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Journal Entry – November 21, 1871 The morning came gray and thin. I told myself it was a dream — that I’d never gone into the cellar, never seen that shape standing in the dark. But the mud beneath my nails said otherwise. At breakfast, the guests were restless. One of them, a traveling salesman, complained that the floorboards thumped beneath his room all night. “Like someone hammering slow,” he said. I laughed, too quickly. My voice cracked on the last word. The day passed

Journal Entry – November 20, 1871 The morning began as any other. Frost clung to the windowpanes, and the guests complained about the chill seeping through the walls. I lit the stove, boiled water for coffee, swept the front step — all the motions of a woman tending her inn. The smell of bacon from the kitchen almost made me forget the hum beneath the floorboards. Almost. By noon, the light outside had turned the color of pewter. Baxter stopped by to deliver nails and kerosen

November 19, 1871 Tonight, the house exhaled. The walls groaned, long and low, as if drawing breath for the first time. The floor swelled beneath my feet, and the cellar door creaked open on its own. The hum that once lived under the boards now beats like a pulse — steady, human — rising through the wood, through my legs, into my chest until my heart answers in rhythm. The mark on my arm burned first white, then gold, then black. Each color felt like a different kind of pain

November 18, 1871 He offered me a choice. The stranger stood behind me in the mirror again, though I hadn’t uncovered it. His voice was a breath against my ear — soft as prayer, steady as a promise. “You called me,” he said. “Now let me finish what you began.” I told him I wanted freedom. He smiled. My reflection smiled too, but hers lingered longer, the corners of her mouth curving as if she pitied me. “Then give me what keeps you from it.” The book’s last page is changing.

November 17, 1871 The candles no longer burn for me. When I strike a match, the flame flares blue, then dies — snuffed out by air that feels too heavy to breathe. The darkness in this house has thickened, no longer an absence but a thing that moves, slow and deliberate, pressing close to the skin like wet cloth. Even without the mirror, I hear him now. His voice no longer hides in reflection or dream. It vibrates through the floorboards, the walls, my ribs. Sound that isn’t s

November 16, 1871 I no longer trust the spaces between words. They move when I’m not looking. When I write, the letters inch closer together, their stems twisting, joining into shapes I didn’t intend. Sometimes they rearrange themselves entirely. I tried to copy a prayer from the Kentucky book this morning — a simple invocation for silence — but by the time I finished, the lines had changed. Not by much. Just enough that the meaning was different. The new words rolled under m

November 15, 1871 The coins whisper when I sleep. At first, I thought it was the rain — that soft percussion against the windows, the kind that lulls the house into restless dreams. But when I woke, the rain had stopped, and the whisper remained. They scrape against one another inside the pouch, not chaotically, but in rhythm . The sound is delicate, deliberate — like teeth chattering in the cold, or bones knocking together beneath the floor. I laid the pouch beside my bed, c

November 14, 1871 I dreamt of the orchard again. At first, it was as I remembered — rows of trees bowed under the weight of fruit, moonlight trembling through the branches like water. The air smelled of clove and rain-soaked soil. Then the wind shifted, and I realized the trees were weeping. Not sap, but blood — thick and slow, steaming where it touched the frozen ground. The fruit hung low enough to touch, glistening in the half-light. When I looked closer, I saw they weren’

November 13, 1871 The cellar door is breathing. I hear it when the wind dies — that slow, rhythmic swell of wood and air, the faint creak of boards expanding as if lungs pressed from the other side. At first, I thought it was the storm — the draft that slips beneath the seams of old houses. But storms don’t breathe in time with a heartbeat. And tonight, the hum beneath the floorboards moved there — gathering, concentrating, waiting. I’ve taken to sitting at the top of the sta

November 12, 1871 I shouldn’t have uncovered the mirror. But curiosity is its own kind of commandment. The cloth came away with a soft hiss, stirring the dust that had settled over it. For a moment, the glass was only glass — dull, warped slightly from age, catching the flicker of the single candle behind me. My reflection stared back, hollow-eyed and sleepless. Then the flame bent. The air thickened, as if the house had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale. A shadow passed ov

November 11, 1871 The frost came early this morning, silvering the window glass until the world outside looked drowned in milk. When I reached to wipe it clear, I saw the sparrow. It was lying on the sill — wings folded neatly, feathers unruffled, as though someone had placed it there with care. There was no blood, no sign of violence. Only the eyes were gone. Hollow, black, polished smooth like two tiny coins taken as payment. The Kentucky book waited for me on the table, op

November 10, 1871 I woke with the taste of salt and blood in my mouth. The air in the room was still, heavy, sweet with the faint scent of something burning that shouldn’t be. My pillow was damp — not from the heat, but from a cold sweat that clung to my neck and hair like a second skin. Frost traced the windowpanes, yet I burned beneath the blanket. The Kentucky book lay open beside me. The ink in the margins had bled outward, the shapes warping into something almost alive.

November 9, 1871 The hum hasn’t stopped since last night. It hides now beneath the floorboards — a steady, deliberate rhythm, pulsing up through the soles of my boots. I told myself it was rats, or wind, or the house settling as the night cooled. But the sound doesn’t scatter when I move. It follows. Before dawn , I knelt in the parlor, ear pressed to the wood. The boards were cold and slick with morning damp, smelling faintly of mildew and old ash. Beneath them, something b

November 8, 1871 The final candle burned blue tonight. The coins had arranged themselves in a perfect ring before I entered the room, each mark turned inward, as if awaiting instruction. Downstairs, I could hear Ma clearing dishes, the low creak of Pa’s chair, the soft murmur of voices that felt a lifetime away. Then the sound began — a hum at first, soft as the turning of a wheel, deepening until it pressed against the floorboards and climbed up through my bones. I couldn’t

November 7, 1871 The pouch was open when I woke. The coins lay scattered across the floorboards, arranged in a spiral — the same shape that crowns the chapter heads of the Kentucky book. Morning light filtered through the curtains, picking out the faint carvings on their faces. For a moment, they looked harmless. Then one twitched. I heard them clicking against the wood like teeth shifting in a skull. When I reached for one, the mark on my wrist flared blue-white. The sound t

November 6, 1871 Light bends toward me now. Even the smallest flame in the house seems to bow — lanterns in the hallway, the oil lamp by the stair, the stove’s faint blue core. When I pass, they lean inward, stretching thin as though reaching for something they crave. Before supper I went to replace the wicks in the lamps — Ma says the guests hate to eat by shadow — but every match I struck guttered out the instant I raised it. I tried again, whispering the verse for illumina

November 5, 1871 The book was on the bed when I woke — open to a chapter that wasn’t there before. The Door Between. The handwriting isn’t mine. It’s thinner, sharper, the ink scored into the page like scratches made with a pin. The diagrams show two silhouettes joined by a single ribbon of flame. One of them is crossed out. The air smelled of myrrh — thick and cloying — though I have none here. Outside, I could hear Pa in the yard, splitting wood, the steady rhythm of the ax

November 4, 1871 The mark on my wrist has begun to move. It shouldn’t, of course — it’s only ash and soot, traced from a drawing in the book’s margin. But when I carried the breakfast tray down to the dining room, I spilled coffee across a guest’s sleeve because the cup rattled in my hand. The mark throbbed beneath my cuff — faint, but constant, a pulse that isn’t mine. Baxter came by to fix a cracked hinge on the front door. He noticed the glove I’d kept on, though it wasn’t

November 3, 1871 This morning the air tasted of iron. I woke before dawn to the sound of Ma stirring the stove below — bacon hissing, the rattle of the kettle, the world going on as if nothing burned last night. The salt ring I laid on my floor had turned black and fused into the boards. The Kentucky book promised it would seal the unseen , but what kind of seal brands itself into the wood like a wound? When I tried to sweep the remains, the broom snagged on something I could

November 2, 1871 The mirror has begun to misbehave. Morning came with frost on the windowpanes and the smell of coffee thick in the hallway. Ma Bender was arguing with Pa about the cost of coal again, her voice sharp as a bell. I wiped the bar, stacked the bottles, smiled at travelers who would never remember my name. Ordinary things. Yet every time I passed the parlor mirror, I caught a flicker — like the glass inhaled when I did. By nightfall, the inn had gone quiet. Only t