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墨書 Inktalez
With the early autumn breeze brushing against him, Lin Yan stepped onto the weathered steps and arrived at the Old Apartment located at the end of the alley. The third floor had no elevator, and the narrow hallway required him to slightly tuck in his shoulders. The peeling walls revealed patches of concrete, and a yellowed red paper talisman was affixed to one door, as if the defenses against the world had long since become futile.
The landlord was a woman whose age was hard to discern. Her voice was cold and she always looked down at the ground while speaking. She got straight to the point, as if sketching a quick outline: "Rent includes utilities, no internet, average soundproofing, neighbors are international students, water drips from above often, no repairs, no refunds, minimum three-month lease. If you want it, move in today." Her tone felt like a reminder and a test of patience all at once.
Lin Yan surveyed the room: about eight pings in size, furnished with a bed frame, an old desk, a small window, and a dark wooden wardrobe. The wardrobe had no handles and was square-shaped, almost too large for the space, taking up nearly an entire wall. He pushed against it, but it didn’t budge; it felt like it was part of the house itself.
"Can it be moved?" he asked.
"It cannot be moved." The landlord's gaze lingered on him briefly. "It's fixed."
There was a slight pause in her tone—not a command nor an explanation—as if there were unspoken words hanging in the air.
Lin Yan signed the lease and dragged his suitcase from the MRT Station into this shadowy space oppressed by iron bars. He moved here to escape—escaping workplace chaos and emotional ruin. He hadn’t told anyone about his change of residence; he only posted a picture of a rice ball from a convenience store on Instagram with the caption: "Eating." There were hardly any likes.
On his first night, he slept poorly—not because of noise but due to the silence. In the deep of night, he was convinced he heard something breathing—irregularly and lowly, with a hint of dampness. He thought it might be a plumbing issue from above. It wasn’t until the second night that he lay in bed scrolling on his phone when the battery dropped to 2%. Just as the screen was about to go dark, he caught a glimpse of a shadow flickering through the gap in the wardrobe door.
He sat up immediately; the wardrobe door remained still. He stared at it for a minute, then another minute. Nothing appeared—not even a sliver of space—like it was sealed shut.
"I must be imagining things," he murmured to himself. That night he moved a chair in front of the wardrobe instinctively.
The following days passed normally. During the day, he worked part-time doing remote data annotation; for dinner, he bought oden from the convenience store; late at night, he drank beer while watching YouTube. The apartment was as quiet as an empty box; sometimes he would fall asleep with the TV on—even if it was just news.
On the fifth night, his phone wouldn’t connect to the hotspot. He crouched down to check the router and unexpectedly found several long hairs stuck in the corner of the wall—almost blending in with its color—clinging there as if they hadn’t been cleaned in ages. He picked them up; they felt hardened and made him feel nauseous—a remnant of someone else's presence that unsettled him. He tossed them into the trash bin and pressed down with paper.
At four in the morning, he woke up with a dry mouth and a damp back as if he had dreamt something but couldn’t recall any details upon waking. Sitting up, he noticed that the chair had shifted—it was no longer propped against the wardrobe but lay toppled in the corner as if someone had knocked it over. Instinctively, he glanced at his phone screen: 4:13 AM; the front camera was activated without him touching it or turning it on. On-screen was his room, and within its frame, a black shadow slowly retreated from one corner.
In that instant, Lin Yan felt an intense chill shoot up his spine to his scalp. He turned off the screen and stood up immediately, switching on the light. Nothing was there—the wardrobe remained tightly closed with no gaps or sounds or abnormalities.
But the chair was still on its side. He didn’t remember kicking it over.
He righted the chair back in front of the wardrobe and sat down with his back turned to it while opening his laptop to post on some forum: "Strange occurrences at my rental place; can anyone help me determine if I'm overthinking this?"
No one replied beneath his post. After waiting for a while, he went to take a shower—the water was still cold; this place never had hot water. As he dried off after showering, he faintly heard an extremely soft laugh—not coming from outside or from above like usual water sounds but from behind him—from inside that wardrobe.
The sound stopped too abruptly, as if it echoed in his mind, but it was enough to freeze him in front of the mirror for a few seconds.
When he returned to the bedside, he found that the help post on his laptop screen had been deleted, the account logged out, and the system displayed: "This account has logged in abnormally, please re-verify your identity." The screen reflected the wardrobe, revealing a nearly invisible crack that seemed to have opened slightly, as if it had always been there.
At six-thirty in the morning, sunlight streamed through the slats of the blinds, just grazing Lin Yan's face. When he woke up, remnants of dreams lingered above his head, like a warm liquid being poured into the back of his skull—no pain, just a sticky sensation. He couldn't recall the details of the dream, only that there were many slippery sounds and someone was softly calling his childhood nickname over and over again, like a forgotten summons from his past.
He propped himself up, feeling a slight stiffness in his neck and a weight pressing down on his shoulders as if he had carried something heavy all night. The chair was still in front of the wardrobe but had been pushed askew, one leg wedged into the corner. He remembered straightening it back last night. This was no isolated incident; it felt like a repeated test—someone was probing him to see how long he could endure before breaking.
He didn’t check his phone or laptop immediately. Instead, he went to the kitchen to boil water. After washing his face and looking at himself in the mirror, he noticed that his face had changed slightly over the past few days—not older, but rather "looser"—as if tiny gaps had formed between his skin and bones. It was an unnatural slackness, like a living person trying to mimic a dead one.
As the water boiled, he sat down and restarted his laptop. His forum account remained locked, but the history record showed that his post had existed at some point; it had simply been deleted by an anonymous moderator with the reason listed as: "Indescribable content that violates community harmony guidelines."
He clicked on other people's articles, trying to search for keywords related to "abnormalities in old rental housing," "wardrobe," and "sleep disturbances." The results were pitifully few—only a handful of old posts from years ago, with authors who had not logged back in since.
One post dated back to 2016 by an author with the ID "SpintheKey" read:
"…There are breathing sounds coming from the wardrobe. I know you’ll laugh, but there really is a sound coming from inside. Once I woke up in the middle of the night, and that sound turned into a human voice; it said: 'Let me borrow a little space.' I didn’t dare open the wardrobe; that voice sounded like it was whispering through the crack of the door, lips pressed against wood. I called 1999 for repairs; the city said this place shouldn’t be inhabited anymore, but the landlord claimed it was just outdated information. I…"
The article abruptly cut off as if it had been violently deleted. Lin Yan searched for that ID but found no relevant information outside of the forum.
—
That afternoon, he took on a simple tagging job—marking facial expressions of passersby in photos—for six continuous hours. When he finished and stood up, he realized that his left shoe sole was stuck—not with slime but with fine threads woven through it, connecting him to the floor. He pulled up his shoe and discovered a puncture wound on his foot, yet there were no foreign objects on the floor.
Bending down to inspect closely, he noticed that certain planks near the wardrobe had lifted slightly, forming a strange arc as if something beneath was slowly pushing them apart. He tried prying one plank open with his key—it was black underneath, opaque like some old fabric pressed beneath. When he touched it, the fabric sprang back.
It wasn’t fabric; it was skin. Cold and elastic with tiny pores.
He stumbled back three steps, darkness closing in around him as all he could hear was the frantic beating of his heart.
He no longer waited. He burst out of the room and took the subway back to his mother's house, saying nothing. His mother noticed something was off and brewed him some tea, but he only held the cup, unable to utter a word. He knew that if he spoke of what he had seen now, everything would become unreal, as if he were lying. He simply said he had moved houses and was tired, needing to sleep for a night.
—
When he returned to the rental unit, it was already dark outside. He stood at the door for a moment, as if waiting for someone to open it. The entire building remained silent. A light bulb flickered, casting shadows that danced across the floor like paper.
He kicked the door open and walked in without turning on the lights, heading straight for the wardrobe. There was no particular reason; he just suddenly wanted to see what was inside.
He reached out to touch the wardrobe door. It wasn’t locked; it just needed a bit of force to open. Taking a deep breath, he pushed with his shoulder, and the door creaked slightly ajar.
A wave of dark air poured out like water—not smoke or mist, but a long-sealed scent of something that had existed too long—something akin to a sweet rot mingled with dampness.
Lin Yan took out his phone and shone the flashlight inside.
What lay within was not a normal wardrobe. There were no rods, no shelves, no clothes or hooks. It was a cave that extended backward, its walls resembling flesh-colored soft clay, gently vibrating with breathing sounds. He saw something sitting inside—like a person, curled up with knees drawn to its chest, body pressed against the wall, hair hanging down in strands.
That thing was looking at him; it had no eyes—only two thin black slits where eyes should be, lightly wrinkled in what seemed like an imitation of human features.
Before he could react, it slowly opened its mouth. Nothing came out—no sound—just a silent utterance formed by its lips. Lin Yan understood that shape:
"Don't go."
The door closed automatically behind him.
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