Chapter 3 - The Library of Secrets
The next three days were a blur of hospital bureaucracy and creeping, mounting dread. Noah was discharged, and because there were no next-of-kin identified in his personal records—only me—I found myself driving him home to my small, quiet Portland flat.
He didn't bring much: a small backpack, a tattered copy of a book on local history, and the overwhelming weight of his mother's unfinished mission. As I set up the spare room, I felt like I was welcoming a ghost.
"She left this too," Noah said, pulling a heavy, black leather journal from his bag. It was filled with sketches, maps, and dates—hundreds of them. It wasn't just a diary; it was a research log.
I spent the first night poring over the pages. Sarah had been obsessed with the genealogy of Silver Creek. She had tracked down the founding families, the ones who had built the town on land that was rumored to be cursed. But as I read through the entries, I realized it wasn't a curse. It was a cover-up. The fire at our farm hadn't been an accident; it had been an attempt to destroy a cache of documents that proved our family owned the mineral rights to the land beneath the town—rights that had been stolen by the very families who ran the local council.
"They killed them for money," I muttered, the rage rising in my throat. My parents hadn't died because of a fire. They had been silenced.
"My mom said they’re still watching," Noah whispered from the doorway, his eyes dark with the exhaustion of a child who had never known a real childhood. "Every time we moved, she felt them. The men in the black SUVs. The ones who follow the stories."
May you like
I looked at the girl I used to be—a girl who had run away because she was terrified of the dark—and realized that the dark had been chasing me the whole time. I had just been too afraid to look behind me.
"Not anymore," I said, grabbing my keys. "If they want to play, we’re going to give them a reason to regret it. We’re going to Silver Creek."
