I'm Here to Deliver a Warning

I'm here to deliver a warning.
A few years ago my friends and I were out walking in the woods. Jim, Mark and I had all met at school in accounting and were brought together by our mutual dislike of our teacher.
There was a really great bit of woods a couple of miles out from my house. One day, Jim had the idea to go exploring there. Mark and I agreed, of course, as we loved spooky things.
So there we were, in the woods, lost. The sun had gone down half an hour ago and I'd lost the map. We were all sure that if we just picked a direction and kept walking we'd find our way out. It was a pretty small area, after all.
After a while, we came upon something strange. A log cabin stood alone in a small clearing--so small, in fact, that one of the walls was up against trees. The roof was gone and the walls were burned halfway to the ground. Mark suggested that we go inside, but I wasn't so sure.
I reminded him that it was already pretty dark, and that we could always come back here tomorrow. He reasoned that we would be hard pressed to find it and, with that, he moved to the door.
At first, the door wouldn't move, but after a few good kicks it came off its hinges. Mark led the way in. The walls were scratched as if something had tried to get out and the little furniture that was there had been overturned. A small bed was on the far wall with no mattress and no sheets.
I found a lantern and some matches hung up on the wall, so I lit it. I was glad to have some light.
That is, I was glad until I saw the cabin. The walls were covered in blood. Lots of it. The walls were splashed with it in different shapes, as if someone had been ripped to shreds. There was a long streak of it heading towards the door, but stopped about a foot short of it. We all just stared at it for a moment. And then we ran.
I dropped the lantern in the cabin, sending it up in flames. As it burned we ran as hard as we could. It felt like an eternity but we finally burst out of the woods and onto the road. We ran all the way back to my home. From there Jim and Mark were able to call their parents to come and pick them up. That was the end of it, or so I thought.
The next day Mark called me and told me to meet him in the warehouse, because he had something to show us. I agreed to come quickly and hung up the phone.
The warehouse was an old meat-packing plant a couple of miles from the center of town. It had been abandoned after a couple of the employees had been murdered there. One of them had been the owner's son, so he couldn't bear to work there anymore. He closed up shop and tried to sell the plant. No-one would buy it though. They were too scared by the murders.
I rode my bike down there and met Jim outside the door. We went in together to find Mark inside, sitting at a table. He had a book in front of him, the cover half-burnt and blackened. He told us that he'd found it in the cabin yesterday and pocketed it. We were curious to see what was inside.
Mark told us that he'd read over it a bit, and that it was a grimoire. When we asked what a grimoire was he said that it was a manual on how to do magic and rituals, summon entities from beyond and whatnot. That sounded pretty cool, so we asked what we had to do.
Big mistake.
Mark wrote some stuff on the floor in an arcane language and stood up. He lit some candles and told us to stand around the writing in a circle. We turned off the lights and did just that. He then took a knife and cut himself, grabbing the blade with his left hand and pulling it across with his right. We watched as he then placed his hand on the ground and smeared the blood across the writing. Standing up, he handed us the knife. Jim took it and did the same before handing it to me. I hesitated, but I eventually took the knife and copied.
Mark opened the grimoire and started chanting in a strange language. The candles went out and I couldn't see a thing. I blacked out a moment later. When I came to I was in an office. I got up and looked around, figuring out that I was in the supervisor's office in the plant. I looked out through the window and what I saw horrified me. Jim had his chest ripped out and his entrails splashed across the floor. Blood was everywhere. Mark was hanging from the ceiling by his intestines. I couldn't take it, and I threw up.
I ran home and went straight upstairs to the bathroom. I showered, washing the blood off me before stepping out to look at myself in the mirror. I had a few deep gashes across my arms and my face was cut up pretty badly.
I called the police to go and have a look at the warehouse, telling them what had happened. A little while later they came to my house and arrested me.
I'm on death row now. I'm writing this as a warning to everyone not to practice evil rituals. Some things were not meant to be messed with.
It turned out that Mark had hid a camera in the warehouse with the intention of capturing what happened. I was shown the video during the trial.
I had just bent down to smear blood on the ground. Mark had opened the book and started chanting. The candles went out. What I saw next will haunt me for the rest of my short life.
I walked over to the table and picked up the knife. Jim turned and asked me where I was going, and I responded by plunging the knife into his chest and repeatedly stabbing him until his organs spilled out. I then turned my attention to Mark. He wrestled the knife from me and attacked, slicing up my face. I acted as though I couldn't feel a thing and knocked him out. I cut out his intestines and climbed a ladder up to the ceiling where I hung him, still alive, from one of the metal beams.
The rest of the video was him screaming as he slowly died.
I can honestly say that death can not come fast enough for me. Please, please do not make the same mistake I did.
To this day the book has never been found.
Category:Books
Category:Places
Category:Dismemberment
Category:Ritual