My roommate convinced me to hit the latest “extreme” haunted house that had gone viral on Reddit. It was October 30th—Devil’s Night. He’d dropped a staggering amount of money to rent the entire place out for a private, overnight “immersion experience.” We were supposed to be there until dawn. We hadn’t been on the service stairs for more than twenty minutes when the guide suddenly stopped. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, his flashlight beam trembling against the gray concrete. “We’ve been going down for dozens of flights now,” he muttered, his voice sounding thin in the narrow stairwell. “Why haven’t we hit the basement yet?” Tyler, my roommate, let out a dismissive snort. He was leaning against the handrail, looking bored. “It’s a marketing gimmick, man. They probably just looped the stairs to mess with our heads. It’s part of the ‘immersion,’ right?” I looked over the railing, staring into the rectangular void of the stairwell. The darkness below was absolute, a throat that seemed to swallow the light from our phones. My stomach did a slow, nauseating flip. “Tyler,” I said, my voice tight. “We’ve been walking down for almost two hours.” 1 I turned to the guide, my pulse thrumming in my fingertips. “I… I just remembered I have a project due. Something came up. Can you just take us out through the emergency exit? The normal way?” Under the harsh, pallid glow of his industrial flashlight, the guide’s face looked skeletal. He wasn’t smiling. “This is the only way. I don’t get it. I’ve run this route a hundred times. I don’t remember it being this many floors.” I felt a chill settle into my bones, a physical stiffness spreading through my limbs. Tyler rolled his eyes, a smirk playing on his lips. “Oh, come on, Jason. Are you serious? You’re letting the ‘actor’ get to you? He’s clearly just building the atmosphere. Give the guy an Oscar and let’s keep moving.” The guide didn’t look like he was acting. His eyes were wide, fixed on the darkness below. “I’m not building atmosphere,” he whispered. “I’ve never seen this before. Is it possible we… we crossed into…?” He didn’t finish the sentence. 2 The moment the words left his mouth, a ripple of unease went through the group. We were mostly freshmen, kids who had barely spent a semester away from home. We didn’t know each other well; there was no shared history to ground us, no collective courage to draw from. Tyler had organized this whole thing because he’d read somewhere that fear releases a flood of oxytocin—that terror is the ultimate aphrodisiac. He wanted to get close to Sienna, the girl from our Psych 101 class who everyone was obsessed with. But now, even Tyler’s cockiness was starting to fray at the edges. Sienna shivered, pulling her North Face jacket tighter around her. “I’m tired. I want to go back to the dorms. Let’s just leave.” The guide’s jaw tightened. “I told you, this is the only path. You’re college students—learn to listen. There are no other doors.” Tyler’s face darkened. “Watch your tone. I paid a premium for this. If you’re lost, that’s on you. Call the manager. Tell them to come get us.” The guide seemed relieved at the suggestion. He fumbled with his phone, his fingers shaking as he pulled it from his pocket. He hit a contact and put it on speaker so we could all hear. We held our breath. There was a long, agonizing stretch of static—a dry, rasping hiss. Then, the call connected. A collective sigh of relief escaped us. But it lasted less than a second. From the tiny speaker came a sound that didn’t belong to the world of the living. It was a cacophony of jagged screams, wet, guttural sobbing, and a high-pitched, manic laughter that sounded like metal scraping against bone. It was a roar of agony that felt distinctly inhuman. We all recoiled, covering our ears. Tyler, his face turning a sickly shade of white, lunged forward and snatched the phone, slamming the end-call button. “Nice. Real high-tech sound effects. Give it to me, I’ll call the main office myself.” He dialed. He put it on speaker. At first, there was only the hum of the dial tone. Then, the screaming exploded again—louder this time, more distorted, as if the things on the other end were pressing their mouths directly against the receiver. Tyler dropped the phone. It clattered against the concrete, the screen cracking, but the screaming continued until the device finally flickered and died. Panic hit us like a physical wave. A girl in the back began to sob. Kevin, a guy in thick glasses from the floor above ours, sank to the floor, his knees giving out. “I told you we shouldn’t have come,” he whimpered. “Something is wrong with this building.” The fear was infectious, spreading through the narrow, windowless space. The flashlight beams caught our faces, making us all look like ghosts—pale, hollow-eyed, and already dead. The guide wiped cold sweat from his neck. “Shut up! Both of you! Crying isn’t going to get us out.” Tyler stood there for a long moment, staring at the dead phone. He wiped his palms on his jeans and looked down into the infinite black. “He’s right,” Tyler said, his voice forced and brittle. “Sitting here is suicide. We keep moving. I want to see what’s at the bottom of these goddamn stairs.” The guide took a deep breath, adjusted his grip on his light, and took the first step down. 3 We descended. The light only reached a few steps ahead before the dark swallowed it whole. The sound of our footsteps echoed upward, bouncing off the concrete walls, mingling with the soft, rhythmic weeping of the girls. The hair on my arms stood up. My legs were beginning to burn—a dull, throbbing ache in my calves and a grinding sensation in my knees. It felt like my blood was turning to lead. Finally, someone broke. It was Lily. She was a petite girl from the Linguistics department, someone I remembered seeing at the gym, always looking exhausted after just five minutes on the treadmill. She didn’t have the stamina for this—physically or mentally. She collapsed against the wall, burying her face in her hands. “I’m not moving. I can’t. We’re never getting out. We’re going to die in here.” Her voice spiraled up the stairwell, a jagged, broken sound that threatened to snap what little remained of our composure. We stopped. No one spoke. The only sounds were the heavy, labored breathing of exhausted bodies and the oppressive silence of the building. The guide turned around, his expression grim. “Shut it!” “What good is crying?” he snapped. “You think your tears are going to shorten the stairs? You think an exit is going to manifest because you’re sad?” He looked at us, his eyes dark and unsettlingly intense. “You college kids… you have all the ego and none of the grit. You didn’t even check the history of this place before you signed the waiver, did you?” He gritted his teeth, leaning in. “Do any of you know the story behind this tenement?” 4 “What… what story?” Tyler asked, swallowing hard. The guide lowered his flashlight, letting the beam hit the floor so that his face was cast in terrifying upward shadows. “Twenty-five years ago, this wasn’t a ‘haunted attraction.’ It was a low-income housing project. A hundred families packed in like sardines. Then, a new family moved in. A man, his wife, a teenage daughter, and a five-year-old son. Just a normal family.” “On moving day, one of their crates fell off the truck. It hit the sidewalk and the lock snapped. You know what spilled out?” Silence. The air felt heavy, like it was filled with invisible dust. “Gold,” the guide whispered. “Jewelry. Rolexes. Family heirlooms. A literal fortune in a wooden box. Every person in this building was watching from their windows.” “That same night, the family was gone. Someone—or several someones—broke in with machetes. The parents were slaughtered in the foyer; their blood was thick enough to seep under the front door. But the fifteen-year-old girl and her little brother… they made a run for it.” He tilted his flashlight up, illuminating the spiraling stairs above us. “They were barefoot. They ran down these very stairs, screaming for help. Their voices were raw, screaming for someone, anyone, to open their door and let them in. Do you think a single person opened their door?” Lily was trembling so hard her teeth were chattering. “N-no?” “Oh, they opened them,” the guide said, a sick, twisted smile touching his lips. “They opened the doors and stepped out into the hall with knives and pipes. Every single tenant in this building was in on it. The siblings ran flight after flight, floor after floor, until they couldn’t run anymore. The girl tucked her little brother under her body, trying to shield him. They hacked them both to pieces right on the landing.” A collective gasp shuddered through the group. “And then?” someone whispered. “And then the building went sour. You’d hear kids crying in the middle of the night. People started falling. They’d be walking down the stairs, and suddenly they’d just… tumble. Snap their necks. Others would be fine, then they’d suddenly stop, turn around, and run to the roof just to throw themselves off. Dozens died on these stairs. The police couldn’t find anything—no footprints, no prints, no intruders. The security footage just showed people losing their minds.” “Eventually, everyone fled. The place sat abandoned for decades.” He looked at us, his eyes lingering on each of our faces. “Until a developer bought it a few years ago and turned it into this.” The silence that followed was absolute. 5 “You’re saying… we’re caught in that?” “We didn’t do anything! We weren’t even born then! It has nothing to do with us!” “I want to go home. Please, I just want my mom.” Tyler turned on the guide, his voice trembling with rage. “You knew this place was cursed? You brought us here on Devil’s Night knowing this? What the hell is wrong with you?” The guide snapped back, his face inches from Tyler’s. “Are you kidding me? You picked this place. You insisted on the private overnight ‘extreme’ package on the most superstitious night of the year. Don’t you dare pin this on me.” Tyler flinched, his bravado finally crumbling, but he tried to maintain his stance. “We’re just kids. You’re the professional. You should have warned us.” “It’s an urban legend!” the guide yelled. “I’ve been leading tours here for two years and nothing ever happened! How was I supposed to know tonight would be different?” “I don’t care. I paid you. Get us out. I didn’t even want this specific building, you’re the one who pushed the ‘Tenement of Terror’ package!” “Because you were being a cheap-ass!” the guide roared. “You wanted the lowest price-point for a private booking, and this was it! I’d rather be at home with a beer and a movie than stuck here with a bunch of entitled brats!” As they began to lung at each other, I stepped between them, putting my hands on their chests. “Stop it! Both of you!” I yelled. My own voice sounded foreign to me. “Fighting isn’t going to fix the space-time continuum. We need a plan.” They both glared at me, panting. “What plan, Jason?” Tyler spat. I chewed my lip, looking up. “We go up.” 6 The guide blinked. Then, a spark of hope returned to his eyes. “That makes sense. We came in from the top. If we find the entry point, we can leave.” The setup for this place was weird. They’d picked us up in a shuttle, blindfolded us, and led us into a windowless “elevator” that supposedly “randomized” our starting point in the building. It was a gimmick to keep people from knowing the layout. I’d thought it was cool at the time. Now, I wanted to find the person who designed it and throttle them. If we could find the entry room, maybe we could trigger an emergency alarm. Lily looked up, her eyes red and puffy. “Go up? Are you insane? I just told you I can’t move! My legs, my knees—I’m done. I’ll die if I have to climb a hundred flights.” She backed away, pressing her spine against the cold concrete. “You guys go. Go find help. I’ll stay here. Just come back for me.” The group wavered. Kevin, the guy with the glasses, nodded slowly. “She’s got a point. If we all go, and we all get exhausted halfway up, we’re stranded. Maybe some of us should stay and conserve energy while the strongest go for help?” “Yeah,” another girl chimed in. “I’m shaking, Tyler. I can’t do this. This is your fault, you should be the one to go.” Tyler’s face went through a kaleidoscope of emotions—fear, guilt, and then a defensive anger. “My fault? I didn’t force you to sign the waiver!” “You’re the organizer!” Kevin shouted, the stress finally breaking his voice. “You dragged us here! You take the lead!” “Fine!” I barked, cutting through the bickering. “I’ll go.” I took a deep breath, looking at Tyler. “Tyler, you’re coming with me. Everyone else, stay here. If we find the door, we’ll bring the staff back. If we find a phone that works, we’ll call 911.” Tyler didn’t argue. He looked relieved to have a task. Lily slumped back down, looking defeated but grateful. The guide nodded. “I’ll stay with them. I’ll keep everyone together.” I turned and began the climb. Up. Always up. “How many floors?” Tyler wheezed after a while. “Thirty-six… or thirty-seven…” My throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. Every step was a battle against gravity. Sweat stung my eyes. We stopped to catch our breath. Tyler slid down the wall, hugging his knees. “God… I’m so sorry, Jason. I’m such a moron.” I didn’t have the energy to forgive him. My ears were ringing, a high-pitched drone that wouldn’t stop. We kept going. The stairs were endless, an infinite loop of gray cement and rusted railings. Just as my mind was starting to turn into a hazy fog of exhaustion, I heard something. Voices. Muffled, familiar voices coming from above. Tyler and I froze. We looked at each other, eyes wide. “People!” Tyler scrambled up, energized by a sudden jolt of adrenaline. “Hey! We’re down here! Help!” He sprinted up the last few steps, and I followed, my heart hammering against my ribs. We rounded the corner to the next landing—and I nearly crashed into him as he stopped dead. Lily was huddled in the corner. Kevin was leaning against the opposite wall. The guide was standing in the middle of the floor, staring at his dead phone. They all looked up at us, their faces masked in pure, unadulterated horror. “You…” Lily whispered. “How did you get back here?” Tyler’s face went ashen. “We… we were climbing. We were going up. How the hell are we back where we started?” No one had an answer. We were caught in a loop that defied physics, a vertical cage with no beginning and no end. Lily started to scream.
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