There is a peculiar stillness in certain abandoned places—not the silence of emptiness, but something else, something with texture. A silence that has learned how to be still.

It was in such a place that I found the instructions.

The house on Grenthorpe Moor was marked for demolition when I entered it, more out of professional curiosity than any belief in folklore. Its foundations had sunk a little, and its interior had the sour, chalky scent of long-standing rot. Wallpaper curled like old scabs. The wind outside moved freely across the moor, but somehow never quite reached the interior.

I found the notebook between the walls in what must once have been a child’s bedroom. The room had been stripped bare except for the closet, inside which lay a wooden box, and within that—wrapped in waxy paper—was the book.

It was old, but not ancient. Late twentieth-century by the style of the handwriting. The pages had warped with moisture. And in the margins, in slanting, urgent script, were annotations. Mostly one line, often repeated: „Do not ask about yourself. It lies.”

I took it home, and I read it often.

Not obsessively, not at first. I’ve always been drawn to ritual anthropology, to the strange symbolic logic of forgotten practices. But this one lingered in my thoughts in a way others didn’t. Perhaps because its premise was so simple—and because I, too, had a question.

I had not spoken Elise’s name aloud in several months. I had not dreamed of her in longer still. But the loss remained. We had been apart when it happened—geographically, not emotionally—and perhaps that made it worse. I wasn’t there to hold her hand. I wasn’t there to say goodbye.

Somehow the ritual offered something ordinary language could not: the illusion of answer.