The Holiday Cottage Had a Guest Book With Tomorrow's Dates | Horror Story Animated

The guest book on the kitchen table was already open to tomorrow's date, and my name was already written in it. I was a freelance writer, alone at a holiday cottage for four nights in November, and the answer to that question cost me every night's sleep I've had since.

Chapters:
0:00 Your Name, Tomorrow's Date
1:58 Dry Boots in the Rain
3:46 Twelve Miles, No Garage
5:33 What He Missed
6:51 Priya Reads a Review
8:38 A Voice Says My Name
10:18 She Sounds Lovely
12:10 Dry Boots, Wrong Reason

Written and narrated by Alice Kettleby.
Original fiction — names, places and events are invented.

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The guest book on the kitchen table was already open to tomorrow's date, and my name was already written in it. I was a freelance writer, alone at a holiday cottage for four nights in November, and the answer to that question cost me every night's sleep I've had since. She handed me a key with a rabbit-foot charm, smiled a beat too long, and pointed me toward a thick leather guest book on the kitchen table. The cover was worn smooth, like something handled every single day.

A cold cup of tea sat beside it, still steaming faintly. Someone had been here minutes ago. The layout was simple enough. Front door straight into the kitchen, a narrow stair to one bedroom, a bathroom at the end of the landing. Under the stairs was a cellar door, heavy wood, no key offered.

My phone showed one bar of signal, and even that kept blinking out every few minutes. Before she left, Della pointed at the guest book and said I had to sign it. Not asked, said. I noticed the pen was already uncapped, already waiting. I signed my name and the date, Friday the 14th, and only then saw that the line above mine was already filled in.

In tomorrow's date. I made tea, came back and actually read the entry above mine. Saturday the 15th. Tomorrow's date. The handwriting was cramped, pressed hard into the paper, and it stopped mid-sentence, mid-word actually, like the pen had been knocked sideways. Then, from somewhere below the kitchen floor, I heard a low, slow scrape.

At seven that evening, Della appeared at the kitchen window without knocking. She just held up a bag of logs and pointed at the back step. I let her in. Her boots were bone dry. Then I noticed she already knew my name without me saying it. I had not introduced myself. Around eight I heard it for the first time.

A low, rhythmic scraping from somewhere beneath the kitchen floor, faint, like a wooden chair dragged slowly across stone. Then silence. Then I noticed my phone was at eleven per cent. The charger was in the car. I had not brought it inside. I flipped back through the guest book after dinner.

Six more entries, all dated in the future, each in a different handwriting, each one ending mid-sentence or with only a first name completed. The most recent future entry, ahead of all the others, was dated tomorrow: Saturday the 15th. My stomach went tight. I rang Della. She said some guests like to pre-date their checkout entry, that it was a quirk, nothing to worry about at all.

Her voice was bright and completely flat at the same time, like someone reading from a card. I almost believed her. I put the phone down and looked at the book again. I read the Saturday entry again, slowly this time. My name was in it, spelled right, and a reference to the freelance report I was there to finish.

I had told no one about that except Priya, my editor, who had made the booking on my behalf. My mouth went dry. I rang Priya. She said she only gave my name and arrival dates to the booking site, nothing else. I thought about driving back to the city, but the car had a slow puncture and the nearest garage was twelve miles away, closed until Monday.

Then I heard the scraping start again, directly below my feet. I woke at two in the morning. The cottage was quiet. The guest book was still open on the kitchen table one floor below me, turned to tomorrow's entry, and I had left it closed. I checked my phone: four per cent battery.

I plugged it in on the bedside table and pulled the duvet up. Nearly. Then the scraping came back. Not from below the kitchen this time. From the bottom of the stairs. I sat up straight. Silence dropped like something heavy. I checked the time: 2:09 a.m. The bedroom door had a lock.

I had checked it earlier. The latch was broken. It had always been broken. I came downstairs for water. The kitchen light clicked but gave nothing. I switched on my phone torch and swung it across the table. The guest book was open on a different page from the one I had left it on.

I photographed it immediately, hand shaking. I checked the photo. The torch had blown the whole page out in white glare. Nothing readable at all. I moved the phone and tried again. Three per cent battery. The screen went black before it saved. I plugged it back into the kitchen socket and just stood there.

The kitchen had felt wrong, and I could not shake it. My tea was stone cold. I'd made it at nine forty-seven. It was now eleven twenty. Fifty-three minutes I couldn't account for. I lay on the bed fully dressed, both arms flat at my sides, staring at the ceiling, listening. Saturday morning.

Grey light. I read the entry again and stopped. There was a second line I had not seen before: 2:14 a.m. and the word 'stayed'. I had no memory of that being there. I called Priya, got voicemail, and left a message trying to sound calm. Della arrived at ten without being called, said she wanted to check the heating.

She walked through the kitchen, paused at the guest book, and smoothed the open page with her palm, very slowly, the way you flatten a crease in a tablecloth. She said the book was very old. I asked to see the cellar. Della said there was nothing down there and she did not have the key.

But she had never actually told me I could not go. I tried the kitchen drawer while she watched. There was a key on a plain ring, right at the front. Priya called back just after noon. She'd checked the booking site's review history. Every single review was five stars. She read the most recent one aloud.

The dates matched my arrival exactly, posted three days before I got here. How was that possible? I had no answer. Neither did she. At four in the afternoon I found a voicemail from an unknown number. A man's voice, reading a guest book entry word for word, including the line with my name in it.

The voicemail timestamp said 2:11 a.m. I sat very still and listened to it three times. Then the scraping came again. This time it was inside the kitchen, directly under the flagstone floor. Loud enough to be unmistakable. I checked my phone: thirty-one per cent. I screenshotted the voicemail log and texted it to Priya.

Then I crossed to the drawer, took the key, and looked at the cellar door. I used the key. The cellar door swung open onto stone steps. I shone the torch down. Workbench, jam jars, and a mattress, rolled out flat on the concrete floor, with a dent in it like someone had been sleeping there.

Then, directly above me, the kitchen floorboards creaked. Once. Twice. Later, report closed, I got into bed and watched the clock without meaning to. At 2:14 a.m. the bedroom door handle turns. That is the only way I can say it. It turns all the way down, slow and deliberate, and holds there.

I do not move at all. A voice on the other side of the door says my name. Once. Quietly. No question in it, no greeting, just the word dropped flat into the silence. Then the handle releases and clicks back up and the landing goes completely still again. I call Priya's number and let it ring once, then hang up.

That was our old university signal for call me back right now, no questions. Then I cross to the corner, pick up the wooden chair, and wedge it hard under the door handle. I sit on the bed and shake. Priya calls back inside a minute. I speak quietly and calmly and tell her I need her to ring the local police non-emergency line, say a friend left a gas tap on at Harrow Fold Cottage and needs a welfare check.

I do not explain further. I do not know who is listening. Twenty minutes of silence on the landing. I do not touch the chair. I open the blurred guest book photo on my phone and stare at it again. The blown-out white has one readable edge I missed before. One word, small and neat at the margin.

It says: waited. Two uniformed officers arrive at 3:40 a.m. They search the cottage top to bottom. The cellar door is standing open. I am certain I locked it. Fresh mud on the stone steps. And directly beneath the kitchen floor drain, a small wooden stool, positioned exactly there, like it was placed on purpose.

One officer played the voicemail on speaker, the unknown-number recording, the man reading my name from the guest book, timestamped 2:11 a. m. Della listened in silence, then said she had no idea what that was. The officer looked at me and said the call might have been a prank. Might have been.

The second officer pulls me aside near the front door, away from her colleague, and tells me quietly this is the third time in two years they have responded to this address. Always a solo guest. Always the same night of the stay. They were never able to charge anyone. She says nothing more.

I put everything in my bag in four minutes. Priya had already found a 24-hour taxi firm in the nearest town. The cab came in twenty minutes and cost sixty-two pounds. I paid without hesitating. I sat in the back seat and did not look at the cottage as we pulled away. My phone was at four per cent when the taxi pulled away.

Sixty-two pounds, paid without hesitating. I did not look back. Within a week the listing was gone, no explanation, no message, no follow-up call. I kept waiting for one. It never came. That silence was its own kind of answer. A month later I find a photo I never meant to take. Table height, angled down.

The cellar door is in the corner of the frame. It is open. Della is not in shot. Someone else is. Only from the knees down. Plain boots, completely dry, standing very still on the top step. I zoom in. The boots in the cellar doorway are plain and completely dry. They match nothing Della wore.

And that is when it hits me. Back on the first night, Della's boots were dry in heavy rain, I told myself she came from somewhere sheltered. But she had been inside the cottage the entire time, not outside at all. She had never left. I still have the rabbit-foot key charm. I found it in my jacket pocket when I got home.

I do not know when she put it there. It sits in a drawer now because I am not sure what happens if I throw it away. I have not stayed anywhere alone since.