Chapter 4: The Rules of the Unseen

Chapter 4: The Rules of the Unseen

The scratching sound from the audio file had become a permanent resident in Alex’s mind. It was an insidious echo he heard over the hum of his computer, in the silence between his own frantic heartbeats. The phantom door was now a mere four feet from his own, a silent, creeping invasion. His technological assault had not only failed, it had felt like a provocation. The sound he’d captured was not a random occurrence; it was a reply.

He was done trying to fit this into his world. He had to find his way into its.

His previous research had been too logical, too constrained by official records and keywords. He had been looking for a gas leak, a structural flaw, a forgotten historical event. Now, he understood he was looking for a ghost story, a myth that was bleeding into reality. He sat before his monitors, the faint light illuminating the dark circles under his eyes, and began to type.

He ignored the building's name. He ignored dates and blueprints. He typed what he had seen, what he had felt.

Impossible hallway. Door appears on blank wall. Building changes at night.

The results were a predictable deluge of amateur horror fiction, paranormal blogs filled with blurry photos of "orbs," and nonsensical conspiracy theories. He waded through pages of digital noise, his hope dwindling with every click. He was about to give up, to surrender to the creeping madness, when he recalled Elara Vance’s haunted eyes, her carefully chosen words. The doors that aren't quite right.

He typed a new phrase into the search bar, a desperate, last-ditch effort: "Architectural Glitches."

The first few results were the same digital chaff. But on the fourth page, buried under a link with no preview description, was a simple, unformatted line of text in a forum about urban exploration. It read: "It's not a glitch in the building. It's a glitch in the code of the world. If you've seen the yellow hall, if you've heard the silence, go here."

Below it was an IP address. Not a website name, just a string of numbers.

Alex’s hand trembled as he copied and pasted it into his browser. The page that loaded was stark and minimalist. A plain black background with a single input box and the words: "At what time does the shift begin?"

His blood ran cold. He knew the answer. He typed: 3:12.

He hit enter. The screen refreshed, granting him access to a simple, text-based message board. The forum was titled "The Negative Space," and its header was a single, grim welcome: "You're not crazy. You're not dreaming. You are noticed."

He scrolled through the threads, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. It was all here. Post after post of raw, terrified testimony that mirrored his own experience with sickening precision.

A user named ‘CorridorWalker’ wrote: It’s always the same. The bile-yellow linoleum. The buzzing lights. The doors with no numbers. I got lost for what felt like hours. I only got back because I heard my cat scratching at the door from what sounded like miles away.

Another, ‘Static_Man,’ described the entity: It doesn’t walk, it glides. So tall and thin. No face. God, the no face part… we call it The Janitor. Because it keeps its domain clean. And we are the dirt.

The Janitor. The name was so mundane, so banal, that it was utterly terrifying. It gave a title to the formless horror, a name to the blank-faced dread that haunted his waking moments. Alex felt a strange, dual sensation of profound relief and escalating terror. He was not alone in this. But the thing that was hunting him was known, was named, because it had hunted, and likely taken, others.

He clicked on a pinned thread at the very top of the board, titled: "READ THIS FIRST. THE RULES OF SURVIVAL."

The post was a compilation, a grim crowdsourced scripture written by the desperate and the damned.

THE RULES:

1. IT IS DRAWN TO ATTENTION. THIS IS THE FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT RULE. Looking for it, trying to understand it, trying to photograph or record it—these are not acts of investigation. They are acts of invitation. It is a predator of perception. The more you focus on the glitch, the more the glitch focuses on you. The doors move closer when you measure their distance. The hallway appears when you anticipate it. Acknowledgment is sustenance.

2. DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THE CHANGES. If a picture frame in your home is suddenly crooked, do not straighten it. If a door appears where one was not before, do not stare at it. If you see it in a reflection, look away immediately. Treat the intrusions as if they have always been there. Your ignorance is your only camouflage.

3. MUNDANE SOUND IS AN ANCHOR. The domain of The Janitor—the In-Between—is defined by an absolute, unnatural silence. If you find yourself there, do not scream. Scream all you want, it won't hear you. Hum a song. Recite a grocery list. Tap out a rhythm. The sounds of our world are an irritant to that place. They can sometimes help you find the seam to get back through.

4. OLD THINGS ARE A DEFENSE. It is a creature of the 'new.' Of wrong angles and sterile, impossible geometry. It has a distaste for things with history, with weight. Pure iron (not steel), old salt, symbols of faith that are genuinely believed in—these things can act as a momentary repellent. They are not weapons. They are shields. They will not kill it, but they might make it recoil long enough for you to run.

Alex leaned back in his chair, the glow of the screen illuminating the sweat on his brow. The rules clicked into place, solving the horrifying puzzles of the last forty-eight hours with chilling clarity.

The camera feed hadn't just malfunctioned; it had been blinded by an entity that fed on observation. The scratching he’d heard wasn't a random threat; it was a direct response to his attempt to capture it. He had been shining a spotlight on himself in the dark, screaming his location to the monster in the shadows. Elara Vance had survived for decades not by fighting, but by adhering to Rule #2: she had made herself invisible through practiced, deliberate ignorance.

He, on the other hand, had done everything wrong. He had obsessed. He had investigated. He had measured. He had recorded. He hadn’t just stumbled into its path; he had rolled out a welcome mat.

He closed the browser, the stark text of the rules burned into his retinas. The sliver of hope the forum had given him—the knowledge that there was a playbook, a strategy—was choked by a far more immediate and horrifying realization.

He looked down the short, dark corridor of his apartment. The phantom door was there, a silent slab of dark wood in the gloom. It was only a few feet away now, close enough that he could almost reach out and touch it from his own threshold. He understood now why it had moved so quickly. He had been pulling it closer with every terrified glance, with every desperate search, with every frantic attempt to prove its existence.

He wasn't just being hunted. He was being answered. And it was almost at his door.