Patient File No. 7
I decided to talk to someone about it. Not as a psychiatrist, but as a person who was losing his mind.
Dr. Rostami was the only one I knew well enough. One evening, after working hours, I went to his office and told him everything — not in full detail, but enough. The missing file. The five names of five doctors with that same repeated sentence. The dreams I didn't think were dreams. The Monday that wouldn't end.
He listened without interrupting. When I finished, he was silent for a while, then said something I hadn't expected:
"I knew eventually someone would take that file and this would happen."
I asked what he meant.
"We all sort of knew that file was... troubled. Not in a supernatural sense — don't go saying I said that. But every doctor who's worked on this patient, after a few weeks, something changes in them. The one before you — I remember how he started talking about strange dreams, about some neighborhood none of us recognized. Then one day he just didn't show up for work."
"And no one looked for him?"
"We did. His apartment was empty. He'd taken everything, that same night. Neighbors said a car came, in the middle of the night, and loaded it up. No one had his new address."
I looked at him. "Do you believe this patient... really has something that..."
He cut me off, almost angrily: "I don't believe in anything supernatural. I believe a very intelligent and very dangerous patient knows how to exploit other people's minds. That's what you're dealing with. Not a monster. A man."
I wanted to believe him. I really did.
That night, instead of going straight home, I went for a walk — I thought maybe fresh air would help. I chose my route aimlessly, through streets I didn't usually take.
After about twenty minutes, I noticed the smell of fresh bread.
The smell itself wasn't strange — bakeries are everywhere. But something about it — perhaps its intensity, perhaps the timing (it was nearly nine at night, when no bakery is usually open) — made my steps slow down.
I stopped at the mouth of a street.
It was a short street. Maybe three hundred meters, just as he'd said. Old brick houses. A bakery, with a light still on inside, though its sign was dark. And a little further down, a small park, with the shadows of three swings visible beneath the streetlight.
My feet went cold.
I don't know how long I stood there. All I know is that at one moment, something inside me said go in, and in the next moment, something else — whatever was left of my reason — said turn back.
I turned back.
I ran the entire way, without looking behind me.
---
At the next session, even before he sat down, he said: "You went there."
I said nothing, but this time I didn't even try to deny it.
"I didn't go in," I finally said.
"I know," he said. "If you had gone in, you wouldn't be here right now — or if you were, you wouldn't be 'you' anymore." He paused. "But the fact that you stood at the entrance, that you smelled the bread, that you saw the swings moving without wind — that means the door is opening wider. It means the more sessions we continue, the smaller the distance between your world and mine becomes."
"Why does it work like that?" I asked, my voice louder than I intended. "Why does everyone who hears the story have to be pulled in?"
He looked at me. For the first time, I felt he was truly sympathizing with me — not with words, but with his eyes.
"Because it's a reciprocal relationship, Doctor. I can't fully tell my story unless you fully listen — not just with your ears, but with your mind, with your imagination. And in order to imagine it, your mind has to construct part of that place. And anything a mind constructs is a door, for him."
"Then why do you keep going? Why tell me this story if you know you're dragging me into the very thing you escaped from?"
He was silent for a long time. When he finally answered, his voice broke for the first time — not from fear, but from something deeper, something like shame.
"Because if I don't finish the story, that version of me still trapped there will never be set free. And because..." He drew a deep breath. "Because only by telling the story in full will I understand who I really was there. A victim? Or someone who helped him?"
I couldn't answer.
That night, when I got home, the first thing I did was lock every door and window — something I had never done before, because my apartment was on the seventh floor.
At two in the morning, I heard a knock. Soft. Three taps.
I looked through the peephole.
The hallway was empty.
But on the floor, right in front of my door, the smell of fresh bread was rising — as if a bakery, just seconds ago, had finished its work right there.
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To be continued in Chapter Five…