Ny's Writing Blog ✍️

The forest was wrong that night.

The pines stood too still, their needles refusing to sway even as the wind groaned like something wounded. Moonlight dripped through the branches in thin white streaks, illuminating the narrow path Rowan followed deeper into the woods. His lantern flickered despite no breeze touching it.

He shouldn’t have gone looking for the old campsite.
He really shouldn’t have followed the singing.

It wasn’t a melody exactly—more like pages slowly turning, whispering to themselves.

He found the source at the base of a huge, rotted pine. Something glimmered between its gnarled roots. Rowan crouched, brushing aside the wet, spongy soil.

A book lay half-buried in the earth.

Its cover was made of some dark, leathery material that pulsed faintly, as though a heartbeat throbbed beneath it. The clasp that held it shut was twisted metal shaped like a jaw full of teeth.

When he touched it, the temperature of the clearing plummeted. The lantern hissed, its flame shrinking away.

The clasp unlocked itself with a sound like bones snapping.

Rowan’s breath trembled as the book opened—not to the first page, but to the middle, as though something was eager to show him exactly what it wanted.

The paper inside writhed subtly, and the ink bled like fresh wounds forming words before his eyes.

“READ.”

Rowan tried to back away. The roots of the pine surged up, curling around his ankles like skeletal fingers. The pages flipped violently, stopping on a page filled with jagged symbols.

Then the book screamed.

Not a human scream, but many layered together—children, men, women, something inhuman—like all the voices that had ever touched it were trapped and begging.

The lantern shattered.
Darkness swallowed him.

Rowan lost his balance and fell forward, landing with both palms on the pages.

The ink exploded upward, swirling around his hands like liquid shadow. It crawled beneath his skin, sinking in like burrowing worms.

He cried out as veins blackened, his pulse slowing, freezing, then stopping entirely.

The book showed him what it wanted.

On the pages, an illustration formed—a man standing in the woods, hands stained in darkness, eyes hollow and dead.

Then the illustration blinked.

Rowan screamed again, but his voice sounded distant—like it was coming from the page itself.

The roots tightened. His spine twisted with a sickening crunch, forcing him upright like a marionette lifted by strings of flesh. His vision darkened at the edges as something ancient and hungry slid into his hollowing body.

When his eyes opened again, they were no longer his.

The book snapped shut.
The clasp locked.
And Rowan—no longer Rowan—picked it up gently.

Behind him, a trail of dripping footprints marked where he walked, each print filled with inky black fluid.

He wandered the woods now, lanternless, whispering softly to the trees. The moonlight avoided him.

And the book whispered back, hungry for more.

**Sometimes, if you walk deep enough into those woods…

you might hear pages turning behind you.**
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