Three days had passed since the mirror cracked open and Mara vanished in a shimmer of light.
Peace had settled into apartment 4B.
No whispers in the night.
No cold drafts slipping beneath doors.
No blood from the walls.
But that silence—it wasn't final.
It felt like the pause between heartbeats.
The kind you feel right before something wakes up.
Eli and I decided it was time to dig deeper into the heart of the ghost contract.
If Mara was only the first, who came after her?
And more importantly—who created the contract in the first place?
We began in the most logical place: behind the living room wall.
A small section of the wallpaper had peeled on its own a week ago.
Back then, we ignored it.
Now, it felt like an invitation.
Eli brought a knife and carefully cut along the edge.
Dust and flakes of plaster rained down.
Behind the wallpaper was an old wooden panel—carved with symbols.
Circles. Eyes. A sun split into thirds.
At the center: a small brass handle.
He pulled it open, revealing a hollow space.
Inside: a thick leather-bound ledger.
It smelled like damp parchment and mildew.
The cover was blank.
But the moment Eli touched it, a faint burning sensation spread through his fingertips.
The book responded.
It unlatched itself and flipped open.
Pages turned rapidly—faster than we could follow—before landing on one that seemed freshly inked.
At the top:
THE BINDING RECORDEstablished 4B | Since 1957
Below that, a list of names. All handwritten. All ending in red thumbprints.
Eli squinted.
"These are… renters."
I nodded slowly.
"But not all of them."
We scanned the entries.
Each name was followed by an annotation.
Some said "Witness", others "Carrier", and a few… "Host."
Mara's name was there, near the top.
Mara H. Caldwell – Host – 1965
Then, a few pages later, Eli found another familiar name.
Lydia Caldwell – Witness – 1987
And then...
His face went pale.
His hand trembled.
He slowly turned the book toward me.
Written in flawless script, dated only a few months ago:
Elias James Caldwell – Host – 2024
The ink looked fresh.
It shimmered faintly, like it was still drying.
Eli whispered, "I never signed anything…"
But the book had his full name.
And next to it, a red thumbprint—perfectly matching his own.
He pressed his thumb against it.
The shapes aligned.
A burning pulse shot through the page.
"I didn't agree to this," he said, voice shaking.
"But you did," I replied quietly. "Not with words. With your bloodline. With your presence."
He stared down at the signature.
"What happens to a Host?"
We flipped backward to Mara's page.
The ink began shifting before our eyes.
New text appeared below her name:
"Bound to containment.Silence is the cage. Memory is the key.To release the spirit, the Host must remember.To escape, the Host must pass it on."
Eli took a deep breath.
"So the contract never really ended. It just... passed to me."
I nodded grimly.
"And if you don't find a way to close it, it will pass to someone else."
He closed the ledger and looked at the wall it had been hidden in.
"I'm not letting this thing pass to anyone else."
We were about to place the book back when we noticed one more oddity.
A second name on his page—faded but there.
Not typed.
Carved.
Burned into the parchment.
A name I recognized immediately.
[REDACTED FOR NOW] – Witness – 2024
Eli's voice broke. "That's… that's you."
I froze.
"I never touched the book," I said.
"I never signed anything."
But there it was—my full name, branded onto the page.
And unlike his... my thumbprint was missing.
That's when the room dimmed.
The temperature dropped like a vacuum had sucked out the heat.
The book in Eli's hand slammed shut on its own.
A gust of wind howled through the apartment—though no windows were open.
The wooden panel behind the wallpaper slammed shut too.
Then a voice whispered from the sealed wall:
"Only one can leave.The Host or the Witness."
Eli turned to me.
"You said you'd help."
"I did," I said.
"And I will."
But I couldn't hide the fear creeping up my spine.
This was no longer just his story.
It was mine too.
Somehow, my presence here—my memories, my voice—had been absorbed by the contract.
I had become a part of the ledger.
And one thing was now terrifyingly clear:
Only one of us could walk away with the memory intact.
That night, I didn't sleep.
Neither did Eli.
We sat in silence, the ledger between us.
The book was quiet now, but it watched.
I could feel it in the way it pulsed beneath the leather.
It wanted a decision.
And we were running out of time.
In the early hours before sunrise, I heard Eli whisper in the dark.
"If I go… and you stay… will she stay free?"
I didn't answer right away.
Because I wasn't sure.
But deep down, I feared the truth:
If Eli left… the contract might reset.
And the apartment would look for the next Caldwell.
Maybe someone even younger.
Even more vulnerable.
I sat up and stared out the window.
This was no longer a haunting.
This was a cycle.
And to break it, we needed to find the origin.
Who wrote the first name in that book?
Who began the ledger?
The answer wasn't in 4B.
It was somewhere deeper.
Older.
Forgotten.
And yet... still alive.