Tales from the Hollow: Room 6 | Haunted Apartment Short Story
"The Hollow collects stories the way old libraries collect dust—quietly, patiently, until one day you realize the shelves are heavier than they should be.
Some tales come to us neatly bound in history. Others arrive like whispers in dark hallways, half-remembered and uncomfortable to hold for too long. And then there are the ones no one wants to claim at all.
Tonight’s story concerns a room.
Room 6.
A forgettable place in a forgettable building—cheap rent, cracked plaster, and a landlord who prefers tenants who keep to themselves. People come and go there with very little notice. Sometimes they disappear just as quietly.
The city records a few deaths connected to the address. But records, as you may know, rarely tell the whole story.
What follows was pieced together from scattered accounts, a police report, and something else… something less easily explained. The truth is difficult to separate from rumor in places like the Hollow.
But one detail appears in every version.
No one ever truly leaves Room 6."
Room 6
Jack had a knack for finding the cheap spots in the city. Cracked linoleum, flickering lights, and peeling wallpaper didn’t bother him; they suited him just fine. His latest hideout was a tiny room above a shuttered laundromat, ripe with the earthly scent of mildew and stale cigarettes.
By day, the small room with little to no insulation, was filled with the sounds of the street outside. Traffic laced with conversation.
But at night, the silence was almost deafening. He was left with his thoughts and the eternal conversations that played through his mind. Conversations focused on disappointment. Arguments on missed opportunities and broken relationships. These always preceded the restless ache that began gnawing at the base of his skull. Crawling upward from his neck and into his hair line.
He needed another hit.
Something to dull his nerves and silence the voices.
He dozed on the thin mattress, dreams twisting like smoke in a stale room as he fought the craving.
When he woke, something was different. The air was colder, heavier, as though the room itself exhaled a warning. Shadows pooled in corners where none should have been.
He heard laughter, faint. Almost musical.
A woman’s laughter.
He looked toward the window. The yellowed, frayed curtains blowing softly with a slight breeze.
Jack rubbed his eyes and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
He didn’t remember leaving the window open.
He stood and looked outside into the empty street. The streetlight created a pool of brightness on the sidewalk. The darkness pressed upon the light and he thought he saw a figure standing just outside the ring of light.
He leaned over the window ledge.
And felt foolish when he realized nothing was there.
A heavy bang on his door startled him and he nearly fell over the ledge of the window. His fingers curled into the sill as he caught himself.
“The fuck,” he growled, walking the short distance to the door where the pounding continued.
When he opened the door, the hallway was empty.
The light at the end of the hall flickered. And he heard the woman’s laughter once more.
His flesh broke out into a could sweat and he quickly closed and locked his front door. He heard footsteps and he took a quick step backward. Shadows played under the door and he crept forward to peek out the peephole.
The hallway was empty.
His mouth was dry and he pulled a shaking hand through his hair.
He didn’t know how long he stood there. When he turned to return to bed his eyes fell on the small table and the tiny bag that lay on the surface.
One hit, he thought. One hit to calm his nerves and get some sleep.
The whispers came next. As on the first night, he thought they were from the street below. Faint voices, slurred and frantic, curling around the ceiling and the cracked walls. They called his name, begged him, sometimes screamed. He tried headphones, loud music, even a small hit to chase the tremor in his nerves. But the voices seeped through.
One night, he saw her framed in the bathroom doorway. A young woman, pale and thin, her dark hair clinging wetly to her face. Her eyes were empty pools of grief, fixed on him with a hungry intensity.
“Don’t… don’t leave me,” she whispered, voice like a knife through smoke.
Jack staggered back, bumping into the wall. “I—where did you come from?”
Her face contorted, a network of emotions before dissolving into a cacophony of laughter before she disappeared.
He didn’t understand, not fully. But her presence gnawed at him, a cold hunger feeding on his every pulse. Sleep became impossible. The lines between day and night blurred. Each morning he woke with bruises he didn’t remember, scratches across his arms as if someone had clawed at him in the night.
The neighbors called him an addict. His best friend lectured him to seek help. That the images and noises where hallucinations brought on by the drugs. He was used to it. But when he spoke of the girl, asking what happened, and if she was real, the landlord’s eyes went cold, distant. “What girl… that’s not… You are the only tenant,” he said, voice low, cold and distant before he hung up the phone.
Jack laughed it off. Until the night she touched him.
Cold. Like winter sinking into his bones. She pressed against him, curling around him as he slept, and suddenly he was swimming in her memory, her pain, her terror, her despair. He saw it all: the loneliness, the betrayal, the final leap from the window, the thud on the street below. The shattering of bones.
The city had swallowed her. Continuing as though she never existed.
A fragment of memory.
He tried to fight, tried to escape, but the room had grown around him. The walls pulsed, the ceiling pressed down. The whispers became screams. “Get out get out get out!”
He had had enough and ran from his room only to wake in a cold sweat on the stained mattress. The room was empty.
He paced the floor, staring at the empty bag on the table. Knowing he needed more. Anything to quiet the voices. Eliminate the sound of her. Deaden the feeling of her touch on his flesh.
He shuddered, crossed the room the window and opened the sash. He stared outside, feeling the wind dry the sweat from his face and chest. He felt her touch, soft on his arm. And he turned to see her smile at him.
The next morning, a neighbor called in a report. A man, dead, sprawled across the sidewalk, eyes wide in a final, silent horror.
Room 6 was empty.
And then… he woke.
Jack was back on the cracked linoleum, the smell of mildew sharp in his nose. Sunlight leaked through the blinds. His hands shook, trembling as if he had been through eternity. And yet, it was all familiar—the room, the mattress, the stale cigarette smoke. The small bag of heaven on the table.
A cold whisper curled at his ear.
“Don’t ever leave me.”
Jack turned. She was there. Pale, thin, hungry, eyes hollow. And now, he knew the truth. There was no escape. The loop. The pain. The death. His. And hers.
"And so the record ends there.
The official reports list the death as unfortunate, if not entirely unexpected. A troubled man. A neglected building. A room that had seen better decades.
But those who live nearby still speak about Room 6 in lowered voices. They say the window light flickers some nights, even when the building stands empty. They say footsteps move across the floor above the old laundromat long after midnight.
Two sets of footsteps.
Of course, rumors have a way of growing in the dark.
Still… if you ever find yourself looking for cheap rent in a quiet corner of the city, you may wish to check the number on the door before accepting the key.
Some rooms in the Hollow are already occupied.
And the residents, I’m afraid, are not fond of being left alone."
—Filed quietly among the stranger volumes of the Hollow Library
© 2026 Jen Sequel. All rights reserved. Tales from the Hollow are works of fiction. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution is prohibited.
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