Lucas’s smile was thin. “Because I need you to draw something for me. Something specific.” He flipped to the last page. The drawing there was rough, almost childish, but unmistakable: a figure, human-shaped but wrong—too many joints, fingers like roots, a face that was mostly empty space with three too-large eyes. Underneath, in shaky letters: The Hollow.
Megan’s heart hammered. He was right. If this got out, she’d be a lab experiment or a circus act. There was no middle ground.
“Megan Inky.”
It was a Tuesday. A grey, drizzly Tuesday in October that smelled like wet leaves and regret. Megan was in the art room after school, alone—her favorite time. She’d just finished a detailed ink drawing of a raven on a thick sheet of watercolor paper. Its eye was a perfect, glossy bead of black. She leaned back, admiring her work, when the door creaked open. megan inky
Lucas nodded, satisfied. “Midnight. Don’t be late.”
Lucas’s face went white. He hadn’t expected it to actually work . “I—I wish for—”
She held up her pen. The nib glinted.
“Your wish,” it whispered, in a voice like dry leaves skittering across pavement.
Megan had nearly screamed in the middle of Mr. Henderson’s lecture on the Treaty of Versailles.
She didn’t even mind the stain.
“You don’t have a choice.” He pulled out his phone, tapped the screen, and turned it toward her. It was a video of Megan’s bedroom window, taken from outside. In the video, a tiny ink squirrel leaped from her desk, scampered across her pillow, and dissolved into a puddle.
“Save it.” He pulled something from his jacket: a small, leather-bound notebook. It was old, the pages yellowed and warped. He opened it to a page covered in diagrams and cramped handwriting. “My great-grandfather was an artist too. He left this behind. Notes about ‘lucid ink’—the ability to animate drawings. He could never do it himself. But you can.”
Select at least 2 products
to compare