Ansel Grady stepped into the building with a sense of triumph.
The keys were still cold in his hand. He'd signed the lease less than an hour ago. One bedroom, one bathroom. Rent criminally cheap. No credit check. The property manager never even asked for ID.
He should've known then.
The building—painted in fading shades of moldy beige—loomed on the corner of an old street like a rotting tooth. Every window was either covered in grime or too dark to see through. The sign outside, barely legible, read: MARROW HOUSE.
The name didn't sit right. But Ansel was too tired to care. It was just temporary, he told himself. A few months. Enough time to get his head straight.
He climbed the narrow stairs to the third floor, each step groaning like a warning. His apartment—3D—was at the end of the hall. The bulb overhead flickered violently as he approached, and for a moment, he swore the door breathed.
Not opened. Not creaked.
Breathed.
He shook it off.
Inside, the apartment was… livable. Bare walls. Peeling paint. An old armchair sat in the center of the room like someone left it there in a rush. A narrow hallway led to the bedroom and a bathroom with a mirror too fogged to reflect.
He locked the door, dropped his duffel on the floor, and exhaled.
He was alone.
Or so he thought.
It began around midnight.
A sound. Quiet. Barely a whisper.
He lay on the mattress—still in his jacket—staring at the ceiling when he heard it. Not above. Not below. Not outside the window.
Inside the walls.
It started like a scrape. Then a tap. Then… something else.
Breathing.
Not his.
Ansel held his own breath to be sure. Still it came—slow, raspy, wet. Like something sick, pressed tight against the other side of the plaster.
He sat up.
The hallway light flickered.
His phone—plugged into the wall—was dead.
No power. No bars. Just a black screen and his own breath fogging in the growing cold.
And then came the voice.
"Ansel."
So soft. Like someone trying not to wake a sleeping child.
He froze.
The voice came again, this time from the living room.
"Ansel… come see."
It was his mother's voice.
But she'd been gone five years. Buried on a hill in the rain with dirt that clung to his shoes for days after.
He stood slowly, barefoot, shivering. His flashlight—an old camping one—was in his duffel. He fumbled for it, flicked it on.
The hallway stretched longer than it had earlier. The shadows curved strangely. The corners didn't end where they should have. The light didn't reach the floor—it just got swallowed halfway down.
"Come see."
This time, the voice came from the mirror.
He didn't want to look. But something in him had to.
The mirror—cracked and streaked—showed not his reflection, but the hallway behind him. But the hallway in the mirror was empty. No walls. Just a long tunnel of black.
And in the center of it… something was crawling.
Thin. Pale. Fast.
Coming closer.
He turned around—no one was there. Turned back to the mirror—closer still. The figure was inches away in the reflection. No face. Just a stretched, gaping mouth. Its fingers scraped the glass.
And then—
CRACK.
The mirror split down the middle.
He screamed.
The flashlight flickered, then died. He was alone in darkness now. Utter. Complete.
But not alone.
He felt it behind him. A pressure. Like gravity itself had shifted. His chest tightened.
Then—
"Leave the lights on," a new voice whispered. Deeper. Older.
He spun.
No one.
Then from the corner—near the door—a flicker of light.
A match.
Held by an old man. Wrinkled face, white stubble, eyes like cold coals.
"Leave. The. Lights. On." The man said again, and tossed him a flashlight.
Then he was gone. Just gone.
Ansel clutched the flashlight, clicked it on. His room snapped back into shape. The hallway shrank to its normal size. The mirror was whole again. No scratches. No cracks. No reflection but his own—pale, wide-eyed, shaking.
He didn't sleep.
He sat in the corner with every light on, the flashlight in his lap.
The shadows didn't retreat. They just waited.
And somewhere, far below the floorboards, something laughed.