Episode 3: Lina’s Secret
258 Words
The package Lina brought home was hidden beneath the floorboards of her room.
She didn’t speak.
Not to her mother.
Not to the priest who knocked that evening, his hands trembling and his breath reeking of old wine.
Lina only sat by her window, staring at nothing.
But her mind was burning.
The whispers had started again — not outside… but inside her head.
“Do you remember the fire, Lina?”
“Do you remember the screams?”
“He begged them to listen.”
The voice was not her own.
It was deeper… broken… like someone who had wept for too many years.
⸻
That night, she opened the cloth.
And there it was.
Not just cheese.
But a piece of it… molded in the shape of a human ear.
The smell hit her like a wall.
Rotten. Bitter.
And yet — somehow — familiar.
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t scream.
She took the piece of cheese and placed it gently into a bowl of salt water, just as the old book had instructed.
From the corner of the room, the shadows moved.
⸻
In her dream that night, Lina stood at the edge of the village well.
And from its depths, a voice rose:
“You are the last to carry his pain.”
“You will be the first to break his curse.”
When she woke up, there was blood under her fingernails—
and a trail of wet footprints on her wooden floor.
She hadn’t left her bed.
Or so she thought.
- Writer
