Ticking Secrets At Maydale

Chapter 3

I couldn't feel my knees. A minuscule spark of strength made me bolt to my room and lock the door.

Sweat matted my forehead and hair, my hands visibly trembling, my heart pounding like it was trying to escape my chest. I took deep breaths, trying to calm down, but the terror still wrapped around me like a cold, suffocating blanket.

What to do? The question kept hammering in my head, getting louder with each repetition, until it became almost unbearable.

The police? Should I call the police?

"Hey, so I wake up in the night, and a diary opens by itself, with words appearing on the pages." Yeah, right. A likely story.

I crouched on my bed, draping my blanket around myself for security, the fabric barely providing any comfort. My ears were perked up, and my eyes darted around the room, my palms pressed tightly together in an attempt to stop them from shaking.

The ticking of the clock felt like a drum beating ominously in the silence.

I waited.

The diary didn't seem to give me any more trouble. There were no strange noises from outside my locked door. Nothing seemed to move. Yet, I decided to wait a little longer.

A sudden noise startled me—my heart skipped a beat—only to realize it was just an owl hooting in the distance.

The tiniest sound was amplified in my hyperaware state, but I heard nothing unusual.

Time ticked on.

Twenty minutes passed, and the suspense that had gripped me gradually started to fade. My breath began to slow, and the trembling in my hands subsided.

With my wide, saucer-like eyes, sleep was an impossible thought. I knew I couldn't stay paranoid the entire night either. Keeping myself busy might help.

Perhaps writing down everything that happened would soothe my nerves. Putting pen to paper always had a way of making me feel better.

But the thought of writing it down sent a chill down my spine.

...

I flipped to a fresh page, placing the pen tip on the paper. I let my thoughts flow, my hand moving almost on its own.

The scratching of the pen against the paper became the only sound in the room, the noise somehow comforting in its normalcy.

I gripped the pen harder as I scribbled down: "The pages seemed to turn by themselves, and words appeared on the first page."

The scraping sound grew louder as my writing quickened.

"It read as follows:"

I didn't need to look again to remember the words. They were etched into my mind.

"I am coming for you, Wixx."

"I am going to kill us all."

"It is the only way to fix what we did."

"Time waits for no one."

I put the pen down. The words seemed to take on a life of their own, breathing from the page, their meaning deepening in a way that left me shaken. They seemed alive, a message trying to communicate something... but not necessarily to me.

...

"Time waits for no one."

What did it mean? Was it a sign? A warning? Was it telling me something crucial that I couldn't quite grasp?

Am I running out of time, and I don't even know it?

Who is Wixx? And what did they do?

...