The inside of the house looked to have been abandoned for years. With each step Chaerin took a loud creak followed, disturbing layers of dust long left untouched.

The windows were boarded up from the inside, allowing only few slivers of light through. Despite them the house was dark as night. What could be hiding in that darkness, the possibilities were endless. Just thinking about it was making her excited.

Chaerin slipped her hand in her pocket, she mentally cheered when she felt her thumb graze a small object. It was a plastic bear only three inches in height. With her thumb she flipped the bear's head off, it sparked to life creating a small flame. Chaerin didn't smoke, but as soon as she spotted a lighter shaped like a teddy bear her inner shopaholic wouldn't let her leave without it. Chaerin smiled to herself. I knew this would come in handy eventually.

Brandishing the lighter Chaerin crept deeper into the house. The ceiling was dusted with spider webs and cob webs alike. One single spider hung suspended from the ceiling on a silken thread. It was probably silly to think, but Chaerin couldn’t help feel as if the thing was watching her. 

She eyed it for a second. It didn’t move. “Yeah, you stay up there.” Chaerin mumbled, returning to her task of exploring the house. This place wasn’t so dangerous it’s just an old house full of-. She stumbled forward her boot caught beneath something. She peered down into the darkness, it was one of the floorboards; it had grown loose and jutted up leaving a gap perfect for foot catching.

She wrenched her foot back trying to get it out, but it remained firmly stuck. Her brow creased in annoyance, there was no way she was losing her favorite boots to the floor. Nu uh. 

Alright Plan B don’t fail me now. Chaerin would need both hands for this. She shoved the lighter in her pocket as to not lose in the dark and crouched down on one knee as best she could. Her fingers found the edge of the board. With a little bit of force she pried it up making the gap just a little bit bigger and enough for her to slide her foot out.

That's better. She relit the lighter to assess the damage. Her fingers brushed over the smooth leather toe of the boot, finding nothing major. She was about to stand when a glint of metal from beneath the board caught her eye. 

Something hidden beneath the floor boards? Excitement raced through her like a jolt of electricity. It was just like in a movie or mystery novel except real. How cool was that? She brought the lighter closer to the dark hole to try and get an idea of what it could be. The action proved fruitless, it was too dark to even get a simple outline of the object.

Well only one way to find out. She slipped her hand in hoping it wasn't something lame like a penny that had just fallen into a crack. The tips of her fingers touched something hard. Not wood, but not metal either. It felt more like the cover of a book. Her fingers slid across it feeling the surface rise up in little shapes, letters? 

Her fingers bumped something cold, and definitely metal. Her hand locked around it. In the feeble light of the flame her fingers unfolded and in her palm sat a key. Gold and shaped beautifully. Chaerin felt the curiosity in her heart grow a little more. For every key there must be a lock right? And one as expertly crafted as this must open something important. She tapped her chin, smiling; now this was something big.

Her thoughts moved back to the loose board, there was still something in there. It wouldn’t be nice to just leave it right? She the key into her pocket and slipped her hand back into the hole. Ignoring what felt like dead bugs she grabbed the edge of the book and pulled it out. 

As she thought it was a book, but less of a novel and more of a journal type, bound in leather. It looked as old as the house did. On the front cover was a phrase, Vita Dolce. Chaerin turned her head to the side in thought. The words looked Latin which unfortunately she had no experience in.

She flipped the book open to the first page to find neat lines of cursive writing. The pages were all dated in the top margin, but oddly enough with only month and day, no years. She flipped back to the first page which was dated as December thirty-first and began reading.

"I've never kept a journal and I find it odd to record the details of my personal life on paper, but nevertheless here I am writing. I hope in the future I'll be able to write of things more interesting then I have today, but for now this is where I'll end."

Chaerin skipped forward a few pages to a page recorded on February fifteenth. 

"It's happened again last night, I woke with the image of his face in my mind. How can I have this image of a man I've never seen reappearing in my mind? It's starting to scare me, but I haven't told anyone for fear they'll think the worst."

Chaerin bit her lip slightly and stared at the page for a second, rereading the entry. This wasn't just any normal journal was it? She skipped forward again and came to May third.

"Whispers surround me where ever I go. Everyone else is deaf to them, but to me they’re as clear as my own voice. Thankfully they only surface at night. I'm scared if I tell anyone they'll send me off to an asylum. But maybe that's where I belong."

Chaerin's mind had already begun calculating a story behind the journal. The person who wrote this must of lived in this house and gone crazy leaving behind the house abandoned, but still where would that place this person's family, wouldn't they have taken over house? Surely they wouldn’t have just left it to rot. Chaerin ran a hand through her hair and again flipped the pages. This time she stopped on August eighteenth.

"Ever since the day I found that grave in the middle of the woods it's been following me. It is the face I see and the whispers I hear, but it doesn't just whisper anymore it speaks. The words it says frighten me. It tells me to do things, unspeakable things. My sister has died. They say she was mauled by an animal, but I saw the body. She was killed by human hands, and they were mine."

The light was shaking; it took Chaerin a moment to realize that it was her hand that was shaking. Ghosts didn't scare her, zombies didn't scare her, but people did, people were definitely real and the list of horrible things they could do were endless.

She took a deep breath. This person was long gone, nothing to be scared of. A little smile crossed her lips at the thought of what Bom was gonna do when she saw this. Oh Bom! She was waiting outside while Chaerin was taking her sweet time reading, she must be totally freaking. Let’s speed things up here. Chaerin flipped to the last entry, November sixteenth. The writing looked different on this page. On all the pages beforehand the writing had been perfect and in neat little rows, but on this one it was scrawled out messy.

"They've found me and any minute they will be here to take me away. If you are reading this then I beg you to help me finish what I cannot. I cannot allow it to torment anyone else. Along with this journal is a key, this key is the only thing holding-"

Chaerin eyes were darting across the lines of text as fast as she'd ever read, but something froze her cold. A soft little pat on the shoulder, like the hand of someone who'd found her snooping in things she most definitely should not have been snooping in. 

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Thank you all for the comments, they mean a lot, and please keep reading the story I'm pretty excited for what's going to happen next and I hope you are too. Also Happy New Year!