This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Chunky_Wet_Booger on 2024-09-09 03:08:23+00:00.

My uncle Joe was a house flipper. He bought distressed or abandoned houses and fixed them up and sold them for a profit. He’d done this for years and he was pretty good at it. Sometimes I helped him out, it’s a decent way to make a few bucks over the summer and I got to hang out with my uncle. It was hard work but at least it wasn’t something soul-destroying like fast food or a call center.

We’d found some pretty wild things in the houses he bought. Once we found a fully functioning still in the basement of an old hunting lodge, along with about twenty bottles of moonshine. One time we found these little weird clay statues, about fifty of them, all around an old ranch house that used to be an artists commune. Of course we also found the usual stuff you see an a old house. Lots of abandoned family picture albums, broken plastic toys, decaying furniture. All of it has to be tossed out.

Sometimes I think about these people, and the stuff they left behind. A lot of it came from people who died with no family, but other times I can’t help but wonder what the story was. One time we found this huge painted portrait of a little girl, about six or so. Must have cost a fortune. At the bottom was a plaque that read “Rest in Peace, Maggie 1967 – 1974” I wonder what happened to Maggie. I wonder what happened to her family that they would leave this painting behind. I felt so bad throwing it in the roll-off dumpster. It felt irreverent or disrespectful. I felt like I was throwing away something precious. All of the things that have meaning to use will end up as somebody else’s junk.

Out of all the things I found while I worked for my uncle I never kept anything. Except once. We were working on a split-level out in the county that was already in decent shape. It just needed a pretty good cleaning, a coat of paint and some new carpet. The only furniture left inside was an old broken cabinet style TV and a roll-top desk. Inside the desk was an old leather bound journal, the hardback kind people used to use as a diary ages ago. Someone had written on the cover, in big block letters “NIGHTMARE JOURNAL”

When I opened it up I found pages upon pages of someones nightmares they had written down. This was a solid one hundred pages, front and back, of dense, neat handwriting. Hundreds upon hundreds of entries, each one dated – except for the first, which read:

“My name is Adam. This is going to be my nightmare journal. The shrink says this might help, but I don’t know. I’m also not supposed to call him a shrink. I’m willing to try anything at this point.”

I don’t know why but I had to take it. I couldn’t explain it. I felt bad about it at first. I tried to lie to myself that if it was something important they would have taken it with them. But the truth is this is somebody’s private misery that I had no right to poke my nose into. But I couldn’t resist.

I’ve had the journal for quite a few years now. I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I want to share some of these entries. The journal was old even when I found it and I don’t think it’ll do any harm.

Most of the journal is made up of short, two or three sentence entries. Some are a couple of paragraphs. But some are several pages long, and insanely detailed and descriptive.

This is an entry from near the beginning of the journal:

14 July

“It wouldn’t be hell if it wasn’t forever.” the pale man says, standing over me.

He shouldn’t be able to speak, he has no mouth, no face, just a round jagged hole filled with sharp chunks of bone and raw flesh. He holds a old oil lamp that smokes and flickers, he holds it in a hand that ends not in fingers but raw stumps of bone. In his other hand is something like a staff, but covered in pulsating veins. He is dressed in rags and smells faintly of ashes.

I stagger to my feet. I am cold, naked, and drenched in sweat. The only thing I can feel is fear. It coils in my guts like a snake made of ice. It overwhelms me. I have never been this afraid. I try to speak but the sound dies in my throat. What comes out of my mouth reminds me of a lamb being slaughtered. An animal sound, like a panicked bleating.

I am surrounded by dimly lit dead trees and the smell of decay. The black flagstones I stand on are moss covered and slick. They form a rough path that leads into the darkness. I have to get away, so

I do the only thing I can, I run. I run and leave the pale man and his smokey oil lantern that smells faintly of burning meat and something worse. I run into the darkness, into a tunnel of dead trees.

My way is lit by a pale light in sky that I can not see. I slow my pace and try to look up, but my body refuses to obey. I know in my heart that the source of this silver light is the worst thing I can possibly imagine. I know if I look directly into that wan glow it will be the end, it will be terror beyond imagining. So I lower my gaze and keep running. It’s all I can do.

I run for hours, possibly days. There is no time here. There is only the overwhelming fear and the darkness and cold stale air and the need to get away. The trees thin out, and the flagstones give way to sand and gravel. I keep running. The sand gives way to hard packed dry dirt and dead brush. I keep running. My feet ache and burn. They are raw and bleeding. The pain is intense and sharp, like the jagged edge of a broken diamond digging into the nerves of my feet. I keep running.

In the distance is a mound, possibly a hill. It is the only thing for miles around besides the occasional dead bush or small jagged rock. The top of the hill glows with a warm red light. It is warm and welcoming, the color of a faded rose.

As I get closer, I see it’s not a hill, but some kind of pyramid. There are steps on the side, like the pyramids in South America. I ascend the steps slowly, with reverence. I am supposed to be here. I leave bloody footprints in my wake.

On the top of the pyramid is a wide, flat terrace with a squat, square throne made of black stone. On the throne sits the pale man. Before me is a glowing pit, made of brick giving way to an awful pink flesh. A never-ending mouth, sucking and chewing. The pale man gestures and my knees give out. I fall in. I fall, and as I fall I look up at the sky, and see that silver light. That moonlight glow. It is an eye, a vast and infinite eye filled with incomprehensible sadness and wisdom. It looks at me and though me. It sees every part of me, then it turns away.

I am being torn apart. My hands and feet are gone, I feel every microsecond of them being ripped away. Then my arms and legs. I am coming apart. I am a torso. I am only a head. I am a single mote of dust in a black hurricane. The wind blows through me, and around me and inside of me and out of me. I am nothing.

The world spins, and I wake, laying on black moss-covered flagstones.

“It wouldn’t be hell if it wasn’t forever.” The pale man says, standing over me.

I wake up screaming. This was a really bad one. I need more sleeping pills.

And that’s the first entry that really shook me. I’ll post more if you guys want. It’s mainly the longer ones that are interesting, but I may post some of the shorter ones as well.