CHAPTER 12: THE GHOSTWRITER. The Horror Thriller Web Novel - IT’S ME, MOM—LET ME IN by Abrar Nayeem Chowdhury

The chapter title hit like a mallet to the skull.

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE GHOSTWRITER

And everything else just...
stopped.

No wind. No whisper. No movement in the breathing walls of the Book’s world.
Just silence — thick as blood, waiting to clot.

Stuart froze mid-step, ink dripping from his eyes like forgotten dialogue.

Debra’s mouth hung open, her tongue mid-word, trembling like a cursor.

Daniel stood still, smiling, but his eyes were empty. Not blind — blank.
As if someone had hit the backspace key behind his pupils.

And the Blanky Man?
He didn't vanish.
He bowed.

As if someone far above had just returned.

 

“You felt it, didn’t you?” said a voice that wasn’t quite yours.

It echoed from the sky, or maybe beneath your ribs — impossible to place.

“Felt what?” you asked, your voice smaller than ever.

“The click. The shift. The moment the narrative snapped.”

The ground beneath your feet changed texture.

No longer parchment.
Not even paper.

Now it felt like...
skin.

Your own.

And it was written on.

You looked down and saw lines moving up your calves, across your chest, like ink tracking up through your veins. Paragraphs began scrolling across your torso, your arms, your throat.

He stepped into the void, forgetting he was fiction, pretending he had power.

You screamed.

And the story kept writing.

In the distance, the Book shivered.

It opened.

No hands turned it.

It simply wanted to be open.

And that’s when you saw it — through the tear in the fabric of this place:

A desk.

A room.

Ordinary.

Almost too ordinary.
A mug half-full. Cold coffee.
Sticky notes scattered across the wall with half-formed plot points.

“What is that?” you whispered.

“That,” said the voice, “is where you came from.”

You stepped closer.

The tear widened.

Now you could see it fully: a laptop glowing. A blinking cursor.
And fingers. Human.
Typing.

And on the screen — this chapter.

Word for word.

“I’m not the writer?” you asked.

“No,” said the voice. “You’re the written.”

The world tilted.

The Inkborns screamed behind you — not in hunger, but in fear.

The monsters of the Book knew what this meant.
A character realizing the truth could unravel the entire structure.
And the Book had no control over that.

“I thought I was choosing,” you whispered.

“You thought wrong,” the voice said gently. “You’re a safety mechanism. A narrator failsafe.”

“So why am I still here?”

“Because I never deleted you.”

“Why not?”

A pause.

“Because you were the part of me I was too scared to let go.”

You looked down again.

The words kept writing themselves on your body — but slower now.
More... hesitant.

One line appeared across your forearm like a knife-wound:

“This is the chapter where he chooses.”

Then the voice offered a choice.

Not a metaphor.

Not a literary device.

A real, awful, soul-splitting choice.

“You can finish the Book,” it said. “Become its final page. Shut it forever.”

“Or?”

“Or you can stay unwritten. Half-open. Undefined. Forgotten... but free.”

In the distance, the Blanky Man stepped back.

Not retreating.

Respecting.

He knew this part was no longer his.

This was your ending.

Or your refusal to have one.

The page beneath you split into two glowing paths:

• One path pulsed with red ink, curled and bleeding at the edges:
  FINISH THE BOOK. CLOSE THE STORY. BE THE END.

• The other path blinked in erratic ellipses:
  REFUSE THE ENDING. LIVE UNFINISHED. LET THE INK BURN OUT.

You looked at your hands.

They weren’t yours anymore.

They were font.

They were layout.

They were storyline.

“So what’ll it be?” the voice asked, closer now, right behind your eyes.

“Do you want to be a character...”

“Or the author who never finished what they started?”

To Be Continued.... 

 

Chapter 11: https://storylinespectrum.blogspot.com/2025/04/chapter-11-co-author-horror-thriller.html