Silas' Haven

If someone had told me Wickham Shore would smell like a wet ghost crawling inside my nostrils, I would’ve stayed on the bus. The scent envelopes every breath, heavy with the must of seaweed and the lingering taint of an unlucky shipwreck. Instead, I step off with Bronwyn, Duncan, and Damian, and breathe in a combination of salt, rotting kelp, and the faint chemical tang of old paint surrendering to the sea. The fog sits low, as if the sky has given up and is now squatting over the town.

Bronwyn’s short red bob is already frizzing sideways, freckles glowing like constellations across her cheeks. Her green eyes widen with delight at the sight of the shoreline, as if she’s looking at a promising patient.

“This is perfect,” she says.

I look around, the fog curling with a sea breeze that feels as heavy as a heart waiting to break. The silence is palpable, the kind you could slice with a knife. An old boat creaks in the distance, its echo haunting the shoreline.

“It’s haunted,” I say.

“Atmospheric,” she counters.

“Full of tetanus.”

“Rust is charming.”

I stare at her. Her smile grows. She’s unstoppable.

Duncan and Damian, the six-foot-two blond twins who look like someone copy-pasted Trouble, stand behind us. Damian has already unzipped his hoodie because he refuses to believe the world gets cold. Duncan is glaring at the fog like he wants to fight it.

Technically, the four of us met in college because all our parents hated us in similar frequencies: neglect, disappointment, or strategic absences. Trauma bonding is underrated.

“This place looks like a seafood restaurant that never emotionally recovered from something,” I say.

Bronwyn claps her hands. “Great! Let’s go find it.“

The Galley sits on the edge of the beach, perched above rocks like it’s avoiding paying rent directly to the ocean. Its blue paint flakes off in pieces the size of potato chips. Someone once attempted to draw a happy seahorse on the sign; now it looks like the seahorse has seen things.

Inside, the restaurant is dark, silent, and cold in a way cold shouldn’t be. Not crisp—more like old breath.

Our living space is upstairs: a single hallway, two bedrooms, a small living room, and a kitchenette that looks like it regrets ever being installed.

We moved in with:

four forks

one mattress

two idiots

I am the one who notices it first.

The smell.

Not the lemon disinfectant the previous tenants used to pretend cleaning happened. Not even the faint wet-wood undertone.

This is different—like cooked onions that were left on low heat too long, like broth cooling in an abandoned pot.

Something warm and something sad.

“Do you guys smell that?” I ask.

Damian lifts his head from flopping dramatically on the couch. “Yeah, that’s the dying couch cushions. They’ve seen horror.”

“No,” I say. “Food.”

Duncan sniffs the air. “Nitara, nothing here has been cooked since the Carter administration.”

Bronwyn tosses her duffel on the table. “Relax. The place is old. Old places smell like old things.”

I’m not convinced. But I don’t argue—yet.

We explored the upstairs. Bronwyn insists the restaurant attic might have cheap furniture or haunted treasure. I vote no. Damian votes yes. Duncan votes, “God, please don’t make me.”

The attic hatch groans when we pull it open. The air that spills down smells like dust, salt, and something sharp—like someone stored storms in here.

Bronwyn climbs first. I follow.

The attic is a cramped triangle of shadow and forgotten objects: tangled fishing nets, a broken lantern, a knocked-over coat rack that scared the souls out of us.

And the book.

It sits half-buried under a stack of soggy magazines, dead spiders, and disappointment.

It’s thick. Leatherbound. Damp around the edges. The cover is embossed with swirling shapes that might have been decorative or might have been warning signs. Hard to tell with old things.

I poke it with my foot.

“Guys?” I say. “This book smells like fear and seaweed.”

Bronwyn perks up like a raccoon encountering a shiny object. “Old. Cool. Keep it.”

“Bronwyn—those are the two worst reasons to keep anything.”

She already has it in her hands.

Duncan climbs up behind us and takes it, flipping to the first page. The handwriting is cramped, uneven, and a little desperate. “A summoning ritual!”

We all stare at him.

He shrugs. “It’s written in cursive. Only cursed things are written in cursive.”

Bronwyn grins like she wants the curse to happen.

I glare at her. “If we die, I want everyone to know it was your fault.”

We don’t summon anything.

We don’t chant anything.

We don’t even light candles.

All we do is leave the book on the table while unpacking.

The first weird thing happens that night: a sound from downstairs in the restaurant.

A small sound.

Soft.

Barely there.

Tap.

Not footsteps. More like… someone flicking the metal countertop with their nail.

Duncan freezes “Did you hear that?”

“No,” I lied.

“Yes,” he says.

Damian pokes his head out of the bathroom. “Who’s tapping Morse code at midnight?”

Bronwyn shrugs. “Probably the pipes. Old buildings like to make death threats.”

But I heard it again.

Tap-tap.

And the smell—warm onions, simmering broth.

Cooking.

A kitchen that hasn’t been touched in years is cooking.

The next day is foggy, colder than it should be. The restaurant creaks in a way that feels intentional. Damian tries to fix a cabinet hinge and drops his wrench because he hears something.

A humming.

A low, tuneless hum.

A child’s hum.

Like someone trying to remember a lullaby.

“Guys?” he whispers. “Is one of you practicing for a horror movie audition?”

We all shake our heads.

The humming continues for three full minutes.

Bronwyn pretends it’s totally fine, but she keeps glancing at the stairway to the restaurant below.

That evening, I’m cooking rice when I noticed condensation on the kitchen window.

A fogged patch.

And in the center of it—

A handprint.

Small.

Wet.

Pressed from the inside.

I drop the spoon.

Bronwyn walks in, follows my gaze, and swallows.

Damian walks in, sees it, screams a high note, and runs out.

Duncan says, “That’s definitely a ghost.”

Bronwyn says, “We don’t jump to conclusions.”

But she won’t touch the window.

I shower and step into the hallway wrapped in a towel. The lights flicker once. Twice.

Then a shadow glides across the far wall.

Not shaped like us.

Too small, too thin, too fast.

I freeze.

“Nitara?” Bronwyn calls.

I swallow, throat tight. “I think… we have a visitor.”

The day after the handprint, the restaurant feels… alive.

The wooden floorboards groan under our steps. The walls breathe faintly, expanding and contracting like they’re sighing. Every time we turn a corner, the light flickers, like the bulbs themselves are uncertain whether they want to work or vanish entirely.

I’m chopping vegetables for dinner. The knife clicks against the cutting board rhythmically. The smell of onions and garlic curls in the kitchen air, warm and homey—but not enough to calm the unease crawling over my shoulders.

Damian leans over my shoulder, frowning. “Did you just see the cupboard move?”

I glance up. The cupboard door that was closed a second ago is now slightly ajar.

“Probably the wind,” I say, though the windows are all shut tight.

“Or a ghost,” Duncan mutters from the hallway. His tone is half-sarcastic, half-serious, and I don’t know if he’s joking or not.

Bronwyn just rolls her eyes. “Stop being dramatic,” she says, though her freckled face tightens as she peers at the cupboard. I can see the tension behind her casual words.

I feel it too—the restaurant watching us, patient, waiting.

Later, Damian comes running upstairs, panicked.

“There’s a wet footprint in the hall!” he shouts.

I freeze. Our hallway has no open windows. No one’s been outside. The rain is coming down in a drizzle, but it’s still early evening.

I step closer. The footprint is small, muddy, and… wrong. It doesn’t match anyone in the apartment. It points toward the kitchen.

“Not funny,” Duncan says flatly. “Someone is in the house.”

“Yeah,” Damian agrees, “but who’s making the pot of soup when it’s three degrees outside and no one knows how to cook?”

Bronwyn snatches a flashlight from the counter. “We check. Calmly.”

I grip my own flashlight. My stomach churns. There’s a metallic scent in the air—coppery, like old coins, but sharper. My skin pricks. Someone… or something is here.

The hallway is empty. The kitchen is empty.

And then we hear it: the faintest scrape, like a pan sliding across stone.

We sit together in the living area, trying to convince ourselves it’s nothing. Damian jokes. Duncan frowns. Bronwyn mutters about “old buildings being weird.”

And then the whisper comes.

Soft, almost shy.

“Nitara…”

I jerk. “What—who said that?”

No one responds. The four of us freeze.

Damian laughs nervously. “Probably the wind. Right? Wind has a name now?”

Bronwyn tightens her grip on the book. “Don’t dismiss it. I’ve been thinking… This book isn’t just recipes. It’s… aware.”

I swallow. My throat feels dry. “Aware? Like… haunted?”

“Yeah,” she says, softly. “Like it wants something.”

And then the kitchen smells of broth. Not old broth. Fresh. Warm. But there’s no stove on. No simmering pot. Nothing but us four, standing frozen.

“Do you smell that?” I whisper.

“Yes,” Bronwyn says, voice low. Her freckled face looks serious for the first time. “It’s… cooking. I'm angry.”

Back at the apartment, the book is on the table. I hesitate, but my curiosity wins.

A page flips. Slowly. Without wind.

I catch a glimpse of a boy in the margin, drawn roughly: a pale, hollow-cheeked face, eyes too big. He seems… hungry.

The hairs on my arms stand up.

Bronwyn sees me staring. “You see him too, right?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “He’s… there.”

“And he’s not waiting for us to open the book to exist,” Bronwyn says. Her voice trembles a little, though she tries to stay composed.

The room smells of fresh bread, soup, and… something old, like soil and seaweed mixed.

Something is in the house. Watching. Waiting. Hungry.

The hauntings are small but constant. No one sleeps properly. Arguments flare:

Duncan snaps at Damian for moving things “invisible hands don’t need to touch.”

Damian yells back: “You’re being dramatic because your hair isn’t blowing in the haunted wind!”

Bronwyn lectures us both, “Stop being idiots, we have a real problem here.”

I try to meditate. My patience is running thin, my hair damp from foggy windows, smelling faintly of salt and fear.

Humor fights for its place among the tension. Damian tripping over a ghost, Duncan yelling at a cupboard, Bronwyn rolling her eyes at everyone—this is how we survive.

But at night, when the wind presses against the glass, when the lights flicker and the smell of broth fills the air… we know the real problem is still waiting.

Silas (we found out the ghost’s name from the book) is here. And he’s hungry.

The fog presses against the windows like a living thing, dragging the smell of wet seaweed and salt into the room. The air is thick; my lungs feel full of mist. I wake to a thump from the kitchen.

“Duncan?” I mumbled. “Stop eating at three a.m.”

No answer. Just the sound of fast, desperate chewing.

I creep down the hall, barefoot, each floorboard groaning under my weight. The kitchen light flickers, throwing long shadows over the counters. My stomach twists.

It isn’t Duncan.

It’s Bronwyn.

Her green eyes are gone, replaced by something black and bottomless. Tears streak her freckled cheeks. She’s shoveling cold rice into her mouth like it’s the last meal she’ll ever have.

“Bronwyn?” I whisper.

No reply. Just quiet, ragged sobs between bites. Her red bob sticks to her damp forehead. The metallic scent of blood and salt fills my nose.

I freeze. Then do the only thing that seems sane: I grab a baguette and swing.

“Ow!” she yells — in a normal voice. Then the black returns, overlaying her words:

“I am so hungry. I have always been hungry.”

Duncan bursts in with a wrench. Damian yells, “Is this… a possession?”

Bronwyn grabs a lemon and tries to eat it whole. I scream: “STOP EATING SOUR THINGS WHILE POSSESSED.”

The room smells like rice, lemon, and despair.

Over the next few nights, the pattern repeats:

One of us possessed

Always crying, always eating

Whispering the same words : “I am so hungry. I have always been hungry.”

We try everything: salt circles, sage, yelling at the fog, threats, even jazz music. Nothing works.

I lie awake, listening to the building groan. Fog coils around the windows. Somewhere below, the kitchen hums with invisible cooking.

Duncan glares at me one night. “Why is it always you who notices the weird stuff first?”

“Because I smell it before it eats you,” I reply, teeth chattering.

Bronwyn groans from the couch, hands shaking, hugging her knees. Even possessed, she somehow looks like she’s hiding in herself.

Damian tries humor. “Do ghosts burn calories?”

I throw a spoon at him.

The twins start snapping at each other under the pressure.

Bronwyn pinches the bridge of her nose. “You two are literally useless right now!”

​I sigh. My stomach twists, a mix of fear and exhaustion. We are losing control. The house feels alive, the shadows twitching, the walls breathing.

The book sits on the table like a taunt, leather creaking faintly, smelling faintly of salt and something old, like buried things no one should dig up.

One night, I couldn’t sleep. The fog presses against my window. I see a figure at the edge of the lighthouse cliff.

A boy. Pale with wide, sorrowful eyes. He’s watching us. Hungry.

I stumble backward. Bronwyn is beside me, still shivering from possession.

“He’s… there,” I whisper.

“Yes,” Bronwyn says, voice soft. “He’s not waiting for us to open the book. He’s already here.”

The kitchen smells of broth and bread again. Warm, inviting, yet terrifying. The fog presses closer.

I feel it in my bones: he’s hungry for more than food.

Days blur into nights. Sleep is a memory. Tension stretches between us like a taut rope:

Duncan refuses to touch anything remotely haunted.

Damian mocks everything to cope, but jumps at shadows.

Bronwyn tries to be in charge, but her confidence cracks.

I try to keep everyone sane, silently panicking.

We realize: Silas doesn’t just haunt us. He manipulates the environment. He cooks. He moves things. He whispers. He waits.

And he is always hungry.

By the fourth night, possession has taken a toll. Bronwyn’s sobs echo in the house, echoing ours. The twins argue. I can barely think.

I sit in the corner, listening to the faint scraping of something across the floorboards. My chest tightens. I feel his eyes on me.

“I am so hungry.”

Not from his mouth this time. Not fully. From somewhere behind the walls, the fog, the very building itself.

I shiver. Fear, compassion, exhaustion, and something resembling anger churn inside me.

We are trapped between terror and sympathy.

Bronwyn finally says, voice small but firm:

“Okay. We have to destroy the book.”

Damian cradles it like a baby. “But… but what if we need one of the recipes?”

“Damian,” I say, exasperated, “you cannot cook cursed sea witch chowders.”

He sighs like I’ve crushed his culinary soul.

We tear the book apart, page by page. Salt, ink, and paper dust cling to our hands.

Outside, the ocean swallows the pages with soft, gulping sounds. We stand there, chest heaving, listening to the tide.

We think it’s over.

We do not know that Silas is patient. He waits. He hungers.

A week later, there’s a knock at the door. I freeze, heart thudding. No one ever knocks.

A boy stands there, drenched in rain. Hair plastered to his pale forehead. Eyes too old for his face.

“Hi,” he says quietly. “My name is Fernando. People call me Nanboy. I… I found pages in the ocean, and I think they… got inside me.”

My stomach twists. The coppery, metallic smell returns. I glance at Bronwyn; she whispers, “Silas.”

His stomach growls. Loud.

We feed him. He eats and eats, still hungry.

“Why… why are you like this?” I ask finally.

His voice is small, trembling, years older than he looks:

“My grandmother fed me everything she could. But I was born cursed. I ate and ate, and still starved. I ate her time, her money, her health. When she died, I kept eating. People hated me. I died wanting food and love, and neither came.”

My throat tightened. “You weren’t evil.”

He shook his head. “I was just hungry.”

Then Bronwyn said, quietly, “Okay. Then we feed you.”

Damian whispered, “Even if it ruins us?”

Duncan nodded. “He was alone. We’re not.”

I pulled Nanboy into a hug.

A real one.

He trembled like no one had ever held him before.

“You don’t have to earn this,” I murmured. “Let us love you.”

Everything changed after that.

We cooked for him because we wanted to.

We told him awful jokes.

Damian taught him new swear words.

Duncan showed him how to fix hinges.

Bronwyn trusted him with the stirring spoon.

He laughed.

He cried.

He ate slower.

He hugged back.

One morning, I woke to silence.

Nanboy was asleep at the table. Peaceful.

And Silas was gone.

He left one message, written in flour:

Thank you for making me full.

I cried so hard I had to sit down.

The next day Damian opened a drawer and screamed.

Money. Old coins. Crumpled bills. Gold. Everywhere.

Duncan whispered, “He paid us back.”

“No,” I said. “He thanked us.”

We opened the restaurant.

We named it Silas’ Haven.

People ask what it means.

We just tell them:

“It’s named after someone who was hungry once.

He isn’t anymore.”