The Grimoire Beneath the Blackwater

My brother-in-law, Dale, and I were after flathead catfish in the old mill pond behind Grandpa’s place in the Ozarks. We’d been out since dusk, but the fish weren’t biting, and the usual night sounds—crickets, bullfrogs, the occasional hoot of a barred owl—had an off-kilter quality, like a radio station slightly off frequency. We sat on a rusted-out dock that sagged into the tea-colored water, our lantern sputtering, the whole scene bathed in a sickly yellow glow. The woods pressed in all around, a wall of black on every side, and behind us, the old mill’s broken wheel creaked in the slow current.

We’d been chatting about nothing, then drifted to heavier topics—what happens after we die, whether there’s anything to the old ghost stories Grandpa used to tell. Dale was a skeptic, but I could tell he was on edge. That’s when the sounds started. They weren’t the usual skitters or snaps of twigs. They were like women humming, a low, warbling melody that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The hair on my arms stood up, and I caught Dale staring into the dark treeline, his jaw set. ‘You hear that?’ he whispered. I nodded, but we tried to shake it off, blamed it on a prankster or some animal.

We decided to pack it in by eleven if we had no luck. As the hour approached, the air grew heavy, thick as wet wool. The humming faded, replaced by a profound silence. At exactly eleven, a sound erupted that I’ll never shake—a growl so deep and guttural, it felt like a physical force, vibrating in my chest. My body convulsed; I sprang to my feet so fast I nearly fell into the pond. I spun around, expecting to see something, anything, but there was only the blackness. Dale was on the ground, scooting backward on his hands, his face a mask of pure terror, eyes wide and glassy. I’d never seen him like that. He pointed a trembling finger toward the old mill.

I turned to look. The mill’s waterwheel had stopped creaking. In the faint moonlight filtering through the canopy, I could make out a shape—a figure, tall and impossibly thin, standing on the edge of the pond, half-shrouded in mist. It had no discernible features, just a dark silhouette that seemed to shimmer and shift. And then, as if it sensed my gaze, it tilted its head. A voice, not a growl, but a woman’s whisper, slid through the air, right into my ear, even though the figure was yards away. ‘You shouldn’t have come.’

Dale scrambled to his feet, grabbed my arm, and pulled me toward the truck, which was parked a short distance through the brush. We ran without looking back, crashing through brambles, the whisper following us, growing louder, wrapping around us like vines. I could feel something behind us, a chill that bit into my bones. We dove into the pickup, slammed the doors, and hit the locks. The engine turned over, but headlights revealed nothing but empty forest. We peeled out, leaving the pond behind.

We didn’t speak until we were a mile down the gravel road. Dale was shaking, clutching the door handle. ‘What the hell was that?’ he finally muttered. I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. When we got back to Grandpa’s, we tried to convince ourselves it was a prank, a deer, a psychotic owl. But as we walked up the porch steps, we both stopped. There, in the dust on the hood of Dale’s truck, was a neat, handwritten message, like from a child’s penmanship: ‘Leave the book.’

Dale and I exchanged a glance of horror. We hadn’t mentioned any book. But then I remembered that Dad had once told me about an old grimoire that belonged to Grandpa’s grandfather, rumored to be hidden somewhere on the property. We’d never found it, thought it was a myth. Now, it seemed, something had mistaken us for treasure hunters. We went inside, convinced we were done with that pond, that whatever was there could stay. But as I lay in bed that night, I heard the whisper again, from just outside the window, ‘The book… bring it to me…’ And I knew, with a deep, chilling certainty, that this was only the beginning.