02 Feb Through the Cracks

Part I

Nathan Reynolds knew his apartment was falling apart, but he hadn’t expected it to happen overnight.

He’d lived in The Margrave for three years, long enough to understand that the place was dying. The walls were yellowed from decades of cigarette smoke. The radiator coughed and sputtered, expelling bursts of wet heat laced with the smell of rust. The floors creaked, the pipes knocked at odd hours, and the water tasted faintly metallic—as if something had corroded inside the building’s bones.

But it was cheap. And in a city like this, cheap was all he could afford.

The apartment complex was six stories tall, a gray brick structure with peeling green paint around the window frames, and a lobby that smelled like wet carpet. The hallways were dimly lit, the sconces too weak to illuminate the stained wallpaper, leaving the corners in shadow.

Nathan worked from home—data processing for a logistics company—which meant he spent more time inside these walls than he cared to admit. His only real interactions were with the other tenants, and even those were fleeting, forgettable.

Mrs. Calloway, the elderly woman across the hall, spoke to someone who wasn’t there, her voice a whisper through the walls.
Luis and Antonia, the couple from 4B, were always fighting. Loudly. Dennis, down the hall, was convinced the government was listening through the light fixtures.

And the landlord? Mr. Grayson might as well have been a ghost.

* * * * * *

Nathan first noticed the crack in his bedroom wall on a Monday night. It was small—a thin, jagged line near the ceiling, cutting across the faded white paint. At first, he didn’t think much of it. The building was old. Old buildings cracked. But something about it unsettled him. The shape of it, maybe. The way it split downward in uneven branches, like veins under the skin.

He ran his fingers over it. The paint flaked away easily. Beneath it, the plaster felt dry and brittle. He pressed a little harder. A sliver of it crumbled beneath his thumb. Nathan sighed. Just another thing breaking down. He made a mental note to email the landlord, then promptly forgot about it.

That night, he heard scratching inside the walls.

Nathan wasn’t a light sleeper, but something about the sound woke him up instantly. It was soft, deliberate, like tiny claws raking against wood. Mice, he thought. Maybe rats. Not surprising. But the sound didn’t move horizontally—it moved upward, along the wall where he’d seen the crack. Climbing.

He turned on the lamp. The room was empty. The crack was still there, unchanged.

Nathan sat in bed for a long time, staring at it and listening. But the sound was gone.

In the morning, the crack had shifted. Not just widened, but moved—lower than before, stretching closer toward the middle of the wall.

Nathan frowned, rubbing his eyes. Maybe he was imagining things. He took a picture on his phone before heading to the kitchen to make coffee.

By the time he returned, the crack was an inch longer. He checked his phone and compared the photo. It was different. He set the phone down and watched the crack, unblinking.

Nothing happened.

After a minute, he let out a dry laugh. Maybe the lack of sleep was getting to him. He had been working too many late nights, staring at spreadsheets until the numbers blurred. Still, he took another picture.

Later that afternoon, Mrs. Calloway knocked on his door. She was a frail woman in her seventies, dressed in a faded cardigan and slippers. Her white hair was thin and wispy, her face lined with deep-set wrinkles.

“Did you hear them last night?” she asked.

Nathan blinked. “What?”

Mrs. Calloway leaned forward, lowering her voice. “The voices.”

Nathan hesitated. She was always talking about things that weren’t there. Most of the tenants ignored her.

“I heard… scratching,” he admitted, though he felt stupid saying it. “Probably rats.”

She shook her head. “Not rats. Them.”

Nathan sighed. “Who’s ‘them’?”

Her eyes flickered toward his apartment—toward the crack in the wall, which she couldn’t possibly see from here.

“They watch,” she whispered. “Through the cracks.”

Nathan stiffened. For a moment, he thought she might say more, but then her face went slack, as if she’d lost her train of thought.

“Never mind,” she murmured, turning away. “You’ll see soon enough.”

That night, Nathan sat in bed, staring at the crack. It was longer now, almost reaching his dresser. He grabbed a butter knife from the kitchen and scraped at the paint, widening the hole just slightly. The drywall crumbled away too easily. Beneath it, the space wasn’t dark like he expected—it was black, hollow, and impossibly deep. For a moment, he thought he saw movement inside.

Nathan swallowed hard. Just shadows, right? Just an optical illusion.

But then he spotted a glint of something reflective—a wet shine. A blink.

Nathan jerked back from the wall and stared wide-eyed. The crack was still there, unchanged. Nothing inside but darkness.

Nathan sat frozen in bed for a long time before finally turning off the lamp.

He didn’t sleep.

Part II

Nathan barely slept.

He stayed awake watching the crack, expecting to see it move, grow, and split into something unnatural. But by morning, it looked the same as the night before. He told himself he’d imagined the movement, that his exhaustion was playing tricks on him. But he couldn’t ignore the unease curling in his stomach.

The next day, he noticed a second crack, this time in the bathroom mirror. It was small, almost unnoticeable, a hairline fracture at the very top. But when he stepped closer, he swore it shifted, creeping a little farther down.

Nathan stood motionless. “Just the glass settling,” he murmured aloud. Nothing supernatural about a cracked mirror.

Still, when he reached out to touch it, a sharp static tingle ran up his fingers. Not pain—just a strange, uncomfortable buzz. He pulled his hand away quickly.

Down the hall, something scraped against the walls. He turned sharply and scanned the apartment. But there was nothing there—just empty space and silence.

He went to the kitchen, turned on the faucet, and splashed water on his face. The water had a faint metallic taste.

Nathan spent the day trying to ignore the cracks. He focused on work, clicking through spreadsheets and typing out reports he barely read. But his eyes kept drifting toward the wall, toward the dark fracture that now stretched halfway down the bedroom paneling.

That night, he lay in bed, the glow of his phone screen the only light. He checked the first picture he took, comparing it to one he’d taken that morning. The difference was undeniable. It was growing.

As he stared, he realized something wasn’t right about the second picture. The space inside the crack—it was darker than it should have been. Not just shadows. Not just the absence of light. It was unnaturally black, like peering into an opening that shouldn’t exist. Nathan felt his stomach knot.

Without thinking, he rolled over in bed and glanced at the real crack. As before, there was a shine inside, the familiar wet, shifting gleam. Again, something blinked.

Nathan threw himself out of bed, scrambling backward. His heel caught the edge of his nightstand, sending his lamp crashing to the floor. He stared at the crack, panting.

Nothing. Just empty space. No movement.

Nathan swallowed hard, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and forced himself to sit. It’s the lighting, he thought. Just shadows. Just exhaustion. He took another picture, closed his eyes, and didn’t open them again until morning.

* * * * * *

Nathan awoke to muffled shouting from the hallway. Likely Luis and Antonia, fighting again.

Nathan groaned and pulled his pillow over his head, willing himself back to sleep. It was a daily ritual at this point.

But then—a crash. A loud, splitting noise, followed by silence. Nathan sat up and listened.

The hallway went dead quiet.

After a long moment, he threw on a hoodie and stepped outside. Luis’s apartment door was wide open.

“Luis?” Nathan called. No response. He stepped closer and knocked. Still nothing.

Against his better judgment, Nathan stepped inside. The first thing he noticed was that the fight hadn’t been cleaned up. The kitchen chair lay broken on the tile, split at one leg. A glass of water had been knocked over, spreading across the counter.

Luis sat at the table, staring blankly at nothing. Nathan frowned. “Luis?”

Luis blinked, as if he hadn’t noticed him until now. “Oh. Hey, man.”

There was no distress in his voice. No sign of the shouting from earlier.

Nathan’s stomach tightened. “Where’s Antonia?”

Luis tilted his head. “Who?”

Nathan stared. “Antonia. Your girlfriend.”

Luis let out a dry chuckle. “Nah, man. I live alone.”

Nathan felt the air squeeze out of his chest. His eyes flickered to the two coffee mugs on the counter and the woman’s jacket hanging by the door. His skin crawled.

Nathan went back to his apartment and locked the door behind him. His hands were shaking. Antonia was real. She had always been real.

Luis was lying—or something was wrong with him.

Nathan turned to the wall. The crack had branched further. The branching lines looked almost organic now. Like veins.

That night, he left the bedroom light on.

* * * * * *

The next few days, things only got worse. The crack in his bedroom spread down to the baseboard, and more appeared—thin fractures along the ceiling, splitting the drywall in the kitchen and stretching into the bathroom tile.

Nathan tried filming it, but the recordings never captured the movement.

Then, the sounds in the walls grew louder.

They weren’t scratches anymore. They were whispers—soft and indistinct. But they were getting closer.

Nathan stayed in his apartment as much as possible. He avoided talking to Luis. He didn’t answer when Dennis knocked on his door, rambling about new security cameras in the lobby. He just needed to sleep. He just needed to get through the week.

Friday night, he woke up gasping. His heart raced—not from a nightmare, but from something else. A sound. Something deep and hollow, resonating through the building.

Nathan sat up, staring at the dark ceiling. His sheets were soaked with sweat. Then he noticed something different—the door to his bedroom was open. Nathan hadn’t left it open.

Slowly, he got out of bed and walked to the doorway. The hallway was… wrong. It looked longer than it should have been. The walls felt farther apart, stretching into shadows.

Nathan’s throat tightened, and he took a step forward. The air carried the unmistakable musty scent of damp wood.

Then, it moved. At the end of the hallway, just at the edge of the shadows, something shifted inside the wall.

Nathan froze. For a long moment, he thought it was just another crack in the drywall.

But then it blinked.

Part III

Nathan didn’t move. The shape at the end of the hallway remained motionless, blending into the darkness. But he knew it was watching him.

Then, it shifted. Just slightly.

Nathan lunged backward, slamming his bedroom door shut. He grabbed the desk chair and jammed it under the knob. He stood there, hands trembling, waiting.

Silence.

Then, just beyond the door, heard it—scraping. It started at the floor and moved upward, across the door’s surface, a dry, rasping sound, like nails dragging over wood. Nathan’s stomach turned to ice. The noise went on for minutes, but eventually it stopped.

He stayed awake until morning, not daring to open the door.

At dawn, Nathan stepped into the hallway. It looked normal again. No unnatural stretching, no shifting shadows. But when he turned to Mrs. Calloway’s door, he froze. Her door was wide open.

Slowly, Nathan stepped forward, peering inside. The apartment was a mess—papers scattered, furniture half-tipped over, the radio playing a faint, warbling hum.

Then he saw her standing near the window.

She didn’t turn to look at him. Her bony fingers were trembling, clutched into the fabric of her cardigan.

“They’re taking them,” she whispered.

Nathan swallowed. “Taking who?”

Mrs. Calloway turned halfway, her face shrunken with exhaustion. “The ones who see them.”

Nathan felt his spine stiffen. “What are you talking about?”

She let out a thin, humorless laugh, shaking her head. “The cracks aren’t from the building.”

Nathan frowned. “Then where are they from?”

She met his gaze, her pale blue eyes watery with terror. “They’re from the other side,” she whispered.

Before he could respond, something creaked behind him—the sound of a door slowly swinging open. Mrs. Calloway’s face twisted in horror.

Nathan spun around. Her apartment door had swung wider, revealing something behind it. Not another room, not another hallway—but rather, something impossibly black, yawning open like a wound in reality.

Mrs. Calloway let out a thin breath. Then, she stepped forward and disappeared inside. The door swung shut behind her.

Nathan stood in the hallway, his skin crawling with goosebumps. For a long time, he stared at the door. Knocked on it. Called her name. She didn’t respond.

The apartment was silent.

After a few minutes, he turned and walked toward Dennis’s unit. He knocked, and Dennis opened the door, his usual paranoid scowl on his face.

“Did you hear that?” Nathan asked. “Mrs. Calloway—she just—”

Dennis raised an eyebrow. “Who?”

Nathan hesitated. “Mrs. Calloway. The old woman across the hall. She—”

“There’s no Mrs. Calloway,” Dennis said flatly.

Nathan’s stomach dropped. “—What?”

Dennis rolled his eyes. “This is why I don’t talk to people in this place. Y’all don’t even make sense.”

He slammed the door in Nathan’s face.

Nathan stood there, his breath tight in his chest. He turned and looked at Mrs. Calloway’s door again. The number on her unit—4A—was gone.

That night, Nathan kept all the lights on. His apartment felt wrong. Different. The floorboards were uneven, like the foundation was shifting under him. The furniture was slightly misaligned. And the cracks—they were everywhere now. The ceiling, the corners of the walls, even on the kitchen tiles.

He knelt near the largest one, the original crack in his bedroom. It looked deeper than before, the darkness inside thicker.

Nathan pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight. Slowly, he angled the light into the crack.

At first, there was nothing—just the dark interior of the wall. But then—something inside stirred. It was just for a second, but it was enough. A faint shifting mass, glistening and pulsing like something alive.

Nathan jerked backward, his stomach twisting. Then he heard something else—a whisper. Not in his head. It was inside the crack.

“…we see you.”

Nathan grabbed the nearest object—a heavy book from the nightstand—and slammed it against the wall. The crack didn’t break—but the whispering stopped.

Nathan sat on the floor. He needed to leave.

* * * * * *

Nathan stuffed his backpack with essentials—wallet, keys, laptop, extra clothes. He wasn’t going to spend another night here.

But when he stepped into the hallway, he felt a sudden, deep nausea. The corridor was wrong again. It felt… longer. The walls didn’t match up with how he remembered them.

The lights flickered.

Nathan turned toward the stairwell. He took one step—and then he heard it. A voice. No longer a whisper. This time, it was low and rumbling, and it was coming from inside the walls.

“…don’t go.”

Nathan bolted for the stairs. But when he reached the landing, the door to the stairwell was gone.

Part IV

Nathan stood frozen.

The stairwell door was gone. Not locked or barricaded—gone.

Where the metal door should have been was just more hallway, stretching forward into the dimly lit corridor. He turned left, then right, searching for something familiar, but nothing matched. The layout had changed. The hallway was too long—the walls too far apart. As for the floor, it bulged slightly, as if something was pressing up from underneath.

Nathan took a shaky breath and turned back toward his apartment. He needed to think. But his door was gone, too. His throat tightened, and he backed up slowly, inspecting the featureless walls where his door had been. The air was thick. The floor was damp. He felt as if he was losing his mind, and stood there in silence for a moment, considering the implications.

Another noise broke the stillness—a wet, rhythmic pulsing, like something breathing. Nathan’s stomach twisted. He wasn’t alone.

He turned sharply, eyes flicking down the corridor. At the far end, just at the edge of the shadows, something undulated.  A dark, folding shape, shifting in the dim light, pressed outward from the cracks in the walls.

Nathan didn’t wait. He ran, sprinting through the twisting hallways with abandon. He turned corner after corner, searching for anything familiar—but the layout kept shifting.

Then, finally, he reached the lobby. The front door stood ahead, its old brass handle dull under the weak fluorescents. Nathan hurled himself toward it, grabbing the handle and twisting. It didn’t budge. He yanked again. Harder. It was locked. No, wait, he realized—not locked. There was no seam between the door and the frame.

Nathan ran his hands over the wooden surface, searching for any sign of a separation or gap, but there was nothing. It was smooth, sealed shut.

Nathan stepped back. The building had closed him in.

Then, behind him, he heard a sound—a deep, slow creak. The sound of a door swinging open.

Nathan turned. At the end of the lobby, just beyond the mailboxes, a doorway gaped open—black, wet, and yawning.

Nathan took one step back—and he heard a voice from inside the open doorway. His own voice.

“…help me.”

Nathan’s chest seized. It was his voice—but distorted and stretched, as if it had been pulled from somewhere deep inside the walls.

Something moved inside the blackness.

Nathan bolted, running back toward the stairs—toward the second-floor hallway. If he could find Dennis, maybe—

Nathan stopped.

Dennis’s door stood wide open.

Nathan stepped forward hesitantly. The apartment was empty. No furniture, no books. No trash, no Dennis. It looked like no one had ever lived there.

Nathan’s stomach twisted.

Then he saw it—the walls of Dennis’s apartment had been altered. They weren’t drywall anymore—they were flesh. Soft, grayish-brown ridges, pulsing like veins. Nathan staggered back.

The building wasn’t just alive. It had already digested him.

Nathan ran, back into the hall, back toward anywhere that wasn’t there—but the walls were moving now. The cracks were spreading across the ceiling, the floor bulging beneath his feet. The building was shifting, twisting—enveloping him.

Then, from the darkness, something stepped forward. Not a person. Not anything physical at all. It was just a shape, formed from the walls themselves. It had no face, no arms, and no eyes. All the same, it watched him.

Nathan stumbled back—and the hallway collapsed around him. The last thing he saw was the walls splitting open, revealing endless blackness inside.

And then, nothing.

Part V

Nathan woke up in the dark. His body was pressed against something damp. The air smelled stale and organic, like rotting wood soaked in water.

He tried to sit up—and his hands sank into the floor. It wasn’t wood or concrete; whatever it was, it was soft.

Nathan yanked his hands back. The floor pulsed beneath him. Panic surged in his throat. He wasn’t in his apartment anymore. He wasn’t sure he was in the building at all.

Nathan scrambled to his feet. The space around him was wrong—pitch-black walls curved inward, narrowing like the inside of a tunnel—and it smelled like dirt and old blood.

Nathan turned, trying to find a door, a window—anything—but the walls were featureless, seamless, stretching into endless dark. The building had swallowed him whole. Then, from somewhere deep inside the darkness, there again came a voice.

“…we see you,” it repeated.

Nathan lunged backward, slamming against the wall, and felt it flex. Nathan gagged.

The whisper came again, curling through the damp air. “…don’t fight.”

Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, whispering to himself. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real.”

The voice came closer. “…you are part of us now.”

The walls began to shift. Thin, glossy cracks split open, revealing something wet and gleaming underneath. A slow pulse ran through the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. The entire space was breathing.

Nathan turned and ran. His feet slapped against the damp surface, his hands groping at the darkness ahead—the hallway kept stretching. The walls curved inward, squeezing him as he hurled himself forward.

“…don’t go,” the voice whispered.

But Nathan didn’t stop. He kept running until the ground dropped beneath him—

And suddenly, he was falling.

Nathan hit the ground hard, knocking the air from his lungs. For a moment, he lay there, dazed and breathless, staring into the pulsing blackness above.

Then, he realized he wasn’t alone.

He felt it—something behind him.

Nathan rolled onto his hands and knees. The ground shuddered underneath him, the cracks spreading—and a wet, dragging sound rose to a crescendo.

Nathan froze. Something was moving toward him, emerging from the darkness.

He didn’t look. He didn’t want to look. But he felt it—the presence of something enormous, monitoring his every move.

The voice whispered, closer than before. “…join us.”

Nathan bolted. He clawed at the shifting ground, forcing himself up—but the floor split beneath his feet.

Again, Nathan fell, this time through the cracks.

The last thing Nathan felt was cold, wet blackness wrapping around him, pulling him deeper, deeper, deeper.

It wasn’t just the building anymore. It was something else—something beneath the world, something that had been waiting.

Nathan tried to scream, but the darkness swallowed the sound. And then… there was nothing.

No air. No walls. Just silence.

The cracks closed behind him.

* * * * * *

A week later, the apartment was rented out again.

The Margrave’s management listed it as newly available, with a fresh coat of paint and a discounted price.

The new tenant arrived—a twenty-nine-year-old named Daniel Myers. He was excited. And who wouldn’t be? After all, the rent was cheap, and it was in a good location.

Daniel was so enthralled he barely noticed the thin, barely visible, vein-like crack in the bedroom wall. Daniel didn’t think much of it, in fact.

He set down his suitcase, stretched his arms, and let out a sigh. Tomorrow, he’d unpack.

For now, tonight, he’d sleep.

That evening, he climbed into bed and turned off the light.

Outside the window, the city hummed with life.

Inside the wall, Daniel none the wiser—something moved.