There was a book in the school library always kept under lock and key.
Maude never understood what all the fuss was about. The book seemed like any ordinary old book, except of course for the thick silver chain warped around it held together by a giant lock.

Maude remembered the first time she’d seen the aged brown leather cover with the title written in gold ink, most of it long faded away. She remembered picking up a stool and approaching the high shelf it was displayed on as if compelled, fingers nearly grazing the chain before a passing librarian harshly pulled her back and pointed to the plaque in front of it. “DO NOT APPROACH” it said.

A classmate later explained to her that the book had been donated to Matilda’s Girls Academy by an eccentric alumna who spend most of her time traveling the world in search of relics and treasure some thirty years ago. No one knew why she had bequeathed the school with this particular item, but shortly after she disappeared and hasn’t been heard of since. 

The book wasn’t always chained. At first, students were allowed to study its pages full of drawings and swirling text no one could read, before strange things began to occur. Students and faculty alike disappeared for days at a time, returning in the dead of night mumbling in languages no one could make sense of. Others began to see visions of monsters come to life straight out of the books’ pages.
It wasn’t long until the headmistress tried removing it, but the book wouldn’t let her. It was as if it glued itself to the shelf by some kind of magic, and no matter what they tried, no one had succeeded. And so the book was chained and kept out of reach. Only then did the horrors stop and everything at Matilda’s Girls Academy returned to normal.

But the book never truly slumbered. It was merely waiting for the right person to come along.

The fall that Maude stepped through Matilda’s polished halls, the book began to wake.