The Address That Shouldn’t Exist
I found the delivery address by accident.
At least, that was what I told myself at first.
Accidents feel kinder than traps.
After the man knocked on my apartment door, I did not answer.
I sat on the floor until sunrise with a kitchen knife in one hand and my eyes fixed on the covered canvas.
The knocking stopped after the third tap.
No footsteps left the hallway.
No elevator door opened.
No voice called again.
Just silence.
The kind that waits for you to feel foolish.
At 7:16 a.m., I finally crawled toward the door and looked through the peephole.
Empty hallway.
No man.
No shadow.
No silver-haired buyer standing outside with a broken mirror ring.
Only one envelope on the floor.
Black.
Sealed with red wax.
My name was written across it in handwriting I recognized.
Not because I had seen it before.
Because I had painted it.
That sounds impossible.
But the letters curved exactly like the scratches on the wall inside my self-portrait.
The same uneven pressure.
The same desperate slant.
ELARA.
Inside the envelope was a receipt.
Not from my online shop.
A shipping receipt.
Fourteen paintings.
Delivered over seven months.
All to the same address.
17 Blackwater Lane.
I stared at it for a long time.
Because I had never shipped anything there.
MIRROR_17 never gave a physical address.
He paid for digital files.
He ordered me to destroy originals.
He should not have had deliveries.
Unless someone else had been collecting what I thought I burned.
Unless the burned canvases were never the real transaction.
Unless the paintings were not products.
They were evidence.
I searched the address online.
Nothing came up at first.
Then an old property record.
Blackwater House.
Abandoned since 2009.
Fire damage.
Foreclosure.
No current owner listed.
One photo showed a huge decaying mansion surrounded by trees, its windows boarded, its roof sagging beneath years of rain.
I recognized it before I knew why.
Not from life.
From the painting.
The gray room.
The chains.
The black door.
Somewhere beneath that ruined house was the room I had painted without ever seeing it.
And someone under the concrete floor had just told me:
Finally.
Blackwater House
I went at dusk because fear is stupid.
It waits until the worst possible hour and calls itself courage.
Blackwater Lane sat beyond the edge of the city, past old factories, dead streetlights, and a narrow road swallowed by trees.
My taxi driver refused to turn into the driveway.
“House is condemned,” he said.
“I’ll be quick.”
He looked at me through the rearview mirror.
“People say that before becoming news.”
I paid cash.
He did not offer to wait.
Blackwater House rose behind an iron gate covered in vines.
The mansion looked larger in person.
Not grand.
Hungry.
Windows stared through broken boards. Rainwater dripped from cracked gutters even though the sky had stopped raining hours earlier. Dead leaves covered the stone steps like old paper.
I stood outside with my phone flashlight trembling in one hand and the shipping receipt in the other.
17 Blackwater Lane.
The address was real.
Which meant the buyer was real.
Or had been.
The front door was unlocked.
That should have made me leave.
Instead, I stepped inside.
The air smelled of mold, ashes, and something sour beneath the floorboards.
My flashlight cut across a wide entrance hall with peeling wallpaper and a chandelier hanging low from a broken ceiling.
Dust covered everything.
Except the footprints.
Fresh.
Leading deeper into the house.
My breathing grew louder.
I followed them past the staircase, through a dining room with no table, into a long corridor lined with closed doors.
At the end of the hallway, pale light leaked through a cracked frame.
I pushed the door open.
And saw my paintings.
The Gallery Of Crying Women
They covered every wall.
Dozens of them.
Not fourteen.
Dozens.
Some mine.
Some older.
Some painted in styles I did not recognize.
Women crying.
Women behind glass.
Women in water.
Women holding hands over their mouths.
Women looking toward something outside the frame.
The room felt less like a gallery and more like a witness lineup.
I stepped closer to the first painting.
A woman with red hair crying beside a bathtub.
Mine.
Sold four months ago.
I remembered burning the canvas.
I remembered watching smoke rise behind the laundromat.
Yet here it was.
Untouched.
Framed.
Beneath it was a small brass plate.
MARA HOLT.
MISSING: MARCH 12, 2018.
My throat tightened.
I moved to the next.
A woman at a window with tears on her cheeks.
Mine.
Bought by MIRROR_17.
Beneath it:
ELISE VAUGHN.
MISSING: JULY 4, 2020.
Another.
A woman in a burning doorway.
Beneath it:
NORA FELL.
MISSING: NOVEMBER 19, 2016.
My stomach turned violently.
These were not characters.
They were real women.
I pulled out my phone and searched the names.
Mara Holt.
Missing teacher.
Elise Vaughn.
Missing nurse.
Nora Fell.
Missing musician.
Every face matched.
Every painting I had created from “feeling” had been a portrait of a woman who disappeared before I ever painted her.
I backed away from the wall.
“No.”
My voice sounded tiny inside the ruined mansion.
A painting near the corner caught my eye.
It was my latest self-portrait.
The chained woman with my face.
The gray room.
The black door.
The word MIRROR scratched into the wall.
But the brass plate beneath it was blank.
No name.
No missing date.
Just empty metal waiting to be engraved.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A message appeared.
You found the others.
My hands went cold.
Another message came through.
Now find me.
The Buyer Was One Of Them
I typed with shaking fingers.
Who are you?
The reply came almost instantly.
The first one.
I looked around the gallery.
The first painting.
Not mine.
An older canvas hung above the fireplace, darker and more detailed than all the rest.
A woman in a red dress stood inside a concrete room, one wrist chained to the wall, one hand pressed to her throat.
Her face was turned toward the viewer.
Crying.
But not helpless.
Angry.
Alive.
The brass plate beneath it read:
VIVIAN LARK.
MISSING: JANUARY 17, 2013.
I searched the name.
The page loaded slowly.
Journalist.
Investigated missing women connected to private art auctions.
Disappeared after attending an estate viewing at Blackwater House.
Presumed dead.
No body recovered.
A photo appeared.
Vivian Lark smiled beside a newspaper building, holding a camera bag over one shoulder.
She had the same eyes as the woman in the painting.
And the same ring on her finger.
A broken mirror.
My phone buzzed again.
He made me paint the first room.
My breath stopped.
Another message.
Then he made others paint us.
I looked at the walls again.
Different styles.
Different signatures.
Different years.
Painters.
Artists.
Witnesses.
Somewhere, other desperate artists had been paid too much by someone they never met.
Somewhere, they painted women they thought they invented.
Somewhere, they destroyed originals and believed the smoke ended the story.
My latest message appeared.
Most of them stopped answering.
I stared at it.
“Because he killed them?”
The phone buzzed.
Because they finished their portraits.
The room seemed to tilt around me.
My blank brass plate waited beneath my painting.
My name not yet engraved.
My missing date not yet chosen.
I stepped backward toward the hallway.
Then music began playing from somewhere below the house.
A phone ringtone.
Soft.
Muffled.
Vibrating through the floor.
My screen lit up with a map.
No street.
No building plan.
Just a red dot blinking beneath me.
Basement level.
The Basement Beneath The Gallery
The basement door was hidden behind the fireplace.
I found it because the ringtone grew louder when I stepped near the hearth.
The brick panel opened inward when I pressed the broken mirror symbol carved into the mantle.
A staircase descended into darkness.
Cold air rose from below.
Damp.
Metallic.
Human.
I should have called police before going down.
I know that.
But I had already learned something terrible.
The police had probably been called before.
By Vivian.
By Mara.
By Elise.
By every woman whose portrait hung upstairs.
And yet the gallery remained.
The house remained.
The room remained.
I turned on my phone camera and began recording.
“My name is Elara Voss,” I whispered. “I am inside Blackwater House. There are paintings upstairs of women listed as missing. I am going into the basement.”
My voice trembled.
Good.
Let anyone watching hear it.
Let fear become evidence.
The stairs ended in a narrow concrete hallway.
The walls were wet.
Pipes ran overhead.
At the far end stood a black door.
The same door from my painting.
Half open.
I stopped breathing.
The ringtone came from behind it.
One buzz.
Then another.
I pushed the door slowly.
The room inside was exactly as I had painted it.
Gray walls.
Single hanging bulb.
Metal chair.
Chains fixed into the concrete.
Tally marks scratched into one wall.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
And above them, carved deep:
MIRROR.
My stomach twisted.
My painting had not been imagination.
It had been memory.
Not mine.
Someone else’s.
Transferred through brushstrokes.
Or through whatever nightmare MIRROR_17 had used to reach me.
The phone vibrated again.
Not mine.
A second phone.
Somewhere in the room.
I followed the sound to the center of the floor.
Concrete.
Cracked.
Dark stains near the drain.
The vibration came from underneath.
My screen showed a new message.
Finally, you painted the correct room where I was locked.
I looked down at the floor.
The sender was MIRROR_17.
The phone was beneath the concrete.
Not on the floor.
Not hidden behind a pipe.
Under it.
Buried.
My throat closed.
“Vivian?”
The room lights flickered.
A reply appeared.
Not Vivian.
I froze.
Another message came through.
Vivian was the first portrait.
I was the first buyer.
Cold spread through me.
I stared at the phone.
“Then who are you?”
The screen remained dark for several seconds.
Then:
The one he buried before he started collecting faces.
The concrete beneath my feet buzzed again.
The phone below the floor rang.
Old.
Muffled.
Desperate.
I knelt and pressed my ear to the concrete.
Under the ringtone, I heard something else.
A voice.
Female.
Weak.
Not electronic.
Not recorded.
Alive.
“Help me.”
The Woman Under The Concrete
I grabbed a rusted metal bar from the corner and slammed it into the concrete.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The floor cracked slightly.
Not enough.
The voice under the floor coughed.
My phone buzzed again.
Don’t break the wrong place.
A new image appeared on the screen.
A diagram of the basement floor.
Red X near the drain.
Blue line showing a hollow channel beneath the concrete.
There was space under there.
A crawl chamber.
A sealed cell.
Not a grave.
Not yet.
I moved to the drain and struck the concrete again.
The first piece broke loose.
Then another.
Cold air rushed upward.
Stale.
Rotten.
A hand shot through the gap.
I screamed and fell backward.
The hand was thin.
Pale.
Fingernails broken.
But it moved.
Alive.
I crawled forward.
“I’m here. I’m here.”
The woman beneath the floor grabbed my wrist with desperate strength.
Her voice scraped upward through the crack.
“He sent you?”
“No.”
“Did he make you paint?”
“Yes.”
The hand tightened.
“Then he’s already chosen you.”
My eyes filled with tears.
“Who are you?”
A pause.
Then the woman whispered:
“MIRROR_17.”
My whole body went cold.
The mysterious buyer.
The person who paid double.
The person who ordered crying women.
The person who sent me here.
Not a killer.
Not a collector.
A prisoner.
Buried under the room she made me paint.
The woman beneath the concrete sobbed softly.
“I kept buying the paintings so someone would finally see us.”
My chest hurt.
“How?”
“There’s a signal line under the floor. Old phone. He forgot it was here.” She coughed violently. “I learned to send messages when the house system wakes at night.”
“Who is he?”
The woman did not answer immediately.
Above us, the mansion creaked.
Footsteps.
Slow.
Heavy.
Crossing the gallery floor overhead.
My blood froze.
The woman under the concrete whispered:
“He’s home.”
My phone screen changed.
No message now.
A live camera feed appeared.
The gallery upstairs.
A man walked slowly between the paintings.
Dark coat.
Silver hair.
Thin smile.
Broken mirror ring.
The man from my painting.
He stopped in front of my self-portrait.
Then looked directly into the hidden camera.
Into my phone.
Into me.
His lips moved.
A second later, the basement speaker crackled.
“Elara,” he said warmly, “you weren’t supposed to meet the buyer before I framed you.”
The Unfinished Portrait
The basement door slammed shut.
I ran to it immediately.
Locked.
Of course.
The woman beneath the floor gripped my wrist harder through the broken concrete.
“Listen to me.”
Footsteps sounded above.
Slow.
Patient.
Coming toward the basement stairs.
My phone camera still showed him moving through the house.
He held something in one hand.
A brass plate.
Blank.
For my painting.
The woman under the floor gasped.
“If he hangs your plate, the room will take you next.”
“What does that mean?”
“He doesn’t kill all of them in the room.” Her voice shook violently. “Some he sells. Some he hides. Some he turns into paintings.”
I stared at the self-portrait on my phone screen.
The chained woman with my face.
The room.
The door.
The blank plate.
My throat tightened.
“How do I stop him?”
The woman coughed again.
Blood speckled the edge of the crack.
“You need the first painting.”
“Vivian?”
“No.” She sounded weaker now. “Before Vivian.”
The footsteps reached the basement door.
I backed away.
The handle moved once.
Then stopped.
The man outside chuckled softly.
Not impatient.
Enjoying this.
My phone buzzed one final time.
A file opened.
A photo.
Old.
Taken inside this same basement.
A young girl sat chained to the wall holding a paintbrush.
Maybe thirteen.
Maybe fourteen.
Her face was familiar in a way that made my stomach twist.
Dark eyes.
Sharp cheekbones.
Same small scar near the lower lip.
Mine.
No.
Not mine.
My mother’s.
The woman beneath the concrete whispered:
“He made your mother paint the first one.”
The basement door unlocked.
Click.
Slow.
Final.
The man’s voice came through the wood.
“Open the door, Elara.”
The phone screen changed to a new message.
This one was not from MIRROR_17.
It came from a saved contact I had never seen before.
MOTHER.
The message said:
Don’t let him finish your eyes.
Then the door opened.
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