Day 6
When I woke up, I felt sure I’d been run over by a truck. My entire body ached and my head pounded. I wasn’t even sure I could open my eyes, my eyelids weighed too much.
But there was a sound breaking through it all, and I felt sure I had to do something about it. I think it was… my phone?
One eyelid peeled open and the light streaking through my window stabbed directly into my brain. I groaned and rolled off the couch. Forcing myself forward, I crawled across the floor to the table, where my phone continued to buzz.
I grabbed it in a weak grip and struggled to press the answer button, but I managed it in the end.
“Hello?” I barely recognized the sound of my own voice.
“Oh my god, you sound awful.”
“Jenny?”
“Yes. I’m outside. Can you come unlock the door? It’s raining?”
I forced my head up to stare at the door on the other side of the room. It seemed endlessly far away, and I sighed.
“It’s… gonna take a minute…”
I dropped the phone before I could hear Jenny’s response and reached ahead of me to claw and drag myself across the floor to the door. I was out of breath and sweating by the time I reached it and my arm was barely long enough to reach the lock. I flipped it over and then collapsed to the floor.
Jenny flung the door wide and gasped when she saw me.
“You’re not okay! The doctors told me you’d be fine alone! I would have-” She trailed off and then stooped to help me up.
Most of my weight fell on her shoulders, but she didn’t complain as she pulled me back towards the couch. She draped a blanket over me and sat next to me.
Through cracked eyes, I watched her take in the room. The towel I’d used to stop the bleeding was on the floor next to the couch. And the book still sat open on the table. Jenny stood and approached it.
“Don’t!” I lunged forward to try to grab her, but all I accomplished was nearly falling off the couch again.
She stopped and looked at me. “Is this the book from the storage unit?”
“I — uh — yes. Don’t open it.”
“Why not?” She opened the front cover and re-read the first page. I watched her hesitate and nearly turn the page.
“Stop!”
She turned towards me again. “You don’t think this book did this to you, do you?”
“Please, come sit down. Don’t turn the page.”
Jenny frowned at the book again, but then returned to the couch. “You know a book can’t hurt you, right?”
“But what if it did?” I reached for her hand and squeezed it with all the energy I could muster. “I was fine before. And now I have a tumor and constant nose bleeds. I can barely stand.” I took a deep breath, winded by my speech. “What if the book is killing me?”
Jenny didn’t look convinced. “I should… take the book back to the storage unit. I should log it on the manifest.”
I sighed. “Probably. But don’t read it. No one can read it.”
Jenny squeezed my hands in hers and I could tell by her smile that she didn’t really believe me. “Let me take you to your appointment. You obviously can’t drive yourself.”
“I need to shower…” I didn’t have the energy to argue with her any longer.
“Do you need help?”
“Probably.”
I was readmitted to the hospital. Jenny told the doctors how she’d found me that morning and lectured them about how they’d let me go home in the first place. I’d never seen anyone yell at a doctor before, but I was too tired to admire it. I just wanted to go to sleep.
Day 7
An entire day of tests. And more tests. And they still haven’t decided what they’re going to do about my tumor. My nose is bleeding again, and I had to use my IV pole to walk to the hallway. But I had the book clutched under one arm as I shuffled my feet away from the hospital room.
The nurses' station was empty at this hour. There was a dim light from a room behind the desk and I figured they were back there enjoying the somewhat quiet of the middle of the night.
I made it outside and then my energy left me. I sank to the ground against the wall of the hospital and stared up at the sky. I knew the time crept closer and closer to the end for me and I wanted to see the stars one last time. The sunrise…
I wiped a hand across my face and it came away bloody. I knew without knowing this was the end.
I opened the book and stared at the page of warnings. And then I flipped the page to the mindless formulas I didn’t understand. And the headache shot to life behind my eyes once more.
Blood dropped onto the page, and then the next as I flipped through the book.
If I soaked the pages with my blood, maybe no one else would be able to read it. Maybe then it wouldn’t take another life.
As my life dripped from me, I hoped it would be enough.
Not even an hour later, a nurse found her lifeless body in front of the hospital, the book pinned beneath her. After the chaos of getting her inside and declaring her dead, the nurse carried the book towards a side table to be kept with her things. But she was tempted to open it, just to see what the dead girl had taken with her for her last moments in this world.
She turned to the front page. It was dusty and smelled a little damp, but the words were perfectly legible.
Proceed no further. The curse within these pages will bring you to your knees…