The Quiet Ones / Season 1, Episode 4
Silent Scribbles at Midnight
Owen’s pencil scratched against the notebook page, a jagged rhythm in the dim light of the dormitory. The air was thick with the smell of damp stone and old wood, the kind of scent that clung to the back of your throat. His bunk creaked under him as he shifted, knees drawn up, the thin blanket pooling at his feet. The other boys were asleep—or pretending to be—their breaths uneven, some shallow, some heavy with the weight of dreams they’d never tell. The window above his head was a black square, no moon tonight, just the faint howl of wind slipping through cracks in the frame. He didn’t look up. He couldn’t. The notebook held him, its pages yellowed at the edges, the leather cover worn soft from three years of his grip. He wrote fast, words spilling out—I heard it again. That hum. Like a voice but not. Under the floor or in the walls, I can’t tell. It’s closer now.—and then he stopped, pencil hovering, because the next line wasn’t his. Scrawled in a sharp, slanted hand, ink blacker than his own faded graphite, were two words: I’m here. His chest seized, a cold fist clamping around his ribs. The pencil dropped, rolling across the page with a soft clatter, loud in the stillness. He stared at the...