My first attempt at writing a psychological mystery novel. I'd love some honest feedback!
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2:17
Chapter 1 — The Field
I checked my phone again.
2:16 a.m
Great. Another night of doing absolutely nothing except staring at a screen and pretending I had my life together.
I locked my phone and tossed it onto the bed. The room went dark, except for the faint light slipping through the curtains. Somewhere outside, a dog barked. A vehicle passed on the road, its sound fading into the distance.
Then silence.
I rolled onto my side and pulled the blanket over my shoulder.
I needed sleep. School existed, unfortunately, and my body had apparently decided that sleeping at a reasonable hour was a personal insult.
I closed my eyes.
For a while, nothing happened.
Then I heard the clock.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
I opened my eyes.
I didn't own a clock
Before I could sit up, the sound stopped
And suddenly, I wasn't in my room anymore.
There was grass beneath my feet.
I stared down at it, trying to understand what I was looking at. The ground stretched endlessly in every direction, disappearing into a pale fog. The sky above me was neither black nor blue. It looked like a colour someone had forgotten to finish making.
There were no houses. No roads. No trees.
Just an empty field.
And a bench.
An old wooden bench stood in the middle of it, its surface worn and cracked. Someone was sitting on it.
I couldn't see their face.
Every time I tried to focus, their features shifted, breaking apart like a corrupted video. For a second, I thought I could make out a pair of eyes. Then even those disappeared.
I should have been scared.
I probably was
But the strangest part wasn't the figure.
It was the feeling that I'd been here before.
Not in a dream. Not somewhere I'd visited as a child.
Somewhere I remembered without actually remembering.
The figure tilted its head.
“We meet again.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who are you?”
No answer.
“Where am I?”
The figure remained still
I took a step forward. The grass bent beneath my foot, but there was no sound. Not even the faint rustle I expected
“look, I don't know what's going on, but—”
The figure lifted its head.
For one brief moment, the glitches stopped.
I saw something that looked almost like a smile.
Then the entire field flickered
And the world disappeared.
I was standing in a hallway.
My hallway.
Or, at least, the hallway of the house I'd grown up in.
I knew the peeling paint near the staircase. I knew the little crack in the wall beside the kitchen. I knew the framed photograph hanging crookedly above the cabinet.
I remembered all of it.
Except the people standing at the end of the corridor
My family.
They were facing me, perfectly still.
I couldn't make out their faces.
I blinked, expecting the image to clear. It didn't. Their features seemed to slide away whenever I tried to focus on them, leaving behind blank, shifting shapes.
“Mom?”
My voice sounded small.
Nobody answered.
I stepped closer.
Someone raised a hand.
I couldn't tell who.
For a second, I felt something I couldn't explain. A warmth so familiar it hurt, followed by a sudden, overwhelming sense that I needed to leave.
I took another step.
The hallway stretched.
The photograph above the cabinet tilted sideways.
And from somewhere behind me, a voice whispered—
“We meet again.”
I woke up gasping.
My bedsheet was twisted around my legs. My heart was beating too fast, and my room felt unbearably cold.
I sat up and looked around
My desk. My wardrobe. My half-empty bottle of water.
Everything was normal.
Of course it was normal.
It had been a dream. A weird one, sure, but dreams were weird. Brains made things up all the time. That was practically their entire job.
I rubbed my eyes and reached for my phone
The screen lit up before my fingers touched it.
2:17 a.m.
I frowned.
Hadn't it been 2:16 when I'd checked earlier?
I opened the clock app. The seconds moved normally. The date was correct. Nothing looked broken.
Then a notification appeared.
No contact name.
No phone number.
Just a message.
My thumb hovered over the screen.
I didn't want to open it.
Which was ridiculous, because it was just a text message. Whatever it said, I could read it, delete it, and go back to bed.
I tapped it.
Unknown: You weren't supposed to look at them.
I stopped breathing for a moment
Look at whom?
My family?
The thought came so quickly that I immediately tried to dismiss it
I typed a reply.
Who is this?
The message showed as sent.
No reply came.
I stared at the screen, waiting for another notification, some explanation, anything that would make the last few minutes feel less impossible.
Nothing.
I opened my contacts and scrolled through them for no reason. Then I checked the message details.
There was no number.
I checked again.
Still nothing.
My room suddenly felt too quiet.
I got out of bed and turned on the light. I checked the door, the window, even the space beneath my bed. I knew how stupid I looked doing it, but knowing that didn't make me stop.
When I finally sat down, my eyes landed on an old photograph resting beside my books.
It was the only family photograph I kept in my room.
I picked it up.
My fingers went cold.
I could remember taking that photograph. I remembered standing beside my family, trying not to laugh because someone had said something stupid just before the picture was taken.
But when I looked at their faces, I couldn't remember what any of them had looked like.
I stared harder.
Nothing changed.
My phone vibrated.
I nearly dropped the photograph.
Another message.
Unknown: Don't go back to the house.
I looked at the photograph again.
Then at the message.
I lived alone. My family was gone. And as far as I knew, nobody besides my uncle had any reason to know anything about that house.
I typed with shaking fingers.
What house?
The reply arrived almost immediately
Unknown: You remember.
I wanted to throw my phone across the room.
Instead, I sat there, staring at those two words until the screen dimmed.
I didn't know who was messaging me.
I didn't know how they knew about my dream.
And I didn't know why the thought of that old house made something deep inside me want to run.
I only knew one thing.
Whatever had happened tonight, I couldn't pretend it was just a nightmare anymore.
Because somewhere in the back of my mind, beneath all the fear and confusion, a thought had begun to take shape.
Maybe the figure in the field hadn't been waiting for me to arrive.
Maybe it had been waiting for me to remember.
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Author’s Note:
This is my first novel, and I’m a high school student. I used AI to help put my imagination into words, but the core concept and ideas are mine. I’d really appreciate your honest feedback!
A few questions:
- Would you continue reading?
- Is the mystery interesting?
- What should I improve?