Chapter 40

By the time the roaches appeared, the landlord had stopped answering calls.

Mina lived alone in Apartment 4B. The building was old enough to groan in winter and sweat in summer. The pipes rattled at night. The wallpaper peeled in long curls from the damp.

The first roach scuttled across her kitchen counter while she was making tea.

She shrieked, grabbed a shoe, and smashed it.

Crunch.

A smear of brown ichor.

“Disgusting,” she muttered.

Then she noticed something odd.

Inside the crushed shell was a tiny white object.

She poked it with the tip of the shoe.

It looked like a tooth.

Human.

She laughed nervously and threw it away.

The next night there were three roaches.

The night after that, dozens.

They emerged from beneath the sink, from cracks in the baseboards, from the vent above the stove. She bought traps. Sprays. Powders.

Nothing worked.

Every morning, she’d find more.

But they behaved strangely.

They weren’t afraid of her.

When she entered a room, they stopped moving.

Thousands of tiny antennae angled toward her.

Watching.

One night, unable to sleep, Mina heard it.

A faint scratching.

Inside the walls.

It wasn’t the chaotic scuttle of insects.

It was rhythmic.

Scratch.

Scratch-scratch.

Pause.

Scratch.

Like fingernails.

She pressed her ear against the bedroom wall.

The scratching stopped.

Then something scratched back.

Right where her head rested.

Mina stumbled away.

The next morning, she called exterminators.

They arrived with masks and flashlights.

After less than ten minutes inside the apartment, one of them walked out pale and shaking.

“We can’t help you,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Mina snapped. “They’re just bugs!”

The man hesitated.

“Roaches don’t arrange themselves like that. Get an exorcist.”

He left.

Confused and angry, Mina searched the apartment herself.

Eventually, she pulled her refrigerator away from the wall.

Behind it, hundreds of roaches clustered together.

They weren’t feeding.

They were spelling something.

Three words.

LET US OUT.

Mina screamed and stumbled backward.

The roaches scattered.

She fled the apartment and spent the night in a motel.

The police searched 4B the next day.

No message.

No infestation.

Nothing.

They suggested stress.

Sleep deprivation.

Mina returned home because what else could she do?

That night, she lay awake in bed, every light blazing.

Silence.

Then—

Tap.

She looked toward the ceiling.

Tap.

Another.

Something small landed on her blanket.

A roach.

Then another.

And another.

They dropped from the smoke detector.

From the light fixtures.

From the air vent.

Hundreds.

Thousands.

She tried to run.

The roaches didn’t bite.

Instead, they crawled over her skin with frantic urgency.

Up her legs.

Across her chest.

Over her face.

She opened her mouth to scream.

Several rushed inside.

Mina gagged.

And then she heard it.

Not with her ears.

Inside her head.

Voices.

Hundreds of them.

Overlapping.

Desperate.

Crying.

It’s dark.

Please.

He sealed us in.

Behind the walls.

Under the floors.

He said nobody would hear us.

Mina collapsed, choking as the memories poured into her.

Children.

Women.

Men.

Locked alive inside the apartment decades ago by the building’s original owner.

The scratching.

The pleading.

The hunger.

The darkness.

When the police finally broke down Mina’s door the next morning, they found her unconscious on the floor.

The walls had been torn open from the inside.

Behind them were bones.

Dozens of skeletons curled together in the narrow spaces.

The official report blamed a long-forgotten serial killer.

The newspapers called it a miracle that the victims had finally been found.

No one could explain the roaches.

Months later, Mina moved into a new apartment across town.

Clean.

Modern.

Perfect.

Sometimes, late at night, she notices a single cockroach sitting in the corner of the room.

It never runs when she approaches.

It simply raises its antennae toward her.

As if listening.

As if waiting.

And once, just before it disappears beneath the baseboard, she could swear she hears a tiny voice whisper:

“Thank you for hearing us.”