The Room with No Window — Part 3

Jonathan Hale had not slept in weeks. Ever since the night the voices had returned—whispers crawling through the cracks of the windowless room—he had lived in a limbo between waking and nightmare. His eyes were sunken, his skin pale, and his mind frayed by the constant echo of sounds that did not belong to this world. He told himself to leave, to abandon the cursed boarding house and its suffocating corridors, but something stronger than reason chained him to the room. It wasn’t merely a place he rented anymore. It was alive. And it wanted him.

The diary, once a curiosity found tucked under loose floorboards, had become his obsession. Each time he opened it, new words appeared, written by an unseen hand. The entries shifted like whispers trapped in ink: fragments of prayers, broken warnings, commands that pressed upon his will.

“You are chosen,” it read one night, the ink still glistening as though it had been freshly bled onto the page. “Stay.”

Jonathan had tried to fight it. He hurled the book into the fireplace, only to watch the flames sputter and die, leaving its pages untouched. He threw it down the courtyard well, but the next morning it was lying neatly on his desk, as if it had never left. He understood then: the diary was no longer an object. It was part of the room. And the room was becoming part of him.

The atmosphere of the boarding house changed as well. The once-crowded halls grew silent. Tenants spoke in hushed tones about shadows crawling beneath their doors at night, sudden cold drafts, and faint sobbing in the walls. One by one, they left. By the end of the month, Jonathan was the only tenant left behind. Mrs. Calloway, the landlady—a brittle, hollow-eyed woman—still brought his meals, but her hands trembled. She no longer looked at him directly.

“You should leave, Mr. Hale,” she muttered once, setting down his supper without meeting his eyes. “That room is not meant for living souls.”

But Jonathan stayed. He had to. The diary pulled him deeper with every line that appeared, binding him with invisible threads. He often caught himself tracing the words with his fingertips, his lips silently moving as if repeating a litany.

Then came the storm.

The sky cracked open with thunder, rain lashing the roof and walls. The room shook with every strike, as if the storm was clawing to get inside. Jonathan awoke to find the floor covered in water, though the room had no leaks. The water was dark, almost black, and in its shifting surface he saw faces—screaming faces, twisted with terror, mouths opening in silent agony. They stared at him, reached for him. Lightning flashed, and the faces vanished. Only the damp boards remained. Jonathan fell to his knees, shaking. His sanity wavered. Was it a hallucination, or had the room peeled back a corner of its truth for him to see?

That night, the dream came. He saw a door he had never seen before—not the one that led to the hallway, but another, hidden behind the wardrobe. In the dream, it pulsed like a beating heart, its surface sealed with black iron chains. Whispers surrounded him, chanting without pause. He woke drenched in sweat, the sound still echoing in his ears.

Compelled by a force beyond reason, he dragged the wardrobe aside. His heart stopped. The door was real. It stood there, ancient and silent, carved of stone and humming with a low vibration that rattled his bones. His hands shook violently. On the desk, the diary fluttered open on its own. Words clawed themselves onto the page: Do not open it.

But Jonathan’s hand was already on the handle.

The door groaned open, and a gust of air colder than death swept over him. Beyond stretched a narrow stone stairwell spiraling downward into darkness. He lit a candle and stepped inside. The descent felt endless, each stair slick with unseen moisture. The walls pressed closer with every step. Whispers grew louder, layering over each other until they sounded almost mechanical, like a chorus of broken machines.

At last he reached the bottom. A chamber stretched out before him. Symbols covered the walls, shifting and twisting in ways that hurt his eyes. He blinked and they moved again, as if alive. At the center of the chamber stood a mirror. Tall, black, and silent, its surface reflected nothing but void. Jonathan leaned closer, his breath frosting before the glass. His own face was absent.

The mirror rippled.

And then, something stepped through.

It was him. Or rather, something wearing his shape. Pale skin, hollow eyes that glowed faintly, and a grotesque smile that twisted his familiar features into a mask of cruelty.

“You should not have come,” the double whispered, its voice a perfect echo of his own, but layered with others—dozens of others. “Now you cannot leave.”

Jonathan staggered backward, his candle flickering. The figure advanced, and with a final shiver the mirror sealed itself behind it. The chamber was plunged into darkness as the candle died. He was trapped with himself.

Yet for the first time, the whispers stopped. Silence pressed against his ears like a suffocating weight. His double leaned closer, and Jonathan’s breath caught. In those hollow eyes he saw faces—the tenants who had vanished, the drowned souls in the water, the shadows that lingered in the walls. They were all inside the double, bound to him.

Jonathan screamed.

When he woke—if it was waking—he was back in the room. The diary lay open on the desk, its pages now blank, white as bone. But on the far wall, jagged black letters had appeared, dripping as though written in blood: The window will open when the room is full.

Jonathan stared in horror at his hands. They were stained in fresh ink. He didn’t remember writing the words, but the truth was undeniable.

Since that night, the boarding house has been silent. Mrs. Calloway locked the cursed room and vanished. The building now stands empty, rotting on the edge of the town. Yet locals whisper that if you pass after midnight, a faint glow flickers from a window that was never there. Some claim they’ve seen a figure looking out—a man with hollow eyes, smiling faintly, waiting.

They say Jonathan is still inside, trapped forever. But others insist that the room is no longer just a room. It is a mouth, hungry and patient, waiting for the next soul to cross its threshold.

And somewhere beneath the rotting floorboards, in the endless dark, a second Jonathan waits—smiling, patient, and hungry. His voice is no longer alone. It carries the whispers of everyone the room has devoured. And it is growing louder.