Chapter 6: The Landlord's Confession

Chapter 6: The Landlord's Confession

The photograph felt like a block of ice in Leo’s hand. The man’s eyes, rendered in impossible clarity, followed him as he paced the small confines of his apartment. They were the eyes of the silhouette, the eyes of the listener, the eyes of the thing that had whispered his name through the ceiling. This wasn't a haunting. A haunting was a memory, an echo. This was an intelligence, an active, predatory consciousness that could manipulate the physical world with terrifying ease.

The initial shock wave of terror began to recede, replaced by something hard and hot: fury. A white-hot rage directed at the one person who knew. The one person who had looked him in the eye and lied. Mr. Abernathy.

Leo snatched the photograph from the table. He didn't bother locking his door. What was the point? Locks were a comforting fiction in this building. He stormed down the stairs, his footsteps pounding a furious rhythm against the worn wood, each step an indictment of the landlord’s cowardice.

He burst into the cramped office without knocking. Mr. Abernathy sat behind his cluttered desk, looking exactly as he always did—a man drowning in paperwork and secrets. He looked up, his perpetually worried expression flickering into alarm at Leo’s sudden, violent entrance.

“Mr. Vance, I—”

“Don’t,” Leo snarled, his voice a low growl he barely recognized as his own. He strode to the desk and slammed the photograph down on a precarious stack of ledgers. It landed face up, the man’s piercing gaze seeming to judge the entire squalid room. “Explain this.”

Abernathy flinched as if struck. His eyes widened at the sight of the photograph, a choked, gurgling sound escaping his throat. All the blood drained from his face, leaving behind a waxy, corpse-like pallor. He stared at the pristine glass, the sharp image, and Leo saw the last vestiges of his carefully constructed denial shatter.

“Where… where did you get this?” the landlord whispered, his voice trembling.

“From the third floor,” Leo shot back, leaning over the desk, his hands planted flat. “The one with the ‘structural issues’. The one where I found a key slid under my door. The one where this thing,” he jabbed a finger at the photo, “tried to trap me in an empty room after whispering my name through the floorboards.”

Leo’s words tumbled out, a torrent of terror and accusation. He told him everything. The dragging footsteps, the mocking taps, the headphones coiled with mocking precision, the impossibly dry glass of water. He described the gaunt, shadowy figure in the doorway, its broken-necked posture, the glint of malice in the dark.

With every detail, Abernathy seemed to shrink, collapsing in on himself under the weight of a truth he had carried for decades. His frayed suit seemed to hang looser on his frame, his thinning hair looking grayer. The fight was gone. All that remained was a vast, hollowed-out weariness.

“He chose you,” Abernathy finally said, his voice a dead, defeated rasp. He didn’t look at Leo. He looked at the photograph, at the face of the man staring out of it. “I was afraid of this. He’s been… quiet, for so long. I hoped…”

“He? Who is he?” Leo demanded, his anger still burning hot. “Stop talking in riddles! Who is the man in the picture?”

Abernathy finally lifted his gaze. His eyes were rheumy, filled with a despair so profound it was almost bottomless. “His name is Julian. Or, it was.”

He began to speak, the words spilling out in a quiet, monotonic flood, as if a dam had finally broken. “He lived here. A long time ago, in the fifties. He owned the whole building, lived in the penthouse. The entire third floor was his private residence.”

“He was wealthy, charismatic… and obsessed,” Abernathy continued, his gaze distant. “Obsessed with the occult. With extending his life. He believed death was a vulgar inconvenience for lesser men. He spent years gathering artifacts, studying forbidden texts. He wanted to perform a ritual that would grant him… life eternal.”

Leo stood frozen, listening. The story was insane, the stuff of pulp novels, but it fit the chilling, unnatural reality of the past few nights with horrifying precision.

“The ritual required a vessel. An anchor. Something to bind his life force to, so it couldn't escape his body upon death. He chose the Blackwood. This building.” Abernathy gestured vaguely at the walls around them. “He performed the ritual on the third floor, in that room. But something went wrong. The magic was older, darker than he anticipated. It worked, but not in the way he intended.”

“It did grant him a form of immortality,” the landlord said, his voice dropping lower. “But it severed his soul from his body and bound it to the building itself. His body rotted, but his consciousness, his ego, his hunger… it soaked into the foundation. Into the wallpaper. He didn't become a god in his home; he became the ghost in the machine. A parasitic entity, tethered to the place he tried to conquer.”

Abernathy looked at Leo, his expression one of profound pity. “He can’t feel. He can’t taste. He can’t live. He’s just a consciousness trapped in brick and plaster, starving for sensation. So he feeds. He feeds on fear. On terror. On the life force of the people who live here. It’s the only thing that makes him feel alive again.”

The pieces clicked into place with sickening finality. The dry glass of water—it wasn't drunk, it was consumed. The whispering, the moving objects—all displays of power meant to cultivate terror. He wasn't being haunted; he was being farmed.

“And you?” Leo asked, his voice now quiet, cold. “What is your role in this?”

Abernathy’s gaze fell to his trembling hands on the desk. “The curse didn’t end with Julian. It latched onto the caretakers. My grandfather was the building manager when Julian… changed. When he died, the burden passed to my father. And then to me. We are the wardens of his prison. We keep the building running, we find him… sustenance… to keep him placated. To keep him from turning his full attention on our families.”

The word hung in the air between them. Sustenance.

“You sacrifice tenants to him,” Leo stated. It wasn’t a question.

Abernathy flinched, a raw sob catching in his throat. “We choose people who won’t be missed. People like…”

“Like me,” Leo finished for him. An outsider. No friends, no family in the city. A ghost even before he stepped into this tomb.

“Most of the time, he just… grazes,” Abernathy said desperately. “A little fear here, a nightmare there. Enough to sustain him. But every few decades, he gets ambitious. He grows stronger. He isn't content with just feeling alive anymore. He wants to be alive again.”

He pointed a trembling finger at the photograph on his desk. “He’s grown strong enough to try it now. He’s chosen you, Mr. Vance. He’s been testing you, breaking you down, weakening your spirit. This isn't just about feeding anymore. He wants to swap places. He wants to push your soul out and pull his own consciousness into your body. He wants to walk out of that front door, in your skin, and leave you behind to take his place as the new spirit of the Blackwood.”