Chapter 3: Three in the Morning

Chapter 3: Three in the Morning

The greasy pizza box lay forgotten between them, a tombstone for normalcy. The air in Apartment 1000L had grown thick and cold, each word of Kiwi’s story hanging in the space like a particle of dust in a sunbeam. Leo’s hope for a peaceful, stable life had been systematically dismantled and replaced with a gnawing dread. He wasn't just in a new apartment; he was trespassing in a place of profound tragedy.

Kiwi hugged her knees tighter, her gaze locked on the short, dark hallway leading to the spare room. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice fragile. “I shouldn’t have told you. Abernathy was right, I should have just kept my mouth shut.”

“No,” Leo said, his own voice sounding distant to his ears. “I needed to know. It… explains things.” The feeling of being watched. The door. The damn wall.

Kiwi let out a shaky laugh that held no humor. “The thought of going back to my place right now… even just through the wall… it feels like a million miles away.”

An unspoken understanding passed between them. In this oppressive, haunted space, the only comfort was proximity to another living, breathing person. “Stay here tonight,” Leo offered, the words leaving his mouth before he’d fully considered them. “You can take the bed. I’ll take the couch.”

“No way,” she said, shaking her head, the black and white strands mixing. “It’s your place. I’ll be fine on the couch. It’s better than being alone.”

They moved with a somber, mechanical purpose, setting up a makeshift bed with the spare blankets Leo had unpacked. The simple act felt absurdly domestic against the backdrop of their shared terror. There were a thousand questions Leo wanted to ask, but the answers felt too monstrous to contemplate. Instead, they worked in a silence that was heavier than any conversation.

When they finally settled down, the apartment was plunged into near-total darkness, save for the orange sodium glow of the city filtering through the large window. Leo lay on his new mattress, staring at the ceiling, listening to the soft sounds of Kiwi shifting on the couch in the other room. Her presence was a small, flickering candle in an overwhelming darkness, and he clung to it. He was terrified, but for the first time in his life, he wasn't terrified alone.

Eventually, exhaustion won. He drifted into a shallow, uneasy sleep, the names Elara and Caleb Thorne echoing in his subconscious.

---

He woke up with a gasp.

It wasn't a sound that had woken him. It was a feeling. A suffocating dread had descended upon the apartment, a pressure so immense it felt like the air had turned to water, pressing down on his chest, stealing his breath. The room was unnaturally cold, a deep, penetrating chill that had nothing to do with the autumn night outside.

He glanced at his phone. The screen glowed with stark, digital numbers: 3:00 AM.

A faint, cloying scent wafted into the room, weaving through the cold air. It was bitter and earthy. The smell of stale coffee, stronger than he’d ever smelled it before. He sat up, his body rigid, every instinct screaming that he was in danger.

A floorboard creaked in the hallway.

Leo’s blood turned to ice. It wasn’t the old-building groan he’d grown used to. It was a soft, deliberate sound. A footstep. He held his breath, straining to hear over the frantic pounding of his own heart. Was it Kiwi? Had she gone to the bathroom?

Then he heard it again. Another creak, this one coming from inside the spare room.

He knew he should stay put, hide under the covers like a child. But a morbid, desperate compulsion pulled him to his feet. He had to see. He had to know what shared this space with him. He crept out of his bedroom, his bare feet silent on the cold floor. The living room was empty; Kiwi was a still lump under the blankets on the couch, seemingly asleep.

The door to the spare room, which he distinctly remembered closing, was now ajar, a sliver of profound darkness leaking into the hall. The coffee smell was thickest here. Pushing the door open, he peered inside.

The room was darker than it should have been, the window a patch of absolute black. But in the center of the room, the air shimmered. It was like the heat-haze rising from asphalt on a summer day, but it gave off no warmth. The haze slowly coalesced, twisting into two warped, indistinct silhouettes. One was taller, slender. The other was small, barely reaching the first one’s waist. A woman and a child. Elara and Caleb. They were fragmented, translucent, their forms flickering in and out of existence like a faulty projection.

Then came the scream.

It wasn't a sound that travelled through the air to his ears. It erupted inside his skull, a raw, piercing shriek of pure agony that was both silent and deafening. It was a woman’s voice, filled with a pain so absolute it tore through him, vibrating in his very bones. He clamped his hands over his ears, but it did nothing to stop the psychic assault.

As the silent scream faded, leaving a ringing void in his head, his panicked eyes fell upon the wall. The perfectly smooth, freshly painted wall. It seemed to glow faintly in the oppressive dark. He didn't know why, but he felt an overwhelming urge to touch it, as if the answers were buried just beneath the surface.

He stumbled forward, his hand outstretched and trembling. The shimmering figures vanished as he approached. His fingertips made contact with the cold, smooth plaster.

And he felt it.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

It was a pulse. A low, rhythmic thrumming from deep within the wall. He pressed his palm flat against the surface, his mind reeling. It wasn't one heartbeat. It was two. One was a frantic, terrified rabbit’s pace. The other was slower, weaker, fluttering like a trapped bird’s wing. They were beating out of sync, a chaotic duet of terror and fading life, right under his hand.

This wasn’t a patch. It was a seal. This wasn’t a wall. It was a tomb.

A strangled gasp escaped his lips. He ripped his hand away as if the wall had burned him and scrambled backward, tripping over his own feet and crashing to the floor. He crab-walked out of the room, his mind screaming, his gaze locked on the horrifying wall until the hallway eclipsed his view.

He scrambled into the living room, his only thought to get to Kiwi, to wake her, to get them both out of this nightmare.

“Leo?”

Her voice was a terrified whisper from the couch. She was already sitting up, blankets clutched to her chin, her wide, horrified eyes staring not at him, but at the darkest corner of the living room, near the front door.

“You heard it too?” she choked out. “The scream?”

He could only nod, his throat too tight for words. He followed her gaze, his own eyes struggling to adjust to the inky blackness. At first, he saw nothing. Then, they materialized.

Two points of faint, shimmering light, floating in the darkness about four feet off the ground. They weren't reflections. They were self-contained, glowing with a soft, sorrowful luminescence. They were a pair of spectral eyes. And they were staring directly at them, unblinking, filled with an agony that transcended worlds.