PAPER CRACKS

By morning, the rain had finally stopped pretending it was weather and started feeling like penance. The sea below Blackwater Hall looked bruised. I’d spent the whole night reading through my notes again, line by line, word by word, like a detective with bad lighting and worse instincts.

Something in Julian’s version of Berlin didn’t fit.

The dates, the sequence, even the way he said he fell instead of he overdosed. Little cracks. Paper-thin, but loud once you knew where to listen. The world doesn’t break all at once, it frays quietly first. 

I laid his words beside the headlines: Levi Vale found unresponsive in hotel suite, 3:47 a.m. Brother Julian discovered body. But Julian said he was already downstairs when he heard the scream. The reports said the maid found him. Two people can’t discover the same body unless one of them is lying. My stomach turned the way it does when you realize you’ve built trust on quicksand. I wanted to believe he was just protecting grief. But the truth doesn’t rot like this unless it’s been buried alive.

A knock at the door startled me,  two short taps, then silence.

When I opened it, the hallway was empty, except for an envelope on the floor. 

Inside: one sheet of paper, no signature.

“He watched it happen.”

The words looked typed but felt handwritten ;  too deliberate, too personal. I stared at them until the ink started to move, or maybe my hands were just shaking. Somewhere in the house, faintly, a piano note rang out , low, unfinished, like someone testing if the keys still worked.

I told myself it was nothing. I told myself a lot of things that morning. The paper felt heavier than it should’ve. Like it knew things about me. About him. I kept rereading the line until it started breathing. He watched it happen.

I tried to laugh it off, like maybe this was Claire’s idea of motivation. But Claire didn’t do anonymous threats; she preferred deadlines and passive aggression. This was different. This was inside the house. I spent the next hour pacing. Every sound turned into a confession, the radiator hissing, the waves below, the creak of footsteps overhead. Even my own heartbeat sounded suspicious.

By noon, I’d convinced myself to go find Julian.

I told myself it was for the book. I told myself it wasn’t because I needed to see if guilt had a face.

The library was empty, but I heard music drifting from down the hall low and uneven, a half-remembered melody missing its other half. The door to the music room was cracked open.

Julian sat by the grand piano, sleeves rolled, cigarette burning down between two fingers. The smoke curled toward the ceiling like it was trying to leave. He wasn’t playing anymore just pressing one key over and over, soft enough to sound like regret.

“You play like someone who’s trying not to wake the dead,” I said firmly 

He didn’t look up. “Maybe I am.”

I walked closer, notebook clutched against my chest. “I’ve been reviewing the Berlin night. Something doesn’t add up.”

He exhaled smoke through a tired laugh, humorless. 

“You mean the night the world decided I killed my brother?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Not yet.”  He finally looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot too much whiskey, not enough sleep. Or maybe the other way around.

“You said Levi relapsed,” I started carefully. “That you argued, he slammed the door, and ten minutes later, you heard a scream.”

“Correct.”

“Except the maid found him. The reports say you weren’t in the room. So who screamed?”

He blinked. For a second, I saw something flicker behind his eyes it was not surprise, but memory.

“I don’t know,” he said finally.

“Julian, that’s not an answer.”

He stood, too fast. The piano bench screeched against the floor.

“You think you can just come here and rewrite the worst night of my life because Google told you it doesn’t make sense?”

“I think you’ve been rewriting it yourself.”

Then, softer almost pleading: “You don’t know what it’s like to carry someone else’s sin because you were too cowardly to stop it.”

My throat went dry. “What are you not telling me what are you hiding and don’t answer with your poetic riddles?” I could feel my anger coming to the surface.

He turned away. “Nothing you’d want to write about.” The way he said it was flat, practiced almost worse than a confession. Like he’d built a wall of words and forgotten what they were hiding.

“You really are a coward Mr Vale but you should know this, the truth will come out!”  I looked at him I wasn’t afraid but disgusted by his presence. When I left, the air in the hallway felt heavier. 

I half expected another knock, another envelope. Instead, when I opened my laptop, three new emails waited, stacked like ghosts in a queue.

No sender. No subject.

#1: “He knew what Levi did.”

#2: “They came to him.”

#3: “He told them to forget.”

My pulse thudded in my ears. Each email sent at 3:17 a.m., the exact time Julian had said he first saw the email that started all this.

Coincidence or signature.

I clicked reply, fingers trembling.

Who are you?

The cursor blinked back at me, patient, unbothered, as if it already knew I’d ask.

No answer came.

Only the faint sound of the piano again, this time it was playing a song I didn’t recognize.

Something soft, almost apologetic.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Every creak in the hallway sounded like footsteps; every gust of wind like someone breathing outside my door. The house went still around two in the morning;  the kind of still that hums, like something holding its breath. I should’ve been asleep. Instead, I sat up in bed, watching the laptop screen pulse with its faint blue heartbeat. The inbox stayed open, daring me to blink.

Then a sound. A whisper of metal on metal. My door handle turning.

Every instinct in me froze. The door eased open, and a sliver of hallway light crept in. A shape moved;  tall, careful, familiar.

Noah.

He crossed the room without hesitation, straight to the desk where my laptop waited. His movements were gentle, almost ritualistic, as if he’d done this before. The screen came alive, washing his face pale. He typed fast  just a few lines then stopped, shoulders shaking ever so slightly.

I reached for the lamp. The bulb flicked on, spilling gold light over him. He flinched but didn’t run. “Noah?” My voice cracked. “What are you doing?” 

He turned slowly, eyes red-rimmed, expression hollowed out by something deeper than fear.

“You shouldn’t be asking questions you can’t forget,” he said softly.

“What questions?”

He looked past me, to the window where the ocean beat itself against the rocks.

“Some stories here were never written down for a reason.”

“You sent the emails.” 

He didn’t deny it.

“Why?”

He hesitated before whispering, “Because he won’t tell you what really happened. None of them will. They won’t even say their names.”

“Their names?”

Noah’s jaw clenched, his eyes glistening. “My daughter, Hanna. And all the others.”

The silence that followed felt alive, as if the house itself were listening. My mind was spiraling, every rumor suddenly snapping into focus. I knew Noah wasn’t lying. I could feel it like the truth had been hiding in the cracks of these walls all along.

And then came the nausea. The disgust. At Julian, with his perfect smile and quiet charm. I felt filthy just standing there, ready to let myself be fooled by a monster. The thought alone made me sick.

"So the rumors-” I said my voice shaking

His voice broke on the last word. “Just… don’t trust what he calls truth.”

He stepped toward the door, hand trembling on the handle.

“He’ll talk to you soon. Don’t let him make you feel sorry for him.”

And then he was gone, leaving only the smell of damp wool and cigarette smoke. The laptop screen dimmed again. One new email blinked into the inbox.

No sender. No subject.

“Now you know enough.”

I stared at it until the sun began to rise gray, weak, and a little too quiet.