CHAPTER 3. THE STATUS YOU DIDN'T POST by Abrar Nayeem Chowdhury - A Terrifying Modern Devil Horror Web Novel About Social Media and Secrets

 

CHAPTER 3: The Secret That Isn’t Yours

The phone typed without her needing to use her fingers.

Letters appeared one by one—slow, deliberate, like someone carving them into her screen with a needle.

“When Mira was fourteen…”

“Stop,” she whispered. “Please stop.”

Her voice cracked like thin ice.
Layla stared at her from the bed, half-awake and fully confused.

“Mira, what are you talking about? Who are you texting?”

Mira didn’t answer.
Couldn’t.
The words kept forming:

“…she watched the neighbor bleed and didn’t call for help.”

“That’s not—”
Her breath stuttered.
“That’s not true!”

The phone paused, as if savoring her panic.
Then another sentence formed, slower this time, crueler:

“It will be.”

A cold prickling spread up her arms.

The lights flickered again, though the morning sun had already brightened the sky outside.
Daylight should have softened fear.
Instead, it sharpened it—turning every shadow into a threat that had learned to hide better.

Layla swung her legs off the bed. “Let me see your phone.”

“No.”
Mira clutched it to her chest like a dying heartbeat.

Layla frowned. “You’re scaring me.”

A second notification appeared.

Message from ThingThatFeasts.

Mira’s thumb twitched, but she didn’t open it.
The phone opened it on its own.

The Devil’s message arrived as a single line:

“You’re scaring everyone.”

Her knees weakened.

She felt suddenly watched, not just from the corners of the room—but from behind her eyes, as if thought itself had become a window.

Layla touched her shoulder. “Mira, seriously—”

Mira flinched so violently she knocked her phone to the floor.

It didn’t break.
It didn’t even clatter.

It landed upright, screen facing her, glowing with that unmistakable satisfaction of something that had been waiting.

More text appeared:

“You didn’t call for help at fourteen.”

“But you will fail to call again today.”

Her panic sharpened. “What do you mean today?”

The response came too fast to be typed.

“Someone will need you.
And you won’t save them.
Just as you didn’t save me.”

Mira screamed. “I didn’t kill you! I don’t know you!”

The Devil replied instantly:

“Humans rarely know what they are born.”

A cold, heavy silence settled over the room.
Layla knelt to pick up the phone. “Maybe you’re being hacked—”

Before she could touch it, the screen erupted with a sound Mira had never heard a phone make.
A sound like bones rattling in a furnace.

Layla jerked her hand back.

The Devil’s next message appeared slowly, each letter shaking the screen slightly, as if carved with force:

“Touch what is mine again… and I will peel the sleep from your eyes, girl.”

Layla’s face drained of color.
She backed away. “Mira… what is happening?”

Mira swallowed. Her throat burned. “There’s something… something talking to me.”

“Who?”

The Devil answered before she could.

A voice—real now, loud and close—spoke from behind the wardrobe:

“I am the thing she invited as a child and abandoned as a woman.”

Mira turned too fast, her vision blurring.

Nothing stood there.
Just clothes.
Shoes.
Silence.

But the wardrobe doors began to tremble.
A low knocking came from inside—slow, deliberate, polite in the most horrifying way.

Three knocks.
A pause.
Three more.

The Devil’s voice seeped from the cracks:

“Open the door, Mira.”

“No.” Tears blurred her eyes. “You can’t make me.”

A soft chuckle curled behind the wood.

“Oh, little liar.

If I could not make you… You would not be trembling.”

Layla grabbed Mira’s arm. “We’re leaving. Now.”

For a moment, Mira believed escape was possible.

Then her phone buzzed again.

New status posted.

She didn’t want to look.
She already felt the truth waiting like a blade.

But the screen faced her anyway.

“At 9:14 a.m., Mira Rahman will walk past a dying girl and not call for help.”

Mira froze.

Layla whispered, “Mira… what does that mean?”

She didn’t answer.

Because outside, in the hallway, someone screamed.

A sound sharp enough to split bone.
A sound of real pain—raw, desperate, begging.

Layla rushed to the door.

Mira grabbed her arm this time. “Don’t.”

“Someone’s hurt!”

Mira’s pulse hammered.
The Devil’s message chimed again.

“This time it will not be an accident.”

A second message:

“This time… you will choose.”

Layla pulled free and swung the dorm door open.

The hallway stretched before them, long and familiar—but now washed in an unnatural pallor.
At the far end, a girl lay collapsed, blood spreading beneath her like a growing shadow.

Mira stepped back.
Her chest squeezed tight, refusing to breathe.

Layla ran toward the girl.

Mira stayed rooted, shaking violently.
She heard her own heartbeat pounding in her skull.

Her phone buzzed once more.

The Devil’s final message of the chapter read:

“Three secrets revealed.
Ten remain.
And you have already begun to obey me.”

The hallway lights died.

And Mira was left to make her own choice in the dark.

To Be Continued...

Chapter 2: https://storylinespectrum.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-status-you-didnt-post-horror_19.html