Chapter 3: Rule Number One

Chapter 3: Rule Number One

Two days bled into a sleepless, caffeine-fueled haze. Alex moved through her apartment like a ghost in her own life, every nerve ending frayed, every shadow a potential threat. The search for Max had become a frantic, obsessive ritual. She’d upended cushions, emptied closets, and peered into every conceivable hiding spot until her knees were bruised and her voice was raw from calling his name. He was gone. The logical part of her brain suggested he might have slipped out when her friends were leaving, but she couldn’t silence the colder, more primal fear that whispered he hadn’t left at all.

Her world had shrunk to the four walls of her apartment, a place that now felt alien and hostile. The silence was the worst part. It pressed in on her, a living entity that amplified every tiny sound—the hum of the refrigerator, the sigh of the elevator in the building’s core, the phantom creak of a floorboard that made her heart seize in her chest. She found herself avoiding the short staircase to the loft, choosing to sleep on the sofa, a flimsy barricade of cushions piled around her.

This morning, denial was making its last stand. She was exhausted, overworked, and probably dehydrated. That was it. Her brain was playing tricks on her. The misplaced keys, the creaking sound—they were products of a mind under duress. She just needed to regain control, to force a routine back into her life.

She started with a shower, standing under the scalding water until her skin was red, trying to wash away the feeling of being constantly watched. When she was done, she pulled the heavy glass door shut with a definitive thud, the sound echoing in the tiled space. She made a point of it, watching the magnetic strip seal the door completely. A small act of order. One closed door. One thing she could be certain of.

She dressed, made coffee, and forced herself to sit at her workstation, staring blankly at the half-finished logo design on her screen. The clean lines and vector shapes felt like a language from another life. She couldn't focus. The image of Max’s empty food bowl was a constant, aching accusation in the corner of her vision.

After an hour of accomplishing nothing, she stood up to pace, the restless energy too much to contain. Her path took her past the hallway leading to the bathroom.

And she stopped dead.

The bathroom door was wide open.

Not ajar. Not cracked. It was pushed all the way back against its stopper, a yawning black rectangle in the white wall.

Alex’s breath hitched. No. Absolutely not. She had closed it. She knew she had. She could still feel the solid thud of it shutting, see the perfect alignment of the glass and the frame. There was no draft in this hallway, no window, no possible explanation. The pressure differential theory, her last flimsy shield of skepticism, shattered into a million pieces.

This wasn't a trick of the mind. This was a message. A deliberate, mocking action designed to be seen. It was the final straw, the one that broke the back of her denial and let the raw, undiluted terror flood in.

Her carefully constructed composure crumbled. A sob, sharp and ragged, tore from her throat. She fumbled for her phone on the kitchen counter, her hands shaking so violently it took three attempts to unlock it. She didn't even think, her thumb scrolling frantically through her contacts until it found the one name she needed.

Her mother picked up on the second ring, her voice calm and familiar. “Alexandra? Is everything—”

“It’s still here,” Alex gasped, cutting her off. The words poured out of her, a frantic, desperate torrent. “The door, Mom, the bathroom door. I closed it, I know I did, I watched myself close it and now it’s wide open. And Max is gone, he’s just gone, I can’t find him anywhere. The other day the keys moved and I heard something… something upstairs, like a giggle.” She was hyperventilating now, pacing a frantic circuit around her kitchen island. “Am I going crazy? Tell me I’m going crazy. I think I’d rather be crazy than this.”

On the other end of the line, the silence was heavy and profound. Alex could hear her mother’s soft, controlled breathing. It wasn’t the shocked silence of disbelief, but the tense, waiting silence of someone who had been expecting this call.

“Alexandra, I need you to listen to me,” Elara said, her voice dropping to a low, urgent whisper that held no comfort, only a chilling gravity. “Very carefully. This is not a game, not like you think. I’ve… seen this before.”

That hint of a dark family history, a door Alex never even knew existed, sent a fresh wave of cold dread through her. “Seen what before? What is it? What’s happening to me?”

“You cannot panic,” Elara commanded, her tone sharp, demanding obedience. “Panic is a kind of attention. It’s a flavor, and these things love it. You need to get a hold of yourself. Now.”

Alex forced herself to stop pacing, gripping the edge of the cold quartz countertop until her knuckles turned white. She took a ragged breath, trying to anchor herself to her mother’s words.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“Good,” Elara said, a faint, shaky relief in her voice. “There are rules, Alexandra. Old rules. You’ve broken one already, the most important one. But now you have to follow the rest. To the letter. Do you understand?”

“Rules?” Alex’s mind reeled. This wasn't a haunting; it was a… a condition? A puzzle with a set of instructions? “What rules?”

“Rule Number One,” Elara stated, her voice as clear and cold as a winter morning. “Don’t give it a name. Don’t speak to it. Don’t even think at it if you can help it. You feed it with your attention. Every glance, every word, every single terrified thought is a meal. It’s starving, and you’re ringing the dinner bell.”

The air left Alex’s lungs. Her mind flashed back to the party, to her standing there, a glass of wine in her hand, her friends laughing as she raised her voice in a drunken, theatrical proclamation.

We see you. You can stop now.

It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t a silly dare. It was an invitation. It was the first, and biggest, meal she had ever served. She had looked right at it, acknowledged it, and given it the one thing it craved above all else. Recognition.

“Oh god,” Alex breathed, slumping against the counter. “At the party… I talked to it. Liam dared me to. I called it the ‘spirit of the door.’”

A sharp intake of breath on her mother’s end. “Don’t say that name again. Don’t call it anything. It’s not a ghost. It’s not a spirit. It’s… a hungry thought. And you’ve let it know you can see it. You’ve let it know you’re the one who can feed it.”

The world tilted on its axis. This wasn’t some random, spectral squatter. This was a predator. A parasite. And she, with her careless words and playful skepticism, had just painted a target on her own back. Her apartment wasn't just haunted; it was a hunting ground. She was no longer a resident being pestered by a noisy ghost; she was prey, locked in a cage with something that was growing stronger off her fear, and she had just learned the first deadly rule of a game she never knew she was playing.