MY SISTER’S OLD DIARY WAS UNDER THE FLOORBOARD IN THE EMPTY ROOM
My fingers traced the rough wood grain as I pulled the loose board back from the wall. Dust motes danced wildly in the weak afternoon light slanting from the window. It had rattled for weeks, forgotten after her room was cleared. I just saw something dark tucked underneath.
It was her diary, the one she swore she burned years ago. The worn leather cover felt cold against my palm. I flipped brittle pages quickly, the faint, sweet smell of old paper and dried flowers rising. My eyes stopped dead on a specific date, two days before… *that* awful morning.
The cramped, frantic writing filled the page, detailing a planned meeting, a name I recognized instantly. My breath caught. “I have to tell him, no matter what happens. This can’t go on,” she’d scrawled. We thought it was an accident all this time. Was she trying to prevent it? This changed everything we thought we knew.
Then the front door clicked downstairs, sharp in the quiet house. Footsteps on the stairs, getting closer. My brother called my name, his voice too cheerful. I slammed the diary shut, heart hammering, shoving it back under the board as his shadow fell across the floor. His head appeared in the doorway seconds later.
He smiled, but his eyes flickered down towards the floor where I was kneeling.
👇 Full story continued in the comments…”Hey,” he said, his voice light, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “What are you doing in here? Just… checking things out?”
I forced a casual shrug, pulling myself up from my knees. “Yeah, just… the floorboard was loose, remember? It was rattling. Thought I’d see if anything was stuck under it.” My voice sounded too high, too breathless. I could feel the sweat prickling on my back. The space under the board felt miles away, yet terrifyingly close.
He walked further into the room, looking around, then his gaze settled back on me and the spot by the wall. “Right,” he said slowly. He took another step closer. “Find anything interesting? Like loose change?”
“Nah,” I managed, trying to keep my hands casual, away from the floor. “Just dust. Lots of dust.”
He stopped a few feet away. The cheerful mask slipped completely, replaced by a sharp, assessing look. “You were kneeling right over *that* one,” he said, his voice dropping slightly. “The one she used to complain about.”
My stomach clenched. He knew. Or he suspected. “Just curiosity,” I said, trying for nonchalance, but my eyes must have given me away because his own narrowed.
“Curiosity killed the cat,” he said, not unkindly, but with a chilling edge. He didn’t move towards the floorboard, but his gaze remained fixed on me, waiting.
Panic warred with the desperate need to understand what I’d just read. “It’s just… this room,” I started, gesturing vaguely. “Feels weird, you know? Empty.”
He nodded, a flicker of something I couldn’t name – sadness? regret? – passing across his face before it was gone. “Yeah. Empty.” He was silent for a moment, and the air in the room grew heavy, thick with unspoken things. “Mom and Dad are talking about selling soon,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “Putting it behind us.”
Sell. Get rid of the house, the room, the loose floorboard… and whatever was hidden beneath it. “Right,” I whispered. “Putting it behind us.” But how could we, now? The diary wasn’t just a relic; it was a grenade.
He finally turned away from the floor, walking towards the window. “Coming downstairs? Lunch is almost ready.”
“Yeah, be right there.”
He gave me one last look, a long, searching one, before turning and heading out the door. I waited until his footsteps faded down the stairs before I dropped back to my knees, my hands trembling. I needed to see the name again, understand who Mark was, what this meeting meant. Had she been in danger? Was that why she was gone?
My fingers went back to the edge of the board. It lifted easily this time, the secret space revealed. But the diary wasn’t there.
My breath hitched. I scrabbled frantically in the dusty cavity. Empty.
My brother. He must have seen me put it back. Or maybe… maybe he’d taken it before. Maybe he’d known it was there all along.
A cold dread, far worse than the shock of finding the diary, settled deep in my bones. His too-cheerful voice downstairs, his eyes flickering to the floorboard, the chilling phrase “Curiosity killed the cat.”
He wasn’t just suspicious. He knew I’d found something. And whatever secret my sister had written down, the name she was going to tell, my brother clearly didn’t want me to know it. The “accident” suddenly felt terrifyingly deliberate. The planned meeting, “no matter what happens”… had “what happens” been preventing her from telling? And who had prevented her? Mark? Or the brother who just walked out, leaving me alone with a missing diary and the terrifying certainty that the truth about my sister’s death was buried deeper than I’d ever imagined, and maybe buried by someone in this very house.