Pages 3-5

 June 6th, 2025

I woke up to my heart already racing, like I’d been running a race in my sleep.

The house was quiet. Not asleep quiet. Empty quiet. I checked my phone this time just to prove to myself it hadn’t buzzed. No notifications. No missed calls. Nothing new.

I packed the car slowly. Every item felt like a decision I could still undo. Camera, batteries, lights, mic, charger, notebook, water, snacks. I stood there for a long time holding my keys, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and pretending that meant something.

Mom asked where I was going when she saw the bag. I said I was filming some abandoned places for a project. She smiled in that polite, worried way parents do when they don’t want to ask follow up questions they’re afraid of the answers to. She told me to drive safe. As she always does.

I didn’t tell her where.

The further I drove, the thinner everything felt. Trees pressed closer to the road. Houses spaced themselves out until there were long stretches where it was just asphalt and sky. The radio started cutting out, even though it never does out here. Static. Snippets of voices. A song I swear my girlfriend used to play in the car flickered for half a second before dissolving into nothing.

I turned it off.

There are signs warning you before Centralia. Official ones. Like you’re about to enter a construction zone instead of something people whisper about at night. “Danger.” “Unstable ground.” “Authorized personnel only.”

I parked further away than I meant to. My hands were shaking when I turned the engine off. The silence after was heavy, like the world leaned in closer once the car stopped making noise.

The fog was already there.

Not thick. Just present. Hanging low, like it had been waiting. It smelled wrong. Not smoke exactly. More like wet concrete and old metal. The ground near the road was warm through the soles of my shoes. I hated noticing that.

I took the camera out. Held it. I didn’t turn it on.

The town looked… wrong. Not destroyed. Not dramatic. Just incomplete. Streets that ended too suddenly. Houses sagging inward like they were tired of holding themselves up. No birds. No wind. Everything felt paused.

I thought I saw someone standing between two houses. Just for a second. A shape where a person should be. I blinked and it was gone.

I told myself it was fog. I told myself it was stress. I told myself I hadn’t eaten enough. I said it out loud, just to hear a voice that wasn’t in my head.

My footsteps sounded loud.

I wrote this sitting on the hood of my car because once I crossed the road, I knew I wouldn’t come back. That sounds dramatic, but it’s true. There’s a line here. You can feel it. Like standing at the edge of cold water before you step in.

I haven’t seen her. Not yet. Part of me is relieved. Part of me is disappointed, and that thought makes me feel sick.

The fog is getting thicker now. It wasn’t like this five minutes ago. I can still see the car, but only barely. The road behind it already looks longer than it should.

If anyone ever reads this later and wonders when I should’ve turned around
This was probably it.

But.. I’m pushing on.

June 6th, 2025: next page

I crossed the road.

That’s the moment everything changed, even if I didn’t realize it right away. There wasn’t a sound or a feeling like in movies. No sudden cold. No noise. Just a quiet certainty settling in my chest that something had closed behind me.

The fog thickened fast. Not rolling in condensing. Like the air decided to stop being see through. I could still see shapes, buildings, outlines of streets, but depth stopped working correctly. Things felt closer than they were. Or farther. I can’t tell which.

I turned around to look at the car.

It was gone...

Not faded. Not obscured. Gone. The road behind me stretched out into fog that looked deeper than it was in front of me, which doesn’t make sense but that’s the only way I can describe it. I walked backward a few steps, heart pounding, expecting to bump into the hood... I didn’t.

I laughed. I actually laughed out loud, because my brain needed something normal to do.

“This is stupid,” I said. “You’re fine.”

My voice didn’t echo. It didn’t even carry. It felt like the sound got absorbed immediately, swallowed before it could decide where to go.

I started walking further in.

The ground here is cracked in long, ugly lines, like veins. Steam leaks out in places, thin and quiet, not dramatic plumes, just constant. The heat comes and goes. One step warm, the next normal. I caught myself hopping between cooler patches like a kid avoiding lava on a sidewalk and immediately felt ridiculous for it.

There are houses here that still have furniture inside. Couches. Tables. Curtains hanging half rotted in windows. It feels rude to look at them. Like staring into someone else’s life.

I heard footsteps behind me.

I stopped. They stopped.

I turned around slowly, already telling myself it was just my own echo, even though I know what my footsteps sound like.

No one was there.

But the feeling didn’t go away. That awareness you get when someone is watching you. Not from far away. Close. Personal. Like standing too close someone in an elevator.

I started walking faster.

That’s when I heard my name.

Not shouted. Not whispered. Spoken casually. Like someone testing the sound of it.

“Alex.”

It came from my left, from inside one of the houses. A voice I know better than my own. A voice I have replayed in my head so many times it feels worn down.

I didn’t answer.

I pressed my back against the side of a building and slid down until I was sitting on the ground, notebook shaking in my hands. My brain kept trying to negotiate.

Hallucination.
Stress response.
Grief psychosis.

All words I’ve heard before. All words that don’t matter when the sound is right.

“Alex,” the voice said again, closer this time. “You came.”

I put my hands over my ears.

That was a mistake.

The sound didn’t change. It didn’t muffle. It was like the voice wasn’t traveling through the air at all. Like it was being placed directly somewhere behind my eyes.

“I’ve been waiting,” it said.

I don’t know how long I sat there. Time is wrong here. My watch says only a few minutes passed, but my legs were numb like I’d been there for hours.

I stood up eventually. I don’t know why. Maybe because sitting felt like surrender.

The fog ahead parted just enough for me to see a figure standing in the street.

Her height. Her posture. Her hair, even in the fog, even blurred, falling the same way it always did over her shoulders.

She didn’t move.

She didn’t wave.

She just stood there, facing me.

I didn’t write what she looked like any clearer than that because I don’t trust my eyes right now. And because part of me is afraid that if I describe her too carefully, I’ll admit something I’m not ready to yet.

I haven’t gone closer.

She hasn’t come toward me.

We’re just standing here, separated by fog and cracked pavement and everything that happened before this.

My hands are shaking too badly to keep writing much longer.

If this is Centralia giving me what I “need,” I think it’s misunderstood the assignment.

I’m going to try to move. I don’t know which direction is out anymore, but standing still feels worse.

If the next page is messier than this one, it’s because I’m writing while walking.

If there is a next page.

Note: I'm stepping in quick just to quickly say that the next few pages are kinda messy and a little hard to read but I'm doing my best. She clearly was walking and writing or even just writing quickly... But what I'm reading is concerning. I'm not sure if what she was writing was real or if she just broke and was having an episode or something... But I'm no where close to the end of this note book yet.

June 6th, 2025: next page

She moved.

Not fast. Not sudden. Just one step forward like she was testing the ground. Like she wasn’t sure it would hold her weight. I froze because my brain decided if I didn’t move, nothing else would either.

She tilted her head.

That’s when I knew it wasn’t her.

Her head tilted the wrong way. Too far. Like her neck didn’t have the same limits anymore. Her mouth opened like she was about to smile and then didn’t. Her face kept… trying. Like it couldn’t remember how.

I backed up and said her name before I could stop myself.

She took another step and the fog peeled away from her face and it was wrong wrong wrong. The eyes were there but empty, like the lights were off and someone forgot to tell the rest of her. Her skin looked stretched, like it didn’t fit anymore.

“I didn’t leave you,” she said.

I ran.

I don’t remember deciding to. My legs just went. The sound she made when I turned my back on her God, I can still hear it. Like crying swallowed halfway and forced back down her throat.

The town opened up after that. Buildings clustered too close together, like they were huddling. I kept telling myself to breathe, counting steps, trying not to look behind me even though I could feel something following for a few seconds and then nothing.

My chest hurt. I had to stop near what I think is the center of town. There’s a big open stretch, cracked blacktop, old signs half melted, heat rising in waves. I bent over with my hands on my knees and almost threw up.

That’s when I heard fabric dragging.

Slow. Wet. Like cloth being pulled across tile.

I looked up.

It was standing near the far side of the street. Tall. Really tall. Long in a way people aren’t. Its limbs hung down like they were tired of being attached. It wore a white hospital gown soaked dark at the hem, and over it a straightjacket, also white once, now streaked and covered in what I imagen is old dryed blood. The buckles were undone. The sleeves hung loose, swaying as it breathed.

Its head was tilted down, but its face..

A theater mask. Smooth. White. Painted with a deep, exaggerated frown. Sad. Permanent. The kind you see in old drama books. Except it was cracked down one side, and something wet was leaking from behind it.

It twitched.

Just once.

And then its head snapped up.

I swear it smelled me.

It made a sound like air being forced through a throat that didn’t want it anymore, like dry rotted bag pipes, but with a hallow raspy gargle, and then it moved and I don’t know how something that long could move that fast but it did and I screamed and ran. I didn’t look where I was going.

I ran as fast as I could, my camera bag bouncing on my back. I could feel it getting closer to me.

I crashed through the doors of an old school.

The doors slammed shut behind me on their own. I didn’t touch them. I didn’t stop to think about that.

I’m inside now. Hallways. Lockers. Peeling paint. The floor is littered with old papers and broken glass and something else I don’t want to identify. My footsteps echo loudly. Every sound feels like I’m announcing myself.

I can still hear it outside.

Walking.

Dragging itself.

Stopping.

Starting again.

I don’t know where to hide. Classrooms all look the same. Doors half open like they’re waiting. I’m trying to stay quiet but my breathing won’t slow down. My hands won’t stop shaking. I keep smearing the ink.

If anyone ever finds this notebook, please know I didn’t come here for this. I didn’t want monsters. I didn’t want punishment. I just wanted 

("wanted" is smeared and a line dragged across the page like she accidently dragged the pen over the page.)

It’s inside.

I heard the door open.

The dragging sound is closer now, coming from somewhere down the hall. I’m moving again. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know if there’s a safe place. I don’t know if this thing can see or if it just knows.

I’m writing while walking because if I stop I think it will catch up.

If I don’t write again

I’m sorry.