25 Jan The Reading Circle

Part I

The cold in Vermont was the kind that burrowed deep, settling in your bones and refusing to leave. It had been a relentless winter, one of record-breaking storms and ice-glazed roads, and the tutoring center’s converted church basement felt barely warmer than the outside. But I was determined. Teaching in these conditions was no picnic, but for the five kids who’d signed up for the weekly reading circle, it was worth it. They deserved more than what this small, underfunded town could offer.

My name is Claire Donovan, and I work with students who struggle with reading—dyslexia, learning disabilities, anxiety, you name it. It’s not glamorous, and it doesn’t pay well, but it feels important. It’s not every day you find work that aligns with your belief that everyone deserves a fair shot at understanding the world.

That’s how I justified my impulse buy at the estate sale. It had been a Saturday morning, one of those rare Vermont days where the sky was clear, and the roads were passable. The flyer for the sale had caught my eye while I was waiting in line for coffee: “Harker Estate: Antiques, Books, and Collectibles.” I was always on the lookout for interesting material to use in lessons, and the mention of books hooked me.

The Harker estate was something straight out of a gothic novel. A dilapidated Victorian sat at the top of a winding driveway, its windows boarded up and its shingles warped from decades of neglect. A cluster of cars, mostly pick-ups, filled the gravel lot near the porch. The relatives—cousins, I think—had opened the house to the public, selling off anything they could to cover debts and funeral costs. They greeted me with polite indifference and waved me toward the living room, where most of the books were piled in chaotic stacks.

It smelled like dust and mildew inside, but there was something else underneath—a faint metallic tang I couldn’t place. I chalked it up to old pipes or the sour tang of neglect, but I kept catching myself glancing over my shoulder as I browsed the shelves.

The books were a mix of the mundane and the strange: yellowed medical journals, a crumbling set of encyclopedias, and outdated cookbooks. And then there was The Watcher’s Delight. It was tucked beneath a stack of paperbacks, its leather cover cracked and soft from wear. The illustration on the front showed a whimsical scene: woodland animals gathered around a tall figure in a robe, its face obscured by a hood. The title was embossed in gold, its letters curling like vines. It was charming in a way that felt almost magical, and I thought my students might appreciate the novelty.

“How much for this one?” I asked, holding it up.

“Take it,” said the woman organizing the books. “Anything that’s not gone by today is going in the trash.”

Later, I found myself lingering in the kitchen, listening to the relatives talk. One of them—a tall man in a Red Sox cap—was explaining how the house had been locked up for years after Thomas Harker’s death.

“Margaret was the weird one,” he said, shaking his head. “Always talking about energies and symbols. She had the place full of junk when she died. Tommy just shoved it all in that back room and locked it up. Didn’t want to deal with it.”

“Like what?” I asked, curious despite myself.

The man shrugged. “Books. Papers. Weird stuff. They found symbols painted on the walls when they cleared it out. Probably just her trying to keep people out.”

That should have been my first red flag.

Back at the tutoring center, I added the book to my stack of lesson materials, running my fingers over the cover one more time. It was odd, but not unwelcoming–quirky, in a way that I thought might intrigue my students. If I felt a faint chill as I handled it, I ignored it.

After all, it was just a book.

Part II

The tutoring center was quiet that evening, the kind of silence only winter can bring. The thick snow muffled everything, and the only sound was the hum of the fluorescent lights above. My students filtered in one by one, each bundled in puffy coats and scarves, leaving trails of snow behind them.

“Grab some cocoa before we start,” I called out, nodding toward the thermos and paper cups I’d set up on a folding table.

Ben, the first to arrive, mumbled a thank-you as he poured himself a cup, his hands shaking slightly from the cold. He was twelve, painfully shy, and dyslexic, but he worked harder than anyone in the group. Sophie came in next, pulling off her mittens with nervous energy. She was eleven and the most eager, though her confidence was fragile.

Luke arrived third, as he always did, wearing his usual skeptical expression. Thirteen, with a sharp tongue and an attitude that said he’d rather be anywhere else. Mason and Mia came together last. Mason, ten, looked like he’d seen a ghost every time he opened a book, and Mia, twelve, was whip-smart but easily distracted.

“Okay, settle in,” I said, waving them to the semi-circle of chairs I’d arranged. “Tonight’s going to be fun.”

Luke snorted. “Fun? Reading? Pick one.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Luke,” I said dryly. “Let’s see if I can change your mind.”

I reached for The Watcher’s Delight, holding it up so they could see the embossed cover. “This is a little different from what we usually do. It’s an old children’s book, and I thought it might be fun to read it together.”

Sophie leaned forward, intrigued. “Where did you get it?”

“An estate sale. It’s got woodland animals and a mysterious figure in a hood. Maybe a wizard or something. Thought you’d like it.”

Mason shifted in his chair, looking uneasy. “It’s kind of creepy,” he muttered.

“It’s not creepy,” Sophie said, though her voice wavered. “It’s cute. Right?”

“Exactly,” I said, flipping open the book. “See? Look at these illustrations.”

I passed it around, letting them study the first page: a fox, a rabbit, and a bird gathered beneath a tree as the hooded figure stood nearby, holding what looked like a staff. The colors were muted, like old watercolors, but there was something oddly compelling about the image.

Ben was the last to take the book. He stared at the page, his lips moving silently as he tried to parse the text. “Do I have to go first?”

“Only if you want to,” I said, taking the book back. “How about Sophie starts us off?”

The first few sentences were innocuous enough, describing a forest at dusk and the animals preparing for a gathering. Sophie read slowly, her voice trembling slightly as she struggled with a few unfamiliar words.

But then the text shifted.

“The watchers stir where the veil grows thin,” she read.

I frowned. That didn’t sound like something from a children’s book.

Sophie hesitated. “Is that right?”

I leaned over her shoulder to look at the page. The words seemed perfectly ordinary to me: “The fox and the rabbit watched the moon rise.”

“You’re doing great,” I said. “Keep going.”

She continued, but her voice faltered again. “The watchers… the watchers are… hungry?”

The room seemed to grow colder.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“The watchers are hungry,” Sophie repeated. “That’s what it says.”

I looked at the page again, and this time, I saw it—the words didn’t match what I remembered.

“Let me see,” Luke said, snatching the book.

“Careful!” I warned, but I let him have it.

He skimmed the page, his eyes narrowing. “It’s just animals talking. No watchers. You guys are imagining things.”

Mason looked unconvinced. “Then why does it feel weird in here?”

“It doesn’t feel weird,” Luke shot back, though his face had gone pale.

“It’s just a story,” I said, trying to regain control of the group. “Let’s keep reading.”

Luke reluctantly read the next passage aloud. His voice was steady at first, but then he stumbled.

“The… veil… parts for the chosen kin. What the heck does that mean?”

I took the book back. The words were clear as day to me: “The owl flew through the night, calling to its friends.”

“Good effort, Luke,” I said, trying to sound upbeat. “Mason, why don’t you give it a try?”

Mason shook his head violently. “No way.”

“Come on, it’s just a book.”

“No,” he said, his voice rising. “It’s not!”

The temperature in the room dropped sharply, and the fluorescent lights flickered. Sophie screamed, pointing toward the corner.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded, following her gaze.

“There’s something there!” she cried.

“Something where?”

She pointed again, trembling. “By the wall. It’s… tall. And it’s staring at you!”

I turned to Luke. “Do you see anything?”

He hesitated, then nodded slowly. “It’s… like a shadow. But it’s moving.”

“Stop it,” I said firmly. “You’re scaring Mason.”

Mason whimpered, burying his face in his hands. “It’s whispering,” he said. “I can hear it whispering.”

I grabbed the book, snapping it shut. “Okay, that’s enough. We’re done for tonight.”

“But—” Sophie started.

“No buts,” I said. “Go get your coats. I’ll walk you all to the door.”

The students obeyed reluctantly, casting nervous glances over their shoulders as they left the circle. I stayed behind to clean up, my hands trembling as I picked up the book.

The leather cover felt colder than before, almost icy.

Part III

I couldn’t stop thinking about the book. Even after the kids had left, their fear stayed with me. Sophie’s screams, Mason’s whimpers, Luke’s pale face—all of it churned in my mind like a storm.

I’d brought books into my reading circles a hundred times, and never once had something like this happened. The book wasn’t just a book. I knew that much. What I didn’t know was how—or why—it had this effect.

It was past ten by the time I locked up the tutoring center. The air outside was sharp enough to bite, the snow crunching beneath my boots as I walked to my car. I tossed the book into the passenger seat, determined to figure out what was going on.

The next day, I returned to the tutoring center early, hoping to make sense of The Watcher’s Delight before the next session. I sat at my desk, flipping through its pages. The illustrations were as enchanting as ever: woodland animals gathering beneath the trees, their eyes bright with curiosity. But something about them made my stomach twist.

The hooded figure—the one that had seemed whimsical at first—was more detailed than I remembered. Its robes were covered in faint symbols, barely visible unless you looked closely. And its face… I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was something unnatural about its blankness.

I read through the text slowly, taking notes on anything unusual. At first, it seemed harmless—typical children’s story fare. But as I reached the middle, the tone shifted. Phrases like “the veil stirs” and “the watchers wait” sent chills crawling up my spine.

When I reached the line “the watchers hunger for a path,” the room grew colder.

I snapped the book shut.

* * * * * *

That evening, the kids arrived for their second session of the week. They were quieter than usual, their laughter subdued. Even Luke seemed on edge, his usual sarcasm replaced with silence.

“You guys okay?” I asked.

Sophie nodded, but her eyes darted to the corner of the room. “Is the book still here?”

“It’s just a book,” I said firmly. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

Mason’s expression was etched with worry. “It didn’t feel like just a book.”

I wanted to reassure them, but I couldn’t lie. I’d felt it, too, that creeping sense of wrongness. “We won’t use it tonight,” I promised.

The session started smoothly enough. I brought out some lighter material, encouraging the kids to take turns reading from familiar stories. It seemed to work—at least for a little while.

But then the lights flickered.

Sophie froze mid-sentence. “Did you see that?”

“It’s just the old wiring,” I said quickly.

The temperature dropped again, more sharply this time. Luke shifted in his seat, glancing toward the same corner Sophie had pointed at the night before.

“There’s something there,” he said.

I followed his gaze, but all I saw was shadow. “Luke, there’s nothing—”

The words died in my throat.

The shadow moved.

It was subtle, like the flicker of a flame, but it was enough. I stared, willing my eyes to see something—anything—more clearly.

“I told you!” Sophie cried.

Mason whimpered, clutching his knees. “It’s whispering again,” he said. “It’s louder this time.”

The room felt wrong—stretched, warped in ways I couldn’t quite articulate. The shadows seemed deeper, darker, like they were swallowing the weak fluorescent light.

Luke stood abruptly, his chair screeching against the floor. “I’m not staying in here.”

“Luke, sit down,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

“Why? So we can wait for whatever that thing is to grab us?”

“There’s nothing here,” I said, but even as I spoke, I didn’t believe it.

Sophie’s eyes widened as she pointed toward the back of the room. “It’s moving again,” she said quietly.

I turned just in time to see the shadow elongate, stretching unnaturally toward the center of the room.

I grabbed the book, yanking it off my desk. “This is the problem,” I said. “It’s this stupid thing.”

“What are you doing?” Mia asked.

“Getting rid of it.”

I threw the book into a trash can and pulled a lighter from my bag. I hesitated for only a second before flicking the flame to life and holding it to the book’s corner.

But it didn’t burn.

The flame licked at the cover, but the leather remained untouched, as cold and smooth as ever.

“What the hell?” Luke rasped.

I tried again, this time holding the flame closer. Nothing. Not even a scorch mark.

Desperation clawed at me. I ripped the book out of the trash can and tore at its pages, expecting them to shred easily. But the paper didn’t give. Instead, it stretched, as if made of something far tougher than paper.

A low hum filled the room, growing louder with each attempt.

“What’s happening?” Sophie cried.

“I don’t know!” I said, my voice cracking.

Finally, a page gave way with a loud snap. For a brief moment, I felt a flicker of triumph—until something small and black scuttled out of the torn paper.

It looked like a spider at first, but its movements were wrong—too quick, too jagged.

Sophie screamed as more of the creatures emerged, skittering across the floor. They weren’t spiders. They weren’t anything I’d ever seen.

“Get on the chairs!” I shouted.

The kids scrambled onto their seats, and I grabbed a broom, swiping at the creatures as they darted toward us.

Mason whimpered. “They’re everywhere,” he said.

And he was right. The creatures were multiplying, pouring out of the book like water from a broken dam.

I knew then that the book wasn’t just cursed—it was alive.

Part IV

The tutoring center felt like a different place now. Shadows pressed against the edges of the room, their depth unnatural, as though the walls had expanded into a void I couldn’t comprehend, and the creatures—those tiny, alien things—continued to skitter across the floor.

I stood in the center of the room, gripping the broom like a lifeline, surrounded by the kids perched on their chairs. Their faces were pale, their eyes wide and darting. Sophie clung to the back of her chair, her knuckles white, while Luke muttered curses under his breath, his usual bravado long gone. Mason was crying softly, his knees pulled to his chest.

I didn’t know what to do.

“This isn’t real,” I said aloud, as much to myself as to them. “It’s not—this can’t be real.”

“It is real!” Sophie snapped. “You see them now, don’t you?”

“I see… something,” I admitted, my voice trembling.

The book was still on the floor, lying open where I’d thrown it. Its pages fluttered as though caught in a breeze, though the air was still. Every time a page moved, more of those small, spindly creatures seemed to crawl out, their jointed limbs clicking against the tile.

“We have to stop it,” Luke said. “We have to… I don’t know, destroy it or something!”

“I tried that!” I said. “It won’t burn. It won’t rip!”

“Then what do we do?” Mia asked, her voice sharp with panic.

The answer came, oddly enough, from Mason. He was staring at the book, his face streaked with tears, when he muttered, “It’s alive.”

“What?” I asked, turning to him.

He looked up at me, his eyes red-rimmed. “The book. It’s alive. It’s like… like it wants us to read it.”

I froze, his words hitting me like a punch to the gut. He wasn’t wrong. Every time we’d read aloud, the book had reacted—changing the words, summoning the creatures, making the room colder and darker.

The book wasn’t just a conduit for whatever was happening. It was the source.

I knelt down, hesitant, and picked the book up again. The leather cover felt colder than ever, almost painful against my skin. The symbols etched into it seemed to writhe as I stared at them, like they were alive too.

“I think…” I said slowly, “I think we have to finish it.”

“What?” Sophie gasped.

“Finish the story,” I said, though the words felt wrong in my mouth. “The book is alive, but it’s also a ritual. A ritual disguised as a story. If we complete it, maybe we can… I don’t know, close it somehow.”

“That’s crazy!” Luke said. “What if it just makes everything worse?”

“It’s already worse,” I said, gesturing to the creatures now crawling up the walls. “Do you have a better idea?”

I flipped the book open, my hands trembling. The pages no longer looked like paper; they shimmered, as though made of liquid light. The words glowed faintly, and I had the eerie sense that they were watching me.

“I’ll read,” I said. “You all stay on the chairs. Don’t move unless I say so.”

“No way,” Sophie said. “We’re not letting you do this alone.”

Before I could stop her, she jumped off her chair and knelt beside me. The others followed, one by one, until we were all sitting in a circle on the cold floor, the book resting between us.

I took a deep breath and began to read.

The words were foreign, their meanings slipping through my mind like water through a sieve. But as I spoke them aloud, the room shifted again. The shadows on the walls twisted, taking on grotesque shapes. The creatures on the floor paused, their heads—or what passed for heads—snapping toward me in unison.

I kept reading.

Sophie took over when my voice faltered, her tone shaky but determined. Then Luke, then Mia, each of us passing the book like a torch. The words flowed, a mixture of English and something ancient, something I couldn’t fully understand but felt deep in my bones.

The final passage was the worst.

It wasn’t just words—it was something more. Speaking it felt like peeling back a layer of reality, exposing something raw and terrible beneath. My voice cracked as I read, and the temperature plummeted further, frost creeping across the floor.

The creatures screamed.

It wasn’t a sound I could describe—it wasn’t meant for human ears. But it filled the room, rattling my teeth and making my vision blur.

I forced myself to keep going, my voice rising above the cacophony. As the last word left my lips, the book erupted in a blinding flash of light.

The creatures dissolved, their forms collapsing into smoke. The shadows on the walls receded, and the warped dimensions of the room snapped back into place. The air warmed, and everything went still.

I stared at the book. It was still there, its cover singed but intact. The symbols on its surface had faded, and the pages were blank.

“We did it,” Sophie whispered.

But even as the words left her mouth, I wasn’t so sure.

Part V

The book was gone. Not physically—it still sat on my desk, its once-ornate cover now singed and faded, the pages blank—but its power had vanished. Whatever dark force had been bound to it seemed to have dissipated during the ritual.

And yet, the uneasy feeling lingered.

I couldn’t sleep that night. My dreams were fractured—flashes of shadows stretching across walls, of words twisting on the page, of the creatures’ screams echoing in the darkness. When I woke, the unease clung to me like a second skin.

I needed answers.

The next morning, I called the Harker relatives who had run the estate sale. It took a few tries, but eventually, a tired-sounding woman answered.

“Yeah, I remember you,” she said after I introduced myself. “You’re the one who took that old children’s book, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “I need to know more about it. About the Harkers. About Margaret, specifically.”

There was a pause. “Why?”

I hesitated, unsure how much to reveal. “It… caused some trouble during a tutoring session. I think it might have been valuable—historically, I mean.”

The woman snorted. “Valuable? Lady, if you’d seen the rest of the junk in that house, you wouldn’t be saying that. Half the stuff was so weird we didn’t know what to do with it. Ended up dumping most of it in the landfill.”

“Wait,” I said. “You dumped it?”

“Yeah. Anything we couldn’t sell or didn’t want. The house was packed with all this creepy crap—Margaret’s old books, her journals, even these paintings she did of… I don’t know, symbols or something. Gave me the chills just looking at them.”

My stomach dropped. “Which landfill?”

By noon, I was standing at the edge of the landfill, the stench of rotting garbage thick in the air. The woman at the gate had been reluctant to let me in, but a twenty-dollar bill and a convincing sob story had changed her mind.

“You’re looking for books?” she asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” I said. “Old ones, leather covers, probably buried under a bunch of other junk.”

She shook her head. “Good luck.”

The search was grueling. I waded through mounds of trash, picking through broken furniture, moldy clothes, and shattered glass. The cold air bit at my exposed skin, and my gloves did little to protect my fingers.

Hours passed. My boots were soaked through, my back ached, and I was on the verge of giving up when I spotted it: a trunk, half-buried beneath a pile of old newspapers.

It was locked, but the wood was rotted enough that I could pry it open with a nearby metal rod. Inside, wrapped in layers of yellowed fabric, were Margaret Harker’s journals.

The journals were heavier than they looked, their leather covers cracked and warped from years of neglect. I carried them to my car, my heart pounding with a mixture of dread and anticipation.

That night, I sat at my kitchen table, flipping through the pages.

Margaret’s handwriting was cramped and chaotic, her words scrawled in a mix of English and symbols I didn’t recognize. At first, the entries seemed harmless—rambles about her love of literature and her frustration with the small-mindedness of the townspeople. But as I read on, the tone shifted.

She began writing about rituals.

Margaret had been deeply involved in the occult. She believed that books could be used as vessels for summoning and binding entities, their rituals disguised as harmless children’s stories. She wrote about her experiments, about the symbols she painted in the house, about the “watchers” she hoped to control.

The words on the pages seemed to crawl as I read them, and I had to stop more than once; I felt like I was being watched.

One entry stood out:

“The Watcher’s Delight succeeded beyond my expectations. The veil stirred. I glimpsed them, just for a moment, their forms terrible and magnificent. But they are restless. Hungry. They demand more than I can give.”

Margaret’s final entries were frantic, detailing her growing fear of the watchers and her desperate attempts to lock her books away. She begged her husband to destroy them, but he refused.

“I can’t undo what I’ve done. All I can do is hide it and pray no one ever opens them again.”

I closed the journal, my hands trembling. The book I’d brought into my tutoring center hadn’t just been a fluke—it was part of a deliberate plan, a spell disguised as a story.

And Margaret’s warning echoed in my mind: “They are restless. Hungry.”

Part VI

I couldn’t bring myself to sleep that night. Every shadow in my apartment felt too dark, every creak of the floorboards too loud. I sat at my kitchen table, Margaret Harker’s journals spread out before me, and forced myself to keep reading.

The more I read, the more I understood. Margaret hadn’t just dabbled in the occult—she’d immersed herself in it. Her experiments weren’t accidents or idle curiosities; they were deliberate, calculated attempts to pierce the boundaries of reality. She believed the watchers existed in a liminal space, caught between worlds, and her books were designed to lure them closer.

And she had succeeded.

Her journals spoke of other books, each containing its own ritual, each designed to summon something different. The Watcher’s Delight was just one of many. The thought chilled me. If there were others like it, how many more unsuspecting people might stumble upon them?

The next day, I returned to the tutoring center. It felt different now, quieter than usual. The kids had gone home safe that night, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what they had seen. How much had this experience scarred them?

The book was still on my desk, its pages blank and lifeless. It looked harmless now, but I worried it was only dormant. I considered burning it again, but I remembered how it had resisted the flames before.

Instead, I locked it in a filing cabinet and shoved the key into my pocket.

That evening, as I prepared for bed, a strange sensation washed over me. It wasn’t fear, exactly—more like a low hum of awareness, a tingling at the back of my neck.

I turned off the lights and crawled under the covers, but sleep didn’t come. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the rhythmic creaks of the old building as the wind howled outside.

And then I heard it: a whisper.

I sat up. The sound was faint, but it was there.

At first, I thought it was coming from the hallway. I opened my door, expecting to see nothing, but the murmuring grew louder. It wasn’t words—it was more like the sound of rustling paper, an unsteady rhythm that set my teeth on edge.

I followed the sound to my desk. The journals were still there, untouched. But as I leaned closer, the whispering stopped.

I stared at them for a long moment, my pulse racing. Then, slowly, I opened the top journal to the last page.

There, scrawled in Margaret’s cramped handwriting, was a single sentence I hadn’t noticed before:

“They will never leave you.”

The days that followed were a blur. The murmurs came and went, sometimes faint, sometimes loud enough to wake me in the middle of the night. I began to see shadows flicker in the corners of my vision, shapes that vanished as soon as I turned to look.

I told myself it was paranoia, the lingering effects of what had happened. But deep down, I knew the truth. The watchers weren’t gone.

I wasn’t sure if they were tied to me, or to the book, or to the ritual we had completed. Maybe it didn’t matter. They had marked me somehow, and I could feel their presence everywhere I went.

* * * * * *

A week later, a package arrived. It was small, wrapped in plain brown paper, with no return address.

I hesitated before opening it, my hands trembling as I slid a knife through the tape.

Inside was another book.

Its cover was black, its edges worn. The title, embossed in faded silver, read The Weaver’s Hymn.

Beneath it was a single note, written in a hand I didn’t recognize:

“The watchers remember. They are waiting.”

I stared at the book, my stomach churning. The air in the room felt heavier and colder, as though the watchers were already here, waiting for me to open it–and they would not be ignored.

For a long moment, I sat frozen, unsure whether I ought to burn it, bury it, or throw it into the nearest lake.

But then, slowly, I reached out and opened the cover.

And I began to read.