"G-ghostly h-haunting I t-t-turn loo-oose."
Lydia fought off shivering long enough to finish that line, but beyond that a giant inkblot scrawled out the rest. Poor Lydia curled up into a ball on her bed, cold from head to toe now. She piteously struggled to read what was left behind the inkblot, but not even a fragment of a word could be made out. She tried flipping to a few other pages, but it was all the same. Words here and there were completely blotted out, as if on purpose. Though they looked like random blotches, they were clearly hiding something that someone didn't want read, or said, or even thought about. Lydia wondered what would need to be covered up like that. Maybe this was some sort of spell book, and she'd accidentally stumbled upon a curse!
Even the normally unaffected Lydia was a little scared at the thought of that. What exactly had she read, after all? The last thing she'd said, something about ghostly haunting… Could she have called out something supernatural?
Lydia quickly flipped through more of the book, desperate to find an answer. But the more she searched, the less legible the text became. Suddenly, the pages started flipping of their own accord, and Lydia leaped back in awe. The book floated just above her bed, its words shuffling around to form giant jumbles of text. When Lydia got the book pinned down, the words rearranged into little pictograms, which Lydia struggled to identify.
One definitely looked like a insect, but the other one was… a milk carton? She didn't really understand it. What was the book trying to tell her? Lydia wondered if reading aloud again would help, so she tried to sound out the words: "Bug, Bee, Bee-tle?" The book responded with a vigorous thrashing! "Beetle. Beetle what? What about the beetle?" The word beetle fragmented off an arrow, pointing at the carton. "Carton? Milk? Drink? Bottle?" The book was losing strength.
"I'm sorry, I don't know what it is! It's very hard to tell with all these letters mixed together…"
The milk carton fractured into its individual letters then, rearranging to form "STARTS WITH" and a gigantic letter "J". Then, sure enough, it reformed into the milk carton, then an orange. The orange stayed in the center of the carton, and it suddenly clicked with Lydia. "Orange juice. Juice!" The book practically applauded her. "Okay then!"
"But what do beetles and juice have to do with anything?"
The book showed the bug again, then the carton, flickering between the two. Lydia tried again, "Beetle. Juice. Beetle- juice? Beet--"
Just before Lydia could repeat the words again, her father peeked in. The book shut in her hands as he turned on the lights.
"Pumpkin, is everything okay? You've been in your room all day."
"Yeah Dad, I'm fine. Just doing some reading…"
"That's my little girl. Good night. Don't stay up too late now."
"Alright, Dad. Good night."
"Oh, and don't forget to shut that window. You'll catch cold in here."
"Oh, heh heh. I hadn't noticed."
Lydia sheepishly got up to shut the window, only to find it already closed. Just as she'd expected. Once her father shut the door, she looked to the book on her bed. It was also shut up tight. Seems she wouldn't get any further with it tonight. Lydia tucked it safely underneath her bed, then laid down wondering what she'd gotten herself into.
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