Chapter 1: The Silence That Wasn't Silent
The rain hadn't stopped in three days.
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Outside, the sky hung like a soaked shroud over the town of Elmbrook, dark clouds knotted with secrets. The streets, slick with rain and silence, led Aryan Varma to the threshold of Oakmoor Boarding House—a place whose name was now barely legible on the rusting iron plaque near the gate. He pulled his coat tighter around himself as thunder grumbled somewhere above, like a beast disturbed in its slumber.
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A heavy knock. A moment’s hesitation. The door creaked open on its own.
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Standing inside was an old man with silver hair slicked back, wearing a grey woolen vest and a face that might've once known joy but had long forgotten the taste of it. His name, Aryan would later learn, was Devlin. But for now, he simply stared, then slowly extended a hand with a brass key dangling from it—an ancient thing, oddly heavy, with the number 11B etched deep into its worn surface.
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"Welcome, Mr. Varma," he said, his voice dry like dust. "You may find things here... quieter than you're used to."
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Aryan nodded. He didn't want conversation. Not after what he'd left behind in Mumbai. Not after the breakdown. He wanted obscurity, cold walls, and time to lose himself in something else.
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Anything else.
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The hallway was dim. Wall sconces flickered as if reacting to his breath. Floorboards groaned under the weight of forgotten years. As he walked, Aryan noticed closed doors on either side—some marked with names, others just numbers. But at the very end of the hall, past a faded painting of a lake and a woman whose eyes were scratched out, there stood one door with no number. Its wood was darker, almost scorched, and it had a handle that seemed to shimmer faintly even in the low light.
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He looked back. Devlin was watching him.
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"That one’s sealed," the old man said. "Was sealed long before your time. Don’t disturb what sleeps behind it."
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Aryan gave a polite nod, turned the key in the lock of 11B, and entered.
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His room was sparse. A wooden bed, a desk with a rusted lamp, a wardrobe, and a small window that framed only the skeletal branches of a dying oak tree. The wallpaper peeled in places like skin revealing old scars. Yet, oddly, there was a comfort in the age of it all. He unpacked slowly—books, journals, and the one photograph he still allowed himself to keep: his sister, Anika, smiling in the sun before the fire.
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That night, Aryan sat at the desk and tried to write. But the words came fractured. Disjointed.
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Somewhere in the boarding house, a floorboard creaked.
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Then again. Closer.
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He paused. Listened.
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Silence.
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Then, just as he bent to reach for his pen, a knock—faint but undeniable—echoed through the room. Not from the door. From the wall behind his bed.
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He stood up. Pressed his ear to the plaster. Nothing.
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But the moment he lay down again, it came once more. Three soft knocks. Then... a whisper.
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His name.
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The next morning, the rain had faded to a drizzle. Aryan approached Devlin at the front desk. The old man was reading a yellowed newspaper from 1976.
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"Do you rent the room next to mine?"
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Devlin didn’t look up. "Room 11A has been locked since 1983."
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Aryan frowned. "I heard something. Last night."
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Devlin folded the newspaper with precise care. "You’re not the first to say that. But you will be the last, if you’re wise."
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---
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The days that followed were colder. Aryan began to notice things.
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Photographs in the hallway where the faces had been scratched out with nails, not age. A woman’s humming that started in the vents and ended somewhere beneath the floor. Lights that flickered only when he passed by. And that sealed door at the end of the hallway? Sometimes, it seemed... less closed.
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On the fourth night, the knocking returned—this time from inside the wardrobe.
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He opened it.
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Empty.
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But on the floor, barely visible beneath the corner of the wardrobe wall, was a slip of paper. He pulled it out with trembling fingers.
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"She waits in the quiet. Do not open the door."
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The handwriting was uneven, desperate. But the ink—still wet.
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To be continued in Chapter 2...
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