After burying the box, I didn't sleep for two days.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Mara's face. Sometimes Liana's. But last night, I saw myself — sitting in this room, writing in a notebook I didn't remember owning, with a hand that wasn't mine.
And one word on the wall:
"LIAR."
This morning, the list stared back at me like always.
Read the notebook
Return the red sweater
Bury the box
Find out who lied
Burn the film roll
Find out who lied.
But about what?
About Liana? About her death?
Or about why I'm here?
I flipped through the early pages of Liana's notebook again.
One page I thought was just scribbles actually had a pattern.
Some letters were bolder. Slanted.
I marked them and rearranged.
A hidden message appeared:
"He said I'd be safe.But he locked the door and left me here."
Who is he?
And why did Liana think she'd be safe?
I dug deeper. The book wasn't just a journal — it was a confession. And on one of the pages, I found a sketch of a face.
A man. Neatly combed hair. A tie. Glassy eyes.
Beneath it was one name:
Mr. Halden
I tried to recall the apartment lease contract.
No owner name. Just the property agency.
I opened the email I received when I first applied for this apartment — something I had almost forgotten, since everything now feels like a nightmare.
And at the bottom of the email, in tiny letters…
"Property Management: Halden Real Estate Group."
I froze.
Not a coincidence.
I went downstairs. But not to the lobby.
I headed for the archive room — a gray metal door barely visible at the end of the hallway. The first time I moved here, it was locked. But now, somehow… it was slightly open.
I pushed it in.
The room was narrow, dusty, filled with stacks of old documents. All in manila folders.
I searched for the name "Liana."
And I found it.
A folder labeled: L. MATHERS — INCIDENT FILE
My hands trembled as I opened it.
It contained more than just a rental form.
There were:
Copies of police reports
Interview transcripts
Medical letters
And among them — a letter from Mr. Halden himself.
I read it carefully.
Halden wrote that Liana had "mental disturbances," and that "for the safety of other tenants," she had to remain inside unit 4B until "her condition improved."
There was no sign he ever got help for her.
He locked her inside.
And never came back.
It wasn't a ghost who trapped her.
It was a man.
There was one more item in the folder.
The last photo of Liana — sitting in the corner of the same room I now live in. Empty eyes. Hollow face.
On the back of the photo, a timestamp: May 4, 2018
And a handwritten note:
"Claimed she saw 'the girl in the red sweater.' No one else did. No record of Mara Ellis ever living here."
I read that line again.
No record.
But I saw the sweater. I returned it.
And I met Mara.
What do they mean, no record?
Then something struck me.
Could it be — Mara wasn't a person?
Could she have… been dead all along?
And Liana was punished for seeing what she shouldn't?
When I got back upstairs, the air in the apartment had changed again.
Not cold.
But angry.
The mirror in the bedroom had cracked even more.
In the middle of the fracture, someone had written:
"Now you know."
Then below it:
"He lied. So will you."
I stepped back.
Me? Lie?
I don't even know the truth.
But when I opened the list, item four slowly faded… and was crossed out with a thick black line:
4. Find out who lied
And underneath, new words appeared.
"Once you know, you carry it too."
I collapsed onto the floor. My breath caught in my throat.
I came to this apartment for peace, solitude, and affordability.
But it turns out, I walked into a place of death.
I'm not just a tenant.
I'm a replacement.
And this curse doesn't disappear…
It just finds a new hand to hold.