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I need to tell you a story. It starts, like many a dark mystery, with a peculiar phone call, pronouncing the death of my Great Aunt Aurelia. I say ‘peculiar’ not because of the circumstances under which she died—a regular old heart attack apparently—but for two reasons, which still elude explanation.

The first is that none of us—Dad, Mum or me—had ever heard of her. We weren’t really in touch with Dad’s side of the family (most of them lived over in the U.S.) but it seemed strange that my late grandparents had never once mentioned her. The second reason is that she left part of her estate to me—twenty thousand dollars to be exact. Dad followed up the details over the next few days and, to our surprise, everything checked out. The family tree sent by the executor showed Aurelia to be last of my grandma’s siblings. She had split her assets equally between the grandchildren of her generation. Mum and Dad seemed satisfied, so my share was transferred to my account and, then, I allowed myself to get excited.

At this point, I should tell you that I secretly wanted to be an author. I say ‘secretly’ because I hadn’t confessed this to anyone, knowing there was a chance it might not work out as a career. Even though I dreamt of making it as a world-renowned fantasy author, I knew I’d need a reliable job to fall back on. So, I was working as an Editorial Assistant for a small magazine in central London, living with my parents while I saved up enough money to buy a flat. Trying to be a model employee and an attentive and sociable daughter didn’t allow much time to sustain a secret writing habit, but being straight out of university, in my first job and on a starting salary, I expected these living arrangements to last for a while. But this boon from an estranged, departed relative had changed all that. I’d finally have enough money to by my own space, with freedom to breathe, to come and go as I pleased and, most importantly, to write.

Fast-forward a few months and the twenty thousand dollars, plus a little help from Mum and Dad, had secured me a deposit on a modest, one-bedroom flat in Croydon. The location made for an easy commute into work and it wasn’t too far from my parents’ place either—it was everything I’d hoped for. I moved in two weeks later.

Dad helped me to move my many boxes of belongings into the flat up the nine flights of stairs. Eager to unpack at a leisurely pace while savouring my newfound independence, I hugged him goodbye and went to make my inaugural cup of tea in my new flat… and that’s when I saw it. A small, black notebook bound with elastic, lying in the kitchen sink. This book.

Thinking it would make a convenient canvas for my writing, I picked it up. I noticed splashes of water around where the book had lain, though the book itself was dry and undamaged. I opened it and casually flicked through the pages, glimpsing what looked like several short stories, not hand–written as I might have expected from a notebook, but printed in an old typewriter–style font.

I took the book to my folding camp chair, the only furniture in the living room, and began to read. The stories were all written by anonymous authors, all works of fantasy, some based on common myths and legends, others more grounded in reality, but all of them with one common feature—the main character in every single story suffered an untimely and usually gruesome death. As I read deeper into the book, each story seemed darker and more elaborate than the last as if each author were trying to outwrite their predecessor. The little, black book was, plainly, a challenge.

Unable to resist the call and eager to flex my writing muscle, I scrounged around for a pen, and began to write. I chose one of my sapling ideas that I hadn’t yet developed into a full story—a young woman living an ordinary life in modern London who finds herself tangling with supernatural creatures that only she can see. The foundation of the character was easy to write—she was based on myself—and then I let loose, weaving tales of vampires in alleyways, trolls under Tower Bridge and witches in Hyde Park. I wrote until my hand cramped and my eyes strained to stay open, before finally resolving to get some much needed sleep.

The next day was like any other day. I woke up, ate breakfast and went to work, but the strange happenings began on my commute home. As I was walking to the Tube station I noticed a man, pale and wearing a hooded, dark coat, walking a few paces behind me. At first I dismissed him—this was central London, so it wasn’t unusual for someone to be walking in the same direction as me. Precautionarily, I turned down a side street to take an alternative route to the station. A few turns later and he was still following me. I started walking more briskly back towards civilisation and kept looking ahead, never letting him leave my periphery, tracking his every move through car window reflections and streetlight shadows.

Fuck, I thought, as I turned into a dead–end alleyway. My attention had been so focused on the stranger that I must have missed a turning. I spun on my heels in retreat, but too late, for the stranger was blocking my escape. He pulled down his hood, revealing red eyes… and abnormally long incisors. This couldn’t be happening. I fumbled with my phone to call for help but dropped it in my haste. I stumbled backwards and tripped over the corner of a skip, landing sprawled on the ground. Instinct took over at that point—I reached into my bag and grabbed the first thing my hand touched upon, and as the stranger rushed towards me with abnormal speed, I raised my hand towards him. His red eyes shrank as he staggered backwards, clutching the wooden pencil I had planted in his chest, before dissolving into ash. I, like my very own heroine, had just killed a vampire.

Back in my flat, having asserted control of my breathing, I rifled through the pages of the little, black book until I found the first story I had written the previous night. Every detail of the story, down to the harrowing red eyes and even the type of pencil I’d used to dispatch the vampire, was identical to that evening’s encounter. My story had come true and I was the protagonist. My brain did cartwheels for the next few hours seeking another explanation, but there was none. Then I thought of the other stories I’d written—had I unleashed a menagerie of invisible terrors on the city? According to my own written rules, these creatures might only be visible to the heroine—to me—but they were still terrifyingly capable of hurting other people. If what I’d written was true, which it had already proven itself to be, then I had a responsibility to stop these creatures. I would re-enact each of my stories and play the heroine, eliminating my grisly antagonists.

Every night that week I donned my favourite purple jacket and went out monster hunting. I was successful every time, for I already knew where to look, and though I felt hopelessly unequipped for fighting such creatures, I would always emerge triumphant. A hidden weapon would reveal itself to me at the opportune moment or I would have a spontaneous realisation of the best way to dispatch whichever dark horror I was facing. The fights were always tough, but I never once doubted my victory. The heroine always prevailed—it was already written… or so I thought.

The twist came that Friday night, as I approached the end of my supernatural hitlist, when I came face to face with a werewolf. It was strong and fast, but once more I prevailed, by deftly dodging a blow from its deadly paw, causing it to career into a serendipitously sharp fallen tree branch. But the creature had injured me too—a long, thin slash halfway up my left calf extending down to the ankle. The wound stung as I limped home, but not nearly as much as the disturbing fact that now pervaded my thoughts—I hadn’t written about werewolves.

The wound on my leg only got worse in the following days, swelling and puckering into an unsightly seam. I thought about going to hospital, but they’d soon realise it wasn’t a regular injury and I couldn’t explain it without being declared insane. I applied anti-septic cream and hoped for the best.

I started to hear strange stories on the news of bizarre creature sightings, unexplained injuries and confused witnesses. So now other people could see them too?! Seeking reassurance, I called Mum, just to hear her voice, but that did little to settle my spirit. Amid the banal retelling of her neighbours’ goings–on, she mentioned that a man had come into the hospital where she worked, covered in burns and raving about dragons. Things were getting out of control—I had to destroy the book.

Water clearly didn’t damage it, so I tried fire. I seized the book and took it to the kitchen. placed it on the hob and turned on the gas, and though the flames engulfed it entirely, the little, black book remained impervious—in fact, it was still cool to the touch. Screaming wildly, I hurled it into the living room where it landed, almost deliberately, open. My macabre curiosity ushered me to where the book lay and I saw on the open page the first story I had written, though it was no longer written in my hand but picked out in the same typewriter–style font as the previous authors’ works. The book had claimed my story, my heroine for its own. But wasn’t I the heroine?

A slicing pain in my leg brought me painfully to my knees. My wound had split open and from the seam poured a viscous black substance that burned and filled the air with a foul tang. Too weak to cry out, I fell onto my side and watched the hateful ink flow out of me ceaselessly, pooling on the floor before being drawn into the book’s pages. I felt the evil thing’s pull, claiming my vitality to fuel its malevolence. Helplessly, I joined the authors I had once thought to conquer in the depths of these pages, as I was steadily unwritten from the world.

Within these pages I have nothing but time to think, yet I still can’t fathom when, exactly, my ending began. Did it start when I wrote my first story, when I picked up the book from the kitchen sink, or did the book somehow fabricate my Great Aunt, the family tree, the money, the deed to my flat, in the same way it wove my fiction into reality—a hook to lure me to my demise? I doubt I’ll ever know—I’m nothing more than typeface now. But I have to hope it isn’t too late for you.

If you’re reading this, close this book and walk away. Don’t let your pride con you into taking the challenge—it isn’t one you’ll ever win. Walk away and forget about the little, black book. Let my story be the last to haunt its pages. The story you’re thinking about writing is better left unwritten.

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Hmmm, not bad. Definitely better than some of the others. It got a bit weird with the vampires and werewolves, but I liked the ending—very sinister. Still, I think I can do better…