest. Just open the door and let your mother in."

It wasn't a memory. It wasn't a dream. It was a voice, real and present, winding its way out of the vent. The entity had found a new way in. Not through the window, but through the building’s very bones. Through his own history. He scrambled off the couch and pressed his ear to the cold metal grate of the vent, his breath catching in his throat.

The voice was gone. Silence. Was he finally cracking? Was this the "sudden psychotic break" the archives had mentioned about the tenant from 1998?

Then, a new sound. A harsh, grating whisper from the direction of the window, seeping through the tiny cracks in the frame.

"Vance! You think you can just not show up? You're on thin ice, boy. Thin ice!"

It was Mr. Davies, his boss from the grocery store. The voice was thick with the man's signature mix of cheap cigars and perpetual fury.

"One more screw-up and you're out. Out on the street. You'll lose this place. You'll have nothing. You're a disappointment, Vance. Always have been. Just give up. It's easier. Open the window and get it over with. Let a real friend tell you the truth."

This was a different kind of attack. It wasn't preying on his love, but on his deepest, most immediate insecurity: the precariousness of his life. The fear of losing his job, his apartment, the last rung on the ladder he was clinging to. The Beggar had read his file. It knew his weaknesses. It was using his own life as a weapon against him.

He backed away, stumbling over a rug, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He was a rat in a maze and the maze was now his own mind. He had to warn Maya. He had to tell her what was happening. He lunged for her bedroom door, his hand outstretched to pound on it—

And then he heard her voice.

"Leo? Help me..."

It wasn't coming from behind the door. The whisper was coming from the vent on his side of the wall. It was Maya's voice, but strained, terrified, and distorted by a sob.

"Leo, he got in. He's in my room! The window... I don't know how... Oh God, he's here! You have to let me into your part of the apartment! Open the door, Leo, please! Let me in!"

Pure, animal panic seized him. The monster was in her room. He had to help her. His hand was on the doorknob, ready to throw it open, to face whatever was inside.

But a sliver of rational thought, a shard of Maya's own logic that had rubbed off on him, pierced through the terror. The whisper was coming from the vent. Not from behind the door. He could hear no struggle, no other sounds. It was another trick. The most vicious one yet. A gambit to use his loyalty to his only ally to make him open a threshold in panic.

His hand shaking violently, he pulled out his phone. He stabbed at the screen, his fingers slick with sweat.

Are you ok? he typed, his thumb hovering over the send button.

The whispers intensified, becoming a horrific, layered chorus. His mother's pleading, his boss's scorn, Maya's fabricated screams, all swirling together from the vents, the window frame, the very air in the room. They converged into a single, seductive, venomous command.

"Just let a friend in, Leo."

"We can make the pain stop."

"All you have to do is open up."

"Just rest."

"Let us in."

He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the heels of his palms into his sockets. The psychological warfare had begun, and the battlefield was the inside of his own skull. The enemy no longer needed to scrape at the glass. It had found its way inside, and it was using the voices of everyone he knew to patiently, methodically, scour his sanity away.

His phone buzzed in his hand. He ripped his eyes open and stared at the screen. A message from Maya.

I'm fine. In my room, door locked. I can hear them too. Don't listen.

The wave of relief was so profound it almost brought him to his knees. She was safe. But the terror that followed was even worse. They were both prisoners, locked in separate rooms, while a malevolent intelligence dismantled them piece by piece, whisper by whisper. They were fighting an enemy that could be anywhere and sound like anyone. And they were losing.