The room beyond the door

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The Room Beyond the Door

Subtitle: Whispers from the Other Side

The first time Ethan heard the voice, he was alone in the hallway outside Room 6B of the Blackridge Boarding House. It was a whisper, barely audible over the groan of old pipes and the ticking radiator. Faint and wet-sounding, like someone exhaling directly into his ear.

He’d just moved in two days earlier.

The house was ancient—creaking floorboards, sagging wallpaper, and a landlord who looked like he’d stepped out of a forgotten century. Rent was cheap, which suited Ethan fine. After everything with the accident—the drinking, the breakup, the job loss—he just wanted somewhere to disappear. Blackridge was perfect for that.

Except for Room 6B.

It was at the end of the third-floor hallway. The door had no knob, no peephole, just a tarnished brass plaque that read “6B.” The landlord, Mr. Hensley, had told him flatly: “That room’s locked and stays that way.”

Ethan had nodded. He didn't care.

But now, he was starting to care. Because the whispers didn’t stop.

At first, he thought it was the plumbing or maybe the wind. But every night, just after midnight, he'd hear them—wet, whispering voices, like a crowd murmuring through cracked teeth. He pressed his ear to the wall beside 6B and heard something shift inside. Furniture scraping. Footsteps. Then silence.

On the fourth night, Ethan stayed up with a bottle of scotch and a flashlight. At 12:13 a.m., the doorknob that wasn’t there appeared.

It simply… faded into view. A bronze knob, old-fashioned, stained black around the edges. Ethan blinked, rubbed his eyes, but it stayed. His heart pounded, but he reached for it anyway, and the cold metal met his hand like it had been waiting for him.

He turned it.

The door opened with a breath, not a creak. Inside, the room was wrong.

It was vast—far larger than the house should allow. Walls stretched upward into darkness. The floor was covered in a carpet of dusty red velvet that looked wet. An antique chandelier hung crooked from the ceiling, its candles burning though he smelled no wax, no fire. The air smelled like rot and iron. And in the center of the room was a chair.

In it sat a figure.

At first, Ethan thought it was a man. But as he stepped closer, he saw its head was wrong—elongated, as though stretched by hands pulling at both ends. The face was smooth, featureless… until Ethan blinked and saw his own face staring back.

He stumbled backward. The chair was now empty.

The whispers rose.

“You opened the door…”
“It sees you now…”
“It wears you…”

He turned to run—but the door was gone. The room was shifting. The velvet beneath his feet pulled like quicksand. Walls contracted, expanded. Shadows slid across the walls like oil.

Then: a sharp pain in his chest, like a hook dragging through his lungs. He fell.


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Ethan woke up in his room.

Sweating, gasping. It was dawn. His door was locked. No sign of Room 6B. Just the hallway, as drab and silent as ever.

He convinced himself it was a dream. A nightmare. Maybe hallucination. But that day, he noticed things.

His reflection didn’t follow his movements exactly. When he blinked, it stared. When he turned his head, it smiled.

That night, the whispers came again—from inside his room.

By the end of the week, Ethan no longer remembered why he’d come to Blackridge. His thoughts were cluttered, looping fragments. He began to see the door in reflections—mirrors, windows, the blank face of his turned-off TV.

He saw the chair.

He saw the figure.

And then, finally, he became it.


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Weeks later, a new tenant moved into the boarding house. A quiet girl named Tara, looking to escape her own demons. On her third night, she heard voices coming from the end of the hallway. When she looked, there was no Room 6B. Just a wall.

But late that night, the whispers began.

And the knob appeared.


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🩸 The Room Beyond the Door

Whispers from the Other Side. It sees you now.