The manuscript arrived on the first of October.
No stamp.
No return address.
Just my name written across the front in black ink, ‘MARA VANE’
I found it on the doormat when I came home from the supermarket, half-hidden beneath a flyer for a local Halloween event.
I almost threw it away. That was the first thing I remembered later.
Not the manuscript. Not the name.The feeling.
A small, cold certainty that I had seen it before.
as I stood in the hallway with the shopping bag cutting into my fingers and I stared at the envelope.
My name looked familiar in the way a stranger’s face sometimes does in a dream.
I picked it up. The paper was thick and cream-coloured. There was no postage mark, no crease from being pushed through the letterbox.
Someone had to put it there by hand. I lived on the third floor. The building had a locked front entrance. I looked down the corridor. Nothing.
I listened. Nothing.
Then I did something I couldn’t explain.
I locked my front door. Then I checked it again, turned around before turning again and checking it two more after that
Inside the envelope was a manuscript. Not a notebook. Not printed pages but a manuscript.
Roughly a hundred sheets of white paper, held together with a black binder clip. The pages were numbered in the bottom-right corner. There was no title an no author’s name.
I carried it into the kitchen and put the kettle on.
I write horror novels for a living. Badly, according to some reviews.
Adequately, according to most.
Well enough that I had been able to quit my office job three years ago and live on advances, royalties and the occasional freelance piece. I knew what a manuscript was supposed to feel like. This one felt like evidence. I sat at the kitchen table.
The first page contained a single sentence; October begins quietly.
I smiled despite myself, it was a good opening.
The second page began: Mara Vane comes home at 5:17 p.m. carrying a grocery bag containing milk, bread, apples and a bottle of red wine she does not remember buying.
I stopped smiling, and I looked at the clock.
5:17 P.M.
The shopping bag sat on the counter. I opened the bag, milk, bread, apples and there was a bottle of red wine at the bottom.
I had no memory of buying it. I stared at it for a long time.
Then I laughed. Not because it was funny. Because sometimes your brain reaches for laughter when it doesn’t know what else to do. I checked my receipt. The wine was there.
€8.99.
I had paid for it and I had simply forgotten all about it. That was all.
I turned the page.
The manuscript continued:
She tells herself she must have picked it up without thinking.
I put the pages down.
For the rest of the evening, I didn’t read another word.
I told myself it was a prank. A bad one. Someone had found my name online or someone who knew I was a writer or someone who knew enough about me to make the manuscript convincing.
It wasn’t impossible. People sent strange things to writers, it wouldn’t be the first or the last.
Letters, stories and photographs.
Once, someone had mailed me a dead moth inside a paperback.
So I wasn’t frightened. Not really, just grossed out.
Until 8:43 p.m.
I was washing a glass when I heard it fall.
The sound came from behind me. A sharp crack.
I turned. The wine glass was on the floor.
Broken.
The bottle was still on the counter.
I looked at the clock.
8:43.
I didn’t move.
I dried my hands slowly and then I went back to the manuscript.
The pages were exactly where I had left them.
I turned to page three.
At 8:43, the glass will break.
Underneath it:
Mara will not be holding it.
Then: She will spend the next eleven minutes convincing herself that this can be explained.
I looked at the clock.
8:44.
I closed the manuscript and for the first time in a long while, I didn’t sleep.
The next morning, I put the manuscript in a drawer.
By lunchtime, I had forgotten about it.
That was the second thing I remembered later.
I forgot it, not on purpose but it simply disappeared from my mind.
For three days I went to work.
I answered emails.
I wrote.
I bought groceries.
I spoke to my brother on the phone. I even went out for dinner on the fourth.
On the fifth of October, I found the manuscript on my desk.
I didn’t remember taking it out of the drawer.
I opened it again. The first few pages were unchanged.
But the later pages were different.
Not rewritten.
Just more detailed.
They described things that had already happened.
The coffee I spilled on my keyboard.
The phone call from my editor.
The argument I’d had with my brother.
The fact that I had cried in the bathroom afterward and told myself it wasn’t about him.
It was about something else.
Something I couldn’t name.
Then I reached page twenty-three.
I read the first line.
And stopped breathing.
Maya will dream about the red door tonight.
I didn’t know what that meant.
I had never seen a red door.
At least, I didn’t think I had.
That night I dreamed about one.
The door stood at the end of a narrow hallway. There was no house, no walls. Only the hallway and the door.
Painted red with an old brass handle. Something scratched into the wood.
Three words.
DON’T LET HER.
I woke before dawn.
For several seconds, I couldn’t remember where I was.
Then I heard a whisper:
“Don’t.”
I sat upright, looked around. The bedroom was empty.
The whisper came again.
Closer.
“Don’t remember.”
I switched on the lamp.
Nothing.
I didn’t go back to sleep.
On October seventh, I called my grandmother.
She died when I was young but I called her old number anyway.
I still had it saved, I knew nobody would answer.
Nobody ever did.
I listened to the automated message and hung up.
Then I cried, not because I missed her but because I suddenly remembered something.
A sentence.
Something she used to say every October.
I had completely forgotten it. October is the month we forget.
I stared at my phone. I had no idea what it meant. I opened the manuscript.
Page thirty-one. There it was.
Maya remembers her grandmother saying: October is the month we forget.
Beneath it:
She does not remember why.
I turned the page.
There was only one sentence.
She will.
That night I searched my grandmother’s name.
Then my mom’s and then mine.
Then our old address.
Then October.
Nothing.
I searched old emails, photographs and bank statements.
I found nothing unusual.
Until I opened the photo folder on my laptop.
There was a picture of me at eight years old.
Halloween.
I knew the photograph well, must have looked at it about a hundreds of times.
I was standing beside my grandmother and mother in front of our old house.
I was wearing a dark purple etched with black witch costume. They were both smiling.
But this time I noticed something I’d never noticed before.
The photograph had been taken from inside the house.
Looking outward.
At us.
I zoomed in.
There was someone standing behind the camera.
I could see their shadow on the floor. A long, distorted shape. Who was that?
My grandmother wasn’t looking at the camera.
She was looking at the shadow.
And she looked terrified.
I closed the laptop and that night I didn’t sleep again.
The manuscript stopped at page fifty-two.
The remaining pages were blank.
I thought that meant it was finished.
Then, on October tenth, another envelope appeared on my doormat.
Same paper.
Same black ink.
Same handwriting.
This time the name on the front wasn’t mine.
It said:
Emma.
Nothing else. Inside was a single sheet, with on it four lines.
You are going to remember October. You are going to think that is the problem.
It isn’t. The problem is that you remembered it before Halloween.
I read it three times. Then I noticed the date written at the bottom.
October 10th, of this year.
I turned the paper over.
Nothing.
I looked at the clock.
2:14 a.m.
I hadn’t realized how late it was. I went to bed and dreamed about the red door again.
This time, it was open.
There was a girl behind it. She was about eight years old. She looked like me but not exactly.
But enough.
Same dark hair, eyes and the same small scar above the left eyebrow.
She stood barefoot on the other side of the door.
She looked at me.
Then she said, “you weren’t supposed to remember me.”
I woke up screaming.
The next morning, I called my brother.
“Did Mum or grandma ever say anything strange about October?”
Silence.
Then, “why?”
“Just answer me.”
Another silence.
“She didn’t like Halloween.”
“I know.”
“No. I mean she really didn’t like it.”
My brother lowered her voice.
“When we were kids, she wouldn’t let us open the door on Halloween.”
“I remember.”
“No, Maya…”
His voice changed. “She wouldn’t let anyone open it.”
I felt cold. “Anyone?”
“She said it wasn’t safe.”
I waited.
My brother breathed out.
“After you turned nine, you started asking about the girl.”
I froze, my breath caught in my throat. “What girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“No.” He sounded frightened now.
“You used to ask them where she had gone.”
“Who?”
“The girl who came to the door.”
The kitchen seemed to tilt.
“What girl?”
My brother abruptly hung up.
I went through every box in my flat.
Photographs. Old birthday cards.
My grandmother’s and mother’s things.
I found a diary.
It wasn’t mine.
It belonged to my grandmother.
Most of the pages were ordinary.
Bills, appointments, recipe lists.
and some notes about me.
Then I reached October. The entries became shorter.
October 1:
She’s started again.
October 4:
She remembers the door.
October 7:
Keep her away from the basement.
October 12:
She asked about the girl.
October 18:
I think she’s beginning to remember too early.
Then October 30.
Nothing.
October 31.
Nothing.
On November 1st entry, a single sentence.
She forgot again. Thank God.
I turned the page.
The next year.
October 1.
It starts again.
The next year.
Same.
And again.
And again.
Every October.
Every year.
The same sentence.
It starts again.
I counted.
There were seventeen Octobers.
Seventeen, which I had forgotten, every one.
At the back of the diary was an envelope.
My name was written on it.
I almost didn’t open it. Inside was a photograph.
The photograph was old. Older than me.
My grandmother and mother stood outside our house.
Beside them was another woman.
I didn’t recognized her.
Between them stood the little girl.
Me.
Except I wasn’t eight.
I was younger, five, perhaps and I was crying.
The other woman had one hand on my shoulder.
My grandmother had one hand over my mouth. My mom standing beside them petrified.
On the back of the photograph, she had written:
The first time, she comes through the door.
Underneath:
The second time, she remembers.
I read it again. Then again. The words didn’t make any sense. There was more writing, in the low corner on the back.
We have always thought the forgetting was the curse.
It isn’t.
The forgetting is what keeps her outside.
My hands started shaking. I heard something upstairs.
Slow footsteps.
I looked toward the hallway. My front door was locked. I was alone.
At least, I thought I was. Then someone knocked.
Three times.
I didn’t open the door, I wouldn’t dare The knocking stopped. I waited.
Nothing.
Then my phone rang. Unknown number. I answered.
No one spoke.
I heard breathing. Small. Uneven. A child’s breathing.
Then a voice.
My voice. Eight years old. “Maya?” I dropped the phone.
It started ringing again on the floor. I backed away, my hip hitting the kitchen counter.
The manuscript was still on the table.
I hadn’t noticed it there.
The pages were spread open.
I walked toward it. The final page wasn’t blank anymore.
There was writing on it. Four sentences.
You have remembered the first October.
You have forgotten the second.
Tonight is Halloween.
Do not open the door.
I checked the date.
October 31.
I hadn’t noticed the calendar.
I hadn’t noticed the passing weeks.
I had been so focused on remembering that I hadn’t realised how quickly the month had disappeared.
Outside, someone laughed. Children. Costumes.
Doorbells.
Cars passing.
Normal Halloween sounds.
I looked at the clock.
11:52 p.m.
Eight minutes until midnight.
Then I heard footsteps in the hallway outside my flat.
Slow.
Bare feet against the floor.
They stopped outside my door.
A child’s voice whispered:
“Maya.”
I closed my eyes.
“Please.”
The voice sounded exactly like mine when I was eight.
“Let me in.”
I looked at the manuscript.
There was one final line beneath the others.
I hadn’t noticed it before.
The first time, she asks you to open the door.
I swallowed.
Another line appeared beneath it.
Not appearing magically.
It was simply there.
As if it had always been there.
The second time, she asks you to remember why you didn’t.
I stared at the words.
And suddenly I remembered.
Not the girl.
Not the red door.
Not my grandmother.
I remembered Halloween.
The first Halloween.
The door opening.
My grandmother screaming.
The girl standing outside.
And me looking directly at her.
Because she wasn’t asking to come inside.
She was asking me to come out.
I remembered what happened next.
I remembered stepping through the door.
I remembered the house disappearing behind me.
I remembered my grandmother grabbing my hand.
I remembered her screaming my name.
And I remembered looking back.
At the doorway.
At myself.
Still standing there.
Crying.
Waiting.
There had been two Mayas.
There had always been two. One who went through and one who stayed behind. The one who stayed forgot. Until October came around again. Until the door opened. Until they switched places.
My knees gave way. Outside, the child laughed.
Then she whispered: “You remembered.”
The clock changed.
11:59 PM
The manuscript slid from the table and landed open on the floor.
There were two sentences left; This is the first October you remember.
I stared at it.
Then the final line beneath it, it is also the first October you have survived.
The clock struck Midnight. The knocking stopped and somewhere inside my flat, behind me, a little girl began to cry. I didn’t turn around. I knew who she was now and I knew what she wanted.
