Every time. Christmas? I catch the flu. Halloween? My mom gets the stomach bug. My little sisters birthday? My dad gets COVID.
I thought this was all a coincidence. It seems like it should be, right? Just a funny little thing that happens, who knows why? My initial thoughts were wrong.
This takes place about nineish months ago, when I was clearing out our family’s basement for some spring cleaning, I found a strange book. From the outside, it seemed like a strange book with odd carvings on it. None of them were particularly interesting, just the stuff you would see in a public bathroom stall, if a bit more… unsettling.
I decided to pick it up, for whatever reason. I did a quick scan to look for a title or something, but found nothing but a small sticker which read:
Sunday, October 25, 1846
The sticker looked old, dusty, and torn. I thought it may have been an old bible, due to the fact our family has a long history of being fairly religious. So, I decided to open it. That was the worst mistake of my life.
As I opened it, I felt my chest start to tighten, the letters, or what seemed to be letters at least, were all written as if they were strange symbols. There were sketches of what seemed to be a warped human form, as if they had been corrupted by a demonic force.
Normally, I would’ve closed the book, and went to calm myself down. But I couldn’t control myself, and turned the page. Each page was more unsettling than the last, showing more and more deranged sketches, until on a page somewhere in the three hundreds, it became legible, if a bit messy.
It was written in what I thought at the time was red ink, and read,
This freaked me out. I wasn’t sure what this meant, who wrote it, or what happened for this to have happened. Now, while I don’t believe in any form of magic completely, I’m a solid believer in the supernatural, and this made me believe my family had been cursed.
That would explain everything that had been happening, but I thought that a curse would’ve been more intense, so after a small amount of critical thinking, I closed the book and shook off my lingering fear.
That night I had the worst nightmares of my life. I heard screams of agony, horrid skeletons charred to the bone clawing, begging for mercy. Flames engulfed my vision. I saw a man carving into a book, chanting something, as he bled from his hands.
I woke up in a cold sweat. It was the middle of the night, but I could hear my sister awake. In a frenzy, I rushed to her room, to find her awake and crying. I did my best to comfort her, and she eventual fell back to sleep.
I wasn’t given such mercy, unfortunately. I didn’t sleep at all that night, and judging by my parents tired expressions, I could tell they didn’t either. I thought I should mention the book I found, but I felt a cold hand keeping my mouth from speaking, although there was nothing there.
I can’t figure out what has been causing this. My family has kept getting sicker and sicker. My grandma has gotten cancer, and my mental health even has been destroyed. Did opening that book cause all this? It couldn’t have been, right?
A few weeks later, after consistent nightmares and sleep paralyses, I decided to go find the book again. It was exactly where I had left it. But something wasn’t the same. Keep in mind, about twenty-three days had passed at this point. The date on the sticker had changed, and instead read,
Thursday, December 10, 1846
The stickers date was changing faster than our own. I felt a cold presence in the room with me, and decided to take the book.
I went to my grandparents with the book, and burnt it. The flames burned higher than I thought they would have from a book that size, but I thought nothing of it. For a few seconds, though, I thought I saw eyes staring through the flames.