February 12, 2025
I never expected to hear from Mr. Smoe’s brother again. The last time we spoke, he had asked if I wanted to claim Mr. Smoe’s body since none of his family wanted it. I had said no, suspecting it was just a way to push the cost of burial onto me. That was supposed to be the end of it. But then, early this morning, he called again.
He said he had finished clearing out his brother’s house but found additional “cult” boxes in the attic. He didn’t want to deal with them, didn’t care what was inside. He just wanted them gone. He asked if I wanted them, but I had to pick them up in a day or two. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was worth the drive to Austin from Houston. The last boxes had been full of frantic notes, old maps, and the strange white and yellow notepads—pieces of a puzzle I was still struggling to put together.
I agreed to come. I jumped in my car and started my two-and-a-half-hour drive.
When I arrived at the house around noon, it felt different. The first time I had been here, after Mr. Smoe’s death, the air had felt stagnant and abandoned. As I stepped inside, it felt full of energy, even though the house was now empty of his belongings, except for the boxes in the attic. His brother led me to the attic door and pulled the cord. The ladder creaked as it unfolded. "They’re up there," he said. He didn’t offer to go up with me. He just turned and walked away.
Being a fan of late-night 80s horror movies, I knew what going into the attic meant, so I ensured the .45 on my right hip was secure. I climbed into the attic, the dim light of my camera light cutting through the dust. The boxes sat in the far corner, stacked neatly, as if someone had placed them there deliberately. When I opened the first box, I didn’t find maps or loose scraps of paper. I found scrolls. Hundreds of them. Each one was wrapped in yarn.
I ran my fingers over the parchment. The paper felt too thick, too smooth, too unnatural. It wasn’t like any paper I had handled before. It felt like skin. I unrolled one carefully, and as soon as my eyes fell on the inked characters, a voice—clear, human, real—spoke in my mind.
As I read the scroll, it was like a narrator was reading it for me. I rolled it back and secured it with the yarn. I read another one, then another. The voices didn’t belong to anyone I recognized. That's when it hit me. The words on the scroll weren’t just records. They weren’t stories. They were spirits. Spirits who were killed and forgotten.
Mr. Smoe had been housing these scrolls. But why? Had he known what they were? Or had he just been collecting them without realizing their purpose? I opened another box. More scrolls. Each rolled and sealed. Each containing a spirit, a voice that hadn’t been heard in years, decades, maybe centuries. Mr. Smoe wasn’t just an obsessive collector of strange notes. He was something else. Was he a registrar of the dead? But why?
The attic felt suffocating now. The presence of hundreds of forgotten voices filled the silent space. The air was thick with dust, and it was way past time to get out of here. I had no interest in staying up here any longer than necessary. This was not the place to go through them. Not alone. Not in the dark. My light beam felt weak, barely illuminating the boxes stacked around me, each one filled with names, stories, and questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
I exhaled and started packing. Thirteen boxes in all. They felt heavier than they should have, as if I were carrying more than just parchment.
With one last glance around the attic, I shut the boxes, carried them down, and loaded them into my vehicle. I’d go through them later, at home, in the light, where I could see what I had brought with me.
I wasn’t sure what I had discovered yet, but I knew this was bigger than anything I had found before. These weren’t just stories. They were lives, sealed in ink, waiting for someone to remember them.
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