It was just an ordinary day when I stumbled upon an old diary at a garage sale. The cover was worn and the pages were yellowed, but something about it called to me. I bought it for a few dollars and took it home.
As I started to read, I realized that this diary belonged to a woman named Emma who had lived in the early 1900s. She had written about her life, her family, and her dreams in intricate detail. But as I delved deeper into the pages, I began to notice something strange.
Emma’s descriptions of her dreams were unlike anything I had ever heard before. They were vivid and terrifying, full of creatures with eyes that glowed in the dark and shadowy figures that whispered in her ear. She wrote of being chased through forests by something unseen, and of waking up with bruises and scratches on her body.
At first, I tried to dismiss it as the wild imaginings of a woman from a different era, but as I continued to read, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more to these dreams. I started to have nightmares of my own, dreams that were similar to Emma’s in their intensity and horror.
As the days went by, my life began to spiral out of control. I found myself becoming more and more obsessed with Emma’s diary, staying up late into the night to read and reread her words. I stopped going to work, stopped talking to my friends and family. All I could think about was Emma and her dreams.
And then, one night, as I lay in bed, I heard a voice whispering in my ear. It was a voice I recognized from Emma’s diary, a voice that had haunted her for years. I tried to shake it off, to tell myself that it was just my imagination, but it only grew louder and more insistent.
The next thing I knew, I was running through the streets, chased by creatures with glowing eyes and shadowy figures that seemed to be everywhere at once. I could feel their hot breath on my neck, their cold fingers reaching for me.
When I woke up the next morning, I was covered in scratches and bruises, just like Emma had been. I knew then that I had to do something, that I couldn’t let these dreams consume me any longer. I gathered up Emma’s diary and set out to find answers.
It wasn’t easy, but eventually, I tracked down Emma’s descendants. They told me that Emma had been plagued by these nightmares her entire life, and that she had eventually died in her sleep, her body covered in strange bruises and scratches.
As I sat there, listening to their stories, I knew that I had to break the cycle. I burned Emma’s diary, hoping that by destroying it, I could somehow break the hold that it had over me.
It’s been several weeks now, and the nightmares have stopped. I’m starting to feel like myself again, but I know that I’ll never forget the horror that I experienced. And I can’t help but wonder, what other secrets and horrors are hiding in the pages of old diaries, waiting to be unleashed on unsuspecting readers like me?