Chapter 8: An Invitation

Chapter 8: An Invitation

The final night settled over the city, a smothering blanket of dark velvet. Inside Maya’s apartment, the air was still and heavy, thick with the electric tension of a coming storm. There was no television on, no music playing. The only light came from a single lamp that cast long, dancing shadows on the walls, illuminating the strange, grim altar they had assembled on the floor.

In the center lay the cold brass plate of Apartment 5B, a tarnished icon of the building’s long misery. Draped over it, like a soldier’s final offering, were the cool, heavy dog tags of Leo’s grandfather. Encircling them were the printed obituaries and police reports—the names of the fallen, a silent testament to their rage. Robert Miller. Elaine Vance. David Miller. The Petersons. They were no longer just victims. Tonight, they were ammunition.

Leo and Maya sat cross-legged on the floor, facing the large window that looked out onto the empty night. They had spent the last hour in near silence, their purpose solidifying from a frantic plan into a cold, hard resolve. They were no longer prey waiting for the predator. They were trappers, and the entire room was their snare. Leo’s gaze kept returning to the simple brass latch on the window. For weeks it had been the symbol of his last defense, a barrier he’d reinforced with a heavy dresser and all his terror. Tonight, it was the trigger.

The clock on Maya’s laptop ticked past midnight, each minute stretching into an eternity. The whispers from the vents had fallen silent, a tactical retreat by the entity, leaving a silence that was somehow more menacing. It was waiting. It knew the game had changed.

Leo could feel the cold radiating from the glass, a familiar precursor. He focused on the feeling, not as a source of fear, but as a confirmation. Come on, he thought, the words a cold burn in his mind. Come and get it.

The laptop screen glowed: 3:15 AM.

Maya’s hand found his, her grip tight and steady. Her knuckles were white, but her eyes, when he met them, were fierce. They were in this together. A final, shared breath.

3:16 AM.

The building groaned around them, a deep, resonant sigh as if it were settling for a long sleep. But Leo knew it was waking up.

3:17 AM.

It began.

Not with the familiar, rhythmic scrape… drag… pause. That sound, as unsettling as it had been, had a semblance of civility, of a tool being used. This was different. This was the sound of raw, frantic need. A dry, desperate scratching, like skeletal fingernails clawing at the glass, seeking purchase. It was the sound of a beast trying to dig its way in, its patience utterly gone.

Leo forced himself to look. He had to see the trap through.

At first, it was the face he expected: the gaunt, pathetic old man, his sunken eyes wide with a practiced sorrow. The Beggar at the Glass had arrived for his final performance. But as the scratching intensified, the performance shattered. The image flickered, wavering like a faulty projection.

The old man’s face began to melt and shift. For a horrifying second, his features were overlaid with those of a man in his forties with broken glasses and a look of stark surprise—Robert Miller, the financial analyst. Then it warped again, the skin smoothing, the eyes widening in terror into the face of a young, dark-haired woman—Elaine Vance, just before her psychotic break. The faces of an elderly couple, mouths agape in a silent gasp, faded in and out, their ghostly forms stretched over the gaunt bones beneath. Finally, the face of a bearded man with haunted, artistic eyes—Elara’s husband, David—surfaced for a moment, his expression one of eternal, falling despair.

It was a horrifying, shifting amalgam of its past victims, a living collage of the misery it had consumed. The hand pressed to the glass was no longer a single, bony hand, but a multitude of them, flickering over one another, leaving ghostly afterimages on the pane. This was its true form, not a creature, but a curse that wore the faces of its dead like a gallery.

Then the voices came, not from the vents, but pouring directly from the glass, a deafening chorus of the damned.

His mother’s voice, thick with a terrible, cloying pity. “Leo, honey, you can’t do this. He’s just a poor, cold man. Have a heart. Your grandfather would be so disappointed in your cruelty.”

Mr. Davies, his boss, sneering with contempt. “Look at you, Vance. A coward hiding behind a woman. You’re nothing. You’ll always be nothing. Open the window and prove you can do one thing right.”

A fabricated, screaming imitation of Maya’s voice twisted itself into the mix. “It’s a trick, Leo! He’ll kill us! Don’t listen to me, listen to the real me! Don’t open it!” A masterful stroke, designed to shatter their trust with a paradox of terror.

And beneath it all, a new layer of whispers, the voices of the faces in the glass. “He promised us peace,” they sighed in unison. “It’s so quiet here on the other side. Let him in. Join us. It doesn’t hurt for long.”

The assault was overwhelming, a tidal wave of psychological warfare designed to find and exploit every crack in his soul. His resolve wavered. His hand trembled. Pity, fear, doubt, despair—the entity was serving its entire menu at once, trying to force-feed him. He felt his defiance beginning to fracture under the sheer weight of the attack.

He looked at Maya. She was ghostly pale, her eyes squeezed shut, but she wasn’t cowering. Her lips were moving, silently repeating the names from the papers on the floor. Robert Miller. Elaine Vance. The Petersons. She was holding the line.

That was all he needed.

He looked back at the window, past the writhing masks of the dead, and focused on the original pair of eyes beneath it all, the cold, hungry eyes of the Beggar. He thought of Elara’s warning: it feeds on hope, because nothing tastes as sweet as the moment hope breaks.

But this wasn't hope. This was a debt. This was vengeance.

The chorus reached a crescendo, but through it all, the Beggar’s own voice cut through, its last, desperate gambit. It reverted to the pathetic whimper of their first encounter. “Please, son,” it wept, the shifting faces momentarily coalescing back into the original mask of a frail old man. “I’m so cold. I died out here once before. Don’t let it happen again. My Clara… she’s waiting. Just a glass of water. Just let a friend in.”

Leo rose to his feet. His movements were calm, deliberate. He walked to the window, the cacophony of voices swirling around him like a hurricane. He looked at the frantic, hungry thing on the other side of the glass. He felt the cold anger solidify within him, a core of absolute ice. He was not its meal. He was the poison.

His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat counting down his final seconds of safety. His every instinct screamed at him to run, to hide, to do anything but this. He ignored them. He placed his hand on the cold brass latch he had dreaded for weeks.

With a deep, steadying breath, he looked the shifting horror directly in its myriad of eyes and spoke the words it had waited a century to hear. The words he had dreaded more than death.

“You can come in.”