Scratch Marks Novels & Stories

This was humiliating and wrong and I needed to never think about it again for the rest of my life. I also needed a cold shower and maybe a lobotomy, something to scrub the memory of dream-Luca’s hands on my body and inside my body and the way I’d begged him not to stop. That’s when I saw the scratches. Deep gouges in my bedroom door, four parallel lines that definitely hadn’t been there when I went to bed. I walked over and touched them with trembling fingers, feeling the splintered wood rough under my palm. They were too high up to be from a dog, plus we don’t even have one.

At first there was nothing unusual, only the rough grooves carved naturally into the wood by years of growth and weather. Then she noticed the marks. “Oscar,” she called softly. He stepped closer, following the direction of her gaze. For a moment he saw nothing more than shadow and texture, but as he leaned closer the lines became clearer. Someone had scratched a symbol into the bark. The carving was shallow, barely deep enough to leave a permanent mark, yet the lines were deliberate. Four short strokes crossed by a longer one formed a shape that meant nothing obvious to him, but the precision behind it made one thing certain.

“I was trying to move a heavy cupboard, and my bracelet got stuck behind it. It scratched me when I tried to pull it out.” I lifted my eyes from her wrist, meeting her gaze. She was not making eye contact, her eyes darting everywhere but at me. Her heartbeat was fast . The marks were not consistent with her explanation. If it were from a piece of furniture, the scratches should be spread across her wrist, not pressed into the flesh like someone had grabbed her. “It is late, I should go to bed,” she said abruptly, yanking her hand from mine and making a beeline for the stairs.

That was when I noticed it. Something was different. My eyes narrowed. At first, I thought it was a crack in the stone. A tiny imperfection near the edge of the window frame. But the longer I stared, the more certain I became. It wasn't a crack. It was a mark. I stepped closer. My pulse instantly quickened. Three scratches. Three deliberate scratches carved into the stone. Faint. Almost invisible. The kind of thing anyone else would overlook. But not me.

There’s no irregular pull in the skin, no discoloration that follows impact or blade because it’s too neat. She presses her thumb to it once, then stills. Her shoulders don’t move, but her breath changes, just slightly, as if something inside her checked itself and reported back. I haven't said anything yet but I watch instead. Precision like that doesn’t come from accidents. I’ve seen markings placed with intent before, though not often. Packs avoid them unless there’s no other option. They’re difficult to lay and worse to remove but this one doesn’t belong to any pack I know and it isn’t lunar work either. There’s no resonance, no answering pull and the Moon doesn’t leave edges this clean.

I picked it up and ran my finger through it. Suddenly caught sight of something. There is a tiny nearly undetectable scratch mark on the lids interior. It was tiny—no larger than my pinky nail—and appeared to be intentional. To catch the light I tilted the box and leaned closer. The scratch wasnt arbitrary. It pointed toward the boxs bottom and appeared to be a tiny nearly microscopic arrow. “Okay Ivy” I whispered dont act like Sherlock Holmes right now. Most likely there is just a defect in the wood.

I pointed at the chat history, each word hitting hard: "Medical examination showed that the marks on Yvonne Shaw's neck are caused by the compression of something circular and regularly-shaped. They're not finger marks at all, but marks from a leather collar! "As for the so-called 'scratch marks', they're playful injuries left behind during her fun times!

Dalton called trying to get my mother's attention I don't think it working. "Do you want to know how you got that mark on your back"? She asked me still boiling in annoyance. The mark on my back, it looks cool so I don't know why she is bringing it up. When I asked her about the mark she told me it was a birth mark, I found it so cool because it looks like a dog foot print and my friends finds it cool, and looks exactly like a tattoos. So I don't understand how my birth mark relate with my father.

Raina paused, then moved forward to lift the table—but Leif beat her to it and pulled it away. He was acting weird today, but Raina didn’t have time to think about that. When the table moved, it revealed the scratches. Deep and shallow, spread all over the wall. Looking closely, it was clear those marks weren’t from anything else—they were finger scratches. At that moment, Raina’s shock hit its peak. Who on earth had been here? What kind of pain would make someone leave marks like this? Could it have been her mother? ***

“Yeah.” We move slower. Hazel points with her chin. Ahead of us a scrap of cloth hangs from a twig where a sapling meets the path. It’s weathered gray, nothing to it, until the moon catches a smear on the weave. Red-brown, three strokes, clawed downward and splayed. Redmaw’s mark. It’s fresh. Wet where the threads bunch. We both stand there looking at it like it might start talking. “They’re inside the fence line,” Hazel whispers.