The Readers
711 Words
Chapter 6
Ethan didn't move.
The darkness felt alive.
The message in the notebook remained burned into his mind.
He likes being noticed.
Now he knows where you live.
For several seconds, Ethan stood frozen in the middle of the apartment.
Then the lights flickered back on.
Everything looked normal.
The desk.
The notebook.
The empty room.
Yet nothing felt normal anymore.
The Smiling Man was real.
He wasn't a nightmare.
He wasn't a hallucination.
Ethan had created him.
And now he existed.
A cold knot settled in his stomach.
The Pen wasn't just changing reality.
It was releasing things into it.
The following morning, Ethan called Lena.
She arrived within an hour.
The moment she saw his face, she knew something was wrong.
"What happened?"
Ethan told her everything.
The man across the street.
The smile.
The message in the notebook.
The knock at the door.
All of it.
Lena listened quietly.
When he finished, she looked toward the notebook.
"I think we should destroy it."
Ethan laughed nervously.
"You think I haven't tried?"
He walked to the kitchen and returned with a lighter.
Placing the notebook on the table, he ignited a corner of the page.
The flame touched the paper.
For a second, it burned.
Then the fire simply died.
As if someone had blown it out.
The page remained untouched.
Not even a scorch mark.
Lena stared.
"What the hell?"
"Exactly."
Neither of them spoke after that.
Two days later, the first reader disappeared.
Ethan learned about it through social media.
A fan had posted about finishing his novel.
Hours later, her family reported her missing.
No signs of forced entry.
No signs of struggle.
She had simply vanished.
Ethan felt uneasy but tried to convince himself it wasn't connected.
Then another reader disappeared.
And another.
And another.
Within a week, six people were gone.
All of them had recently read his novel.
All of them had posted about it online.
All of them had vanished without explanation.
Fear spread quickly.
News channels picked up the story.
People began calling it a mystery.
A coincidence.
A serial kidnapper.
Anything but the truth.
Because the truth was impossible.
One evening, Ethan received an email.
The sender had no name.
No profile picture.
No subject.
Only an attachment.
His hands trembled as he opened it.
A photograph appeared on the screen.
His blood turned to ice.
The image showed the bedroom of one of the missing readers.
The room was empty.
Except for the walls.
Every inch of them was covered in black ink.
Words stretched from floor to ceiling.
Thousands of them.
Written over and over again.
The same sentence.
The same warning.
HE IS READING US.
Ethan's breathing became shallow.
He quickly closed the image.
A moment later, his phone rang.
It was Lena.
"Ethan."
Her voice sounded frightened.
"What's wrong?"
"I think someone is outside my apartment."
His heart skipped a beat.
"What do you mean?"
"I've seen him twice tonight."
The line went silent.
Then he heard her breathing.
Fast.
Uneven.
"Ethan..."
"What?"
"I think it's the man from your story."
The Smiling Man.
Ethan rushed out of his apartment.
Rain poured from the sky as he drove across the city.
The entire journey felt endless.
By the time he arrived, Lena was waiting outside.
Shaking.
Terrified.
She pointed toward the building across the street.
At first, Ethan saw nothing.
Then lightning flashed.
And there he was.
Standing perfectly still beneath a streetlamp.
Watching them.
Smiling.
The grin stretched impossibly wide across his pale face.
Neither Ethan nor Lena moved.
Neither could.
The figure slowly raised one hand.
Then pressed a finger against his lips.
As though sharing a secret.
Another flash of lightning illuminated the street.
The figure vanished.
Gone.
Without a sound.
Without a trace.
As if he had never existed.
That night, Ethan returned home and found the notebook open on his desk.
He was certain he had left it closed.
Fresh words covered the page.
Words written in black ink.
Words he had never written.
Words that made his blood run cold.
The readers belong to the story now.
A new sentence slowly appeared beneath it.
Letter by letter.
As though an invisible hand was writing.
And the story is hungry.
- Writer
