Three slow knocks.
Measured. Heavy.
Like someone — or something — wanted to make sure he was listening.
Nolan didn't breathe. He couldn't.
He stared at the wardrobe — an old oak thing, antique, with rusted hinges and a mirror that hadn't reflected properly since the last storm cracked its surface.
Three more knocks.
Then silence.
But the kind of silence that breathes.
He raised the revolver, aimed at the door, and whispered, "This can't be happening again."
The wardrobe's handle turned slowly — all by itself. Creaking metal. Grinding wood. Time seemed to warp. The temperature dropped like a knife through flesh.
And then… it opened.
Nothing came out.
The space inside was pitch-black — blacker than darkness had any right to be. Nolan stepped closer, against every instinct screaming to flee. The flashlight beam disappeared as it entered the wardrobe, swallowed completely by the void.
Then a voice whispered from inside — his own voice.
"Detective Nolan, you were warned."
A hand shot out. Thin. Pale. Fingernails blackened. It gripped his wrist like ice and pulled — violently.
He fired.
Once. Twice. Three times.
The room screamed.
Not the woman. Not him. The room itself.
The sound twisted and warped, shaking the walls. Blood seeped from the wardrobe hinges. The mirror cracked fully, shattering into a thousand frozen spiderwebs. And then…
Silence again.
The wardrobe door had closed itself. Locked. As if nothing had ever happened.
Nolan was on the floor, gasping, staring at the spent shells and the blood on his sleeve. But it wasn't his.
He stood slowly, wiping the sweat from his forehead, and turned to leave — when the radio on the bedside table crackled to life.
A voice came through, drenched in static.
"They're watching you from the walls. Don't turn around."
His skin crawled.
He turned around anyway.
The wallpaper — the one with the strange symbols — was moving. Undulating like muscle beneath skin. Faces pressed from behind, their mouths open in silent screams. One of them looked like the girl from last year. The missing one.
She whispered his name.
Then all at once — the walls stopped moving. The radio died. The wardrobe creaked again… but didn't open.
Nolan stumbled back, chest pounding, and grabbed his notebook. He flipped to the last page he wrote during the original case. A name was circled three times: J. Kinsley.
An occult historian. The only one who ever made sense of the murders — before he disappeared.
And under that name, in fresh ink, though he hadn't written it…
"You'll find him in the basement. But you won't leave alone."
Nolan tore the page out, stuffed it in his pocket, and headed for the stairs.
What he didn't know, as he descended into the blackened lower level, was that Room Number 7 wasn't just a room anymore.
It was awake.