Chương 161: Chapter 161
The pencil sat on the kitchen counter for days before anyone noticed the slight changes. At first, it seemed like nothing. Just a tool, small, worn from use, a simple instrument of writing. But over time, its shape began to alter.
Maggie, the youngest, was the first to see it. She stood by the counter one night, waiting for her mother to finish dinner, when she noticed something odd. The eraser, once worn down to a nub, had regained its shape—sharp, clean, and fresh. The wood, scratched and splintered from years of use, was now smooth and even, with no sign of wear. She reached out to touch it, but something stopped her. The hairs on her arms stood up, a strange feeling creeping over her.
"Mom, the pencil's... it's different," she said, voice quiet, unsure.
Her mother, busy stirring a pot on the stove, didn't answer. "Don't bother it, Maggie," she muttered, not looking up. "It's just an old pencil. Nothing to worry about."
Maggie stared at the pencil. She could have sworn it was looking back at her.
That night, after dinner, Maggie was the last to go to bed. She passed the kitchen again, her feet dragging as exhaustion settled into her bones. The pencil was still there. But now, it wasn't just the eraser. The lead had changed too, darker, thicker. The mark it left on the paper had a new sharpness to it, an edge that didn't feel right. She grabbed a piece of scrap paper, hesitated, then drew a line. The pencil felt heavier than it should.
The line was odd. Almost as if it had a weight of its own. Maggie shivered, discarded the paper, and went to bed.
The next day, her brother, Dan, found the pencil in the living room. He had been drawing, his usual hobby, filling notebooks with sketches of monsters and scenes from his video games. He sat down, reached for the pencil, and started sketching, but something was wrong. The pencil didn't move the way it should have. It was smooth, almost too smooth, like it had a life of its own. The drawings started to look strange—distorted, alive in a way that made Dan's skin crawl.
"Mom!" he yelled. His voice cracked as he tried to shake the pencil loose from his grip. But it wouldn't let go. It felt as if the pencil was digging into his hand, drawing him in.
His mother rushed in, but when she grabbed his arm to pull him away, she recoiled. Her fingers burned, and she cursed under her breath. The skin on her palm turned red and raw, as if the pencil had left a mark that wasn't just on the surface.
"What the hell is this thing?" she muttered, eyes wide, looking at the marks Dan had made. The picture wasn't clear—just shadows and shapes that swirled, distorted.
Later, when the family tried to throw the pencil away, it would return. It always came back, finding its way back into their home, as if it had a purpose. It wouldn't stay out. And with each return, it changed. The more they ignored it, the more they tried to push it away, the worse things got. It was as if the pencil had begun to feed on their resistance.
Maggie's drawings were no better than Dan's. When she tried to use it, the lines twisted into grotesque images. The monsters in her mind, ones she had drawn countless times before, now looked wrong, as if they were in constant motion, stretching and twisting in ways that made her sick. When she tried to rub them out, the eraser wouldn't budge.
The air in the house grew heavy. No one slept well. At night, Maggie would hear scratching sounds, faint but relentless, coming from the walls. She couldn't place where it was coming from. Sometimes, it sounded like breathing, deep and slow, but there was no one there.
One evening, her father found the pencil outside in the backyard. It had rolled to the far corner, hidden in the tall grass. He picked it up, examined it, and brought it back into the house.
"That's it," he said. "We're getting rid of this thing. Tomorrow, I'll burn it."
But the pencil wasn't done with them yet.
That night, the drawings started coming to life.
Dan woke up first, sweating, his heart pounding. The shadows in his room were moving. At first, he thought it was just his imagination, but then the shapes in the dark began to shift, crawling along the floor. He saw them now—creatures, half-formed from his own sketches. They moved with purpose, slow and deliberate, their eyes burning red. He tried to scream, but no sound came out.
He ran out of his room, but when he reached the hallway, he froze. The walls were covered in his drawings. Every inch, every space, filled with crawling things, twisted creatures, and endless eyes. And they were all staring at him. His own drawings, twisted and wrong, staring back, alive, reaching out.
Dan's breath caught in his throat. His hands shook as he reached out, touched the wall. His fingers met cold, damp paper. It was as if the walls had become alive, flesh and ink combining in ways that made him dizzy.
But it wasn't just the walls. The creatures started to move, breaking free of the paper. One by one, they stepped out of the walls, their limbs stretching too far, their faces malformed. They began to move toward Dan.
He ran.
Maggie was next. She woke up to a soft noise—a scratch, scrape, whispering just outside her door. It was the pencil, she realized too late, rolling across the floor. She tried to ignore it, but the noise grew louder, like something desperate, something hungry. It was calling to her.
When she opened her door, the hallway was filled with drawings—drawings of her, of her family. They were moving, reaching out. One of them, a monstrous face, turned its eyes toward her. It grinned.
Maggie stumbled back. She slammed the door shut, but it didn't stop. The scratching, the tapping, the whispering—it was coming from everywhere. It was inside her head. She could hear it, feel it—an itch, a pull, something driving her to draw more, to feed it.
And then it was inside the house.
Her mother was the first to see it. She was in the kitchen, hands shaking as she dropped a glass onto the floor. Her eyes snapped to the pencil, sitting innocently on the counter, waiting for someone to use it. She tried to pick it up, but the pencil twitched in her hand. The lines on the paper she had just drawn twisted, reforming into something new.
A door opened. Her husband stood in the doorway.
His eyes were wide, filled with something terrible.
"The pencil…" he said, his voice breaking. "We have to get rid of it. We have to burn it."
But the pencil wouldn't let them. Every time they tried to destroy it, it came back. It always came back.
One by one, the family was taken. Dan, Maggie, their father, their mother. Each succumbed to the drawings, pulled into the world they had created, the monsters they had brought to life.
By the time it was too late, there was no escape. No one left to resist. The house became a living nightmare, a place where the walls were filled with endless horrors, where the drawings had come to life, and where the pencil waited for its next victim.
And somewhere, in the dark, you could hear it scratching again, eager for more.
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