“So,” Started Kurt. “What did you want to tell me?”

I forced a nervous smile and avoided eye contact. I knew he wouldn’t be too fond of what I was about to tell him, that he would have more questions than I had answers. His expression changed when I didn’t answer right away.

“What’s up, Andrea?” Kurt asked, a shade of worry washing over his face.

"Look what Silas found at school today," I said. It came out blunt and maybe that was for the best, there wasn't much good in what our son had found. I placed the diary on the kitchen table.

Kurt scoffed, eyes going from mine to the diary, then back to mine. I could see the nervousness in his stare, and I heard it in his scoff. He shifted his stance, the way he often did when he was uncomfortable.

"What's this?" He whispered, moreso to himself. He picked up the diary and began to glance at the first page. Reading the entry to himself, his mouth moved with the processing of his mind. He skimmed through some more, I could see his eyes going from left to right as he read the contents of the diary.

"Oh my god," Kurt started. "Is this?"

I nervously nodded my head, but I knew he wasn't looking at me. I could feel my nerves tingle throughout my body from head to toe. I wrapped my hands around my arms, I could feel the goosebumps as they rose.

"Are you kidding me? This is a diary of the Shadowbrook murders..." Kurt stammered, his eyes still going over the entries. "Silas found this? How?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I'm not sure. I know he's not telling me the truth, not all of it at least. He told me Deacon gave it to him."

"Deacon? Grace and Carl's, Deacon?"

I nodded my head. Deacon was Silas's only friend and we weren't the biggest fan of him. Deacon Drake looked like a troublemaker in the making, even at the tender age of seven. And he didn't come off like the troublemaker who would pull pranks, he came off like the one who would eventually torture animals. I think the thing that bothered me the most was that when Silas said Deacon gave it to him, I believed him, I didn't even second-guess my son's answer.

"This is insane," Kurt whispered, again moreso to himself. "This is the diary of Elena Roth."

I expected Kurt's captivation, but he was starting to bother me. He hadn't taken his eyes off the diary since the opened it and he seemed more fascinated than bothered by what our son's weird little friend had given him.

"I mean, should we be worried? Are the Roths still alive? Is she even alive, this Elena?" I questioned.

Kurt let out a sigh, and his eyes got large. "I mean, I honestly have no idea. The first entry of the diary is from 1990, which means I was six. Mom was so worried about these things because it was essentially in our backyard. I was six you know? I didn't really pay attention to it...I don't think I wanted to. It wasn't till I got older that I heard about everything that happened."

"Kurt. Should we be worried?" I repeated.

For the first time in what felt like a decade, Kurt closed the diary. He wrapped his hands around it like a child cradling his newest toy, there was a glimmer of innocence in his eyes. He sighed. "The last entry here is November of 1998, and it just kind of ends. That’s about the time that the Roths were discovered for the murders they’d been committing for just under a decade. I forget who figured it out, but after that, the murders stopped, but none of their bodies were found.”

And that's what worried me. The fact that there was no clarification on what happened to the Roth siblings after more than twenty years. If you grew up in Valcrest Hills or Corvallis Falls, you knew of Shadowbrook Canyon, and you knew of the murders that happened there. You heard of the Roth siblings and The Gregory House. Visiting that famed house was a right of passage for most teenagers (not me though, it was too far and I was far too scared).

"Did Silas say how Deacon found this?" Kurt asked. His words were directed at me, but his eyes were back on the contents of the diary.

"He didn't say," I replied, moreso to myself.

I couldn't recall the last time I'd seen Kurt so intrigued by something. When Silas showed me the diary I read the first entry and it made me so uncomfortable:

It was dated 9-23-90 and in the entry, Elena talked about how her brother Vic had snagged their first "target". She talked about how they'd furnish and feed him until it was time for the hunt. She talked about how they watched him throughout the hours of the day, monitoring his change in behavior. It made me extremely uncomfortable, and I wondered how much Silas had read. I asked him and he said he didn't read anything...which I knew was a lie.

I skimmed through the contents but didn't get too in-depth, I refused to. From what I saw, as the years went by Elena's writings became more sporadic, she went from cursive to jagged lettering, and to me, she came off as someone who became more and more unstable. I read an entry toward the end and the detail she went into chilled me to my very core, that's when I closed it and threw it in a drawer until Kurt came home. I didn't want that thing in my house, I didn't want it anywhere near my son.

-----------------------

That night I had a dream of Kurt reading the diary in our room. I woke up to find him sitting on his side of the bed with his back to me. He was mumbling something to himself and I couldn't make out what he was saying. I maneuvered myself to see what he was doing, peering over his shoulder to see the diary in his hands. He was sitting there in the dark and reading it to himself.

"Babe...what are you doing? Are you really reading that diary in the dark?"

He didn't reply, he just continued to read to himself, he didn't even seem aware of the fact that I was awake.

"Kurt, can you leave that downstairs it creeps me out."

No reaction.

-----------------------

I remembered the dream in vivid detail the following morning, it didn't feel like a dream. It felt as though I'd woken up and found my husband reading that diary in the darkness of our bedroom. At breakfast, as Silas was getting ready for school, I asked him about it.

"Did you take the diary to our room last night? Did you read it at all?"

Kurt's eyes widened as he put a piece of bacon in his mouth, "No? Thought you said it creeped you out. I read it a little bit in my study and came to bed...why?"

I shrugged my shoulders and took a sip of my coffee, "It's nothing, just me being stupid."

He smiled and laughed, the same combination that I'd fallen in love with. He finished his eggs with a forkful, downed his coffee, and kissed me on the cheek. He told me that there was nothing to worry about and left for work.

It was around lunchtime that something clicked with me, something clicked so viciously that I almost threw up. I never told Kurt that the diary made me uncomfortable, not coherently at least. The only time that I told him that was in my supposed dream.

I didn't want that diary in the house and I knew that if I kept it there it could potentially harm my family. I pushed myself from my work desk and made my way on shaky legs to Kurt's study. I couldn't see the diary on his desk, even after sifting through his countless papers and books. I checked every drawer, shuffled through every cabinet, and couldn't find a thing. Kurt had taken the diary with him to work.

I decided to wait for Kurt to come home to confront him about the diary. Ask him truthfully about it and let him know that it made me uncomfortable and that I didn't want it in the house. Silas and I waited and waited, to the point where we had to have dinner without him. I tried his cell to find it was turned off and that's when I got worried. I tried his office around 7:30 and they said that he'd left hours ago. I asked how he seemed and the receptionist said he seemed relatively normal. At 9 pm, just after I'd put Silas to bed, we got a knock on the door. I could see the red and blue lights through the family room windows and that's when I knew Kurt was dead.

At around 8 pm, Kurt drove his car onto the train tracks on Hillcrest street. The train tracks were just a few miles from his office, and about a block from Silas's daycare. Officer Harmon told me that the bystanders tried to get him out of the car, screaming for him to move his vehicle, but all he did was sit there a read what looked like a little black book. A few people tried to make their way onto the tracks to pull my husband from his car, but the train was too close. The train couldn't stop on time and it collided with Kurt's car, it exploded on impact and spiraled out onto Hillcrest. It's a miracle that no one else on the street was killed, and the passengers on the train suffered only minor injuries.

Kurt's car was destroyed, and his body was unrecognizable. Harmon said the only thing not damaged in the explosion was the small black book he was reading, they found it in a pile of glass next to his car. It was the diary, that cursed Diary of Elena Roth.

That's what killed my husband.