Patient File No. 7
That night, when I finally left Golestan Alley — or perhaps the alley let me go, I no longer knew which was more accurate — I didn't go home. I went to Dr. Rostami, the only person still willing to believe me, and told him everything — the story of the old hospital, the medical error, the regret that had become an entity.
He, contrary to my expectations, instead of worry or fear, raised his eyebrows in the way only someone with a scientific background does when something seems suspicious to them.
"Something's strange," he said, after I finished. "This whole story — the hospital, the negligent doctor, that Monday night — where did it come from?"
"He told me himself."
"Exactly," he said, and in his eyes I saw something I hadn't seen until that moment — not doubt in me, but doubt in something else. "Think, Doctor. An entity whose power comes from story, from narrative, from people believing it... why would it tell you the truth? Why wouldn't it fabricate a new story, precisely when it realizes that speaking the truth is weakening it?"
I sat down, suddenly cold.
"You think he lied?"
"I think," Rostami said, slowly, "that perhaps that tragedy — that regret, that hospital — is exactly what you needed to feel sorry for him. And when you feel pity, you can no longer fight him with the same intensity as before."
His words poured over me like cold water. All that pity that had settled in my heart, all that human moment I thought I had seen — all of it might have been just another layer of manipulation.
---
That night, instead of sleeping, I sat down and began re-examining the details of the story Mr. Monday had told. If an old hospital had existed on that spot, there had to be a trace of it in the city's records.
I searched for hours. I found no trace of a hospital — not in old maps, not in newspaper archives, not in any official document.
I found only one thing: a very old report, from more than seventy years ago, about an empty plot of land in that same area that had once, according to local rumors, been the site of a mass execution during a period of political unrest — not a hospital, not a medical error.
No names, no details matching his story.
I sat there, my feelings oscillating between anger and terror. If the hospital story was a lie, then why had it felt so real? Why had the sorrow in his voice, the exhaustion, felt so human?
Perhaps because he truly believed it. Perhaps what he had shown me wasn't the truth of himself, but a truth he had convinced himself of — a lie he had repeated to himself so many times that he could no longer distinguish it from reality.
Or perhaps — and this thought terrified me more than anything else — he knew exactly that he was lying, and was simply waiting to see how long it would take for me, like the others, to pity him and lower my guard.
---
Two days later, I saw him again — not in a dream, not in the alley, but in my apartment, sitting in that same reading chair, exactly as he had appeared the first time.
"You figured it out, didn't you?" he said, without preamble, his voice colder this time, less human than before.
"The hospital never existed," I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
He laughed — that horrible multi-voiced laugh, but this time with no attempt to hide its coldness. "No, it didn't. I like you, Doctor. The others were too confused to ever figure it out."
"Why?" I asked. "Why fabricate that story?"
"Because it worked," he said, simply, as if discussing a tool. "Every entity needs a justification, Doctor. Even for itself. Especially for itself. If I just said 'I enjoy pain because I enjoy pain,' well... even I couldn't live like that. So I built a story. A story of victimhood. And then I began to believe it, and then I told it to you, and you — just like the others — felt sorry for me for a moment."
"So none of it was real?"
"Maybe a piece of it is real," he said, his tone now indifferent, almost cruel. "Maybe somewhere, sometime, there was something like regret. But now? Now it's just a tool. A way to keep people like you close enough for me to continue my game."
I stood and backed away, but he just sat there, without moving, without needing to move.
"Why are you telling me this now?" I asked. "Why confess the truth now?"
His smile, this time, grew wider than ever — wider than any human face should be able to hold.
"Because I realized I no longer need to lie," he said. "Because I realized, Doctor, that you can no longer leave. Even if you know what I am, even if you no longer pity me — you're part of the story now. And stories, once they've progressed far enough, no longer care who knows the truth."
The light in the room went out completely.
In absolute darkness, his voice, from everywhere, whispered the final sentence:
"Because you're in Chapter Fourteen now, Doctor. And only six chapters remain until the end."
When the lights came back on, the room was empty.
But on the mirror across from me, in invisible steam — with no source of heat anywhere — a countdown had been written:
6
And as I watched, the number slowly changed.
5
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To be continued in Chapter Fifteen...