Mystery

The Prince of Shadows
Long ago, in the golden kingdom of Elessar, there lived a prince named Thalen-brave, compassionate, and beloved by all. With eyes like stormy skies and a heart full of fire, he was destined to inherit a peaceful realm. But peace, as fate often shows, is a fragile thing.
By Emma Adeabout a year ago in Fiction
A hidden door in a castle leads to a kingdom made of glass
Rain pelted the ancient stone walls of Eldwyn Castle as sixteen-year-old Elara pressed her fingertips against the cracked mural in the west wing. The corridor had been closed for decades, yet something-some whisper of instinct or fate-had led her there.
By Emma Adeabout a year ago in Fiction
The Mirror’s Debt
The town of Greystone was a place where history clung like damp rot, its streets lined with sagging storefronts and memories no one cared to recall. Tucked at the end of Mill Lane was Hollow’s Antiques, a shop so old it seemed to grow from the earth itself. Most folks avoided it, muttering about strange lights or whispers from within. But for Tessa Wren, the shop was her inheritance—and her curse.
By Shohel Ranaabout a year ago in Fiction
The Keeper of the Lantern
The town of Saltmere clung to the edge of a jagged coastline, where the sea was both lifeblood and executioner. Its lighthouse, perched on Blackthorn Cliff, was older than the town itself, its stone walls pitted by centuries of salt and wind. Most folks avoided it, whispering of strange lights and voices carried on the gales. But for Marin Cole, the lighthouse was her sanctuary.
By Shohel Ranaabout a year ago in Fiction
The Whispering Gallery
Ellsbury was a town that time had overlooked, its streets lined with sagging Victorian houses and a mill that hadn’t turned in decades. The Ellsbury Museum of Antiquities was the town’s only claim to fame, a crumbling relic packed with artifacts no one visited. Most locals avoided it, muttering about strange noises or lights flickering after hours. But for Lila Everett, the museum was home.
By Shohel Ranaabout a year ago in Fiction
The Library of Unread Books
Wren Harbor was a town that clung to the edge of the world, its cliffs battered by salt and storm. The kind of place where the sea told stories and the townsfolk pretended not to listen. Tucked behind the main street, where fishermen swapped lies and tourists bought overpriced lobster rolls, stood the Wren Harbor Library. It wasn’t on any map, and most locals swore it didn’t exist. But Nora Caldwell, a bookseller with a nose for trouble, had heard the whispers.
By Shohel Ranaabout a year ago in Fiction
"The Secret Night on Rtanj: Encounter with Beings from Another World"
Rtanj. A name that carries mystique and sorrow, a mountain whose peak Šiljak rises like a pyramid toward the sky, has always inspired awe and strange tales among the villagers of eastern Serbia. But few know what really happened on that night in 2019, when unknown celestial visitors descended upon this sacred mountain.
By Beyond Knownabout a year ago in Fiction
Solstice
“You think they ever…you know…here?” Marcus made a stabbing motion from atop the viewing platform. ”Probably,” Joe laughed, walking below along the ridges of the Great Serpent Mound. It really was spectacular, way more impressive in person than his new friends told him it was.
By Matthew J. Frommabout a year ago in Fiction
Theriocentricity-My definition
Theriocentricity is a term that means to me a way to bring all theories on several topics and subjects to become a concentric whole. Like when learning how to teach you are also learning some very basic counseling skills in making whomever to improve behaviors and still learning basic skills socially and academically. Seeing how the relationships of these two professions are similar as well as different. Remember an old science experiment when you drop a rock in the water and the waves as concentric circles get bigger and bigger we are learning that theories help us to understand ideas.
By Mark Grahamabout a year ago in Fiction
The Lanterns of Silent Hill
Every evening at dusk, the children of Silent Hill lit paper lanterns and released the into the sky. No one remembered when the tradition began - only that it always had been. The villagers said the lanterns were wishes, floating into the heavens. The old ones said they were apologies.
By New growthabout a year ago in Fiction
13 steps into the attic . Content Warning.
They say never count the steps to the attic. But I did. Thirteen. Thirteen creaking wooden steps, each one groaning under a weight that didn’t always feel like mine. The first twelve were ordinary, dusty, old. But the thirteenth? It never made a sound. Never creaked. Never shifted. As if it weren’t a step at all. Just... a threshold. When my sister Liz vanished, it wasn’t from a parking lot, or a school, or a gas station. She vanished from our grandmother’s attic. The police said she must’ve run away. No signs of a break-in. No struggle. Just a single sandal left on the top step. And the attic door locked from the inside. --- I came back to the house a year later, just after Granny passed. She’d left it to me—maybe guilt, maybe pity. But I knew it wasn’t just a house. Not anymore. Something in there had taken Liz. And I was going to find it. I moved in on a rain-heavy Thursday. By Sunday, the whispers started. Late at night, from above my room, I’d hear footsteps. Not rats, not raccoons— footsteps. Slow. Dragging. And the soft thump of something moving across the attic floor. When I tried to record it, the audio came back silent. so, was it all just in my head? Every single time. --- The attic door was at the end of the upstairs hall, locked with a rusted bolt and a smaller, strange lock I didn’t recognize— old but sturdy . I pried it open on the fourth night. The air changed instantly. It wasn’t musty or warm. It was... still. Like a grave. I turned on my phone’s flashlight and began counting as I stepped up. One. Two. Three. The steps groaned, as they should, coated in dust and something sticky beneath it. Something like syrup or old blood. Seven. Eight. Nine. I felt watched. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Then silence. Step thirteen made no sound under my foot. My breath caught. My light flickered. I turned it back toward the attic. And the attic wasn’t empty. --- There was furniture that didn’t belong—an antique chair, a broken crib, a mirror that hadn’t been there before. None of it was Granny’s. I knew this house. This room had changed. The mirror caught me. Not my reflection. Just me, staring back—no phone in hand, no light. And in the reflection behind me stood a girl with one eye sewn shut. I turned around. Nothing there. --- I came down shaking, locked the door, and told myself it was grief. Insomnia. Trauma. Until I looked at the photos on the hallway wall. All the family portraits had changed. In every one, Liz was missing. Not blurred. Erased. And in her place, further in the background than before, was the one-eyed girl. Closer. Clearer. Watching. --- I started sleeping downstairs. I nailed the attic door shut. I drank. I left lights on. But each morning, the door was unsealed. The nails untouched. And the thirteenth step always clean—free of dust, blood, anything. It wanted me back. --- On the seventh night, I found my phone sitting on the kitchen table, playing a video I never recorded. It showed me, climbing the attic steps. But in the video, I never turned back. I reached the thirteenth step... and vanished. I don’t remember doing it. I don’t remember leaving my phone. But the video was dated tomorrow. --- I should’ve left. I didn’t. At 11:47 p.m., I climbed the stairs again. One. Two. Three. I was shaking. Six. Seven. Eight. The walls felt tighter. The shadows deeper. The air still, pressing against my chest. Twelve. Thirteen. Silence. --- The attic was darker now. The crib was gone. The mirror cracked. And in the corner sat Liz. She hadn’t aged. Not a day. Same striped hoodie, same scuffed knees, same bitten nails. Time hadn’t passed for her—it had paused, like a broken clock caught between ticks. While I’d grown older, grayer, heavier with guilt, Liz remained exactly seven. Trapped not just in space, but in the second she disappeared. She looked up. One eye sewn. The other crying. She stared at me like I was a stranger. Her one good eye wide, unsure. “Are you... the new babysitter?” she whispered, voice trembling like it hadn't been used in years. My heart broke in places I didn’t know were still intact. “Liz,” I said, kneeling down, “it’s me. Your sister.” She shook her head slowly. “No... my sister’s thirteen. You’re... you’re old.” The words didn’t hurt. Not like the way she flinched when I reached for her—like I was something dead pretending to be alive. “Don’t look in the mirror,” she whispered. But I already had. It didn’t show me this time. It showed stairs—thirteen steps, descending. And from the top, the one-eyed girl was crawling down. Toward me. --- I grabbed Liz. She screamed. The room buckled, twisting like a stage set on wires. Wood split. The mirror shattered into dust. The attic door slammed behind us. And I ran. I didn’t look back. --- We tumbled down the stairs together. My hands bled. Liz was sobbing, shaking, half-real, half-gone. I held her until morning. When the sun rose, the attic door was gone. The hallway wall was smooth, painted over. No hinges. No knob. As if it had never existed. But Liz remained. --- A month later, we live in a different house. We don’t talk about the thirteenth step. We told the world she was my daughter.
By E. hasanabout a year ago in Fiction
Velvet Graves. Content Warning.
The first body was discovered behind the old Marrow Theater—propped up like a forgotten prop, red velvet ribbon stuffed down her throat, eyes wide and glassy with terror. Her lips had been sewn shut, delicate threadwork pulled tight with surgical precision. Detective Lorne Vale crouched beside the corpse, gloved fingers grazing the ribbon. He'd seen overdoses, gang killings, domestic horrors—but this? This was something else. The velvet was clean. No blood soaked it until the throat turned it dark. And in the woman’s palm was a note written in fountain pen: >“To die beautifully is an art. –S.” The press dubbed the killer “The Seamstress.” Vale hated it. Not because it was inaccurate—but because it fit too well. --- Three days later, another body. Male, mid-thirties, left slumped in a theater seat in the Marrow’s derelict balcony. Same velvet down the throat. Same stitched lips. Same note. The theater had been closed for decades—ever since the Hollis fire in '82. The blaze claimed nearly the entire family, including Eliza Hollis, the town’s last true aristocrat. Only her daughter survived. Clara Hollis. Seven years old. Disappeared for thirty years. Then last month, she came back. Clara bought the theater. Quietly. Paid in cash. “I want to restore it,” she told the city council, gloved hands folded neatly in her lap. “The town has forgotten its elegance. Its drama.” Vale remembered her vividly. A porcelain girl in funeral black, even at the age of seven. Now grown, she looked untouched by time—pale skin, sharp cheekbones, and those same lifeless eyes. --- Vale pushed past caution tape and stepped into the Marrow Theater for the third time that week. The air inside was heavy with mildew and something sweeter—cloying, like decaying roses. The lights didn’t work, but the old stage lights flickered to life as he moved down the center aisle. Someone was watching. Backstage, he found her. Clara Hollis stood in front of the old mirror wall, gazing at her reflection. She didn’t flinch when Vale entered. “You returned quickly, detective,” she said. Her voice was smooth as smoke. Vale motioned to the velvet curtain. “Odd hobby, restoring a place where half your family died.” “I find ruins comforting,” she replied, turning. “And ghosts rarely bother me. They’re quieter than the living.” He stared at her hands—black lace gloves, tight. Always the gloves. “You knew them,” he said. “The victims.” “I auditioned them,” she answered without hesitation. “They weren’t very good.” Vale blinked. “Excuse me?” “I posted ads for actors. I offered roles. They came, they auditioned... and they died.” Her smile was paper-thin. “You’re confessing?” “No,” she said, “I’m curating.” --- He left, heart pounding. No warrant. No proof. But his gut howled. That night, Clara hosted an invite-only “dress rehearsal” for what she called Velvet Graves: A Tragedy in Three Acts. Vale went in with a wire and backup waiting outside. The theater was candlelit. Half a dozen guests, dressed in black, sat silently in the first row. On stage, a velvet coffin. Clara emerged from the wings in a blood-red gown, her gloves gone. Her hands were hideously scarred—burns running from fingertips to wrists. A legacy from the fire. Or perhaps not. Perhaps they were earned later. She began to speak. “Welcome to the closing of the curtain. Tonight’s performance is for the final role.” Vale stood. “You’re under arrest—” But before he could finish, the stage trapdoor opened beneath the coffin. A body tumbled out—fresh, mutilated, stitched with loving detail. And the crowd applauded. They weren’t guests. They were disciples. Clara turned to Vale, smile widening. “Detective,” she said sweetly, “I saved the last act for you.” --- They lunged. He shot two. Ran. Blood sprayed across velvet seats. Screams rang out, rehearsed and real. Vale reached the exit— —but the door was sealed. Trapped. Backstage. Hallways like veins. The walls pulsed with heat. He staggered into the prop room and found them: Photos. Names. Measurements. All the victims. All labeled as cast. On a pinned board was his photo. > Role: The Interrogator. Final Scene. --- Vale kicked down the side exit just as backup arrived. SWAT stormed the theater. They found bodies. Costumes. Blood. But Clara was gone. No trace. Only a note pinned to the coffin lid: > “Every tragedy must end in silence. Curtain falls. –S.” ---They searched for Clara Hollis for weeks. The theater gave no more answers—only echoes. Forensics found nothing of value. The disciples refused to speak. Every surviving member had stitched their lips shut literally, just like the victims. Some died from infection. The rest were committed. The Marrow Theater was condemned, locked behind iron bars and legal red tape. But even from the outside, some claimed they could hear muffled sobs behind its velvet curtains. And Detective Vale? A month later, Vale quit the force. He doesn’t sleep much. He doesn’t talk much. But sometimes, in dreams, he hears the velvet rustling. Sometimes, in the mirror, he sees thread pulling at his lips. Sometimes, when the curtains flutter, he swears he hears applause. --- END.
By E. hasanabout a year ago in Fiction