Chapter 4: The Neighbor's Complaint

Chapter 4: The Neighbor's Complaint

The eviction notice was a phantom that now haunted Remi as much as the doll did. It hovered in the corners of her vision, a crisp white envelope with her name on it, a tangible consequence of an intangible terror. Mr. Henderson would come knocking any day now. And soon after, the packages would start arriving. Lady Annelise’s Lace Fan. Duke Alistair’s Silver Signet Ring. She pictured the delivery man’s cheerful face as he handed her the boxes, oblivious to the fact that they were trophies from a war she was losing.

She existed in a state of suspended animation, a ghost in the machine of her own life. She went to work, her movements robotic, her mind a maelstrom of fear and financial ruin. She came home, tiptoeing past the living room where The Crimson Court played on an endless loop, a historical drama that had become the droning, mocking score of her personal horror film. The doll was always there, on the coffee table, a silent, enthroned queen in its kingdom of her living room.

This morning, the exhaustion was a physical weight, pressing down on her skull and making her vision swim. She hadn't slept in what felt like a week, surviving on caffeine and the raw, frayed energy of constant anxiety. All she wanted was a cup of coffee strong enough to strip paint.

As she was measuring out the grounds, a sharp, insistent rapping echoed from her front door.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

It wasn't the gentle tap of a delivery person. It was the hard, impatient summons of someone with a grievance. Her heart leaped into her throat. Mr. Henderson. He knew about the rent.

She wiped her trembling hands on her jeans and crept to the door, peering through the peephole. The distorted, fish-eye lens showed not her landlord, but the tight, gray perm of Mrs. Millar from 2B, the apartment directly below hers.

Remi’s shoulders slumped in a wave of conflicted relief. It wasn't about the rent. But a complaint from Mrs. Millar, a woman whose primary hobbies seemed to be curtain-twitching and building management gossip, was almost as bad.

She slid the deadbolt, the sound unnaturally loud in the quiet hall, and opened the door a few inches. “Mrs. Millar? Is everything okay?”

The older woman stood with her arms crossed over a faded floral housecoat, her lips a thin, disapproving line. “That’s what I was about to ask you, dear. Everything is not okay.”

“I… I’m sorry?”

“The noise,” Mrs. Millar said, her voice a sharp, accusatory whisper. “It’s been going on for three nights now. I’m a light sleeper, Remi. I need my rest.”

Remi blinked, confused. “Noise? I don’t understand. I work the night shift. I’m not even here most of the night.”

Mrs. Millar’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, as if she’d caught Remi in a lie. “Well, someone is. All hours, it is. A terrible racket. I don’t know what you’re doing up here, but it sounds like you’re moving your furniture around. Banging and dragging. Scraping things across the floor. Last night it went on past three in the morning.”

The blood drained from Remi’s face. A cold, sick feeling washed over her, far colder than the perpetual chill in her apartment. Banging. Dragging. The phantom footsteps she’d heard were one thing; a memory she could almost convince herself was a hallucination. But this… this was confirmation. It wasn’t just in her head. It was real. It was loud enough for the neighbors to hear. The thought sent a fresh spike of terror through her, so sharp and absolute it stole her breath.

“I… I don’t know what to say,” Remi stammered, her mind reeling. “There must be some mistake. Maybe it’s the pipes?”

“I’m sixty-eight years old, dear. I know the difference between a banging pipe and a chair being dragged across a wood floor,” Mrs. Millar sniffed, her patience clearly exhausted. “This is a quiet building. We have respectable people living here. I don’t want to have to speak to Mr. Henderson about it, but I will. Consider this your one and only warning.”

Without waiting for a reply, she turned and shuffled back toward the stairs, her slippers scuffing against the linoleum.

Remi stood frozen in the doorway, the woman’s words echoing in her head. Scraping furniture across the floor. She slowly closed the door, her hand shaking so badly she could barely turn the deadbolt. The walls of the hallway seemed to press in on her. The thin barrier of plaster and drywall that separated her private horror from the outside world had been breached. Her nightmare was leaking out, becoming a public nuisance.

A dreadful, sickening curiosity propelled her forward. She walked on numb legs out of the kitchen and into the living room.

The television was on, as always. A scene from The Crimson Court flickered on the screen—a tense confrontation in a palace garden. The doll sat on the coffee table, its black eyes absorbing the light, its painted smile fixed and serene. The scene looked exactly as it had every other day for the past seventy-two hours. Normal. The new normal.

But then her eyes fell on the armchair.

Her armchair. The lumpy, overstuffed one with the faded floral pattern she’d inherited from her grandmother. The one piece of furniture that represented comfort, escape, a place to collapse after a grueling shift.

It was no longer pressed against the wall where it belonged.

It had been moved. Dragged several feet out into the middle of the room. It was positioned at a slight angle, turned away from the wall and aimed directly at the television. It sat there like a second spectator, a silent viewing companion for the doll. The legs had left long, scuffing gouges in the cheap laminate flooring.

Scraping furniture across the floor.

Something inside Remi, a cord that had been stretched taut for days, finally snapped.

The terror didn't vanish. It was still there, a shrieking, frantic thing in the back of her mind. But it was suddenly overwhelmed by a tidal wave of pure, incandescent rage. A fury born of exhaustion, helplessness, and the utter violation of her life.

Her gaze locked onto the small, porcelain figure.

“You,” she hissed, the word a venomous dart in the quiet room.

The doll, of course, did not react. It just sat there, smiling its placid, infuriating smile.

“Was this you?” Remi screamed, her voice cracking. She gestured wildly at the displaced armchair. “Was this your little redecorating project? Keeping the neighbors up all night?”

The air in the room grew thick, heavy with a silent, listening pressure. The actors on the television continued their mannered dialogue, their voices a surreal counterpoint to her raw, ragged outburst.

“What do you want from me?” she shrieked, taking a step closer, her fists clenched at her sides. “My money wasn't enough? My sanity wasn't enough? Now you want to get me thrown out of my own home?”

She was screaming at an inanimate object, and she knew it. But she also knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that she was being heard.

“This is MY home! That is MY chair! This is MY life you are ruining!” Her voice broke on a sob, tears of rage and terror finally streaming down her face. “I have nothing left! Do you hear me? You’ve taken everything! What more could you possibly want?”

She stood there, panting, her chest heaving, the accusations hanging in the supernaturally cold air between them. She had challenged it. She had screamed in its face, unleashing all the fear and fury she had suppressed.

The doll remained on the coffee table. Unmoved. Unblinking. Its black glass eyes stared forward, reflecting the flickering light of its favorite show. Its serene, red smile, which had seemed mocking just moments before, now looked like something else entirely. It looked patient. Possessive. As if it had been waiting for this. Waiting for her to finally understand her place.

And in the profound, ringing silence that followed her screams, she felt a terrible shift in the room, a change in the unseen current of power. She had shown it her rage. She had shown it her fear. She had shown it everything.

And now, it would show her what it wanted.