I didn't go to school the next day.
Or the day after that.
By the end of the week, I still hadn't stepped outside my house except to throw out the trash.
If anyone from school noticed, I didn't know. Rick probably did. Selena probably complained about it. Teachers might have marked me absent. I didn't really care.
My conversation with Selena and Grandma refused to leave my mind.
No matter how hard I tried to distract myself, those words kept coming back.
"But you can."
And then Grandma's calm, firm voice.
"You can't."
It wasn't that I didn't trust my Grandma. I trusted her more than anyone else in the world.
She had never lied to me, not once. She had always been careful with her words, always honest, even when the truth was uncomfortable.
But something felt… incomplete.
Like a missing piece.
Or maybe it wasn't missing.
Maybe I just hadn't seen it yet.
Or maybe I wanted to prove something.
To myself.
I spent most of the week glued to my phone and laptop, sitting on my bed or the floor, barely noticing the passage of time. I searched for anything I could think of.
Ghosts.
Evil spirits.
Psychic abilities.
Clairvoyants.
Exorcism rituals.
Urban legends.
Horror stories.
Even Fortune tellers.
I wasn't picky.
Most of it was useless.
Fake stories, exaggerated encounters, people clearly making things up for attention.
Some posts contradicted each other so badly that reading them felt like a headache.
Some were right here and there but you could tell that it was made up or they might have heard something from someone else too.
Others were clearly written by people who had never experienced anything remotely supernatural.
Still, I kept searching.
Scrolling.
Reading.
Until one post caught my attention.
It was on Quira.
At first glance, it looked like any other ghost story. The title wasn't dramatic. No exaggerated claims. No clickbait.
Just a simple question.
"Has anyone experienced something they couldn't explain in their apartment?"
I almost skipped past it.
But something about the details pulled me in.
The way it described spirits.
The way it talked about the state of the dead.
The difference between wandering ghosts and malicious ones.
It felt… familiar.
I read it again, slower this time.
I searched its content in Oogle and found something similar.
It was about a mass suicide case from years ago.
Multiple people.
Different ages.
Different genders.
Different jobs.
There was nothing common between them.
Except one thing.
They all lived in the same apartment complex.
According to the news, the deaths happened over less than a month.
People jumped from balconies. Some were found hanging. A few overdosed. One even drowned himself in his own bathtub.
At first, the police suspected a serial killer.
But there was no sign of forced entry. No evidence of struggle. No pattern that could be traced back to a single person.
Eventually, the case was closed.
The apartment complex emptied out quickly after that. Families moved out in the middle of the night. Some left furniture behind. Others refused to even talk about it.
Even the landlord sold the building and disappeared from the city.
I felt a chill run down my spine.
I kept reading.
There was an interview included in the post. It was apparently taken before the landlord left.
"I heard noises," the man had said. "But whenever I turned back, there would be no one."
I paused and read that line again.
"I have lived alone for many years. Even after my wife died, I continued on with life. I have never been too ill or depressive."
My grip on the phone tightened slightly.
"But it seemed like someone was telling me to jump off the railing. Always. Whenever I was alone. Sometimes even when I was with friends."
That part made my stomach twist.
"It only happened in my house," the interview continued. "Many times, I found myself standing on my balcony, and I wouldn't remember how I reached there."
I stared at the screen for a long moment.
This wasn't a Dumbo Ghost.
This was exactly how a Khumya worked.
Whispers.Slow pressure.Thoughts that didn't feel like your own.
I scrolled back up to the main post.
The person who wrote it claimed that the cause of the deaths was an angry spirit attached to the building itself.
Not a person.
The building.
Anyone who lived there fell under its influence.
The longer they stayed, the stronger it became.
Eventually, it pushed them over the edge.
Literally.
The post mentioned that the spirit was eventually exorcised.
But that was it.
No details.
No explanation of how.
No mention of who did it.
Just that it was "taken care of."
It was a fifteen-year-old incident.
I scrolled down to the comments.
Most people were praising the story.
"This gave me chills."
"So scary."
"Sounds fake but interesting."
"Great writing."
Nothing useful.
Nothing questioning the truth of it.
Nothing asking how the exorcism was done.
I checked the profile of the person who posted it.
They had written a few other stories.
Some were about ghost encounters or strange dreams and other unexplained events.
All of them felt somewhat real .
Only to me. Others had taken them mindless stories or illogical writings.
This was their last post.
No activity after that.
I leaned back against the headboard and stared at the ceiling.
"Great," I muttered.
Still, I wasn't ready to give up.
I copied the username and searched it on Intagram.
At first, nothing came up.
Then I found an account with a similar name.
The profile was public
It had only one post.
Just one.
I opened it.
It was a picture of a young woman, probably in her early twenties. She was standing near a railing, smiling faintly at the camera. The background was slightly blurred, but something about it made my heart beat faster.
There was a sign behind her.
I zoomed in.
The image wasn't very clear, but I could make out the name of a place.
I typed it into Oogle.
My breath caught.
It was a place in the same city.
The same area where the mass suicide case had occurred.
I sat there for a long time, phone resting loosely in my hand.
This could mean nothing.
It could be a coincidence.
It could be another dead end.
But something deep inside me told me otherwise.
This was the first real lead I had found.
"Looks like I don't have much of a choice," I said quietly to the empty room.
For now, this was all I had.
And I was going to bet my luck on it.
Even if it turned out to be a mistake.