Chapter 11: " Night calls "

The world is a story, dear reader, but some tales rewrite their authors. Julian thinks he can craft perfection. Let’s see what endings find him. Silence your words, or the Night Caller will write them for you…

Rain battered the city, a relentless drumbeat against rooftops, like a thousand impatient fingers clawing for entry. Midnight had long settled over the urban sprawl, its streets hushed, its lights dimmed. The world slept, cocooned in dreams or oblivion.

Except for Julian. Julian Torres, a 24-year-old aspiring writer, sat hunched at his desk in a cluttered studio apartment, the air thick with the scent of coffee grounds and crumpled paper. 

His desk was a battlefield of notebooks, their pages scrawled with half-finished stories, crossed-out plot twists, and sketches of worlds only he could see. 

Books classics, manga, grimoires of literary theory lined his shelves, but he’d found them all wanting. Their twists were predictable, their characters flat, their worlds shallow. 

If Julian wanted a story worth reading, he had to write it himself. “That’s a twist,” he muttered, a grin curling his lips as he scratched the final line of a short story into his notebook. 

A betrayed hero, a city swallowed by its own lies, a final revelation that turned the world inside out. Perfect. His pen danced, the ink a lifeline to his restless mind. 

Writing was his escape, his obsession, the one place where he controlled every outcome. The rain slammed harder against his window, the sound sharp and insistent, almost angry. 

Julian glanced up, his dark eyes catching the glass. The storm was fierce tonight, the sky weeping in torrents, blurring the city’s neon glow into smears of color. “Wow,” he whispered, “the sky’s really crying out there.”

The splash of water grew clearer, louder, as if it weren’t just outside but inside, pooling somewhere in the room. His brow furrowed. 

He hadn’t opened the window had he? The air felt wrong, heavy, like a breath held too long. Julian pushed back his chair, the scrape of wood unnaturally loud, and took a step toward the window.

He froze. The window didn’t get closer. His step felt like wading through tar, the room stretching, its edges warping like wet canvas. The walls bent inward, their paint peeling into twisting shapes branches, maybe, or veins. 

The rain’s roar filled his ears, drowning out his heartbeat, pressing against his skin like a living thing. His vision spun, the floor tilting beneath him.

“Am I… dreaming?” Julian’s voice trembled, barely audible over the storm. The window loomed larger, its frame swelling until it consumed the room his desk, his notebooks, the very air he breathed. 

The world was gone, leaving only the window and the void beyond it. He leaned forward, drawn by a pull he couldn’t name. 

His reflection stared back, but it was wrong his eyes too wide, his face too pale, his mouth twitching with a fear he didn’t feel. Beyond the glass, something moved. Tall. Thin. 

A silhouette against the rain, its form sharp yet blurred, like a shadow cast by nothing. It had no face, only a blank expanse where features should be, yet it watched. Its presence was a weight, a judgment, a promise.

Julian’s heart skipped. His breath caught. “What” He jolted awake, gasping, his body drenched in sweat that clung like ice. 

His desk was there, cluttered as ever. His notebook lay open, the pen still in his hand. The rain had stopped, leaving an eerie silence. Just a dream. A vivid, stupid dream.

Then he saw it. The window was open. No rain fell now, but the sky outside was wrong a deep, bruised purple, weeping light that wasn’t moonlight yet glowed with its pale sheen. 

Julian’s hands shook as he stood, his legs unsteady. “What’s happening?” he whispered, fear gnawing at his chest. The air was thick, heavy with a scent he couldn’t place old wood, damp earth, like a forest after a fire.

His gaze shifted, unbidden, to his desk. There, among his notebooks, was a book he didn’t recognize. Old, leather-bound, its cover cracked and etched with twisting branches that seemed to writhe in the strange light. 

No title, no author. It was heavy, its weight unnatural, its surface warm like fevered skin. Julian’s pulse quickened. He hadn’t bought this. He hadn’t borrowed it. 

Yet it sat there, as if it belonged, its presence a challenge to his meticulous memory. A vague image flickered a stranger in the coffee shop where he wrote, their face obscured, pressing the book into his hands with a low, urgent, “Read it.” 

But the memory dissolved, a fog where details should be. Julian, who prided himself on crafting flawless narratives, felt a thrill at the anomaly. A mystery book was a story to unravel.

He opened it, the pages crackling, releasing a faint smell of ash and rotting bark. The first nine pages were missing, torn out with jagged edges, leaving a reddish stain that looked too much like blood. 

The first intact page read: Chapter 11: Night Calls. The text was handwritten, the ink uneven, as if clawed into the paper with a trembling hand. Julian’s curiosity burned, and he began to read.

The night is his domain, and he is its messenger. Tall, thin, faceless, the Night Caller watches. He sees without eyes, judges without words, takes without mercy. 

His rule is absolute: don’t speak to the night. To call out is to invite him, to let him rewrite your story, binding you to his endless dark. I thought I could outrun him, crafting tales to keep the silence at bay. But one night, I whispered, “Who’s there?” and the Night Caller answered. 

He showed me my stories every twist, every ending, turned against me. My characters screamed, their voices mine, their fates sealed in his shadow. Now I’m his page, my words his prison, my mind a canvas for his will. Don’t speak to the night. The Night Caller is waiting.

Julian dropped the book, his heart pounding. The story was too close his late nights, his obsession with perfect endings, the silence he filled with words. 

The room felt colder, the strange moonlight casting shadows that pulsed like veins. The book’s pages rustled faintly, though no air stirred. The rule echoed in his mind: Don’t speak to the night.

He shoved the book into a drawer, hands trembling, and returned to his notebook, trying to anchor himself in his own story. But the words wouldn’t come. 

The air grew heavier, thick with ash and rotting wood, a faint hum vibrating in his ears not a sound, but a presence. Julian’s pen hovered, his need to write clashing with a growing dread. 

Who was the Night Caller? Was it tied to the “her” the book mentioned, the same “her” from the stories he’d never read but felt he knew?

The next night, Julian sat at his desk, the book now on his chair despite locking the drawer. Its cover glowed faintly, the branches writhing like fingers reaching for him. 

He ignored it, drafting a new story, but his thoughts strayed to the book’s warning. “Who wrote this?” he muttered, the question slipping out before he could stop it.

The hum sharpened, splitting his skull, and the room darkened, the strange moonlight dimming to a sickly glow. A presence formed tall, thin, a void where a face should be, its silhouette a tear in reality. 

Its voice was a low vibration, not heard but felt, like bones grinding: “You speak. I write.”

Julian froze, the rule screaming in his mind. He clamped his mouth shut, but another question escaped: “What do you want?” The Night Caller’s hum grew deafening, images flooding his mind: 

a boy lost in black-veined trees, a woman silenced in a void, a man burning in red light. Their stories Billy, Sumi, Ethan were real, their suffering etched into his thoughts. 

Then his own face, screaming, his stories unraveling, characters turning on him, their voices accusing, their endings rewritten in shadow.

The room warped. Notebooks bled ink, their pages curling into branches. The window swelled, its glass rippling like water, reflecting Julian’s face twisted in terror. 

The book, now open on the floor, pulsed, its pages burning without flame, ash rising in spirals. A new line scrawled itself: You spoke, Julian. Quola’s Night Caller claims your story.

“Your words feed her, Julian. Speak, and you’re hers forever.”

The Night Caller loomed closer, its faceless void splitting into a maw of darkness. The room’s shadows coiled into branches, dragging Julian toward the window, its glass now a portal to an endless night. 

His screams were swallowed by the hum, his stories rewritten, each word a shard in his soul, binding him to Quola’s will.