You sleep.

The bunk knows your shape. The lamp on dim is a small moon. The cabin ticks, settles, plays one last pipe-vowel that you could get up and stop, and you do not, because you already proved you could.

Dawn is ordinary and beautiful, which is a sentence people skip when they are hunting ghosts. Cold wears the spruce. A jay does a rude joke of a shout from the porch. The notch smells like stove-iron and snow, not like a warning.

Priya finds you safe. She reads the sticky note on the pipe and the open notebook and the grate still locked. “Not haunted,” she says. “Still wonderful. That’s the trick people miss.”

Ellis appears at a civilized hour with toast that is not supposed to travel. “Any knockers?”

“Only us, if we rattle,” you say, if you did. “Or none. The cabin is a drum. Wind is the stick. Ice has its own band.”

You eat eggs if there are eggs. You stay out of the adit later, out of habit and respect. In the valley, before your page exists, a rumor of tommyknockers gets a head start. Priya is glad you are safe and a little sad the notebook is thin. Wonder stays. The true names have to catch up later, which is a cost.

THE END

What you learned: cabin “hauntings” are often wind in a flue, settling logs, porcupines, and a brain that hears words in noise. Safety first is right. Writing the causes down is how you keep a rumor from outrunning the truth.