Adrian hadn't left the apartment in two days.
The curtains stayed drawn, the locks double-checked, the phone unplugged. Every creak of the building set his nerves on fire. He moved through his rooms like prey, quiet and cornered, eyes darting to the windows, the walls, the mirrors.
But exhaustion gave him clarity. The fear couldn't just freeze him. He needed answers.
And answers meant going back to the one place he'd avoided since his mother vanished.
Her bedroom.
---
He hadn't opened the door in years. It was still locked, as if sealed by grief itself. When he finally forced it open, dust swirled in the stale air, carrying the faintest scent of lavender—his mother's perfume.
The room was frozen in time. Bed neatly made. Curtains tied back. A single porcelain crucifix nailed above the headboard.
Adrian's throat tightened. He almost closed the door again. But something tugged him forward, a memory of her voice: "Don't look too long at the walls, Adrian. They look back."
He searched the dresser first. Clothes, folded and untouched. A small box of jewelry. Nothing unusual.
But then, under the bed, his fingers brushed against a loose floorboard.
He pulled it up.
Inside was a journal.
---
The leather cover was cracked, the pages yellowed. Adrian sat cross-legged on the floor, flipping through his mother's handwriting—shaky at first, then frantic, letters pressed deep as if she had been carving words into the paper.
Day 12:
He's drawing them again. Spirals on the walls, spirals in the margins. He says the "man with no face" is teaching him. I've hidden the drawings, but they always come back. I don't think they're his hands.
Day 38:
I dream of it too now. The sound of static, louder every night. It speaks through him when he sleeps. It knows my name.
Day 76:
This is older than me. Older than him. Something my family carried, though no one spoke of it. A curse—or a calling. The Dimensional. That's what it calls itself. That's what it wants me to call it.
Adrian's fingers trembled as he turned the page.
Day 102:
I tried the prayers. The salt. The rituals. Nothing holds it back. It wants him. It has always wanted him. He was born a doorway. I was only the lock. And locks break.
---
Adrian slammed the book shut, gasping. His pulse thundered in his ears. The words blurred together in his mind: born a doorway.
He crawled backward until his shoulders hit the wall. His breath came fast, shallow, like the air itself was poisoned.
That was when he noticed the wall wasn't smooth anymore.
Lines etched themselves across the plaster, thin and sharp, curling into spirals. He scrambled to his feet, pressing himself against the opposite side of the room.
The spirals pulsed.
And then—voices seeped out from them. Layered, overlapping, a thousand mouths whispering at once.
"...Adrian..."
"...doorway..."
"...ours..."
The journal slipped from his hands, falling open to the final entry. He forced himself to read through the storm of whispers.
Day 143:
If anyone finds this—if Adrian finds this—know that running is useless. The Dimensional isn't outside. It isn't chasing. It's already inside. The only choice is to learn what it wants... or be consumed.
---
The whispers cut out.
The spirals faded from the wall, leaving only blank plaster.
Adrian's body shook as he picked the journal up again, clutching it to his chest. His mother hadn't abandoned him. She hadn't left.
She had been fighting the same thing that now stood behind every reflection, every whisper, every breath of static.
And she had lost.