The Last Writer Adriane Leigh (story reading TXT) 📖

regrets stretched like shadows into the distant past. I thought then of the last writer, what had happened to her and who might be missing her. Were her last days spent inside the library walls? I made a mental note to ask Thax if he’d found anything else relating to the last writer on his late-night research trips into the stacks.

“Have a good day, Miss.” The old man waved, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Wait—I don’t have my purse but if you wait I can run up to my room to get something—”

“No, you keep it.” He was already turning away from me and heading down the path deeper into the park.

I watched his hunched shoulders walk away, my thoughts already turning back to my story and the puzzle that waited for me upstairs. I was determined to finish it and find any other clues, and then I could get back to writing my buried alive project with a new kind of energy that my walk in the park had inspired.

I made a mental note to take a walk every night if this new perspective was the result as I walked around the back of the library and came to West 40th. I flowed with the sidewalk track, smell of doughnuts and coffee and car exhaust in the air as I came around Fifth and approached the stately lion statues that stood guard at the library steps.

I grinned to myself, thinking what kind of evil must secretly lurk inside of me that I was enjoying letting terror take the wheel of my creativity with this new story, giddy anticipation filling my insides with twists as I rushed up the stairs of the main entrance. Yara really did have a way of eliciting inspiration out of her authors, that was obvious, and suddenly now I did regret not fully appreciating all the other books that’d come before me at the hold of her measured hand.

Even Yarrow, as weird as he was, played a role. The two of them together had a way of inspiring chills like I’d never encountered before, and soon enough my time here would be over and I could go back to my boring, dull life behind a computer screen.

I settled at the desk, fingers seeking out the puzzle pieces. I worked on the puzzle with focused intent, stopping only when ideas for my story entered my head. I wrote for an hour or more, then went back to the puzzle before starting the back and forth volley all over again.

My eyes ached and my head hurt, but I found I’d written more than three chapters of notes and completed nearly all of the last section of the puzzle.

I stretched, surprised to find the sun had already set between the building outside, yellow streetlights of Fifth Avenue lighting my window dimly.

My eyes washed back to the puzzle even though another walk to clear my head sounded like the only thing I needed. My body was sore and stiff, but the desire to finish the puzzle was overpowering. Before I could even slip the start of the horizon puzzle piece in place, a soft wisping sound landed on my ears.

I turned in my chair, still and waiting.

It came again, louder and more frantic this time.

I slid back, crossing the room to the closet. With each step, the wisps evolved to scratches, which evolved to near shudder-inducing sensation of nails on a chalkboard.

Or someone buried alive.

My fingers shook as I ruined the door knob on the closet, fight or flight racing through my nerves as I pulled the door wide and pushed the hanging dresses aside. The closet was empty. I dropped to my knees, hands searching the floor for evidence of movement. I slipped my hands along the door jambs, searching for anything that could have made that scraping noise.

Defeat settled like a cloud as I realized nothing was here, it’d all been in my head. Again.

“What is happening to me?”

I sank against the inside of the closet, hems of the little navy dresses wisping along the crown of my head.

I inhaled a breath, forcing the frustrated tears away as I imagined admitting to Yara that I struggled with a mental illness that left me unable to complete my time in the residence program. I let my eyelids close, sucking in a breath to settle my nervous system, when the heady scent of roses filled my senses.

I smiled, marveling at the ability of my brain to conjure relaxing scents to bring me peace when I most needed it.

I said a silent prayer for safety, thinking maybe it was time I shelved my obsession with the puzzle for now, if it was going to elicit this kind of insomnia and hallucinations. I pressed my palms to the cool wooden floorboards to push away when my eyes settled on violent slashes of the letter Z.

ZARAZARAZARAZARAZARA was scratched into the raw wood of the wall adjacent to me. Just at the edges of the door jamb, someone, or thing, had dug so viciously into the wood, small splinters had fallen on the floor.

Tears forced their way down my cheeks as I scrambled from the closet, slamming the door as I launched myself into bed. I sucked in violent breaths, willing my head to clear and the veil of reality to come back into focus.

The puzzle, the ghost, the scratches, the pointing.

Why did it feel like there was a message I wasn’t receiving?

The scared little girl awakened inside of me, the desire to tuck myself deep into the back recesses of that closet was powerful. Then I imagined the bones of all the other writers piled up in the secret space, my nightmare growing the more I gave it room to breathe. Maybe that was the message, maybe it’d been right in front of my face all along.

Maybe I was next, maybe I was meant to run.

I shoved my pillow over my head, desperate for peace. Thax was right. Sleep was the enemy.

My mind