The Haunted Story by A. Witch

The haunted story. Thats a funny name for a storybook. It must be about a story thats haunted or a haunted book or something and A. Witch? Is that a real name? That has to be a made up name.

Hey, thats weird. What I just thought is in the story. How can that be? And what I'm thinking now is there too. I must be dreaming. This can't be real.

Startled, Susan closed the book in her hands and looked at the cover again.

"The Haunted Story by A. Witch"; that was all it said, no picture or anything, just a title in red lettering upon a black cover.

She put the book down upon her bed.

Maybe her neighbour, Mr Cranston had been right after all.

She'd seen him that morning tearing pages out of the book and trying to burn them on a bonfire hed built in his back garden.

She'd rushed into his garden and stopped him, giving him a big angry speech about how it was wrong to burn books and how the Nazi's had thrown books onto bonfires.

"But its evil", he'd said, pushing her away and continuing to tear out pages, "Its not a normal book".

"Knowledge is never evil", she'd said, adamantly, not listening, snatching the book from his hands and telling him that she was a primary school teacher and how great it was seeing the kids in her class love reading.

But maybe she'd been wrong, maybe it was an evil book.

"No", she thought, "I must have imagined it or misread it somehow. Maybe I'm tired. Books can't be haunted".

She picked the book up again and opened it, turning again to the first page.

"Then Susan began to read the book again", it said, "But, to her horror, she saw the words were different now and there was something else, what was that? A noise from behind her like the floor creaking".

Susan turned her head round to look but she couldn't see anything, only her closed bedroom door and all she could hear was the clock ticking

She continued to read, she didn't know why; she didn't want to read, she wanted to throw the book down and run away but she couldn't, something was forcing her to look at the words on the page, making her read.

"Susan started to read again", she read, "And as she did she heard that strange creaking sound grow louder but this time she couldn't turn round because she was no longer a reader of the book; she was a character in its story, trapped within its words and, as she read on, she began to realise just what that sound behind her was, the noise of footsteps creaking on her bedroom floor as, slowly, the witch crept closer".