The Last Page

I was nineteen, a sophomore at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York, where the winter buried everything under gray snow for months. I’d always been a night person, and that February was no exception. My girlfriend, Mira, and I had taken over a corner of the old campus library’s basement, a dusty annex that smelled of mothballs and old paper. The heating ducts groaned overhead, and the fluorescent lights flickered every hour like a nervous heartbeat.

Our biology midterm loomed, and for weeks we’d been pulling all-nighters, fortifying our hideout with blankets, thermoses of tea, and instant noodles. The library closed at midnight, but the basement had a side exit that never locked, and the janitor, a stooped old man named Mr. Kovacs, would give us a knowing nod and leave us alone. We’d push together two cracked leather couches, covered in layers of our coats, and take turns sleeping while the other studied.

That particular night, it was my turn to sleep. I was bone-tired, my eyes burning from hours of memorizing mitosis diagrams. Mira was highlighting her notes when I laid down, her face a blur against the yellow lamplight. I pulled a blanket over my head and let the exhaustion pull me under.

I woke with a start, disoriented. The basement was darker, the lamps dimmed, and Mira was gone. A paper note was taped to her phone: ‘Went to get coffee. Back in 10.’ I checked the time: 3:47 AM. She’d been gone longer than ten minutes, but I wasn’t worried; the vending machines were down the hall, and sometimes she lingered.

I stretched and got up to move, pacing between the shelves. The musty air felt thick, and I noticed a book lying on the floor under a table. It wasn’t one of our textbooks. It was an old, leather-bound volume with no title on the spine. Curious, I picked it up and opened it. The pages were brittle, yellowed, and the first page had only a date: ‘February 14, 1998.’ The next page was blank, and so was the one after that.

I flipped through, expecting to find something, but all the pages were blank. There were handwritten notations in the margins in faint pencil, which I couldn’t read, but they looked like symbols I didn’t recognize. At the back, one page had a single line of text: ‘The watcher in the reading room will know your name.’ A chill ran down my spine, but I laughed it off as a prank.

Just then, I heard a faint scraping sound from the main reading room above. The library was normally silent at that hour, but this was a rhythmic, deliberate scrape, as if someone was dragging a chair across the floor. Curious and a little spooked, I decided to investigate. I left the book on the table and climbed the stairs, my heart beating faster.

The reading room was dim, lit only by the exit signs and the moon through the tall windows. At the far end, near the dark stacks, I saw a figure hunched over a long table. It was a woman in a gray dress, her back to me. She was moving something across the table, and I realized she was writing with a scratchy pen. Her hand moved in a strange, jerky motion, pausing, then starting again.

I stepped closer, my footsteps silenced by the carpet. I didn’t want to scare her, so I called out softly, ‘Hello?’

The pen stopped. The figure straightened but did not turn. I heard a voice, not from the figure, but from seemingly all around me, a whisper that seemed to crawl inside my ear: ‘Sit.’

My legs moved before my brain could object, and I found myself sitting across from her, the table between us. She was old, her face a web of wrinkles, her eyes milky white, but her hands were steady. She was writing on a notepad. She slid it across to me. The words were in the same faint pencil I’d seen in the book.

‘You have the book. The blank pages. You must write in it.’

I tried to speak, but my throat felt dry. ‘I don’t have it. I left it downstairs.’

Her milky eyes seemed to bore into me. ‘It will find you. You must write your name on the first page. If you do, you will be the watcher for a night. If you refuse, the watcher will come for you.’

I shook my head, trying to break free from the spell of that voice. ‘This is a prank. Who are you?’

She smiled, a thin, mirthless smile. ‘I was the watcher, once. Many years ago. I found the book, as you did. I wrote my name. I watched for one night. Then I passed it on. It is the way of the book. If you do not pass it on, it will not let you go.’

The lights flickered, and she was gone. I was alone in the reading room, my heart slamming against my ribs. I stumbled back to the basement, half-expecting to see Mira, but the note was still on her phone, the book still on the table.

I picked up the book, and on the first page, my name appeared in my own handwriting, though I had not written it: ‘Damien.” I dropped the book as if burned. A sound came from the far corner of the basement, a dry, rustling noise, like a thousand insects moving in unison.

I turned, and the shadows were deeper, the corners darker. From the darkness, a shape began to coalesce: a tall, thin figure, with long fingers, and a face that I could not focus on. It seemed to flicker, like a faulty film reel. It took a step toward me.

I grabbed the book, my only instinct, and it felt warmer than before. The pages were no longer blank. They were filled with names, hundreds of names, written in different hands. A few I recognized: Mr. Kovacs, the janitor. A professor who had died the year before. And at the bottom of the last page, my name, freshly inked.

I slammed the book shut and ran. I found Mira coming up the stairs with two cups of awful vending-machine coffee. She looked at me, pale, and asked if I was okay. I couldn’t speak. I forced her to take the book, to get rid of it, to throw it in the dumpster behind the library.

We did, backing away as if it were poison. We didn’t sleep that night, and we passed the biology midterm in a daze.

The next day, we went back to the dumpster. The book was gone.

For weeks, I waited for the watcher to return. It never did. But sometimes, when I study alone in the library, I catch a faint scraping sound above, and I smell mothballs and old paper. And I wonder if the book has found someone else.

Mira graduated last year, and we broke up. I told her I couldn’t explain what happened that night, but something in me changed. I started going to temples more, trying to find comfort in prayers, but now even the sacred spaces feel thin, as if something stands just behind them.

I’ve written this down because I think the book chose me for a reason. It wanted a watcher. I refused, but I never passed it on. I wonder if there is a consequence. I wonder if, someday, I’ll open a book and find my name waiting again.

But for now, I close my eyes and pretend the night didn’t happen. I pretend I’m just a normal young man, and the shadows in the corners are just shadows. But every time I see a blank book, even a new journal, I feel a tremor in my chest.

And in the deepest quiet, when the library is empty and the lights hum, I hear a whisper that isn’t mine: ‘You know what you have to do.’