The coy girl, but riveted, witty and recalcitrant, always out of control, craved for visions of the unseen..., yes, it is me, Marisol, the one, bound to these pages.
Yes, call me delightfully upbeat, but I will always cling to the thought, "that's your delightful deviation from the ordinary".
The uncanny has always been my muse, the whispers of the otherworld I craved boundlessly.
Right, grant me in the place of your regard, if I'm being quite poetic, you know what I mean...
Prepared to plunge into the heart of my tale?
Shall I unravel further?
Ok then...
Welcome to my world of whispers, where shadows linger between every line.....yet, you still dare to read.
...................
Midnight.
I sensed, the hour has slipped into the ghost's keeping, though I cannot bring myself to look at the clock. Hours do not matter when the house itself, decides it's rhythm. Tonight, it's pulse, found me.
The first knock came soft, not hesitant - no, hesitation belongs to the living. This sound was deliberate.
Three beats, tranquil, slow enough I felt them in my bones. I sat perfectly still, my own hovering. Some would interpret it as fear, for me, the moment wasn't new, only remembered. I had been waiting for this, my whole life perhaps.
The diary- my parents left behind when they vanished into silence- stirred against the desk. It's pages fluttered though no wind grazed them, as if they were impatient. Then without my hand, without my ink, a single word, bled across the paper:
"Answer"
I whispered my parent's names but the room swallowed them whole. Only the candle listened, bowing it's flame towards the door, stretching long and thin as if reaching for the visitor waiting there. Shadows pooled at my feet, spilling out like ink, twisting in shapes, I half recognized. Hands, faces, or perhaps that was my mind making patterns.
Pardon my omission- Second sight is the tongue I was born with.
*Shall we press on?
The knock came again, louder, former, but not desperate - oddly polite, in it's own dreadful way. A calling, not a demand. And then, the diary bled again. Words coiled in margins, crooked and trembling as though written from the other side of the paper.
"They heard it too, Marisol"
Suddenly, I wasn't the only secret in the room.
My blood chilled. 'They'.
My parents had spoken of this house before they were swallowed by it—always in whispers, always in warnings. They said the walls had ears, that some doors were not doors at all but mouths waiting to open. They said if I ever heard the knocking, I must not… must not…
But the warning faded in my memory. Perhaps they never finished the sentence. Perhaps the house silenced them before they could.
I pressed my palm against the wood. The surface throbbed faintly, like a pulse beneath bark. It was cold enough to sting, but alive enough to answer my touch. The rhythm matched my heart for one moment, then shifted into its own—slower, deeper, older.
I should have pulled away. Instead, I leaned closer. The air between my lips and the door was damp, as if someone stood breathing on the other side.
"Who's there?" I asked, my voice, steady and calculated. Bravery? No - Bravery implies wisdom. Curious, Yea - Curiosity, it's own brand of recklessness.
The silence that followed was heavy, but not empty. Silence can speak, and this one said:
"you belong to me now".
The diary bled a final time, each letter stretching long, as though the ink itself trembled to be read:
"They opened it. Will you?"
I remembered my mother's hands—always trembling when she locked this very door. I remembered my father's voice—stern, but soft when he told me, "Curiosity is a dangerous inheritance, Marisol. Ours more than most."
And here I was, their daughter, touching the handle, tasting the sweetness of dread on my tongue like forbidden fruit.
Perhaps the knock was not a beginning. Perhaps it was a continuation.
They answered first.
Now it was my turn.
I tightened my grip on the handle, the latch whispering like it wanted to be free.
I ought to stop writing. Yet the knocking persists—louder, slower, like a heart practicing patience outside my door.