Imagined Into Being: The Chronicles of Quinn Book 2 by Qatarina Wanders & Ora Wanders

Author:Qatarina Wanders & Ora Wanders [Wanders, Qatarina & Wanders, Ora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wandering Words Media
Published: 2023-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

Grandpappy's Storybook

Gramps said that his grandfather, Grandpappy, took a book and made some copies. But this isn’t a copied book. It’s got everything handwritten on the pages in neat, dark ink lines. The words curl, bigger on the titles, and each one carefully, meticulously hand numbered at the bottom corners.

I sat down in the library, because I was already there, and tugged the candle close. There was something sort of thrilling about sitting and reading a super-old book like this—while I was sitting next to a candle.

It was less thrilling when I started reading the book.

For one, it wasn’t actually like, a whole story. It was a bunch of smaller stories, inside of the big book. And even more bizarre, I recognized the characters.

Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Tabitha. She loved to paint. When she painted, she could pretend that the world around her wasn’t actually happening. None of the bad. None of the mundane. And… None of the good, either.

You see, Tabitha was a girl rather easily frightened, and while she wanted good things to happen, as any properly polite good little girl might, she was also dreadfully afraid of them. Each time a new girl came to the orphanage, she would run away!

Oh, she would run—and then she would trip, and then she would fall, and then when she stood back up, she would say, “This is exactly why I was so afraid!”

And Tabitha would go off to hide again.

When she wasn’t hiding, she was dreaming, and she would paint those dreams. But even her paintings would become filled with her fears. The dog would bite. The tree would fall. The picnic would be ruined by storm clouds.

Tabitha was always scared. And she was lonely, because she was so scared. She would watch others from the edge of the door, and she would hope they would speak to her…and she would fear that they would speak to her.

One day, a stranger came to the orphanage in the middle of the night. Tabitha had been up painting. She was the only one awake.

Instead of running and telling the nun, Tabitha handled the situation the same way she always did. She ran, she fell, and she hid. She hid in a closet, far away from the stranger. She stayed very quiet.

The man came into the orphanage with a sack and a knife and a match. First, he filled up his sack, and then he stabbed the nun who ran the orphanage. Finally, he struck his match and lit the building on fire as he left.

The other children smelled the smoke and felt the flames. They got up and they ran outside. They called for Tabitha, but she was so scared that she ignored them. Instead, she tucked her face into her knees and she stayed right there in the closet, hiding.

The smoke got thicker. The heat got hotter. And soon enough, there was nothing that Tabitha could do.

She had hidden herself straight to death.

I swallowed hard as my gaze landed on that final word.

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