9 Circle Street

Luke and Cassie, the perfect couple in every way, arrive home from a long day of grocery shopping. They climb the three floors to their apartment and put away the groceries in their fridge. They are interrupted by a phone call. Luke answers and a woman asks to speak to Cassie. When Cassie takes the phone her blood runs cold. Her mother yells obscenities at her and Cassie slams the phone down. Cassie lies to Luke when he asks who it was. The fire alarm rings out. Luke checks the hallway, and after finding smoke, grabs Cassie and they flee down the stairs. One level below, they hear a crying child in an apartment. Luke busts through the door to find Seth, a small boy no older than ten. They grab him by the arm and pull him into the stairwell. They rush down another flight of stairs, then another. Luke opens the door into another hall. He and Cassie are dumbfounded as this should be the lobby. They run down another floor, and the fire alarm stops, plunging them into silence. Luke pulls a window shade open, hoping to see the fire department outside, only to reveal nothing but solid earth. They are below ground. Down one more flight of stairs they find a man seated on the bottom step. He wears old clothing and is covered in mud. He sobs into his hands. They push past the man and sees he cries blood through empty sockets in his eyes. In the next hallway, Cassie loses sight of Luke in thick smoke and bumps into an old man who asks her how she could do it?! Luke shakes Cassie out of her hallucination as a phone rings behind the door next to them. Seth tells them they should answer it. They enter the apartment where a family sits like wax figures around a table. Luke answers the phone and a child’s voice asks for Cassie before morphing into a horrible cackle. Cassie slams the phone down. He tells Cassie they’re going back to their apartment. Leaving Seth behind, they ascend the stairs to find they end in a solid wall. They turn to see Seth, who tells them their only way out is down. Luke snaps and grabs the little boy, demanding he tell them what’s going on. Cassie convinces Luke to let Seth go and they head back down the stairs. Luke, Cassie and Seth emerge from the stairwell into a hallway where every door is covered in police tape except for two at the far end. Seth tells Luke his exit lies in the door on the right. He opens the door and witnesses Cassie pressing a pillow into her mother’s face until she dies. Luke backs out of the room, terrified. Cassie tries to explain why she did what she did but Seth tells her it wasn’t her place to decide. The second door opens to reveal billowing smoke and hints of flame rising from below. Seth leads Cassie toward it, she follows almost in a trance. Luke begs Seth to forgive Cassie but Seth reveals Cassie did it for the insurance money. Cassie removes Luke’s hand from her arm. Cassie and Seth disappear through the door. Luke passes out from the smoke and awakens outside his apartment, with two concerned neighbors checking on him. Luke rushes into his apartment, everything is as it should be. Luke sits down at the table… puts his head in his hands… while outside a worker places a VACANCY card under the sign that reads: THE APARTMENTS AT 9 CIRCLE STREET.