Speaker 1: Calorougu Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to ghost Scary Stories and the October Records, a
month long Halloween nightmare. This is episode nine The Apartment Building,
Part two.
Speaker 3: October ninth, nineteen seventy four. Silas Crane the Milbrook Arms
is drowning from the top down. The seventh floor is
empty now, all twelve apartments, all forty three residents gone,
but their shadows remain, pacing behind windows, casting darkness on
walls where no bodies exist to cast them. The sixth
floor has become unbearable. The smell rotting, vegetation, stagnant water,
something dead in the walls. Residents report black water dripping
through their ceilings, though when maintenance checks the seventh floor
its bone dry, not a drop of moisture, but the
dripping continues. Missus Chen in six Sea was found this
morning standing in her living room, eyes clouded, speaking to
someone who wasn't there. She said, we're going down to
the foundation, down to where the reservoir remembers. Then she
walked to the stairwell and descended. But here's the thing.
She kept descending past the lobby, past the basement. The
super followed her downstairs. That shouldn't exist, down to floors
that aren't on any blueprint. He lost her at what
he swears was the negative third floor. When he tried
to return, he climbed for twenty minutes before reaching the
lobby again. The building is growing downward. Each floor taken
becomes a new floor below. The Millbrook Arms isn't just
an apartment building anymore. It's becoming a throat, and it's swallowing.
Speaker 1: October ninth, twenty twenty five. I returned to the Millbrook
Arms before dawn, unable to sleep after what I'd witnessed yesterday.
The building looked different in the pre dawn darkness, taller somehow,
or perhaps deeper. Its reflection in the wet street extended
far below where the pavement should have been. David Park
was still at his desk. He hadn't left, couldn't leave,
he said. Every time he tried to walk out the door,
he found himself walking back in from the stairwell. The
building won't let me go, he said, his voice hollow.
I'm the manager. I have to manage the descent. The
security monitors behind him showed impossible things. The seventh floor,
supposedly empty, was full of people. But they were wrong.
They moved through walls, they stood in the same space simultaneously.
They were all wet, dripping, leaving puddles that the cameras
somehow captured, but that didn't exist. When David had checked
in person, show me the sixth floor, I said, the
monitors flickered, switching to the six floor hallways. Half the
apartments were dark, not without light, dark with something thicker
than shadow. And in the lit apartments, residents stood at
their windows looking down at something. What are they looking at?
David pulled up the external cameras. The view from the
sixth floor should have shown the street, the shops across
the way, the normal view of downtown Millbrook. Instead it
showed water, as if the sixth floor was submerged, looking
out into an underwater city. The fifth floor is starting,
David said. Listen. He turned up the audio from the
fifth floor hallway camera. The sound of dripping, constant, rhythmic dripping,
but also voices, whispers, multiple people speaking in unison, floor
by floor resident by resident, Holloway, by Holloway. We bring
the reservoir back, we bring the deep up, we bring
the drowned home. A figure appeared in the fifth floor
hallway Walter Holloway from seven G, but he was simultaneously
there and not there, solid and liquid, walking and drowning.
He stopped at Apartment five E, knocked on the door.
When it opened, I saw another Holloway, James. According to
David's records, they spoke, but there were words, were just
the sound of bubbling water. Then James stepped out and
both men became transparent, like water in human form. How
many Holloways are left, I asked. David checked his records.
Three Missus Holloway in six C, but she disappeared last night,
Marcus Holloway in three A and Sarah Holloway in one F.
They're going floor by floor, taking the Holloways first, taking
them where I thought about Silas's description of the negative
floors down. They're going down to floors that don't exist
or didn't exist until now. We went to the stairwell.
I had to see for myself. The stairs going up
looked normal, but the stairs going down there were too
many of them. The basement should have been one flight down,
but I counted three flights before reaching a door and
marked B. That's wrong. David said, that's completely wrong. We
continued down another flight, another door, minus one, then minus two,
then minus three. The air grew thick, heavy with moisture,
the walls wept with condensation, and through the small window
in the door of minus three, I saw an impossible sight,
an exact duplicate of the third floor, but flooded residents
floating in their hallways, not dead, but not alive, existing
in some state between. We need to go back, David said,
panic in his voice. But as we climbed, the stairs multiplied.
We climbed for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty, always more stairs,
always another flight. The numbers on the doors stopped making sense.
Two minus one, five, zero, minus seven. Finally, gasping, we
emerged in the lobby. But it was wrong. The lobby
was full of water, real water, this time knee deep,
black as night, and standing in it were all the
missing residents from the upper floors. They turned to look
at us with clouded eyes. The building is complete, they said,
in unison seven up, seven down, a perfect reflection. The
eighth point of the pattern is marked. The water rose
in seconds. It was at our waists, our chests, our necks.
Don't fight it, Walter Holloway said, his voice clear. Despite
being underwater, fighting makes the drowning worse. Accept it, breathe,
it become it. I held my breath, but David didn't.
He gasped, inhaled the black water, and his eyes went clouded.
He stood perfectly still for a moment, then smiled. I
understand now, he said, his voice bubbling through the water.
The building isn't drowning. It's teaching us to breathe underwater,
preparing us for when the whole town sinks. The water
reached over my head, my lungs burned. I had to
breathe had to, and then I was in the real lobby, dry, gasping.
David was at his desk, but his clothes were soaked,
leaving puddles with every movement. Did you see, he asked,
did you see what we're becoming? I ran out of
the building into the October morning, But when I looked back,
the millbrook arms had changed. It was shimmering, shifting between states,
sometimes seven stories, sometimes fourteen, sometimes a building, sometimes a
column of water reaching up into the sky and down
into the earth. The eighth point was fully marked, and
it was showing us the truth. The pattern wasn't about geography.
It was about depth. Each point would sink to its
designated level. The apartment building, being the eighth point, would
sink deepest seven stories down. But that meant there were
depths assigned to every point. The library, the hospital, the church,
my home. When I returned to the library, I found
water in the basement, just a puddle, but it hadn't
rained inside. And when I looked closer, I could see
shadows in the water. People, residents of the Millbrook arms
reflected impossibly in a puddle that shouldn't exist. They were
waving or drowning from below. It's hard to tell the difference. Tomorrow,
I'll play October tenth. Tomorrow I'll learn about the school bus. Tonight,
I'm measuring the library has three floors above ground, according
to the pattern's logic. That means it will have three
floors below. I'm already finding stairs i've never seen before,
doors that weren't there yesterday. The whole town is beginning
its descent, building by building, point by point, and were
only on day nine.
Speaker 2: Ghost Scary Stories is a production of Caloroga Shark Media.
Some elements of AI may have been used in this production,
but it was written, edited, mixed, and produced by Real
Live People Executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermott.