The Cursed Isle of Echoes

The cottage creaked under the weight of another damp afternoon. The mist hung low outside, curling against the windows like it was waiting.

I kept myself busy. It was easier than thinking about the voice from that first night—or Kaito's warning.

The house was old, older than I'd realized. Every floorboard groaned underfoot, dust clung to the corners like cobwebs, and the walls still carried the scent of salt and decay, no matter how often I opened the windows. I decided to clean the spare room at the back of the house—the only one I hadn't touched since I arrived.

The door protested as I forced it open. Dust filled the air, thick enough to taste. Inside, there was little more than a rotting dresser and a cracked mirror leaning against the wall. The floor sagged in one corner, warped from years of moisture seeping in through the walls.

I knelt down, running my fingers along the floorboards, tracing the uneven edges. That's when I felt it—an odd indentation between two planks near the dresser. A small gap, almost invisible unless you knew where to look.

Curiosity gnawed at me.

I grabbed a nearby crowbar, wedging it into the gap and prying upward. The floorboard lifted with a groan, revealing a shallow cavity beneath. Inside, wrapped in brittle, yellowing cloth, was a small leather-bound book.

A diary.

I sat back on my heels, brushing dust off the cover. The leather was cracked with age, but the binding still held. I opened it carefully, revealing the first page:

Akira Takamura – 1952

A strange chill crept up my spine. This must have been one of the previous owners.

I flipped through the pages. The entries started off mundane—details about the house, fishing trips, even notes about his writing. Akira was a novelist, apparently, though I didn't recognize the titles he mentioned. But as I read on, the tone of the diary shifted.

The first odd entry caught my eye:

July 4th, 1953 – She called out to me last night. From the other side of the door. I heard her voice, soft and sweet, just like before. But she's gone. I know she's gone.

I swallowed hard, my hands tightening around the brittle paper.

The following pages were more frantic, the handwriting growing erratic.

July 9th – Every night now. The same knocks—three, polite, like she's waiting. And her voice… it sounds perfect. Too perfect.

I kept reading, my heart thudding faster with each entry. Akira described the same experience I'd had—the rhythmic knocking, the familiar voice calling to him. Only for him, it wasn't his mother.

It was his wife.

July 15th – I can't stand it. She sounds so real. I almost opened the door last night. I nearly turned the bolt.

Then the final entry:

July 21st – I opened the door. Forgive me.

The words were shaky, scrawled across the page as if written in haste.

But what made my stomach twist was what covered the bottom half of the page—dark, faded stains, smeared across the paper.

Blood.

I sat there in stunned silence, the diary trembling in my hands.

Akira had opened the door.

I didn't want to imagine what he had seen—what had been waiting for him on the other side.

My eyes drifted back to the warped floorboards, to the room itself. Had it happened here? Was this where—?

A sudden knock at the front door made me jump, the diary slipping from my hands and landing with a soft thud.

I rushed to the living room, my heart racing. But this knock wasn't like the others. It was quick, careless—human.

I cracked the door open and saw Kaito standing there, a cigarette hanging from his lips, hands shoved deep into his pockets.

"You look worse than yesterday," he said, eyeing my pale face.

I didn't respond right away. My mind was still in that room, with Akira's bloodstained diary.

"Kaito," I started, my voice strained, "did you know the man who lived here before me? Akira Takamura?"

Kaito's jaw clenched around the cigarette. He pulled it from his lips, flicking ash onto the porch.

"Heard of him," he said, avoiding my gaze. "Didn't end well."

"He opened the door, didn't he?"

Kaito hesitated, then nodded once.

"Nobody found his body," he muttered, his voice low. "Just blood. A lot of it."

The words hit me like a punch to the chest.

"Why didn't anyone warn me about this before I came?" I asked, frustration creeping into my voice.

Kaito let out a bitter chuckle. "Would you have believed it?"

I didn't have an answer.

He stepped off the porch, heading back toward the path that led to the docks.

"Don't go digging too deep, Haruto," he called over his shoulder. "This island… it remembers."

I stood there long after he left, the damp breeze pulling at my clothes.

The diary still sat on the floor where I had dropped it, its pages open to Akira's final words.

I opened the door. Forgive me.

I locked the front door again, sliding the bolt into place.

And for the first time since I arrived, I wondered if it would be enough.