Young Writers Society

Authors Note: Hi, I'm Jacob. This is the first work I've ever published online, so hopefully you guys like it. A review would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for taking your time to read this!

Jacob

7th November, 2019

Dear Charlie,

I have just arrived in East Lagoon, Alaska, and the weather here is delightful! Of course, there’s no reception for miles, but that’s okay. Just means the post office will be getting a lot of business from me. That might seem old-fashioned, but so is everything in this town; according to Mrs. Jackson, it was founded in 1770, and it doesn’t seem to have changed much since. It’s like living in a time capsule, here. Anyways, expect lots of letters!

I know you think it’s a bad idea, me living so isolated from the rest of the world. But I think I need this, it’ll really give me the time and space I need to focus on my novel. Which is going quite well, I can add. Eleven chapters in, and I haven’t once been tempted to throw my computer out the window! I think it’s the scenery, more than anything else. It’s late autumn, now, and the colours on the trees relax the mind faster than any painkiller could.

Mr. and Mrs. Jackson have just finished showing me around Uncle Jesse’s old house. I don’t really know how to describe it. Beautiful… wouldn’t be the right word. It’s strange. It’s two stories, plus the attic and the basement, and the floorboards are a warm teak, practically glowing with some kind of inner light. There’s a crystal chandelier hanging from the living room. There’s a hedge maze, in the garden, and the backyard is a meadow on the very edge of the woods. I have the most amazing view from the master bedroom. The way the clouds roll over the forest… but, as I said, it’s hard to describe. It’s beautiful, but it has a peculiar feel to it. I don’t think the Jacksons like the house. They seem wary.

But enough about me. What about you? Last I heard, you were recovering from a broken leg. What was it again? Mountain biking? Always said you had a few screws loose upstairs. Ah, well. Wishing you –and your leg – well, and say hello to Sean and the kids for me,

Emily.

15th November, 2019

Dear Charlie,

Happy birthday! Wish I could be there to say it in person, but, as you know, I’m busy trying to contract cabin fever. Hope you and Sean are doing okay. I’ve sent you a block of “Authentic East Lagoon Chocolate”. Very exclusive. Probably overrated. I doubt it’s any better than regular chocolate, but that’s all they sell here.

I’ve fully settled into my new living arrangements, and the Jacksons come along and clean every weekend, despite my protests. They insist on checking up on me – it’s almost like they’re worried for me, though I can’t imagine why. It’s so peaceful, up here. The town only moves in slow motion, like ants pushing through honey. Deadline’s an obsolete word, and showing up on time for something is all but unheard of. I swear, it’s like time only moves half-pace here. Which might explain why it feels like I’m still in the 18th century!

Another thing: Uncle Jesse’s house is just full of surprises. The basement’s filled to the brim with antique furniture; there’s a huge collection of books in the attic; and there’s an old pathway through the woods that I’ve been meaning to explore. I found a bunch of old manuscripts in the basement, in the drawer of a beautiful mahogany desk. I think they were Uncle Jesse’s – but they don’t seem quite sane. Then again, Uncle Jesse was never very sane, was he? Remember that time when he took us out for ice-cream, back in Sydney? We must have been about six years old. But the way he talked, it was always so distant, as if he were talking through a staticky radio. And he’d never look you in the eye. He always was a hermit, and I think living alone out here might have driven him batty – that’s probably why he went missing.

Now that I think of it, maybe that’s why the Jacksons keep checking in on me. They’re probably worried I’m going to go batty myself. I’m not too worried about that, though. Me and my book are keeping perfect company. Say hello to Sean and the kids for me,

Emily.

1st December, 2019

Dear Charlie,

Looks like my wish was granted. I am now wholly cut off from the world. This letter probably won’t reach you for a while; there was a blizzard last night, so the postal workers won’t be driving anywhere anytime soon. It’s well and truly winter, now, and I’ve been amusing myself by listening to Christmas carols on the old record player I found in the attic. The town’s been buried alive. I went for a walk out in the snow, this morning, and not a soul was wandering the streets. It’s the strangest feeling… like you’re the only one left on the planet. I don’t know whether I like it or not. My book’s reached a bit of a standstill, I can’t seem to get past chapter thirteen. The silence is getting to me. Maybe I’m not as good a hermit as I thought. Too late, now, I guess.

It’s hard to imagine Australia, in these woods. I can’t say I miss summer, but I hope you guys are going to have a good December holidays. I bet little Ricky can’t wait for school to end – what is he, seventh grade? And Sophia, just about to graduate high-school! Tell her I said congratulations! She’s a lot like me, come to think of it (does she still want to be an author?), so I suspect she’ll love the university lifestyle. Hopefully, she’ll have better luck than me. Tell her I said to focus on studying, and that if she does drugs her dear old auntie will kill her. I do not want another addict in the family.

Oh, I found another one of Uncle Jesse’s manuscripts. It’s about that pathway into the woods – I don’t really know what to make of it. It’s quite disturbing:

Went out into the woods last night. The pathway… I heard something up there. Voices – voices hiding behind the cries of the loons. And a lonely, lonely sound no other sound can tame; pervaded with a ceaseless motion, the path of that unresting sound. Can you hear it, too? That SOUND. It’s deafening in the silence. I don’t know how much longer I can take it.

I think that might be where Uncle Jesse went missing. Maybe he wandered out into the woods… it was last year, in late December, when he disappeared. During a blizzard. They never found the body, did they? All those other manuscripts I found were talking about some kind of “sound” in the dark. I think he was obsessed. I think… oh, I don’t know. But it’s getting late. I’m going to go to bed.

Say hello to Sean and the kids for me,

Emily.

12th December, 2019

Dear Charlie,

I went up that path in the woods. I think there’s something wrong with this place.

The Jacksons were over for coffee, two or three days ago. They seemed anxious, particularly when I asked them about Uncle Jesse. They said he used lots of drugs, when he was living here. He was a heroin addict. And he used to say things… as if he were talking to someone who wasn’t there. Mrs. Jackson suspects he had schizophrenia, and that the drugs drove him over the edge – but I’m starting to wonder. Maybe it’s not just that. There’s something about this house that feels wrong. I think I picked up on that when I first came here – but it was dormant, then. Hidden. Now it’s awake, and it’s scaring me. I’m starting to notice some bizarre parallels between Uncle Jesse’s letters and my own experiences.

In most of Jesse’s letters, he talked about a sound. A quiet ringing, at first. But it steadily rose in volume, higher and higher, welling up from the depths of some fathomless ravine. I think I can hear it now. A shrill ringing in my ears that won’t go away… it’s funny. I never thought you’d be able to hear silence. But I can hear it. I can hear it now.

I went up the pathway, yesterday evening. It led up to a clearing on top of a snowy hill. It was beautiful; the snow reflected the red-orange mantle of twilight, and the full moon hovered above the hill. A ghostly lantern, bobbing on the edge of the horizon. But it was cold. The snowflakes were fireflies in the dark, embers, and I swear I could hear voices, whispering in the trees. I could hear Jesse’s voice.

I think I’m going crazy. I still have writer’s block. Every time I go to write, that ringing sound grows louder in my ears, until I can’t stand it any longer. Until I just want to stick needles in my eardrums.

I don’t know what to do. Every day, this house gets smaller. It’s like the walls are pressing in on me, and the frosted windows are looking more and more like bullet-proof glass, in a maximum security prison. And I think there might be something in the basement. When I go to sleep, I can hear creaking floorboards below my bed.

13th December, 2019

I saw it last night. The thing in the basement, it was there, dear God, I saw it, under the floorboards – the Sound woke me up, I heard it just after midnight. I went to check in the basement and there was a still form under a dusty wrapping. The moon was blazing through the window, an opening eye in the night, and it started to move. It was a body. I knew it’s face

17th December, 2019

Dear Charlie,

I’m sane again. Just. The last few days, it felt like I was sleepwalking. Or stoned out of my mind. It’s like I overdosed, and I’m in rehab, again, even though I’ve been clean for what? Twenty years, now? It doesn’t make any sense.

But I’m awake now. I’m clean. I’m good. I have this vague memory – a nightmare, I think – of something in the basement… I think it was Uncle Jesse. I can remember rotting hands, groping around in musky darkness. And that ringing sound.

I wish I could talk to the Jacksons. But the weather is getting worse and worse up here. I tried stepping outside, but I couldn’t see a thing. Just white. Like a blank slate, or a staticky radio. No reception, of course, so all I’ve got is you, Charlie. Only you.

Either this place is haunted, or I am going mad. Or maybe it’s both. I don’t know. But I don’t know how much longer I can stay awake. I’m going to bed. Sweet dreams, I hope, but I get the feeling I’ll just be visiting Uncle Jesse again. Those rotting hands –

Say hello to Sean and the kids for me.

Emily.

20th December, 2019

Dear Charlie,

I think it’s growing stronger. There is something else in this house, something other, and it wants me… it’s almost winter solstice, you know? The darkest night of the year. It’s growing more powerful; I can feel it. That secret glow beneath the teak floorboards is growing brighter, and there’s a steady vibration from below. I am alone… and yet I’m not. The house is silent, but the silence lingers, like a deafening scream in my ears. No chance of finishing that book, now, Charlie. No chance of that. It won’t let me.

21st December, 2019

I’m going out into the woods tonight. I have to find the Sound. I have to find it before it kills me, I can’t stay in this house anymore, not with that thing beneath the floorboards, that endless Sound filling the room. I’m alone but I’m not, it won’t let me be, I can’t stand the Sound

I can’t do this anymore. That endless ringing