The night didn't pass, it stretched.
Sarah lay on her bed, wide awake, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Every creak of the building, every soft groan of the old pipes, felt like an answer to the question she had asked.
Did something happen here?
Sera's whisper wouldn't stop echoing in her mind.
They don't like when you ask.
The words had sealed the air in the room, turned the silence into something thick and suffocating.
Sarah felt like she was breathing underwater, so slow, heavy, and afraid. She listened to the steady, even breaths coming from across the room. They were too perfect.
Sera wasn't sleeping. She was pretending. Just like Sarah.
When morning finally came, it didn't feel like relief. The light that crept through the window was pale and weak, like it was scared to come inside.
And Sera was already gone.
Her bed was perfectly made. Not a wrinkle, not a pillow out of place. It was like she'd never been there. Like she had vanished.
Sarah sat up slowly, her body sore from a night of not moving. The room felt emptier now, but not in a comforting way. It was like something had taken Sera's place. A presence. A quiet one. Still watching.
Her eyes drifted, as they had all night, to the floor.
That one floorboard.
The one that didn't sit right.
It wasn't just loose, it was wrong.
Like a crack in a wall that wasn't supposed to be touched. A thread you weren't meant to pull. But it was there, right in front of her. Daring her.
She stared at it for a long time.
Doing nothing.
Just thinking.
She could leave it alone. Pretend she never noticed it. Go back to pretending everything was fine, like everyone else did. She could keep her head down. Be quiet. Be safe.
But that wasn't who she was anymore.
She remembered the piano's warmth under her fingers, how it had shifted beneath her like skin. She remembered the way Mr. Finch had looked at her, the coldness in Julian's warning, and the ghostly fear in Sera's eyes.
This place wasn't just strange, it was designed to unravel you, piece by piece.
Redwood didn't just want silence.
It demanded obedience.
She wasn't sure when her body moved, only that she was suddenly on the floor, her knees pressing into the cold wood. Her hand hovered over the raised board. She took a deep breath. Her fingers trembled.
This wasn't just curiosity.
It was a choice.
If she lifted that board, she crossed a line. She would no longer be a bystander. She would become part of whatever was happening in this place.
She slid her fingernails into the small gap at the edge. The wood was old and splintered. She had to work slowly, carefully, until the board finally gave a sharp groan, loud enough to make her flinch.
She froze.
Waited.
No footsteps. No voices. Just the same silence pressing in.
She pulled the board the rest of the way up and set it aside. Beneath it was a small hollow space, just large enough to hide something. The air was damp and heavy, and smelled like mold and dust.
Inside the space, wrapped in a piece of yellowed cloth, was something solid.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Hands shaking, she reached in and lifted it out. The cloth was brittle in places, like it had been buried for years. Slowly, she peeled it away, layer by layer, until she saw what was hidden inside.
A journal.
Old.
Worn.
Bound in cracked brown leather, the kind that darkened with age and touch. A thin strap was wrapped tightly around it, held by a small brass clasp.
It was locked.
She turned it over in her hands gently, feeling the weight of it. It was heavier than it looked. More than paper. More than leather. It felt… important, personal.
Like something sacred.
On the front cover, where a name might've once been pressed into the leather, there were only scars now. Deep, savage scratches, as if someone had taken a knife and destroyed whatever name had been there.
The marks weren't from time. They were from anger.
Someone didn't just lose this journal.
Someone wanted it erased.
Sarah stared at it, her throat dry.
This was a piece of someone's life.
Someone who had lived in this room before her. Someone who had scratched at the walls and left behind a silence so loud it had turned Sera into a ghost.
She wasn't imagining things.
This was proof.
For a moment, she sat perfectly still, holding it in her lap like a sleeping bird. She could feel the past humming inside it, pulsing like a heartbeat.
She wanted to open it.
More than anything.
But her fingers hesitated at the clasp. The lock was small, but firm. Probably easy to break. But something in her resisted.
She thought of Julian again. This place eats people like you.
She thought of Sera's whisper. They don't like when you ask.
The journal was more than a story. It was a doorway. And once she stepped through it, she couldn't step back.
She wasn't ready.
The fear wasn't subtle now. It was a full, cold grip on her ribs. Her hands shook, not just from nerves, but from the weight of what she was holding.
Because once she opened this, she wouldn't be able to look away from the truth anymore.
And she wasn't sure if she could survive carrying someone else's ghost when she hadn't even faced her own.
Still, she couldn't just put it back. She couldn't bury it again like it never existed.
This girl, whoever she was deserved more than that. Her voice had been stolen. Her name had been scratched out. Her story had been hidden under the floor, buried in silence.
Sarah wouldn't leave her there.
She took her time rewrapping the journal in the linen cloth. Her movements were slow, almost careful. She wasn't hiding a secret anymore, she was protecting it.
She stood up, her knees stiff, and walked across the room to her violin case. The familiar black velvet inside greeted her like an old friend. She moved the instrument aside gently, and placed the wrapped journal into the space beside it. It fit, snug and perfect, like it had always belonged there.
She closed the case.
The latches clicked softly.
And that was it.
The journal was hers now. Her responsibility. She didn't know what she would do with it yet, but she knew one thing for sure.
She couldn't pretend anymore.
She stood in the center of the room, her arms folded around herself, and looked toward the shrouded mirror.
It had always felt like a threat. A silent thing that loomed and waited. But now it felt different. Like it was watching not to scare her, but to see what she would do next.
Sarah's gaze didn't drop.
She didn't look away.
The fear was still there, sharp and cold but underneath it, something else began to stir.
Not bravery.
Not confidence.
Just a small, stubborn spark of defiance.
The girl who had written in that journal, she had once asked questions too.
Maybe she had been punished for it. Maybe she had been forgotten. But not anymore.
Sarah was holding her words now.
And she was done being silent.