I didn’t want to admit it, but I had been avoiding it. The Easter notes — the strange, cryptic symbols — had been a part of my life for years. Every spring, they appeared, sometimes hidden in unexpected pces, sometimes right where I least expected them. I had thought they were just part of a sick game my sister’s ghost was pying, but it didn’t feel like a game anymore. The symbols weren’t random. There was a reason for them. I needed to figure out why.

  I had been trying to make sense of the symbols for years, picking them apart, drawing connections in my mind that never seemed to hold up. Some symbols had a pattern, some didn’t, and there were always others that felt completely out of pce. But no matter how many times I looked at them, no matter how many ways I rearranged them in my mind, it felt like something was just beyond my reach. Something crucial I wasn’t seeing.

  Kian had tried to help, too, but he didn’t understand what it meant to me. He wasn’t the one haunted by these notes, the one who felt the invisible weight of my sister’s presence in every room. He didn’t hear the creaking of the floors at night, the faint whispers carried on the wind that felt like they were meant only for me.

  But today… today felt different. Today, I could feel the weight of something shifting. The air in the room seemed heavier, the symbols staring at me from the page almost accusingly. I couldn’t ignore them anymore. They weren’t just a reminder of my sister’s ghost. They were something more. Something I hadn’t seen before.

  I gnced at Kian, sitting across the kitchen table, sipping his coffee with a faraway look in his eyes. He had been quiet since the library, since I’d stormed out after seeing the footage. The footage. The memory of that moment — of Kian standing there, watching my sister being tormented — still hung between us like a thick fog. I had wanted answers, and instead, all I’d gotten was more confusion.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said, breaking the silence.

  My voice felt thin, like it wasn’t my own.

  Kian raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. He was waiting for me to continue, like he always did, even when I didn’t have the right words.

  “I’ve been trying to make sense of these notes,” I continued, pulling the folded paper with the familiar symbols from the drawer.

  “But I think I’ve been looking at them all wrong.”

  Kian put his coffee cup down and leaned forward, his expression focused.

  “What do you mean?”

  I looked at the symbols again, each one a puzzle piece that I couldn’t quite fit together. There were spirals, jagged lines, and odd shapes that seemed almost familiar, but I couldn’t pce them. They were almost like a foreign nguage, a code I should’ve known but didn’t.

  “I’ve always thought they were just random,” I said, “but I don’t think they are. I think my sister was trying to tell me something. Something important.”

  Kian remained silent, watching me with a look that could’ve been disbelief or hope — I couldn’t tell which.

  “What are you thinking?”

  I ran my fingers over the symbols, feeling the cold, hard edges of each one.

  “What if these aren’t just random things she was writing? What if they’re clues? What if there’s something deeper, something hidden here?”

  Kian exhaled slowly, his eyes narrowing.

  “You really think that these are clues? From your sister?”

  I nodded, feeling a strange mixture of certainty and dread.

  “I do. I think she was trying to tell me something. And maybe… maybe she couldn’t say it outright. Maybe this is how she was trying to communicate with me.”

  The silence in the room grew thick, and I could feel the weight of it pressing down on my shoulders. I couldn’t expin why, but something deep inside me was telling me that this was the key. The symbols, the notes, my sister’s ghost — they were all part of something bigger. Something that had been buried, waiting to be uncovered.

  “But what?” Kian asked, his voice soft but full of urgency.

  “What could she be trying to tell you?”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know yet. But I think we need to look at it from a different angle. We need to break it down.”

  We both sat in silence for a few moments, the tension in the room growing heavier. My mind was racing, trying to make sense of everything — the notes, the ghost, the footage. The nagging feeling that there was something I was missing, something right in front of me that I couldn’t quite see.

  “We need more information,” I finally said, snapping out of my thoughts.

  “There’s got to be something that ties all this together. I need to look through her things. Maybe she wrote something down. Maybe there’s a clue we missed.”

  Kian raised his eyebrows.

  “Her room? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “I have to do this,” I said, my voice firm. “It’s the only way. If there’s something there, I need to find it.”

  Without waiting for Kian to respond, I grabbed my jacket and stood up, walking toward the door. Kian hesitated for a moment before following me.

  Her room felt cold when we entered, like it hadn’t been touched in years. The scent of dust and forgotten memories filled the air, the weight of it suffocating me. My sister’s things were still there, scattered around like she had just stepped out — a book on the desk, a pile of papers beside the bed, clothes hanging from the closet. Everything was frozen in time, a snapshot of who she had been before she was taken from me.

  I walked over to her desk, my heart pounding in my chest. The drawers were locked, but I had the key. I’d had it for years, always keeping it hidden away, just in case. I slid the key into the lock and turned it, the sound echoing in the quiet room.

  The drawer opened with a soft creak, and inside, I found a small notebook — one that looked like it had been written in recently. I flipped through the pages, my fingers trembling as I read. There were notes about the town’s history, bits and pieces of things that didn’t make sense at first gnce. But then, I saw something that stopped me cold.

  Symbols.

  The same symbols that had been in the notes.

  I traced the lines with my finger, feeling the weight of them. They weren’t just random. They were part of a code. A code my sister had been trying to crack.

  “What is this?” Kian asked, peering over my shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered, my voice barely audible.

  “But I think she was onto something. Something dangerous.”

  We spent hours going through the notebook, piecing together fragments of information. It was like putting together a puzzle, but the pieces didn’t fit perfectly. There were too many gaps, too many things left unsaid.

  But there was one thing I was sure of: my sister had known something. Something she had uncovered about this town, about the people who lived here. And whatever it was, it was connected to the symbols.

  Finally, we found something that made sense. A name.

  A teacher. Someone my sister had been researching. I didn’t recognize the name, but Kian seemed to. He had seen it before, he said, in one of his old history notebooks. This teacher had been involved in the town’s founding — but there were rumors, whispers of things that shouldn’t have been said.

  The answers were out there. I could feel it in my bones. But they weren’t going to be easy to find.

  And I had to be ready for what I might uncover.