Oh.

Johnny's heart sinks like a stone, into the deep pit of his stomach. With trembling fingers he accepts the page, terrified - what will it be? The story of his mother? The... whatever it was... encounter in the tattoo parlor storeroom? Something awful about Raymond, something that will make Seth look at him with disgusting pity for the rest of their friendship?

A story about a woman who fucked him? His descent into madness, hallucinated murder, dreams about his own gruesome death?

Something so much worse - something about the house, something that might get into Seth's head and wreck him like it did Johnny?

No. It's just a fucking piece of when he realized he'd lost his job. Missing for weeks and not knowing. Pathetic, yes. Worrying, yes. Not a real secret. Not something bad.

Still. "I wish you hadn't," he murmurs. He crumples the paper in his hand and stares at it numbly for a moment. He shouldn't be angry. Not fair to Seth. Not his fault.

"It's the book," he says, the book even though he's never mentioned it to Seth. "The book I finished. The book that almost killed me."

That ought to give him a little more of "some" idea.