This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Various_Destinations on 2024-10-17 22:53:17+00:00.
There are some things better left unfound. I did not always think this way. As a younger man I loved exploring abandoned and forgotten places. I loved finding old items that had been left behind by owners long since passed. That’s how I came across the red book.
I found it in a condemned hospital. I used to look up buildings scheduled for demolition so I could go poke around before they were forever lost. Bloody asking for something like this I was. I travelled for hours through rural countryside before I found myself in the outskirts of a sizable town. I arrived on a late Autumn day, and sized up the dilapidated building looming before me.
It was a Christian hospital, filled with crosses and portraits of Jesus staring down from the cobwebbed walls. The memory of the crucifix hanging above the chapel sticks in my mind; broken and upside down. That was where I found the red book, sitting upon the altar. I look back now at how foolish it was; how inviting it must have seemed for…
I remember the statue of Mary, seeming to bore a pleading stare into me as I took the crimson bound tome. I’m sure this was not the case… but when I think back to that moment, my memory presents her as weeping tears of blood.
I opened the book there. The words were written in what I recognized as Latin. I had seen many Christian artifacts before, but something about these pages felt… different. Heavier. My eyes skimmed the words, and though I could not understand them, I almost could not pull myself away.
The air become hazy, and I lost myself for a time. There was a whining in my ear, but when I finally shut the book, it vanished. I do not know what compelled me to take this item. No, that’s not true. I have always loved procuring these sorts of things. It has brought me trouble before. It will bring me trouble again.
But for this trouble, it had just begun. I took it home and placed it on a bookshelf in my living room. There it stayed, drawing my eyes whenever I walked by. I eventually took to opening it and gazing at the words that I could make no sense of. The whining would return, growing in intensity. When I focused on it, it started to sound like screaming.
Unsettled, I hid the book away in a locked chest. I tried to forget about it. I thought about discarding it, but something inside me reviled the idea. The more I tried to distance myself from it, the more present it became in my mind. The occasional whining in my ear began to trespass on my daily activities. At least, I told myself it was whining, like the tinny sound of tinnitus. But I knew it what it really sounded like. It was a faint screaming. A cacophony of voices all calling out together in agony. Then the nightmares began.
The same one, every night. A black figure with the head of a goat, only three eyes where each one should be. It would rumble to me in a language I did not understand. Then I would be presented with the horrors of hell. I would be nailed to a cross, forced to watch as thousands of bodies were mutilated and flayed before my eyes. I witnessed children ripped from their mother’s breast and eviscerated. I saw demons reveling in the violence and viscera. These things I saw every night in my sleep.
I began to see the figure in the shadows of my home. I heard the screams constantly, growing in intensity all the time. Despite this, I still hesitated to discard the book. I knew it was the source of my oncoming madness, but somewhere deep in my heart, I treasured it. I loved it.
Eventually I grew to understand what the beast told me in my dreams. It was always the same. “This is your eternity. Your soul is now mine.” One night, after such a dream, I awoke to find bleeding scratches torn across my face. Terror finally won over. I dug out the book, the bright and deep color of blood, and I took it to the nearest church. It was the middle of the night, but I had a penchant for getting into locked buildings. However, I found a conspicuously convenient unlocked door, and from there I brought the book to the chapel.
Looking back, I do not know why I didn’t throw away or destroy the book. Instead, I brought the red book to the altar, and placed it upon it. I looked up then, and I saw, clear through my haze, blood dripping down the face of the crucified Jesus above the altar.
I fled then, a sea of emotion inside of me. Shame and fear, mixed with a dark excitement. I could not place why at the time, but looking back, I fear the feeling was not my own. Two days later, the church burned, killing dozens inside. I do not remember where I was that day. There were clothes in my closet that reeked of gasoline.
That was years ago. I have since moved away. I still have the nightmares. I still hear the screams. I have told few of my story, and those who have heard it say that they too begin hearing the distant screams in the days following my tale. They tell me of the dreams of the beast.
I tell it now, against my own judgement. Against my own will. There is something within that desires this tale to be spread. Something that wishes for all to feel as I do. Desperate, terrified, and elated.