THE SILENT APARTMENT—Episode 3 : Beneath the skin
955 Words
EPISODE 3 :Beneath the skin
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Previously: Lila fled the haunted Apartment 3B, only to discover that something — or someone — followed her. The voice, the knocking, and the terror persisted, no matter where she went. The ghost of Mary Caldwell had awakened… and she remembered.
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Lila hadn’t slept in four days.
She was staying in a small Airbnb on the edge of town — no history, no strange reports, no walls thick with forgotten screams. She even asked the host if the place had ever been renovated. "Nope," the woman said cheerfully. “This cabin’s as original as they come.”
Still, at 3:17 a.m., Lila kept her eyes open. Waiting.
Nothing came.
No knocks. No whispers. No nightmares.
The silence, for once, felt… natural.
She almost cried.
By the fourth day, she allowed herself to believe the haunting had broken. Maybe ghosts needed a connection — an object, a space, a tether. She had abandoned all of it. She even burned the old shoes she wore in Apartment 3B, just in case.
She was done.
But ghosts don’t need places.
They need witnesses.
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The headache started on the fifth night.
A sharp spike behind her right eye, like something drilling inward. She took aspirin. Slept through it.
But when she woke the next morning, her pillow was wet.
With blood.
Not a lot. Just a smear near her right ear. Enough to ruin the pillowcase. She checked herself in the mirror — no cuts, no wounds. Just a throbbing ache inside her skull and a single ringing tone that wouldn’t go away.
She leaned closer to the mirror.
And she swore, just for a moment, that her reflection lagged behind.
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That evening, Kyle called. She hadn’t spoken to him since the night he laughed off the knocking sounds. But his voice was different now — hoarse, panicked.
“Lila… you need to come over.”
“What’s going on?”
“I listened to the full recording. I cleaned the audio.”
“The knocking?”
“Not just the knocking.” He paused. “There’s a voice. It says your name.”
Her heart skipped. “What?”
“I boosted the background noise — it’s there, layered under the knocks. It says: Lila. Lila. You left me. Over and over.”
She was silent.
“That’s not all,” he said. “There’s another voice. Deeper. Slower. I can’t make it out, but it’s like… like it’s telling her what to say.”
A chill rippled through her. “Telling who?”
“Mary.”
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Lila met Kyle the next day. He looked exhausted — unshaven, eyes ringed in gray.
He showed her the waveform on his computer. Played the slowed audio.
The voice was faint but undeniable.
Lila… Lila… you left me…
And beneath it, another voice — not whispering, but chanting. She couldn’t make out the words, but it wasn’t English.
“It’s like a loop,” Kyle muttered. “A ritual. Or a… command.”
Lila stood up. Her hands trembled.
“Pause it,” she said. “Go back two seconds.”
Kyle rewound. Played again.
In the background, beneath the static and knocks… a sound like scraping.
“Can you isolate that?”
He tried. Filtered it. Boosted the gain.
The scrape resolved into something almost intelligible — like fingernails dragging across concrete.
And then, just barely:
dig.
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The word followed her back to the Airbnb.
She lay awake, repeating it to herself. Dig.
Dig where?
At 3:17 a.m., she didn’t hear knocking.
Instead, her skin began to itch. First her arms. Then her neck. Then, alarmingly, her stomach.
She lifted her shirt. Five red scratches — parallel lines — had risen on her skin, just above her hipbone.
Exactly like the marks on her old floorboards.
She stumbled into the bathroom, turned on the light — and froze.
The mirror was fogged from within. The words smeared across the inside:
“I’m inside now.”
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By the next day, she was hallucinating.
In every reflective surface, she caught glimpses of Mary — not as she was in life, but decayed. Hollow-eyed. Her mouth stitched shut with what looked like wire. She was always pointing down. Always mouthing the same word:
Dig.
Lila couldn’t take it anymore.
She returned to Apartment 3B.
The police tape was gone. The building was empty — condemned after her report. But the door was still there, warped and brittle.
She broke the lock.
Inside, dust had settled thick as snow. Her footprints were the only ones.
She walked straight to the bedroom.
The patched floor where she had found the evidence tag was still there — but now, it pulsed slightly, like something beneath it was breathing.
Lila dropped to her knees.
Took out a crowbar.
And began to dig.
The floor gave way easily this time. Beneath it: cement.
Then beneath the cement: loose soil.
And then—
A bone.
Small. Feminine.
A hand.
Still bound by rusted chains.
She dug deeper. Found the rest of her.
And then, at the base of the shallow grave, something else — a small, charred notebook.
Inside: sketches. Symbols. A language she didn’t recognize.
And the final page, written in frantic, smeared ink:
“It’s not Mary. It wore her like skin. I sealed it. It was supposed to stay dead. If you’re reading this—”
The page ended in a smear of blood.
Then came the knocking.
From behind her.
She turned.
And there, in the doorway, stood Mary — or what was left of her — grinning.
Her mouth was no longer stitched shut.
And she spoke.
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To be continued…
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- Writer
