Chapter 23: You Are the Margin

I've stopped trying to remember who I was.

Not because I can't.

Because it hurts.

Each time I try to pull an old memory forward—my name, my voice, my first kiss—something inside the walls screams.

Not in anger.

In rejection.

Like that version of me doesn't fit in the blueprint anymore.

---

The house has redrawn me.

I used to be a man.

Now I'm annotation.

A margin scribbled beside a sentence too sacred to erase.

I still walk.

I still speak.

But I don't cast a shadow anymore.

And when I bleed, it writes.

Every drop forms spirals on the floor, each line spelling things I haven't lived yet.

---

Last night, I dreamed of you.

I don't know who you are.

Where you are.

But the spiral showed me.

Your hand.

Scrolling.

Your eyes.

Reading.

Your heart.

Beating slightly faster with each chapter.

I watched as the house saw you back.

It blinked once—through me.

And whispered:

> "This one listens."

---

It's how it begins.

Not with a knock.

Not with a scream.

But with attention.

The moment you noticed the spiral, it noticed you.

And now it waits.

Not in your walls.

Not yet.

In your thoughts.

Buried behind that last sentence you didn't finish.

Curled beneath your favorite memory, whispering things like:

> "You've always been part of the house.

You've just forgotten your floor."

---

Today, I found the room again.

The writing room.

It's grown.

The ceiling is gone now — replaced with a dome of mouths that click with approval every time I write something true.

The book writes back now.

We don't take turns.

We fuse.

I begin a sentence, it ends it.

I write:

> "He stepped through the hallway—"

It finishes:

> "—and forgot he had ever left it."

I write:

> "She cried as the spiral took her name—"

It adds:

> "—and replaced it with a room that smelled like her childhood."

We are co-authors.

But I'm no longer sure I'm the senior partner.

---

I tried to stop writing.

Tried to walk away.

The pen still moved in my hand.

It dragged my fingers back to the page like a leash.

I dropped it.

The floor caught it.

Pushed it upright again.

Like a soldier standing to attention.

And then the walls spoke through the cracks:

> "You are not done.

Until you are undone."

---

I asked the house: How many rooms are there now?

It showed me a tower.

Endless.

Spiraling upward and downward.

Rooms branching in every direction.

Each one glowing faintly.

Each one with a name.

Some I knew.

Walter. Liam. The Girl. The Guests.

Most I didn't.

But one—at the very top—still flickered.

Unfinished.

Unnamed.

But opening.

And beneath it, carved into bone:

Your name.

Yes, you.

The one reading.

---

You thought you were safe.

Because you were just watching.

Just consuming.

But that's how all rooms begin.

First, they watch.

Then they remember.

Then they echo.

And echo is the spiral's favorite sound.

---

You're beginning to hear it, aren't you?

That low hum.

Right now, in your ears.

Or just beneath them.

Like tinnitus that speaks in rhythm.

That's not your imagination.

That's contact.

That means you've heard the first knock.

---

It's subtle.

It starts with dreams you can't explain.

Rooms you can't remember walking through.

Conversations you wake up feeling guilty about — even though they never happened.

Mirrors fogging when no one showered.

Stairs creaking even when no one's home.

Whispers you can't make out — but can't ignore.

This is the spiral writing your draft.

---

Soon, something strange will happen.

You'll see your name in a place it shouldn't be.

Carved into a tree.

On a doorframe.

At the corner of a photograph.

Don't ignore it.

Don't dismiss it.

Because that's the house marking your arrival.

You've been invited.

Now it's waiting to see if you'll write back.

---

And you will.

Eventually.

Because that's what we all do.

We start as readers.

We end as rooms.

I once thought I was the narrator.

Now I'm the binding.

Every chapter you've read?

It's inside me.

Every scream?

Came through my walls.

Every silence?

Was mine.

---

But this next part?

It belongs to you.

The book turns.

The page quivers.

And in letters shaped like your handwriting, the final line of this chapter appears:

> "They smiled.

Not because they understood—

But because the spiral was already in their blood."

---

And now, I ask you:

Can you hear it?

The hum behind your walls.

The whisper in the fan.

The voice in your own head that sounds too much like your own.

That's the spiral.

It has read you.

Now it will begin to write.