CHARPER 3:
He did not touch the pen for three days.
Instead he explored the house. He found the bricked-up space behind the pantry exactly where the story described it. The mortar was old, crumbling. A loose brick came away in his hand, revealing darkness beyond. He shone his phone torch inside: bare earth floor, a rusted iron ring bolted to the wall. Nothing else.
That night he dreamed of small hands pressing against the inside of the bricks, trying to push them out.
On the fourth morning he sat at the desk again. The inkwell was half empty now, though he had taken none. The level had dropped visibly since the first night.
He uncapped the pen.
He wrote:
Who are you?
The nib rested a moment, then moved.
We are the stories that were never finished.
We are the voices that were never heard.
We live in the ink because the ink remembers.
Elias's mouth went dry.
He wrote:
What do you want?
To be told properly.
To be set free.
Or to take another teller in our place.
He stared at the words until they blurred.
Then, carefully:
What happens if I stop writing?
The reply came faster this time.
The house grows hungry.
The walls grow thin.
You have already begun.
He looked up. Rain still fell, harder now, drumming on the roof like impatient fingers. Somewhere below, a door creaked though there was no wind inside.
He wrote one last line.
Tell me the rules.
The pen scratched for a long time. When it stopped, the page was full.
The ink chooses the story. You only guide the pen.
Every story must be finished, or it finishes you.
What is written can become true if read aloud three times under this roof.
The ink will never run out while a teller lives.
When the teller dies, the ink seeks the next.
Burn the pages only after the story is complete and never spoken aloud.
Break a rule and the story breaks you.
At the bottom, in smaller letters:
Lydia broke rule 3.
She read Miriam's ending aloud.
That is why she could never leave.
Elias sat back. His hands shook.
He considered burning the journal there and then. But the fire in the grate was dead, and the matches he found were damp. Outside, the rain had turned to sleet.
He told himself he would leave in the morning. Pack a bag, drive to the nearest town, post the keys back to the solicitor with a note renouncing the inheritance.
But that night the scratching started again—inside the walls, slow and deliberate, following him from room to room.