The Diary in the Wall
Words a frightened hand left behind
While repairing a crack, Tom found a hole that had been hidden in the wall.
Someone had pushed a small book deep inside before the had dried.
The had lain in the darkness for longer than either of them guessed.
Its pages had turned yellow, and the ink had faded in many places.
"A family used to live here before us," Emma said, opening the cover.
The first owner had written her name on the very first page.
"My name is Alice, and we moved into this house last spring," it began.
Alice used to write in the almost every single evening.
At first she had described a happy home, full of light and laughter.
But her words had slowly changed as the cold winter months had passed.
"The children used to sleep well," she had written, "but not any more."
She had heard footsteps upstairs, just as Emma and Tom now had.
Alice used to believe that the house was simply old and full of draughts.
By winter, however, she had stopped making such gentle excuses.
"There is a room that we had never opened," one late said.
"My husband tried every key we had, but the door would not move."
Emma looked up, because she had read those very words before, in a way.
Alice had described the same locked room that troubled them now.
"The cold used to stay in that room," the said, "but now it spreads."
The final pages had been written in a shaking, frightened hand.
"We should never have come here," Alice had written near the end.
"The house had already chosen us before we ever signed the papers."
Emma's hands were trembling, for she had understood the warning too late.
Tom took the gently, though he had gone very pale himself.
The last stopped in the middle of a sentence, as if interrupted.
And below it, in fresh dark ink, someone had written their own two names.