Shadows of Hallstatt: Lia's Haunted Apartment

CHAPTER 1: THE BURNING

The snow fell thick and slow over the dark forest, softening every sound. Somewhere beneath the towering pines, a fire crackled unnaturally bright. It wasn’t the kind of fire that offered warmth it was the kind that devoured.

Deep in the woods of Hallstatt, Austria, a secluded stone hall stood hidden behind a veil of mist and trees. Once a chapel, it had long since been claimed by something else a group cloaked in secrecy and obsession. They called themselves The White Flame.

Inside, the flicker of candlelight danced across worn stone walls. Dozens of figures in white robes chanted in unison, encircling a strange symbol painted in what looked like dried blood. In the center stood a man tall, pale, eyes filled with something ancient and unkind. He was Johannes Weiss, the leader of the cult. Tonight, he promised, they would ascend.

But the villagers had heard the whispers. They had seen the strange lights in the forest and noticed the missing livestock, the children who cried in their sleep. And tonight, they had come with torches and axes.

As the cultists raised their arms in ritual ecstasy, a thunderous crash broke through the front door. Screams followed. Flames roared across the floor as villagers hurled lanterns and oil. Smoke choked the once-sacred air.

Chaos erupted. Some fled. Some fought. But Johannes did neither. He stood calmly in the center of the circle, arms open, robes licking with fire.

"Let the flames take me," he whispered, his voice too steady.

And they did.

He burned, not with panic, but with purpose. And as the roof collapsed and ash filled the sky, the villagers thought the nightmare was over.

They were wrong.

Beneath the scorched earth, something remained. A seed planted in blood and fire, waiting.

Waiting to return.

CHAPTER 2: THE ARRIVAL

The bus hissed as it came to a stop near the edge of the village. Lia stepped off, boots crunching softly on the fresh snow. The air smelled of pine, wood smoke, and something she couldn’t quite name something older, heavier. Her breath came out in clouds as she pulled her coat tighter and looked up at the silhouette of the mountains that loomed in the distance.

Hallstatt was beautiful, but in a way that felt too still. Too pristine. As if it were trapped in a memory.

She walked slowly through the narrow streets, past shuttered windows and steep-roofed houses. Her suitcase rattled behind her like an unwelcome companion. A few villagers watched her pass, their expressions unreadable. No one waved.

The apartment building stood near the edge of the frozen lake, tall and quiet. Its faded white walls had turned gray with age, and a lattice of bare vines clung to its stone exterior. An old plaque near the door read: Edelweiss House.

Inside, the hallway was dim and smelled faintly of mildew and cold metal. Her footsteps echoed as she climbed the stairs, following the landlord's instructions.

Unit 404 was at the end of the hall.

The number was faded, like it had been scrubbed off more than once. The brass doorknob was colder than the rest. Lia hesitated, then turned it.

The apartment greeted her with silence. Dust motes hung in the slanted light that spilled through the window. The rooms were small, the air stale. But it was hers.

She wandered from room to room, brushing her fingers across forgotten surfaces. A cracked mirror hung above the sink. The bedroom had no bed frame, only a worn mattress left by the last tenant. There were scuff marks on the floor near the window, like something had been dragged.

She unpacked quietly, placing books on a shelf, a small framed photo of her parents on the counter. She didn’t have much. She liked it that way.

Later that evening, as snow began to fall again, she stood at the window and looked out across the lake. It was already dark, the water a flat black sheet. Her reflection stared back at her from the glass, but something about it looked slightly off as if it were a fraction slower to move.

A knock on the wall startled her.

She turned quickly. Silence.

Maybe the pipes, she thought. Or the building settling. Still, she took one last glance at the window before closing the curtains.

Outside, the snow kept falling. Inside, something was waiting.

CHAPTER 3: THE ECHOES

The first few nights were quiet.

Lia kept to herself, exploring the small town during the day, curling up with books at night. The apartment remained still cold, yes, but manageable. She even began to find comfort in the solitude. That is, until the knocking started.

It came at exactly 2:00 a.m.

Not loud. Just a soft, rhythmic tapping against the far wall of the bedroom, like someone politely knocking from the other side. At first, she thought nothing of it. Old buildings creak. Pipes knock. But the pattern never changed. Three knocks. A pause. Three more. Always the same.

On the third night, she pressed her ear to the wall.

She heard breathing.

Her heart stuttered. She backed away, turned on every light, and paced the apartment. Nothing. No neighbors making noise. No logical explanation. And yet, the knocking returned the next night.

When she mentioned it casually to a woman at the café, the server’s smile faltered. "Which unit did you say you're in?" she asked. When Lia answered, the woman turned pale.

Later that afternoon, as Lia stepped out of her building, a man locked his door across the hall tall, stiff, older. Their eyes met. He gave a polite nod.

"Herr Klaus," he introduced himself in a deep, tired voice. "You’ve moved into 404, yes?"

Lia nodded. "Why does everyone act so strange about it?"

He hesitated. "A girl lived there before you. Rina. She disappeared."

Lia felt the air thin. "They said she moved out."

"They always say that," he muttered. Then, without another word, he walked away, leaving her on the icy steps with questions clinging to her like fog.

That night, she stayed up, listening. The knocking came, right on time. But this time, it was followed by a sound she couldn’t explain a slow, dragging scratch. Like fingernails over wood.

And then came the whisper.

It wasn’t loud. Not even clear. But it came from the wall, where the mirror hung.

“Lia.”

She didn’t remember falling asleep. But she remembered waking up, drenched in sweat, with the feeling that she had been watched the entire night.

Outside, the town slept. But inside the walls of Unit 404, something had awakened.

CHAPTER 4: THE MIRROR

The next morning, Lia stood before the bathroom mirror, examining her reflection with tired eyes. The whisper from the night before still clung to her thoughts like morning fog. Her name spoken not in anger or desperation, but recognition.

She leaned closer. For a brief moment, it seemed like her reflection blinked a fraction too late.

By the time she arrived downstairs to check the mailbox, Eva was already there. The older woman gave her a polite smile, but there was something guarded in her eyes.

"You haven’t been sleeping well," Eva said without preamble.

Lia hesitated. "No, I guess not. Weird dreams. Strange sounds."

Eva nodded, as if she'd expected that answer. "That apartment... some people say it remembers."

"Remembers what?"

Instead of answering, Eva offered her a gentle but wary look. "Just be careful around mirrors. They show more than reflections in that place."

Lia tried to laugh it off, but her stomach twisted.

That evening, she stood in the bathroom once more, the light above flickering faintly. At exactly 2:00 a.m., the mirror began to fog, even though the air was dry and still.

She hadn’t used any hot water.

Her breath caught as the haze thickened, and through the mist, a shape began to emerge.

A woman. Pale, wet hair clinging to her face. Hollow eyes. Lips parted as if in mid-scream, but no sound came. Lia’s knees locked. Her own reflection was gone replaced entirely by this other face staring back.

And then it was gone.

Lia stumbled backward, knocking over a bottle from the sink. It shattered on the tiles, but she barely heard it.

The next day, she found Eva again.

"I saw something in the mirror," Lia said quietly.

Eva’s expression darkened. "Rina started seeing her too."

"The girl who disappeared?"

"She didn’t disappear," Eva said. "She vanished. There’s a difference."

Later, Lia sat alone at the kitchen table, flipping through the pages of a local newspaper she'd picked up earlier. Near the back, she found an article from seven years ago. The headline was small, almost forgotten:

Young Woman Dies After Apparent Fall Foul Play Not Ruled Out

There was a photo. The woman in it had the same face Lia had seen in the mirror.

Her name was Rina.

CHAPTER 5: THE BLOODLINE

The next morning, Lia boarded the first bus to the town archives. The building was old, like everything else in Hallstatt, filled with the scent of paper, dust, and something almost floral lavender or decay, she couldn’t decide.

The librarian barely looked up as Lia sifted through old news clippings and public records. Hours passed, the snow outside melting slowly under a pale sun.

And then she found it.

A yellowed birth certificate. Her grandfather’s name Johannes Weiss.

Her breath caught. She flipped to another article, a local scandal buried in history: a cult leader burned alive in 1932 after a failed ritual. The same name. The same face from the article. She matched it to the faded photo she carried in her coat pocket a photo of her mother as a child, standing beside a stern man in white robes.

Her blood turned cold.

Back at the apartment, the mirror was still fogged.

Lia lit a candle and placed it on the sink. The flame flickered, even though there was no draft. The face returned not Rina this time, but someone older. A man with hollow cheeks and burning eyes. She recognized him instantly.

“Grandfather,” she whispered.

He smiled, but it wasn’t kind. It was possession.

The next morning, Lia packed a small bag and tried to leave Hallstatt. She walked the road to the bus stop. No buses came. She walked the highway until her legs ached every sign led her back to the same fork in the road, always back to the lake, back to Edelweiss.

She was trapped.

That evening, Herr Klaus found her sitting on the stairs.

"You’ve seen him, haven’t you?" he asked.

She looked up slowly. "He’s my grandfather."

Klaus nodded solemnly. "That apartment doesn't let go easily. Your family... it began something long ago. Something that hasn’t ended."

"Then how do I stop it?"

He didn’t answer. Just looked at her with deep pity before retreating into the shadows of his own apartment.

Lia sat alone, heart pounding, surrounded by silence that felt anything but empty.

CHAPTER 6: THE WARNING

She returned to Eva, desperate for clarity.

"You said the apartment remembers," Lia began. "You knew this would happen."

Eva looked tired. Her hands trembled slightly as she poured tea. "I hoped it wouldn’t. But yes. I knew."

"My grandfather was Johannes Weiss," Lia said.

Eva closed her eyes. "Then it’s worse than I feared."

"He’s coming back, isn’t he?"

"He never left."

The apartment had been built over the ruins of the old cult site. Unit 404 wasn’t just haunted it was the doorway. The place where the veil was thin. Lia was blood. The key.

Eva finally handed her something wrapped in linen. An old dagger. Iron, dulled with age, etched with strange symbols.

"This belonged to one of the villagers who tried to stop him," she said. "It didn’t work. But maybe it will, now that he’s weaker."

Lia held it tightly, her fingers curling around the hilt.

That night, she didn’t sleep. She waited.

And at 2:00 a.m., the mirror fogged.

This time, she didn’t run.

Rina appeared again. But not alone. Behind her, shadows twisted and flickered faces half-formed, mouths opening in silent screams.

“Don’t let him finish the ritual,” Rina said, her voice sharp, echoing. “He needs your blood. He needs your place.”

The mirror cracked.

From it, hands emerged black, smoky, clawed. They grabbed her wrists, her ankles, dragging her forward. She screamed as the world blurred into darkness.

When she woke, she was no longer in the apartment.

CHAPTER 7: THE RITUAL

Lia was tied to a cold stone altar. Around her, shadows moved dozens of them. Whispering. Chanting. Their voices layered into a sickening harmony that vibrated in her bones.

They were the cultists. The followers of her grandfather.

One stepped forward, its face burned and half-missing. "We need your blood, child," it said in a rasping voice. "To bring him back."

It raised a long, jagged shard of metal and drove it into her palm.

Lia screamed as blood flowed, thick and red, pooling into a black stone bowl. The cultist lifted the bowl and poured it onto a pile of bones at the center of the chamber.

The bones stirred.

They twisted, fused. A shape began to form twisted, half-human, half-something else. Horned, long limbed, with skin that glowed faintly red.

A cruel laugh echoed as the creature rose. Johannes.

He turned his glowing eyes toward Lia. "Thank you, granddaughter," he said, smiling. "You’ve done what others could not."

She glared through the pain. "You’re not my grandfather."

"No," he agreed. "I’m more."

He lifted a ceremonial spear, walking toward her. "But you are no longer needed."

Just as he raised the weapon, ghostly hands erupted from the darkness Rina, and others, victims of the apartment’s curse. They latched onto him, pulling him back.

"We want to be free!" they screamed. "We won’t let you rise again!"

"Lia!" Rina called. "The dagger!"

Lia saw it dropped during the struggle, glinting on the ground. She broke free from her bonds and lunged for it.

"You would kill your own blood?" Johannes hissed.

"You’re not my blood," she whispered, and drove the blade into his chest.

The creature shrieked, light pouring from its body. The chamber cracked. Shadows scattered. Bones exploded into ash.

Lia collapsed, breathless, in the silence that followed.

CHAPTER 8: THE ESCAPE

Light seeped into the chamber from cracks in the stone. The ritual space was collapsing. Lia staggered to her feet, still clutching the dagger. Around her, the spirits of the sacrificed lingered, translucent and solemn.

Rina approached her, face serene for the first time. "You broke the cycle. He’s gone."

The other spirits nodded, slowly fading like mist under sunlight.

Lia turned, searching for an exit. Where once there had been only stone and darkness, now a doorway glowed with a pale white light.

She walked toward it.

As she stepped through, wind rushed past her ears, cold and sharp. Her eyes stung. The world around her blurred and twisted. And then

She was on the floor of her apartment.

The mirror was shattered. The walls were still. No shadows. No sounds.

She rose slowly, expecting pain, but there was none. Her hand once bleeding was wrapped in clean white cloth. Someone had cared for her.

A soft knock came at the door.

Father Mikhail stood there, weathered and calm. "It’s done, isn’t it?"

Lia nodded, tears stinging her eyes.

He stepped in, saying nothing, only offering quiet presence. Together they watched the first light of dawn break over the lake.

Unit 404 was no longer cold.

CHAPTER 9: THE CALM

The following days passed in a kind of quiet she hadn’t known she missed. No more knocking. No whispers. Just silence and peace.

The residents of Edelweiss, once wary and distant, now greeted her with soft nods and quiet smiles. Eva brought her warm bread one morning, saying only, "Thank you."

Father Mikhail returned the dagger to Lia in a small box. "Keep it," he said. "A reminder that even darkness can be broken."

Lia accepted it with reverence. She didn’t want to forget. Not everything. Some truths needed to be remembered so they would never return.

She spent her final day in Hallstatt walking along the lake. The snow had melted, revealing the stony shore beneath. Birds called overhead, and for the first time since her arrival, the village felt truly alive.

She stood outside Edelweiss and looked up at the window of Unit 404. The glass reflected nothing unusual. Just the sky. Just light.

And yet, she raised a hand in farewell.

Inside, unseen from the street, the last traces of shadow faded into nothing.

CHAPTER 10: THE DEPARTURE

Lia boarded the train just after sunrise. Her seat by the window gave her a final view of the lake, now calm and glassy beneath the early light. Edelweiss stood in the distance, small and still, its shadows now quiet.

She carried little only a small bag, a journal, and the box that held the old dagger. Her phone buzzed with new messages, but she ignored them. The world outside Hallstatt could wait a little longer.

Her mind wandered back to everything that had happened. To Rina’s desperate eyes. To her grandfather’s twisted smile. To the voices, the darkness, the fire. It felt distant now. Like a bad dream. And yet, every part of it had been real.

She pulled her coat tighter and closed her eyes. Rest, at last, felt possible.

In the glass of the train window, her reflection stared back. But it was her own this time steady, unchanged.

Then, just as the train rounded the bend, the faintest shimmer passed behind her reflection. A flicker, nothing more.

But Lia smiled.

Whatever it was, it didn’t scare her anymore.

Some stories don’t end. But they can be faced.

And sometimes, facing them is enough to be free.

The End