The Room With No Window – Part 4

Jonathan Hale no longer recognized himself in the mirror—or in the man who had emerged from it. Ever since the night he faced his doppelgänger behind the hidden door, his days had blurred into sleepless nights, haunted by whispers and the diary’s silent, patient watch. The pages, once brimming with threats and secrets, now lay blank, yet somehow pulsed with a presence he could feel.

The boarding house remained abandoned. Rain leaked through the crumbling roof, the halls echoed with scurrying rats, and every tenant who once called it home had vanished. Mrs. Calloway, the landlady, was gone—vanished as if she had never existed. Yet Jonathan sensed he was not alone. Shadows lingered in corners, moved along walls, and each night, scrawled words appeared:

*The window will open when the room is full.*

For days he pondered the meaning. “Full of what?” he muttered. No answer came—until the knocking began.

It started softly, a rhythm brushing beneath the floorboards. Then louder, insistent, as if countless hands pressed from below. Trembling, Jonathan pried the boards loose, revealing a tunnel lined not with soil, but with stacked bones, their surfaces smooth and cold.

A wave of decay and iron assaulted his senses. He lit a candle and descended, each step echoing in the hollow chamber. At the end of the tunnel, the walls twisted with the same writhing symbols from before. And there, suspended impossibly in the stone, floated a window.

Its iron frame glimmered faintly; the glass was liquid, churning with faces, landscapes, and mouths caught in eternal scream. Jonathan heard a chorus of voices, fragmented and overlapping:

“Jonathan Hale… you are the last… open us… let us in…”

The diary flared in his hand, pages splintering with words:

*Do not fill the room. Do not unseal the window.*

*But you already have.*

The tunnel trembled. Bones rattled. Behind him, footsteps approached, measured and deliberate. He turned to see his double, its eyes hollow voids, skin cracking like aged porcelain. In its arms lay a corpse. Jonathan froze—it was Mrs. Calloway, lips moving soundlessly, whispering:

*The window will open when the room is full.*

The double moved aside, revealing more figures: vanished tenants—faces pale, eyes empty, mouths whispering his name. The chamber filled with their presence, cold and unyielding.

Voices rose into a chorus:

*Fill the room. Open the window. Fill the room. Open the window.*

The liquid window pulsed like a beating heart. Cracks appeared, spilling molten light onto the floor. Beyond the pane, a massive, unseen entity gazed, its eye stretching across the horizon.

Jonathan tried to flee, but the tunnel had sealed. Stone pressed where the passage had been. Flames consumed the diary in his hand. Desperate, he hurled it at the window. The glass absorbed it, then expelled it, ink now scrawled in fresh, bleeding letters:

*One more soul, Jonathan. Yours.*

The double advanced, smiling. “You know it must be you. The room is waiting.”

Jonathan’s screams echoed as he stumbled toward the faceless figures. They grasped him, cold and unrelenting. In their hollow eyes, he saw every tenant, every lost soul, every scream from the water below. His reflection whispered:

“Once you enter, the window will open. And when it does, this world will no longer be theirs. It will be ours.”

Light erupted as the window split wide, molten gold spilling across the chamber. Stones cracked, bones shattered, wind roared, pulling Jonathan forward. He resisted, claws scraping the floor, but it was futile.

On the other side lay endless rooms, each with no window, each filled with screaming doubles, each waiting for the next soul. Jonathan felt himself consumed, yet also a part of the cycle.

Above ground, the boarding house stood silent. Locals whispered of a new window, appearing where none had ever been. And in its dim glow after midnight, a figure stood watching.

Sometimes it resembled Jonathan Hale. Sometimes, it resembled them.