She Checked into an Airbnb to Heal After a Breakup – but Scratches in the Closet Floor Hinted at a Terrible Secret

After a painful breakup, Callie rents a cozy Airbnb cottage to find some peace. But when she discovers deep scratches on the closet floor and strange entries in a guest journal, her quiet retreat turns tense. The sweet host brushes it all off, but someone is watching — someone who knows the truth.

The key turned with a soft click. She stepped inside on cautious feet, dragging behind her a suitcase with one broken wheel and something heavier: a silence that didn't start here.

I watched her glance around, taking in the floral curtains and brass wall sconces.

She lifted the embroidered scatter cushion on the couch, frowned at the heart stitched onto it, and set it down with the needlework facing the sofa cushions, hidden from view.

That was the first time I felt her sadness. It wasn't loud or sharp, just the soft seep of a wound no one could see — like Margot's.

She opened the fridge next, nodded at the neat row of glass bottles and soft cheese.

"This'll do," she murmured aloud, but I heard the part she left unspoken: for now.

She turned around, taking the cottage in once more, and exhaled deeply into the stillness. I caught the shape of her breath and held it. I had been alone for so long.

Her name was Callie. I learned this from the way she whispered it into her phone.

"Hi, it's Callie. Again. Please pick up." Silence. "Come on, Rick. I just want to talk…"

She tried again an hour later.

"Four years, Rick. Four years together and you can't even explain to me?" A pause. "Don't I deserve that much?"

I had felt this before... the weight of words unsaid, the ache of reaching toward something that wouldn't reach back.

She opened the closet to tuck her suitcase away, and I flinched.

No. Not yet. Don't see that part of me yet!

But it was too late.

"What the hell?" she whispered, crouching down to stare at the hardwood floor.

She reached out, running her fingers over the old scratches carved into the wood, spreading her fingers to line up with the marks. She tilted her head and leaned in close to peer at the bleach stains.

But then she rose, set her suitcase in the closet, and shut the door.

That night, she found the guest book. It had slipped under the Gideon Bible in the nightstand, as if trying to hide. She sat on the chair and read.

"Such a peaceful place."

"Loved the little butter cookies she left. So sweet."

If only all the remarks were so pleasant.

I knew when she'd gotten to the others by the way her brow furrowed.

"I feel like I'm being watched."

"Weird whispers at night. I think the place is haunted."

The final entry ended with a scrawl: "I keep—"

That was all.

I felt her unease, her spine stiffening, her fingers tracing the edge of the page like it might cut her.

Callie closed the book and set it aside. She didn't sleep well. I could feel her restlessness seeping into my walls, the way she turned and turned, searching for a position that didn't exist.

At 3 a.m., she sat up and dialed her phone again.

"I know you're probably asleep," she whispered into the darkness. "But I need to know why. I need to know what you meant about me needing space, and what's so important about knowing who I am without you? What does that matter when we were planning forever, Rick?"

She set the phone on the nightstand, hugged the pillow, and wept.

She sat on the little porch the next morning, phone to her ear, one leg curled beneath her like a cat unsure if it should settle.

"It's not like I'm asking to come back," she said into the speaker. "I just… I want to understand."

Her voice broke softly on the word "understand."

"I keep thinking about that fight. The one where you said I was suffocating you. I didn't mean to. I was just scared. I'm always scared of losing people."

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I love people like I'm already losing them."

The call ended.

She sat in the morning sun, shoulders curved inward like parentheses around her grief.

I had heard these words before. Not the exact words, but the shape of them. Margot had said something similar to her mother, back when they still spoke, back when Mrs. Hennessey would bring tea and try to coax her daughter back to life.

"I love you like you're already gone," Margot had said. "Like you're already disappointed in me."

Mrs. Hennessey had reached for her then, but Margot had flinched away.

"Don't," she had whispered. "Don't touch me like you're trying to fix me."

The memory sat heavy in my walls.

My reflection was interrupted by footsteps on gravel.

It was her. She carried cookies in a white tin and smiled so sweetly, you might think she was a good person.

"Settling in alright?" she asked. "It's a charming little place, isn't it?"

Callie hesitated. "Yeah, actually. It is. There's, um… some scratches on the closet floor, though."

"Oh, that'd be from a foster dog I had years ago," she lied. "Big scaredy-cat. He used to hide in there during storms."

"And the guest book? There are some… strange remarks."

She waved a hand. "People like to scare themselves in cottages like this. Ghost stories and wine."

Ghost stories? Was that all Margot deserved?

"If you need anything, just knock," she said as she handed over the cookie tin.

She glanced back over her shoulder as she walked away. If Callie had been looking, she would've seen Mrs. Hennessy's true nature in the way she narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips.

Mrs. Hennessey had been lying for 20 years. To the guests, to the neighbors, to anyone who asked about her daughter.

Evening settled. The crickets sang their thin chorus outside, and inside, Callie pulled the stool beneath the vent.

She'd already fiddled with the thermostat twice, folded a takeout menu into a fan, and waved it half-heartedly at her face. But the air still hung heavy and unmoving.

Now, she was about to uncover Mrs. Hennessy's secret.

She saw the small black camera the moment she got the vent off. The faint red light blinked.

"What the hell…" she breathed.

Panic took shape. Color drained from her cheeks. She stumbled back from the vent, phone shaking in her hand as she dialed.

"Mrs. Hennessey? I need you to come over. Right now. I-I found something."

She fled out the door.

I felt her fear echoing in my empty rooms. It tasted like metal and childhood nightmares.

The mother returned under the yellow porch light, her cardigan wrinkled, her hair askew.

"What is it?"

Callie led her inside, hands trembling.

"That." She pointed to the vent. "There's a camera in the bedroom vent. A real one."

Mrs. Hennessey looked. Her face didn't change.

"Yes," she said. Quietly. "There is."

Callie took a step back.

"It's not for you," the woman added. "It's for her. For the cottage."

I stilled then.

"Bull!" Callie exclaimed, pulling out her phone. "I'm calling the police!"

"Just hear me out, please!" Mrs. Hennessy raised her hands. "I know what it looks like, but I swear, the camera is only there in case my daughter returns."

Callie froze. I could see the curiosity in her eyes, the doubt. Mrs. Hennessy must have seen it too, because she then told Callie everything.

"My daughter, Margot, lived here after she… after she lost a baby. She wasn't well. She said this was the only place that didn't expect anything of her."

She paused.

"I tried to help her from a distance. Gave her space but brought her tea, food. I didn't want to crowd her. I thought I was being kind."

Her voice caught.

"One morning, I came with breakfast and she didn't answer. I knocked. I called. Eventually, I let myself in. Margot was in the closet... she scratched up the floor like that, not a dog. She hadn't eaten in days... everything I'd brought her was hidden in the closet, and she wasn't speaking. She looked through me like I wasn't there."

She closed her eyes, steadying her breath.

"The doctor… they said she was a danger to herself. That she needed help I couldn't give. I signed the papers. They came with white coats and soft voices and took her away screaming."

I remembered that day, the banging on the closet door and the sharp commands.

Margot's voice, cracked and hoarse: "Don't let them take me!"

Footsteps stomping over the welcome mat and a needle glinting in the sunlight. Arms flailing, and Margot's scream.

Then silence.

They carried her limp body out of here, and there was nothing I could do about it. Mrs. Hennessy watched them with no expression.

She came back every day for a week to scrub the closet floor with bleach, and there was nothing I could do about that, either; no way I could force her to leave or tell her how much I hated her for erasing Margot.

But now—

Mrs. Hennessey turned to Callie, eyes wet.

"She never forgave me. I haven't seen her in 20 years. But I… I couldn't let go. I kept the cottage ready for her and installed that camera a few years back. Not for guests, never for that. I just — if she ever came back, I wanted to see her. I wanted to know."

Callie didn't speak.

"Sometimes I feel her," Mrs. Hennessy whispered. "When it's quiet, when I can't sleep. I know what I did. I know I didn't save her. But I keep hoping that maybe she'll forgive me and come back. Maybe if I keep watching, I'll see her... just once. Even once would be enough."

I never imagined she felt that way. I had believed I was the only one who remembered, who kept Margot's grief tucked into me.

But Mrs. Hennessey had also carried Margot all these years, not in her arms, but in the air between thoughts, in her sleeplessness, her guilt.

And maybe that was a kind of haunting, too.

For 20 years, I had resented her and blamed her. I'd believed she abandoned Margot here and then erased her.

Now, I realized we had both been keeping vigil.

Callie placed her hand on Mrs. Hennessy's shoulder.

"I understand," she said quietly. "I've been calling someone who doesn't want to answer. Waiting for someone who isn't coming back. Maybe that's what ghosts are… not the dead, but the parts of us we can't let go."

Mrs. Hennessey nodded, tears flowing freely now.

"I should have fought harder for her. Should have found another way."

"Maybe," Callie said. "But you did what you thought was right. That has to count for something."

They sat in silence for a while. Three of us, really, all haunted by sorrows and regrets.

A day later, Callie called her sister and asked if she could stay there for a while. She packed her bag the same day.

On her way out, she placed the guest book on the table near the door and wrote:

"It's not the past that haunts us. It's the pieces of ourselves we leave behind. But maybe that's okay. Maybe some things are worth remembering, even if they hurt."

I felt something shift as I watched her leave. Not a letting go, exactly, but a settling; a peace.

I had spent years believing that holding on was the same as honoring and that forgetting was the same as betrayal.

But Callie was right.

Some things are worth remembering, even if they hurt. Likewise, some things are worth releasing, even if they once meant everything.

I watched her walk down the garden path, her shoulders straighter than when she had arrived.

She would be okay. Changed, but okay.

Mrs. Hennessey appeared on the pathway, watching her go.

"Take care of yourself," she called out.

Callie turned and waved. "You too."

When the car disappeared around the bend, Mrs. Hennessey came inside.

She looked around my rooms, taking inventory of what remained.

"It's just us now," she said softly.

I settled around her, my walls holding the words she couldn't say.

Yes. Just us, but maybe that was enough. I'd been alone before, but this was different. This time, I wasn't waiting.

Here's another story: My son showed up at my door in the middle of the night — his wife had kicked him out, and he had nowhere else to go. He wouldn't tell us what happened. Then a package of sewing supplies arrived for him. That's when everything started to change.

This work is inspired by real events and people, but it has been fictionalized for creative purposes. Names, characters, and details have been changed to protect privacy and enhance the narrative. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

The author and publisher make no claims to the accuracy of events or the portrayal of characters and are not liable for any misinterpretation. This story is provided "as is," and any opinions expressed are those of the characters and do not reflect the views of the author or publisher.