Chapter 6: The Survivor of the Sixth Floor

Chapter 6: The Survivor of the Sixth Floor

The whispers had become a constant, corrosive static at the edge of hearing. For two days, Leo and Maya had been besieged within the clean, well-lit confines of her apartment. They moved like soldiers in a minefield, communicating in hushed tones and frantic notes, terrified that any spoken word would be recorded and weaponized, twisted into a venomous imitation by the entity in the walls. They stuffed towels under the door and taped over the vents, but the voices still found their way in—thin, reedy tendrils of sound that preyed on their fraying nerves.

Leo was coming apart. He’d catch himself responding to his mother’s phantom pleas before clamping his hands over his mouth, his eyes wide with self-betrayal. The entity had started using a new voice on him, a soft, feminine whisper he didn't recognize, promising him the one thing he craved more than life itself: a long, dreamless sleep. Just open the window, it would croon, and you can finally rest.

Maya, fueled by caffeine and a terrifying, razor-sharp focus, was fighting back in the only way she knew how: with research. Her laptop screen was a chaotic mosaic of archived newspaper pages, city records, and genealogical websites. Her face, illuminated by the cold blue light, was pale and drawn. She was no longer just a neighbor; she was a co-conspirator, a fellow prisoner of war.

"I found her," she finally breathed, her voice cracking from disuse. It was just after dawn, and the whispers had momentarily subsided, leaving a ringing silence in their wake.

Leo, who had been huddled on her sofa staring at a blank wall for hours, looked over. "Her?"

"The artist from 1965," Maya said, pointing a trembling finger at the screen. "The one who 'fell.' David Miller. The obituary listed a surviving spouse. Elara Miller." She clicked a few more times. "There's an Elara Miller, age eighty-seven, living at St. Jude's Home for Continued Care. It has to be her. She lived on the sixth floor, Leo. She was right above 5B. She survived."

The word hung in the air between them, heavy with a significance they hadn't dared to feel in days: survived. It was a possibility, a distant shore in a churning sea of despair. The obstacle was no longer just enduring the night; it was the gnawing uncertainty of what to do next. Now, they had a destination.

The journey to the nursing home was a surreal ordeal. Stepping out of the Excelsior Arms felt like breaching the airlock of a contaminated vessel. The city sunlight was painfully bright, the noise of traffic an assault. Leo flinched at every passerby, his sleep-deprived mind half-expecting their faces to melt into the Beggar's gaunt features, their mouths to open and offer a plea for a sick daughter.

St. Jude's was a low brick building that smelled of bleach, boiled cabbage, and quiet resignation. A cheerful nurse led them to a sunroom where a handful of residents sat in wheelchairs, their gazes fixed on the distant, hazy skyline. In a corner, a small, bird-like woman with a cloud of white hair sat staring out a large pane of glass.

"Elara?" Maya asked softly.

The woman turned. Her eyes were a pale, washed-out blue, but they were startlingly alert. They flicked from Maya's concerned face to Leo's haunted one, and for a moment, she looked like any other resident: frail, detached, lost in the labyrinth of her own long life.

"We... we live in the Excelsior Arms," Leo began, his throat dry. "We wanted to ask you about your husband. About what happened."

Elara's expression remained unchanged, a placid, unreadable mask. "David fell," she said, her voice a papery rustle. "He was a clumsy man. The police said it was an accident." She turned back to the window.

Leo's heart sank. They had come all this way for a dead end. This woman wasn't a survivor; she was just another person who had accepted the official story, burying the horror under decades of denial.

"It wasn't an accident," Leo blurted out, his desperation overriding his caution. "It's still there. In the building. It scrapes at the window. And it… it whispers."

The old woman went perfectly still. Slowly, she turned her head, and this time, the polite detachment was gone. Her pale blue eyes fixed on Leo, and they weren't just looking at him; they were looking into him. It was a look of profound, chilling recognition, a gaze that bypassed eighty-seven years of life and sixty years of trauma to see the fresh, raw terror stamped onto his soul.

"Ah," she whispered, a world of pain in the single syllable. "You have the look. I remember it from my own mirror. The look of a man listening for a sound that's already inside his own head."

She gestured to the two empty chairs opposite her. They sat, their movements stiff.

"They told everyone I went mad after David died," Elara said, her voice gaining a surprising strength. "I didn't. I went sane. Horribly, terribly sane." She looked out the window again, but Leo knew she wasn't seeing the skyline. She was seeing the sheer brick wall of the Excelsior Arms, six stories up.

"It's not a ghost, not really. I call it The Hunger. David called it The Beggar. It started with him just like I imagine it started with you. A sound. A pathetic old man. David was a good person. Full of pity. He opened the window the first night, just a crack, to give the man a blanket. That was all it needed. An invitation."

Leo thought of his own hand on the latch, the primal fear that had stopped him from offering a glass of water.

"After that," Elara continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "it didn't need the window. It was in. It started to talk to him. It used my voice. Told him I was leaving him. Told him he was a failure. Then it used his father's voice, calling him a disappointment, just like the old man had his whole life. It finds the cracks in you and pours poison into them."

It was a perfect echo of Leo's own torment. His mother’s voice. His boss’s. Maya’s.

"It doesn't want your money or your food," she said, her eyes finding Leo's again. "It's a hunger that feeds on feeling. It sips your pity like fine wine. It gorges on your despair. But its favorite delicacy… its absolute favorite… is hope. Because nothing tastes as sweet to it as the moment hope breaks and curdles into terror."

"So how did you survive?" Maya asked, her voice barely audible. "After David..."

Elara’s face hardened, the soft lines of old age seeming to sharpen into something like granite. "After David was gone, I emptied myself out. The Hunger came for me. It whispered to me for weeks. It promised me peace. It promised me David was waiting for me on the other side of the glass. But all my pity was buried with my husband. All my hope had fallen with him to the alley. When it spoke, I felt nothing. It was like shouting at a stone. There was no meal for it. After a while, it got bored and moved on. Looking for a new pantry."

A cold, horrifying understanding dawned on Leo. The pattern in 5B. The entity would latch onto a tenant, feed on them until they broke, and then lie dormant, waiting for the next meal to move in.

"How do we stop it?" Leo pleaded, leaning forward. "We can't just... feel nothing. We're terrified."

Elara looked at him, a flicker of something that might have been sympathy in her ancient eyes. She shook her head slowly.

"That's its greatest trick. It makes you think your only choices are to give in or to run. You can't run from it. And you can't fight a hunger head-on." She paused, her gaze turning inward, wrestling with a memory. "But you can't just ignore it, either. It is patient. It will wait you out."

She leaned forward, her voice dropping so low they had to strain to hear it. "You cannot starve it, because it will simply feed on your desperation as you waste away." Her bony fingers gripped the armrest of her chair. "You must poison the meal."

Before they could ask what she meant, the cheerful nurse returned. "Alright, Elara, time for your medication."

The moment was broken. The hardness in Elara's face dissolved, replaced once more by the placid mask of old age. She had retreated, the door to her terrifying sanity slamming shut. She didn't look at them again as the nurse wheeled her away.

Leo and Maya walked out of St. Jude's and back into the blindingly normal world, the old woman's cryptic words echoing between them. They were no longer just running. They had been given a weapon, a riddle wrapped in a warning. The fear was still a cold knot in Leo's stomach, but it was now threaded with something new and dangerous. A purpose.

They had to figure out how to prepare a feast for the thing in the walls. A feast that would be its last.