I didn't wait for morning.
The diary's words clung to me, pressing against my thoughts like a voice just behind my ear. The place where it began. I knew exactly what it meant, though I had spent years convincing myself I didn't.
The old house stood at the edge of town, abandoned and avoided. People said it was unsafe, that the floors were weak and the walls ready to collapse. But I knew the truth.
Some buildings don't rot.
They remember.
The gate screamed as I pushed it open. Rust flaked onto my hands like dried blood. The diary felt heavier in my bag, as if it sensed where we were.
Inside, the air was cold and damp. Moonlight slipped through broken windows, illuminating dust that moved like restless spirits. Every step echoed too loudly, as though the house was repeating my presence to itself.
I stopped in the hallway.
The whispering began.
At first, it was faint—like the sound of pages turning far away. Then words emerged, soft and intimate.
"Read…"
I clutched the diary to my chest. "I don't want to," I said, my voice barely held together.
The whispers laughed.
In the living room, the floor was stained darker than the rest. I had scrubbed it once. Scrubbed until my hands bled. It had never faded.
My hands moved on their own again, pulling the diary out. The cover opened without resistance.
A new page waited.
This is where you learned how silence works.
The ink shimmered, then lifted slightly from the page, twisting into thin, thread-like letters that hovered in the air. They drifted toward the walls, pressing themselves into the cracks like veins.
I remembered now.
The shouting.
The fall.
The sound that followed.
"I didn't mean to," I whispered. The house groaned, as if breathing in my confession.
The diary disagreed.
Intent doesn't change the ending.
Suddenly, the whispers grew louder, overlapping, urgent. Every torn page began to reappear—floating through the room, translucent and glowing faintly blue. They circled me, each carrying a sentence I had once written and forced myself to forget.
You pushed.
You watched.
You stayed silent.
"No," I cried, covering my ears. "I was scared!"
The pages stopped moving.
One floated closer than the rest. The ink rearranged itself into a final line.
And fear chose for you.
The diary slipped from my hands and fell open on the floor. Ink poured out—not liquid, not solid—crawling across the wood like something alive. It formed a shape.
A name.
The same name I had refused to speak for years.
My knees gave way. The house seemed to lean in, listening, waiting for me to say it out loud.
"I remember," I said, my voice breaking. "I remember everything."
The whispers fell silent.
The ink retreated back into the diary, obedient once more. The pages settled. The house exhaled.
But the diary was not finished.
As I picked it up, one last sentence appeared, darker than the rest.
Remembering is only the beginning.
Behind me, a door creaked open—one that had never existed before.
And I knew, with terrifying certainty, that the next truth would not stay on the page.