The Last Tenant of Gallowmere Heights
Gallowmere Heights was the sort of place you passed on the way to somewhere else. Standing thirteen stories high, it loomed like a mausoleum in the middle of the city’s aging industrial district, its soot-darkened façade half-forgotten beneath layers of grime and shadow. Most people didn’t even know it was still inhabited.
But it was.
A few lights flickered weakly behind its barred windows, like the final embers of a fire that had long burned itself out. The elevator groaned when it moved — if it moved at all — and the mailboxes in the lobby were rusted shut, nameplates long faded or scratched out. Some said the building was cursed. Others said it had simply grown tired of time. Either way, Gallowmere Heights kept its secrets well.
Vincent Archer wasn’t the superstitious type. He was a city surveyor, methodical by nature, and under strict instructions to assess the building for structural viability before a potential investor moved forward with plans to renovate the district. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Not the literal kind, anyway. But Gallowmere Heights had a strange weight to it — an air thick with silence, like breath held too long.
He arrived just past dusk, the sky bruised purple, his boots echoing sharply as he stepped into the vestibule. The air inside was heavy with mildew and a faint undertone of ash, as if something long dead still smoldered in the walls. No one met him. No welcome, no curious glance from a window. Just that feeling of being watched.
His office had issued him a passkey, meant to open every unit in the building. Most of the apartments had been unoccupied for decades. Still, procedure demanded a room-by-room inspection. Vincent checked his watch. It was just after six. He figured he could finish by midnight.
The first few floors were what he expected: peeling wallpaper, dust-choked vents, kitchens with rusted fixtures and refrigerators older than himself. He took notes, photos, measurements. Nothing remarkable — until the fifth floor.
Here, the hallway light buzzed erratically, casting stuttering shadows that seemed to move even when he stood still. One door in particular caught his eye: Apartment 5B. It looked cleaner than the rest. The number plate had been recently polished, and there was a faint smell of something herbal — lavender, perhaps — seeping from beneath the door. Vincent hesitated, then slid the passkey into the lock.
The door swung open with surprising ease.
Inside, the apartment was… pristine. Not new, exactly, but meticulously kept. The furniture was antique — polished mahogany, velvet upholstery faded but intact. Candles flickered in ornate holders, their flames unmoving despite the draft he brought in. A porcelain teacup sat on a saucer beside an armchair, steam still curling from it. Someone lived here.
“Hello?” Vincent called out.
No response.
He stepped in cautiously, eyes scanning for movement. The air was cool but pleasant. On the walls hung old oil paintings — landscapes choked in fog, lone figures walking down empty roads. A grandfather clock ticked softly in the corner, though its hands were frozen at 11:07.
Vincent turned to leave and froze.
The hallway outside no longer looked the same.
Where there had been peeling walls and flickering lights, there was now deep burgundy wallpaper with gold filigree, sconce lights casting warm glows, and a runner rug that hadn’t been there before. Confused, he stepped out.
He wasn’t on the fifth floor anymore.
Or rather, it wasn’t the fifth floor he’d come from.
This floor was impossibly quiet, not even the distant groan of pipes or creak of settling wood. Just the soft, constant ticking of unseen clocks.
He tried the stairs. They spiraled up and down endlessly, without labels or landings. The elevator wouldn’t respond. Every floor he reached looked the same — identical doors, identical hallway, identical air of something watching from just out of view. He called his supervisor. No signal.
Time passed, though he couldn’t say how much. The windows in the hallway revealed only darkness, not even the glow of the city beyond. Vincent’s watch had stopped at 11:07.
Then he saw the figure.
At the end of the hall, past Apartment 9C, a tall man in a gray suit stood with his back to him. His posture was rigid, arms at his sides. Vincent called out, relief washing over him. The man didn’t move.
“Sir? I’m looking for the exit. Can you help me?”
Still no response.
Vincent walked closer. The air around the figure grew cold, like standing too close to a deep freezer. He reached out and gently tapped the man’s shoulder.
The suit collapsed.
Empty. No body, no bones — just the suit, hanging in the air for a moment before falling to the floor in a heap.
Vincent stumbled back. His heart pounded in his throat. Something rustled behind him.
He turned to see another door open — Apartment 9D.
From inside came the smell of rain on stone, like an underground tunnel. He heard whispers. Faint. Urgent. Familiar.
“Vincent…”
He blinked. The voice was… his own?
Against his better judgment, he stepped inside.
This apartment was different — colder, darker, with walls of dark wood and ceilings lost in shadow. The floor felt uneven beneath his feet, and the windows had been bricked over. A single oil lamp burned on a desk covered in handwritten notes — his notes. Surveyor logs, building diagrams, even the photograph he’d taken on the first floor. All written in his handwriting. All dated for the days after he arrived.
But he hadn’t written them.
On the far wall hung a mirror, tall and framed in oxidized silver. But it didn’t reflect him.
Instead, the glass showed the hallway — endless, empty, and behind it, shadows moving of their own accord. His own reflection finally appeared, but it was… older. Haggard. Eyes sunken, beard unshaven. The reflection stared at him, then mouthed a single word.
Get Immortal Gothic’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
“Leave.”
Vincent turned and fled.
He ran through the hallways — floor after floor, door after door, all looping back to the same place. He would exit one apartment only to return to the same one again. The world had become a spiral. Time, a smear. He stopped only when he found himself once more in front of Apartment 5B.
The door was open again.
Inside, the same teacup steamed beside the armchair. But this time, someone sat in it.
A woman.
She was pale, with dark hair pinned in a style fifty years out of date, her dress old but elegant. She regarded him with a tired smile.
“You took longer than the others,” she said.
“Others?” he asked, breathless.
“They all come eventually. The ones who think they’re just passing through. But Gallowmere doesn’t like to be surveyed. It remembers. It listens.”
Vincent felt the weight of her words settle in his chest.
“I want to leave.”
She gestured to the chair opposite her. “They all do. Sit with me. I’ll tell you how it ends.”
He didn’t want to sit. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to break a window, to find a door. But he sat.
And she spoke.
She told him of the building’s history, how it had once been a luxury residence in the early 1900s before falling into disrepair. How a tenant had gone missing in every decade since. One by one, forgotten by the city, absorbed by the building. Some tried to escape, others tried to reason with it. None succeeded. The building did not tolerate abandonment.
“You’ll be the caretaker now,” she said softly. “Until the next.”
Vincent stood, rage flaring in his chest. “No. I’m not staying here. I’m not part of this.”
But the woman only smiled.
“You already are.”
He ran again, this time with no destination. Doors blurred past. Lights failed. The darkness grew heavier, more alive. Finally, he collapsed against a wall, heart hammering, lungs burning.
And then — light.
He opened his eyes to see the lobby. The same filthy, cracked lobby he’d entered hours ago.
It was morning.
Sunlight poured through the stained glass above the entrance. The elevator sat still and dead. His equipment bag lay at his feet.
He didn’t question it. He ran out of Gallowmere Heights and didn’t look back.
Weeks passed. He returned to the survey office. Filed his report. Claimed the building was structurally unsound. Dangerous. Best demolished. But at night, when he closed his eyes, he still saw the hallways. Still smelled lavender. Still heard the ticking.
One evening, he passed the building again, unable to help himself.
It stood unchanged.
But the lobby door now bore a new nameplate.
Caretaker: V. Archer
Vincent backed away slowly.
As he turned to leave, he caught a glimpse of the upper floor window.
There, in Apartment 5B, two figures sat facing each other in flickering candlelight. A man and a woman. One sipping tea. The other staring into a mirror that did not reflect the world outside.
Gallowmere Heights was not empty after all.
It never was.
* * *
Listen to this story (and other stories) on our YouTube channel:
If you enjoyed this tale, you can support our work here: https://ko-fi.com/immortalgothic/
* * *
Disclaimer:
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real-life events is purely coincidental. It was created for storytelling purposes and enhanced using AI-generated text and images.
