The sun hung like a molten coin over Highway 17, bleaching the asphalt to a dull, feverish gray. Heat rippled off the road in visible waves, warping the distant pines into skeletal fingers clawing at the sky. Cicadas screamed in the scrub, their chorus relentless. A hand-painted sign, propped crookedly on a splintered sawhorse, read: WANNA BUY MY BOOKS? CHEAP! in drippy red letters that resembled dried blood.
Beside the sign stood a girl—around sixteen—leaning against a rusted pickup truck. Lila Morrow wore cutoff jeans frayed to ragged threads and a faded Nirvana t-shirt two sizes too big. Her hair, the color of burnt copper, clung to her neck in sweaty ropes. Her eyes, one blue, one brown, flicked to the empty road again. Three days. Three days without a sale. The thought gnawed at her like the hunger in her gut. The books sat in milk crates behind her, their spines cracked, titles half-scrubbed away by time. The Shivering Season. Teeth of the Hollow. How to Forget. They weren’t hers. But they had to be sold.
A black Cadillac glided to the shoulder, its chrome grille grinning. The driver emerged—a man in a cream linen suit, unblemished by sweat. His face was a study in wrongness: too-smooth skin, eyes black as oil slicks, teeth bright as surgical instruments. He moved like a marionette learning its strings, joints clicking faintly.
“Afternoon,” he said, voice syrup-thick. “Those books for sale?”
Lila straightened, forcing a smile. “Yeah. All original. Cheap.”
The man—Mr. Voss, call me Silas—traced a finger over the spines. His nail was yellow, curved like a talon. “Interesting titles. The Anatomy of Regret. Whispers Under the Floorboards.” He paused, plucking a battered paperback. “Ah. How to Bury a Secret. My favorite.”
Lila’s pulse quickened. The book's cover had shown a garden shovel yesterday, but now it depicted a child's hand emerging from the dirt.
Silas smiled wider than seemed possible. “Where’d you get these, girl?”
Lila fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. “They’re… my grandma’s. Estate sale stuff.” It was a lie. She had found them in the pickup after the accident after they had disappeared.
Silas inhaled deeply as if he could smell her fear. “Mm. They sing, don’t they? Little hunger songs. How much?”
Lila replied, “Five bucks each.”
Silas laughed, a sound like ice cracking. “Oh, no. You’ll take more than that. You’ll take what I owe.”
Silas flipped open How to Bury a Secret. The pages rustled, even though there was no wind. His grin faltered as he watched the title on the cover slither and rearrange into How to Bury Silas.
“What... is this?” he whispered, his veins bulging like worms beneath his skin.
Lila backed against the truck. They had never experienced anything like this before. “I—I don’t know! They’re just books!” she stammered.
Silas dropped the book as if it were scalding hot. It landed spine-up, its pages fanning open to reveal a handwritten name: Marissa Voss. 1998. His sister. Missing. Presumed buried.
“Who. Are. You.” His voice splintered, teeth sharpening.
Lila scrambled into the pickup, keys trembling in the ignition. The engine coughed and died. Silas loomed at the window, linen suit splitting at the seams, something glistening and chitinous writhing beneath.
Silas: (hissing through a mouthful of needles) “You can’t run, little liar. The books chose you. They’ll feed you lies until you’re empty.”
The engine roared. Tires spat gravel. In the rearview, Silas dissolved into a swarm of flies, the Cadillac gone. On the passenger seat, the book glowed faintly, its new title undeniable: How to Survive the Night.
Lila's reflection in the windshield revealed a third eye-opening, its lid sticky with tears on her forehead.
The sky bruised purple as Lila slumped into a cracked vinyl booth at the Last Chance Diner, its neon sign flickering like a dying pulse. Rain hissed against the windows, blurring the parking lot into a watercolor smear. Her reflection in the greasy glass showed the third eye on her forehead—now the size of a quarter, lid half-open, the pupil beneath milky and restless. It itched. She scratched at it, then froze when the eye blinked on its own.
The waitress, a woman with nicotine-yellow nails and a name tag reading *Darla*, slid a coffee cup toward her. “Storm’s gonna get worse,” she said, nodding at the TV above the counter. Static-fuzzed weather maps swirled red and green. “Flash flood warnings. You hitchin’ somewhere, hon?”
Lila pulled her sleeves over the faint scales creeping up her wrists. “Just… selling books.” She gestured to the milk crates by the door. The Shivering Season now reads The Shivering Child.
Darla’s smile tightened. “Ain’t seen a soul out there but truckers and crazies. You be careful.”
As she walked away, Lila cracked open *How to Survive the Night*. The pages were blank except for a single sentence, written in what looked like charcoal: *“He’ll try to burn it all down. Stop him.”*
The rain became needles as Lila sped toward a lone gas station, its fluorescent lights buzzing like angry wasps. She parked beneath the overhang, the books in their crates glistening wetly. The third eye throbbed, a hot coal embedded in her skull.
A figure emerged from the storm—a boy, no more than seventeen, wearing a soaked hoodie and Converse shoes, splashing through puddles. His face was angular, with acne scars resembling constellations. “Hey,” he called out, his voice cracking. “Are you selling those?”
Lila nodded cautiously. The boy shuffled closer, revealing the name "Noah" printed in peeling letters on his hoodie.
Noah, grinning yet nervous, asked, “Do you have anything creepy for a project?”
Lila pushed a crate forward and replied, “Depends. What kind of project?”
Noah, avoiding her gaze, answered, “Just... stuff about fire, pyromania, whatever.”
His hand brushed Teeth of the Hollow*. The cover writhed—a charred schoolhouse, flames licking the title: How to Ignite a Sin.
Noah snatched his hand back. “What the hell? That… that wasn’t like that before.”
Lila replied, her voice steady despite the churning in her stomach, “It shows what you need, not what you want.”
Noah flipped open the book, and the pages fluttered to reveal a diagram of a chemistry lab. Beakers were labeled with words like gasoline, bleach, and rage. The margins were filled with scrawled notes—Mr. K’s classroom, 3 PM, burn the records first*—in handwriting that matched Noah’s.
Noah whispered, “I didn’t... I haven’t even decided yet—”
Lila leaned in, her third eye-searing. “But you want to. The book knows.”
Noah’s pupils dilated as the gas station lights dimmed. Raindrops hissed as they hit the pavement, steam rising like phantom flames. In the puddles, his reflection appeared distorted—skin peeling, teeth bared in ecstasy.
Noah’s voice deepened, a growl beneath, “How much?”
Lila replied, “It’s not money they want.”
Noah slammed the book shut, “Then what? My soul?” He laughed, a sound like kindling snapping.
The third eye wept black fluid. Lila’s vision splintered: Noah tossed a match into a locker, screams melting into the roar of fire, the book in his backpack glowing like an ember.
Noah tossed a crumpled $20 at her feet. “Keep the change.”
Lila: (grabbing his wrist; her fingers left smudges of ash) “Don’t. It’ll *make* you do it. You think you’re in control, but—”
He wrenched free, face contorted. “You don’t know anything! They deserve it! He deserves it!”
The book pulsed in his hands. Noah’s hoodie caught an unseen breeze, rippling like a flag in a furnace.
Noah: (soft now, almost pleading) “It’s just a book. Right?”
Lila said nothing. The Cadillac’s warning echoed: They’ll feed you lies until you’re empty.
Lila counted the cash—five $20 bills, though Noah only took one book. The third eye snapped fully open, flooding her mind with visions: a hallway lined with fire alarms, Noah’s laughter ringing over sirens, and the book nestled in ash like a black heart.
In her rearview mirror, the gas station shrank into the storm. The crates in the back seat rattled. New titles bled into view: How to Drown a Guilty Man. How to Silence a Scream.
Her phone buzzed. A news alert: Local High School Evacuated Due to Gas Leak.
No accident, she thought. The eye closed, leaving a jagged scar.
The rain had stopped by the time Lila pulled onto the dirt road leading to the abandoned farmhouse. The sky overhead was a bruise, dark and swollen, the edges fraying with the last embers of daylight. In the backseat, the books shifted in their crates, their spines murmuring against each other like restless teeth.
She hadn’t picked this place. The books had.
Her third eye throbbed under a makeshift bandage, but she still felt it twitching, trying to open.
Lila killed the engine. The silence rushed in, thick and waiting. She reached for her phone. The last news alert still glowed on the lock screen:
Gas Leak at Local High School—Possible Arson?
Noah.
The book had known.
And she had let him take it.
She exhaled, gripping the wheel. “Shit.”
From the darkness of the house, something knocked.
Not from the door.
From inside.
She grabbed a book from the crate at random—The Hollow Room. The title twitched as she touched it, morphing into The House That Eats.
Of course.
“Great,” she muttered. “This is a trap.”
The books rustled in response.
She got out anyway.
Inside, the air smelled like burned wood and something older. The furniture was mostly gone, just a few rotted chairs and a mirror in the hallway, its frame curling with age.
The floorboards groaned beneath her as she stepped in.
And then—
A voice.
Small. Cracked.
“Are you the one selling?”
Lila’s breath hitched.
A boy stood in the doorway at the end of the hall. Maybe ten years old. Pale, barefoot, wearing a damp hospital gown that clung to his thin frame. His face was all sharp angles and hollow places.
But the worst part?
His eyes.
Not just his.
His third.
A milky white eye in the center of his forehead, just like hers.
Lila took a step back. “Who—”
“You have something of mine.”
His voice was wrong. Not like a child’s. Not even like something trying to sound human.
Lila swallowed. “I don’t think so.”
The boy blinked all three eyes at once.
Then the house sighed.
The walls breathed, and the floor shuddered beneath her. From the hallway mirror, a dozen pale hands pressed against the glass from the other side.
The books in the crates whispered.
Lila clenched her jaw. “What do you want?”
The boy tilted his head. The movement was slow and deliberate. A predator measures the space between its claws and its meal.
“I want my name back.”
Lila frowned. “Your—”
Then she saw it.
One of the books.
Its title shifted, bleeding black ink until it settled on:
How to Remember Him.
Her pulse spiked. She snatched the book, flipping it open. The pages were filled with names. Row after row, scrawled in the same uneven hand.
All of them crossed out.
Except for one.
—Gideon Voss.
The air crackled. The shadows at the boy’s feet thickened, stretching toward her.
Gideon.
Voss.
Silas Voss had a missing sister.
And now a dead brother.
Lila’s grip tightened on the book. “You’re his.”
Gideon’s face didn’t change. But the mirror behind him did.
It rippled like water. And in its depths, she saw—
Silas.
His real form.
Not the man in the linen suit.
But something else.
Something made of teeth and ink and hunger.
Gideon whispered, “You’re him, too.”
The house lurched.
The mirror cracked.
And all the hands inside reached for her.
The mirror burst.
Shards exploded into the hallway, glinting like frozen stars, but Lila barely had time to flinch. Because the hands—pale, writhing, too many fingers—had broken free with it.
They stretched out of the glass like drowning men clawing for air.
And they were reaching for her.
Lila staggered back, gripping the book so hard her knuckles burned.
Gideon didn’t move.
Didn’t even blink.
His third eye was wide open now, the milky pupil swirling.
“I can’t leave,” he whispered. “Not unless you finish it.”
A hand grazed her wrist.
The skin where it touched burned—like frostbite and fire at once.
Lila jerked away, her breath ragged. “Finish what?”
Gideon pointed.
The book.
She looked down.
The name—GIDEON VOSS—was shifting, like ink bleeding in the water. The last letters unraveling.
Becoming something else.
Lila shook her head. “No. I don’t write these. They—change on their own.”
The house groaned. The hands lunged.
Gideon grabbed her arm. His fingers were ice-cold. His voice wasn’t a whisper anymore—it was desperate.
“Write it, Lila.”
The hands were everywhere.
Creeping up her legs. Tugging at her shirt, her hair, her skin.
The book throbbed in her hands.
A blank space opened beneath his name. Waiting.
She didn’t have a pen. Didn’t need one.
Her fingertips moved on their own, pressing against the page, trailing black ink like blood.
And she wrote.
—Gideon Voss is dead.
The house screamed.
The floor collapsed.
The walls melted into the dark.
And Gideon—
Gideon vanished.
Like a name being erased.
Like he had never been there at all.
Lila woke up in the truck.
The farmhouse was gone.
No rubble. No sign it had ever existed.
Just an empty field, stretching to the horizon.
The book was still in her lap.
Its title had changed again:
How to Bury a Name.
Lila’s hands shook.
She stared at her reflection in the rearview mirror.
The third eye was still there.
And for the first time—
It was smiling.
The books were hungry.
Lila could hear them whispering.
Not like before—not just the rustling of old pages or the creak of cracked spines. Now they spoke. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. The milk crates in the passenger seat buzzed with voices, low and urgent, words curling like smoke in her head.
He was only the first.
There are more.
They are waiting.
Lila clenched the wheel, her pulse a slow drumbeat in her ears. She had driven for hours since leaving the field—first toward town, then away, toward nothing. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she couldn’t stop.
Because the moment she did—
The books would be chosen again.
Her phone buzzed on the dashboard.
Lila didn’t want to look.
She looked anyway.
Breaking News: Suspected Arsonist Found Dead—Noah Lancaster, 17, Dies in Fire
Lila’s breath caught.
Noah.
He had taken Teeth of the Hollow. The book that had changed into How to Ignite a Sin.
She remembered the way his hands had trembled when he’d touched it. The way his reflection had grinned back at him in the gas station puddle, lips curling too wide.
He hadn’t stood a chance.
And now he was gone.
She should’ve felt something.
Fear. Guilt. Anything.
But all she felt was the eye in her forehead, throbbing like a second heart.
The books had chosen him.
And she had let them.
The truck’s headlights carved through the dark. The road was endless.
And then—
A sign.
Hand-painted.
Just like hers.
WANNA TRADE?
The words were scrawled in black paint across a bent road sign. Beneath them, an arrow pointed toward an unlit side road that twisted into the trees.
Lila’s fingers tightened around the wheel.
The books rustled.
Go.
It’s time.
He’s waiting.
The eye on her forehead fluttered open.
And she turned onto the dirt road.
The house was waiting for her.
It was small, sagging at the edges like something long abandoned. But the porch light was on. A single, flickering glow against the night.
Lila killed the engine. Sat in the truck.
Waited.
Then—
The door opened.
And he stepped out.
Not Silas.
Not Gideon.
Someone else.
He was old. Too old. Skin stretched tight over his bones, fingers curled like dry roots. His eyes were solid black, no whites, no pupils—just darkness.
And yet—
Lila knew him.
The way you know a nightmare before it even starts.
The way you know a shadow that doesn’t belong to you.
He smiled.
"You’re late," he said.
Lila stepped out of the truck, knees stiff. "Who are you?"
The man chuckled. "You already know."
The books shivered.
The air felt thick, pressing against her skin.
Lila licked her lips. “Did you write them?”
The man sighed, shaking his head. "Nobody writes them. They happen."
He took a step forward.
Lila didn’t move.
"You fed them," he murmured. "You did good, girl. Better than most. But you’ve got a choice to make now."
Lila’s pulse ticked faster.
"What choice?"
The man pointed to the truck.
To the books.
"Keep going," he said. "Find more names. More lives. More stories. Or—"
He smiled wider.
"Take my place."
Lila’s stomach turned to ice.
The eye in her forehead twitched.
Take his place.
The words sank into her bones, heavy and final.
The books weren’t just choosing people.
They were making something.
Making her.
She looked down at her hands.
Her skin was wrong. Paler than before. A little thinner.
And her shadow—
It wasn’t hers.
The man nodded. "You see it now."
Lila’s breath shuddered.
The books rustled louder.
Choose.
Choose.
Choose.
Lila exhaled.
Stepped toward the porch.
The man nodded as if he had always known.
She reached into her back pocket.
And pulled out a book.
Not one of the ones from the truck.
One that hadn’t existed until this very moment.
The title flickered, solidifying under her fingers:
How to End a Story.
The man frowned. "What’s that?"
Lila smiled.
Opened the book.
And spoke his name.
The effect was instant.
The man shuddered, his bones collapsing inward, his mouth yawning open in a silent scream. His body flickered, unraveling like ink swirling down a drain.
He clawed at the air, but he was already gone.
The house groaned.
The books fell silent.
And Lila—
Lila stood there, breathing.
Alone.
For the first time since she had found the books, the world was quiet.
She turned and walked back to the truck.
Tossed How to End a Story into the crates.
And drove.
The next morning, a new sign stood on the side of Highway 17.
Hand-painted. Crooked.
It read:
WANNA BUY MY BOOKS?
Beneath it, a single line of small, red letters.
CHEAP.
The End
---------------------------------------------
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