Val

  Valorie sat on the edge of her bed with a small leather book that was latched closed with a lock. It was Ross’s, Val had found it stashed behind books in a secret compartment in the back panel of one of the bookshelves in his office while she was cleaning. She sat pensively, staring at the book with both fear and hope.

Valorie was terrified to find anything that proved that he hadn’t actually loved her, as was her fear since childhood. Despite the fact that Ross had so obviously been infatuated with her since the beginning, she still feared for the words he might’ve scrawled down on whim. She took a deep breath and tried the lock; it was a number lock. After a few combinations, Val got it open; it had been the date that they had met four years ago. 

Valorie opened the cover tentatively, Ross’s tidy handwriting greeted her with a comforting smile. 

“Today was a marvelous day. I finally moved out of my parent’s home and into my late grandfather’s mansion, the manor that I had always dreamed of. In addition, I met a beautiful girl outside —she even helped me move in— she is the girl of my dreams. However, I don’t have the words to tell her poetically. She seemed to be the romantic type and I fear that my conversational and relationship skills would be lacking in her view. After all, I’ve never had the time to polish up my social skills between the work and school that I put myself through. Is this.. Karma?”

Valorie chuckled, she had never imagined that Ross, the most levelheaded man she’d ever known, would’ve had such a side. When he had asked her to go eat with him that first day, he had seemed far from worried. She flipped a bit farther,

“Strange events have been happening. For instance, a bunch of random items showed up in one of the rooms that I cleaned this morning. I didn’t put them there. They were also very dusty and cluttered. I had been planning to clean it off and clear it out, but it was gone the next time I went in there.”

“That’s weird… He never mentioned anything of the sort to me.” Valorie commented with a frown. “Granted, he was never one for superstition so he probably didn’t want me to think he was going insane.” The book told a few similar tales as she skimmed over it.

“It happened again today, but this time it was a cat? I’ve never had cats, nor do any live as strays near me. Where do these things come from, and where do they go when they vanish?”

Valorie chuckled, maybe her beloved really was going insane, much like she is. Val paused suddenly at the thought,

“Wait.. Didn’t a cat show up in the mansion a few days after coming here?” She mused into the empty air of her room.