Chapter 9: Return to 5B

Chapter 9: Return to 5B

The oily black key felt disgustingly alive in Rohan’s palm. It was warm and slick, pulsing with a faint, abhorrent rhythm that seemed to sync with his own terrified heartbeat. He held it in a white-knuckled grip as he drove through the deserted streets, the city a sleeping beast, oblivious to the parasitic god he was driving to meet. Every traffic light seemed to watch him like a malevolent red eye. The world had become a hostile landscape, and he was the only soldier left on the field.

He parked across the street from the decrepit apartment building. It looked even more menacing than he remembered, a black tooth jutting into the bruised, pre-dawn sky. Its windows were dark, vacant sockets, and the crumbling facade seemed to sag under the weight of an invisible rot. This was the temple. The nest. The place where it all began.

Leaving his car felt like stepping off a cliff. The air was unnaturally still and cold, carrying the faint, familiar scent of rust and decay he now knew so intimately. He crossed the street, his footsteps echoing in the oppressive silence. The building’s front door was unlocked. It swung open with a low groan, revealing a lobby steeped in a darkness that felt thicker than mere absence of light.

He took the stairs, his hand trailing on the grimy banister. Each step upwards was a conscious act of will, a fight against every survival instinct screaming at him to turn and run. The silence in the stairwell was profound, absolute. No creaks from other apartments, no distant hum of a refrigerator. It felt as if the entire building was holding its breath, waiting for him.

The fifth-floor landing was a pocket of profound cold. And there it was. Apartment 5B. The door looked less like wood and more like a slab of scarred tissue. It seemed to pulse faintly in the gloom, a threshold to a living nightmare.

Rohan’s hand trembled as he raised the key. The metal—or whatever passed for metal—felt soft and yielding as he pushed it into the lock. It didn't click into place. It slid in with a wet, squelching sound, like a probe entering flesh. He turned it. The lock disengaged with a sickening, organic pop.

The door swung inward on its own, opening into a chasm of perfect darkness and releasing a wave of the entity's foul perfume. Rohan hesitated for only a second, then stepped across the threshold, into the belly of the beast.

The door swung shut behind him with a final, heavy thud, sealing him in.

His eyes slowly adjusted, and he saw that the apartment was a desecrated monument to their terror. It was a warped, twisted reflection of the place they had celebrated in just a few nights ago. The furniture was overturned, the cushions slashed, exactly as he’d seen in Aman’s final, frantic video. The walls were weeping thick, black streaks that glistened like fresh blood, the same unholy secretion that had bled from Zoya’s walls.

And the song was playing. It wasn't coming from a specific device but seemed to emanate from the air itself, a low, distorted, ambient whisper. The seventh is coming... soon he will be here...

His gaze fell upon the coffee table in the center of the wreckage. Just as Aman had screamed in his last message, six mugs lay smashed, their brightly colored ceramic fragments scattered across the wood like broken bones. They were proof of his friend’s final, futile act of defiance.

But in the center of the devastation, one mug sat untouched.

The seventh mug. Stark white, perfectly clean, and pristine. It wasn't just a cup; it was a place setting. A declaration. An invitation that had never been rescinded. It waited patiently for its guest.

A morbid compulsion drew him deeper into the apartment. He glanced into the bathroom. The mirror above the sink was intact, but it was completely fogged over, just as it had been on the first night. The condensation swirled in slow, oily patterns, and for a terrifying second, he thought he saw the shape of a grinning face form within the mist—his grinning face. He slammed the door shut, his heart hammering. The foul smell of decay and wet hair rising from the floor drain was overpowering, a visceral reminder of Kunal’s defilement and the frantic scratching from below.

He backed away from the bathroom, his gaze drawn to the end of the hall, to the master bedroom. The door was slightly ajar, leaking a darkness that felt older and deeper than the rest of the apartment. This was the heart of it all. The place where the shadow had scuttled away. The place where the knocking had come from inside the wardrobe.

He pushed the door open.

The first thing he saw was the wardrobe. Its dark wood doors hung open, revealing the contents within. Long coats were crammed on the rail, their empty sleeves dangling. But they weren't still. They were swaying, a slow, gentle, rhythmic back-and-forth, as if stirred by a breeze that didn't exist. Their silhouettes were horribly, undeniably human. Six of them. Six hanged figures, dancing slowly in the dark. Rohan remembered their nervous laughter as they'd opened it the first time, finding nothing. The nothing had just been waiting.

He tore his eyes away, forcing himself to scan the rest of the room. The air was frigid, and the whispering song was louder here. His gaze swept past the overturned nightstand, the mattress half-pulled from the bed frame. His eyes settled on the dark, gaping space beneath the bed.

And he saw him.

A scream built in Rohan’s throat, hot and sharp, but it died before it could escape. He was paralyzed, frozen by a sight so utterly impossible, so grotesquely wrong, it shattered the last remnants of his sanity.

Lying on his side in the dust under the bed was Pranav.

He wasn't a ghost or a corpse. He looked solid. Real. He was unnaturally pale, his skin having the waxy sheen of a mannequin, but his eyes were wide open and lucid. There was no fear in them. There was only a profound, beatific calm. A serene, gentle smile graced his lips, the smile of a man who has finally found peace.

Pranav’s gaze met Rohan’s across the ruined bedroom. He looked just as he had in life, just as he had when he’d been sobbing in terror in this very room. But the terror was gone, replaced by a welcoming tranquility.

Then, slowly, Pranav lifted a hand. He uncurled his fingers, beckoning Rohan forward. Inviting him to come closer. To join him.

Rohan finally understood. Pranav’s note wasn’t a suicide letter. It was a statement of intent. I want to go back under the bed. He's saving me a seat. The entity hadn't just killed his friends. It had recruited them. They weren't gone. They were here. They were the bait in the trap. Lures made of memory and love, perfectly crafted to catch the last fish.