The Missing Pages

Maya and Tom had just relocated from the frozen tundra of northern Michigan to the sun-drenched coastal town of Salton Shores, Florida. The arrangement was simple: live rent-free in Tom’s Aunt Rita’s sprawling Craftsman while Tom finished his cybersecurity degree and Maya studied nursing. In exchange, they’d keep an eye on Rita’s nearby properties, since she was a ‘snowbird’ who spent her winters in the Everglades.

Salton Shores was a postcard of pastel bungalows and palm trees, a world away from the snowbanks Maya had known. She relished the change—the salt breeze, the chorus of crickets at dusk, the way the sun didn’t vanish by noon. Two months in, she’d settled into a routine of early study sessions on the porch, her notes spread across the white wicker table.

Then the disappearances began. It started with a single page of her anatomy notes—she had distinctly placed it inside her binder. When she opened the binder during class, it wasn’t there. She tore her backpack apart, checked the porch, the car, her desk. Nothing. Annoyed, she re-wrote the page from memory.

Days later, while she was in the kitchen brewing tea, she heard a soft fluttering sound from the living room. She walked in to find the missing page lying on the coffee table, face up, as if it had been placed there. The ink was slightly smeared, like it had been damp. Tom shrugged it off. ‘You probably left it there and forgot.’

But Maya knew better. She hadn’t used the coffee table in days. The page was dry, but the edge felt oddly cool, like it had been sitting in a refrigerator.

The pattern continued. A textbook chapter on pharmacology vanished from her desk. Two days later, she found it under her bed pillow, as if someone had slept on it. The corners were dog-eared, but not in her way. A single red sewing pin, the kind she used to mark important passages, was now stuck through the title page—not in the margin where she’d put it, but dead center, like a stake through a heart.

She started keeping a journal, documenting each disappearance and return, noting the time, the place, the eerie coolness of the objects. Tom grew concerned. ‘Maybe it’s the ocean air getting to you,’ he joked, but his eyes betrayed unease. He’d noticed things too: his PlayStation controller would migrate from the entertainment center to the kitchen counter; his house keys would turn up in the bathroom sink, covered in condensation.

One night, Maya woke to find the porch light flickering. Through the window, she saw a figure standing at the edge of the property—a tall, thin woman in a pale dress, her hair plastered to her head like she’d just been swimming. The woman raised a hand and held up something white: a page, fluttering in the wind. Maya’s heart hammered. She wanted to scream, but her voice caught. When she blinked, the figure was gone, and the page was gone with it.

The next morning, she found a note taped to the bathroom mirror: ‘FORGIVE ME FOR TAKING WHAT IS YOURS. I ONLY WANTED TO READ.’ The handwriting was neat, almost elegant, but the ink had a sepia tint, like old parchment.

They searched the house from attic to crawlspace. In a dusty storage room, they found a locked steamer trunk that Tom’s aunt had forgotten to mention. Inside, wrapped in moth-eaten lace, was a stack of decayed books—diaries, ledgers, and a thick manuscript bound in cracked leather. The manuscript’s title page read: ‘The Borrower’s Chronicle.’

The entries described a resident ghost—a woman who had drowned in the canal behind the house in the 1920s. She was a writer, and when she died, her final novel was unfinished. According to the legend, she would take pages from the living, hoping to find inspiration to complete her own story. But she always returned them, because they carried the essence of their owners—and she was, despite her trespass, deeply apologetic.

Maya and Tom exchanged a look of disbelief and dread. That night, as they lay in bed, a cold breeze swept through the room, and the manuscript on the bedside table opened itself. Pages rustled like leaves in a storm. Maya’s own notes flew out of her bag, spiraling into a vortex above the bed. The spirit’s voice—a soft, watery whisper—filled their ears: ‘I see you, Maya. You miss your grandmother, yes? She gave you that bookmark.’

Maya froze. The bookmark, a blue ribbon, had been missing for a week. She had assumed she’d lost it. It had belonged to her grandmother, who had died the year before.

‘Please,’ the voice continued, ‘let me borrow your grief. I’ll return it, I promise.’

A hand materialized from the swirling pages—pale, thin, with glittering water droplets. It reached for Maya. Tom grabbed her, pulling her off the bed. They ran to the car, throwing the manuscript out the window before speeding away.

They never went back. They left Salton Shores, leaving behind most of their belongings, knowing the ghost would treasure them, use them, return them in her own time.

Maya still keeps the blue ribbon in her pocket, though it’s always damp, and she often thinks she sees a tall figure in her peripheral vision, watching with sorrowful eyes. She no longer takes notes on paper. She writes everything in stone, and even then, she sleeps with a hammer under her pillow, ready to shatter the words if they ever rise again.