The old farmhouse stood alone against the biting wind, its windows like vacant eyes staring out at the desolate plains. Mark had inherited it from a great-aunt he never knew, a woman local legend painted as peculiar and private. He'd come to the remote location seeking quiet, a place to finish his novel away from the city's relentless noise.The silence was a physical thing here, heavy and absolute, broken only by the occasional gust rattling the loose siding. It was the kind of silence that made you listen harder, made the small creaks of the old structure sound like drumbeats. On his first night, in the room that served as his study, he noticed a built-in bookshelf filled with identical, leather-bound journals. They were meticulously dated, spanning from 1950 to the present day.
He pulled one down, the date on the spine a crisp January 12, 1980. The handwriting inside was tight and looping. It detailed a monotonous life of farm chores, weather reports, and the author's increasing paranoia about the "Visitors." Mark dismissed it as the ramblings of a lonely old woman, setting the journal back and moving on.Days turned into a week. Mark found himself drawn back to the journals. They documented a consistent, terrifying pattern. Every night at precisely 3:00 AM, the "witching hour", a soft scratching would begin on the exterior wall of the house. The author, his aunt, had boarded up all the ground-floor windows years ago to stop them from "looking in". The entries grew more frantic, describing how the Visitors would try the door handles, their movements slow and measured.On the night of January 12, 2026, exactly forty-six years after the entry he first read, Mark woke up to a faint, rhythmic scraping sound.
He sat bolt upright in bed, heart pounding a frantic rhythm in the absolute darkness. He checked his watch: 3:02 AM.He crept to the window, the single one his aunt hadn't boarded up on the second floor, the one overlooking the front yard. He parted the dusty curtain a fraction.In the pale moonlight, he saw nothing obvious. But the scratching continued, moving from the wall to the front door. He heard the distinct, deliberate sound of the doorknob turning, slowly, then stopping, then turning again.He grabbed the nearest heavy object, a fire poker. "Hello?" he called out, his voice shaking.The noises stopped immediately. A heavy silence descended again.A voice, low and raspy, spoke from the other side of the door. "You don't need that," it said.Mark's blood ran cold. He recognized the voice instantly. It was the same voice he used when he read the journal entries aloud to himself, mocking his aunt's fear.He lowered the poker, an inexplicable trance taking hold. He reached for the deadbolt. The rational part of him screamed to run, but he felt compelled, overpowered by a terrifying sense of deja vu. He was letting an old friend in.Just before he turned the lock, he stopped, the sheer terror breaking the spell. He backed away from the door, his eyes fixed on the handle as it began to rattle violently, much faster this time.The thing on the other side knew he was alone. And it knew his voice.