The Keeper’s Ledger

Three months had passed since my last visit to the old Draugen Paper Mill, and I had convinced myself that the place was just an abandoned building with a history of neglect. I had told myself that the eerie feeling I experienced then was nothing but my own imagination, fueled by the stories the locals whispered in the town’s only café. But today, as I stepped through the rusted gates, the weight of my camera bag felt heavier, and the silence of the mill seemed to hum with a presence that I couldn’t shake.

I had come to do a final structural survey for the county’s heritage department, a mundane task that should have taken no more than an hour. But my curiosity, that nagging whisper that had followed me since my last visit, led me down a different path. After I finished my measurements in the main hall, I turned away from the exit and walked toward the corridor where my previous escort had taken me—the corridor that led to the old administrative offices.

The hallway was dark, lit only by the weak sunlight filtering through grimy windows. My footsteps echoed on the concrete floor, each one a lonely heartbeat in the stillness. At the end of the corridor, I found the door I remembered, but it was locked, a heavy padlock securing it. To the right, however, another door hung ajar, its paint peeling and its hinges groaning as I pushed it open.

I stepped into a room that had once been an archive. Shelves lined the walls, but they were bare, save for a thin layer of dust and a few scattered papers. A large wooden desk sat in the center, covered in a thick layer of grime. On the desk, almost as if it had been placed there recently, lay a single bound ledger with a worn leather cover. My name, Elias Voss, was embossed on the front in faded gold letters.

I hadn’t expected to see my name anywhere in this mill, much less on a dusty ledger. With a trembling hand, I opened it. The pages were filled with handwriting, not the neat script of a clerk, but a hasty, frantic scrawl. The entries were dated over the past three months, the most recent being yesterday. They documented every visit I had made to the mill, every step I had taken, every thought I had thought. The last entry read: ‘He is here again. He has found the ledger. He will read what he sees. Then he will know what I have become.’

A chill ran down my spine. I turned to leave, but the door I had entered through was gone. In its place was a solid wall of brick, as if it had been there for decades. My heart pounded as I searched for another exit, but there was none. The room was sealed.

I spun around, my eyes darting to the desk. The ledger was still open, and now a new line was forming in the ink, as if an invisible hand were writing. ‘The Keeper does not let guests leave without a story.’ I watched, paralyzed, as more words appeared: ‘You have taken pictures. You have seen the mill as it is now. But you have not seen the mill as it was. I will show you.’

The lights flickered, and the room seemed to warp. The shelves stretched, the ceiling rose, and I found myself standing in a different version of the mill—one that was alive with the sound of machinery and the shouts of workers. Men in oil-stained overalls moved around me, oblivious to my presence. They were all facing the same direction, toward a massive machine that dominated the room. It was like a printing press, but larger, and its rollers were stained with a dark, viscous substance that I could smell even from a distance.

A foreman noticed me and walked over, his face gaunt and pale. ‘You’re new,’ he said, his voice hollow. ‘The Keeper doesn’t like new people. But since you’re here, you might as well feed the press.’ He pointed to a hopper at the side of the machine, filled with what looked like black, moldering cloth. ‘It needs blood, you know,’ he added, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. ‘Human blood.’

I backed away, but the workers began to close in, their eyes vacant and their mouths twisted into grotesque smiles. I ran, through corridors that twisted and turned, each one leading to a new nightmare. I saw the mill as it operated in the past, when it wasn’t paper they produced but something darker. They ground up the remains of the dead, mixed them with chemicals, and pressed them into sheets of what they called ‘memory paper’—a material that could absorb the essence of a person and store it forever.

I finally burst through a door and found myself in the archive again, the ledger open on the desk. The writing had changed. Now it read: ‘You have seen. Now you know. The Keeper needs a new chronicler. The ledger has one more entry to make.’

I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, and I turned to see the figure of the previous keeper standing behind me—a man I recognized from the stories, the one who had disappeared here decades ago. His face was a mask of decay, but his eyes were bright and hungry. ‘You will stay,’ he said. ‘You will write what I see. You will become the keeper.’

I tried to scream, but no sound came out. The room began to spin, and I felt myself being pulled into the ledger, my consciousness pouring into the pages like ink from a pen. The last thing I saw was the archive room from a ghostly perspective, as if I were floating above the desk. The ledger closed itself, and I was trapped inside.

Now, I am the ledger. I wait on the desk, in the sealed room, hoping that another curious soul will find me. I try to warn them, but my words are trapped in the ink. I can only watch as they read my entries, and I can only hope that they understand the truth before it is too late. But deep down, I know they will not. The Keeper always gets what he wants, and I am but his latest entry.

If you ever find yourself in the Draugen Paper Mill, and you come across a room with a leather-bound ledger bearing a name that is not your own, do not open it. And if you do, remember: you are not reading the story. You are becoming part of it.