🩸 "The Thirteenth Room"

It started with a floor plan.

Evelyn moved into the old Ashcroft building in late October, chasing a job and cheaper rent. The building was strange—tall and narrow, with creaky wood floors and a permanent draft—but it had character. And at night, the halls smelled faintly of lilac, like someone, somewhere, had spilled perfume years ago that never faded.

One rainy afternoon, bored, Evelyn asked the super, Mr. Baines, for a copy of the building’s original blueprint.

“Haunted house curiosity?” he teased, handing her a yellowed paper from a folder so old it crackled.

She took it, laughing off the idea.

That night, she spread the blueprint on her kitchen table.

First floor. Lobby, mailroom, laundry.

Second floor. Apartments 2A through 2F.

Third floor. Apartments 3A through 3F.

But then she saw it.

On the fourth floor—her floor—the plan showed seven apartments: 4A, 4B, 4C, 4D, 4E, 4F… and 4G.

But in real life, there was no 4G. She knew that hallway by heart. Six doors, numbered neatly. And an old, bricked-up wall at the end.

She stared at the blueprint, a cold knot twisting in her chest.

Why brick over an apartment?

The next morning, she asked Mr. Baines.

“Never heard of it,” he shrugged, a little too quickly. “Probably a mistake. Old buildings have weird plans.”

But his eyes flickered. Just for a moment.

Evelyn couldn’t let it go.

That night, after midnight, she walked the hallway. Floorboards moaned under her socks. The bricked wall at the end felt wrong—like it was hiding something that wanted to breathe.

She knocked softly.

Silence.

She pressed her ear to the bricks.

At first, nothing. Then—maybe—a faint scrape. Like someone moving inside.

She jerked back, heart racing.

For days, she tried to forget it. But every night, she woke up at 3:13 a.m.—always the same time—hearing sounds in the walls. Shuffling. Scratching. A soft, low hum that might have been breathing.

One night, she finally gathered courage.

She borrowed a small hammer from the laundry room. Past midnight, she crept back to the bricked wall.

Hands trembling, she chipped away at the old plaster, brick by brick.

After twenty minutes, sweat trickling down her back, she made a hole big enough to see through.

She held up her phone’s flashlight.

Inside was a narrow corridor coated in dust, untouched for decades.

And at the end, just visible in the beam of light, was a door.

Faded, rotting wood. The number barely visible: 4G.

She pressed closer. A draft whispered through the hole, carrying the scent of mildew and something sour, metallic—like rust… or blood.

She should have stopped.

Instead, she broke enough bricks to squeeze through.

The corridor swallowed her light.

Each step kicked up clouds of dust. Cobwebs brushed her face like cold fingers. The air felt wrong, heavy, almost wet.

She reached the door. Close up, the number was clearer.

But it wasn’t just 4G.

It was 13, etched over the faded letter. Carved, deep and deliberate.

Her pulse thundered. Who had done that?

She reached for the handle.

It turned.

Inside, the room was almost empty. Broken chair, cracked mirror leaning against the wall. The walls were covered in old, peeling wallpaper, stained dark in patches.

She stepped forward.

Then she saw it: on the floor, scrawled in something brown and dried, almost black.

“Never open.”

The words circled a rotting trapdoor, barely wider than a suitcase.

A smell rose from it—cloying, sickly sweet.

Before she could move, the door behind her slammed shut.

She ran back, pulling, pounding. It wouldn’t budge.

From the trapdoor came a scratching. Slow. Heavy.

A scraping sound, like nails—or claws—on wood.

She backed away, chest heaving, whispering, “Please… no…”

A crack split across the trapdoor’s surface.

The scratching grew louder.

She dropped her phone. The flashlight rolled, casting wild, spinning shadows on the walls. Shapes moved in the dark, something shifting just beyond the edge of light.

The mirror trembled, its cracked surface reflecting movement that wasn’t hers.

A whisper filled the room, low and wet:

“Stay…”

She screamed, pounding the door until splinters cut her palms.

Then—silence.

The scratching stopped.

The whisper faded.

She waited, ears ringing.

When she dared look back, the trapdoor was closed. The smell was still there. Heavy, rotting. But nothing moved.

She tried the door again.

This time, it opened.

Evelyn stumbled back into the hallway, lungs burning.

She bricked the hole up herself before dawn, hands shaking so badly the mortar smeared across the bricks like tears.

She never spoke of it.

She moved out two weeks later.

Months passed.

New tenants came.

One rainy night, a curious college kid found the same blueprint. Saw the missing room.

And a new hole appeared in the wall.

🩸 Lesson:

Some mysteries are buried for a reason. Curiosity can open doors—but some doors were never meant to be opened.

A Story by: Pir Ashfaq Ahmad.