Never Emek: Room 102 - Part 8 of ?

8

When morning came at last, albeit reluctantly, a subtle streak of grey sept through the frosty windowpanes. But it was so thin it barely illuminated the dark and shadowy corners, as if the sky itself were wary and hesitant to enter. I lingered at the window long after dawn, fingers pressed to the cold glass, tracing the frost with the tips of my fingers. It wasn’t until I withdrew that I noticed the twisting patterns on the glass, a map made of lines – all of which led to the same place.

The caretaker’s hut.

I couldn’t shake the image of what I saw. Thought I saw. But it wasn’t even these images that gnawed at me, that bore me down and distorted all my senses. It was the uncertainty of it all. Was it all real or just my imagination running wild? As a former journalist, I knew the supernatural did not and could not exist. At the same time, I couldn’t make sense of what was happening to me. And whatever it was, it started the day that letter arrived. Was I being set up? But by whom? The solicitor or… something else?

Eventually, I pulled away from the window and forced myself out of the room. This time, the door gave way under my touch and creaked open without issues. As though I had imagined it trapping me inside hours earlier. How ironic. Maybe I did hallucinate it, after all? But I knew I hadn’t. Couldn’t have. Because my flight through the corridor yesterday was still present, neither erased nor covered up by whatever haunted me. Almost as if it… wanted me to know. To not forget. To not doubt its existence. But why go to such lengths if it wanted to kill me? If it wanted to kill me.

Ring. Ring.

Down the corridor, near the restroom door, a phone rang. I instinctively reached for my pocket. It was my phone. My… phone? I briefly looked away as it continued ringing, trying to recall the exact moment I had lost it. Then I did, and a shiver shot up my spine, one I quickly shook off. But who would be calling me at this hour? Alena? No, she wouldn’t. Not after what happened the last time. Then maybe—my daughter?

Every step I took was heavier than the former as I approached the phone, my heart pounding hard against my ribcage and smothering me. A frown formed on my brow as soon as I picked it up as gingerly as I could. The screen was cracked into pieces, but that wasn’t what caused me to arch my brows and gulp hard. There was nothing on the display. No name, no phone number to help me identify the caller. Just a black screen and the option to answer or decline the incoming call. I hesitated for good reasons. And when I did answer and the ringing let up at last, everything hushed. Like the entire building held its breath in anticipation.

“Hello?”

No reply.

“Hello?” I tried again. “Who’s this?”

Again. No response. But this time I heard something else. It wasn’t breathing or anything of the sort. No, this was something else, something I once knew but had forgotten. A tune. My hand shot to my aching chest, the pain surging and roaring from within without warning. What was this melody, this agonising pain? It was melancholic in nature, in the way the low pitch rose and fell with a sombre cadence and brought back flashes of memory from inside me, causing a deep pang of ache to form in my chest and spreading. Where had I heard it before? I must have!

Then it dawned on me, and my eyes flew open with the realisation, with the shock of it, and my eyes flickered from place to place as the memories rushed back and overwhelmed all my senses. I was five—no, younger. Maybe three. I sat on the lap of a young woman, sleepy. But I didn’t want to sleep. Couldn’t sleep due to the bombings and drones. The woman then hummed a tune, lulling me into the warm embrace of sleep. A lullaby—

“…Khāle?”

The words slipped my mouth before I could hinder them, before I could process what had already taken form and space in my distraught mind. The tune stopped in response, and a shallow, laboured breath replaced it.

“Khāle?” I began, my breath hitching and mind going haywire. “Are you—where are you? What happened to you? Khāle—”

The line died.

I stared at the black screen for several minutes, my mind reeling, the unanswered questions taking over every inch of me. It was her. It had to be! But why wouldn’t she talk to me? Why wouldn’t she—

Knock.

I directed my unfocused eyes towards the guestroom, or rather, the wall next to it – where a door was missing. The one that led to that room I saw through the gap. The knocking itself, however, came from within the wall, from the space where a door should’ve been. I was certain. But it didn’t repeat itself. I drew closer nonetheless and listened, tapping on the wooden surface to find a hollow spot. Then I heard it. A faint knock back. As if someone trapped inside the walls replied to me. I tapped again, hoping for a reply back when—

Ring. Ring.

I answered without looking at the screen this time. Holding my shallow breath, hoping to hear my aunt’s voice. To hear her say something, anything. To tell me she was alive and well despite everything, no matter how foolish that hope was. But wasn’t that what hope did anyway? Offering miserable people a thin, trembling promise of a tomorrow that would never come.

“You… shouldn’t… be… here.”

“Khāle?”

“Don’t—”

Wet, staggered gasps spilt through the line. Slowly. Certainly. Yet… soft too at the same time, like she was trying not to cry as her breath caught violently in her throat. Like she was being… choked.

“Please! Don’t—hurt me! Don’t [unintelligible]—help me!”

“Khāle!”

“Someone please [unintelligible]!” Then the choking ceased, replaced by a wheezing sound for half a second before—. “Sami?” But it didn’t come from the phone. It came from behind me. From inside that wall.

And I turned, painfully slow, every hair on the back of my neck rising as goosebumps crawled all over my skin, and a cold breath brushed the back of my head. Until it no longer did. The breath vanished. And in its place, something else began to seep through the walls, spreading fast and frantic, like a wildfire racing in the dark. It surged through every space in the corridor, multiplying, filling every crack, every hollow, as if it meant to swallow the entire place whole.

I staggered back, eyes wide and heart pounding out of control, and before I even realised it, I was running. Down the stairwell and up again, towards the far side of the building where the entrance was. All the while, the walls writhed with the countless critters, shifting and breathing as though the entire building had come alive.

Can’t even remember how I made it out. The details eluded me for some reason, as if my brain willed me to forget, to not recall a damn thing. Looking back now, I guess I was too out of it to recall, to process what was going on. All I knew, all I wanted to do at the time, was to get out of the building before I lost my mind completely. To break free from the chains of events that made no sense whatsoever. Had I known what I knew as I’m putting these words on paper, I might not have reacted the way I did. But saying these kinds of things was only possible in hindsight. What mattered was the moment. When it happened.

The ground was completely frost-bitten as I stormed outside, the biting air the first thing to hit me, like a well-deserved slap to regain my senses. Strangely, it worked. Kind of. But it wasn’t the slap itself that did it. With it, the whistling wind carried the scent of the frozen earth, grounding me to the moment, steadying my galloping heart and frantic breathing. It was like entering an invisible portal to the past, to my forgotten childhood, sniffing the air like an addict looking for a quick kick; flashes of memories passing in a blur. Funny how certain smells bring back those kinds of memories, the ones deeply hidden in our brains to protect us, only to let themselves be known in the moment…

But I wasn’t ready to face those memories. Not yet.

So, I drew a deep breath and cleared my thoughts.

The burial ground stretched out before me, quiet and endless as it was and would forever be. Yet, every lump of stone seemed to watch me. Study me. But it wasn’t these peculiar observations that arrested me as I drew closer to the cemetery. There, just a few meters away, where before there had been a hollow, disturbed earth, now the soil lay flat and smooth, pressed down. There was no mound, no indentation, no hint that the ground had ever been touched. Even the grass around it glimmered with frost, each blade coated in crystals that crunched under the weight of my hesitant steps.

I stood there, frozen in place, trying desperately to recall the memory of the caretaker bent low over the dark pit with the perfect stillness of the witching hour. So, how was this—I crouched. My fingers twitched as I prodded the surface for some clue, something that could disprove what my eyes were seeing but could not make sense of. But found none. The entire patch was undisturbed. The unmarked grave was… gone. No, it had never been there. Couldn’t have.

Was my memory betraying me? Or…

My eyes now settled on the caretaker’s hut at the edge of the burial ground, and before I knew it, my legs had begun moving of their own accord, the frozen grass crunching softly with each step and echoing in the hush of morning. I wasn’t even sure why I was going there. Perhaps I was still trying to reason with my mind, to convince myself that I was overthinking, that I was nothing but sleep-deprived. That it ought to be like that. That speaking to the caretaker would somehow convince there had never been an open grave there. Maybe I just wanted to believe that was the case. For a sound mind.

The brain is an amazing machine, you see. It does everything it can to forget things that ripple through your very marrow – at the cost of your sanity. And then, suddenly, your heart aches, but you don’t know why. Only that it happens now and then, when a sudden smell or image triggers something in your unconsciousness, making you feel the pang without telling you why it happens. So cruel… so unforgiven. So—disturbed.

I knocked once and waited, the sound thudding against the swollen wood. But no one answered the door. I heaved a sigh and relaxed. Not that I didn’t want to confront the guy. I just… didn’t know how. What was I even going to say? That I saw him last night? No, that would be—huh?

Noises. From inside the hut. Like something moving. But too slow. Too… distorted? Neither footsteps nor scraping, but more like the constant rattle of something slithering through the decayed floor, forcing itself forwards with a shuffling sound. Something was in there. But it wasn’t the caretaker. It couldn’t be. Perhaps my imagination was running wild again, playing tricks on me to taunt me, but whatever this was, it was not human. That, if anything, I knew.

The door cracked open.

I froze; heart thudding so hard it drowned out everything else.

Then—

It ceased. That strange sound.

I scrambled back, taken aback and panicked, desperately trying to see what had caused the door to crack open in the first place. As I did that, however, I saw the eye of the Khamsa in the gap as it met mine through the darkness inside the hut, and then it—blinked. Right then, something rose in the darkness, catching the morning light and glittering: a thin, curved blade.

My heart kicked into a full gallop, and instinct took over.

I spun on my heel and bolted for the gravel path, refusing to look back even for a mere second. All I could think about was running; getting as far from the property as my legs would carry me. The gravel spat up under my shoes as I sprinted, each step jarring through my legs and causing severe pain in my joints. My lungs burned too, my chest tightening as though the entity’s presence clung to my back, while shadows flickered at the edges of my vision, urging me faster. Only when the path widened into the village road did the pressure ease. Only then could I slow down, catch my breath, and look behind me.

There, at the boundary where the burial ground met the village, the humanoid figure stood watching me. Motionless, its blade lowered at its side, its single eye tracking my every breath. It didn’t advance. It simply waited, as though biding its time… as though hoping I’d be foolish enough to step back towards it, to let it tear me apart. But I couldn’t let it. Not until I figured out why it existed, whether it was a product of my mind or something else entirely.

Yet I couldn’t make sense of what it wanted from me. Should it want me dead, it had plenty of chances to do so last night. But it never did, just chased me down whenever… something happened. Whenever I thought of her. My aunt.

I tore my gaze away from it, refusing to meet its piercing eyes locked onto me. My mind reeled as several thoughts crowded in and tripped over one another, all demanding to be heard, each one trying to make sense of what I’d seen, to give shape to something that felt beyond understanding.

Then… my thoughts sharpened, breaking through the fog of fear, of the uncertainty, and a pattern began to form, chaotic but undeniable. Was it guiding me? Forcing me to see something? To find something? But what? I’d come to Neve Emek knowing nothing. Only that my aunt had vanished here, that she had been the rightful owner of the property. But now… now I knew something else. Something darker, something sinister to the core. I’d heard her choking through the phone. Dying. That had to be her! And then… her voice. My name, called from inside that room, through the walls writhing with the crawling critters, as if the building itself fought her, tried to stop her from reaching me…

But why this creature? Why did it appear every time I thought of my aunt? It made no sense. None! Unless… there was a link between the two. One I had yet to figure out. But those harrowing thoughts did nothing to calm me or soothe my frantically beating heart. Instead, every question, every single thought taking space in my mind, clawed at me and demanded answers, each one worse than the last. And I didn’t know how to stop the madness. But from beneath all that panic, one truth pushed its way to the surface: if I could understand the creature – its purpose, its origin – I might finally learn what happened to her, too.

To be continued...