Chapter 7
Mark’s fingers trembled as they brushed against the yellowed, brittle paper of the journal. The ink had faded to a pale sepia, but the looping, childish handwriting was unmistakable. It was his own diary—the one he thought he had lost during the chaotic move following his mother’s sudden hospitalization back in nineteen-ninety-two.
"How is this possible?" Mark whispered to himself, his voice shaking uncontrollably as he stared at an entry dated October fourteenth.
The entry read: Today Daddy took me down to the basement room again. He said we have to keep it a secret from the bright lights outside. The walls are listening.
Mark squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force his racing mind to dig through the fog of childhood memories. He remembered growing up in this house, but his memories of those early years were always fragmented, hazy like a dream viewed through frosted glass. He had always blamed the trauma of his father's death and the subsequent foreclosure. But looking at the neat, precise sentences written in his own hand, a horrifying realization began to take root.
Those weren't normal childhood memories. They were blank spaces. Entire blocks of his youth had been systematically erased, overwritten by something that lived behind these very walls.
"Mark! Can you hear me?" David’s voice suddenly blasted through the house, though it wasn't coming from the kitchen phone anymore.
Mark snapped his head toward the hallway entrance. The front door of the house was wide open, the night wind howling through the entryway. David stood in the foyer, out of breath, clutching a heavy steel crowbar in one hand and his smartphone in the other, his face pale with panic.
"Dave!" Mark cried out, scrambling to his feet and running toward his brother. "You... you drove here in twenty minutes?"
"I was already halfway across town when you called," David panted, his eyes darting wildly around the hallway before locking onto the open white door at the far end. "What the hell is that? Why is there a door open in the east wing?"
"It shouldn't be here," Mark said, his voice a ragged whisper as he shoved the leather journal into his brother's hands. "Read that. Look at what I found inside."
David flipped open the journal, his eyes scanning the faded ink. As he read the entry about the basement room, the color drained entirely from his face, his jaw tightening into a hard, fearful line.
May you like
"This is a fake," David muttered defensively, though his voice lacked any conviction. "You bought an old diary at a flea market years ago and forgot about it. You're trying to mess with me."
Before Mark could argue, a low, metallic chime echoed from deep within the open dark room. It sounded like an old grandfather clock striking midnight, followed immediately by the heavy latch of the white door clicking shut on its own.
