By morning, James had packed his bag.
He didn't care if he left clothes behind, didn't care that his rent was paid in full. He just needed to leave. Whatever was happening in 3B - no, in the whole building - was beyond explanation.
He slung his duffel over one shoulder and marched down the stairs, taking them two at a time, barely breathing. The building was quiet again - that same unnatural stillness that made the silence feel loud. He didn't knock on Jonah's door. He didn't look for the little boy. He didn't care.
All he wanted was out.
He pushed through the iron gate into the compound and crossed the short cement path to the front gate of the property. The heavy steel doors stood open. The street beyond shimmered in the morning sun.
But something felt... wrong.
The usual traffic sounds - keke horns, hawkers, church radio - were gone.
No dogs barking.
No motorcycles.
Just wind.
James stepped outside, expecting to see the familiar, dusty street where he'd first arrived, lined with shops and potholes and old men drinking sachet gin on wooden benches.
Instead, he saw...
Graves.
Stretching endlessly in every direction.
Unmarked tombstones, crooked crosses, some sunken, some freshly dug. The ground was uneven, broken in patches, and a strange white mist crawled between the headstones like it had a mind of its own.
He turned back to the building.
It was still there - cracked yellow paint, three stories tall - but now surrounded by a cemetery that hadn't been there the day before.
James staggered backward.
He turned around again. Looked left. Right. No street. No sidewalk. No danfo buses. Nothing.
Only graves.
The air smelled like wet soil and rotting paper.
He took a step forward and heard a squelch underfoot. He looked down. His foot had landed on a rotting funeral pamphlet.
It had a name. A photo.
The face was his.
James O. Atanda
"Sunrise: 1999 - Sunset: ???"
He dropped it like it burned him.
"No. No, no, no, no..."
He spun on his heel, running back toward the apartment complex, only to find the front gate closed again. The steel doors had sealed themselves. No hinges, no gaps - just a solid wall of rusted iron where the exit had been seconds ago.
He pounded on it with both fists. "LET ME OUT! OPEN THE GATE!"
The only reply was a soft click behind him.
He turned.
The caretaker, Jonah, stood just outside the building's entrance.
Holding a machete.
The blade wasn't for attack - not yet. It was old, covered in dried candle wax and tied around the handle with red and black thread. He looked at James with the same blank, exhausted stare from before.
"You saw it, didn't you?" Jonah asked.
James didn't answer.
"You stepped out, and now it knows you want to run."
"What is this place?" James hissed, voice trembling. "Where the hell did the street go?"
Jonah looked at him, as if deciding whether to lie or not. Then he spoke slowly, each word heavy.
> "This building was never built on land.
It was built on the memory of land.
A cemetery that existed before Nigeria had a name.
Before the missionaries came.
Before even the gods went to war."
James stared at him. "That doesn't make any sense."
"It doesn't have to. It's already eating you."
And with that, Jonah turned and walked back into the building.
-
James stood there alone, trapped, clutching his bag like a shield.
The graves around him groaned - just slightly.
Like they were shifting under the soil.
Like they knew his name now.
James locked his door behind him this time.
Three times.
He dragged his fridge in front of it. Then stacked the microwave on top of that. Then his mattress. Anything to create a barrier between himself and whatever had tried to come in the night before - and whatever had turned the outside world into a graveyard.
But deep down, he knew it didn't matter.
This apartment didn't follow the rules.
The walls shifted. The lights pulsed with a rhythm that didn't match electricity. The bathroom mirror now showed a different version of him - one with hollow cheeks and black gums and eyes that didn't blink when he did.
Still, panic was the only thing keeping him sane. If he stopped moving, thinking, searching - he would break.
So he began tearing the room apart.
Looking for exits. Crawlspaces. A hatch in the ceiling. Anything.
He ripped open cupboards, kicked the wardrobe aside, pried at the tiles behind the toilet. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Until-
A breeze.
Soft. Cold.
Coming from behind the wardrobe.
He froze.
The wall should've been solid concrete - but when he pressed his palm flat against it, it gave slightly, like drywall. He grabbed a knife and jabbed at the spot. The blade punched through with a soft crunch.
Hollow.
He dropped the knife, grabbed the wardrobe, and shoved it with all his strength. The thing screeched against the floor but finally moved.
Behind it was a small wooden door, barely tall enough for a child. No knob. Just a rusted handle shaped like a cross.
James stared.
The door hadn't been there when he moved in. He was sure of it. This was the same wall he'd leaned against while talking to Tunde on moving day. There had been nothing here.
Now, the breeze grew colder.
It smelled like salt and old incense.
James considered his options. Stay in this cursed room and wait for nightfall - or go through the door and risk whatever lay behind it.
His hand trembled as he reached for the handle.
It turned with a click.
The hinges groaned open.
A narrow staircase spiraled downward, vanishing into blackness. The steps weren't concrete like the rest of the building - they were made of bone. Carved femurs. Finger bones. Teeth embedded in the railing.
Every instinct screamed for him to close the door and forget it existed.
But there was something else, too.
A sound.
Faint.
Delicate.
Like... a woman humming.
Soft and melodic. A lullaby. Something his mother used to sing to him when he was six and sick with fever. But that was impossible. She died before he turned ten. And he hadn't told anyone about that song.
Still, it came from the dark below.
Calling him.
Welcoming him.
James took the first step.
Then the second.
With each step, the temperature dropped. His breath fogged in the air. The humming grew clearer - and more distorted. It bent and warped like a tape slowing down, switching keys, turning from lullaby to... something else.
He stopped at the twelfth step.
Below him, the stairs continued into a hallway that shouldn't exist. Candles burned along the walls, casting long shadows. The floor was covered in funeral wrappers and wet footprints leading from room to room.
A sign above the hallway, carved into the bone arch, read:
> "FLOOR 4 - FORGOTTEN TENANTS ONLY"
James's heart pounded.
There were only supposed to be three floors in the building.
Suddenly-
A face appeared at the far end of the hallway.
Pale. Gaunt. Upside down.
It hung from the ceiling like a bat, watching him with wide, unblinking eyes and a mouth that never moved - but somehow still whispered:
> "Go back... or stay forever."
The candles began to go out, one by one.
James turned and ran, taking the stairs two at a time, slamming the bone door shut behind him. He shoved the wardrobe back into place, then fell to the floor, gasping, drenched in sweat.
When he looked up...
There was now a crack in the ceiling.
From the inside.
And someone was whispering his name through it.
> "Jaaaaames..."
James lay in his bed, trying to control the rapid, erratic beats of his heart. The crack in the ceiling seemed to have grown while he wasn't looking, and now the whispering was louder - more insistent, as if it were crawling across the walls.
> "Jaaaaames..."
He could almost hear the chill in the voice, like a forgotten memory clawing at him, trying to pull him back.
Without thinking, he grabbed his phone, desperate for a signal, a lifeline, something to break the madness. The screen was dead, flickering one moment, then completely black the next. He tossed it aside in frustration, nearly sending it crashing into the dresser.
The room felt too small. The walls felt like they were closing in.
And then, as if in response, there was a knock.
Soft.
Polite.
The door.
James sprang to his feet, his pulse roaring in his ears. He rushed to the door, but stopped just before turning the knob. His breath caught in his throat as he realized: the knocking wasn't coming from the other side.
It was coming from the walls. The ceiling. Everywhere. An echo. A warning.
> "You can't run. You're already part of it."
He backed away. The room felt alive, and every step he took only made the sensation grow stronger, like the floor beneath him was no longer solid but pulsating, breathing.
Then, through the door - Jonah entered.
The caretaker's eyes were wide, haunted. His usual calm demeanor was gone, replaced by the urgent flicker of someone who knew something James didn't. His clothes were wet, soaked with a dark stain, and he wasn't alone.
Behind him, in the dim light, James saw the woman - the one from the hall, the upside-down face - her body stretched grotesquely, limbs bending in impossible angles as she glided into the room, her feet never touching the floor. Her black hair trailed behind her like a shadow.
Jonah slammed the door shut behind him, locking it with a bolt that wasn't there before.
"Jonah, what the hell is going on?" James demanded, his voice shaking with fear. "I... I heard... it called my name. I saw things."
Jonah's face twisted in sorrow. "You didn't listen, did you?"
"No," James whispered. "I... I didn't know."
Jonah let out a long sigh, sitting down on the edge of the bed. The strange woman - no, creature - hovered beside him, her hollow eyes staring directly at James.
"This apartment... this building... it doesn't just house people. It claims them," Jonah said, his voice a low growl. "Once you enter, there's no escaping. You become a part of the story, a chapter in its endless history."
"What do you mean?" James said, taking a step back. "How could-how could it do that?"
"The building feeds off memories. It's not alive in the traditional sense, but it's not dead, either. It is a place that exists on the edge of everything - between the living and the dead, between what should be and what shouldn't. And once you move in, you belong to it."
The creature beside Jonah tilted its head, a sickening cracking sound filling the room as its jaw stretched open, wider than possible. A whisper escaped from the depths of its throat:
> "Once the tenant enters, it starts. The cycle begins."
James staggered back, fear bubbling in his chest. "No... no, this is crazy. You're lying."
Jonah shook his head slowly. "I wish I were."
James turned his gaze back to the creature. "And this? What is she? Why is she here?"
Jonah's eyes darkened. "That is Zara. She was once like you - a newcomer, someone who thought they could leave, that they could escape the curse of 3B. But she couldn't."
Zara's mouth stretched open again, impossibly wide, as if to show James the horrors she had seen - and become a part of.
Jonah continued, his voice trembling now. "She is one of many. Every seventh night, the building... calls. It takes one of us, consumes them, and adds them to its collection. The rest of us are left behind, cursed to live in the shadows of those we lost."
James felt bile rise in his throat. "And if I leave?"
Jonah didn't answer at first. His eyes flickered to Zara, then back to James. "Leaving isn't an option. The exit isn't where it was before. You've already seen it. The building has shifted."
The walls groaned as if in agreement.
"You're trapped, James," Jonah whispered. "And every seventh night you stay, the cycle will continue, feeding on your memory, your soul. Until you are nothing."
James's knees buckled, and he sank to the floor.
Zara stepped forward, the air growing colder, her breath like ice on his skin.
> "You've crossed the threshold now. You are one of us."