The Red Note

I was seventeen, living in a rented bungalow on the edge of town with my mom and her new husband, Gerald. The place had a strange smell, like old paper and dust, but it was cheap and close to school. My boyfriend, Ben, and I had been together for three months, and since my mom and Gerald both worked days, my house was the perfect spot for us to hang out without our parents breathing down our necks.

One freezing November day, Ben came over. We were in the basement, which my mom had turned into a sort of den, with a worn couch and a TV that only picked up three channels. We were laughing at some sitcom when we heard it: heavy footsteps directly above us, in the hallway. The kind of steps that made the ceiling creak. I assumed Gerald had come home early, even though his car wasn’t there, so I said I’d go check.

I climbed the stairs and looked down the hallway. Empty. The bathroom door was open, the guest bedroom door slightly ajar. I peeked in each, but there was no one. I called out, ‘Gerald?’ No answer. Feeling silly, I went back down and told Ben it was nothing. We resumed our show, but ten minutes later, the footsteps returned, louder and faster, as if someone was pacing back and forth. Ben’s face had gone pale. ‘Maybe we should go,’ he said. I agreed.

I grabbed my keys and coat, and we headed out the back door, which I always used because the front lock was sticky. We walked along the side of the house, heading for the street, when my phone buzzed. Unknown number. I usually ignored those, but something made me answer. A voice, raspy and low, said, ‘You left the red notebook on the kitchen table. You’ll need it.’ The line went dead. I stopped dead. I had no red notebook. The kitchen was on the other side of the house, and we hadn’t been in there all day.

Ben saw my expression. ‘What’s wrong?’ I told him, and we both turned to look at the kitchen window. Through the blinds, I could see a silhouette standing at the table, holding a small red book. Then the figure raised its other hand and pointed at us. We bolted, not stopping until we reached the corner gas station. I called my mom, crying, and she called the police. They searched the house and found nothing, but the kitchen table had a fresh scratch on it, as if something had clawed it. The red notebook was nowhere.

Later that evening, I found a loose floorboard in the pantry that I had never noticed. Underneath was a stack of old papers and a red notebook, its pages filled with handwriting that wasn’t mine. It described a man who had lived here in the 1970s and had a thing for ‘visiting’ people, leaving notes for those who were ‘interesting.’ The last entry read: ‘She brought him. Now I know them both. I’ll be waiting for them to come back.’ I showed it to Ben, but he said it looked exactly like my handwriting. It wasn’t. When I looked closer, the ink was slightly damp, and the final sentence was still wet, bleeding into the page. There was another step overhead, and then silence. We left and never slept in that house again. Sometimes, when I’m near that town, I get a call from an unknown number, and when I answer, I hear a voice say, ‘You left the red notebook on the kitchen table. You’ll need it.’ And I know it’s not done with me yet.