CHARTER 2:
Morning brought weak grey light and the smell of mould. Elias made coffee in the cold kitchen, then returned to the study. The journal lay exactly where he had left it, but now the page was crowded with writing—dense paragraphs in Lydia's hand, covering both sides.
He had written only one sentence.
He read.
The rain against the window sounds like fingernails.
They are trying to get in.
What follows is the account of Miriam Vale, who lived in this house in 1897 and believed the walls listened.
Miriam was twenty-two when she came here as governess to the two Harrow children. The boy, Thomas, was sickly; the girl, Clara, was silent. Their mother had died in childbirth with a third who did not survive. Their father, Captain Harrow, spent most evenings in his study with brandy and the ghosts of naval battles.
On Miriam's third night she woke to scratching at her door. Soft, patient. When she opened it, the corridor was empty. The scratching continued—from inside the wall.
She told no one. Servants gossiped enough.
A week later Clara drew a picture: the house, the moor, and a tall figure in black standing at Miriam's bedroom window. The figure had no face.
That night Miriam found wet footprints on the landing outside her door. Bare feet. Small, like a child's. They led to the attic stairs and stopped.
She began to keep a diary. She wrote in it every evening before sleep, describing the sounds, the footprints, the growing certainty that something in the house wanted her attention.
One entry, dated 14 October 1897:
I have started leaving the diary open on the desk. This morning there were new lines I did not write. They say:
Tell them where we are buried.
Elias's skin prickled. The journal in his hands felt heavier, as though the paper had absorbed more than ink.
He turned the page. The story continued for another five handwritten sides—Miriam's growing obsession, her discovery of a bricked-up room behind the pantry, the night she pried loose the bricks and found small bones wrapped in a christening gown.
The last paragraph was in a different hand—his aunt's again.
Miriam disappeared on All Souls' Eve. The family claimed she ran away with a lover. The truth is simpler. The house took her because she listened.
Elias closed the journal. His pulse hammered in his ears.
He told himself it was clever forgery. Lydia had researched the house's history, invented a ghost story, written it out to unsettle him. A final game.
Yet the details felt too precise. He had never heard of Miriam Vale or the Harrow family. A quick search on his phone—signal was weak but present—turned up nothing. No local records, no newspaper archives mentioning a missing governess in 1897.
He opened the journal again. A new line had appeared at the bottom of the final page, fresh and glistening.
Your turn, Elias.