Chapter 6: Total Darkness
The sudden absence of light was absolute, swallowing the room and erasing the distinction between floor, walls, and ceiling. Maya froze, her hand hovering in the empty air just millimeters from the heavy iron deadbolt. In the suffocating blackness, her other senses sharpened to an agonizing degree. She could hear the faint, rapid thud of Tyler’s fists against the outer side of the door, accompanied by his panicked, ragged breathing. But closer—far too close—she heard the slow, deliberate creak of plastic shifting behind her, as if the heavy casing of the large black speaker was expanding under extreme internal pressure.
"Tyler?" Maya called out, her voice cracking in the dark, small and pathetic against the heavy silence of the room.
"Maya, don't touch it!" Tyler’s muffled voice yelled from the hallway, his panic finally stripping away all the cruel bravado he had worn like armor earlier that evening. "My phone... my phone flashlight just died on its own. The whole corridor is dead."
Before Maya could respond, a sharp, metallic click echoed from inside the speaker cabinet, followed by the hiss of a reel-to-reel tape player spinning up to high speed. The room filled with the ghostly sound of whispered laughter, echoing from every corner at once as if a dozen invisible people were standing right beside her in the dark. She dropped to her knees, her hands covering her ears, pressing hard to shut out the mocking whispers that seemed to burrow directly into her thoughts.
"You can't escape the broadcast, little zero," a cold, synthesized voice whispered right against the shell of her ear, though she was completely alone in the center of the room.
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A sudden, blinding flash of white light erupted from the speaker grill, illuminating the interior of the studio for a fraction of a second. In that microsecond of illumination, Maya saw something that made her blood run cold: the mixing board console was covered in old, dried blood splattered across the vintage sliders, and the heavy wooden door had no handle on the inside—never had.
The light died instantly, plunging them back into darkness, while a slow, heavy footstep began to echo on the wooden floorboards, moving deliberately toward her from the darkest corner of the studio.
