Chapter 1: The Bargain

Chapter 1: The Bargain

The city air, thick with exhaust and the humid promise of a summer storm, did little to clean the taste of desperation from Leo’s mouth. For three weeks, he’d been running on a dwindling savings account and the bitter dregs of coffee, chasing down apartment listings that evaporated into scams or were snatched up before he could even see them. He was a ghost in a new city, haunted by the specter of his last month’s rent due at a place he could no longer afford.

Then he found it. An ad so understated it was almost invisible, tacked to a corkboard in a laundromat, typed on a yellowing piece of paper: “Apartment for Rent. Blackwood Apartments. Inquire within. Rent negotiable.”

The words ‘negotiable’ and ‘inquire within’ were relics from another era, but to Leo, they screamed ‘affordable’.

The Blackwood stood on a forgotten side street, a five-story brick monolith hunched between two sleeker, more modern buildings. It looked like a rotting tooth in a perfect smile. Grime clung to the masonry, and the windows were dark, vacant eyes. An oppressive quiet hung over it, a bubble of silence in the city’s constant roar. Every rational part of Leo’s brain, the part that had gotten him through a data-entry job he hated by being meticulous and logical, told him to turn around. But the knot of anxiety in his gut, the one that tightened every time he checked his bank balance, pushed him forward.

The landlord’s office was just inside the heavy oak doors, a cramped room that smelled of dust, stale pipe tobacco, and something else—something like old fear. A man with thinning gray hair and a cheap, frayed suit sat behind a desk buried under mountains of paper. His nameplate read M. Abernathy.

“Here about the apartment?” Mr. Abernathy asked, his voice a dry rustle. His eyes, pale and perpetually worried, flickered over Leo before darting away to a corner of the ceiling.

“Yes, sir. The ad in the laundromat,” Leo said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

Abernathy grunted, pulling a single sheet of paper from a drawer. “Apartment 2B. One bedroom. Utilities included.” He named a price so low it made Leo’s breath catch. It wasn’t just cheap; it was a lifeline.

“I’ll take it,” Leo said, the words tumbling out before he could stop them.

The landlord’s gaze finally settled on him, and for a moment, Leo saw a flicker of something that looked like pity. “You don’t want to see it first?”

“For that price? As long as it has four walls and a roof, I’m good.”

Abernathy sighed, a long, weary sound, as if Leo’s answer had confirmed a sad truth. He pushed the lease across the desk. “The building is old,” he said, his tone flat and rehearsed. “It makes noises. Pipes bang, the foundation settles. You’ll hear things. Pay them no mind.”

Leo nodded, grabbing the pen. “Every old building in this city makes noise.”

“Yes.” Abernathy paused, his fingers drumming a nervous rhythm on the worn wood. “One more thing. It’s a strict building rule. The third floor is… off-limits.”

Leo looked up from the signature line. “Off-limits? Why?”

“Storage,” Abernathy said quickly, too quickly. “Structural issues. The owner keeps his personal effects up there. The point is, you have no reason to go up there. Your apartment is on the second floor. Stay on your floor. Understood?”

The warning was bizarre, the landlord’s anxiety palpable, but the number on the lease held Leo captive. He could make this work. He had to. “Understood,” he said, signing his name with a decisive flourish.

Apartment 2B was… bleak. The wallpaper, a faded floral pattern, was peeling in long strips near the ceiling. The air was stagnant with the smell of decay and something metallic and faint, like an old coin held too long in a sweaty palm. But it had a window that overlooked the back alley, a small kitchen with a temperamental-looking stove, and a door that locked. It was a fortress. His fortress.

He spent the rest of the day moving his few possessions—two suitcases of clothes, a box of books, his laptop, and a dented microwave. The building was unnervingly silent. He didn’t see or hear a single other tenant. The only sound was the echo of his own footsteps on the worn linoleum. As he unpacked, he tried to rationalize the landlord’s strange behavior. The man was probably just an eccentric old codger, fiercely protective of a building that was clearly his entire life. The third floor? Probably full of junk and he was embarrassed.

Logic was a comfort. He clung to it as dusk bled through the grimy windowpane, turning the room a bruised purple. He ate instant noodles standing over the sink and washed them down with a glass of tap water that tasted of rust. Exhaustion, deep and profound, finally settled over him.

He crawled into his sleeping bag, which he’d laid out on the floor of the small bedroom. The city outside was a distant hum, but inside the Blackwood, the silence was a physical presence. It pressed in on him, thick and watchful. He closed his eyes, telling himself this was just the anxiety of a new place, a new life.

Sleep was a shallow, restless thing. He drifted in and out, until a sound pulled him fully awake.

Scrape… drag…

It came from above. Directly above.

Leo’s eyes snapped open. He lay perfectly still, straining his ears against the silence. It was probably just the pipes, he told himself, exactly like Abernathy had warned him. Just the building settling.

Scrape… drag…

No. That wasn’t a pipe. It was a rhythm. The sound of a foot being pulled across a floor, not lifted. The sound of something heavy, something lame, pacing the length of the apartment on the third floor. Back and forth. A slow, deliberate, agonizing journey from one end of the room to the other.

He sat up, his heart beginning to hammer against his ribs. He thought about Abernathy’s warning, the fear in the man’s eyes. The third floor is off-limits.

Leo reached for the cheap headphones by his bag, fumbling to plug them into his phone. He blasted music, a wall of angry guitars and pounding drums, trying to drown out the sound from above. But it was no use. The dragging seemed to cut right through the noise, a bass note of pure dread that vibrated down through the ceiling and into his bones.

He yanked the headphones off. The pacing had stopped.

Relief, cool and immediate, washed over him. He was just tired. His mind was playing tricks on him. It was an old building. That was all.

Then he heard the faint, groaning creak of floorboards in the hallway. The third-floor hallway.

The dragging sound started again, but it was different now. It was moving away from the room above him, towards the main stairwell at the end of the hall. He heard the unmistakable protest of the ancient wooden stairs, a slow, tortured creak with each step.

Creak… scrape…

Creak… scrape…

It was coming down.

Leo froze, his body rigid with a primal fear he hadn’t felt since he was a child afraid of the dark. Every logical explanation fled his mind, replaced by a single, screaming certainty: something was descending the stairs, and it was heading for the second floor. For his hallway.

The footsteps stopped.

He held his breath, listening to the frantic thumping of his own blood in his ears. The silence stretched, taut and unbearable. They had stopped right outside his door. He could feel it, a sudden pressure change in the room, the sense of a presence just on the other side of the thin, painted wood. He waited for a knock, a voice, anything.

Instead, there came a sound.

It was soft. Wet. Impossibly close.

A long, slow, disembodied exhale, as if a mouth were pressed directly against the keyhole, emptying ancient, lifeless lungs into his room.

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

The sound hung in the air for a moment, a chilling whisper of decay and malice, before fading back into the oppressive silence of the Blackwood Apartments. Leo didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. He just stared at the door, the flimsy barrier between him and the listener on the other side. The bargain had been struck. The first payment was due.