The Guestbook

An off-season confession by someone who maybe stayed too long.

Short Fiction By JTV

There was a drawing of a pinecone.
Left by someone named Claire — or at least that’s the name she wrote in the book. A pinecone, carefully sketched in soft pencil, not even shaded in. I didn’t notice it right away. The page was dated three weeks after her stay, which was odd, considering the book lived in the hallway.

Claire had stayed in early spring. The pinecones didn’t come until later.

But I didn’t think too much of it. People get their dates wrong. Time slides.

The guestbook was one of those ideas that felt clever when I bought it — faux leather, recycled pages, a little too precious for the place, if I’m honest. I left it on a shelf by the door and wrote the first entry myself:

Welcome. Feel free to leave a thought, a sketch, a truth. You’re safe here.

Too sincere? Maybe. But then again, sincerity is a type of fiction people believe in.
And I needed them to believe in it. I needed someone to believe something, otherwise I wouldn’t have opened the house to strangers.

The cabin wasn’t much. Pinewood walls, steep roof, a stove that worked best if you coaxed it like a nervous animal. But it had windows that looked like eyes, and a quiet that didn’t feel lonely. At least, not at first.

I started renting it out in the off-season. I told myself it was for the income, but it wasn’t really. It was the need to see people walk through a space I’d lived in. The need to know it wasn’t just mine.

Guests came. Some stayed two nights, some a week. Most were kind, or at least quiet. They left behind bottle caps, half-used candles, playlists I never deleted. And some of them signed the guestbook.

Usually just a thank you. A doodle. A poem fragment. Once, an angry haiku about the coffee grinder.

Then came the pattern.

The first time I noticed it, I assumed I’d turned two pages at once.
There was a sketch of a pinecone. Then three pages later: the same sketch. Same pressure on the pencil, same faint smudge in the top corner. But this one was signed “Martin.”
Then “S.”
Then “Élodie.”
All weeks apart. All pinecones. Same shape. Same hand.

It felt too intentional to be accidental.
So I flipped back further.

Page 4: a sentence scrawled in blue pen.

“I didn’t knock. It let me in anyway.”

Page 9: same sentence, identical handwriting, black ink. Different name.

Some part of me still resisted the strangeness. Maybe I’d been pranked. Maybe someone was bringing the book outside the cabin. Or maybe — and this occurred to me late one night — maybe someone was coming back under different names.

But the dates didn’t work.
Some entries were written before the person had stayed.
Some after.
One page was dated next year.
And one — just one — was signed by J.

In my handwriting.

I didn’t remember writing it.
I’d never used that pen. The sentence wasn’t mine.

“I saw myself standing in the window. I wasn’t inside.”

It was dated February 12th — four days from now.

I didn’t sleep that night.
I sat in the chair by the front door, the book open in my lap, waiting for something I couldn’t name. There was wind. There were creaks. A fox cried in the woods like something half-human. But no visitors came. Not that night.

The next morning, I tore the page out.
Burned it in the stove. Watched the signature curl.

I told myself that was the end of it.
It wasn’t.

The next guest was a woman named Anna. Early thirties, quick smile, eyes that lingered too long on the walls. She carried a leather satchel and wore perfume that reminded me of hotel lobbies and old photographs.

We barely spoke. She asked where the matches were. I told her. She thanked me, but her voice sounded like it was being thrown from a great distance.

After she left, I checked the book.
She hadn’t signed it.

But there was a new entry.
A drawing.

It wasn’t a pinecone this time.

It was a man.

Curly hair. Crooked nose. A little unshaven. Sitting in a chair, looking at the page — as if he was sketching himself sketching himself.

Underneath it, in neat print:

“He thinks he’s the only one.”

I stared at it until my eyes burned.
The face was mine.

For a while, I kept the guestbook shut. Just… shut. I let guests stay, clean up, write their little goodbyes on folded paper towels if they wanted. But I didn’t open the book.

Not until the silence became too thick again.
Not until the wind sounded too much like a whisper that knew my name.

I opened it one evening just after dark.
The pages had changed.

Not all of them — just a few. Enough to know it wasn’t memory playing games. There were now pages I’d never seen before. Pages written in voices I recognized — not from the cabin, but from my life. People I hadn’t spoken to in years. Some I hadn’t forgiven. Some I had loved.

And one, written in shaky pencil:

“I don’t think he knows what the house is.”

Another:

“He keeps feeding it.”

Another:

“Tell him not to light the match.”

I didn’t understand that one. Not then.

The storm came two days later.
Branches slammed against the siding. The power blinked, then died. I lit candles, turned off my phone, sat in the same chair I always did — the one by the window, where I could see nothing but my own reflection.

I was the only one in the cabin.
And yet.
I heard footsteps.

Light. Precise. Moving just behind the wall.

I called out. No answer.
I checked the door. Locked.

I checked the guestbook.

One new line, right across the top margin of the next blank page:

“Don’t look behind you until you’re ready to go.”

That was two weeks ago.
I haven’t had a guest since.
Not that I’ve advertised. Not that I’ve left.

I wake up now with ink on my hands.
Once, a pinecone in my pocket.

The mirror in the bathroom no longer reflects my expression — just the room behind me.

And I know — though I haven’t tested it — that if I were to walk outside, I might not find the path home.

I’m writing this now because someone will find it.
Someone always does.
It’s what the house wants.

If you’re reading this — and you’re sure you’re you — then please:
Check the guestbook.
Check the signature.

And if it says “J”
ask yourself when you wrote it.
Ask yourself what you left behind.

And most of all—
Don’t light the match.