Chapter Four: The Sounds That Cannot Be Heard
I didn't open the window—
But it was open.
I didn't leave the house—
But there was dirt on my feet.
I didn't write anything—
Yet the page before me was written.
I'm sure.
So sure… that I now doubt myself.
This time, the sentence had no name.
No "Rayan."
No "basement."
No "murder."
Just this:
> "Tomorrow night, you'll hear what was never written."
I didn't understand.
But the handwriting was tilted…
As if written under pressure—
Or as if the hand that wrote it… wasn't a hand at all.
I leaned closer to the page.
It felt like it was pulsing.
As if I were breathing something through it—
Something that wasn't air.
Have I lost my mind?
Maybe.
But there's a sound.
A sound that can't be heard,
But it presses inside my skull—
As if silence has taken form,
Wrapping around me like an old bandage.
Everything in the room was in its place.
But I… wasn't.
I looked at the wall.
The one I've written in front of for years.
Now, on it—faint gray letters:
> "Do you remember the story you erased?
It was never erased."
No one knew I deleted that story. No one.
It was the first thing I ever wrote about my father.
I wrote everything…
About the night he left and never came back.
About the letter that never arrived.
About the suspicions that were never proven.
Then I erased it.
Swore I would never write it again.
Never tell anyone.
Not even myself.
But the novel—or whatever this is—remembers.
The night is heavy.
The holes in memory are growing wider.
And I hear the sound again.
Not words. Not music.
It's something between letters, between sounds.
As if reality were speaking in a language I don't understand—
But that understands me.
At 3:13 a.m.,
I woke up to the sound of footsteps.
There was no one in the house.
I stepped into the living room.
The paper was on the floor—
Face-down.
I picked it up.
On the back, a message:
> "The stories you erase always return—
In another form.
And those you write…
will write you."
I held the paper.
And for a moment—
I no longer knew who I was,
Or why my hands were shaking.
And then I saw—
Everything in the house… was beginning to change.
The clock sta
rted ticking backward.
My reflection in the mirror… wasn't mine.
And the name "Rayan"
Was written on my shoulder.