Page 4 Novels & Stories

No kitchen sounds yet. I went to the kitchen to make tea. There was a book on the counter. Not one of his. His books lived on the shelves in the sitting room. This one was sitting alone beside the kettle with a small folded paper on top of it. I picked up the paper. Three words in his handwriting. Chapter four. Page 89. I opened the book. Chapter four. Page 89. A section on qualitative measurement frameworks in behavioural research. Dense and specific and exactly relevant to the question my supervisor had been pressing me about for two weeks.

He pointed at me. “Well, little lamb is out, that leaves only number 4. Now it is time to pick what they'd do for you.” “Fuck…”

I close the page, return back there again and retry, end up on nothing again. I spin it fifteen more times with no luck. It is either rigged or I just have no luck. Sighing, I drop the phone, hoping both of them are safe.

______________________________________________________________________________________________ Poor Gia, Don't you guys think so? How's chapter 4? I hope you guys like it Don't forget to Vote Comments Share ***** Much love from me Little Munchkin

This was it—the answers she had been looking for. She only had to flip to page five hundred and thirty-nine, and she would get her answers. Her fingers shook as she flipped through the pages, reciting the page number like a mantra. Her heartbeat was increasing with every breath she took. Until she got to the page…

she said quietly, “you should probably read all of it before you decide who you can trust.” I watched her walk away. Then I pulled the ledger from beneath my jacket. I opened it again. The page I’d found earlier was there. MERRYN VALE — CONTAINMENT. I turned the next page. Nothing. I turned to another. Still nothing. Then I noticed the numbering. Page forty-eight. Page forty-nine. Page fifty-one. I frowned. I flipped backward. Forty-nine. Then fifty-one. Page fifty was missing. I ran my thumb over the torn edge. The paper had been ripped out recently.

And the site is doing something no record has ever been written to describe. Copy that and come back for Chapter Forty Eight at exactly 2000 words!​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

_*]:min-w-0 gap-3"> The fourth ledger was different from the first three. _*]:min-w-0 gap-3"> Not in construction — it was the same size, the same binding, the same pages. Different in what it was for, which she understood on the first morning she opened it in the twenty-fourth year and sat looking at the first blank page and understood that the first three ledgers had been the building and the fourth ledger was the tending.

Assisi, Umbria (Italy) (1790) Caitlin Paine awoke slowly, completely enveloped in the blackness. She tried to open her eyes, to get her bearings on where she was, but it didn’t do any good. She went to move her hands, her arms—but that didn’t work, either. She felt covered, immersed in a soft texture, and she couldn’t figure out what it was. It was heavy, weighing her down, and with each passing moment, it seemed to get heavier.

All four of them go rigid at once, wolves rising just beneath their skin, and Riven is already moving toward the doorway when a folded scrap of parchment slides across the floor from the dark beyond it, stopping at my bare feet like it was aimed there on purpose. No one steps through the doorway to claim it. Whoever left it is already gone. My hands are shaking as I unfold it. Four words, written in ink the color of dried blood. Choose one, or lose all.