James didn't sleep that night.
He sat on the edge of the mattress in 3B, staring at the front door like it might open on its own. The apartment pulsed around him, silent but awake - the pipes breathed softly, the walls ticked like a heartbeat. It didn't feel like a room. It felt like a lung, and he was the thing inside it being inhaled.
In his hand, the cracked orb from his father's drawer still hummed with faint energy.
He had questions.
And somewhere in this cursed building, someone had answers.
---
Morning came, but the sun didn't.
Gray light filtered in through the windows, barely touching the dusty floorboards. James dressed in silence, his movements mechanical. He had lost time - hours, maybe days - inside that memory room. He didn't even know what day it was.
He opened the door to the hallway.
To his surprise, someone was waiting.
A woman - maybe mid-thirties, dark-skinned, sharp eyes, wearing a faded Ankara head wrap and mismatched house slippers. She held a broom, but didn't seem like she had been sweeping.
She looked more like a guard.
"You the new one?" she asked without smiling.
James nodded slowly.
She sniffed and muttered, "Another 3B. It never ends."
Before he could speak, she turned and walked away, beckoning him with one crooked finger.
He followed her down the stairs.
---
They entered the basement again - but not the laundry room this time. There was another hallway, previously hidden behind a stack of broken chairs and a forgotten vending machine.
At the end of it: a heavy wooden door with a single number carved into it - 0.
The woman knocked three times.
After a pause, the door creaked open.
The room inside was lit with red candles, their flames unmoving. Thick incense smoke hung in the air. Four people sat in a circle on cushions - three men and one woman - all older than James, and all watching him like a bird trapped in a jar.
The woman with the broom shut the door behind him and said, "This is James. 3B."
They all flinched at the number.
The man closest to James - tall, thin, with tribal marks on his cheeks - leaned forward. "You've seen it, haven't you?"
James nodded. "The Memory Room. My drawer. My father's too."
Whispers circled the room like smoke.
The tribal-marked man introduced himself. "Elder Musa. I've lived in this building for twenty-three years. Every tenant of 3B comes here, eventually. Usually too late."
James looked around. "So you all know what this place is?"
A heavy-set man with yellowed eyes answered, "We don't know what it is, but we know what it does. It eats people. Through memory. Through time. And through ritual."
A woman with short dreadlocks added, "The building is a gate. A veil. Between this world and... something beneath it. Something that feeds on identity. The more people live here, the more it grows. The more it learns. And once it knows your name..."
She pointed to James's chest.
"...it doesn't let go."
James swallowed hard. "Then why are you still here?"
The room fell silent.
Then Elder Musa said, "Because every one of us has given it something."
James furrowed his brow. "What does that mean?"
The woman with dreadlocks looked away. "I gave up my memories of my son. I can't remember his name. Or the way he laughed. But the building leaves me alone now. I'm a shell. And that's what it wants."
Another man whispered, "I gave my eyesight. It wasn't voluntary, but it happened. I don't see the real world anymore. Just echoes. Just... residue."
James felt like the floor was tilting beneath him.
"I'm not giving it anything," he said, voice shaking. "I'm getting out of here."
Elder Musa shook his head slowly. "There is no out. Only trade. Blood for freedom. Memory for peace. Or..."
He didn't finish.
But the silence that followed screamed it loud enough.
---
Suddenly, a loud knock echoed through the door of Room 0.
Three sharp raps.
Everyone stiffened.
Elder Musa rose and opened a small slot in the wood.
A child's voice floated through.
"Is James inside? The man from 3B?"
James's blood ran cold.
He knew that voice.
Small. Playful. Familiar.
His little brother, Daniel.
But Daniel had died six years ago. Hit by a drunk driver. Buried with a toy car in his hand.
James stepped forward, trembling.
"No," Elder Musa barked. "That's not real. That's not your brother. The building knows what breaks you. It uses your past like a key."
The voice outside whimpered.
"James... why didn't you come to my grave, James? Why didn't you say goodbye?"
James clenched his fists.
The room began to grow colder. Candles flickered. The incense curled upward violently, like being pulled.
Then the voice outside turned deeper. Wet. Guttural.
> "Open the door, James. You've already let me in."
The knob began to turn - though no one touched it.
The red candle flames turned blue.
And the lights in Room 0 went out.
The lights were gone.
The incense vanished, as if sucked into a hidden mouth in the ceiling. The temperature plummeted. Candles that once glowed red now flared cold blue, casting ghostly shadows across the walls of Room 0.
The door handle twisted again.
James stumbled back from it, his breath a thick mist in the freezing air.
"Do not open that door!" Elder Musa shouted, his voice sharp and desperate. "That voice is not your brother. It is what this place becomes when it learns your pain!"
From the other side of the door, Daniel's voice began to warp.
What started as a child's whimper had become a guttural, gurgling chant - like multiple mouths speaking over one another:
> "Jaaaames... play with me... play with me like before... don't you miss the car crash? Don't you miss the screaming?"
Then a bang.
A tiny bloody handprint appeared on the door.
Everyone froze.
A second bang. Another handprint.
The shape wasn't right. Too small for a real child. The fingers were wrong - jointless, stubby, bent backward at unnatural angles.
Elder Musa moved quickly, drawing a circle of salt around the group, muttering incantations under his breath. James had no choice but to stay still, huddled in the center.
From outside, Daniel's voice continued:
> "You forgot me. You let them bury me in the dark. I was cold, James. Alone. You never came."
James choked back tears. "I wanted to... I just couldn't-"
"Don't talk to it!" yelled the woman with dreadlocks. "That's how it opens the door from the inside."
James looked at the other tenants. "But it knows things. It said things only Daniel would know."
"That's how it works," Musa said. "The building doesn't lie - it remixes. It bleeds the truth into horror until you forget what's real."
Another bang. Now the door groaned, wood bending inward like something massive was leaning on it.
The fat man near the wall whispered, "It's not going away."
The woman with dreadlocks said, "It never does. Not until someone gives it what it came for."
James turned to Elder Musa. "What does that mean?"
Musa's face was grim. "It means it wants to feed."
Suddenly, from outside, the voice changed again.
> "Okay, James. If you won't open the door... then I'll come in another way."
A sharp screech tore through the ceiling - as though nails or claws were digging through the concrete above.
Then something began to drip from the ceiling: thick, black tar.
It landed on the floor beside James with a sickening splat - and moved.
It wriggled, twisted, rose into a vague humanoid shape, faceless and dripping. It pulsed in time with James's heartbeat.
It knew him.
Musa shouted, "Stay in the circle!"
The creature stepped forward - but when it met the salt line, it shrieked and stumbled back, smoke hissing from its body like acid.
It watched James. No eyes, no mouth - but it watched him.
And then it spoke in Daniel's voice one last time:
> "You left me alone, James. But I forgive you. So I'll wait. I'll wait in the walls. And when you cry again... I'll be the one listening."
It melted into the floor, vanishing through the cracks.
The door stopped shaking.
The blue candlelight flickered once - then died.
Darkness returned.
Silence returned.
The only sound was James's trembling breath.
---
Ten minutes later, they lit new candles. Elder Musa sat James down, his eyes tired.
"You've been chosen," he said.
"By what?" James whispered.
"The building. Or whatever lives inside it. Room 3B is its heart. Its anchor. And now it's watching you closer than ever."
James clenched his fists. "What does it want?"
Musa's voice was low. "It wants you to give in. To feel so guilty, so broken, so hollow, that you offer something willingly. A memory. A person. A life."
James stared into the candlelight. "Why me?"
The woman with dreadlocks answered quietly, "Because you were already fractured when you moved in. The building doesn't break strong people - it finishes the ones already falling apart."
James was silent.
In his mind, Daniel's voice echoed again.
"You left me alone..."
He closed his eyes and breathed.
"I'm not going to give it anything," he said.
No one spoke.
Musa finally nodded. "Then you better get stronger, fast. Because it will come again. And next time, it won't knock."
---
Back upstairs in 3B, the apartment was quiet.
James stepped inside, turned the lock, and walked to the window.
The cemetery outside was shrouded in unnatural fog. Gravestones twisted, leaning at angles they hadn't leaned yesterday. A new grave had appeared - fresh soil still damp, a small headstone with no name.
James felt it in his chest.
Something had already died today.
And the building was just getting started.
James didn't sleep.
After returning from Room 0, he sat cross-legged on the dusty floor of Apartment 3B, staring at the orb he'd taken from the memory drawer. Its glow had dimmed since the encounter in the basement. It pulsed softly, like a dying heartbeat.
The silence in the room was wrong - not peaceful, but expectant, like the air itself was listening.
He opened his journal and began writing - anything to anchor himself.
But then, something on the far wall caught his attention.
It was a crack. No wider than a finger. But it hadn't been there before. And now, it pulsed faintly... with the same glow as the orb.
James rose slowly and approached it.
The moment he touched it, the crack widened, splitting like a mouth tearing open in plaster. From inside, something fell out - a folded piece of yellowed paper, brittle with age and stained by mildew.
He unfolded it carefully.
The handwriting was shaky, but still legible.
---
> To whoever comes after me...
If you're reading this, then 3B has chosen you too.
My name was Samuel. I lived here before you.
I saw things. I heard the walls whisper. I saw my dead wife sing to me from the bathtub. I found a child living in the attic who wasn't born human.
But there's a way out. A forbidden one.
The elders will never tell you this - they're too afraid. But I found an old floor, below the basement. Below Room 0.
It's hidden beneath the furnace. There's a trapdoor sealed by bone nails. Break the seal, and you'll descend into the "foundation memory" - the first room the building ever made.
If you can confront what's waiting there... if you can offer it something it's never tasted... it might let you go.
But be warned:
If you go down unprepared, you won't come back as yourself.
- S.
---
James read the note three times.
Something it had never tasted?
What could that mean?
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the orb again. It flickered once - brighter this time, like it recognized the letter.
Whatever this "foundation memory" was... it was the root of everything.
A place even the building feared.
---
Later that morning, James returned to the basement, this time alone.
The other tenants had scattered after last night's terror - not a single one was willing to step near Room 0 again, and certainly not the furnace room.
But James had made up his mind.
The laundry room was silent, the fluorescent light overhead flickering like a dying star. Dust hung thick in the air. The furnace sat hulking in the corner, ancient and rusted, its mouth wide open like an altar.
James circled behind it and found it just as the letter described - a trapdoor, flush with the floor, almost invisible. Four twisted nails - white, spindly, and curved like ribs - held it shut.
Bone nails.
James hesitated.
He remembered Musa's words: "There is no out. Only trade."
But he was done making trades in the dark.
With a wrench from the nearby toolbox, he began prying the nails loose, one by one. They creaked and shuddered like they didn't want to leave. One of them screamed - not in sound, but in his mind. Like ripping something from a living thing.
The final nail snapped out with a sharp crack.
The trapdoor shuddered open - and a rush of cold air poured upward, heavy with the scent of earth, mildew... and sorrow.
James pointed the beam of his flashlight down.
Below him: a narrow wooden staircase descending into blackness. No walls. No sound.
Just the abyss.
He took a breath, gripped the orb tight, and began to descend.
---
Each step creaked like it hadn't been touched in decades.
The air grew thicker. Time slowed. Or maybe it stopped.
Then, after what felt like forever, James stepped into a room.
It was... a living room. But not his.
No - it was familiar in another way.
The wallpaper. The couch. The burnt edges of an old photograph on the wall.
This was his childhood home.
But it couldn't be.
He stepped forward, heart pounding.
Then he saw her.
His mother.
Sitting in her favorite chair, knitting. Alive. Whole.
"James?" she said softly, not looking up. "Come sit, baby. You look tired."
James trembled. "You're not real. You died five years ago. I watched you-"
She looked up at him - and smiled.
But her smile was too wide. Her eyes... too empty.
"You miss me, don't you?" she said in a voice that wobbled between hers and something deeper. "I remember how you cried when they put me in the ground. So much guilt. So much love."
James backed away.
The walls began to twist.
The photo frames melted. The wallpaper peeled into symbols. The orb in his pocket glowed hot, then shattered.
The illusion dropped.
The woman before him was now a thing - tall, skeletal, its flesh a patchwork of faces from his past, stitched together with whispering mouths.
> "You came here to confront me?" the thing said, tilting its head. "You, who still blames yourself for every death in your life?"
James held his ground. "I came here to end this."
The creature laughed. "Then give me something I've never tasted."
James didn't hesitate.
He closed his eyes.
And whispered, "Forgiveness."
The entity flinched.
"What?"
James opened his eyes, tears falling freely. "I forgive myself. For Daniel. For my mother. For all of it. You can't feed on what's healed."
The room screamed.
The creature thrashed, its stitched faces shrieking in agony. The ground shook. Walls cracked. The entire foundation began to collapse.
James turned and ran, climbing the stairs as the entity wailed behind him, shriveling with every step he took upward.
---
When he emerged into the basement, the furnace exploded in a shower of rust and ash.
The building groaned.
Something deep in the concrete shuddered.
And then...
Silence.
---