The Missing Chapter

Nestled on the sleepy corner of Sycamore and Lane, The Quill & Lantern didn’t make much noise. It smelled of paper dust and pipe tobacco and the kind of stories that wrapped around your bones like a second skin. Loretta, the owner, had inherited the shop from her grandfather, a man who’d once claimed that every book knew who needed it. Most of the time, Loretta chalked that up to old man whimsy. Until the Tuesday afternoon when a book disappeared—The Hollis Diary, a brittle, leather-bound volume tied to a mystery that still clung to the town like ivy.

The Book Was Just the Beginning

The theft didn’t trigger any alarms. There were no broken locks or busted windows. The book had simply… vanished.

Loretta noticed its absence while dusting. She’d kept it tucked away in a display cabinet labeled Not For Sale. It was more artifact than merchandise. The diary once belonged to Annabelle Hollis, a schoolteacher who disappeared without a trace in 1973, the same week a fire gutted the chapel by the woods. The only thing recovered was that scorched diary, with ink smudges and cryptic entries mentioning someone called “the Watcher.”

Loretta had always meant to donate it to the town archive, but something kept her from letting it go.

Now it was gone.

She checked the security footage, but there was a glitch—of course. Just static during the exact window the theft must’ve happened. Her regulars wouldn’t touch something so personal. But the memory of a stranger tugged at her: tall, dark coat, hesitant steps, and a long pause in front of the cabinet. She remembered his eyes—haunted, like he was looking for a ghost.

That night, Loretta posted about the missing diary on the shop’s socials. She didn’t name names, just said it was missing and deeply important. What she didn’t expect was the DM an hour later:

You need to stop looking. The story doesn’t want to be found.

That should’ve been the moment she called the police. Instead, Loretta charged her flashlight, locked the shop, and headed for the old chapel ruins.

Her boots snapped twigs. A deer watched from the treeline, motionless. The stone ruins hadn’t changed since she was a kid—ivy swallowing what remained of the altar, half a staircase that led to nowhere. But now there was something new: candle stubs arranged in a circle. And in the middle, The Hollis Diary.

She stepped toward it. A man emerged from the shadows. The same man from the shop.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“You stole from me.”

“I borrowed it. You don’t know what that book can do.”

Loretta didn’t budge. “It’s just a diary.”

“No. It’s a map.” He opened the book, revealing pages that glowed faintly in the dark. “She wasn’t just a teacher. She was part of something bigger—something that kept this town safe. There were others, and they left clues. But someone wanted them gone.”

Loretta looked closer. Between the ink and ash, there were diagrams—symbols—coordinates, maybe. Her pulse thudded in her ears.

“Then help me,” she said. “Let’s finish the story.”

The man hesitated. “If we do this, we don’t get to go back to ordinary.”

Loretta smiled. “I own a bookshop in a town where time glitches and old diaries light up. Ordinary left a long time ago.”

They began tracing the clues—underground tunnels beneath the schoolhouse, a pocket watch sealed in concrete, coded messages in church hymns. The mystery unraveled like a cracked egg, messy and raw. Names emerged. So did secrets. Some townspeople had been part of the original circle. Others had betrayed it.

And Annabelle Hollis? She wasn’t missing. She’d vanished on purpose, to protect something far older than the town itself.

The deeper they went, the more Loretta realized this wasn’t about a missing woman. It was about a forgotten pact, a war that never ended, and a story too dangerous to remain shelved.

And now, it had found its next reader.

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