Chapter 1
No one believes in ghosts anymore.
But what about addresses that don’t exist?
Tara moved into Flat 303 because it was cheap, vacant, and came with a working coffee machine. The agent was vague and hurried. She didn’t care — she was running too.
The keys worked. The lift pinged. The digital lock flashed green.
But the first hint came when she met Mrs. Ghosh, the nosy retired teacher from 302.
“Sweetheart, 303? That’s... not a real flat.”
Tara laughed. “I literally live there.”
“No, dear. 302, 304. That’s all. Look.”
And she pointed to the corridor wall. One door. Gap. Another door.
But Tara’s key still opened the one in the gap.
She looked behind her. She looked again.
And suddenly, there was a door.
She checked the official blueprint at the society office:
No Flat 303.
Just a 2-foot-wide wall between 302 and 304.
No plumbing. No electric line. No Wi-Fi.
Except Tara streamed Netflix just fine. Paid online bills. Slept on a bed she didn’t buy.
She even tried leaving a note on her own door. The next morning, it was gone.
Food delivery guys left her dinner with 302. Her Swiggy app kept saying “Invalid Address.”
No mail ever arrived.
But her bank account said: “Delivered to: Flat 303.”
It felt like... her life acknowledged the flat. But the world didn’t.
The red wallpaper appeared on Day 3.She didn’t put it up. Didn’t even see it at first.
But one morning, the living room wall had a vertical strip of deep red roses. The pattern seemed to shift slightly when she wasn’t looking.
No one had been inside.
On a Thursday afternoon, someone knocked.
A small boy. Frizzy hair. Serious eyes.
“Excuse me...” he whispered. “I think I lived here in a dream. Can I see the room with the red wallpaper?”
Tara’s breath caught. She hadn’t told anyone about the wallpaper.
“You... what?”
“I used to hide in that room. When the whispers came.”
“What whispers?”
He looked up. “They tell you things. But they aren’t lies or truth. They’re the space in between.”
That night, Tara tried sleeping in her bedroom. But the red wallpaper now spread across every wall. It pulsed.
She dreamt of others — dozens of them — waking up in Flat 303.Same furniture. Same confusion. Same door that only sometimes existed.
Some cried. Some screamed. None escaped.
She woke up at 3:03 AM. In bed. But her feet were wet. As if she’d been standing somewhere else.
Weeks passed. Tara stopped trying to prove the flat existed.
She stopped using mirrors. They didn’t reflect her properly anymore.
She stopped opening the windows. What lay outside wasn’t the same city she entered.
Until one morning, she walked into her kitchen and saw:
A sticky note.
It wasn’t hers.
It said:
“303 isn’t a place. It’s a state of forgetting.”
“People don’t move in. They drifting.”
“Red means it’s starting. Don’t answer the door after 3:03.”
–Tara
It was in her handwriting. Dated next week.
And outside, the hallway was gone.
