It's hard to remember exactly when things started to unravel. One year ago, everything was still normal—at least, it felt that way. The house felt quieter without Mom, of course, but I was still getting used to the idea that things could change so drastically. The day-to-day life in Hollowmere was predictable. Nothing ever felt urgent. Everything was just... calm. That was before everything started, before the diary.

I wasn't anything special. Just another teenager trying to survive high school in a town that felt like it had been forgotten by time. It wasn't like I had much else going on, other than trying to stay under the radar and get through my days. I wasn't a troublemaker, but I wasn't popular either. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to be. It was simpler that way. No expectations. Just me, my sister Hannah, and Dad.

But even in the quiet, there was always something strange about Hollowmere. It wasn't a place where anything new ever happened, but it had this way of making you feel like it was all too perfect, as if the town was hiding something.

My sister, Hannah, never seemed to notice the oddities. To her, Hollowmere was just home—small and safe, with its familiar streets and the overgrown trees that lined the roads like they were part of the town's history. Her laugh could fill a room, and she had this innocent way of looking at the world, untouched by anything darker. Her bright blue eyes sparkled with that kind of optimism I never really understood. She wasn't bothered by anything the town might've been hiding.

Dad, on the other hand, was different. He had always been distant, but after Mom passed, he became a shell of who he used to be. There was a time when he would tell me stories about growing up here, about his childhood in Hollowmere. But those stories stopped. Dad stopped talking about anything personal, really. The house was silent most of the time. The kind of silence that made you wonder what was missing.

Then there was Lila. I guess she's the one who made everything feel a little more bearable. Lila Reed. We used to be close when we were younger. We'd spend hours running around the woods behind my house, getting lost in the adventures of our imaginations. But as time went on, we drifted apart, and I'm not even sure how. Maybe I got too absorbed in my own thoughts or maybe she just found other friends. But when I moved back to Hollowmere last year, we picked up right where we left off.

Lila was always different from the others in town. She had this fiery spirit about her, with her curly red hair and freckled face. She was bold in a way I never could be. While I spent most of my time quietly observing, she was the kind of person who would jump into the unknown without thinking twice. She pushed me to do things I wouldn't have done otherwise, like when we went to the old mill one night just to "see what was inside." I would've never gone there on my own. But Lila... she made it seem like an adventure. She had a way of making everything seem more interesting than it really was.

It was around this time that I started noticing strange things about Hollowmere. Little things, at first. Shadows in the corners of my vision. The faintest sounds echoing through the walls of our house. But that was before the attic. That was before the diary.

The broken tile of my attic was the last place I ever expected to find anything. It was dusty, filled with old boxes that had never been opened since we moved in. It wasn't until one particular rainy afternoon that I found myself up there, sorting through the clutter. I had been looking for something—anything to occupy my time—and in one of the boxes, I found it: an old leather-bound journal.

I didn't think much of it at first. It was just an old book, nothing special. But then I opened it, and everything changed.

The first entry seemed so ordinary. The kind of thing you'd expect from a daily diary: "It was a quiet afternoon, and I spent it in the garden." The usual nonsense, right? But the more I read, the more I realized that it wasn't like any other diary. It was written with a clarity that almost felt... deliberate, like the person who wrote it knew something I didn't. The entries seemed to predict small events—things that hadn't happened yet but were about to.

At first, I thought it was a joke. Maybe someone had written the entries to make it seem like they were from the past. But as I read on, the events in the diary started to come true—small things at first, like the storm that blew through Hollowmere one evening. Then bigger things. Conversations I had with Dad. And then there was the mention of the disappearances. The ones that everyone in town had heard about but no one ever talked about. They had happened years before, but the way the diary described them felt... different. More personal.

That's when things started to get really strange.

I couldn't stop reading. I wanted to know more. I needed to know more. But with every page I turned, the entries grew darker. And then, it started to affect the people around me.

Lila was the first to notice. I remember when I told her about the diary, and at first, she thought I was just being dramatic. "It's just some old book, Ethan. Who cares?" she'd said, her usual skeptical tone taking over. But she was wrong. It wasn't just a book. It was connected to something bigger—something dangerous.

As I continued to dig into the town's history, the pieces began to fit together in ways I couldn't ignore. There were secrets buried beneath Hollowmere's perfect facade, and the diary seemed to hold the key. I knew I was getting closer to something—something I wasn't sure I wanted to find—but I couldn't stop.

One night, Mr. Caldwell showed up at my door. He was a retired detective, someone I had always thought of as just another old man who liked to hang around the local diner, telling stories about the "good old days." But when he spoke to me, his eyes weren't just looking at me—they were looking through me. "I know what you're looking for," he told me, his voice low and almost urgent. "And I'm telling you, some things are better left undisturbed."

I didn't listen to him. I should've, but I didn't.

Then there was Hannah. She was so young, so full of wonder. And yet, she started saying things that I couldn't explain. "Do you think the people who disappeared are still here?" she asked me one night, out of nowhere. "Do you think they're watching us?"

I didn't know what to say. The chill that ran through me when she spoke those words made my heart race. She was only eleven. She shouldn't have been thinking about things like that. But there was something about her questions that felt so real, like she knew more than she should. It scared me more than anything else.

That was a year ago. Before everything changed.

Before I discovered the truth about Hollowmere. Before the diary led me into the shadows of the town's past. Before the danger started closing in around me.

But now, looking back, I realize that the first page of the diary wasn't where it all started. It started long before that. It started when I found the broken tile in the attic. It started when I found the book.

And now, it's too late to turn back.