THE FLOOR THAT WAS NEVER
BUILT
Author: Gitangshu Adhikary
Plot: Sourodipto
Part I — The Sounds Above
By
midnight, everyone in Kankurgachi Heights knew the footsteps would begin.
No one
spoke about them in daylight.
The
residents laughed in elevators, complained about leaking taps, argued over
parking spaces, paid maintenance fees, and posted photographs of sunsets from
their balconies. They behaved like people who believed concrete could keep the
world ordinary.
Then the
clock crossed twelve.
The
footsteps came.
Not loud.
Measured.
Patient.
Someone
walking across a floor that did not officially exist.
...
A child
on the sixth floor had once asked his mother why the footsteps always sounded
as though they stopped directly above his bedroom.
She
slapped him before she realized she had done it.
Three
days later, the family moved away without informing the housing society.
Nobody
took Flat 6C again.
...
The tower
stood in one of Kolkata's oldest quarters, where forgotten mansions leaned
against each other like exhausted ghosts and narrow lanes still remembered
horse carriages. The twenty-two-storey apartment block looked painfully modern
among buildings blackened by a century of rain.
Developers
called it progress.
The
locals called it cursed.
According
to every brochure, every sanctioned blueprint, and every elevator button, the
building had twelve floors followed immediately by fourteen.
No
thirteenth floor.
Residents
joked about superstition.
Then
furniture began moving upstairs every night.
Heavy
furniture.
Cupboards
dragged across stone.
Dining
tables overturned.
Metal
scraping concrete.
Sometimes...
Someone screamed.
The
security guards always blamed stray cats.
The
police blamed plumbing.
The
builders blamed imagination.
Nobody
climbed the emergency staircase after midnight.
Nobody
wanted proof.
Because
proof had a habit of changing people.
Anik
Dutta did not believe in haunted buildings.
He
believed in overtime.
At
twenty-nine, he worked nights for a contract cleaning agency that specialized
in newly constructed commercial and residential complexes. His employers liked
him because he never complained about impossible schedules.
His
colleagues liked him because he volunteered for places everyone else avoided.
He had
debts.
Debts
were more frightening than ghosts.
At least
ghosts had never called him twenty-six times in one afternoon.
The
building manager handed him a clipboard.
"Top
to bottom."
"Just
me?"
"The
other cleaner resigned."
"When?"
The
manager hesitated.
"Tonight."
Anik
frowned.
"Before
starting?"
"He
left his uniform."
That was
all.
People in
expensive shirts always knew how to stop conversations before the truth
arrived.
The tower
felt wrong from the moment the automatic doors slid shut behind him.
It wasn't
cold.
Not
really.
The air
simply lacked warmth.
Like
walking inside a photograph.
Even the
marble floors swallowed echoes.
The lobby
lights glowed without illuminating corners.
Anik
checked his watch.
12:14 AM.
Perfect.
Four
hours.
He
plugged his earphones in.
Music
always made empty buildings friendlier.
The
battery died instantly.
He
sighed.
"Fine."
Silence,
then.
The
service elevator groaned upward.
Floor 22.
He would
clean downward.
Routine.
Mechanical.
Safe.
The
elevator stopped.
Doors
opened.
Darkness.
Only one
emergency light burned at the end of the corridor.
Every
apartment was occupied.
Yet every
door remained shut.
No
televisions.
No
conversations.
No
running air conditioners.
The
silence pressed against his ears until he wondered if he had suddenly gone
deaf.
Then—
THUMP.
Directly
above him.
He looked
up.
Concrete
ceiling.
Nothing
else.
Another
impact.
Heavy.
Like a
wardrobe falling over.
He
checked the floor indicator outside the elevator.
Nothing
above.
The roof.
He
laughed nervously.
"Water
tanks."
Another
crash.
Long
scraping.
Wood
dragged across concrete.
The sound
continued for nearly twenty seconds.
Too
heavy.
Too
deliberate.
Too
close.
His
fingers tightened around the mop handle.
Someone
was moving furniture on the roof.
At
midnight.
In
complete darkness.
Without
any lights visible from outside.
His
heartbeat quickened.
He
ignored it.
Debts.
Always
remember the debts.
Two hours
later, he had reached Floor 15.
The
sounds had never stopped.
Sometimes
footsteps.
Sometimes
dragging.
Sometimes
rhythmic knocking.
Always
directly overhead.
Always
impossible.
He found
the staircase door wedged open with a brick.
The
emergency lights flickered.
Someone
had written a number on the wall using black marker.
13
He
frowned.
Maintenance
workers?
Children?
He rubbed
the writing.
It
wouldn't come off.
Paint?
No.
The
number felt carved into the concrete.
Fresh
dust lay beneath it.
As though
someone had engraved it yesterday.
A loud
metallic bang echoed overhead.
This time
the sound came with vibrations.
The walls
shook.
Dust
rained from the ceiling.
Anik
instinctively stepped backward.
Something
slammed into the floor above hard enough to crack plaster.
Someone
was demolishing an apartment.
At
one-thirty in the morning.
Without
power tools.
Without
lights.
Without
permission.
He took
out his phone.
No
signal.
Five bars
had disappeared while he stood inside the stairwell.
He
climbed another flight.
Floor 16.
Signal
returned.
He
climbed down.
Gone
again.
Up.
Returned.
Down.
Gone.
He stared
at the display.
His
breathing became shallow.
That
wasn't possible.
Unless—
No.
There had
to be an explanation.
There
always was.
At 2:07
AM he reached the service corridor behind the garbage disposal room.
No
residents ever came there.
Only
cleaners.
Electricians.
Maintenance
workers.
The
corridor smelled of damp cement and rust.
One
fluorescent tube blinked erratically.
Halfway
down stood a square metal service hatch.
It hung
slightly open.
That
bothered him.
Open
access panels usually meant complaints.
Complaints
meant deductions from contractor payments.
He knelt.
Pulled
the hatch wider.
Darkness.
Not
unusual.
He shone
his flashlight inside.
Pipes.
Concrete.
Electrical
conduits.
Then—
A draft.
Cold air.
From somewhere
impossible.
The
maintenance shaft should have ended after three metres.
Instead...
His
flashlight beam disappeared into a passage stretching much farther.
He leaned
closer.
There was
no reason for a corridor to exist behind the wall.
Blueprints
didn't allow it.
His light
revealed polished tiles.
Fresh
paint.
A ceiling
fitted with elegant brass lamps.
Not
service tunnels.
A
hallway.
Beautiful.
Expensive.
Silent.
It
extended straight ahead before vanishing into darkness.
His mouth
went dry.
He
checked behind him.
The
service corridor remained empty.
He looked
back.
The
impossible hallway waited.
He
laughed softly.
"Hidden
maintenance access."
That
sounded reasonable.
He
climbed inside.
The hatch
closed behind him.
Not loudly.
Just...
Clicked.
He spun.
The hatch
was gone.
Only
smooth cream-coloured wall.
No
outline.
No
handle.
Nothing.
His pulse
exploded.
He
searched frantically.
Pounded
the wall.
Solid.
His
breathing became ragged.
No.
No.
No.
He had
entered through here.
He knew
he had.
He
remembered squeezing through the metal opening.
He
remembered kneeling.
Didn't
he?
He
stopped.
A strange
pressure formed behind his eyes.
For a
second—
He
couldn't remember where he had started cleaning tonight.
The
memory slipped away like smoke.
Not
faded.
Gone.
Entirely.
He knew
he had worked somewhere.
He simply
couldn't picture it.
His
stomach clenched.
Something
inside the hallway breathed.
Not loudly.
Patiently.
Like an
enormous sleeper pretending to remain asleep.
The brass
lamps flickered.
The
corridor stretched farther than before.
Doors
appeared where there had been none.
One.
Then
three.
Then
seven.
Each
painted dark green.
Each
bearing identical brass number plates.
His
flashlight began flashing uncontrollably.
The beam
swept across the ceiling.
Footprints.
Hundreds
of muddy footprints.
On the
ceiling.
Walking
upside down.
All
moving in one direction.
Away from
him.
Something
crashed behind the nearest door.
Another
impact.
Another.
Furniture
being overturned.
Then—
Children
laughing.
The
laughter stopped all at once.
Every
door slowly opened...
...by
itself.
Darkness
poured out of every apartment.
Not
shadows.
Darkness.
A moving
blackness that crawled across the polished floor like spilled ink.
Anik
stumbled backward.
The
corridor behind him had changed.
It no
longer stretched straight.
It bent
sharply left.
Where
there had been walls, there were now staircases.
Where
there had been doors, there were windows looking into rooms that could not
possibly fit inside the building.
He saw an
old courtyard beneath yellow rain.
Women
carrying earthen lamps.
Children
running barefoot.
An
enormous banyan tree.
The image
vanished.
Now the
window overlooked only brick.
His heart
hammered against his ribs.
The
building had moved.
Not
shaken.
Moved.
Rearranged
itself.
Another
memory slipped away.
His
mother's voice.
He knew
he had one.
He
remembered her face.
But...
What had
she sounded like?
He
couldn't hear it anymore.
Panic
flooded every nerve.
He turned
and ran.
Behind
him—
Hundreds
of footsteps began following him.
Not
running.
Walking.
Slowly.
Patiently.
Exactly
in rhythm.
As though
the entire impossible floor had finally realized...
Someone
had entered who still remembered enough to be hunted.
End of Part I
Part II — The Hallway That Remembered
The footsteps did not quicken.
That was the worst part.
Anik sprinted.
The things behind him walked.
Measured.
Patient.
As if they already knew exactly where he would
end up.
His lungs burned. His shoes hammered against
polished tiles that had not existed five minutes earlier. Every instinct
screamed at him to keep moving, yet the hallway ahead refused to remain the
same for more than a heartbeat.
The left wall rippled.
A doorway folded into the ceiling.
The staircase dissolved into another corridor.
The brass lamps dimmed one after another, not
because electricity failed, but because something unseen passed beneath each
one.
Light retreated before it.
Anik reached the corner.
There was no corner anymore.
Only another impossibly long hallway.
"No..."
His voice came back from behind him.
"...No..."
Not an echo.
His own voice.
Spoken a second time by someone else.
He spun.
Nothing.
Only the slow procession of footsteps.
Closer now.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Every step sounded heavy enough to shake dust
from the ceiling.
His flashlight flickered across the walls.
The wallpaper had changed.
The expensive cream finish was gone.
Now faded floral patterns peeled away from
damp plaster, exposing ancient brickwork beneath.
Not apartment walls.
Old houses.
Very old houses.
The smell changed too.
Fresh paint disappeared.
Wet earth replaced it.
Smoke.
Rotting wood.
Rain.
The scent of a neighborhood that had died
decades ago.
Something brushed past his shoulder.
He jerked around.
Empty air.
But the hairs on his neck stood upright.
Someone had been close enough for him to feel
their clothes.
He ran again.
The hallway opened into a square courtyard.
Impossible.
The apartment tower had no courtyard.
Above him should have been reinforced
concrete.
Instead, black clouds churned overhead.
No stars.
No moon.
Only darkness pressing downward like the
inside of a sealed coffin.
Dozens of houses surrounded the courtyard.
Single-storey.
Brick.
Weathered.
Each doorway stood open.
Each house completely silent.
A broken hand pump leaned beside a cracked
well.
Children's sandals lay scattered across the
mud.
Fresh.
As if their owners had abandoned them only
moments ago.
Yet everything else looked decades old.
Anik slowed despite himself.
His breathing echoed across the empty square.
Something about the place clawed at the edge
of memory.
Not recognition.
Longing.
A strange ache spread through his chest.
He had never been here.
He was certain.
Yet his body behaved as though it had come
home.
A low metallic creak drifted through the air.
One of the doors moved.
Slowly.
Then another.
Then another.
Every house opened wider.
Dark interiors watched him.
The footsteps stopped.
The silence became unbearable.
Then every doorway filled with people.
They had appeared without movement.
Without sound.
Simply...
There.
Men.
Women.
Children.
Hundreds.
Standing perfectly still.
None crossed the threshold.
None blinked.
Their clothes belonged to another era.
Simple cotton.
Faded saris.
Old work shirts.
No faces.
Where eyes, noses, and mouths should have
been, there was only smooth skin stretched over bone.
Featureless.
Like unfinished statues.
Anik staggered backward.
One child raised an arm.
Not toward him.
Toward the tower above.
Toward the place where the apartments should
have existed.
The child slowly pointed upward.
The others copied the gesture.
Hundreds of arms.
One direction.
Straight above.
The ground trembled.
The footsteps resumed.
This time...
Above the sky.
Someone was walking on the darkness itself.
A deafening crack split the courtyard.
The nearest house exploded.
Bricks burst outward.
Dust engulfed everything.
Something enormous had crashed through the roof
from above.
Anik threw himself behind the well.
Stone fragments rained over him.
Another crash.
Another house collapsed.
Another.
Something invisible was dropping through
buildings one after another, descending toward the courtyard.
Each impact shook the earth.
The faceless figures never moved.
They remained standing inside their homes
while roofs collapsed around them.
Not one tried to escape.
Not one reacted.
As though they had already died long ago.
The invisible thing landed somewhere beyond
the dust.
Silence.
Then breathing.
Slow.
Wet.
Far too large to belong to anything human.
Anik crawled backward.
The dust began settling.
A shape stood twenty metres away.
Tall.
Too tall.
Its head almost touched the branches of the
ancient banyan tree.
It wore what looked like an architect's long
coat.
Its hands hung almost to the ground.
Where its face should have been...
Nothing.
Only shifting darkness.
As though the night itself had folded inward.
It took one step.
The entire courtyard changed.
The houses rotated.
The well moved.
The banyan tree disappeared.
The exits vanished.
Reality bent around its movement.
Anik's pulse pounded so violently he thought
his ribs would crack.
The thing lifted one impossibly long arm.
Not toward him.
Toward the houses.
Instantly every faceless resident lowered
their arms.
Then...
They all turned together.
Hundreds of blank heads.
Facing him.
They began walking.
He ran before they took their second step.
The courtyard dissolved into corridors again.
Doors slammed.
Walls twisted.
The building groaned like a ship breaking
apart.
He no longer knew whether he was running
upward or downward.
Gravity had stopped making sense.
At one point he glanced through a window.
He saw the city outside.
Cars.
Streetlights.
People.
Everything perfectly normal.
He smashed the glass with his flashlight.
The window did not break.
Instead...
The people outside all stopped walking.
Every single one looked directly at him.
Then, together, they slowly forgot he existed.
They turned away.
Continued walking.
As though they had never seen him.
The window became a wall.
His flashlight finally died.
Darkness swallowed him.
Only the footsteps remained.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Now directly behind him.
Something cold touched the back of his neck.
Not a hand.
Fingertips.
Long.
Dry.
Patient.
He screamed and lunged forward.
His shoulder slammed into a door.
The door burst open.
He fell into another apartment.
Or what should have been an apartment.
Instead, he found himself inside a vast
drafting room.
Blueprints covered every wall.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
Each drawing depicted the same apartment
tower.
Each one different.
In one plan, the building had twenty-two
floors.
In another, twenty-three.
In another, only thirteen.
Every version contained a level marked only
with a black square.
No numbers.
No labels.
Just...
A perfectly black rectangle.
Pinned beside the drawings were old maps of
Kolkata.
Most looked familiar.
One did not.
A neighborhood occupied the exact location
where the tower now stood.
Hundreds of tiny homes.
Narrow lanes.
A temple beneath a banyan tree.
The place had no name.
Someone had violently scratched it out using
black ink.
Again and again.
Until the paper tore.
Beneath the shredded map, a single sentence
had been written in trembling handwriting.
YOU
CANNOT BUILD OVER A MEMORY.
The lights came on.
Every one of them.
Bright.
Blinding.
Anik froze.
He was no longer alone.
An elderly man stood at the opposite end of
the drafting room.
Perfectly dressed.
Grey suit.
White hair.
Wire-rimmed spectacles.
His posture was immaculate.
His smile wasn't.
It stretched a little too far.
"You shouldn't have found this
floor," the old man said quietly.
His voice carried no emotion.
Only exhaustion.
"I made certain nobody ever would."
Anik backed toward the door.
It had vanished.
The old man sighed.
"I removed it."
"You... who are you?"
The man ignored the question.
Instead, he looked sadly at the torn maps.
"They still remember."
Behind him, every blueprint fluttered at once.
Though there was no wind.
The footsteps stopped.
For the first time since midnight...
Complete silence filled the impossible floor.
The old man slowly removed his spectacles.
His eyes were completely white.
Without pupils.
Without irises.
As if memory itself had hollowed them out.
Then he whispered,
"They've started remembering you."
Before Anik could answer...
Every blueprint on every wall burst into
flames simultaneously.
End of Part II
Part III — The Ashes Beneath the Blueprint
The fire made no sound.
One heartbeat, the drafting room was lined with
thousands of yellowing blueprints.
The next, every sheet ignited.
Not from the edges.
From the ink.
Black lines curled into glowing veins that
spread across the paper as if the drawings themselves had caught fire from
within. The flames climbed upward in complete silence, filling the room with a
blinding orange glow that cast no warmth.
Anik stumbled backward.
His skin prickled.
No heat.
No smoke.
Only the smell of wet earth after rain.
The old man did not move.
He watched the burning plans with the quiet
grief of someone witnessing a funeral that had already happened too many times.
"They're awake," he murmured.
The room lurched violently.
A bookshelf toppled.
Anik threw himself aside as timber crashed where
he had been standing a split second earlier.
The silence shattered.
A roar erupted from somewhere below.
Not an animal.
Not machinery.
The entire building seemed to exhale.
The polished floor split down the middle.
Cracks raced beneath Anik's feet.
He scrambled toward the nearest wall as the
center of the room collapsed into darkness.
The old man remained perfectly balanced at the
edge of the widening chasm.
He looked down with the resignation of a man
recognizing an old enemy.
"They've found another way."
The floor disappeared beneath him.
Without a cry, he fell into the darkness.
The white-haired architect simply...
Dropped.
His expression never changed.
Within seconds the darkness swallowed him.
Then came the impact.
Not of a body striking stone.
Of something impossibly large rising to meet
him.
A deafening boom shook the room.
The walls burst outward.
Anik ran.
He crashed through the only doorway that still
existed.
The hallway beyond was gone.
In its place stretched a narrow lane paved
with uneven stone.
Ancient houses leaned overhead so closely that
they almost touched.
Monsoon rain poured from a sky that shouldn't
have existed inside an apartment tower.
Lightning flashed.
For a heartbeat the lane was empty.
Another flash—
People stood on both sides.
Dozens.
Motionless.
Watching him.
This time they had faces.
Only...
They were incomplete.
A woman had eyes but no mouth.
A man possessed a nose and lips, but smooth
skin where his eyes should have been.
A child had a face that shifted every second,
never settling into a single identity.
Each looked as though memory itself had failed
before finishing them.
None spoke.
They simply watched.
Anik kept running.
Behind him, footsteps echoed again.
Faster now.
Not walking.
Running.
He didn't look back.
His lungs felt ready to burst.
His heart hammered so hard that every beat
blurred his vision.
The lane twisted sharply.
He rounded the corner—
—and slammed into a brick wall that hadn't
been there a second earlier.
Pain exploded through his shoulder.
He spun.
The lane behind him had vanished.
Only the footsteps remained.
Closing rapidly.
Left.
Right.
Nothing.
Walls.
No escape.
The rain stopped instantly.
Silence.
Then something wet struck the ground beside
him.
Plop.
Another.
Another.
Dark stains spread across the stone.
They weren't raindrops.
Ink.
Black ink dripped from the sky.
Within seconds the lane was flooded
ankle-deep.
The liquid rippled.
Names surfaced across its glossy surface.
Thousands of names.
Some in Bengali.
Some in Hindi.
Some in Urdu.
Some in scripts Anik couldn't recognize.
Each name floated upward like a drowned leaf
before dissolving.
He looked down—
—and froze.
One name remained.
PRABIR
DUTTA
His grandfather.
A man Anik had never met.
A man his family never spoke about.
His breath caught.
How...
The ink swallowed the name.
A memory struck him with such force that his
knees buckled.
He was seven.
His grandmother sat beside an old wooden
window during a power cut.
Rain drummed against the roof.
She was telling him a story.
"...never build where people are
forgotten..."
He remembered her voice perfectly.
Then—
It vanished.
The words disappeared halfway through the
sentence.
He still remembered sitting beside her.
He remembered the lantern.
He remembered the rain.
But her face blurred.
Then her name.
Gone.
Panic seized him.
"No..."
He clawed at his own head.
"What was your name?"
Nothing.
It had been taken.
Just like that.
As easily as blowing out a candle.
The footsteps stopped directly behind him.
He didn't turn.
He couldn't.
Every muscle locked.
A slow breath brushed the back of his neck.
Cold.
Dry.
Ancient.
Then...
A whisper.
Not into his ear.
Inside his head.
Remember.
The word wasn't spoken.
It arrived.
Whole.
Heavy.
Pain exploded behind his eyes.
Images flooded him.
A crowded settlement where the tower now
stood.
Children chasing kites beneath a sprawling
banyan.
Women drawing water from a well.
An evening festival lit by oil lamps.
A surveyor hammering wooden stakes into the
earth.
Men arguing.
Documents changing hands.
Soldiers.
Police.
Smoke.
Bulldozers.
Screams.
Dust.
Then...
Nothing.
As though someone had taken a knife to history
itself.
The vision ended.
Anik collapsed onto the flooded stones,
gasping.
His heartbeat thundered in his ears.
He knew those people.
Not by name.
By blood.
Somewhere in the erased settlement, his own
family had once lived.
Not all of them had left.
Something had remained.
Waiting beneath the foundations.
Waiting beneath concrete and steel.
Waiting beneath Floor Thirteen.
A crash echoed through the lane.
The wall ahead exploded inward.
Bricks flew past him.
A figure staggered through the dust.
The old architect.
His grey suit was torn.
His spectacles gone.
His white eyes bled thick black tears.
He looked decades older than before.
"No more running," he rasped.
"They're closing every exit."
Anik struggled to his feet.
"You knew."
"I helped."
"You built this."
"I buried it."
The old man's voice broke.
"I thought stone was stronger than
memory."
Another roar shook the lane.
Buildings leaned inward.
Windows burst.
Doors flew open.
From every house emerged the incomplete
people.
Hundreds.
Then thousands.
Not attacking.
Walking.
Every one of them moving toward the architect.
Not Anik.
Toward him.
The old man smiled sadly.
"I was wrong."
He reached into his coat and withdrew a
tarnished brass key.
It was unlike any modern key—long, ornate,
engraved with tiny geometric lines that seemed to shift when Anik tried to
focus on them.
The architect pressed it into Anik's trembling
hand.
"The service elevator."
"What?"
"It still remembers where it began."
"I don't understand!"
"You don't have to."
The crowd drew nearer.
The faceless, unfinished people filled the
lane from wall to wall.
No anger.
No haste.
Only certainty.
The architect stepped away from Anik.
"What are you doing?"
"For the first time..."
He looked at the approaching figures.
"...I'm going to stop forgetting."
The crowd reached him.
They did not strike.
They embraced him.
Hundreds of silent arms closed around his
body.
His outline dissolved among them until only
his white eyes remained visible.
Then those, too, disappeared.
The lane shook violently.
The houses folded inward like collapsing
paper.
Reality cracked.
Anik clutched the brass key and ran.
Behind him, the impossible city began to
collapse into darkness.
And somewhere overhead—
The furniture started moving again.
Only this time...
It
sounded as though an entire neighborhood was dragging itself across the floor.
End of Part III
Part IV — The Elevator That Descended
The sound pursued him.
Not footsteps anymore.
Not furniture.
An entire world was moving.
Behind him, houses scraped across unseen ground.
Brick ground against brick. Iron gates shrieked. Wells rolled. Temple bells
rang once, then shattered into echoes that refused to die.
It sounded like a forgotten neighborhood
dragging itself through the bones of the tower.
Anik ran until his legs trembled.
The brass key dug into his palm so hard it drew
blood.
He hardly noticed.
The lane dissolved beneath his feet.
Cobblestones stretched into polished marble.
The rain evaporated.
Streetlights became recessed ceiling lamps.
The impossible settlement folded into itself
like paper, and once more he found himself inside the apartment building.
Or something pretending to be it.
The corridor was immaculate.
Fresh paint.
Cream walls.
Framed landscapes.
Soft lighting.
Exactly the kind of hallway shown in glossy
brochures.
Only the apartment numbers were wrong.
11...
12...
14...
15...
Every door marked "13" was missing.
Every space where it should have existed had
been filled with uninterrupted wall.
Yet the footsteps still echoed overhead.
Slow.
Patient.
Waiting.
Anik pressed himself against the wall,
fighting for breath.
His reflection stared back from a decorative
mirror opposite him.
He almost kept running.
Then he noticed the reflection wasn't
breathing.
He froze.
His own chest rose and fell violently.
The reflection stood perfectly still.
It watched him.
Then it smiled.
Not his smile.
Far wider.
Its lips split almost to the ears.
Black dust trickled from its mouth.
The reflection lifted one finger.
Pointed behind him.
Anik spun.
The hallway was empty.
When he looked back—
The mirror reflected an empty corridor.
He was gone.
His reflection had disappeared instead.
The glass cracked from corner to corner.
Every fracture whispered at once.
"Don't
forget."
The mirror burst outward.
Thousands of glittering shards filled the
corridor.
Each shard reflected a different version of
him.
A child.
An old man.
A stranger.
A man wearing an architect's coat.
A frightened boy standing beneath an enormous
banyan tree.
He covered his face as the shards rained down.
When he looked again...
Nothing remained.
Not even broken glass.
Only the brass key.
Warm now.
Almost alive.
A metallic ding
echoed somewhere nearby.
The service elevator.
He followed the sound.
The corridor twisted unexpectedly.
Walls slid past each other with a deep
grinding noise.
Doorways exchanged places.
Ceilings rose and fell.
The building rearranged itself as effortlessly
as a person changing position in sleep.
Anik sprinted before the corridor could change
again.
At the far end stood a battered steel
elevator.
Unlike the polished passenger lifts, this one looked
decades older than the tower itself.
Rust streaked its doors.
Paint peeled from its frame.
A handwritten notice hung crookedly above the
buttons.
SERVICE
ONLY
There was no floor indicator.
Only a keyhole.
His hand shook as he inserted the brass key.
It fit perfectly.
The lock turned by itself.
The doors opened.
Inside...
No buttons.
Only a single lever.
It had two positions.
UP
DOWN
Except the lettering had been scratched away
beneath DOWN.
Someone had carved another word into the
metal.
REMEMBER
The footsteps reached the corridor behind him.
Not one pair.
Hundreds.
Closing rapidly.
He pulled the lever.
The doors slammed shut.
The elevator dropped.
Not descended.
Dropped.
His stomach lurched into his chest.
The steel cables screamed overhead.
Lights flickered.
Then went out.
Complete darkness.
The elevator continued falling.
Seconds passed.
Then a minute.
Then another.
No building was tall enough for this.
The descent should have ended.
Instead it accelerated.
The air pressure changed.
His ears popped painfully.
Something outside scraped along the elevator
walls.
Long fingernails.
Hundreds of them.
Metal shrieked.
The cabin rocked violently.
A dent appeared in the ceiling.
Then another.
Something enormous was walking alongside the
falling lift.
Keeping pace.
Anik pressed himself into a corner.
The ceiling bowed inward.
Steel groaned.
A crack appeared.
Black dust sifted through.
Then...
An eye opened inside the crack.
It wasn't attached to a face.
It simply appeared within the darkness above
him.
Human.
Brown.
Filled with unbearable grief.
It looked directly at him.
Blinking once.
Then another eye opened.
Then another.
Soon dozens of eyes stared down through the
widening crack.
None hostile.
Only pleading.
The elevator shook so violently that the
ceiling split open.
Long pale hands reached through.
Not grabbing.
Offering.
Each palm held something different.
A broken bangle.
A rusted key.
A child's wooden spinning top.
A faded wedding photograph.
A clay oil lamp.
Fragments of lives.
Fragments that had been forgotten.
As Anik stared, another memory vanished.
His first day at school.
Gone.
He remembered attending school.
He could no longer picture the building.
His teacher's face dissolved.
His classmates ceased to exist.
He cried out in frustration.
"No!"
The hands withdrew.
The eyes closed.
Darkness reclaimed the ceiling.
The elevator stopped so suddenly that he
crashed to his knees.
Silence.
The doors slid open.
He stepped out into a cavern larger than the
tower itself.
There was no ceiling.
Only darkness.
The ground was packed earth.
Thousands of stone foundations stretched into
the distance.
The forgotten neighborhood.
Not restored.
Preserved.
As though time itself had refused to touch it.
The banyan tree stood at the center.
Its roots spread like the veins of a giant
heart.
Every root disappeared beneath the concrete
pillars supporting the apartment tower high above.
The tree was holding the building up.
Or imprisoning it.
Oil lamps flickered beneath its branches.
No wind disturbed their flames.
Around the tree stood hundreds of people.
Not faceless now.
Not unfinished.
Perfectly ordinary.
Families.
Children.
Old men.
Young women.
Workers.
Shopkeepers.
All silent.
All watching him.
Their expressions held neither anger nor
welcome.
Only expectation.
An elderly woman stepped forward.
Her face struck him with impossible force.
He knew her.
Not from photographs.
Not from memory.
From blood.
She looked exactly like the blurred image of
his grandmother—
Before that memory had been stolen.
She reached out as though to touch his cheek.
Her fingers stopped an inch away.
Tears welled in her eyes.
"You came back," she whispered.
Before Anik could speak—
Every lamp beneath the banyan went out.
The earth trembled.
The roots began to move.
Slowly at first.
Then violently.
They tore free from the ground like enormous
serpents.
High above, the entire apartment tower
groaned.
Concrete cracked.
Steel screamed.
The building had begun to sink.
And from somewhere deep within the darkness
beneath the roots...
Something laughed.
Not loudly.
Softly.
Patiently.
As if it had waited generations for someone to
remember where the Thirteenth Floor truly began.
End of Part IV
Part V — The Last Tenant
The laughter ended as abruptly as it had begun.
The silence afterward was worse.
It spread through the cavern like water filling
a grave, swallowing every sound until Anik could hear only the frantic pounding
of his own heart.
The roots of the banyan continued to writhe.
Each one tore through the earth with a deep, wet
groan, pulling loose chunks of concrete that should have belonged to the tower
hundreds of feet above.
Dust drifted downward.
Not from the cavern ceiling.
There was no ceiling.
The dust fell from darkness itself.
Then the first pillar cracked.
The sound echoed forever.
One by one, the colossal concrete supports began
splitting open.
Steel reinforcement twisted like brittle wire.
The entire apartment block was collapsing—not
downward, but inward, as though an invisible hand were folding the building
into the hollow space beneath it.
The silent crowd never moved.
They simply watched.
Not the destruction.
Anik.
Waiting.
His breathing became ragged.
"I don't understand!"
No one answered.
The elderly woman stepped closer.
She looked almost exactly like the image of
his grandmother that memory had nearly erased.
Almost.
Her eyes carried centuries.
"You were never meant to remember."
Her voice barely rose above a whisper.
"But blood remembers what maps
forget."
Anik opened his mouth—
—and found he could no longer remember his
father's face.
His stomach dropped.
He knew he had a father.
He remembered conversations.
Birthdays.
Arguments.
But the face was gone.
Completely.
A blank space where a lifetime had been.
He staggered.
"No..."
His voice cracked.
"No... no..."
The woman closed her eyes.
"It has begun."
A deafening roar rolled through the cavern.
The apartment tower above tilted.
Concrete slabs crashed through the darkness.
Entire rooms fell past the roots.
A sofa.
A dining table.
Kitchen cabinets.
Television sets.
Beds.
Everything the residents had believed belonged
to them.
All of it rained into the forgotten
settlement.
Furniture.
The same furniture people had heard moving
every night.
Not being dragged.
Falling.
Again.
And again.
And again.
For years.
Every midnight.
The building had been trying to return what it
had stolen.
The first apartment crashed into the earth.
It landed upside down.
Walls burst apart.
A refrigerator slid across the mud before
striking the banyan's trunk.
Then another apartment.
Then another.
The tower was breaking into its individual
homes, each one dropping into the buried neighborhood beneath.
Families screamed from inside collapsing
rooms.
Some stumbled into the open.
They looked around in absolute disbelief.
Parents clutched children.
Old men called out names.
None of them understood where they were.
They had not fallen.
They had arrived.
As if their homes had always belonged here.
The silent residents of the buried settlement
watched without expression.
Neither welcoming nor condemning.
Only waiting.
The laughter returned.
Closer.
The earth beneath the banyan split open.
Blackness surged upward.
Not smoke.
Not shadow.
An absence.
A shape that refused to remain the same for
more than an instant.
Sometimes impossibly tall.
Sometimes bent.
Sometimes resembling a man in a long coat.
Sometimes nothing more than darkness standing
upright.
It possessed no face.
Yet every person present instinctively lowered
their eyes.
Even the silent residents.
Even the elderly woman.
The roots recoiled from it.
The lamps shattered.
The air became unbearably heavy.
Anik couldn't breathe.
Every instinct screamed that looking directly
at the thing was a mistake his mind would never survive.
He looked anyway.
His vision blurred.
His ears rang.
Blood trickled from his nose.
The darkness shifted.
For one impossible heartbeat...
It looked exactly like him.
Then it changed again.
The whisper came.
Not from outside.
From inside his own thoughts.
One
memory.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
Anik fell to his knees.
His mind reeled.
Every memory that remained flashed before him.
His mother laughing.
His father teaching him to ride a bicycle.
College.
His first job.
His debts.
His tiny rented room.
His own name.
The whisper returned.
Choose.
He understood.
Not through reason.
Through terror.
The hallway had never taken memories at
random.
Every person who escaped had paid.
One memory for one passage out.
Some had lost birthdays.
Others entire years.
Some had forgotten children.
Some had forgotten themselves.
The building had never trapped everyone.
It had always demanded rent.
The elderly woman spoke for the last time.
"If you leave..."
She looked toward the collapsing tower.
"...you will never come back."
He looked at her.
"Who are you?"
For the first time, she smiled.
The saddest smile he had ever seen.
"You already forgot."
The darkness surged forward.
The earth erupted beneath Anik's feet.
Roots lashed wildly.
Concrete pillars exploded.
The entire cavern began collapsing.
He ran.
The service elevator stood impossibly far away
beneath the tangled roots.
He sprinted toward it as the ground split open
behind him.
Families screamed.
Apartments crashed from above.
Ancient houses crumbled.
The banyan tree groaned like a living
mountain.
The darkness followed without haste.
It never needed to hurry.
The ground vanished beneath Anik.
He leaped.
Caught a hanging root.
Swung across a widening chasm.
The root snapped.
He slammed against broken concrete, nearly
losing consciousness.
The brass key skidded away.
Stopped at the elevator threshold.
He crawled.
Every muscle burned.
The whisper returned.
Choose.
His fingertips touched the key.
At that exact moment—
He remembered.
Not a fragment.
Everything.
The erased settlement.
The families.
The bulldozers.
The signatures.
The false blueprints.
The architect.
His own grandfather standing among those who refused
to leave.
The soldiers.
The gunshots.
The fire.
The children beneath the banyan.
His grandmother escaping with an infant
wrapped in a bloodstained shawl.
His father.
Himself.
He knew exactly who the forgotten people were.
He knew exactly who he was.
And he understood why the building had called
him home.
Tears streamed down his face.
"I remember..."
The whisper answered.
Then
pay.
He picked up the key.
Opened the elevator.
Stepped inside.
The doors began closing.
Outside, the buried settlement slowly
disappeared beneath collapsing earth.
The elderly woman remained beneath the banyan.
Watching him.
Still smiling.
As the doors met—
Everything went white.
The security cameras came back online at 6:01 a.m.
The police arrived shortly after.
Residents stood outside the building in their
nightclothes, confused but unharmed.
No one could explain why every apartment had
been found unlocked.
No one could explain why furniture in every
flat had been moved.
No one remembered hearing anything during the
night.
Engineers inspected the tower.
The structure was perfect.
There was no damage.
No cracks.
No missing floors.
The official blueprints confirmed the building
had always possessed twenty-two storeys.
Nothing unusual.
The contract cleaner was found unconscious
inside the service elevator.
Dehydrated.
No injuries.
He woke three days later in a hospital.
Doctors asked his name.
He answered without hesitation.
"Anik Dutta."
"Do you remember what happened?"
He frowned.
"I... was cleaning."
"Then?"
"I don't know."
"What do you remember after that?"
He stared blankly through the hospital window.
"I can't remember why I became a
cleaner."
"Anything else?"
He shook his head.
"No."
The doctors called it trauma.
Stress-induced amnesia.
Perfectly understandable.
They discharged him a week later.
Months passed.
Life continued.
New families moved into Kankurgachi Heights.
Children played in the lobby.
The society committee argued about maintenance
charges.
The tower became just another expensive
address in an old part of Kolkata.
Nobody spoke of strange noises anymore.
Because nobody heard them.
Until one rainy night.
A little girl waiting for the elevator looked
up at the illuminated floor display.
She frowned.
"Papa..."
Her father glanced up from his phone.
"What is it?"
"The lift stopped."
"So?"
"It stopped at the thirteenth
floor."
He laughed.
"There isn't one."
She pointed.
The display glowed softly.
13
The doors remained closed for almost a full
minute.
Then they opened.
No one stepped out.
But muddy footprints emerged from the empty
lift.
One after another.
Walking slowly across the marble lobby.
Toward the emergency staircase.
The security guard reviewed the CCTV footage
the next morning.
The elevator had never stopped.
There was no Floor Thirteen.
Nothing unusual had happened.
He erased the recording.
Routine maintenance.
Nothing more.
Years later, when the tower changed owners,
workers discovered an old metal plaque sealed inside a concrete wall behind the
service shaft.
It contained only four engraved lines.
No builder's name.
No dates.
No dedication.
Only a warning.
A street fade softly from the city's
sight.
A name be swallowed by the dust of years,
Lost beneath silence, buried under fears.
Yet memory is a patient, restless flame;
It whispers every long-forgotten name.
No wall can hold it, no darkness keep it bound—
What history buries, memory will have found.
The plaque was catalogued.
Then misplaced.
No one remembered where it went.
Except, perhaps, someone who still walks
patiently above the twelfth floor.
Every night.
Just after midnight.
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