Chapter 1: The Scream
At exactly 2:13 AM, a scream echoed through the empty halls of Valley View Apartments, followed by silence so sharp it felt like the building was holding its breath.
In Flat 13B, Inspector Karan Mehra stood alone, staring at the blood-stained carpet. The apartment was spotless otherwise. No sign of struggle. No body. No weapon. Just a trail of muddy footprints leading to the window — which was locked... from the inside.
And one more thing.
A photo on the wall: a girl in a red dress, smiling.
Written on the back in ink that hadn’t dried yet:
“She never existed.”
Chapter 2: The Girl Next Door
Two weeks earlier, 25-year-old Reya Malhotra had moved into Flat 13A — next to the crime scene.
She was a freelance writer, barely social, and often heard whispering through her wall at night. When she reported it, the building manager shrugged.
“No one lives in 13B. It’s been empty for months.”
But Reya had seen someone — a girl — with jet-black hair, pale skin, always in red, standing by the window at odd hours.
The weirdest part? Every time she tried to take a picture... nothing showed up. The window was empty. Like the girl had never been there.
Chapter 3: Files and Lies
Inspector Mehra dug deeper.
The last tenant of Flat 13B, a woman named Anaya Vaid, had disappeared six months ago.
No one filed a report.
No family came looking.
Her official records were wiped. Passport, ID, everything — gone.
Only one thing remained: a police complaint she filed a day before she vanished, claiming someone was watching her... from inside her own apartment.
And then Mehra found it — in a hidden drawer beneath the kitchen sink:
A diary.
“He comes at night.
He wears someone else’s face.
I think he’s living in the walls.”
Chapter 4: The Hidden Door
Late one night, Reya followed a strange tapping sound from her bedroom wall. It was rhythmic… deliberate.
She knocked back.
Silence.
Then — three knocks in return.
She pushed her cupboard aside and noticed something odd — a thin, vertical slit in the paint. A hidden door.
Behind it, a crawlspace.
She entered, phone light shaking in her hand. The narrow path smelled of old wood and something rotting.
Then she saw it.
A mattress. A camera. A wall full of photos.
Photos of her.
Sleeping. Showering. Crying. Writing.
And in the corner, a bloody red dress.
Chapter 5: The Man Who Wasn’t There
Mehra rushed to the scene. No signs of forced entry. No fingerprints. But the footage from a street CCTV revealed something chilling:
A man in a hoodie entered the building every night at 2:00 AM, using a master key.
But when they tracked the key’s origin… they found out it was registered under Anaya Vaid’s name.
She’d never left the building.
Final Chapter: The Truth in Flat 13
Mehra assembled the pieces.
There was no ghost. No mystery girl.
He wore her clothes. Used her ID. He became her… to hide the guilt.
He was the one Reya saw. The one whispering at night. The one who left bloody footprints.
When police found him hiding in the ceiling, he was wearing the red dress, whispering:
“She never existed. She never existed. She never—”
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