Green Notes

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. You could see it, just faintly from your porch. Just across the lake tucked neatly behind the trees, sat the old structure that had become the thing of urban legends. It was cute enough, rustic as some might call it, but in the year since you moved here it sat dark, and empty. The kids in the town told everyone who would listen about the haunted little cabin, and all the missing people. But the adults laughed, most people who rented secluded cabins in the woods, had a habit of not announcing when they decided to move on. You certainly have no intention to, with your packed bags sitting by the door ready to leave once you turned out your own lights.

The candle wouldn't leave your mind as you turned down the dark mountain road. No one had come to inform you of new neighbors, you usually got a post card from the real-estate agent when a nearby property was rented. Sitting at the intersection looking down the road that led across the lake, it looked the same, over grown and unused. You just had to turn right and you would be on the highway in an hour, if you hurried you could cross the state line before dawn. In the end pessimism took over. After all, disappearing into the night might be normal in places like this, but disappearing after the closest house to your own burns down over night... well, that's just suspicious.

The drive was short and the plan was simple, knock on the door, check who was inside, and leave. But when you reached the porch and your foot almost went through the rotted step, a thought came again to your mind. If someone had come, where was their car? Still, you were never one to listen to that little voice in your head so you keep on. When you knocked on the old door it slid open with a groaning protest revealing the single room. peaking inside you saw, a bed in the corner, a door that presumably lead to a bath room, and a single table by the window that held one burning candle and a book.

The simple cabin was just like your own, and the dozen or so carbon copies that peppered the area around the lake. Except, it was odd. The baren walls and rotting wood were a good sign of it falling into disuse, if that wasn't enough the was a visible layer of heavy dust, as if the no one had been inside for years. The candle had most likely been lit by some of the town's children who were scared off by your headlights, it would best to blow out the candle and be on your way.

So you set across the room, leaving a single set of clear foot prints in the dust behind you. just as you leaned forward to blow out the flame, you glanced innocently at the book. It was thin, but the cover was thick leather with delicate designs and died a deep blue. It was a lovely sight to behold sparkling like it was fresh off the printing press. You picked it up looking for a title but there was nothing, reflexively you turned to the first page.

'Greetings Dear Reader,

While I do truly appreciate your desire to quest with me through this collection, I do wish you might reconsider. You see it is not that I lack faith in you, I do not doubt that you are an able companion. However, the following content contained within these few pages, while neither frightening nor overtly disturbing, still remains most completely, a set of stories that should not be read.

Ah well, I see you have no intention of heading my warning. Very well, allow me then to escort you on. Fear not I shall be with you. Now let us begin.

1

Imagine with me, if you will, a new perspective on an old story which you might just be familiar with.

You awaken one morning, as per usual for you, and prepare to go about your day. Then as you try to stand you find the oddest of things. It appears to be a clump of your hair that has fallen into your lap. You reach for your head and your hand comes away laced with endless strands of hair. You try to scream but your throat fills with dust. Your teeth fall into your outstretched hand as fingernails clink on the floorboards. Your flesh dries and cracks away from bone withering away before your eyes.

Suddenly, the ground opens beneath your feet and you plummet to the earth. Just before your eyes burn from your skull you see heaven closing to you forever. You can only go down from here.

When you stop falling you find that you are in a small dark space, but there are voices just outside. These intruders have incurred the curse, ripping you from paradise and subjecting you to either an eternity wandering the earth or Hell.

How dare they!

Rage fills you as you burst from the sarcophagi. The interlopers are young men and women, and they will be punished. In your time these would have been warriors proud and strong. These men were a shame to their families.

The women were easy, they forgot how to get out and died of starvation. No, but seriously you hunted them down. Mercilessly.

Now, you're stuck on earth, with a bunch of dead bodies. Might as well nap. I mean what are the chances someone else will enter an old pyramid. Right?

2

Imagine with me, if you will, an unsettling idea.

You drive along the road as the sunlight gleams from the horizon. You begin to climb up the mountain, and you yawn. You're so tired.

It's been days since you last slept well. You round a curve and then another, and a deep calm sets into your bones. You're on the shadow side of the mountain now and the road ahead is shrouded in darkness. As your headlights barely glimmer off the old road paint you turn away from the black void stretched out before you. Beckoning.

Each time you feel the call and each time you round the curve.

As you round the next curve you are flashed with headlights. A large truck barrels toward you, the driver either drunk or asleep. You pull hard on your wheel trying to switch lanes with the trunk and you've just made it.

Unfortunately, the road must have still been slick from the rain.

You had a split second to realize that before you burst through the guardrail and began your descent down the mountain. The sensation of falling, often interrupted by jarring collisions, was not the worst of it. That was the sound. The shattering of glass and the crunch of metal. It made one think of being in a car compactor.

By the time the car reached the bottom you were a thoroughly scrambled egg. A few bumps and bruises, maybe a broken wrist, on a whole note though, you were fine. You smile as you climb from the car you face the morning sun with optimism.

For a second there is a dark shadow cast over you and then nothing.

You died, just to let you know. You got crushed by a falling boulder.

And you round the curve.'

The nameless book was a little funny, neither frightening or disturbing as the introduction had said. Just silly little stories that ended abruptly, and in a strange way. As you turned the next page, did you even notice that you had sat down at the table?

'My Dear Reader, at this point I must protest. I beg of thee, traverse no further from this point.

Very well then, I did try.

3

Imagine with me, if you will, an unsettling question.

Are you afraid of that thing?

You know the one. It's there just out of the corner of your eye. That thing underneath you. When you're on the couch, at the pond, on the subway, or laying in bed reading stories you shouldn't. It creeps up sometimes, late at night when you're asleep.

Long bony fingers uncurl from below the bed and seem to study you. As you lay in slumber the thing below pokes and prods waiting for you to be ready.

Sometimes at night, you awake to a sound or sensation and nothing is there. I wonder when it was, that we stopped checking under the bed?

4

Imagine with me, if you will, a rather unsettling swim.

When the sirens went off on the ship you couldn't think of a worse situation to be in. No, you stood up from your five-star dinner at your leisure and strolled casually toward the lifeboats. You would have made it too. If only that fuel line hadn't caught fire. The whole ship went up. Remember?

You've been floating for three days now. Not entirely sure how you survived the explosion, you just woke up adrift on a piece of the ship.

Convenient.

On day one you thought this was the worst situation to be in. Adrift with no food or water. At least help should arrive soon.

On day two there was not a worse situation to be in. Because the sharks had started to circle you, their beady black eyes looking at you with hunger in their depths.

On the morning of day three, today, the day was looking up. The sharks were gone, and none too soon, you let your feet graze the water.

Something brushes against your toes, a tickling sensation. You look over and for a second in your dehydrated, starved, half-mad state, you see a gorgeous person. They poke their head out of the water slowly as you lift your foot. Their too-big eyes catch the sunlight and reflect...nothing.

It was the eyes that dragged you back to sanity for a moment. The delirium hallucination gone, the real creature looked at you.

What you had mistaken for hair was a fin-like protrusion. Their skin wasn't golden tan, it was sickly greenish-blue with irregular patches of brown. And the eyes, they were just empty, lifeless. Far worse than the sharks who had displayed only feral hunger this thing... This thing's humanoid face and obscenely large dead eyes only made worse the widening razor-toothed smile that split the face right in two.

Before you could react in horror and muster the meager strength it would take to pull back your dangling appendage, the creature chopped down its gleeful smile taking with it three toes as it disappeared into the inky black stretching out below you. You screamed in pure agony, ripping your dry lips open. You tasted the tinge of blood slowly growing stronger in your mouth as you huddled in fear curled into a ball, clutching your bleeding foot.

You understand now why the sharks left. You hear a splash and turn just in time to glimpse a fin dart below the surface. Then another, and again. As more time goes by more show up, and the sun is getting so very close to that horizon.

Just before the sky fades from red to black, one of them propelled itself out of the water to land on the drifting wreckage. It began to tear into your thigh ripping out a large red piece of bloodied flesh in its gaping maw

Its soulless eyes took only a moment to wash over you before it dived back into the water. For a brief second in the absolute silence of the settling splash, you thought it was over. Then without a sound, a half-dozen more rose from the deep landing on the wooden board threatening to sink it like the rest of the ship. They tore into you like ravenous monsters.

Well, I do suppose that is what they are after all. Oh don't fret, the fifteenth bite tore out your jugular, you died shortly after.

Whoever would have thought, sirens attack silently? I guess we learn something new every day, well I do at least.

Now Dear Reader I do believe it is best you cease all this.

It is far past your bedtime at this hour.

And these really are not stories one should be reading.

Good night then.

5?

You begin to prepare for bed, back in your cabin. Such strange stories anyway, who wants to read them? Just as you pull back the covers of the bed a thought pops into your head. It is a strange thought. A not-your-normal-kind-of-thoughts thought.

You did lock the door, right?

You heard it so clearly it was almost like someone whispered it in your ear. Such a weird not-really-you thought, should not be popping up like this. And yet there it is and there it stays.

Finally, you accept it. You set the blanket back down and walk to check the door you know you locked. You are so certain you locked this door, that you don't even turn the lights on. You are certain you locked this door, you don't have pants on.

You are so certain you locked this door, that when you get up to it… you check the deadbolt before you test the handle.

And both are locked tight.

Just out of relief, or maybe habit, you pat the door twice before heading back to bed relaxed and tired. Not even two steps away from the door you pause to the sound of a soft *patpat* from the other side of the door.

And as you look from where you stand out the small window you se...

NO!!

This is most definitely a story you should not read!

Ahem, Dear Reader. I do believe I asked you to rest.

You shouldn't wander.

No following of strange noises.

Or investigating of odd occurrences.

Just to bed.

We wouldn't want you getting hurt before we get to the end.

Now would we...'

You wake up in your room, but not your cabin. It's your actual room in your old home. You don't remember driving back, and why would you? That book is just sitting on your nightstand. And you can’t seem to shake the feeling that you are being watched. So you get up and get a glass of water. You don't check the doors or windows, and you actively avoid looking toward the front door. With its small glass window and the who-knows-what on the other side. You move as carefully as you can not wanting to make any noise in case something else echoed it back again.

Back in your room, having ignored the strange light that was shining through the curtains in the den. You climb back into your pillows and blankets, still warm from when you left them. And just as you settle in, content to ignore the daunting feeling you hear it and you are suddenly so wide awake.

"Hello. Dear. Reader."

Before you can run you feel the blankets tighten like vice grips pulling you down into your mattress until you are engulfed in the thick memory foam top, you feel springs digging into your back and you try to scream out. Cotton fills your mouth. Your muffled shriek rings out again as you feel the springs pierce your back.

"You see, Dear Reader.

You really should not read stories that are not meant to be read."

A lights seems to appear in front of you, a bright square light, like a doorway all you need to do is get there. But the door is closing slowly. You try to pull away, to run for it but the springs dig into your back like hooks, tearing the skin, ripping the muscle, and forcing more muffled cottony screams from your lungs. You can’t move, and the light is going away. As the door closes you get a good look at it, the light from behind seems to wrap around and illuminate the side facing you. The edges of the door don’t look like a door anymore. They look like… the inside of a book cover, and on the page glued to the inside cover in swirling blue script it reads: Do not read. Turn to the inside back cover.

That is the last thing you see, a message meant for you. If only you had looked there before you began reading this book. It may not have ended so poorly for you.

Now Dear Reader,

How would you like to die in this next story?

The back page:

Warning

Hello Dear Reader and welcome to my journal of dreams. I am so glad you caught my warning note on the first page and were able to find your way here.

While I would, under normal circumstances, be thrilled to have you explore my journal, I am afraid it is no longer safe. You see, some years ago I was pestered with endless nightmares and so to relieve myself of them I trapped the source of my nightmares in this book. He is a truly vicious creature who desires only to inflict fear. While I admit he is not very good at it now, he may become better as time progresses and so I have sealed him away.

I do apologize for not being able to tour through dreams with you Dear Reader. But it is for the best that no one reads these stories, lest they be pulled into them.

Sincerely and with much regret,

N. Flamel

P.S.

Observation notes:

The creature seems to have taken full control of the book now, it has been some time since it was sealed. More interestingly, it seems to have mimicked the form of my original journal entries. It is quite fascinating, and I shall quite like to investigate the matter when I have more time. For now, I am occupied with this blasted stone. But this journal will have my full attention once I am finished. Let us hope the movers manage to get this book to my new study quickly, I do so hate having it too far away. It does so like to call people to it...that poor cleaning lady. But fear not, should you find yourself in the book, just get to a door before it gets you in a bed.

*This was originally edited for a challenge but I missed the deadline. I liked the edit so I'm still changing it.