The Echoes in Apartment 9F

When Anny merry moved into 9F of the dilapidated Fairview Heights apartment complex, she didn’t expect much beyond peeling paint, creaky floors, and the occasional scream from neighbors fighting. She was a freelance crime reporter used to chaos. But there was something about her apartment , 9F — something off.

It started with the echoes.

Late at night, as she tapped away at her laptop, she’d hear whispers. Not voices from outside or the TV, but faint murmurs within the apartment — always in the same cadence, too soft to understand, but persistent. The first few nights, she assumed it was the pipes. Then she heard her name.

"Anny..."

She froze.

The whisper came from the kitchen. She tiptoed in, heart hammering. Empty. She checked the hallway. Empty. She even knocked on the walls, expecting to find a hollow patch concealing a speaker or some twisted prank.

Nothing.

Determined not to be scared out of her new place, Anny buried herself in work. That week, she dug into a decade-old missing persons case: Eleanor Bright, a graduate student who vanished from Fairview Heights. Her last known location?

Apartment 9F.

Anny’s interest shifted from curiosity to obsession. She found old news clippings, police interviews, even Eleanor’s final blog entries — ramblings about paranoia, noises at night, and a feeling that she was being watched. The parallels chilled Anny.

Then came the locked drawer.

She discovered it by accident — the nightstand in her bedroom had a secret compartment. With a butter knife and grit, Anny pried it open.

Inside was a journal. Eleanor’s.

March 4th:

They keep whispering. I know it’s not the neighbors. It’s the walls. It’s this apartment. I see things moving in the corner of my eye, shadows that vanish when I turn.

March 8th:

I found a door behind the pantry shelf. It shouldn’t be there. It’s not on the floor plan. I didn’t open it. I won’t.

Anny’s pantry had no shelf. She checked anyway. The back panel of the pantry was newer than the rest. She tapped it. Hollow.

She fetched a screwdriver, pried the panel loose, and behind it — a door. No knob, just a smooth surface. But it pushed open with surprising ease.

A dark room, roughly the size of a walk-in closet. Concrete walls. In the center, a chair with leather straps on its arms. A camera, ancient and rusted, sat in the corner.

Anny backed out quickly, slamming the door shut.

That night, the whispers got louder.

"She saw… She knows…"

She set up audio recorders around the apartment. When she woke up she played back the files the next morning, her blood ran cold.

"You can't leave."

"Open the door again."

"You’re just like her."

Her reporter instincts warred with common sense. She should leave. She should call someone. But her hands moved on their own, typing Eleanor’s name into deeper databases, hidden forums, and old police archives.

That’s when she found it — a photo, timestamped three days after Eleanor was reported missing. It was blurry, taken from a distance, but the face was unmistakable.

Eleanor, peeking from behind the curtain of 9F.

Anny rushed to the bedroom and flung the curtains open. For a split second, she swore she saw a face in the window across the street — watching her. Then it vanished.

She couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she heard that door creaking open in her mind. By morning, the real creaking started — slow, deliberate. The pantry door.

Anny armed herself with a flashlight and a crowbar. When she opened the hidden room again, the chair was gone.

In its place stood a figure.

Anny screamed, stumbling back — but the figure didn’t move. It was a mannequin. Dressed in Eleanor’s clothes. Its hands held a tape recorder.

She pressed play.

"I’m Eleanor Bright. If you're hearing this, it means I failed. The apartment... it wants someone. It needs someone. Every tenant before me — gone. Replaced. Echoed. It whispers until it breaks you. Don’t stay. Don’t listen. Get out. Or you’ll become the next echo."

The tape hissed to a stop.

Anny stared at the mannequin. A trick. A setup. Maybe someone wanted to scare her. Maybe someone wanted to silence her investigation.

She turned to leave — and froze.

The pantry door had shut. Locked.

She banged on it, screamed. No use. She turned back to the room — now larger than before, somehow — and the mannequin was gone.

The lights cut out. The whispers rose again.

"You stayed."

"Now you know."

"Now you echo."

Anny merry’s disappearance made the local news. A search turned up nothing. Police found signs of a struggle, but no body. Her laptop, left open, had one document saved on the screen:

“Apartment 9F Investigation – Draft”

Fairview Heights quietly removed 9F from its rental listings. The landlord claimed it was under renovation. Sometimes, the maintenance crew hears typing from behind the locked door. And late at night, if you stand in the hallway outside 9F and listen very closely, you might hear a voice.

Whispering your name.