The Binding
In the dusty back corner of Hollow Pines Public Library, nestled behind rows of forgotten encyclopedias, was a book no one remembered cataloging. It had no title on the spine, just cracked leather bound with a strip of iron. When Ellie, a high school senior volunteering at the library for extra credit, found it, she assumed it was a prop—part of some long-forgotten Halloween display.
Curious, she opened it.
The pages were brittle, the text handwritten in jagged, foreign symbols that seemed to pulse if she stared too long. On the first page, a line in English had been scrawled hastily:
"Speak not the name, or it shall hear."
She laughed nervously and tucked the book into her backpack. It was probably just an old prank.
That night, thunder rolled over Hollow Pines. Ellie sat at her desk, flipping through the strange book by flashlight after a power outage. Each page seemed darker than the last. Diagrams of broken-limbed figures, incantations smeared in red ink, and crude sketches of a towering shadow with hollow eyes.
She whispered a word written beneath one illustration—a string of vowels and consonants that felt wrong on her tongue.
The flashlight flickered out.
Something moved in the room.
Her bedroom mirror cracked.
Ellie screamed.
The next day, her parents dismissed it as a nightmare, but she knew better. Wherever she went, shadows clung unnaturally to corners. Her reflection no longer matched her movements. Sometimes, it smiled when she didn’t.
Desperate, Ellie returned to the library. She confronted Mrs. Winslow, the head librarian, a woman in her sixties who'd worked there for decades.
Mrs. Winslow paled at the sight of the book.
“That thing should have burned with the old wing,” she whispered. “We sealed it behind concrete in ’84. After the disappearances.”
“What is it?” Ellie demanded.
“It’s not a book. It’s a door.”
A scream pierced the library—a child’s cry echoing from the basement. But the library had no basement.
Ellie and Mrs. Winslow looked at each other. The book began vibrating in Ellie’s hands, its pages fluttering violently.
“Don’t speak to it. Don’t read from it,” the old librarian said, voice trembling. “But it’s too late, isn’t it?”
A darkness spilled from between the book’s covers like smoke, slithering across the floor. It took shape—a tall, eyeless figure with an ever-widening grin.
Mrs. Winslow stepped in front of Ellie.
“Go. Run.”
The creature opened its mouth. A void. It swallowed sound, light, time.
Mrs. Winslow vanished.
Ellie fled, the book clutched tight to her chest, unable to let go.
They found her three days later in the woods, eyes wide, whispering in that strange language. The book was gone. So was the library.
In its place was an empty lot. No rubble. No foundation. Just dead earth.
Sometimes, people still hear faint whispers when they pass the lot at night. Sometimes, they dream of a book with no name. And sometimes, they wake up with pages under their pillow… written in a language they suddenly understand.
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