Happy Halloween

Today is the day! It's Halloween and in the spirit of this spooktacular holiday I'm going to post the beginning of a scary story. Let me know if its worth finishing in the comments.

Living Words

Once upon a time... that's how stories are supposed to start. My grandmother died before I was born, but even so, she left me a book. A monstrous, red book; covered with gold ornamental designs. It also had a thick, brown, leather belt tightened around it, keeping it shut. My mother gave me the book on my 18th birthday saying that I needed to be very careful with it and never leave it open. I always thought it was because the book was fragile and she was afraid the pages would get damaged or something. It wouldn't be until years later that I found out, I was wrong.
"Ow! Son of a-" I exclaimed, rubbing my head and reaching down to pick up the dusty, old book that had clobbered me. I remember this book, I thought, carefully moving my fingers across the red and gold cover. It had been in my closet for 4 years collecting dust. I never even opened it remembering how my mother warned me to be very careful. The thick belt tightly binding it had worn over its time in solitude and looked as if it was about to snap. No better time to look at it then when cleaning, I thought, as I tried to unbuckle the belt that seemed to disintegrate in my hand from age and poor care. Why would the book need a belt around it anyway? I brushed off the crumbled leather and opened to the middle of the book. The pages were worn and looked almost burnt around the edges. Even so, the page I had opened to had an intricate drawing of a building that was on fire. The picture seemed to be perfect and untouched by the years. I could see the fear in the faces of the people trapped in windows, and the tears that rolled down one child's face as he watched a woman jump from a second story window. A wave of heat and fear washed over my entire body; I felt heat radiating from the pages the longer I looked at the picture. It was almost as if I was in some kind of trance.
"Hey," my roommate said, breaking me free of book's grip, "what are you doing?"
"Nothing," I answered, "I just found this old book in my closet and started looking through it."
"Oh, what's it called?" the book didn't have a title. There were no words on the outside of it and flipping through it, the inside was nonsensical words and phrases accompanied by more intricate photos and drawings.
"Doesn't say. Doesn't say who wrote it either. Seems like a three year old did though, listen to this: The books are the earth, the words are alive and we are mere specks in the blink of an eye," I read, the entire book is full of these kinds of phrases. The picture that was on that same page was an eye that had been filled in black. Looking at it, I felt as if I was falling into it.
"That's... weird," my roommate said, "me and a couple guys are going bar-hopping; you in?"
"Hell yeah," I said laying the book on the floor and quickly changing my clothes. It was around 2:30a.m. when we got back to the apartment and something seemed… off. There was a smell that I couldn’t quite recognize and the entire place seemed darker. It’s just the alcohol, I thought as I went into my room. The book still laying on the floor where I left it, but it was turned to a different page. There was no picture just writing reading, “the words speak, the words breathe, the words are alive, the words are living” over and over again, filling the entire spread. My skin began to crawl reading the words and I quickly shut the book, slid it under my bed where I didn’t have to look at it, and went to sleep.

I was jerked awake around 5a.m. by something that smelled of burning flesh and a sound similar to the whispers and hums of fire as it eats away dry grass. This has to be a dream, I thought as I stared into the endless, black eyes of a charred… thing, looming over me. It wasn’t a human, its eyes were twice the size of a human’s, and its arms were almost down to its knees. Head cocked to one side, it stared into my soul. Its mouth began to open; it was huge, taking up more than half its face and exposing burning organs. I heard screams come from deep in its throat. A sparking claw-like hand reached out and grabbed my arm. I screamed, the creature’s hold on me broke as I jerked away.

Suddenly, my roommate bursts in turning on the light, making the thing flee. “What is it!?” she yelled, swinging a baseball bat around like a maniac. “Why’d you scream?” I froze, all I could think about were those black, soulless, never ending eyes. “What the hell!?” she exclaimed lifting my burned arm. I couldn’t speak, all I could do was stare at my melted flesh, and try to piece together what had just happened...