The Little Black Book

Evan

Evan Brockham sat in Math’s class one day staring at the classroom wall. The deeper he stared, the more he lost connection with reality into his own world; up until he was nudged slightly in the shoulder causing him to lose balance of his head leaning on his hand. “Hey Evan, where did you go?” looking to the left of himself, Evan finds one of his closest friends; Jessica or “Jess” for short. “Huh?” Evan replies, “You know…. What planet did you gaze off to while staring at the wall?” Jess says while giving him a slight smile. “Oh right. No-where, just zoning out of reality I guess.” Evan looks back down into his book and suddenly loses interest with the excessive algebra notes he had written throughout the lesson. “How mystical of you”, someone to the right of Evan says with a snicker, Blake, the only other close friend that Evan was able to make. It’s not that he can’t make any friends, there just aren’t enough people that value trust over popularity. The bell rings and Evan packs all his books into his bag to get ready to walk home with his friends. As he steps out of the building he pulls out a school cap from his bag and places it on his head, it’s not too sunny but it’s nice for a Friday afternoon.

On their walk, Evan, Jessica and Blake have conversations about movies, music or video games, gossiping about other students and arguing whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza. After about an half an hour of walking Blake parts ways with Jess and Evan, they both waved as Blake walked up his driveway. “How is your art project going?” Jess said to not only break the silence but to keep a conversation going between them without the easy banter that Blake provided. “Yeah good, although painting the texture of the mountain is really sticking me”. They both stop by some stairs that lead down to a concrete path next to a river. “Well you know what they say, the devil is in the details” Evan focused on how Jess said “devil”, she spoke casually, but Evan suddenly felt cold. “Well, see you tomorrow” Jess said, hurrying away, “bye” Evan said, watching her walk away before going down the steps.

Evan walks this path every day and it always seems the same. He could remember every detail: The grass on the right of the path has not been cut for years but it was not too high, the smooth concrete on the path had slightly turned to gravel, the river was always going somewhere and making a low rushing water sound and to the right of the path was a connecting concrete slope. The slope was not as worn out and broken with age like the path, although it still looked old with a couple of weeds growing out between the cracks and lines in the concrete.

Kicking the occasional rock or stick that fell between his steps, Evan dragged his feet as he slowly made his way home. Evan approaches an overarching bridge that connects from the left of the path to the other side of the river, for cars to be able to cross from each side.

He entered the shade from the bridge and slightly looked to his right. There was a curious wooden box with the top pried open, the box was stuck against a rock, trying to go down stream. Evan picked up the box and shook it, letting the water quickly drip off the corners. Lifting the broken lid, he discovered a book and picked it up. It was black and had a symbol on the front cover that was unknown to him. It wasn’t very thick but it had a rough material, “crocodile skin?” Evan thought to himself as he caressed his hand against the material, it was too dark to identify the actual material. Evan noticed a symbol on the front cover of the book. It seemed familiar but he did not know where he had seen it before. Suddenly, there was a loud rustle in the bushes. Evan looked up and around him to see where the noise came from, and he saw what he thought was a terrifying demon or a monster of a man. The thing was tall, around 7-8 feet, with sharp, long fingernails almost like giant claws for hands accompanied by its long stretched out arms. The most unsettling feature of the monster was the head. The face, the eyes grave inside the skull, with tightened skin that looked like a corpse that had life milked out of it. Deep inside the shrunken eye sockets where the eyeballs would have been, were two small white dots in each socket. The bloodied smile carved onto the face, too wide for any humanoid face to have. The absence of ears or hair made it even more unsettling to look at, but the shivers down Evan’s spine came from the devilish smile with a line of sharp teeth, covered in blood.

Evan looked behind him, down at himself and then at the book to give himself some reassurance of reality. He then looked back at the bush where the monster was, and watched it move to the other side of the river under the bridge at an impossible speed, without making a single sound. Slowly the creature lifted its arm into a right-angle position and started painting the wall with its blood-soaked finger while maintaining eye contact with Evan. Evan could not move a muscle but could feel the sweat pinballs slowly drip from his forehead, more terrified with every stroke the monster painted.

Finished, Evan’s heart sunk into his stomach as he realized it was the same symbol that was on the journal. He turned to look at the monster and saw it was gone, but the symbol remained. Without hesitation Evan ran home while looking over his shoulder every so often, stumbling onto the path in his terror.

Evan decided to keep this whole thing to himself, the monster, the book, and anything else he might find after he opens the little black book. Evan sat at his desk and started working on his math assignment, but every time he would begin to write, he would find himself glancing at the bag and thinking of the book. He opened a search tab on his laptop and started researching different symbols. The more Evan read the more concerned he was that this symbol could mean something horrible. Searching and searching Evan had to confront the one thing he was holding off on searching, he swallowed his pride and typed “Demonic symbols”. So many symbols and meanings showed up and, after hours of searching he found it and he froze. Evan pulled the book out from his bag and compared the symbol to the front cover of the book to the one he found. It looked almost identical to the cover of the book. The symbol meant “Dig din” which is said to be an alchemy symbol composed of demons and angels. Seeing that monster today, Evan knew it was not an angel.

Evan, now horrified, held off from opening the book. Every time he looked at it he gave himself more anxiety. “No time like the present” Evan encouraged himself as he sat himself in front of the book, laying in the middle of his desk under a light. Swallowing hard and filling himself with determination, Evan opens the book. The first page upon opening it had itself some different language, although it didn’t look like words. It looked like a code, each symbol consisted of a right angle sometimes starting from the left and sometimes to the right, other symbols had a dot in the middle and some didn’t. The book’s pages were mostly filled with these symbols, but there was a loose piece of paper sticking out in the middle of the book. Evan held on to that page with one of his fingers and lifted the other half of the book to get to that page. The piece of paper had words in English written some deep red colour, Evan pushed away his suspicions that the ink was blood. The words made out to be:

“Write what everyone wants, is good advice,

But be prepared to pay the price”

Reading this gave Evan a cold shiver “what does it mean?” he said to himself, he kept re-reading it to then realise what this book is capable of. “What should I write” keeps going back and forth in Evan’s head thinking of what “everyone wants” and how great “the price” would be. After thinking about it he has a realisation, “what everyone really wants, what society is built upon, is money”. Evan grabs a pen and hovers his hand over the book, stopping for a second to think about whether he should go through with it or not. He placed the pen onto the paper “M-O-N-E-Y” he said as he wrote it. Evan leaned back in his chair and anxiously waited for something to happen.

After a while Evan resolved that nothing was going to happen tonight, he stood up, closed the book, and left it on the table. As he turned to switch off the light he saw a shadow in the corner of his eye, lining the walls of the room was the monster was towering over him, fresh blood dripping from his claws and onto Evan’s face. Evan gasped, trying his best not to scream while trembling backwards, the monster drew closer and snatched Evan’s wrist. Evan desperately struggled but could not escape the monster’s grip. Slowly the monster bent over, closing in on Evan’s wrist and began to open its mouth. With one big chomp and an unsettling crunch, the monster bit Evan’s index and middle fingers from his right hand. Evan let out a blood curdling scream and the monster faded back into the shadows, mocking him with the continued crunching sounds. The book suddenly went up in flames and disintegrated into ash almost instantaneously, Evan barely saw the dig din symbol engraved into his desk before he lost consciousness.

When Evan came to, he was in a hospital bed, his parents explained that they ran in to find him in his chair, his hand bleeding everywhere and his fingers nowhere to be seen. Evan raised and looked at his hand, they weren’t lying. After spending a whole day at the hospital Evan was taken home by his parents to find his friends waiting out the front to see how he was. They all went inside and the 3 friends went to Evans' room to find a box on his bed filled with two thick bundles of money. Everyone was shocked to see this, but Evan thought to himself “pay the price” he looked at his hand and it started shaking. “Good god!” exclaimed Jess “how much is it?” Blake picked up one of the bundles and saw that they were all $100 notes and counted each. “there is $20,000 here Evan, how did you get this?” Blake and Jess both looked at Evan “ok you guys are not going to believe me” Evan said while holding his right hand and looking at the symbol for the last time on his desk as it slowly faded away.