Arjun Mehra
I carried my boxes up the third-floor because the lift wheezed and stalled and there was nobody to complain to at nine at night. The landing bulb blinked, giving the corridor a feeling of breathing, and my new door, 3B, looked like a mouth that had forgotten how to smile. I wanted anonymity: an unremarkable building, a small deposit, closed doors until my thoughts stopped arguing with the past. The lock turned cleanly. The rooms smelled of old paint and last year’s rain, dull enough to feel like starting over. Across the landing stood 3A. Curtains drawn, a metal Krishna pinned to the frame, the nameplate screwed in crooked: MEERA. The broker had shrugged and said she kept to herself, as if that were an amenity that came with parking. People say that to absolve themselves of everything they don’t want to know. I rolled my suitcase into the bedroom, left boxes making a city of brown hills, and listened to the fan tick like a nervous clock. It was the sound of a place trying hard to be ordinary. By ten thirty the corridor had exhaled the day’s heat. I stepped to the balcony to smoke a cigarette I didn’t admit to wanting. Frosted glass divided the balconies; leaning, I saw 3A’s clay pots, parched and dusty, and a coaster on the rail with the ring of a cup. I was picturing quiet routines when a soft shuffle reached me, someone moving inside 3A near the balcony door. I waited for the confirming sound. The building stilled, listening to itself. I told myself it had been plumbing and wind. Sleep came in shallow visits. After one, a click woke me, the sound of a latch—though not at my door. It came from 3A. Footsteps, the weight of them unsure, crossed the living room. Then a dragging pause, as if something were moved and set down carefully. Then a whisper that did not belong to the footsteps. I could not make out words, only that it was near and far, like voices through an air vent. I waited until the hallway swallowed the noise and dreamed of keys turning themselves. Morning smelled of detergent and frying onions. I opened my door and found a rolled newspaper on the floor, though I hadn’t subscribed. The headline was about a missing accountant, last seen leaving a banquet hall without his coat. I turned and saw 3A’s door slightly ajar, not enough to be an invitation, just enough to be a mistake. A thin ribbon of shadow slipped into the corridor. I knocked softly and said hello. The door edged inward, light pooling like a warning. “Meera?” I called, keeping my shoulder against the door. The living room was neat in a way that felt uninhabited: a rug askew, a glass half full, a shawl on a chair. It looked as if someone had left mid-thought. A photo showed a woman at a beach, hair across her face, her mouth smiling. The kitchen was tidy to the point of absence: milk unopened, eggs dated three days ago, a dentist’s card for yesterday. In the bedroom a toothbrush stood in a cup and slippers waited beside the bed. I retreated and pulled the door back to the angle I had found it. Downstairs the guard’s chair sat empty, a newspaper on the seat, a thermos beside it. Near the gate an old woman watered a rangoon creeper. She said the guard took morning tea at the corner stall and would be back just now. When I asked about 3A she frowned, then smoothed her face. “She left,” the woman said. “With someone?” I asked. “Maybe,” she said, lifting the hose. “The landlord will tell you what he wants to tell you.” Back upstairs the corridor was the same indifferent tunnel with bad paint and borrowed light. Meera’s door remained ajar and no one else seemed to care. I told myself to unpack, to build the shelves I had promised, to become someone who did not look at other people’s doors. I showered, ate bread, and opened boxes. A paperback slid from my arm and skated under the bed. Reaching after it, my fingers met a gap in the floor. I pried up the loosened board and found a leather-bound notebook in the hollow. There was no lock. I shouldn’t have opened it. It shouldn’t have been mine to touch. But I am the sort of person who moved to stop being himself, which means rules bend when they are the only way forward. Inside the cover a name had been written with the small pride of possession: Meera. The date below was from six months ago. The first line read: I am not alone in my apartment, even when I am alone. The letters leaned forward as if they couldn’t wait to leave the page. The entries were tidy, dated, precise in their fear. A key turned in her lock at night, like a hand on a sleeping animal. She set a cup against the door; by morning it had shifted. She scattered mustard seeds because her grandmother said the old gods like counting; by dawn they drew a question mark. She changed the cylinder; for two nights it was quiet; then the key returned. Sometimes she woke to breathing that wasn’t her own. She spoke aloud so that if someone listened they would hear a person, not a victim. The last entry ended mid-sentence: He was inside when I locked the door. I can’t— The pen had blotted there. I looked up, expecting the room to have changed; it hadn’t. Boxes gaped like mouths. Somewhere above, a chair scraped. In the corridor, a footfall. I closed the diary and slid it into the wardrobe. Then came the dry turn of metal on metal, so faint it might be imagination, so exact it could only be a key testing a lock. Not 3A. My door. I stood still and watched the handle consider me.
The handle stayed still, but I didn’t breathe until I heard the step retreat. A shoe sliding on grit, moving toward 3A, pausing there, then vanishing down the stairwell. The corridor sighed like lungs emptying. I opened the door quick enough to see only shadows gathering in corners, the bulb flickering, a faint smell of rust. My hand was damp on the knob. When I bent to check the keyhole it was unmarked, no scratch, no intrusion—but the silence after was too deliberate. I closed the door fast, dropped the latch, and leaned against the wood as if my weight could keep out whatever had considered me.
The diary lay in the wardrobe, its presence loud. I pulled it out again, hungry. The paper smelled of dust and faint jasmine. The writing grew more frantic in later pages, words pressed hard into the sheet. She wrote of a “he” who had the keys, who entered when lights were off. She described listening to cups moving in the kitchen though she hadn’t left her bed, waking to the scent of cologne not her own, hearing the bathroom tap run though she had turned it tight. There were sketches too—simple lines of doors and locks, each crossed through with a red pen, as if none were safe. The entries bent time: dated days where she never left, where she tried to measure nights by the rhythm of breathing that was not hers.
One page was different. The ink smudged like tears had fallen before it dried. He whispered my name last night, it read. Close, near the bed. I lay stiff and he leaned so near I felt the pillow warm. When I sat up, no one. But the wardrobe door was open though I keep it shut.
I felt my throat dry and checked my own wardrobe—the diary on my lap, doors ajar like a mouth ready to answer. I pushed them closed until the hinges sighed. A knock startled me. I froze. Not at my door—at 3A. Someone testing patience, three knocks spaced apart. Then silence. When I crept to the peephole, 3A’s door looked the same: cracked open, shadow unchanged.
I couldn’t stay still. Curiosity can be its own key. I slipped out barefoot, steps muffled, heart measuring distance. At 3A I nudged the door wider with two fingers. The apartment breathed stale air. The curtains were still drawn. I whispered Meera’s name, but the rooms did not answer. A smell of iron drifted from the bedroom. I stepped in, holding my phone light low. The bed was neatly made. The slippers still waited on the floor. Only the mirror had changed—its surface clouded, as though someone had breathed on it moments before. And in the mist, a finger-drawn curve: a circle half-finished, like the beginning of an O.
I stumbled back, nearly tripping on the rug, and shut the door as quietly as panic would allow. In the corridor, a door opened behind me—flat 3C. A man in a sleeveless vest, hair greased flat, stared. “Looking for someone?” he asked. His eyes slid to 3A’s door and narrowed. I muttered that I thought I heard something. He smiled without humor. “Best not to hear too much in this building.” Then he shut his door.
Back in my flat, I locked every bolt, then re-read the diary, desperate for context. Near the back, I found pages ripped out, the jagged stubs like missing teeth. I turned the notebook upside down, shook it, hoping for more slips of paper. Nothing. But tucked against the back cover was a torn fragment: He says this is his home. He tells me I am only borrowing space. He says he was here long before.
The words bled into my mind, echoing the landlord’s evasive tone when he rented me the flat—solid building, peaceful tenants, no disturbances. Peaceful. As if silence were proof of safety.
That night, I kept every light on, tried reading until my eyes refused, tried music until my ears ached. Past two a.m., exhaustion won, and I drifted. But somewhere between waking and sleep, I heard it again: the faint scrape of a key at my lock. Slow, patient, like someone who knew I was waiting. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, only pressed my eyes shut. And then—another sound. Inside. A floorboard sighing beneath weight that was not mine.
I opened my eyes and the lamp flickered once. The diary had slipped from the table to the floor, lying open to a page I had not yet seen. In jagged handwriting it read: He comes for whoever finds these pages.
The page gaped on the floor, the letters raw, as if written in haste and left as bait. I picked it up with shaking fingers, and the apartment seemed smaller, the air thickened, as though someone else was breathing with me. I pressed my ear to the wall that touched 3A. The plaster was cool, then suddenly warmer near the skirting board, like a pulse behind concrete. My phone lay on the table. I opened the camera, propped it at the door with the lens angled toward the corridor, and hit record. If he came again, I would catch him. That was the promise I whispered into the silence. But promises are brittle things in buildings that listen.
At three a.m., the familiar hush pressed in, a silence so complete it rang. Then footsteps, not hurried but patient, padded along the corridor. My camera’s red light blinked. I stayed in the chair, forcing stillness, heart a drum in my chest. The footsteps paused outside 3A. A long stillness, then the faintest sound—keys brushing against one another, a metal sigh. A turn of the handle. I gripped the diary like a shield. The door creaked, but not mine—hers. A whisper slid down the corridor, wordless yet shaped like a name. I could not tell if it was hers or his.
When the sounds ended I checked the footage, desperate for proof. The screen showed the corridor stretching empty, undisturbed. The timestamp rolled on calmly while I had listened to breathing. But halfway through, the image quivered, lines of static bending the walls. For ten full seconds, the hallway vanished into snow, then cleared again. My stomach clenched: the disturbance had come exactly when the footsteps had paused at 3A.
I replayed it until my nerves frayed. Then a knock startled me from the screen—sharp, insistent. Not my door. I peered through the peephole. A delivery boy stood outside 3C with a plastic bag, calling a name. Harmless. Normal. I almost laughed from relief. But as I turned back inside, I noticed something on the floor near my doorframe: a smudge of mud, fresh, leading toward 3A. I crouched and touched it. Damp. The print was not from the boy. It was a man’s shoe, broad, deliberate. I lifted my head slowly, and the air carried the faint scent of aftershave—old-fashioned, heavy, the kind worn by grandfathers who haunted their chairs long after death.
The next morning, I forced myself to ask the guard about Meera. He adjusted his cap, eyes darting toward the stairwell. “Madam left,” he said flatly. “Luggage?” I pressed. “No luggage,” he muttered, and busied himself with the register. His knuckles whitened on the pen. When I asked about the muddy prints he lifted his gaze, cold. “Sir, better not to notice such things.” The old woman watering plants heard us, clucked her tongue, and said nothing, just shook her head. A language of silence bound them all.
That evening, I sat in the balcony, cigarette trembling between my fingers. The frosted glass next to me blurred 3A’s side, but I sensed movement. A shadow leaned close, unmistakable, on the other side. I froze. Slowly, the shadow raised a hand and pressed against the glass. Fingers long, splayed, pale. I dropped the cigarette and stumbled inside. The balcony light flicked once and died. When I gathered courage to return, the shadow was gone, only five faint prints fogging the glass.
I pulled the diary again, hoping for answers. Flipping past the last jagged page, I found notes I hadn’t read: sketches of keys, dozens of them, labeled with numbers. 3A, 3B, 2C, 1A. As if she had catalogued every flat. Below the sketches, one sentence in heavy strokes: He keeps them on a ring, he rattles them when he is pleased. My mind flew back to the faint jingle I’d heard in the corridor. That had not been imagination.
Sleep eluded me, but exhaustion pulled me under near dawn. In my dream I stood in Meera’s living room, diary in hand, calling her name. A door opened behind me, and a man’s shape emerged from the wardrobe—tall, gaunt, smile wide, a ring of keys clutched like rosary beads. He raised a finger to his lips and whispered, “Shhh.” I woke with sweat chilling my spine, only to hear the same shushing sound in my room, so soft it could have been breath against my ear. I flicked the lamp on, bare walls staring back. No one there. But on my table, the diary lay open though I had shut it before bed. Across the page, in handwriting not like hers but jagged, scrawled as if written in haste, was a single line: You read what was mine. Now I read you.
The bulb above me hummed, and from the corridor came the faint rattle of keys, growing louder,
The rattle stopped, but the silence that followed was heavier, as if it had weight pressing on my chest. I did not sleep again. By morning, the lights looked ordinary, the corridor a dull yellow strip. Yet I kept glancing at the diary on the table, its last words scratching into my thoughts. If he could write inside it, then the pages were not only hers. They were a place where presence leaked through. The missing pages might tell me why.
I waited until noon, when the building felt least haunted. Sun poured through the balcony, warming even the stale walls. I stepped into the corridor, locked my door, and stood outside 3A. The door was shut, but the lock looked older than mine, its brass dulled. I tried the handle. It gave with surprising ease. Either no one had cared to bolt it after she vanished, or someone had wanted me to find a way inside.
The apartment air was thick, carrying an iron smell beneath dust. Curtains drawn tight made the rooms dim, though daylight pressed against the cloth. I moved slow, each step leaving marks in dust that had settled like skin. The living room was staged in silence: a sofa, a rug, a glass still on the table with a dark ring at the bottom, as though the drink had been drained in the middle of a conversation. On the wall hung a mirror slightly cracked, showing me as fractured. I walked past my own split face into the bedroom.
The bed was made with exactness. The slippers still aligned. Yet the air felt disturbed, as though someone had just shifted their weight from the mattress. On the wardrobe, scratches zigzagged down the wood, raw grooves. I pulled it open—only hangers remained, swinging slightly though I had not touched them. The air inside was cooler. A shadow pooled at the back panel, darker than it should have been. I reached forward, pressed. The wood gave a little, then shifted aside like a false lid. My heart clamped. Behind it lay a narrow cavity, black, wide enough for a person to slip through. A smell of damp earth and old sweat seeped out. The iron scent grew stronger.
I shone my phone torch inside. A crawl space stretched beyond, lined with pipes and peeling concrete. Dusty footprints patterned the floor—bare, long, smeared. And beside the entrance, tucked between pipe and wall, lay a crumpled wad of paper. I pulled it out with trembling fingers. Diary pages. Torn from the binding. The writing was jagged, uneven, written in fear.
He told me not to scream. He said this is his house, not mine. He watches me sleep. He leaves food on the table when I’m gone. Sometimes I hear him laughing, soft, behind the walls. I think he lives between them. I think he has always lived here.
The next page, the ink darker: Last night he climbed out. I saw him standing at the end of the bed. He held the keys up like trophies. He whispered, “I will let you stay if you don’t tell.” But I can’t stop writing. If anyone finds this, know he is still here.
The words blurred as my hand shook. I folded the pages tight and shoved them in my pocket. The space behind the wardrobe yawned, the footprints vanishing into black. A cold current slid against my face from inside, as though the space exhaled. I could not enter, not then. I shut the panel quickly and leaned against the wardrobe, gasping.
Something creaked behind me. I spun. The chair in the corner, empty when I entered, was now angled directly toward the bed. Watching. My breath froze. I stepped back, reached the door, and hurried out into the corridor, pulling the apartment door shut with all my strength.
The hallway looked normal. But 3C’s door opened a crack. The same man in the sleeveless vest peered out. His eyes lingered on my pocket where the diary pages bulged. “Found something, didn’t you?” he said softly. His smile was thin. “Don’t keep what isn’t yours.” Then he shut the door before I could answer.
I stumbled into my own flat, bolted every lock, and spread the crumpled pages on the table. The handwriting blurred into me, feeding dread. She had known. She had tried to warn. And now, by touching these pages, I had taken her place.
That night I dreamed again, but the dream was not my own. I saw the crawl space, felt the walls scrape my shoulders, smelled the sour air. Ahead, someone shuffled, dragging feet. He turned once—gaunt, lips cracked into a grin, keys clinking softly in his hand. “Your turn,” he whispered, and vanished into black.
I woke to the scrape of wood. My wardrobe door stood wide open, though I had shut it before bed. On the inside panel, fresh scratches carved deep, letters gouged in haste: I see you.
Morning brought no safety. I left the wardrobe open because closing it felt worse, like sealing in something that would rattle until freed. The scratches glared: I see you. They had not been there yesterday. My nails were clean, my knife untouched. Whoever carved them had done so in the dark hours when I thought I was dreaming.
I carried the torn pages folded in my pocket as if they were amulets, though they only deepened my fear. Meera had written of laughter inside the walls, of food left on tables, of the man claiming ownership. I needed history, not whispers. If others had lived this before, maybe there was a pattern. And if there was a pattern, maybe there was an end.
At the tea stall by the gate, the guard avoided my eyes. His hands trembled as he lifted his glass. I pressed him. “How long was she here? The woman in 3A.” He muttered, “Three months. Then she left.” “Without her clothes, without her shoes?” I snapped. He stared at me then, lips thin. “Sir, some people vanish themselves. Better not to involve police. It never helps.” He downed the tea and walked away fast, leaving the bill unpaid.
The old woman with the creeper finally spoke when I caught her alone. She leaned on her watering can, eyes cloudy but sharp enough to slice truth. “You think she is the first? She is not. Years ago, in 3A, a young man lived. Always heard things, complained of noises. Then he disappeared too. Landlord said he ran away. We knew better.” She lowered her voice. “The landlord’s brother once stayed there, long ago. He died. Or maybe not. People say he never went.”
Her words clung to me as I climbed the stairs. I needed confirmation. That evening I found the landlord in his office by the stairwell, a dim room with ledgers stacked like walls. When I asked directly, his face hardened. “You pay rent on time, Mr. Arjun. That’s all I ask. Don’t dig in matters that are closed.” “Closed like a wardrobe?” I blurted. His eyes flicked up, startled, then narrowed. “You’ve been inside 3A,” he said flatly. Silence swelled between us. Then he leaned closer, voice low. “That room was never meant to be reopened. My brother lived there. He… changed. We locked it after. But tenants don’t listen.” He straightened. “Leave it alone, or you’ll end up like the rest.” He turned away, dismissing me.
That night I sat with the diary, rereading every desperate entry. My skin prickled at her last words before the missing pages: He was inside when I locked the door. The key in my own lock turned then, in memory or in fact—I could not tell. But my ears swore it was real: the faint scrape, the patient twist, the pressure testing metal. I held the diary tight and whispered aloud, to prove myself present. “This is my house. Not yours.”
At 2:57 a.m., the lights dimmed, as if on cue. The corridor beyond my door filled with footsteps, measured and soft. I rose, moved to the peephole. The hall was empty, yet the sound continued, pacing. Then it stopped right at my door. I held my breath. A shadow spread across the peephole lens though nothing stood there. My heart thundered. Then the rattle: keys, hundreds of them, chattering together like bones. I stumbled back. The diary slipped, falling open to an entry I hadn’t noticed before, scrawled sideways in the margin: If you hear the keys, he already has yours.
I wanted air, escape. At dawn I went to the archives near the old courthouse, claiming research for a book. The dusty clerk cared little. I searched records of deaths in this building’s address. Two stood out. Nineteen years ago, Raghav Sethi, 32, “accidental fall” inside apartment 3A. Ten years later, Nikhil Banerjee, 27, “missing, presumed dead,” last residence 3A. The file ended there. No police follow-ups. No investigations. Just silence stamped official.
On my way back, I looked at every window of the building. Mine. Hers. Theirs. Curtains stirred though no wind blew. Someone watching. Always watching.
I returned with resolve and tools: a flashlight, a small crowbar. The crawl space behind Meera’s wardrobe pulled at me like a magnet. At night I entered again, heart bruising my ribs, and pried open the panel. Cold air poured out. The flashlight beam caught narrow walls, pipes sweating moisture, footprints smeared deeper inside. I crouched, crawled, dragged myself forward. The passage seemed endless, a throat swallowing me. The smell thickened: sweat, rot, cologne.
Ahead, a sound. Breathing, steady, patient. I froze, light shaking. In its circle I saw something on the ground: a key ring. Dozens of keys, each tagged with numbers, some scratched with fresh polish. One tag read 3B. My flat.
The breathing stopped. Silence crushed me. Then, close to my ear, a whisper: “Now you believe me.”
I spun the light. Nothing. But behind me, the panel had shut itself.
The panel closed like a lid and the dark pressed tight, my light a trembling blade. The key ring in my hand jingled when I moved and the sound seemed to travel endlessly, echoing like laughter. I backed against the wall, crawling, desperate to return, but the air felt thick, and the passage stretched longer than before, as though walls shifted to keep me in. When at last the wood gave beneath my palm, I shoved the panel open and spilled into 3A’s bedroom, gasping like I had surfaced from water. The slippers still waited by the bed. The chair still faced the corner. But I knew the space behind me was not empty, that it had learned me now, memorised the sound of my breath.
I staggered back to my flat with the key ring in my pocket. On it, 3B winked like a warning. He already had mine. The diary whispered from the wardrobe, pages rustling though the fan was still. I decided then to turn the watch into a trap. If he moved in shadow, I would hold a mirror to it.
I set my phone camera at the balcony door, another at the corridor, both on record. I left my door unlocked for the first time since moving in, a glass of water balanced on the edge of the table, ready to fall at the slightest touch. I lay on the bed fully awake, eyes shut to pretend. The key turned at 3:12. A slow, patient entry. My skin crawled with the cold of it. I heard the faint scuff of shoes across the floor. Then the glass trembled and tipped. I opened my eyes.
The room looked empty. But the diary was gone from the table. I lunged, sweeping the floor, my camera light catching a shadow by the wardrobe. Tall. Too tall. A face pale as dust, eyes sunk deep yet bright. Lips stretched, not quite a smile. In his hand, the diary. In the other, the keys rattled softly. He stared at me, tilting his head as if studying an insect. My throat closed. He did not move closer. He only whispered, “Writing continues,” and in the blink of my eye he was gone. The wardrobe doors shut with a slam that rattled my chest.
The cameras showed nothing. The corridor stayed empty, the balcony still. But the glass had shattered, proof that someone—or something—had passed. On my phone footage, during those minutes, static bloomed, sound reduced to faint rattling like teeth.
I could not pretend anymore. I left at dawn and returned to the archives, searching deeper. Old newspapers spoke of the landlord’s brother, Raghav, who had once been caretaker of the building. Tenants described him as watchful, intrusive, always entering flats unasked. Complaints piled. Then one day, he was found dead inside 3A, “an accident with wiring.” But whispers said he was obsessed with the building, called it his body. He told tenants, “You live inside me. I keep the keys because you belong.” Even after his death, tenants vanished. Authorities shrugged. The landlord never admitted his brother was buried in the walls.
I came back shaking, carrying his shadow with me. That night I prepared differently. I sprinkled flour across my floor, fine powder to catch prints. I hid in the dark with a kitchen knife, camera in hand, waiting. At 3:00 the air shifted. The door eased open, silent. My heart pounded. On the flour, prints appeared. Long, bare, toe marks dragging. They moved to the wardrobe, then paused. I whispered, “I see you.”
The prints turned toward me though no one stood there. Keys rattled in the empty air. Then my phone vibrated. A new note appeared in the diary app, though I had not touched it. Four words: Behind you right now.
I spun. A shape leaned from the wall itself, shoulders cracking as though unfolding from concrete, face shadow and bone. His keys glimmered, my tag clinking among them. He reached out. I swung the knife, slicing air. He only laughed, the sound dry and low. Then he stepped back into the wall, sinking as though it was water, leaving flour scattered by invisible feet.
I sat trembling until dawn. The prints remained, proof etched into powder. But the knife felt useless, a child’s toy against something that belonged not to flesh but to place. I gathered the torn diary pages again, desperate. At the very back, hidden under binding, one last line emerged, almost faded: Do not let him write you. If he writes your name, you will stay forever.
My eyes darted to the wardrobe. On its inside panel, fresh scratches gleamed in pale light. Letters carving themselves as I watched. ARJUN.
The letters on the wardrobe spelled my name with the finality of a verdict. I stood frozen, watching the gouges deepen themselves, flakes of wood curling to the floor as though an unseen hand worked furiously from the other side. When the scratching stopped, the silence was worse. It wasn’t absence—it was waiting. I touched the grooves. Fresh, sharp, still warm from friction.
I couldn’t live another night with walls breathing around me. Fear and resolve braided together. I fetched the crowbar, pried open the wardrobe panel fully this time, the way I had not dared before. The cavity yawned, black as swallowed light. The smell of damp, iron, and human sweat oozed out. My torch beam caught concrete peeling, spidered pipes, wires trailing like veins. A corridor ran deeper, wider than the crawl space I’d seen before, leading toward the building’s foundations. Dust swirled with every breath, disturbed by more than me. Footprints littered the ground—bare, long, pressed deep into grime, some old, some shockingly fresh.
I crawled inside, shoulders scraping concrete, knees grinding dust. The sound of my own breathing amplified until I hated it. The passage bent downward. I followed, flashlight trembling in my grip. At one junction, I found a mattress shoved against the wall, ragged, stained. A woman’s scarf lay tangled on it. I picked it up and the smell of faint jasmine clung, the same as Meera’s diary. My throat clenched. She had been here. Not long ago.
Further down, my beam caught something on the wall: carvings. Words etched by desperate fingers. Help me. He comes when lights go out. He lives here. Don’t let him write you. The scratches overlapped, layers of tenants marking the same fear, voices trapped in concrete. My torch shook over names—some crossed out as though erased. The last one visible before mine: Meera.
A sound broke the silence. Breathing. Slow, steady. Not my own. It came from deeper in the tunnel. I moved forward, against all instinct, the diary pages tight in my pocket. The passage opened into a broader service corridor, ceiling low, pipes dripping. In the middle, a table leaned, cluttered with objects: old mugs, a cracked photo frame, a half-burnt candle, dozens of small possessions that must have belonged to tenants. Among them, a phone. I touched its screen. Dead. Scratches on the back read: 3A.
The breathing grew louder. I swung the torch. At the far end, a shape hunched, back to me, thin frame silhouetted. He rocked slowly, muttering. In his hand keys glimmered, hundreds jangling softly. My light grazed his face as he turned. Gaunt. Hollow-eyed. A grin stretched too wide, skin pale against darkness. He didn’t blink. “My house,” he rasped. “You walk in me.”
I froze. He rose slowly, bones creaking. Taller than any man I’d seen. He held out the key ring. I saw my own tag—3B—swinging, catching light. “You belong now,” he whispered, voice like gravel.
I stumbled back, flashlight beam jerking. He didn’t chase. He only stood smiling, as if retreat was part of his design. My back slammed into a wall. Carvings pressed against me. I turned the torch and read: Once he writes you, you stay. Beneath it, fresher gouges: He wrote me last night. I am still here. Signed: Nikhil. My breath caught. Nikhil Banerjee, the tenant listed missing in the archives.
I bolted, scrambling through the crawl space, bruising knees, shoulders. The panel resisted as though hands pressed from the other side. I shoved with the crowbar until wood splintered and I fell back into 3A’s bedroom. My chest heaved. The air tasted of dust and iron still, as though the corridor’s breath clung to me.
I stumbled into my flat, locked the door, and slid down against it. The diary fell from my pocket, pages splayed. A new line had been written across the last torn sheet, ink still wet: I showed him the corridor. He saw me. Now he stays.
I hurled the diary across the room, but its cover opened midair, landing faceup, pages fluttering as though invisible fingers flipped them. On the wardrobe, the scratches deepened, the wood moaning. This time not just my name. Another word beside it: Forever.
That night I dreamed, or thought I did. I stood in my room. The lights flickered. The man stood at my desk, calmly writing in the diary. When he lifted his head, his face wore mine.
I woke screaming. But the sound that answered was laughter, low and near, from behind the wardrobe.
The laughter crawled through the wardrobe seams, mocking, close enough to touch. I sat hunched by the door with the crowbar clutched across my knees, the diary lying open like a wound. The scratches on the panel had finished their sentence: ARJUN FOREVER. I pressed my palms to my ears but the sound bled through bone, a rattle of keys woven into the chuckle.
Running would not work. The building was his body, the keys his bones. Even outside, he would follow, drifting through walls, unlocking me wherever I hid. If the diary bound me, I had to face it. I shoved the crowbar into my bag, grabbed a flashlight, and went back to 3A. My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped the key ring I had stolen from the tunnel, my own tag clinking like a death bell.
The apartment opened as if expecting me. Curtains whispered without wind. I tore the wardrobe panel wide, heart roaring in my chest, and crawled in again. The tunnel swallowed me with wet breath. My light swept over carvings, the prayers of the missing. Ahead, the corridor widened. I followed the prints, each step pulling me deeper into his house.
The table of possessions glimmered again, talismans of the vanished. But now there was something new: the diary, resting open, its pages turning though no hand touched them. I stepped closer. Words scratched themselves across the sheet, ink spreading like veins: He comes to write you in full.
The breathing thickened behind me. I swung the light. He was there, fully revealed, pale body too thin, joints wrong, eyes sunk yet glimmering with hunger. The keys sang softly in his hand. His smile peeled back further than lips should allow.
“You carried her book,” he whispered. “So you carried me.”
He lifted the keys and shook them. The sound sliced through me. I dropped the flashlight, the beam swinging wild across the walls. In that strobing glow I saw him step closer, but also saw others. Faces half-formed, watching from the concrete—Meera’s eyes wide, a man I didn’t know mouthing soundless pleas, shadows of all who had been written. Their fingers pressed through stone like clay.
“No,” I choked. “I’m not yours.”
He raised the diary, pages fluttering, pen in his other hand, black with ink. “I write,” he rasped, “and you stay.”
I lunged with the crowbar, swinging hard. The metal tore through paper, not flesh. The diary screamed—pages splitting, voices crying out all at once, a choir of the lost. The man staggered, his smile cracking. Keys fell, clattering like bones scattering. I smashed again, ripping the binding. The walls howled. The faces writhed. Light burst from the torn pages, burning white in the dark.
For one heartbeat I saw Meera, clear, whole, standing beside me. She whispered, “Don’t stop.” I drove the crowbar down once more. The diary split, torn in two. The man shrieked, body convulsing, then collapsed into dust, scattering across the corridor floor like ash. The walls groaned. The faces blinked out, fading into silence.
I snatched the key ring, dropped the crowbar, and scrambled back through the tunnel, lungs tearing for air. Behind me, the corridor crumbled, concrete collapsing, sealing itself as though it had never been. I burst into 3A, the panel slamming shut with finality. The apartment was empty, silent, as though nothing had ever happened.
Back in my flat, dawn spilled across the floor. The wardrobe was plain wood again, no scratches, no names. The diary lay on the table where I had thrown it days ago—whole, untouched, blank. Not a single entry. My name absent. Meera’s absent too. Only clean white pages.
I wanted to burn it. But as I lifted it, a shiver passed through. On the first page, in faint pencil marks, new handwriting appeared, not mine: He always returns. Buildings remember. Keep the keys safe.
I stared at the ring in my hand. Tags for every flat. Mine, hers, dozens more. I thought of the guard’s silence, the landlord’s warning, the tenants who avoided questions. They all knew. They had always known.
That night, sleep finally came heavy. But at three a.m. sharp, I woke to the faintest sound—the turn of a key in the lock. I froze. Slowly, I lifted the ring. My tag, 3B, had vanished.
The door handle quivered. A whisper came from inside the room, behind me this time: “Forever.”
The lights went out.
