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Chapter 34: The Book That Writes Itself
The manuscript sat between them, its pages trembling slightly—as if aware that it was being read. The air in Miller’s house felt heavier, thick with an unseen weight pressing down on their lungs.
Wallace ran his fingers over the book’s aged leather cover. The title, The Plague of Palatka, stared back at him like an accusation.
“You’re saying this book—” Vanessa hesitated, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s predicting everything?”
Miller exhaled, rubbing his temples. “I don’t know if it’s predicting it, or if it’s creating it.” He tapped the last written page, where the words abruptly stopped mid-sentence. “I never finished the ending.”
Rhodes gave a hollow laugh. “You mean the world ends because you ran out of ink?”
Miller’s tired eyes lifted to meet his. “You think this world is real? Palatka was never real. Not in the way we thought.”
A sharp, guttural groan rumbled outside. The survivors tensed. The black tide had arrived. Through the boarded-up window, Wallace saw it slithering down the street, swallowing everything in its path. Cars, buildings, even the corpses it touched were absorbed, twisted into its writhing, amorphous form.
“They’re here,” Vanessa whispered.
Miller sighed, flipping to a blank page at the back of the book. He picked up a pen with shaking fingers. “I never wanted to finish it. I thought if I left it unwritten, it would never come true.”
Wallace grabbed his wrist. “But it’s still happening.”
Miller swallowed. “That’s because the story doesn’t need me anymore.”
The words scrawled across the page by themselves.
Wallace yanked his hand away as ink flowed like blood, forming letters in jagged, uneven strokes:
"THE TIDE HAS CONSUMED. THE END HAS BEGUN."
Vanessa’s breath hitched. “Oh, hell no.”
The book flipped its own pages, faster and faster, until it stopped on the final, empty sheet. The ink writhed, forming something new.
Miller’s voice cracked. “It wants an ending.”
Rhodes checked his rifle. “Then write one. Make it stop.”
Miller hesitated, staring at the empty page. The words he had written in the past had all come true.
What if he wrote something worse?
Wallace grabbed his shoulders. “Write us a way out.”
Miller lifted the pen. He hesitated. Then, slowly, he wrote:
“The tide recedes. The nightmare ends.”
The ink shivered, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Then, outside, the black tide froze.
The writhing mass stopped moving. For the first time since it appeared, the whispering voices stopped.
The air was silent.
Rhodes let out a breath. “Did it work?”
Miller turned to the next page.
The book had written something back.
"THE STORY IS NOT YOURS TO END."
Before anyone could react, the ink on the page surged outward. It leapt from the paper like liquid shadow, twisting in the air before lunging at Miller’s chest.
He choked.
Wallace grabbed him, but it was too late.
The ink poured into Miller’s mouth, his eyes, his skin—absorbing him. His body convulsed, his fingers curling into claws. His mouth stretched open in a silent scream.
Then, he was gone.
The book snapped shut.
And the tide began moving again.
Vanessa grabbed Wallace’s arm, her voice barely a breath. “We need to go.”
Wallace didn’t argue.
They ran.
Behind them, the tide surged forward again, hungrily consuming everything in its path. And in the distance, from deep within the ink-black mass, something spoke with Miller’s voice.
A whisper. A command.
"Let the next chapter begin."