The Pencil Marks

I remember the spring of my ninth year, when the world still felt wide and open, and the woods behind our subdivision were a kingdom of endless possibility. My friend Leo and I ruled that kingdom—or so we liked to think. We built forts from fallen branches, dammed the creek with stones, and raced our bikes along the crumbling asphalt of the old logging road. It was a golden age, one I now know was borrowed time.

It started with a book. Leo had checked out a battered volume from the school library, something about constellations and the myths behind them. He was never much for reading, but he carried it everywhere, its spine cracked and pages yellowed. One afternoon, during recess, he pulled me aside under the big oak tree and opened the book to a page near the middle. ‘Look,’ he said, his voice low and eager. I leaned in and saw the diagram of Orion, but above the hunter’s head was a word scrawled in pencil: ‘DIRE’. I’d never seen it before. ‘What does that mean?’ Leo asked. I shrugged. ‘Why is it there?’ He looked at me, his eyes wide. ‘It wasn’t there yesterday.’

That was the beginning. Over the next weeks, Leo would come to me with more words, each one appearing like a scar on the yellowed pages. ‘FURIOUS,’ ‘GLOOM,’ ‘RANCOR.’ He asked me to look them up in the dictionary, and I did, the definitions slithering into my mind like cold eels. I didn’t want to believe the book was changing, but the way Leo’s hands trembled when he showed me each new addition was convincing. And there was something else—a faint, dry smell, like dust and old paper, that seemed to cling to him.

It was late April when I slept over at Leo’s house for the first time that spring. His room was cluttered with baseball cards and action figures, but the constellation book sat on his nightstand, closed. The nightlight cast a sickly orange glow across the room. We’d been up late, whispering about the book, and Leo admitted he’d had nightmares since the first word appeared. ‘It’s like something’s writing in it,’ he said, ‘and I can’t stop it.’ I told him he was being silly. Then, I heard a soft scratching sound, like a pen moving across paper. Leo’s face went pale. ‘Did you hear that?’ he whispered. I nodded. The scratching stopped as abruptly as it started. We lay in silence, wide-eyed, until the first rays of sunlight crept through the blinds.

A month passed. The words grew more frequent and more disturbing: ‘HATE,’ ‘CORPSE,’ ‘VOID.’ The book’s pages seemed to darken, the illustrations fading into murky shapes. Leo grew thin and listless, his usual energy replaced by a haunted stillness. He started muttering the words under his breath, as if repeating them might give him power over them. But I knew it was the opposite—the words were worming their way into him. I tried to reason with him, even suggested burning the book, but he clutched it to his chest and snarled. ‘It’s mine,’ he said, his voice a gutteral rasp that didn’t sound like him.

Then, in mid-May, Leo stopped coming to school. When I called his house, his mother said he was ‘unwell.’ I decided to visit him, even though I was afraid. The walk to his house felt longer than I remembered, the trees along the street bending as if to listen. When his mother let me in, I was struck by the stillness of the house. She led me to his room, and when she opened the door, I saw Leo sitting on his bed, staring at the wall. The book was open on his lap, its pages blank. ‘Leo?’ I said. He turned to me, and his eyes were wrong—too white, the irises almost gone. ‘It’s finished,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘It’s all in here.’ He tapped his head. ‘They’re all here, and they want out.’ Then he smiled, and his teeth were stained with something dark.

I backed away, my heart hammering. His mother appeared behind me in the doorway, her face a mask of worry. ‘He’s been like this for days,’ she said, wringing her hands. I didn’t know what to say. I just ran. I ran all the way home, the image of Leo’s hollow eyes burned into my mind. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the house settle. And then I heard it again—the scratching. It was coming from my own desk. I snapped on the light and saw my notebook, open to a fresh page. On it, written in my own handwriting, were the words: ‘RUN’ and ‘BEFORE’ and ‘THE’ and ‘DARK.’

I never saw Leo again. His family moved away a week later, leaving no forwarding address. The house stood empty for months, and then children began telling stories about seeing a boy in the window, his face pressed against the glass, mouthing words that couldn’t be heard. I don’t know what became of him. But sometimes, when I’m alone, I find mysterious pencil marks on my walls, my books, even my skin. They appear overnight, spelling out new words—words that I’ve never learned. And I know, with a certainty that chills my bones, that Leo’s story isn’t over. It’s just waiting for me to finish it.