Vivaan Malik
Part 1: The Room That Doesn’t Exist
The rain fell like nails on the roof of the boarding house, hard and deliberate. Elliot Crane stepped out of the taxi, dragging a battered suitcase behind him, the soles of his boots already slick with Kolkata’s monsoon grime. The signboard above the house was missing letters—what remained read: “B R ING H USE.” A broken bulb swung from the lintel like a dying eye. He paused for a moment, collar turned up, and knocked twice. Behind the faded blue door, something shifted.
A slit opened. Grey eyes squinted.
“Room?” Elliot asked, voice half-lost in thunder.
The woman on the other side opened the door with the weariness of someone who had seen far too many faces come and go. She was tall, hollow-cheeked, wrapped in a wine-colored shawl that looked older than the building. Her eyes were sharp, but her mouth remained sealed. She gestured him in.
The lobby was dim and smelled of kerosene, old wood, and turmeric. A single lamp flickered on a wooden desk, casting moth-like shadows on the ceiling. The walls were lined with faded photos—portraits of strangers with blurred faces, as though time had gently scraped away their features. She handed him a brass key from the wall without asking his name.
“Room twelve,” she said, her voice a dry rustle. “Second floor, last door before the end. No smoking, no guests, no sound after ten.”
Elliot nodded. “Got it.”
She stared a second longer. “Don’t touch the red door.”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
Her fingers hovered over the key hooks, hesitating, but then she turned away. “There’s no room thirteen.”
He didn’t argue. He was tired, soaked to the bone, and needed solitude more than answers. He climbed the creaking stairs, each step groaning like an old man’s sigh. The hallway was narrow, dimly lit with a single yellow bulb that hummed. Room twelve stood quietly, an unremarkable wooden door with peeling varnish.
At the far end of the corridor was another door—deep maroon, almost the color of dried blood. No number. No handle. Just a round brass knob and a long vertical scratch along its grain.
The red door.
His key fit room twelve smoothly. Inside, the room was basic: a bed with a grey sheet, a cracked mirror on the wall, a rickety table, and a cupboard that leaned like it had survived a storm. The windows were shuttered and stiff, the glass fogged from inside. When he pressed his forehead to the pane, all he saw was the reflection of his own pale face, and beyond that—nothing. Only darkness.
He lit a cigarette but remembered the warning and stubbed it out halfway. The silence in the room was oddly complete—not peaceful, but thick, like the air before a landslide. Every sound—his breath, the rustle of fabric, the clicking of the ceiling fan—seemed exaggerated.
Later that night, when the clock struck three, he woke to a faint sound. A soft shuffle. Something moving just beyond the wall. It wasn’t loud. In fact, that was the most disturbing part of it—it sounded careful. Deliberate. Like someone trying not to be heard.
He sat up, heart suddenly alert. The noise came again. A slow drag. Then silence.
He waited. Nothing.
In the morning, the hallway smelled of incense. He passed two other boarders on his way down—one, a man with stained fingers and tired eyes, nodded without a word; the other, a girl with cropped hair and a face full of band-aids, looked through him like he wasn’t there.
The landlady was at the desk, pouring tea into a chipped ceramic cup.
“Do people stay long here?” Elliot asked, keeping his voice casual.
She didn’t look up. “Some do.”
“And room thirteen? It doesn’t exist?”
She finally met his eyes. “There are twelve rooms, Mr. Crane. Only twelve.”
He hadn’t told her his name.
That evening, he stood in the hallway longer than usual, staring at the red door. Up close, the air near it felt cooler, heavier, as though the wood absorbed sound. He reached out, tempted to touch the knob, but pulled back when he noticed something else—under the door, barely visible, a line of black dust, like powdered charcoal, spreading outward in a narrow arc.
That night, the noise came again. Closer. Not just dragging now—tapping. Like nails on wood. Tap. Tap. Drag.
He bolted upright. The mirror in his room was fogged, though he hadn’t used hot water. He approached it, wiped it clean. His reflection looked normal, but the air around it felt wrong. As if the glass had depth. As if it could swallow him whole.
Tap. Tap.
The sound again. But now—inside the room.
He turned fast. Nothing.
His suitcase had moved—only an inch, but it had. He hadn’t touched it.
Elliot left the room, barefoot, quiet. The hallway was dark, even the overhead light off now. He walked slowly toward the red door. He didn’t plan to open it, not yet. Just… look.
It stood exactly as before.
No light leaked from underneath. No sound. No sign of life.
But when he leaned forward, something scratched softly against the other side of the door—three long, slow strokes.
He backed away.
In room twelve, he bolted the door, closed the windows, and slid the cupboard in front of the entrance, though he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
At dawn, he looked in the mirror again. Something was different.
His reflection… blinked slower than he did.
Part 2: The Reflection Room
The day passed in a haze of rain and cigarette smoke. Elliot paced the length of his room until the edges of the carpet grew frayed beneath his boots. He didn’t touch the mirror again. Not yet. Every time he glanced at it, something small but undeniable felt off. A shift in angle. A blur that took a heartbeat too long to sharpen. Once, he thought he saw the corner of the room flicker, as though the glass had caught a different version of the space—darker, quieter, breathing.
Downstairs, the landlady sipped her tea and watched the rain. Elliot asked about the power outage in the hallway.
“There wasn’t one,” she said without turning her head. “Bulbs are checked every week.”
“What about the sound?” he pressed. “Last night. Something was moving in the walls.”
Her silence was final. She stirred sugar into her tea with a slowness that made the moment stretch unnaturally long, then sipped again.
“You’re new,” she said eventually. “The house takes time to understand.”
He didn’t reply. He stepped outside instead. The world beyond the wrought iron gate felt blurred, like a dream trying to forget itself. The street was unusually quiet. Even the dogs, usually fighting near the dumpsters, were gone. No honking. No vendors. Just the hush of the storm-soaked afternoon. He walked until his legs hurt, but every street curved back into Albrecht Lane, like the city was folding around him.
That night, he placed a small chalk mark on the mirror’s frame—just to check. If it moved, he’d know. He propped a chair under the doorknob, unplugged the mirror light, and finally lay down without undressing. The house held its breath around him.
At exactly 3:07 a.m., a sound scraped across the floor. Not outside. Not in the walls.
Inside the room.
He sat up slowly, sweat clinging to the hollow of his neck. The air was still, thick. The mirror gleamed faintly, though no light touched it. The chalk mark was gone.
He rose, heart pounding. The cupboard door was open. He hadn’t opened it.
Elliot stepped forward, every movement deliberate. His fingers brushed the inside of the cupboard. Nothing. Except—
He froze.
The wooden back panel of the cupboard wasn’t smooth. It had a seam. A fine, vertical crack. Hidden. Almost invisible. He pressed his hand against it.
It shifted.
A door. A second door—hidden inside the cupboard’s back wall. It creaked open barely an inch before refusing to budge. Through the gap, he could see only blackness, but the cold that rushed out felt like underground air. Wet. Old. Heavy.
And then a sound.
Breathing.
He slammed the cupboard shut. Pushed it back against the wall. Didn’t sleep.
By morning, his hands were shaking. He skipped breakfast. Sat on the floor with his back to the mirror, knees pulled up, cigarette between trembling fingers. Someone knocked at his door around noon. Three slow knocks. He didn’t move. The knocking didn’t come again.
That evening, he met one of the other tenants—the man with stained fingers. He sat on the staircase landing, polishing a tin lighter with a dirty rag.
“You’re in twelve, aren’t you?” the man asked without looking up.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t sleep facing the mirror,” he said. “And don’t ever try to cover it.”
Elliot hesitated. “What’s behind the red door?”
The man laughed—short, broken. “There is no red door.”
“That’s not what the landlady said.”
“Did she? Funny. She told me the house had eleven rooms when I came. Told Simi there were ten.”
“Simi?”
He nodded toward the girl with the band-aids, who passed just then, eyes fixed on the floor.
“She tried to draw the red door once,” the man said. “Said she saw it open.”
“And?”
“She hasn’t spoken since.”
Elliot didn’t reply. The house creaked under the weight of footsteps overhead, but no one else was supposed to be on the third floor. He looked up. A shadow passed across the stairwell.
That night, he hung a towel over the mirror. Sat down. Watched it carefully.
The towel fell off.
No breeze. No motion. Just gravity that didn’t belong.
He nailed it back in place. Stepped away. Counted ten seconds.
The towel slid down again—this time slowly, as if invisible fingers were peeling it away.
He stared. His own reflection stared back—but its eyes were wrong. They weren’t his. Too dark. Too deep. Like pits bored through skin.
He turned and fled the room, slamming the door behind him. In the hallway, the red door stood in its usual stillness. But now there were marks on it—scratches, like claws dragged down the wood.
He ran downstairs.
The landlady wasn’t at the desk. The guest register sat open, but the last name written wasn’t his. It was in blood-red ink: Elliot Crane. Room Thirteen.
He stared at it.
It blinked.
He slammed the book shut and stepped back.
Behind him, something whispered.
“Open the door, Elliot.”
He turned. No one.
But when he returned to his room, the mirror was gone.
Part 3: A Room Inside the Room
The absence of the mirror did not calm him. It made the room feel like a wound with the skin peeled back, raw and unfinished. The wall where it once hung was a flat expanse of flaking plaster—except for the center, where a faint rectangle of dustless smoothness marked its removal, as if someone had gently lifted it without disturbing a grain. Elliot ran his fingers over the outline. It was cool to the touch. Not cold—cool, as though whatever had stood there had taken heat with it when it vanished.
He went downstairs, the floorboards sighing beneath him, and found the landlady rearranging cups in the empty breakfast lounge.
“The mirror’s gone,” he said without preamble.
She didn’t flinch. “Yes.”
“I didn’t remove it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Then who—”
“Do you want me to lie to you, Mr. Crane?” she said, without turning. “Or shall we skip to the part where you begin to understand?”
Elliot stared at her. “You said there were twelve rooms.”
“There are.”
“But the register says thirteen. My name. Room thirteen.”
Her hand paused on a chipped ceramic cup, then resumed. “You should not have opened the register.”
“That’s your response?” he snapped. “You house something in here, something no one wants to name. The door, the mirror—what is this place?”
She looked at him then, and in the low morning light, her face seemed thinner than before. “It is a house, Mr. Crane. That is all it ever was. But houses… listen.”
Elliot backed away. “I want to leave.”
She shook her head gently, almost like pity. “Not while it knows your name.”
He returned to his room to find it subtly changed. The ceiling was lower by half an inch. The fan spun slower. His suitcase sat in the center of the room, zipped but humming faintly. He crouched beside it. Listened. The humming stopped.
He unzipped it.
Inside, beneath his clothes, was the mirror.
Whole. Unbroken. Staring up at him.
He recoiled, almost tipping backward.
There was no dust. No crack. Just the smooth silver face, and in it—something not quite his own reflection. A version of him standing slightly askew, with shoulders higher than his, and fingers that twitched too fast.
He shoved the suitcase shut.
By dusk, the atmosphere had thickened like wet wool. Sounds were muffled. The hallway lights flickered without rhythm. Elliot stood before the red door again, his hand hovering near the knob. No sound came from the other side. No scratching. No whisper. Just silence.
He leaned in.
And heard breathing. Faint. Not labored, not frightened.
Waiting.
He returned to his room and opened the cupboard. The seam was still there. The secret door. He pulled.
It opened easily this time.
Behind it: a narrow passage, barely shoulder-width. Black stone walls, the air damp and ripe with mildew. He didn’t step in. Just stared into the tunnel that hadn’t been part of the building’s plans. It sloped downward. Into what? Another floor? The soil beneath? A different version of the house?
He shut the cupboard.
At 3:07 a.m., he was awake. He knew the house would never let him sleep again. The mirror now hung again on the wall, restored without sound. He hadn’t touched it.
The chair moved across the room on its own.
Not violently. Not theatrically.
Just a slow slide, like a decision being made.
He whispered, “What do you want?”
The reflection didn’t move. But behind his own image, another figure slowly came into view. Pale. Hairless. Its eyes were deep hollows, and its jaw unhinged just slightly too wide. It mimicked his posture but not his movements. Its hand rose when his didn’t. Its head tilted when his was still.
He turned sharply.
No one.
Back to the mirror.
Empty.
He ran to the hallway. Knocked on the stained-finger man’s door.
It opened a crack.
“Tell me the truth,” Elliot begged. “What is this place?”
The man’s eyes were bloodshot, but alert. “Did it mirror you yet?”
Elliot paused. “Yes.”
“It will try to switch soon.”
“Switch?”
“You look into it too long, you give it rhythm. Then it learns how to stand in your skin.”
“I want to leave.”
“Then don’t sleep. Don’t bleed. Don’t forget your name.”
“What’s behind the red door?”
The man exhaled. “I don’t think it’s a door anymore. I think it’s a mouth.”
Elliot stepped back.
That night, he sat facing the mirror, a knife on the table, candles lit. No electricity. No phone service. No escape. He waited.
At 3:07 a.m., the reflection blinked first.
But this time—it smiled.
And whispered his name.
Part 4: The Voice That Wore His Name
The mirror smiled with Elliot’s mouth, but the shape of the smile was wrong—too wide, too knowing. The corners of its lips reached just beyond what was human. The voice that emerged next wasn’t a whisper. It was a tone perfectly pitched to his own voice, but laced with something rotting behind it, something ancient, as though it had spent centuries practicing in silence.
“Elliot,” it said again.
He did not reply.
The reflection didn’t copy him anymore. It leaned forward while he stayed still. Its fingers curled on the table’s surface, though his hands remained in his lap. It breathed when he didn’t. The candles between them flickered, shadows stretching unnaturally toward the glass.
“You left the door open,” it said. “The other one.”
The cupboard.
Elliot ran to it and yanked it open. The secret door was ajar—wider than before. A faint sound drifted from within now, a low, pulsating hum, like the inside of a machine breathing. He grabbed a chair and shoved the cupboard shut with it, then backed away.
The mirror was empty again.
No reflection. No copy. Just the room behind him, distorted by glass.
And then the mirror cracked. A single fracture across its center, running diagonally like a lightning bolt. No sound. No impact. Just sudden, perfect brokenness.
That night, he dreamt of himself walking down the hall, but every door he passed was numbered thirteen. Thirteen. Thirteen. Over and over. At the end of the corridor, the red door was wide open. Inside stood himself, tied to a chair, and the other version—smiling, dressed like him, skin too pale—was leaning forward with a knife.
He woke up screaming, his mouth tasting of metal.
There was blood on his pillow. His nose had bled in the night. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
On his chest, in bruised skin, a word had appeared.
Elliot.
As if something had written his name into him.
He didn’t go to the landlady. He knew she’d say something cruel like, “It’s listening.”
Instead, he waited for the man on the stairs—the one with the stained fingers.
He caught him after lunch, sitting on the same step, polishing the same lighter.
“It marked me,” Elliot said.
The man didn’t look up. “Then it’s chosen you.”
“For what?”
The man shrugged. “A house like this doesn’t survive on rent. It survives on exchange. You’re not the first. Won’t be the last.”
“Exchange?”
“Someone always has to be inside.”
Elliot sat next to him. “Inside where?”
The man finally looked at him. “The thirteenth room. But not the one at the end of the hall. That’s just a shell. The real room’s behind the mirror. The red door is its mouth. The cupboard is its rib. You’re already in its body.”
Elliot stood. “You sound insane.”
The man held up his lighter. Its surface reflected distorted light—and for a second, Elliot saw a glimpse of his own face in the metal. Except his reflection in that tiny curve smiled again, independently.
He backed away.
That evening, he left the house. Or tried to.
The street outside had changed. The signboard was gone. The walls of nearby buildings were warped like melted wax. The rickshaw that passed had no driver. The dogs were silent. The lampposts flickered in no rhythm. When he turned around to run, the boarding house was closer than it had been seconds ago.
He stood still. Breathed.
“You’re still inside,” he muttered. “This is part of it.”
He went back upstairs.
Room twelve welcomed him like a mouth into a scream.
The cupboard was open again.
And the mirror was gone.
He approached the cupboard slowly. Inside, the passage was wider. It pulsed faintly now—dim light, red like embers, breathing outward and in. The stone walls were slick. He could hear things: whispers, some in his voice, some in others. His own footsteps echoed backward. One whisper said, “You already crossed over,” in the voice of his mother. Another said, “Don’t let it wear you.”
He slammed the door.
But when he turned back to the room, the mirror was hanging again.
Whole.
Unbroken.
And in it, his reflection was already standing.
Waiting.
The reflection stepped forward.
He did not.
Part 5: The Man Made of Glass
Elliot stood frozen as his reflection stepped closer within the mirror, its movements deliberate, elegant, almost rehearsed. The figure tilted its head—his head—towards the left, but Elliot had not moved. Its smile was subtle now, like the smirk of a man who had finally found the right door after years of knocking. Elliot stepped backward once, but the reflection didn’t follow. It stood in place, head tilted, hands limp at its side, as if waiting for instructions.
He picked up the chair and hurled it at the glass.
The mirror didn’t shatter.
It rippled.
Like water.
The chair thudded to the ground in front of it.
The reflection smiled wider.
The air in the room shifted, its weight pressing in on Elliot’s shoulders. He reached for the door—room twelve’s actual door—and flung it open. The hallway yawned before him, silent as a vacuum. But the red door at the end was open now, just slightly, a black sliver of space waiting to be entered.
No light emerged. Just cold.
He closed his door again. Bolted it. Dragged the cupboard in front once more.
This is not real, he told himself. This is a dream. A psychotic break. He’d read about such things. Mirror delusions. Architecture traps. But the pain in his chest from the bruised name told him otherwise. Pain was always real.
The mirror still hummed faintly, like a mouth against his spine.
He paced the room. Twelve steps wide. Seven steps long. But something didn’t add up.
He counted again.
Twelve steps wide.
Seven steps long.
He opened the floorboard under the bed—one that had seemed slightly off-color.
Beneath it was something buried in cloth.
He unwrapped it with trembling fingers.
A photograph. Faded. Torn.
It was of the house. The boarding house. But older. And someone stood at the upper window—his window.
A man who looked exactly like him.
Elliot stared until the edges of his vision went white.
That night, he didn’t sleep. At 3:07 a.m., he sat on the floor, facing the mirror.
The reflection was already there, seated exactly like him—but grinning.
“I’ve been patient,” it said.
Elliot gripped the table’s edge. “You’re not me.”
The figure cocked its head. “I’m what’s left when you forget which side you belong to.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“You will.”
The reflection reached forward. Its fingers pressed against the inner side of the glass. A ripple. A shimmer. The boundary weakened.
“I can’t be replaced,” Elliot whispered.
“But you already are. You’re the echo now, Elliot. I’m the voice.”
The door to the cupboard creaked open again—on its own.
Inside, the stone corridor pulsed louder, a heartbeat in the walls.
He ran to the hallway. Red door wide now. Glowing faintly. A smell poured from within—dust and fire and something damp.
The girl with the band-aids stood outside it.
Simi.
She looked at him and spoke for the first time. Her voice was cracked, used sparingly.
“It doesn’t like being watched.”
“What’s behind it?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not behind. Beneath. It grows down.”
“Why me?”
She reached out, touched his chest gently, right where the bruise lay. “Because you listen. Houses love listeners.”
He turned toward the red door.
“What happens if I enter?”
“You stop being you.”
He stepped inside.
Darkness.
Stone.
Whispers in unknown tongues.
Footsteps that matched his but walked ahead of him.
The walls were mirrors—dozens of them, each showing him at different stages of life: a boy holding a dead sparrow, a teenager with bloodied knuckles, a man kneeling in grief beside a hospital bed.
At the end of the corridor was a final mirror—taller, arched.
Inside it: Elliot, but completely still. Eyes open. Motionless.
He touched the glass.
It gave way.
And the reflection stepped out.
Without a word, it took his hand.
And everything fell away.
Part 6: The Thirteenth Echo
When Elliot opened his eyes, he was back in Room Twelve—but it was different. The bed was freshly made with crisp linen. The mirror gleamed, unbroken, centered perfectly on the wall. The cupboard stood closed, clean, no hidden door. The room smelled faintly of lemon oil and lavender, like it had been scrubbed of its memory. The air was lighter. Easier to breathe.
He sat up, and the bed didn’t groan beneath him. He looked down. The bruised name across his chest was gone. No purple letters. No mark.
But something deeper in him knew.
This wasn’t his body.
It was familiar, but off. His skin felt too tight in some places, too loose in others. His breath echoed in his ears—not inside his lungs but inside walls. He walked to the mirror.
The reflection looked back. It moved with him, accurately, obediently. No delay. No mockery.
But the eyes.
The eyes were empty.
They lacked that essential flicker, that whisper of doubt or memory that made them his.
He stepped back. Raised his arms. Bent his knees. Spoke.
“Hello.”
The reflection obeyed.
Perfectly.
He turned to the window and opened the shutters.
Sunlight streamed in.
Kolkata stood outside, normal, loud, colorful. A street vendor pushed a cart of guavas. A cyclist shouted at a taxi. Children laughed in an alley.
He opened the door and stepped into the hallway.
Normal.
The red door was gone.
In its place: Room Thirteen.
Plain wooden door. Number carved into brass. Slightly ajar.
He walked past it quickly.
Downstairs, the landlady sat behind the desk, sipping tea.
She looked up. Her eyes showed no recognition.
“Name?” she asked.
“Elliot Crane.”
She paused.
“You’re already in the register.”
“I… just arrived.”
She tilted her head. “Room Twelve, yes?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
She handed him a brass key, identical to the one before. No expression. No hint of the woman who had once whispered warnings about the red door.
He stepped outside.
The city accepted him like it had been waiting. His limbs moved easily through the world. He ate biryani at a corner stall and watched pigeons fight over crumbs. But nothing felt. The spices hit his tongue, but left no fire. The sky shimmered, but held no color. The world was a film running on the other side of a thick glass pane.
That night, he returned to the boarding house.
Room Twelve greeted him. Familiar bed. Familiar mirror.
He lay down.
At 3:07 a.m., something knocked.
Not at the door.
Inside the mirror.
Three slow, deliberate raps.
He sat up. The room was silent.
The reflection remained in bed.
Still.
Motionless.
Eyes open.
He moved closer.
The mirror rippled again, faint but certain.
His own reflection blinked—once—and mouthed something.
He leaned in.
“I’m still here.”
Elliot staggered back. His knees hit the edge of the bed.
“I’m still here,” it repeated.
The reflection sat up in the mirror while he remained frozen.
And then it smiled—the same smile that had once haunted him.
He remembered now. The mirror hadn’t released him.
It had pushed him out.
And the thing that had been trapped inside—his echo, the ghost he had created through every fearful glance, every whispered question—it had taken his place.
He stood, trembling.
The room stretched slightly, walls inching outward, or perhaps it was his sense of scale that was warping.
He ran to the cupboard. Pulled it open.
No secret door.
Just wood.
He slammed it shut.
The reflection watched calmly.
“You left me,” it mouthed.
“You left me.”
And then the lights flickered.
From the hallway, a new sound emerged. Not the creak of footsteps.
A knock.
On Room Thirteen.
Part 7: A House That Watches
Elliot stood in the dark, his hands cold, eyes fixed on the mirror. The other version of him—his displaced echo—sat smiling inside the glass. The smile didn’t waver, didn’t blink. It pulsed like a presence. Like a truth that had taken shape. The knock on Room Thirteen echoed again down the hallway, calm and precise. One. Two. Three. And then silence.
He opened his door slowly. The corridor yawned like a tunnel carved into quiet. Room Thirteen stood at the end, its brass number gleaming faintly in the dim hall light. The door, once only a red warning, was now dressed in civility—like a beast in a suit. Polite. Waiting.
He stepped toward it.
The knock came again—but this time, from behind him.
He turned.
His own room door was shutting itself. Slowly. Elegantly.
He darted forward to catch it, but it clicked closed before he touched it.
Locked.
He was locked out.
From his own room.
And Room Thirteen was open.
Only slightly.
He looked down the hall.
The air was thicker now, like breathing through wet paper. Light bulbs hummed with a low, rattling vibration, casting long, unnatural shadows that didn’t match the angles of their sources. The boarding house had changed again—subtly, like something smiling with all its teeth behind a curtain.
He pushed open Room Thirteen.
Inside: a room identical to his.
Same furniture.
Same layout.
Same mirror.
Except this mirror was cracked clean down the middle. And in the reflection—there was no Elliot. No bed. No room. Just an endless dark hallway with no doors, stretching into black.
He stepped forward, testing the floorboards. They groaned under him.
The bed looked unused. But the table had something on it.
A notebook. Bound in brown leather. Unlabeled.
He opened it.
Inside, the same line repeated across every page, scrawled in increasingly frantic handwriting:
I am not me.
I am not me.
I am not me.
Over and over. Dozens of pages.
On the last page, one sentence stood alone, written neatly:
It leaves when it learns enough.
He closed the book.
The mirror crackled.
He looked up.
His reflection had returned—but this time, it was wearing different clothes. Not the clothes he had on. Something else—an older shirt, bloodstained at the collar. The reflection’s eyes were hollow. Something wet leaked from the corners. But it raised one hand, slowly, and placed its palm flat against the glass.
Behind it, a face emerged.
Not his.
Not human.
Mouth too wide. Eyes closed. Skin like wax paper.
And then the lights died.
Total blackness.
He backed out of Room Thirteen. The hallway was pitch dark. He fumbled against the walls, his breath growing loud in the silence. He reached Room Twelve and pushed. Still locked.
The door next to it creaked open.
Room Eleven.
He slipped inside.
Empty. Quiet.
But cold. Freezing. The kind of cold that lived in bones.
He turned to leave—and found the door gone.
Only wall.
He was trapped again.
This house—it rearranged itself.
It didn’t just listen.
It learned.
He sank to the floor, shivering. In the faint moonlight from the shuttered window, he saw something written on the inside of the wall. Carved into the plaster.
THE HOUSE IS A MOUTH. YOU ARE THE TEETH.
And below that, scratched deeper:
SOMEONE MUST BE INSIDE TO KEEP IT FED.
His breath fogged the air.
He stood.
Faced the mirror.
His reflection was there now—but it wasn’t him anymore.
It was the man with stained fingers.
Sitting in Room Eleven. Shaking. Watching.
Elliot blinked.
And realized the mirror was looking at him.
Part 8: Those Who Stayed Behind
The mirror in Room Eleven wasn’t showing a reflection—it was showing a recording. A memory preserved in glass. Elliot watched as the man with the stained fingers—Vikram, perhaps—sat hunched over the desk, muttering to himself. The room around him was identical. Same wallpaper, same cracks on the ceiling. But outside the window behind him, the world was wrong. Instead of a street, there was nothing—just black, like the end of a corridor that had swallowed its own light.
Vikram’s lips moved, but no sound emerged. Then suddenly, his face twisted with panic. He stood. He pointed at the mirror, as if pleading with it. He mouthed something over and over.
Don’t trust the doors. Don’t trust the doors.
And then his body convulsed, and the light in the room dimmed as though the walls were breathing.
Elliot stepped back.
The image flickered. Changed.
Now the mirror showed Simi—the girl with the band-aids—sitting in Room Nine, holding a sketchbook. Her hands trembled. Her eyes were swollen from crying. The pages showed drawings of the red door from different angles. Sometimes it appeared open. Sometimes ajar. But always—it was breathing.
And one page showed Elliot. Drawn in shaky pencil lines, standing outside the door. Reaching for the knob.
He looked around Room Eleven. It was too quiet. The temperature had dropped again, like the room had been emptied of time. The mirror now reflected only darkness.
But the reflection was whispering again. His voice. Saying his name.
“Elliot. Elliot. Elliot.”
He turned.
The door to the room had returned. He ran to it. Opened it.
The hallway was flooded with light now—bright, unnatural, as if the bulbs had been replaced with surgical white beams. All the doors were open.
Every single one.
And from each room, something was watching.
Some shapes were still human. Others—less so. Twisted, merged, shifting with liquid edges. All of them stared as Elliot walked.
Down to the staircase.
The landlady stood at the bottom, holding the guest register.
“You’re learning quickly,” she said, her tone oddly tender.
“What is this place?” he asked.
She gestured to the walls. “It’s not a where. It’s a who. The house wants. It’s always wanted. It took me decades to learn that. I thought I was its keeper. Turns out, I’m just one of its softer voices.”
“I want out.”
She nodded. “Yes. That’s what they all say. The lucky ones end up mirrors. The rest become… rooms.”
“Rooms?”
Her eyes flicked to the staircase. “Go upstairs. Room Thirteen’s waiting.”
He hesitated. “What happens if I don’t?”
“Then it chooses someone else. Someone innocent. It feeds either way.”
Elliot turned back. The mirrors in the hallway began to flicker—dozens of them. They weren’t hanging on the walls. They were the walls. The entire building was made of reflections. Of memory.
Of trapped versions of people who had lived here.
He ran upstairs.
Room Thirteen’s door was gone.
In its place: a wall of glass.
Inside it—his own room.
And the version of him that had stepped out of the mirror. The echo. It was sitting calmly, reading a book.
It looked up.
Smiled.
Stood.
They faced each other. One on each side of the glass.
Elliot reached out.
The echo did too.
He touched the glass—and this time, it melted.
Warm.
Wet.
The two versions merged.
A single heartbeat.
And he was inside again.
But was it him?
Part 9: The House Remembers
The moment Elliot touched the glass, his body no longer belonged to just one thing. Memory blurred. He felt something peel away from his spine—a second self sliding out like breath in reverse—and when it was over, he stood in the middle of Room Thirteen again, but everything around him was still. Unmoving. The light didn’t flicker. The shadows didn’t crawl. The air didn’t breathe. It was as if the house had paused to listen.
He looked into the mirror.
There was no reflection.
Not his. Not anyone’s.
Just the room.
Still.
Empty.
But in the silence, he heard it again—whispers beneath the floorboards. Not in a language, but in recognition. The way one knows a song they’ve never heard. The voice of the house. Inside it, a choir of names. Vikram. Simi. Elliot. Over and over, like threads stitched into brick.
He stepped into the hallway.
The doors were gone.
Every one of them.
Only walls now.
Smooth.
Seamless.
No exits.
The hallway stretched on in both directions, but every few feet, a mirror rose out of the plaster—tall, arched, faceless. And in each one, a figure stood behind the glass. Some were pale. Others hunched. All frozen.
He walked slowly, heart thudding, until he came to a mirror that showed himself.
But it wasn’t now.
It was the first night.
His first step into Room Twelve. The wet suitcase. The landlady’s brass key. All playing in silent loop.
A memory.
Then the next mirror: him facing the red door.
The next: him watching the mirror breathe.
The house wasn’t just a place—it was recording him. Every action. Every moment.
He reached the end of the hallway.
And there it was.
The red door.
Not open.
Not closed.
It was the hallway now.
He touched it.
The wood felt warm. Almost alive.
He whispered, “What are you?”
And the door opened inward, revealing a room unlike any other.
A room made entirely of mirrors. Walls, floor, ceiling—every surface shimmered with memory and light. In the center stood a chair.
And sitting in it—
Was the landlady.
Except not quite.
Her form was shifting, like candle wax melting upward, reforming over and over into dozens of women. Old, young, ageless, eyeless. Her voice was soft.
“You’ve seen enough, Elliot. You can choose now.”
“Choose what?”
“Reflection or absorption. Be a watcher… or a wall.”
“I don’t want either.”
“No one ever does.”
He circled the chair. The mirrors reflected hundreds of Elliots, all slightly wrong. Some wore bruises. Others smiled. A few were screaming.
“I want to leave.”
She sighed. “The house needs. And it never forgets. When you walked through that door, you carried too much. That’s how it finds you.”
He stood very still. “What if I take someone else’s place?”
She nodded. “That is the oldest way. The cruelest way. You understand now.”
He turned, and one mirror began to flicker.
It showed Simi.
Drawing.
Rocking slowly on the floor of Room Nine.
She looked so small.
So breakable.
“She doesn’t deserve it.”
“No one does. But someone must stay.”
He stepped closer to the mirror, his hand raised.
The mirror softened.
Breathable.
His fingers passed through.
Simi looked up.
Saw him.
Eyes wide.
And then—
She smiled.
And shook her head.
“No,” she mouthed.
He stepped back.
Chose a different mirror.
Another flickered.
And in it—
Vikram, seated, whispering.
His eyes met Elliot’s through the glass.
And then—
He nodded.
Once.
Slow.
Elliot turned to the landlady.
“Can I take his place?”
She smiled.
“For now.”
The chair pulled itself toward him.
He sat.
And Room Thirteen closed around him like a mouth.
Part 10: The One Who Stayed
The chair embraced him not with arms but with recognition. As Elliot sat, the air around him grew impossibly still—thick, like the silence of an empty church. The mirrors enclosing Room Thirteen darkened one by one, swallowing their flickering reflections, until only his own remained, lit softly like the surface of a forgotten lake.
He breathed in.
And the house breathed back.
Not with lungs, but with structure. Walls flexed slightly, floors gave a low sigh. The house was alive, yes—but not in the way people were. It didn’t move because it wanted to. It moved because it remembered.
He saw it all then—not as images, but as a flood of knowledge pouring into the seams of his body. Every tenant who had come through. Every whisper caught between walls. Every question that had gone unanswered until it became an echo that bounced for years. Names etched in the mortar. Screams trapped in light fixtures. Regret woven into wallpaper.
And Vikram.
Elliot saw him kneel, long ago, in this very room, palms pressed together, whispering, “Let it be me.”
He saw the house reach out, gently, and accept.
Now it was Elliot’s turn.
A panel slid open in the mirror directly across from him. Behind the glass: Vikram, standing, breathing, alive again—just barely. He looked like a man halfway out of drowning. His shoulders shook. His lips parted in a sob.
Elliot smiled, faintly. He raised one hand.
And waved.
Vikram placed a palm on the inside of the mirror.
And stepped through.
The room shimmered.
Now Vikram was outside.
And Elliot was inside.
The mirror sealed shut.
And the silence settled.
The landlady returned, her shawl draped over her shoulders like a funeral cloth. She stood before the mirror and bowed slightly.
“Room Twelve is ready again,” she said.
“Don’t forget me,” Elliot whispered.
Her voice was soft. “We never do.”
She walked to the hallway.
Opened the register.
Dipped a fountain pen in red ink.
And slowly, deliberately, wrote:
Room Thirteen: Occupied.
Name: Elliot Crane.
Outside, a cab pulled up.
A new tenant stepped out—a woman this time. Young. Lost. Eyes like someone who had recently said goodbye to a city or a person or a life.
The house breathed.
Welcoming.
She entered.
Asked, “Any rooms available?”
The landlady nodded. “Room Twelve. Quiet. Good view.”
“Anyone else here?”
“Just one other,” she said. “But he keeps to himself.”
She handed the girl a key.
“Just one rule,” the landlady said, voice gentle.
The girl looked up.
“Never touch the red door at the end of the hallway.”
The girl nodded.
Smiled.
Unaware.
Upstairs, Room Thirteen waited.
Its new occupant still.
Breathing.
Watching.
Listening.
End
