Zuv returned later that evening with a tightness in his jaw that Nora recognized immediately—the look he wore when something ordinary had brushed too closely against something wrong. He told her the previous tenant had said the same things the writer once described in passing: the sounds inside the walls, the creaks that didn't match the building settling, the low, almost human moaning that came at night when the plumbing was silent and the city outside had gone still. But the man had insisted he hadn't left because of those sounds. He said his reason was "personal," spoken too quickly, eyes sliding away, as if the truth stood just behind his shoulder and he didn't dare let it be seen.
Nora listened without interrupting, arms folded, fingers digging into her sleeves. She admitted that the writer had always claimed something felt wrong about the actor who lived there. At the time Nora had brushed it off as intuition shaped by imagination, but now, remembering the way the woman used to pause mid-sentence whenever his name came up, she felt a thin thread of unease stitch itself into her chest. Still, his alibi checked out. Police confirmed he had been on set during multiple disappearances. There was no concrete reason to suspect him. Logic stood firm. Instinct did not.
That was when they heard it.
The sound came from the wall beside them—a faint scrape, then a hollow shift like something adjusting its weight in a space too narrow to breathe. Zuv froze, head tilting. A voice followed, muffled but distinct, and it was unmistakably the actor's voice, low and sharp, arguing with someone. The words themselves blurred through plaster, but the tone was unmistakable: anger edged with fear. Nora and Zuv stared at each other. The argument cut off abruptly when a ringtone pierced the silence. They heard him answer. His voice turned casual, controlled. He told whoever was on the line that he was alone. Nora's skin prickled. They had not seen anyone enter or leave.
They searched the room again, slower this time, eyes trained not on furniture but on absence—spaces where something should have been. That was when Nora spotted it: a small note half-wedged beneath the edge of a cabinet. The paper was creased, hurriedly folded, and on it was a number written in a looping style she recognized instantly. The writer's numbers always curled at the ends like hooks. Nora's breath caught. The note proved she had been here. Recently. Not as a visitor. As someone who hadn't had time to leave properly.
They spoke in whispers after that, their voices instinctively shrinking, as if the walls themselves were listening. Possibilities spun between them—secret passages, hidden tenants, surveillance spaces. Finally Zuv crouched beside the section where the voices had seemed loudest and pressed his palm flat against it. His expression hardened. Without waiting for police, he began prying at the paneling. Wood peeled back reluctantly, nails squealing like something protesting exposure. Behind him, Fred's brother slipped through the gap as soon as it widened enough, ignoring Nora's hissed warning. The space beyond was narrow and black, breathing out stale air that smelled like metal and damp cloth.
Nora swallowed her fear and forced herself toward the hallway instead. If someone was inside the walls, someone had built those walls. Someone who might already suspect they knew.
She knocked on the actor's door and forced a polite smile when he opened it. Up close, his expression looked thinner than usual, like a mask worn too long. She held up the note. "She left this," she said lightly. "It has your name and her number. Did she contact you recently?" His eyes flicked to the paper for only a fraction of a second, but it was enough. Something tightened there—recognition, quickly buried. He answered smoothly, denying everything, yet his gaze kept drifting past her shoulder toward the hallway that led back to the room.
Behind the walls, Zuv and Fred's brother descended a cramped staircase carved between concrete slabs. A weak bulb glowed somewhere below, swinging slightly though there was no wind. The steps were sticky. Halfway down, the smell changed—sharper, coppery. They found her bound in a narrow chamber lined with plastic sheets, her wrists raw, her breathing shallow but alive. Relief barely had time to form before a movement slid through the shadows behind them.
The killer didn't rush. He unfolded from the darkness.
Zuv barely registered the shape—only the sudden weight crashing into him, the flash of metal, the grunt of impact. The struggle was clumsy in the cramped space, bodies striking walls, air punched from lungs. Fred's brother dragged the writer free while Zuv shoved the attacker back hard enough to stumble him. They didn't wait to see his face. They ran upward, hauling her between them, footsteps slamming the stairs as something followed below with a wet dragging sound.
Upstairs, the actor heard the noise.
Nora saw the exact moment he understood something was wrong. His posture stiffened, eyes sharpening, head tilting toward the floor as if he could hear through it. He excused himself too quickly, voice tight, and shut his door. Nora's suspicion hardened into certainty. She called the authorities with shaking fingers, then slipped back toward the opened wall just as Zuv and the others emerged, breathless and streaked with dust.
A crash echoed from downstairs.
Zuv turned immediately and went to check, but by the time he reached the lower level there was nothing there—only a back entrance slightly ajar and curtains stirring from recent movement. Outside, unseen, the actor circled the building and slipped in through another entrance, climbing the outer fire escape to his room with careful, practiced steps.
Police arrived fast.
They found the killer's body first, sprawled in the hidden passage where he'd collapsed from his injuries. For a tense stretch of minutes they treated Zuv as a suspect until the timeline aligned and the rescued woman confirmed everything. Then they went upstairs and knocked on the actor's door.
He opened it with a smile that faltered when they stepped inside.
The washing machine was running. One officer stopped it mid-cycle. Inside were clothes not meant to be washed—dark fabric streaked with something that bled into the water like diluted ink. Evidence was collected. Silence filled the room like a rising tide.
Under questioning, the truth surfaced in fragments. The actor admitted he hadn't known about the killer at first. Fame had brought him obsessive fans, stalkers who watched his windows, followed his schedule, slipped letters under his door. He had grown to hate them—hate the way they stared, the way they claimed ownership over his life. One woman had fixated on him, relentless and venomous, and before he could gather proof against her, she vanished. The killer, already living within the building's secret spaces, had taken her. When the actor discovered what had happened, he didn't report it. He made a deal instead. The killer would only take those the actor deemed "deserving." Stalkers. Intruders. Desperate hopefuls who pushed past his boundaries. Anyone who entered his home uninvited while he was gone. He fed the monster information, sometimes supplies. In return, the monster kept his life clean.
By the time he realized what he had enabled, it was too late to stop.
As for the writer, he confessed he had once suspected her too. A quiet fan with no visible social circle who moved into the apartment next to his. He tried to get close to her, partly out of curiosity, partly out of paranoia. Things escalated until police had to intervene, and she eventually moved away. But she had kept digging into missing persons connected to the building. The morning she disappeared, she had approached him again—calm, professional, asking for an interview about the vanished girls. He agreed and invited her over. She entered the empty apartment and, standing there, remembered something. Something that frightened her enough to scribble her number on a sticky note and step out to slide it under his door.
She never finished.
The killer had been waiting in the walls.