The Sawdust Visitor

My name is Elara, and I never expected to inherit my grandmother’s gift. She was a medium, and according to family lore, I was born with the ‘sight’—a fact she announced to my parents before I could even crawl. Growing up, I thought it was just her way of making me feel special, but the strange occurrences started early.

When I was about seven, I began finding tiny fragments of dark wood on the cream-colored carpet of our living room, even though we never wore shoes inside. My grandmother would smile knowingly and say, ‘It’s just your great-grandfather, checking in on us. He was a carpenter, you know.’ I accepted her explanation, even as the pieces multiplied, appearing on my pillow, in my school bag, once even in my hair.

Years passed, and I forgot about the wood chips. But last week, after my grandmother passed away, I moved into her old house to sort through her belongings. The place had been vacant for months, and dust covered every surface. As I swept the floors, I found a single, dark splinter on the hardwood, and a chill ran down my spine.

That night, I was reading her old diary in the dim lamplight. I turned a page, and a small sliver of wood fell out—charred at one end, as if from a fire. I examined it, and a faint odor of smoke and cedar filled the room. My grandmother had written about a fire in her childhood home, a tragedy she never spoke of. I felt a presence, cold and heavy, settle behind me.

I turned, and for a moment, the shadow of a man stood in the corner, his face obscured, his hands rough and calloused. He held a single piece of wood, and as he raised it, I saw it was the same charred sliver. He pointed to the diary, then to the floor, and a whisper—dry as tinder—brushed my ear: ‘Finish it.’

I closed the diary, my heart pounding. More wood chips began to fall from the ceiling, from the walls, as if the house were shedding its skin. I ran to the door, but the handle was slick with sawdust. I pried it open and fled into the night.

Now, I’m sitting in a motel room, but the pieces keep appearing—on the nightstand, under the pillow, in my shoes. The ghost of my great-grandfather has a message, and I’m terrified that if I don’t understand it, the entire house—and everything I know—will go up in flames.