Inktober Writing Challenge
(I am still few days behind. Fucking sucks. But I am pushing forward. Anyway, this one was incredibly fun to write. I think I may have further plans for it. Enjoy)
Day 17: An Eerie Journal Entry
Below I have copied an entry from a journal I found under the floorboards of my new bedroom. I welcome any sort of insights. To be honest with you all, my stomach flips every time I think about opening the basement. Moving here might have been a mistake. I am not sure yet. I am as intrigued as I am afraid. I think in the end, I will have solved the mystery my parents carried to their grave. I shall update as soon as I can about my findings, and about further entries in the journal. There’s something sinister lingering, and if the testament was to make me a part of it, it’s already too late to turn back.
1995.11.03
“I could hear wails in the basement all night yet again. Sickening, anguished laments of agony and sheer terror. I think it goes without saying I did not get a moment of sleep… I’m so tired, so incredibly tired of this. I asked Edgar and Alyssa to seal the doors with rags, but it doesn’t help. The screams soak through stone and wood and cloth. I tried stuffing my ears with cotton, but I can still sense the cries echoing at the back of my skull, and it’s driving me insane. Wax was no aid either. It only made things worse. The wax blocked sounds that awoke after nightfall, which I loved and which soothed me during the lapses. Only the screams remained, too poisonous to fade. I tried sleeping in another room, in several rooms. I could still hear the screams in every one of them. I came back to my room because every bed other than my own makes my back hurt so bad. It feels as if my spine has been broken and sulphuric acid has been poured into the cracks. Mary started complaining about the cries a couple of weeks ago. I sent her to stay in the shed. Sadly, I can’t sleep there. It’s too cold. Cold makes my pain unbearable, and the lapses to last hours. It’s hard without Mary around. Nobody is there to clean blood and foam off my lips, or to stir the fireplace. If only I had not fallen so sick. I can barely move, I can not walk at all. My muscles are too weak, and even tiniest shift makes my bones hurt. I have to ask Edgar to carry me every time I wish to leave the bed. I can’t stop coughing, sometimes I’m afraid my lungs will turn to shreds. Sometimes my eyes become so foggy I could barely tell faces apart if they sat on my bed side by side. Cigarettes do help thought. Spasms dim when I smoke. I can write, then, and I can read, as well as sip brandy. I’m thankful for it. I receive letters from Him every week… I just wish I wasn’t so ill. I dread to imagine the disarray. Alyssa and Edgar aren’t ready. Alyssa is too sadistic. I suspect the screams now plague the house because of her. I doubt she crushes their cords despite her swearing to me she does. Edgar is too gentle-hearted. Sometimes he even wants to liberate the subjects, especially young children and expecting mothers. I sincerely hope he did not give into compassion now that I am bedridden.
Yet it won’t be long now. He is to return soon, on Devil’s Day, the Hour of Unholy Trinity. He wrote me so in a letter last week. My Belial… I know he shall cure my sickness, burn away the rot that is turning his queen into a breathing cadaver. When pain is gone, I can set the crimson chambers back in order”.
