Only one house remained in the entire old alley.
There were no neighbors on either side and no one behind or in front. It stood alone at the end of the street, the last building in the whole block.
I couldn’t afford rent, so I took the cheap offer on this old house that no one dared to live in.
On my first night there, I found a yellowed set of “Old House Rules” on the living room table.
“Rule One: After midnight, never respond to footsteps on the second floor.”
“Rule Two: Don’t open the letter hidden deep inside the cabinet.”
“Rule Three: It’s only lonely. It will never hurt the residents.”
The whole house was steeped in an eerie atmosphere: footsteps in the night, whispers in empty rooms, a figure that flashed past in the mirror.
Everyone said the place was haunted.
Only I slowly came to realize that the most frightening thing in this world was never malice, but the lonely obsession of someone who had been without company for a hundred years.
I deciphered the rules and unraveled the mysteries, and in the end, I helped that gentle soul, trapped for a century, escape its endless solitude.
