Except when I pushed on the door, it was unlocked. I opened it and looked around, turning on the light. An ornate fixture hung in the center of the room, but only one of its six bulbs was still working.

The room itself was nothing special, really—there was a bed with a dark green bedspread centered on a dull-colored rug. A dresser on one side, a small desk on the other, with a heavy-looking leather-upholstered chair and a lamp with a green glass shade.

As I looked around, I became conscious of a low, repetitive sound:

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

It wasn’t loud. It was just slowly insistent.

Then a small movement caught my eye—across the room, at one of the two windows, the shade was gently moving back and forth as though it was caught in a breeze. Every time the bottom hit the window frame, it made the sound: Thunk. Thunk.

At that point, I would have happily left and gone back to the laundry room. But it seemed rude to leave the window open—what if it rained and water got inside? So I crossed the room, lifted the shade, closed the window, and then turned to go.

With a small pop!, the last light bulb went out.

In the sudden darkness, I tripped on something hard and heavy. It crashed to the ground with a bang that seemed to reverberate through the night. I bent down and saw a metal trash can on its side. As I stood it up, I saw something caught in the bottom, in the corner where the metal pieces were joined together.

I pulled it out and stared at it in the faint moonlight. It was a single small sheet of paper—thick, expensive stationery. There was a name at the top, in fancy raised letters: LILY COPELAND. And it was completely covered in messily scrawled sentences that were so chaotically arranged I couldn’t even read what they said.

Lily? Who was Lily? Laura hadn’t mentioned her . . . She was probably someone who had lived here sixty or seventy years ago. Maybe even Laura’s grandmother or something.

I picked up the trash can and carried it over to the desk, where it seemed to belong. But I didn’t put the paper back inside—I thought Laura might find it interesting, this little message from the past. I pulled the chain on the desk lamp and set the paper down in the light to see if I could make out what it said. I lowered myself onto the leather chair and felt a flutter of excitement, thinking it might be something cool and fun.

But it wasn’t cool and fun at all.

It was kind of disturbing.

The first line of text was, The moral sense of the world is reflected in the individual soul, and only with the greatest care can we avoid the descent into the darkest and most vile tendencies of human nature.