Chapter 1 " The Night Visitor "

You’re living the story. And this tale begins with a boy named Billy, who should have known better than to turn the first page…” 

Billy Harper, a wiry 12-year-old with a mop of brown hair and a habit of chewing his nails, slouched on his bed, his backpack spilled open beside him. 

The day had been ordinary school, dodgeball, a scolding from his math teacher for doodling ghosts in his notebook.

 But now, something was off. Among his crumpled worksheets and half-eaten granola bar wrappers lay a book he didn’t recognize.

It was old, its leather cover cracked like parched earth, the edges of its pages yellowed and curling. No title adorned the spine, no author’s name graced the front.

 Just a faint, uneven embossing of what might have been a tree branch, its lines twisting unnaturally. Billy frowned, turning the book over in his hands. 

It was heavier than it looked, and the cover felt oddly warm, as if it had been left in the sun. 

He didn’t remember buying it or borrowing it. Had someone slipped it into his bag as a prank? His older brother, Jake, was always pulling stupid stunts, but this didn’t feel like Jake’s style.

Curiosity tugged at him, the same itch that made him peek into abandoned sheds or read ghost stories under his blanket with a flashlight. 

He opened the book.The pages crackled, releasing a faint scent of damp earth and something sharper, like burnt leaves. 

The first page bore a single line in spidery black ink Chapter 1: The Night Visitor. Billy grinned. A creepy story? Perfect. 

He flipped to the first paragraph, unaware that the room around him seemed to dim, the hum of the house fading into a thick, expectant silence.

Every night at precisely 12:00 a.m., Billy heard it. A soft, uneven scraping, like something dragging itself across the wooden floorboards outside his bedroom door. 

The air would grow heavy, thick with the smell of wet soil and rotting leaves. The temperature plummeted, his breath fogging in the moonlight that spilled through his window. 

Then, the door creaked open just an inch, never more and the Night Visitor arrived. Facial features were absent from the visitor no eyes, no mouth, no nose just a smooth, pale expanse where a face should have been.

Its upper body was humanoid, draped in tattered cloth that hung like moss, but below the waist, it simply… ended. 

No legs, no feet, just a faint, smoky trail that dissolved into the air. It hovered, motionless, at the foot of Billy’s bed, its faceless head tilted as if studying him.

Billy, heart hammering, squeezed his eyes shut, pretending to sleep, his blanket pulled tight to his chin. 

He counted seconds in his head, praying it wouldn’t notice the tremor in his breathing. For five agonizing minutes, the visitor lingered. 

The room felt like a tomb, the silence broken only by the occasional drip of something water? sap? hitting the floor. 

Then, with a faint rustle, it retreated, the door creaking shut behind it. Each night, it left a single gift: a tree leaf, brittle and veined with black, placed on Billy’s nightstand. 

He didn’t know why, but he kept them, stashing them in a shoebox under his bed, too afraid to throw them away.

Billy told no one. Not his parents, who’d dismiss it as a nightmare. Not his friends, who’d call him a liar. 

He began dreading bedtime, his stomach knotting as the clock ticked closer to midnight. 

But he endured, night after night, until one fateful evening, exhaustion won. He forgot to take the leaf from his nightstand. 

The next night, the scraping was louder, angrier, like claws raking the walls. The air was colder, the smell of decay so thick it choked him. 

The visitor didn’t just watch this time. Its faceless head loomed inches from Billy’s, its presence pressing down like a weight on his chest. 

He couldn’t scream, couldn’t move. Then, with a sound like tearing roots, it seized him, dragging him into a darkness where trees loomed, their branches clawing at an endless night sky. 

Billy’s screams echoed, but no one heard. He was punished, bound to that forest for eternity, his name forgotten by the world.

"Billy" the real Billy, sitting cross-legged on his bed slammed the book shut, his heart racing.

 “Whoa,” he whispered, half-laughing to shake off the chill crawling up his spine. “That was intense. 

And it had my name? Creepy coincidence.” He glanced at the clock  11:47 p.m. His room felt too quiet, the shadows in the corners too deep. 

He shoved the book under his pillow, telling himself it was just a story. But the warmth of the book lingered on his fingers, and the smell of earth hadn’t entirely faded.

He tried to distract himself, scrolling on his phone, but his eyes kept drifting to the story. 

The Night Visitor’s faceless stare, the black-veined leaves, the forest of clawing trees it felt less like fiction and more like a warning. 

“Stupid,” he muttered, turning off his light and burrowing under the covers. He’d deal with the book tomorrow.

Maybe he’d show it to his friend Sam, see if he thought it was as weird. Sleep came fitfully, broken by dreams of rustling branches and dripping floors. 

At 12:10 a.m., Billy jolted awake, his breath catching. His room was freezing, the air heavy with an acrid scent he couldn’t place rotten leaves, maybe, or something worse. 

His window, which he swore he’d locked, was wide open, the curtains fluttering in a breeze that carried a faint scraping sound. 

His eyes darted to the windowsill, where a single leaf lay, its veins black as ink, glinting faintly in the moonlight.

Billy’s breath caught in his chest hammering. He stared at the leaf, unable to move, his body frozen by a primal fear he couldn’t name. 

The scraping sound hadn’t stopped it was faint now, retreating down the hall, but it was still there. 

The leaf wasn’t just a coincidence. It couldn’t be. His fingers twitched, reaching for the book under his pillow, but he stopped, a cold dread pooling in his gut. 

What if opening it again made things worse? What if the visitor wasn’t left?Outside, the wind howled, and the trees in his backyard seemed to sway, their branches twisting into shapes that weren’t quite natural. 

Billy’s eyes stayed locked on the leaf, its edges curling as if beckoning him. Somewhere in the house, a door creaked.