There's a book in the Special Collections Room at Salem Hollow University.
Cataloged.
Dusty.
Unread.
No title.
No author.
No copyright page.
Just an ivory spine and a scent of something old and awake.
Students say it's blank.
Professors call it a misprint.
But a rumor grows every year…
"The book has a page you can only read if you're truly alone."
Not alone in a room.
Not alone in the building.
Not alone in the dark.
But alone without voices —
without memories attached to others,
without echoes of names in your bloodstream.
Alone like a soul left outside the body,
waiting for permission to return.
Kareem didn't believe it.
But he needed a thesis topic.
Something obscure.
Something arcane.
So he sat with the book.
Late.
In winter.
When the heating system slept and even ghosts stayed in bed.
He opened it.
Blank.
Turned a page.
Still blank.
Again.
And again.
And then—
His phone buzzed.
A message:
"You're not alone."
He looked around.
Empty room.
Empty halls.
The message had no sender.
He turned back to the book.
The page was no longer blank.
One line.
Handwritten.
Faint, like someone wrote it in a dream and forgot.
"You're almost ready."
He spoke aloud: "Ready for what?"
The ink vanished.
The next night, he came back.
Airplane mode.
No one told.
No notifications.
He sat.
Waited.
Opened the book again.
New page.
New words:
"You're not fooling me."
Then it bled.
The paper bled.
Black ink.
Shapes he couldn't understand.
Circles like whispers.
Lines like laughter.
He tried copying them.
The copy burned itself.
Each night he returned,
the book offered more…
but only after he gave something up.
One night, he couldn't remember his mother's name.
Another, he forgot his own birthday.
Then his reflection changed.
Not big changes.
Just… unfamiliar kindness in the eyes.
Or was it cruelty?
He wasn't sure.
The final page came during a thunderstorm.
Everything off.
Even his thoughts.
The page was darker than before.
This time, it didn't speak in words.
It showed him a map.
But not of any place he knew.
The map was inside him.
And the note below simply said:
"You were never reading the book.
The book was reading the silence between your thoughts."
They found the book days later.
In a different aisle.
In a different section.
And inside it?
A new page.
Still faint.
Still fading.
And a name scribbled upside down in ink that hadn't dried yet:
Kareem.