Mara didn't touch the knife again. She left it on the kitchen floor, its rusty blade glinting in the flashlight's beam like a dare, a silent challenge she wasn't ready to meet. The metal seemed to pulse under the light, alive with a history she couldn't fathom, its edges jagged and cruel, whispering of things she didn't want to imagine. She took a step back, her boots scraping the linoleum, and then another, her hands shaking as she backed out of the room. The creak from the hall still rang in her ears, a low, insistent note that refused to fade, looping through her thoughts like a warning she couldn't ignore.
She told herself it was the house settling—old wood, old bones groaning under decades of neglect—but the sound had weight, a rhythm too close to footsteps, deliberate and measured, as if something were pacing just beyond her sight. Her pulse thudded in her throat, a frantic counterpoint to the stillness, and she couldn't shake the feeling that the noise wasn't random, wasn't innocent. She grabbed her jacket from the counter where she'd flung it earlier, the fabric cold and damp from the night air seeping through the cracks, and retreated to the dining room, slamming the door behind her with more force than she intended.
It didn't lock, the latch long since rusted into uselessness, but the thud felt final, a flimsy shield against whatever was shifting in the dark. The sound reverberated through the room, bouncing off the walls and settling into the floorboards, a declaration she couldn't take back. She sank into a chair, the wood creaking under her weight, and trained the flashlight on the door, the beam cutting a narrow path through the gloom. Her fingers tightened around the handle, the plastic slick with sweat, and she willed her breathing to slow, to match the steady hum of her own resolve. The coffee sat forgotten in the kitchen, cold by now, its bitter scent lost to the mildew that clung to the air. Her stomach churned too much to care, a roiling knot of unease that made the thought of swallowing anything unbearable.
The knife—where had it come from? She'd hidden a butter knife beneath the sink, something useless, a placeholder to quiet Ellie's panic, to prove to herself she wasn't losing her grip. It had been a small, dull thing, its blade barely capable of spreading jam, let alone cutting through anything substantial. She'd wedged it behind the pipes with a flicker of skepticism, half-expecting nothing to come of it, half-hoping it would stay there, forgotten. But that thing under the sink wasn't hers. It was too real, too worn, its rust flaking like dried blood, its handle wrapped in fraying cloth that smelled faintly of earth and decay. It was a tool with a past, a weight that pressed against her mind, conjuring images of hands that weren't hers, of nights she hadn't lived.
And the reflection—those wide, screaming eyes—haunted her every blink. She'd seen it in the kitchen window, a flash of something younger, something terrified, staring back at her with a desperation that felt personal. It wasn't her face, not exactly, but it was close enough to twist her insides, to make her question what she'd seen, what she remembered. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish the image, but it lingered, etched into the darkness behind her lids, a ghost that wouldn't leave her alone. The house was silent again, but it was a lie—a thin veneer stretched over something restless, something watching. She could feel its attention, a prickling awareness that crawled across her skin, and she needed something to ground her, to anchor her in this nightmare before it swallowed her whole.
Her eyes fell on the photo album, still splayed on the floor where she'd left it, pages fanned out like a broken wing. The hollow-eyed girl stared up at her, a younger Mara frozen in sepia tones, her expression blank but somehow accusing. She couldn't face that version of herself again—not now, not with the weight of the night pressing in—so she turned instead to the boxes she'd dragged from the closet earlier. They sat in a haphazard pile, their cardboard edges softened by time, their contents a mystery she'd been too distracted to explore until now. One was heavier than the rest, its bottom sagging under the weight of something dense, something that shifted slightly as she pulled it closer.
She peeled back the flaps, the tape brittle and peeling away in strips, revealing a jumble of notebooks—dozens of them, spiral-bound, their covers faded to dull greens and blues, the colors muted by years of dust and neglect. Her diaries. She recognized her own messy scrawl on the labels, the ink smudged but legible: Mara, 1998. Mara, 1999. Her teenage years, spilled onto pages she hadn't touched in over a decade, a chronicle of a life she'd half-forgotten. The sight of them tugged at something deep, a pang of recognition mixed with dread. She'd kept them religiously back then, a habit born from loneliness after her mom died, when words on paper were the only company she could trust. Her grandmother must have saved them, tucked them away like relics of a past she couldn't let go, preserving a piece of Mara she'd tried to leave behind.
She hesitated, her fingers hovering over the stack, then grabbed the one marked 1999. The cover was warped, stained with something dark—ink, maybe, or water that had seeped in and dried long ago. It felt heavier than it should, as if the words inside carried a weight beyond paper and ink. She flipped it open, the pages crackling under her fingers, brittle and yellowed at the edges. The entries started mundane, a litany of teenage complaints she barely remembered writing: School sucks. Gran made pie again. Dad didn't call. Her handwriting was jagged, full of angry loops and cross-outs, a reflection of the restless energy that had defined her at sixteen. She skimmed ahead, her eyes searching for June—Ellie's timeline, if that's what it was, a thread she could follow to make sense of the girl's frantic calls.
The dates matched the summer she'd turned sixteen, stuck in this house with no friends, no escape, the long days stretching into nights that felt endless. The entries were a blur of boredom at first—complaints about the heat, the isolation, the way the house creaked like it was alive—but then the tone shifted, subtle at first, then stark. July 12th: Something's outside tonight. Keeps tapping the window. Gran says it's raccoons, but it's too loud. Mara frowned, a vague memory stirring, faint and slippery—nights spent peering through the blinds, her breath fogging the glass, seeing nothing but shadows that twisted in the moonlight. She'd dismissed it back then, hadn't she? Chalked it up to the wind, to her imagination running wild in a house too big for two people?
She turned the page, her fingers trembling slightly. July 15th: He's back. Tall, doesn't move right. I told Gran, but she didn't listen. The words grew shakier, the ink smudged like her hand had trembled as she wrote, the pen digging into the paper. The shadow man knows my name. Mara's breath caught, a sharp inhale that stung her throat. Shadow man. Ellie hadn't said that—masked man, she'd called him, her voice tight with fear—but the echo was too close, the overlap too precise to dismiss. Her heart thudded against her ribs, a frantic rhythm that matched the pulse of the house around her, and she flipped faster, the pages blurring under her fingers.
July 20th: He's closer. Saw him by the shed, just standing there. Gran thinks I'm crazy. I'm not. The handwriting was erratic now, sprawling across the lines, the letters uneven and desperate. The next entry was a scrawl, barely legible, the ink bleeding into the paper: He's in the yard. I heard him whisper. Mara, Mara, Mara. I locked everything, but it's not enough. She slammed the diary shut, her chest tight, the air too thick to breathe. This wasn't right. She didn't remember any of this—no shadow man, no whispers, no creeping terror that sank into her bones. 1999 was a dull ache, a summer of grief and monotony, not a horror show that left her scrambling to barricade the doors. She'd have remembered a stalker, wouldn't she? A figure haunting the edges of her life, calling her name in the dark?
But the handwriting was hers, unmistakably hers—the slant of the M, the way she crossed her t's with a flourish she'd abandoned in adulthood. The details were too specific—the shed with its peeling paint, the yard with its overgrown grass—matching Ellie's frantic descriptions with an eerie precision. A memory flickered, unbidden, sharp and fleeting: running through the house, bare feet slapping the floor, her heart pounding so hard it hurt, a primal fear she couldn't name driving her forward. A shape in the doorway, tall and still, burlap draped over its face, the edges frayed and stained. She gasped, the image slipping away as fast as it came, leaving her dizzy, her head spinning with the effort of holding onto it. Was that real? A dream? A fragment of something she'd buried so deep it only surfaced now, clawing its way free?
She pressed her palms to her eyes, trying to force it back, to summon the scene again, but it was gone, a ghost in her head that left only echoes. Her hands dropped, trembling, and she stared at the diary in her lap, its cover staring back like an accusing eye. The flashlight flickered, the beam stuttering across the room, casting jagged shadows that danced along the walls. Mara tapped it against her knee, cursing under her breath, the sound sharp in the silence. The batteries were new—she'd checked them before driving out here, twisting them into place with a click that promised reliability. It steadied, the light flaring briefly before settling, but it felt dimmer now, swallowed by the shadows pooling in the corners, thick and impenetrable.
She opened the diary again, slower this time, her fingers deliberate as she traced the creases in the paper. She read the last entry she'd found: He's going to get in. I know it. I can't tell anyone—they won't believe me. The words were stark, stripped of the earlier flourish, a bare confession that chilled her more than the rest. A soft thud sounded overhead, dust drifting down from the ceiling in a fine haze, catching the flashlight's beam like motes of ash. Mara froze, her eyes darting to the attic hatch, its outline stark against the ceiling. The sound came again—thud, thud—like something heavy shifting across the floorboards, dragging itself inch by inch. The flashlight flickered once more, the light wavering as if unsure, then held, illuminating the bolted hatch in a weak, trembling glow.
She waited, barely breathing, her body coiled tight, every muscle braced for the next sound. The silence stretched, taut and unbearable, but the thud didn't repeat, leaving her stranded in its wake. The diary slipped from her lap, landing open on the floor with a soft thump, the pages fanning out to reveal a final scrawl she hadn't noticed before. In the margin, scribbled in a frantic hand she didn't recognize—or didn't want to—was a single line: He's already here. The letters were uneven, scratched into the paper with a force that tore through to the next page, a desperate warning that stared up at her, unblinking.
Mara's breath hitched, her gaze locked on the words, her mind racing to deny them. The air in the room thickened, pressing against her chest, and she felt the house shift around her, a subtle realignment she couldn't see but couldn't ignore. The flashlight trembled in her hand, the beam skittering across the walls, and she whispered to herself—a mantra, a plea—that it was nothing, that she was alone, that the past couldn't reach her here. But the words felt hollow, drowned by the creak of the floorboards, the rustle of the shadows, and the unshakable certainty that whatever she'd written in 1999, whatever Ellie feared now, was no longer outside—it was with her, in the dark, waiting.