Maya Brooks had never believed in ghosts.
The closest she had ever come to the supernatural was a Halloween party in college, where someone played a jump-scare video on a projector. Even then, she laughed nervously while her friends screamed. But when she stood in front of Apartment 6B, gripping the brass key in her hand, she felt a heaviness she couldn't explain.
The door's white paint was chipped and peeling, the brass numbers crooked, as if the building itself didn't want to claim the space. The landlord had handed her the keys that morning with little ceremony, his watery eyes fixed on the floor.
"Rent's due first of the month," he'd said. Then, almost as an afterthought:
"Don't try to open the spare room. It's sealed for a reason."
She had chuckled. "What's in there, a dead body?"
The landlord didn't laugh. He pressed the keys into her palm and shuffled away without another word.
---
Inside, the apartment smelled faintly of mildew and old wood. It wasn't much—just a cramped kitchen, a narrow living space, a bedroom with a mattress left behind by a former tenant. But to Maya, it was freedom. After months of couch-surfing and late shifts at the newsroom, she finally had a place of her own.
She spent the afternoon unpacking her two suitcases, filling the cabinets with mismatched dishes she'd scavenged from thrift stores, and pinning a string of fairy lights along the living room wall. By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, Apartment 6B almost felt like home.
Almost.
Because at the end of the hallway stood the spare room door—its paint darker, its lock rusted. It looked like it had been bolted shut for decades.
---
That night, exhaustion pulled her into sleep quickly. But at 2:13 a.m., she woke with her heart pounding.
At first, she thought it was a dream. The faintest sound drifted through the darkness—a whisper, soft and distant. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. The sound grew clearer.
"Help…"
Maya froze. The voice was coming from the locked spare room.
She held her breath, straining to listen. Another whisper, trembling and urgent:
"Run… don't stay…"
She stumbled out of bed, bare feet cold against the warped floorboards. The whispers grew louder the closer she moved toward the spare room. By the time she reached the door, the voices had multiplied—a chorus of men and women, some sobbing, some pleading.
She pressed her ear to the wood.
"Don't open it," a voice hissed. "It knows you."
Maya jerked back, heart hammering. The voices fell silent, leaving her in suffocating quiet.
She didn't sleep again that night.
---
Morning sunlight brought a false sense of safety. The whispers seemed absurd in the light of day. She shook it off as exhaustion-induced hallucinations and forced herself to go about her routine.
But when she returned from her newsroom shift, something was waiting for her.
On the kitchen counter sat a leather-bound journal, its cover cracked with age. She hadn't noticed it before. The name Claire was etched faintly inside the front cover.
Her hands trembled as she flipped to the first entry.
> Day 1 — Moved into 6B today. Strange smell, but cheap rent. Landlord said not to open the spare room. Odd man. Odd warning.
> Day 3 — Heard voices last night. Thought it was neighbors. But the walls here are thick. Too thick. The sound came from inside the apartment.
> Day 6 — The whispers are clearer now. They know things about me. Things I never said aloud.
Maya's throat tightened. She turned the page.
> Day 10 — Last night, it said my name. I never told anyone here my name. How does it know?
The entry ended abruptly, the ink trailing off the page.
As she stared at the final words, a soft scratching echoed from down the hall.
The spare room.
---
The scratching grew louder, like fingernails dragging down wood. Maya grabbed her phone and turned on the recorder, holding it toward the door.
The whispers swelled in her ears, barely audible, but when she played the recording back, they were unmistakable—dozens of voices, layered and desperate.
And then, beneath them, one voice rang clear. A woman's voice.
"Run, Maya. Please."
Maya's blood ran cold. She dropped the phone.
The landlord had warned her. The journal's author had vanished. Now the whispers knew her name.
And they didn't want her to leave.
Maya Brooks had never believed in ghosts.
The closest she had ever come to the supernatural was a Halloween party in college, where someone played a jump-scare video on a projector. Even then, she laughed nervously while her friends screamed. But when she stood in front of Apartment 6B, gripping the brass key in her hand, she felt a heaviness she couldn't explain.
The door's white paint was chipped and peeling, the brass numbers crooked, as if the building itself didn't want to claim the space. The landlord had handed her the keys that morning with little ceremony, his watery eyes fixed on the floor.
"Rent's due first of the month," he'd said. Then, almost as an afterthought:
"Don't try to open the spare room. It's sealed for a reason."
She had chuckled. "What's in there, a dead body?"
The landlord didn't laugh. He pressed the keys into her palm and shuffled away without another word.
---
Inside, the apartment smelled faintly of mildew and old wood. It wasn't much—just a cramped kitchen, a narrow living space, a bedroom with a mattress left behind by a former tenant. But to Maya, it was freedom. After months of couch-surfing and late shifts at the newsroom, she finally had a place of her own.
She spent the afternoon unpacking her two suitcases, filling the cabinets with mismatched dishes she'd scavenged from thrift stores, and pinning a string of fairy lights along the living room wall. By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, Apartment 6B almost felt like home.
Almost.
Because at the end of the hallway stood the spare room door—its paint darker, its lock rusted. It looked like it had been bolted shut for decades.
---
That night, exhaustion pulled her into sleep quickly. But at 2:13 a.m., she woke with her heart pounding.
At first, she thought it was a dream. The faintest sound drifted through the darkness—a whisper, soft and distant. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. The sound grew clearer.
"Help…"
Maya froze. The voice was coming from the locked spare room.
She held her breath, straining to listen. Another whisper, trembling and urgent:
"Run… don't stay…"
She stumbled out of bed, bare feet cold against the warped floorboards. The whispers grew louder the closer she moved toward the spare room. By the time she reached the door, the voices had multiplied—a chorus of men and women, some sobbing, some pleading.
She pressed her ear to the wood.
"Don't open it," a voice hissed. "It knows you."
Maya jerked back, heart hammering. The voices fell silent, leaving her in suffocating quiet.
She didn't sleep again that night.
---
Morning sunlight brought a false sense of safety. The whispers seemed absurd in the light of day. She shook it off as exhaustion-induced hallucinations and forced herself to go about her routine.
But when she returned from her newsroom shift, something was waiting for her.
On the kitchen counter sat a leather-bound journal, its cover cracked with age. She hadn't noticed it before. The name Claire was etched faintly inside the front cover.
Her hands trembled as she flipped to the first entry.
> Day 1 — Moved into 6B today. Strange smell, but cheap rent. Landlord said not to open the spare room. Odd man. Odd warning.
> Day 3 — Heard voices last night. Thought it was neighbors. But the walls here are thick. Too thick. The sound came from inside the apartment.
> Day 6 — The whispers are clearer now. They know things about me. Things I never said aloud.
Maya's throat tightened. She turned the page.
> Day 10 — Last night, it said my name. I never told anyone here my name. How does it know?
The entry ended abruptly, the ink trailing off the page.
As she stared at the final words, a soft scratching echoed from down the hall.
The spare room.
---
The scratching grew louder, like fingernails dragging down wood. Maya grabbed her phone and turned on the recorder, holding it toward the door.
The whispers swelled in her ears, barely audible, but when she played the recording back, they were unmistakable—dozens of voices, layered and desperate.
And then, beneath them, one voice rang clear. A woman's voice.
"Run, Maya. Please."
Maya's blood ran cold. She dropped the phone.
The landlord had warned her. The journal's author had vanished. Now the whispers knew her name.
And they didn't want her to leave.
Maya staggered backward, her flashlight trembling in her grip. The hands stretching from the darkness clawed and writhed like worms, pale and boneless. They scraped against the floorboards, leaving faint gouges in the wood.
The whispers rose into a cacophony.
"Stay… join us… don't leave…"
Her scream caught in her throat as one of the hands brushed her ankle. It was cold, clammy, like touching a corpse. She bolted for the front door, yanking at the lock, but the metal twisted in her grip as if the building itself was alive. The knob refused to turn.
She spun, pressing her back against the door. The spare room gaped open wider, its shadows stretching out across the hallway like liquid. For one heartbeat, she swore she saw faces in the dark—sunken eyes, mouths gaping in silent screams.
Claire's face among them.
"Maya!" one voice cut through the rest, sharp and urgent. Claire's voice. "Don't let it take you!"
Her flashlight sputtered and died.
Darkness swallowed everything.
When Maya opened her eyes, she was on the floor. The air was thick, damp, and cold. She sat up slowly, her head spinning. She was no longer in her apartment.
The walls around her pulsed as though alive, slick with something that glistened in the faint glow of unseen light. The hallway stretched on endlessly, lined with doors—hundreds of them, all identical to the spare room in 6B.
Behind each one, whispers pressed against the wood. Desperate voices, pleading to be released.
She staggered to her feet. "No… no, this isn't real."
"It's real," a voice whispered behind her.
She spun. A girl stood a few feet away, her clothes ragged, her face pale. Her eyes were hollow but familiar.
Claire.
Maya's chest tightened. "It's you."
Claire nodded weakly. "I told you not to stay. I tried to warn you."
"What is this place?" Maya whispered.
Claire's expression darkened. "The room isn't just a room. It's a door. A door to something hungry. It feeds on us. Our fears, our names, our voices. Once it knows you, it doesn't let go."
Maya shook her head. "There has to be a way out."
Claire's gaze flicked to the far end of the hallway, where one door stood slightly ajar, glowing faintly. "That's the way. But it doesn't let anyone go easily."
As if on cue, the whispers grew louder, furious, echoing all around them. The doors rattled, the handles twisting violently.
Claire grabbed Maya's arm. "Run!"
---
They sprinted down the endless hall, the floor trembling beneath their feet. Hands burst through the cracks in the doors, clawing at their clothes. Maya swung her flashlight like a weapon, smacking pale fingers away as they grabbed for her.
The whispers grew deafening. Stay with us… you belong to us…
Claire stumbled, and Maya hauled her back up. "Come on!"
They neared the glowing door. It pulsed like a heartbeat, the only thing cutting through the suffocating dark. Maya's lungs burned, her legs screaming in protest. She shoved Claire through the doorway first, then stumbled in after her.
---
She collapsed onto the floor of her apartment. The lights were on, the room silent. The spare room door was shut again, as though it had never opened.
Claire was gone.
Maya blinked, her breath ragged. She staggered to her feet, rushing to the hallway. Empty. No sign of Claire.
She spun back toward the kitchen—only to see the journal sitting on the counter again. The cover was open to a new page.
Her heart dropped as she read the words scrawled there:
You can leave the room, but the room never leaves you.
And beneath it, written in shaky handwriting she recognized as her own:
Day 1 — Moved into 6B today. Strange smell, but cheap rent…
Her vision blurred. She dropped the journal, stumbling back. The words burned in her brain.
The story was starting again. With her.
---
That night, at exactly 2:13 a.m., the whispers returned.
"Maya…"
The spare room door shuddered.
And this time, when the voice spoke, it wasn't Claire. It was her own.
"Help me."