Anne Hudson is 28 years old when she rents an apartment alone for the first time. She feels desperate to be on her own, by that point. Sure, having a roommate was fun during college, but the longer she lived with someone else after school, the longer Anne felt like she wasn’t moving forward with her life.
Her finances aren’t the stuff of dreams, but she can afford a nice apartment on her own. Nothing large, but not small, either. She’s comfortable there and likes the furniture, and everything works. It’s good enough for her right now.
Over a month passes in her new place. Anne meets some of her neighbors and unpacks most of her things. Her friends all come over and help her move in her belongings and assemble the few things she didn’t already have and bought cheap from Ikea.
One night, Anne’s sitting on her second-hand but still very comfy sofa and trying to politely respond to a work email while still letting her boss know that the latest situation is honestly not her fault. She hates getting work emails outside of work hours that she has to deal with right away. All that she wants to do right now is relax.
She leans against the armrest, trying to get the wording just right so that she doesn’t sound rude or offensive and pretty sure that she’s overthinking the whole thing but not able to stop herself from rereading the email for the hundredth time. After another minute, Anne leans her neck over the armrest, until her head’s hanging upside down, and she closes her eyes. Maybe if she stops looking at it for a few minutes, she’ll be able to focus better.
When she opens her eyes again, Anne starts counting to 30 in her head while she aimlessly looks around the room. She’s not searching for anything in particular, just trying to clear her mind. Her gaze is caught by something odd on the wall, though, and Anne frowns. She squints, trying to see clearer. There’s definitely something off about that section of the wall.
Anne really hopes that it’s not water damage or mold, or something awful like that. She sits upright again, reads over the email quickly and decides that it’s not going to get any better in the next half-hour, presses send, and then sets her laptop down on the couch and gets up.
She looks at the wall again, and now it seems perfectly fine. Did she just imagine something weird on the wall? Was it a shadow? She’s not going to turn her head upside down again just to see some spot on the wall. Anne almost ignores the whole thing, but she really doesn’t want to deal with water damage. If it’s just starting, then it could be an easy fix, but if she left it to rot, then it would become an even bigger mess.
Sighing, Anne walks over to the wall and slowly starts running her hands along the surface around the area where she thinks she saw that weird spot. After a few minutes, she feels something different on one section of the wallpaper. Anne crouches down and looks carefully, and part of the wallpaper is wrinkled, showing a little sliver of the wall behind it.
Well, there could be a lot of different reasons why the wallpaper’s not straight right there. Most likely, it just wasn’t smoothed down completely when it was put up.
Anne tries to lift the wallpaper away just a little bit more to check if the wall is damaged behind it. She’s really surprised to find out that the wallpaper is covering a hinge.
Why would there be a hinge in the wall?
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When Anne moves into her new apartment, she's definitely not expecting to discover a mystery. Why is there a secret door in Anne's apartment, and where does it lead? Why was it hidden in the first place? Anne doesn't know the answers to these questions, but she's determined to uncover the truth of the secret door.
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Want to find out what happens next? Check out the full story here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0841PLY6C.
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