The door to the Nursery Wing didn't appear right away.
It grew.
The hallway bent as if under pressure, walls swelling outward with fleshy groans. Paint peeled. Lightbulbs burst. Then, from the middle of the wall, a wooden door pushed forward like a bone dislocating through skin. It had no handle. Just carvings of children-dozens of them-etched in a ring, all holding hands.
Only... none of the children had faces.
"They don't let anyone in," Amaka whispered, "unless you remember what you forgot."
James stared at the door. "What does that mean?"
Amaka's jaw tightened. "It means the door opens with guilt."
James reached for it-and the carvings moved. Their arms dropped. The children turned to face him. In unison, they opened their mouths and began to scream-high, shrill, endless.
James staggered back, clutching his ears.
Then suddenly-silence.
The door swung open on its own.
Inside was a nursery frozen in time.
There were rocking horses, broken cribs, shelves of decaying teddy bears, and mobile toys that hung from the ceiling like rotting fruit. The air was thick with powdered milk and mold. On the far end, a large window looked out onto an impossible sky-a swirling red storm over a sunless horizon.
As they stepped inside, the door closed behind them with a sound like a child's last breath.
James felt the atmosphere shift instantly.
His thoughts began to blur. He struggled to remember how they got here-what time it was-what day. He couldn't even recall what color his bedroom was growing up.
"Memory distortion," Amaka warned. "It's starting already. Don't trust what you see. Or what you forget."
They walked slowly, the floor creaking beneath every step.
Then they heard it.
A music box, playing a slow, warped version of Ring Around the Rosie.
James turned to the sound.
A small wooden dollhouse sat in the middle of the room. It hadn't been there before.
The music came from inside it.
James knelt and opened the front of the dollhouse-and immediately recoiled.
Inside the rooms were tiny replicas of the apartment's floors-but instead of people, insects crawled the halls. Centipedes dressed in suits. Flies in aprons. A cockroach holding a baby.
Then all the insects turned to look at him at once.
And smiled.
He slammed the dollhouse shut.
Amaka's voice cut through the moment. "James. Look."
She pointed to the far wall.
A phrase had appeared in bloody red crayon:
> "WHO CRIED FIRST?"
A moment later, the lights went out.
Only the glow from the impossible sky outside lit the room now, bathing everything in a strange red hue.
Children's laughter echoed from all directions.
Then came the first voice.
It wasn't human. It was too high-pitched, like something trying to imitate a child.
> "Let's play a game, James. You love games, don't you?"
Another voice giggled behind him.
> "If you lose, you forget. If you win, you bleed."
Then silence.
James turned in a slow circle.
Everything in the nursery had changed.
The cribs were gone. The shelves now held teeth instead of toys. The teddy bears were hanging from strings like puppets. And written in soot across the ceiling were the words:
> "THE FIRST MEMORY YOU REGRET."
Amaka was pale.
"They're going to force us to relive it. Be careful, James. Whatever it is... the moment you admit it, this room will feed on it."
James didn't hesitate.
He stepped forward and said:
> "I killed my brother."
Silence.
Even the red light seemed to pause.
Amaka turned to him, stunned.
James's voice trembled. "When I was seven. I... I pushed him down the stairs. We were fighting over a toy. I didn't mean to. He hit his head. Mom said it was an accident. But I remember what I felt. I was angry. I wanted to win. I killed him."
The nursery walls groaned.
The window shattered.
From the ceiling, a boy's body fell-crashing to the floor in front of them with a sound that echoed for too long.
James couldn't breathe.
The boy sat up slowly, face shattered, head tilted unnaturally.
He looked just like James.
But younger.
And dead.
He smiled.
> "Let's play tag."
The boy leaped toward him.
James barely ducked as the corpse-boy lunged, arms stretched unnaturally wide. The creature was fast-faster than any child should be-its head lolling like a ragdoll, broken neck swinging with each step.
He and Amaka ran, dodging overturned cribs and shattered mobiles. The room stretched and morphed as they moved-walls pulsing, doorways shifting like breathing skin. Each time James blinked, the nursery changed shape, becoming more like a labyrinth built from broken memories.
"Don't let it tag you!" Amaka shouted. "If it touches you, you'll forget!"
"Forget what?"
But already, James was losing something.
He couldn't remember what color his mother's hair was. Or what street he grew up on.
The boy's laughter echoed, high-pitched and warped.
> "You forgot me. You forgot ME!"
James stumbled into a corridor of rocking horses, all of them rocking on their own. He darted through them, feeling one of their hooves nearly clip his leg. A mobile spun above him, its little stars dripping black ichor.
He heard Amaka scream somewhere behind him-but couldn't stop.
Ahead, the hallway twisted downward into a spiral staircase lit with dim, flickering bulbs.
James descended.
Each step down took him deeper into memory.
The wallpaper shifted-first into familiar colors, then into photographs from his childhood.
One showed him and his brother at the zoo.
Another showed the stairs.
Another showed blood.
At the bottom of the stairs, he reached a playroom.
It was too clean. Too bright.
A child's voice whispered:
> "This is the lie you built."
In the center of the room sat a single toy box, old and wooden, with James's name carved on the side. The lid opened slowly... revealing nothing.
But James's legs moved on their own. Toward it.
The laughter came again-this time inside his head.
He looked into the toy box-and suddenly everything went black.
---
When James opened his eyes, he was seven years old again.
Sitting at the top of the stairs in his old home.
His brother-Daniel-stood below him, holding the blue truck James had been playing with earlier.
"Give it back," young James said.
"No," Daniel said. "It's mine now."
James stepped forward.
And in that single moment, he remembered everything.
The rage.
The jealousy.
The push.
But now, something was different.
This time, he saw a shadow behind Daniel. A tall, black figure, barely visible, whispering into Daniel's ear. Feeding him the words.
James gasped.
It hadn't just been a fight between brothers.
The Apartment... the Well... it had reached into his past.
Even then.
"You're not real," he muttered. "None of this is real."
But Daniel turned around slowly, smiling through bloodied lips.
> "I'm more real than you."
Then he shoved James down the stairs.
---
James slammed back into the present, gasping, nose bleeding.
Amaka pulled him up, panting. "You vanished for two minutes! I thought it had you."
James wiped the blood from his face. "It showed me... my guilt. But it added something. A shadow."
Amaka looked grim. "That's how it works. The Apartment isn't just haunted-it's a living memory engine. It feeds on regret, reshapes it, then forces you to carry the new version."
They turned to see the toy box again-but now it was twisting, unfolding like origami.
From within, dozens of child-shaped figures crawled out. They moved like stop-motion puppets, faces blank, whispering in dead voices.
> "Play with us."
James and Amaka backed away slowly.
Amaka pointed toward a mobile hanging from the ceiling, made of bones and brass.
One of the charms was glowing faintly.
"The second relic," she breathed. "It's part of the mobile!"
As James moved toward it, the children began to chant:
> "If he touches it, he forgets!"
> "If he touches it, he forgets!"
James reached up-and the relic burned cold in his hand.
Instantly, memories began to fade.
His first kiss.
His high school graduation.
The sound of his father's voice.
He staggered-but Amaka caught him.
She whispered something in a language James didn't understand, then pressed her forehead to his.
The relic's glow faded.
James blinked, his mind returning like a door slowly creaking open.
Amaka grinned, weakly. "Memory shield. Learned it from a dream I forgot."
He looked at the relic-a tiny brass rattle with tiny teeth carved into the handle. The second of four.
Suddenly, the nursery screamed.
Everything began to collapse-the walls ripping apart to reveal endless darkness, the children's puppets disassembling mid-run, the sky outside turning a violent violet.
A voice thundered:
> "YOU TOOK THEIR LAUGHTER.
NOW GIVE BACK YOURS."
James and Amaka ran.
The doorway behind them reappeared, cracked and steaming.
As they leapt through, the nursery imploded, shrieking into oblivion.
And then-silence.
---
They landed hard in the hallway outside.
The apartment complex had changed again.
The wallpaper was wet with veins. Lightbulbs hung like eyes. The hallway stretched impossibly, leading into new sections they hadn't seen before.
James looked down at the relic in his hand.
It had teeth now.
Amaka stood up shakily. "Two more to go."
"Where's the next one?" James asked.
Her voice dropped.
"In the Room of Mirrors."
James stared down the hallway, where dozens of small reflections shimmered against the walls... even though there was no light to cast them.
And among those reflections... one was moving.
It looked just like him.
But it was smiling too wide.
The hallway ahead shimmered with reflections-but there were no mirrors.
The walls themselves had become liquid glass, rippling with every breath James took. Dozens of versions of himself moved slightly out of sync. Some blinked too slowly. Others didn't blink at all. One smiled with cracked, dry lips-smiled too long.
Amaka stayed behind.
"You have to go in alone," she said, clutching the relic tightly. "If I follow, your reflection will copy me... and then it'll lie."
James nodded, heart hammering.
He stepped into the Room of Mirrors.
Immediately, his reflection fractured.
The walls, floor, even the ceiling dissolved into a shimmering web of glass corridors, stretching into eternity. Each pane held a version of James. But these weren't just memories-they were possibilities.
One wore a noose.
Another held a knife.
A third stood in a priest's collar, face solemn and lifeless.
James took a deep breath.
The door behind him disappeared.
> You're alone now, whispered a voice.
No one can follow you into who you truly are.
The first mirror on his left showed a version of him standing on a bridge, watching someone drown.
> "You didn't jump in," the reflection said. "You watched her die."
James recoiled. "That's not true."
> "But you thought about it."
The next mirror showed a version of him smiling, wearing an expensive suit. But something was off-his eyes were black pits, and something crawled behind them.
> "You could've had it all," this one said. "But you chose guilt instead."
The corridor darkened.
Glass cracked underfoot.
Suddenly-laughter, echoing from every direction.
James turned.
One mirror-larger than the others-showed a warped version of him, with skin stitched together like a patchwork doll. Its mouth stretched across its entire jaw, ear to ear.
It stepped out of the mirror.
Real. Solid. Wrong.
James backed away.
The creature spoke in his voice-but backwards.
> "ƧI MAH I"-"I am HIS."
It lunged.
James dodged, slamming into another pane. Glass shattered-and through it, he fell into a room that wasn't real, but wasn't false either.
---
He landed in a kitchen-his mother's.
But everything was in reverse. Writing on cereal boxes ran backward. The clock ticked counter-clockwise. On the fridge were pictures of people James didn't recognize-but they all had his face.
His mother stood at the stove, back turned.
"James?" she said, in a voice too calm. "Did you wash your hands?"
James froze. That wasn't his mother's voice. It was someone pretending to be her.
He turned to the door-but it had vanished.
The mother turned.
Her face was stitched shut, her eyes black sockets filled with crawling maggots.
She whispered:
> "You left me here, James. Now I'm your memory."
The room inverted, flipping like a Rubik's cube. James was falling again.
---
He landed in a corridor made entirely of mirrors-endless rows stretching out in all directions. His reflection watched him from every side.
Then... one of them moved on its own.
It raised a hand. James didn't.
It leaned close.
Its voice was softer. Sadder.
> "I'm the version of you that stayed. The one who never ran."
James stared, unsettled.
> "We're not monsters," the reflection continued. "We're just the pieces you refused to carry."
James stepped closer. "Why show me this?"
> "Because you need to remember. What you forgot. What you chose to forget."
The mirrors rippled.
Then shattered-all at once.
In the shards, James saw a memory he had never known.
---
He stood in a hospital room.
His father lay dying, eyes sunken, skin yellow from disease.
James stood at the door... but didn't go in.
He had promised he would.
But he couldn't handle it.
He left.
And the man died alone.
Back in the mirrored corridor, James whispered, "I never faced it. I convinced myself I did... but I didn't."
The corridor responded-not with words, but with acceptance.
One last mirror stood before him.
It showed James exactly as he was.
But this time, his reflection smiled gently.
Then shattered into ash-revealing a small object inside.
The third relic.
It floated in the air: a fragment of broken mirror, wrapped in strands of hair. James took it carefully. As he held it, the entire mirrored realm began to break apart, walls shivering and disintegrating.
Behind him, the false James, the backward one, screamed in rage-but his body twisted into smoke, absorbed by the glass.
James ran through the collapsing corridor, the weight of three relics now burning into his soul.
---
He burst through a door-real this time-back into the hallway.
Amaka waited, sweating, trembling.
"You were gone for too long," she said. "I thought the mirror-self took you."
James showed her the relic.
"I saw everything."
She nodded, hesitantly. "It's working. The Apartment's losing control over your mind. But we have one relic left..."
James felt the relics in his pocket vibrate softly-like hearts beating in sync.
He turned.
The hallway ahead was dark, silent.
At the end stood a single elevator. Its doors slowly opened.
Inside, a staircase descended-not down into the basement... but below it.
Amaka spoke, her voice faint.
> "The final relic is in the Well."
James swallowed.
> "And what's inside the Well?"
She looked up at him-and for the first time, James saw true fear in her eyes.
> "The thing that feeds the Apartment."