Chapter 4: The Third Floor

Chapter 4: The Third Floor

For a long time, Leo didn't move. He just stared at the antique brass key lying on his linoleum floor, a glinting piece of impossibility. The whisper of his own name—Lllllleeeeeeoooooo—still echoed in the architecture of his skull. The fear was a physical thing, a cold weight in his stomach, but something else was churning beneath it: a hot, bitter anger.

He was being toyed with. Hunted. The slow, methodical breakdown of his sanity was the goal. The dragging, the tapping, the stolen water, the whispered name—it was a game, and he was the only player who didn't know the rules. The terror of the unknown was being replaced by the greater terror of the known: that it would never stop. It would keep escalating, night after night, until he shattered.

The key was an ultimatum. Cower here and wait for the next violation, or go up there and face the source. The victim or the investigator. The choice, suddenly, was no choice at all.

His hand trembled as he bent down and picked up the key. It was heavier than it looked, the brass cool against his clammy skin. The metal was worn smooth in places, evidence of a thousand turns in a lock. It felt ancient, powerful. It felt like a weapon.

Armed with the key and a flashlight from his go-bag, Leo opened his apartment door. The chair he’d wedged underneath it scraped against the floor, a pathetic, useless defense. He looked down the dim, yellow-lit hallway of the second floor. It was his world, his sliver of safety. He was about to leave it behind.

He walked to the main stairwell. The air grew colder as he ascended, the musty smell of the lower floors giving way to something else, something deeper. It was the scent he’d first noticed in his apartment, but magnified: a metallic tang mixed with the cloying sweetness of decay, like rotting leaves and old pennies.

The third-floor landing was a maw of darkness. While the other floors had at least one flickering, jaundiced bulb, this one had none. The darkness was absolute, a light-swallowing blackness that felt heavy and suffocating. Abernathy’s warning echoed in his mind: The third floor is off-limits. Structural issues. It was a lie, Leo knew that now. The landlord wasn’t protecting Leo from a faulty floor; he was protecting the building’s secret from him.

Leo clicked on his flashlight. The beam cut a nervous, trembling circle into the gloom, revealing a hallway that was a ruined reflection of the one below. The wallpaper here wasn't just peeling; it hung in huge, sagging sheets, exposing the dark, stained lath underneath. A thick carpet of dust, undisturbed for what must have been decades, coated the floor. There were no footprints. Nothing had walked here in a very long time.

He swept the light across the doors. There were four of them, two on each side, their paint cracked and blistered. They looked sealed, entombed. But at the far end of the hall, one door was different. It was made of a darker wood, and unlike the others, it had an ornate, old-fashioned keyhole made of matching brass.

His heart hammered against his ribs. This was it. The source. He walked toward it, his footsteps silent in the thick dust. The beam of his flashlight danced, illuminating dust motes that swirled in the dead air like tiny ghosts. As he got closer, he saw that the sound-deadening dust was disturbed in one specific area—a long, continuous groove had been scraped into it, leading directly from this door to the spot on the floor right above his bedroom. The mark of something heavy being dragged. Back and forth. Night after night.

He reached the door. His breath plumed in the cold air. He raised the brass key, the filigreed head a perfect match for the lock plate. His hand was shaking so badly it took him two tries to guide the key into the hole. It slid in with a smooth, oiled precision that defied the decay surrounding it.

He took a deep breath and turned.

The lock gave a single, resonant CLUNK that echoed down the dead hallway, a sound of finality. Of commitment. He pushed the door. It swung open without a sound, its hinges impossibly silent, revealing a room swallowed by the same profound darkness as the hall.

Leo swept his flashlight beam inside. The room was huge, far larger than his own apartment. And it was empty. Utterly, cavernously empty. The dragging sounds, the feeling of oppressive weight from below—he had expected clutter, furniture, a lifetime of junk. But there was nothing. The floorboards were bare, the walls stripped, the windows boarded over from the inside.

Almost nothing.

In the exact center of the vast, empty room, sat a single, high-backed wooden chair. It faced away from him, a solitary, silent occupant. Its placement was too deliberate, too theatrical. It was a stage, and he had just walked onto it.

He stepped into the room, the door swinging shut behind him with a soft click. He was inside the entity’s domain now. The air was frigid, carrying that same scent of decay but with a new, sharp note underneath—something like ozone, the smell of static electricity.

His light found the chair again. There was something resting on the seat. He moved closer, his feet crunching softly on the dusty floor. It was a photograph in a simple, dark frame.

He picked it up. The glass was cracked and faded with age, the image beneath a murky sepia. It was a portrait of a man, likely taken in the 1940s or 50s. He was handsome in a severe, sharp-featured way, with dark, slicked-back hair and wearing a tailored suit. But it was his eyes that held Leo’s attention. Even through the faded emulsion and cracked glass, they were piercing, arrogant, and unsettlingly intense. They seemed to look right through the camera, through the decades, and lock directly onto him. A cold shiver of recognition ran down Leo's spine, a feeling that he was looking at the face of his tormentor.

He leaned closer, trying to make out more detail, his focus entirely on the image in his hands.

That’s when he heard it.

The sound was not in the hall. It was not above him. It was right behind him.

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

The slow, wet, deliberate exhale. It was a sound of immense satisfaction, of a predator that has successfully lured its prey into the trap.

Leo’s blood turned to ice. Every muscle in his body screamed. He spun around, dropping the photograph, which shattered on the floorboards.

The beam of his flashlight cut through the darkness and landed on the doorway.

His escape was blocked.

A figure stood there, a tall, gaunt silhouette framed against the faint light from the crack under the door. Its proportions were wrong, the limbs too long, the shoulders too narrow. Its head was tilted at an unnatural, broken-necked angle. It was made of shadow, a tear in the fabric of the room, but it was solid enough to block the only way out. He couldn't see a face, no clothes, nothing but the stark, terrifying shape of a man made from malice. And from the center of that inky blackness, where its eyes should be, he saw it: a faint, predatory glint, like moonlight on an oil slick. The listener, the whisperer, the thing from the third floor, was finally, terribly visible.