Abba graffiti tag

Everything to do with Graffiti Tagging and Throw-Ups

2013.03.17 23:55 Mental_Graffiti Everything to do with Graffiti Tagging and Throw-Ups

This subreddit is dedicated to Graffiti tagging. Discuss graff, tags and throw-ups, artists and styles here! For help with your graffiti and tags: PLEASE post in graffhelp Any sketches to blackbookgraffiti
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2013.03.08 20:13 agentlame Located world wide; like the art of Graffiti.

Street Art Porn: a subreddit for any kind of art that can be seen from the street or in an urban setting. It can be graffiti, a sicker, a stenciling, sidewalk chalk/painting, a mural on the side of a building, or even some public works.
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2014.05.09 22:41 Handstyle Help

Subreddit for handstyles. If you have a handstyle you want critiques on, or just want to share your handstyle this is the place to do it.
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2024.05.01 01:49 Edna_Elizia looking for a tiktok from 2022

I'm looking for a tiktok done in 2022. It was on new years. On the video there were two men dancing on a ABBA song : voulez vous. They didn't know each other but synced up while dancing like there was just them in the 'bar'. I think it was a bapub. It's my favorite tiktok , i've been looking for it for a while and i'm desperate. Please help and don't forget to tag the creator of the tiktok please ;)
submitted by Edna_Elizia to Tiktokhelp [link] [comments]


2024.05.01 00:53 tunnaF15h Jinx Left Her Mark on Viktor's Future...Literally (Foreshadowing Future Partnership?)

Sevika deals a winning pair of tarot cards in her game, Death and the Magician. In the Magician's hands is an object marked with Jinx's \"X\" tag rotated clockwise.
In the tarot card scene, Viktor's card, the Magician (which looks like a new version of the Machine Herald), is depicted holding a sphere (the Hexcore) engraved with a mysterious symbol.
This grafitti tag was used as part of the first teaser for Jinx's champion debut. The tag reads, \"X WUZ HERE\".
It took some time but I finally realized the symbol is actually Jinx's graffiti tag. It not just any tag either, this was used for Jinx's debut champion teaser, https://youtu.be/xtFBPVimDxA?t=115, the artists just turned it sideways.
Both tarot cards in the scene are decorated with a \"VJ\" on them.
Then I noticed that the cards tarot cards are initialed with "VJ". Unfortunately a lot of characters have names that start with either "V" or "J", but I choose to believe this it's referencing Viktor and Jinx because the Death card in the same scene looks like Jinx.
Viktor tells the player, \"Remember that Jinx was once a child of Zaun, just like me. Perhaps there is a way... No, don't mind me. Best of luck\", right before you go to confront Jinx after she stole dangerous tech.
Viktor tells the player, \"Whoever she was, remember that Jinx was once a person...\", at the finale as you defeat Jinx and repair the magical chaos she created. Everyone else thanks you or encourages you, but Viktor asks you to think of Jinx.
It really sheds some light on new dynamics that could develop for next season. Viktor and Jinx haven't met yet, but Arcane's promotional material wants you to know that in a world where Viktor knows who Jinx is and what she's done, he still believes Jinx should be treated with basic compassion, and is generally nice to her. You can see it in the RiotxArcane visual novel and the Christmas art.
Jinx looks up at Viktor in awe as he winds up his old toy boat.
In the Christmas art, Jinx and Viktor positioned in a way to reference Viktor's boat scene, but in reverse. Instead of Viktor cautiously showing his handmade toyboat to a curious but reserved Sky, Jinx is openly interested and impressed by what he's done and Viktor's proud of it.
A young Sky looking down curiously at Viktor and what he's doing.
Young Viktor looking up at Sky and showing his toyboat.
I can see their partnership lasting longer than Vi and Jayce's brief team up. Jinx and Viktor will both be on the outs of Piltover and a good chunk of Zaun next season. Jinx is controversial for obvious reasons, but Viktor might not be welcomed into Zaun because he's associated with a Councilor that not only shut down the bridge, but also killed a chembaron's son while raiding Silco's Refinery (who knows how many people were arrested during that). You also can't forget the fact that Viktor killed a Zaunite with his hexcore too. Viktor's going to need as many friends as he can get. I don't think Jinx will be that hard to win over because she responds to people that empathize with her, that's why she clung to Silco so hard. If it works out I can see a relationship where Jinx enables Viktor's descent (is Jinx afraid of the Void?), while Viktor might actually deescalate her plans. Why else have a scene where he defuses her bomb?
Viktor defusing Jinx's bomb which he described the design as \"inspired\", while telling Jayce \"there's always a choice\".
Sidenote: With more digging I found that others pointed out Jinx's champion tag can be found on Ekko and Vi.
Vi's prison uniform where she's designated \"Prisoner 516\", but the X is never stated by any guard or Caitlyn.
The difference is that Vi has Jinx's tag upside down, and Ekko's is in the correct position. No other champions seem have Jinx's tag, not Jayce or Singed, characters that Jinx's actions have deeply affected.
The image is fuzzy, but Jinx's tag can found on the lower left side on the front of Ekko's jacket.
The only ones in the show that get it are champions that are emotionally significant to her.
Caitlyn in her Arcane skin before she snaps Jinx's flag.
I did find that Caitlyn's Arcane skin has a gag animation that Jinx swapped Cait's rifle with a fake one that has Jinx's tag on it, probably to remind the audience the tag is still associated with Jinx.
submitted by tunnaF15h to loreofleague [link] [comments]


2024.05.01 00:24 Much-Giraffe48 A song from a Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure video from over 10 years ago

(hopefully the 'open' tag is the correct one) I apologise if this post breaks any rules or is way too vague for people to figure out - but it's been at least 10 years and I have yet to find this song. I'm desperate, man.
I'll be honest, I don't remember what most of the actual song sounds like. But I do have some surrounding information that might be helpful (from vague to more specific, by accident since I'm just typing this without thinking much in terms of format):
  1. It came from a Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure youtube video, showcasing all the portal animations for the characters, or at least a good chunk of them.
  2. The thumbnail for this video was a low quality image of 'Dark Spyro' specifically.
  3. This song was pre-2014, most likely pre-2013. I think the song itself was very 2000's, and at the earliest might've been released in like. 2001 I wanna say? But very very 2000's, probably pop specifically. Think something like Ke$ha, I wanna say.
  4. This song isn't from a niche indie band who no one has heard of - it played on mainstream, conventional radio channels. I heard it once on the radio myself. (Or at least, it played on French radio, if that helps at all)
  5. The ending of the song has a chorus of woman singing, kind of like the end of The Chain by Fleetwood Mac or Lay All Your Love on Me by ABBA. While this was cut out from the video, it was in the radio version. This is the only bit I remember with the most clarity.
I've tried looking it up myself, I've tried asking people who might know (I'm sure Skylanders is nostalgic for some people, right?), I've even tried looking up on the Wayback Machine in case someone for any reason decided to archive any relevant youtube searches. Nothing.
I have full confidence that I'll recognise the song if I find it though, and maybe that's just me being silly, but I want to at least see if this subreddit helps. If anyone does end up finding the song - even if I listen to it and realise it's bad - call me in your hour of need. I will be in your debt!!
submitted by Much-Giraffe48 to WhatsThisSong [link] [comments]


2024.04.30 23:52 notyabusiness509 Graffiti or?

Graffiti or?
I’m seeing more of this exact tag across town. Is it really just graffiti, or does it “mean” something?
submitted by notyabusiness509 to Spokane [link] [comments]


2024.04.30 22:25 finding_anorak 🤑Best Referrals! $70 For Quest 3 / $35 For Quest 2/Meta Quest Pro / App Referrals (25% off Games!)🤑

$30 referral code is working for new Quest 3 purchases! Just click the link, log in (or already be logged into Meta), and setup your new Quest with that login and we both get free money!
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While you're here, activate unlimited 25% discounts for any of the games below!
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After the Fall Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs
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Asgard's Wrath 2 BONELAB
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Bartender VR Simulator Beat Saber
Beat Saber Blade & Sorcery
Blade & Sorcery: Nomad Forest Farm
Broken Edge Gorilla Tag
Deisim Island Time VR
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Fruit Ninja Lucky’s Tale
Fruit Ninja 2 OrbusVR: Reborn
Glider Sim Raw Data
Iron Rebellion Robo Recall
Ironlights SUPERHOT VR
Job Simulator The Climb
Kingspray Graffiti The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
Knockout League The Wizards - Dark Times: Brotherhood
OrbusVR: Reborn Vacation Simulator
Robo Recall: Unplugged Waltz of the Wizard
SUPERHOT VR Windlands 2
Swarm
The Climb
The Climb 2
The Light Brigade
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners - Chapter 2: Retribution
The Wizards
The Wizards - Dark Times: Brotherhood
Until You Fall
Vacation Simulator
Waltz of the Wizard
Zenith: The Last City
submitted by finding_anorak to OculusReferralLinks [link] [comments]


2024.04.30 16:29 CeliaYeen Looking for a quote to continue a piece

I'm trying to make a design for my phone case and I have the idea down, the only problem is I've been stuck in artists block for like 2 weeks and I'm sick of it. I already have the base of it done, it's a graffiti tag. It's just the words and I haven't been able to color it. I need someone who also has a graffiti style to continue my work since I apparently can't. I'd like a quote for this before I hire anyone of course because my budget is a little tight right now. Expect maybe a bit of delay for a payment unless I can borrow money from a friend. I WILL turn you down if your portfolio is inconsistent.
submitted by CeliaYeen to commissionart [link] [comments]


2024.04.30 13:45 blackmoonbluemoon Share a beauty guru blunder that you think went unnoticed?

Share a beauty guru blunder that you think went unnoticed?
Bubzbeauty once went on a social media rampage because she thought an Abba tribute band was being racist towards her , saying chicken Tikka because she's Asian, when they were actually singing the song chiquitita. She was tagging Ikea that was hosting the band and told us at the time she was giving the singer dirty looks. Poor tribute singer probably had no clue why she was staring him down . Hopefully there were no ramifications for the tribute band.
submitted by blackmoonbluemoon to BeautyGuruChatter [link] [comments]


2024.04.30 13:25 GMsoliumGM my ps2 collection so far (camera quality is pretty bad)

my ps2 collection so far (camera quality is pretty bad) submitted by GMsoliumGM to ps2 [link] [comments]


2024.04.30 10:44 Musab10msn Postshot edits on expert raw

Postshot edits on expert raw
I took this picture in expert raw mode with these settings (swipe to see). I noticed a slight change in the picture from what I saw in the preview before hitting the shutter button.
submitted by Musab10msn to GalaxyS23Ultra [link] [comments]


2024.04.30 07:49 CIAHerpes The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 1]

I remember when I first heard the rhyme as a child. It terrified me. To me, the Crooked Man was some sort of boogeyman with freakishly long arms and legs that were twisted and broken in horrifying ways. I still have the rhyme memorized. It repeats in my brain like a skipping record.
“There was a Crooked Man, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”
My brother Benton, who loved to torture me as a child, ended up adding his own parts to the rhyme over time. The extra parts he added did nothing to console me or end my nightmares of this twisted boogeyman who always seemed to slink through the shadows. I remember the rhyme Benton told me by heart to this day.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue.
The crooked man twists and crawls.
He uses his crooked blade to kill.
And when the curtain of night falls,
He comes to get his thrill.”
***
So I found it strange when, a few weeks ago, I was sitting with a couple of my friends drinking and the subject of the Crooked Man came up again. They were rambling about shootings and serial killers and other fairly interesting subjects that I knew almost nothing about. But my friend Iris knew everything about such morbid subjects.
She was a small drink of water, no more than five feet, with platinum blonde hair and green eyes like a cat. She was extremely attractive with high cheekbones and a small nose and chin. She always talked extremely fast and made violent slashing gestures with her hands. Sometimes I wondered if she had a secret amphetamine habit I didn’t know about.
“But did you hear about the murders in Union?” Iris asked, glancing over at her boyfriend, Ben. Ben was the opposite of Iris- tall and nerdy with thick, black-rimmed glasses and a low whisper of a voice.
“I just heard that some kids went missing,” Ben murmured. I shrugged.
“I don’t watch TV,” I said. “The news is all bullshit anyway. They only show you the bad stuff. After all, no one wants to hear about new breakthroughs in fusion technology or discoveries in particle physics. Instead, people just want to watch others get murdered, robbed and beaten, so that they can feel that at least someone else has it worse than them. That’s all the news is, really: a form of schadenfreude, the joy people get from seeing others’ misfortune and suffering. Our entire media industry is built on a foundation of schadenfreude.” I took a long sip from my beer, a Harpoon that tasted like pure raspberries. Iris rolled her eyes.
“While probably true, I don’t care,” she said, turning her green eyes on me. “Don’t you want to know what happened to the kids?”
“I do,” Ben said, leaning forward. “Was it something… supernatural?” Iris gave a sardonic laugh at that. Ben sat back, offended.
“What’s so funny? I heard there was weird stuff going on around that factory. In fact, I heard they used to manufacture some dye there for clocks and stuff, right? So all these people went to work, painting watches and clocks and whatever else they told them to paint. It was this special green dye that would glow in the dark. The factory was staffed by mostly women, and I heard they used to lick their paintbrushes to form them into points. They figured this stuff was just regular paint that glowed in the dark.” I leaned back, interested. Ben started talking faster, getting more animated.
“So what happened?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Well, the workers started getting cancer and dying in huge numbers,” Ben continued as the kitchen lights sparkled off his glasses. “One woman even had her entire jaw rot off. Others had pieces of their faces falling off. So it turns out, they were using radioactive isotopes to make the paint glow! And these women were just licking the paintbrushes and touching the paint…”
“Holy shit,” I whispered, horrified.
“They called them the Radium girls,” Ben said. “That factory killed hundreds and hundreds of people. That’s why a lot of people think it’s haunted. People claim they see ghosts and weird shit around it. And that’s not all. The case gets even weirder when you look at workers’ families.
“It seems a lot of their kids went missing, too. The cops never found any of them. The entire time the factory was operational, and even after it shutdown, the families of the workers kept having strange things happen- children disappearing from their bedrooms in the middle of the night, strange murders and unexplained suicides that kept killing off healthy, normal people all over town.”
“So, anyways,” Iris continued, looking slightly annoyed at the interruption, “the kids that went into that abandoned factory were all found… torn apart. Their limbs were all amputated and crooked.” She leaned forward, using her spooky campfire voice. “And the limbs were long. Freakishly long, as if they had just grown overnight to inhuman lengths before they got lopped off. But they never found the heads or the torsos. All they found was ten legs and ten arms.”
“And no one knows what happened?” I asked. She shook her head.
“Officially, no. The police and media said it was some sort of serial killer, of course. But there wasn’t a shred of evidence anywhere. It was like a ghost had done it. Where the limbs were piled up in the basement, there was no evidence that anyone had been there in months, no footsteps or microscopic evidence of any presence. But the story doesn’t end there. Because there were six teenagers that went into that building, and one of them was found alive three months later, wandering, covered in blood and scratches, mostly naked and totally insane. One of my friends is an EMT and she said that the kid would not stop talking about the Crooked Man taking his friends and keeping him prisoner in some other world.”
At the mention of those words, the Crooked Man, a chill went down my spine. My heart felt like ice.
“What’d you say? What did the kid say?” I asked anxiously. Suddenly the room felt very hot, and the alcohol was not sitting well in my stomach.
“He said he got kidnapped by someone called the Crooked Man,” Iris repeated, taking a long sip from her wine. “According to the kid, it was some sort of fucking monster, apparently. I think his mind must have just snapped. He was probably kidnapped and held in the basement of some serial killer for three goddamned months. Who knows what he saw and experienced? People make up all sorts of crazy shit when they’re traumatized.”
My hand was shaking so badly that I had to put my bottle down on the table. For some reason, my mind kept flashing back to my sister, Emilia, who had been kidnapped from her room in the middle of the night when my brother Benton and I were little. She had never been found. We had never gotten a ransom note or found a body. It was as if Emilia had simply disappeared, vanished from the surface of the planet in an instant.
“I think some of that stuff is real,” Ben said. “People have been talking about cryptids and ghosts for thousands of years across countless different and unrelated cultures. What are the chances that all of them are just hallucinations or delusions?”
I didn’t know, but I thought I might know someone who might.
***
My brother Benton was a long-term drug addict living in a flophouse. I went to see him the next morning. He opened the door with a glazed, half-aware expression. Scars covered his arms and legs. He looked like a walking skeleton. His eyes shone like the last bit of water at the bottom of a dying well.
“Jack,” he said, surprised, appearing to wake up slightly. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said, pushing past him into the one-bedroom place he called home. A cockroach skittered across the wall. As he closed the door, I saw bites from bedbugs all over his body. Benton turned, spreading out his hands.
“Well, what is it, little brother? You know I’m all ears.”
“You remember that rhyme you used to scare me with when we were little?” I asked. “That rhyme you made up about the Crooked Man?” He seemed to go a shade paler.
“I didn’t make anything up,” he said. “That rhyme came from Grandma. She told it to dad when he was little, before she died.”
“Grandma?” I asked, startled. Our grandmother had died of cancer when she was extremely young, in her late 20s. “Did you hear about the murders over in Union? The survivor was talking about the Crooked Man.”
“That’s pretty freaking weird, man,” he said. “Especially considering what happened to Grandma and Emilia, you know.” He sat down on the threadbare mattress, laying back and sighing.
“Why is it weird?” I asked.
“Because, you know, that’s where Grandma used to work. At that factory in Union. Didn’t Dad ever tell you?” I shook my head, feeling sick.
“So Grandma was one of the radium girls?” I said. My brother shrugged his thin shoulders, the stained T-shirt clinging tight to his frail body.
“I don’t know what that is, but whatever she was doing there, it killed her.”
“But what does that have to do with Emilia?” I asked, my heart pounding at the mention of our long-lost little sister. He shook his head in wonder.
“You don’t remember? You were older than me when it happened. Before she went missing, she kept talking about the same thing, saying weird stuff about some ‘Crooked Man’. Don’t you remember what happened the night she went missing?” I thought back, but it all seemed like a blur. I remembered flashing police sirens and my parents screaming. I had tried to block it out, but apparently Benton hadn’t been able to. That night must be like a fresh wound on his mind all the time.
“No, I just remembered… screaming, and police…” I whispered, my voice trailing off into nothing. Benton leaned forward on the bed, looking sick.
“We both saw it,” he said. “The Crooked Man. That thing she was talking about. It was real. We saw it in her room that night- when it took her.” I shook my head, refusing to look at him. Feeling sick, I walked toward the door without looking back. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going home,” I said. “I can’t deal with this shit right now.” But that night, I would find out that the long-lost nightmare from my childhood was not nearly as buried in the past as I thought.
***
I was laying in my dark bedroom, reading the local news on my phone, when I saw an article that disturbed me greatly. I sat up, looking out the window into the cloudless night. The sky hung overhead like a black hole, colorless and empty. Fear radiated through my heart as I glanced back down at the screen and started reading.
“Sole survivor of serial killer commits suicide,” the article read in garish black-and-white letters. “Michael Galentino, 18, was found dead in a psychiatric facility early this morning. In February, Michael Galentino and five others entered a local abandoned building. Friends who knew them stated that they often explored abandoned structures as part of an ‘urban exploration’ group. But this would not be a normal night for the group. They all disappeared, and within 24 hours, police and search teams had been dispatched to look for the missing teenagers…”
The house was silent. I read the rest of the article with bated breath, my eyes wide. Some of the details I already knew, but others, such as the radioactive isotopes found on the dismembered limbs of the victims, I did not. I wondered about that. The police claimed that, after finding this strange clue, they had sent a team to inspect the abandoned factory with Geiger counters and look for signs of radioactivity. Perhaps the radium, which had a notoriously long half-life, had accumulated on the surfaces over the decades. But they said the radioactivity within the building was all within acceptable levels. It was just another bizarre piece of a puzzle that no one could solve.
The house was deathly silent. I could hear my own heart beating a runaway rhythm in my ears. A rising sense of anxiety was filling me, but I didn’t know why. It felt like some sort of pressure had changed all around me, as if the first wave of a massive blizzard had just blown into the room.
I heard a creaking from across the dark room. At the same time, I felt a sting on my arm. I looked down, seeing a bedbug crawling across my skin, a small red welt rising in its wake.
“Fuck!” I swore, grabbing it between my fingers and slicing it between my nails. Crimson spurted from its swollen body as if it were a tiny balloon. It exploded, staining my fingers red with my own blood.
“I should’ve never gone to see my brother. Goddamned bedbugs,” I muttered to myself. I hoped that was the only one. If I had picked up some extra travelers at the flophouse, I knew they would spread throughout the entire house within days.
The creaking came again, louder this time, almost insistent. I glanced across the curtain of shadows that hung thick and black in the room, seeing the dark silhouette of my closet door swinging open. I could only stare, open-mouthed. A long moment passed, and then I heard breathing. It came out, ragged and slow with long pauses, like the choking of a murder victim.
Slowly, I raised my phone’s dim light, shining it across the room. On the closet door, I saw four inhumanly long, crooked fingers. They shone pale like the skin of a corpse. They twitched, then started rhythmically tapping on the door. And then I heard it, that rhyme, that horrible, gurgling rhyme. It came echoing out from the door in that same choked voice, like a forgotten wound from long ago.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue…”
It felt like I was in some sort of nightmare, but I knew from the sweat dripping down my forehead and the sensation of cloth sheets against my skin that this was all too real. Even a couple months later, I still remember that sensation of dread, the first of many terrors that this night would bring.
I looked around for a weapon. All I found was a letter opener sitting next to some mail on the nearby nightstand. I grabbed it, a flimsy piece of metal in my shaking hands. I was afraid to move, afraid to call out or do anything, out of fear it might shatter the stillness and cause that ineffable horror to come oozing out. I knew I didn’t want to see what was hiding behind that door.
I looked at the open window. I was on the second floor. I was afraid to even breathe too loudly at that moment. With the letter opener in my hand, I tried to silently slide myself across the mattress to the window only a few feet away.
The bedframe groaned softly as I shifted my weight. The breathing from the closet stopped abruptly. I heard the door creaking open, the floorboards shifting. Heavy steps started in the darkness, heading towards me. As I pushed myself off the bed, I glanced back and saw something twisted loping across the room on crooked legs.
It was the Crooked Man, the nightmare from my childhood. He towered over me with a tophat that nearly scraped the ceiling. His lidless eyes were pure darkness, as black as death. They contrasted heavily with his bone-white skin. His lips and fingernails were a suffocating, cyanotic blue, like the lips of a murder victim.
He stood up tall. The bones in his freakishly long legs cracked as the many strange joints of his enormous limbs bent in ways no human limb should bend. His fingers were strange and misshapen, each a foot long. They ended in sharp points of bone that poked out through the dead, white skin. He wore a black suit on his tall, emaciated frame. He moved towards me like flashing static, seeming to disappear and reappear closer and closer in every moment.
In panic and terror, I dived headfirst toward the open window, hearing the gurgling breathing of the Crooked Man only a few feet behind me. I felt slashing talons of bone rip across my back, a burning pain and a feeling of blood soaking my shirt. Then I was flying out the window and falling headfirst towards the grass and bushes below.
***
Time seemed to slow down as the ground rushed up to meet me. The wind whipped past my ears like the currents of a tornado. Instinctively, I tried to curl into a ball. As I smashed into the first of the bushes under my window, I rolled to try to put the brunt of the impact on my right shoulder.
The thin branches of the bush crumpled under me like wet cardboard. I felt sharp sticks stabbing into my skin, opening up new slices and cuts to mix with the deep gashes on my back.
I hit the dirt hard, a sudden pain radiating through my back. A jarring sensation crashed through my body. I rolled as I hit the ground, smacking my head into the lawn. The world spun around me and went dark.
Suddenly, I was somewhere else.
***
I found myself standing in a dark factory, surrounded by debris. Broken glass covered the floor, twinkling like fireflies under the light of the distant streetlights outside. Strange graffiti covered the concrete walls all around me.
“DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU,” one of the tags read in slashing red letters. Underneath it, someone had spraypainted pure black eyes over a massive grinning mouth full of crooked black teeth.
“Destroy it with fire! SAVE your soul,” another one read in small, blue letters. I ran my hands over my face, wondering if I was dreaming. This all felt so real. I could feel the gentle breeze blowing through the broken windows on my skin, hear the rhythmic chirping of crickets outside.
I heard soft sobbing behind me. I remembered the first graffiti tag I had seen and a sense of panic gripped my heart. I did not want to look back.
“Fuck,” I swore under my breath, trembling as I turned. But I didn’t find some eldritch monstrosity with obsidian teeth and black, lidless eyes waiting there. Instead, I found a woman. She was crying, her back turned to me. She wore a black funeral gown that looked ancient and decayed. With a trembling heart, I took a step forward, wondering if I would regret this.
“Hello?” I called out. She spun, her eyes widening. In front of me stood a pretty blonde woman in her mid-twenties, one that I immediately recognized. For I saw many of my own features reflected in that panicked face: the high cheekbones, the large chin, even the waviness of her hair.
“Grandma,” I whispered, looking around in wonder. “What is this? Am I dead?” She shook her head, her eyes still wet and red. She took a deep, shuddering breath and gave a faint smile.
“Jack,” she said in a soft, melodic voice. “I’m so happy to see you. I’ve been watching you. I’ve been so proud of you. Even though we never met, I want you to know that. I wished I could have lived longer, could have met you. If only I hadn’t been murdered by that thing…” She spat the last word with hatred and fear oozing from her voice.
“I thought you died of cancer, Grandma?” I asked. “What do you mean, he killed you?” She shook like a leaf in the wind, refusing to meet my gaze.
“Everyone in that place was touched by something evil,” she murmured, putting her face in her hands. Her voice quavered like a frightened little girl’s. “The sickness radiated from that thing. It followed us like a cancer, made us weak, and then took our breath away. After the long torture was finished, he came to strangle me. He didn’t just kill me, Jack. He murdered my sister and brother, too. I saw it.” Her head ratcheted up, looking behind me all of a sudden. Her eyes widened in terror.
“You need to kill it, Jack,” she whispered grimly. “He’s woken up again after all these years, and he’s starving. The Crooked Man must feed, and feed he will if you don’t stop him. You need to come to the factory and end it. Otherwise, he will keep on killing. The Crooked Man will never stop hunting you. He will kill you and everyone you love.”
“How?” I asked, afraid to look back as the disturbing sounds grew closer and closer. Grandma backpedaled quickly, as if the demons of Hell were approaching. “How? How do I end it?”
I heard a horrible, choked breathing behind me, then the world faded.
***
I woke up suddenly on the lawn, my head pounding. It didn’t seem like much time had passed. I must have knocked myself out. I raised my fingers to my forehead. My fingers came away slick with blood.
For a long moment, I lay there, hyperventilating and looking up at the cloudless abyss of a sky. My body felt bruised and battered, and I wasn’t even sure if I could walk.
Then I saw a pale, hairless visage peeking over the edge of the windowsill with eyes as dark as night. Its face split into a grin with a crack, making a sound like ripping plastic. The bone-white mask of dead skin looked at me with a feverish intensity, a kind of psychopathic hunger that radiated from every pore of his body. With horror, I saw the Crooked Man’s teeth were as black as his eyes, gleaming like polished jetstone.
A rush of adrenaline pushed me up from the ground. I realized I was tremendously lucky, that I had been laying there with my keys still in my pocket and my cell phone in hand, fully dressed except for the fact I was wearing slippers. I sprinted across the lawn towards my car. I heard the Crooked Man scream out after me.
“You’ll be with Grandmother soon, Jackie boy,” he hissed in his gurgling voice. “No one escapes. No one.”
***
I flew down the highway in my car, the phone in my trembling hand. Looking down at it, I called Iris right away. She answered groggily.
“Hello?” she said.
“Jesus, Iris, it’s after me,” I said frantically. “Something’s happening. I got attacked in my own bedroom!”
“Did you call the cops?” she asked, seeming to wake up instantly. I looked down at the clock in the center console, seeing it was already past midnight.
“It wasn’t a person. I saw something. I think it was the same thing that took those teenagers, and now it’s after me. Are you guys home?” There was a long pause on the other end. I heard whispering in the background.
“Yeah… sure, come over,” she said. I knew Ben was somewhat of a gun nut, and had a nice little collection at the house. I would feel much safer if I made it there. And if I had them on my side, that would be all the better.
***
Ben and Iris lived in the middle of a back road surrounded by forests. The dark trees loomed overhead like priests with their heads bowed. The light from their front porch streamed into the creeping shadows as I pulled into their driveway. The sound of the car idling seemed far too loud in this place where the woods closed in all around me. I didn’t know what was hiding in those trees. I immediately shut it off.
Ben was a veteran who knew much more about combat and guns than I did. His collection was also somewhat impressive- an Armalite AR-15, a Judge, a 12-gauge Benelli, two crappy little .22s, a .45 Ruger, a Nosler 21 and a 10-gauge Mossberg. I had gone out shooting with him and Iris quite a few times. I would feel much safer once I was inside.
The cloudless black sky hung overhead like the lid of a coffin. Their little two-story place with the wraparound porch looked quaint, almost like a little rural cabin.
I stumbled out of the car. I’m sure I was quite a sight, battered and covered in clotting gashes and cuts, my eyes wide and panicked. I constantly looked around, checking my back. Every time I did, I expected to see something there, something close by with blue lips like a corpse and deformed, twisting bones.
I had nearly gotten to the front of the house when I saw, through the narrow sidelights at top of the door, the face of the Crooked Man. Standing only feet away, I heard faint gurgling of his diseased breathing even through the wall.
His hairless face was split into a grin like a death’s head, his lidless eyes bulging and excited. He raised his misshapen fingers to the window and gave me a little wave, opening and closing his fingers slowly. Then he turned and disappeared deeper into the house.
***
I immediately tried opening the door, to yell to Iris and Ben to watch out, but the door was locked. I called Iris. Each ring seemed to take an eternity. Finally, she answered.
“Hello? What, are you here?” she asked.
“Iris! Get the fuck out of the house! You and Ben aren’t alone in there! There’s a man coming in your direction right now!” I screamed, panicked. “Jump out the window if you have to! It’s coming!”
“What?” she said, sounding alarmed and confused. “Are you being serious?” I heard soft murmuring in the background.
“Tell Ben to grab a gun right now!” I started to say, but a high-pitched scream carried through the phone and the house at that moment.
“Iris? Iris! Answer me!” I said. The call immediately went dead.
From inside, I heard the first of the gunshots.
***
At that point, I decided to run back to my car. I needed to get inside and help them. A small voice in the back of my mind asked me what I could possibly do, however. If an AR-15 or a lead slug from a 12-gauge couldn’t stop the Crooked Man, then what could? At that moment, I wished fervently that Grandma would have told me.
I grabbed a tire iron from the back of my trunk and sprinted back toward the front of the house. They had large windows leading into the kitchen from their wraparound porch. Without hesitation, I drew the tire iron back and smashed it. The tinkling of glass seemed explosively loud. I realized that the gunshots and screaming had stopped.
At that moment, something pale came scurrying around the side of the building. I jumped, but I looked over and realized it was Iris, dressed in a white hoodie and white pants. Her pale face was contorted with mortal terror. To my horror, I realized hundreds of small drops spattered her clothes, covering her face and body like crimson raindrops. She had the .45 Ruger in her hands, and she was limping.
“Where’s Ben?” I cried. She shook her head.
“I jumped out the bedroom window… he was behind me,” she said. Suddenly, there was another explosion of glass from behind the house. Something heavy thudded hard against the ground. We heard wretched wailing follow it. Looking at each other with horrified eyes, we both turned and ran towards the noise.
We found Ben laying on the lawn. The right side of his neck was nearly severed. Bright-red streams of blood spurted from the mutilated flesh. His back looked broken as well. He laid there like a hornet smashed under someone’s boot. With dilated eyes, he looked from me to Iris. Terror and agony oozed from his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but only a frothy puddle of blood came up.
Then his eyes turned away, looking straight up into the cloudless black void of a sky. The last exhalation came, the death gasp that bubbled and stretched out until I thought it might never end. He died staring into that abyss, that eternity from which no one returns.
The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 2] : mrcreeps (reddit.com)
submitted by CIAHerpes to LighthouseHorror [link] [comments]


2024.04.30 07:46 CIAHerpes The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 1]


I remember when I first heard the rhyme as a child. It terrified me. To me, the Crooked Man was some sort of boogeyman with freakishly long arms and legs that were twisted and broken in horrifying ways. I still have the rhyme memorized. It repeats in my brain like a skipping record.
“There was a Crooked Man, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”
My brother Benton, who loved to torture me as a child, ended up adding his own parts to the rhyme over time. The extra parts he added did nothing to console me or end my nightmares of this twisted boogeyman who always seemed to slink through the shadows. I remember the rhyme Benton told me by heart to this day.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue.
The crooked man twists and crawls.
He uses his crooked blade to kill.
And when the curtain of night falls,
He comes to get his thrill.”
***
So I found it strange when, a few weeks ago, I was sitting with a couple of my friends drinking and the subject of the Crooked Man came up again. They were rambling about shootings and serial killers and other fairly interesting subjects that I knew almost nothing about. But my friend Iris knew everything about such morbid subjects.
She was a small drink of water, no more than five feet, with platinum blonde hair and green eyes like a cat. She was extremely attractive with high cheekbones and a small nose and chin. She always talked extremely fast and made violent slashing gestures with her hands. Sometimes I wondered if she had a secret amphetamine habit I didn’t know about.
“But did you hear about the murders in Union?” Iris asked, glancing over at her boyfriend, Ben. Ben was the opposite of Iris- tall and nerdy with thick, black-rimmed glasses and a low whisper of a voice.
“I just heard that some kids went missing,” Ben murmured. I shrugged.
“I don’t watch TV,” I said. “The news is all bullshit anyway. They only show you the bad stuff. After all, no one wants to hear about new breakthroughs in fusion technology or discoveries in particle physics. Instead, people just want to watch others get murdered, robbed and beaten, so that they can feel that at least someone else has it worse than them. That’s all the news is, really: a form of schadenfreude, the joy people get from seeing others’ misfortune and suffering. Our entire media industry is built on a foundation of schadenfreude.” I took a long sip from my beer, a Harpoon that tasted like pure raspberries. Iris rolled her eyes.
“While probably true, I don’t care,” she said, turning her green eyes on me. “Don’t you want to know what happened to the kids?”
“I do,” Ben said, leaning forward. “Was it something… supernatural?” Iris gave a sardonic laugh at that. Ben sat back, offended.
“What’s so funny? I heard there was weird stuff going on around that factory. In fact, I heard they used to manufacture some dye there for clocks and stuff, right? So all these people went to work, painting watches and clocks and whatever else they told them to paint. It was this special green dye that would glow in the dark. The factory was staffed by mostly women, and I heard they used to lick their paintbrushes to form them into points. They figured this stuff was just regular paint that glowed in the dark.” I leaned back, interested. Ben started talking faster, getting more animated.
“So what happened?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Well, the workers started getting cancer and dying in huge numbers,” Ben continued as the kitchen lights sparkled off his glasses. “One woman even had her entire jaw rot off. Others had pieces of their faces falling off. So it turns out, they were using radioactive isotopes to make the paint glow! And these women were just licking the paintbrushes and touching the paint…”
“Holy shit,” I whispered, horrified.
“They called them the Radium girls,” Ben said. “That factory killed hundreds and hundreds of people. That’s why a lot of people think it’s haunted. People claim they see ghosts and weird shit around it. And that’s not all. The case gets even weirder when you look at workers’ families.
“It seems a lot of their kids went missing, too. The cops never found any of them. The entire time the factory was operational, and even after it shutdown, the families of the workers kept having strange things happen- children disappearing from their bedrooms in the middle of the night, strange murders and unexplained suicides that kept killing off healthy, normal people all over town.”
“So, anyways,” Iris continued, looking slightly annoyed at the interruption, “the kids that went into that abandoned factory were all found… torn apart. Their limbs were all amputated and crooked.” She leaned forward, using her spooky campfire voice. “And the limbs were long. Freakishly long, as if they had just grown overnight to inhuman lengths before they got lopped off. But they never found the heads or the torsos. All they found was ten legs and ten arms.”
“And no one knows what happened?” I asked. She shook her head.
“Officially, no. The police and media said it was some sort of serial killer, of course. But there wasn’t a shred of evidence anywhere. It was like a ghost had done it. Where the limbs were piled up in the basement, there was no evidence that anyone had been there in months, no footsteps or microscopic evidence of any presence. But the story doesn’t end there. Because there were six teenagers that went into that building, and one of them was found alive three months later, wandering, covered in blood and scratches, mostly naked and totally insane. One of my friends is an EMT and she said that the kid would not stop talking about the Crooked Man taking his friends and keeping him prisoner in some other world.”
At the mention of those words, the Crooked Man, a chill went down my spine. My heart felt like ice.
“What’d you say? What did the kid say?” I asked anxiously. Suddenly the room felt very hot, and the alcohol was not sitting well in my stomach.
“He said he got kidnapped by someone called the Crooked Man,” Iris repeated, taking a long sip from her wine. “According to the kid, it was some sort of fucking monster, apparently. I think his mind must have just snapped. He was probably kidnapped and held in the basement of some serial killer for three goddamned months. Who knows what he saw and experienced? People make up all sorts of crazy shit when they’re traumatized.”
My hand was shaking so badly that I had to put my bottle down on the table. For some reason, my mind kept flashing back to my sister, Emilia, who had been kidnapped from her room in the middle of the night when my brother Benton and I were little. She had never been found. We had never gotten a ransom note or found a body. It was as if Emilia had simply disappeared, vanished from the surface of the planet in an instant.
“I think some of that stuff is real,” Ben said. “People have been talking about cryptids and ghosts for thousands of years across countless different and unrelated cultures. What are the chances that all of them are just hallucinations or delusions?”
I didn’t know, but I thought I might know someone who might.
***
My brother Benton was a long-term drug addict living in a flophouse. I went to see him the next morning. He opened the door with a glazed, half-aware expression. Scars covered his arms and legs. He looked like a walking skeleton. His eyes shone like the last bit of water at the bottom of a dying well.
“Jack,” he said, surprised, appearing to wake up slightly. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said, pushing past him into the one-bedroom place he called home. A cockroach skittered across the wall. As he closed the door, I saw bites from bedbugs all over his body. Benton turned, spreading out his hands.
“Well, what is it, little brother? You know I’m all ears.”
“You remember that rhyme you used to scare me with when we were little?” I asked. “That rhyme you made up about the Crooked Man?” He seemed to go a shade paler.
“I didn’t make anything up,” he said. “That rhyme came from Grandma. She told it to dad when he was little, before she died.”
“Grandma?” I asked, startled. Our grandmother had died of cancer when she was extremely young, in her late 20s. “Did you hear about the murders over in Union? The survivor was talking about the Crooked Man.”
“That’s pretty freaking weird, man,” he said. “Especially considering what happened to Grandma and Emilia, you know.” He sat down on the threadbare mattress, laying back and sighing.
“Why is it weird?” I asked.
“Because, you know, that’s where Grandma used to work. At that factory in Union. Didn’t Dad ever tell you?” I shook my head, feeling sick.
“So Grandma was one of the radium girls?” I said. My brother shrugged his thin shoulders, the stained T-shirt clinging tight to his frail body.
“I don’t know what that is, but whatever she was doing there, it killed her.”
“But what does that have to do with Emilia?” I asked, my heart pounding at the mention of our long-lost little sister. He shook his head in wonder.
“You don’t remember? You were older than me when it happened. Before she went missing, she kept talking about the same thing, saying weird stuff about some ‘Crooked Man’. Don’t you remember what happened the night she went missing?” I thought back, but it all seemed like a blur. I remembered flashing police sirens and my parents screaming. I had tried to block it out, but apparently Benton hadn’t been able to. That night must be like a fresh wound on his mind all the time.
“No, I just remembered… screaming, and police…” I whispered, my voice trailing off into nothing. Benton leaned forward on the bed, looking sick.
“We both saw it,” he said. “The Crooked Man. That thing she was talking about. It was real. We saw it in her room that night- when it took her.” I shook my head, refusing to look at him. Feeling sick, I walked toward the door without looking back. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going home,” I said. “I can’t deal with this shit right now.” But that night, I would find out that the long-lost nightmare from my childhood was not nearly as buried in the past as I thought.
***
I was laying in my dark bedroom, reading the local news on my phone, when I saw an article that disturbed me greatly. I sat up, looking out the window into the cloudless night. The sky hung overhead like a black hole, colorless and empty. Fear radiated through my heart as I glanced back down at the screen and started reading.
“Sole survivor of serial killer commits suicide,” the article read in garish black-and-white letters. “Michael Galentino, 18, was found dead in a psychiatric facility early this morning. In February, Michael Galentino and five others entered a local abandoned building. Friends who knew them stated that they often explored abandoned structures as part of an ‘urban exploration’ group. But this would not be a normal night for the group. They all disappeared, and within 24 hours, police and search teams had been dispatched to look for the missing teenagers…”
The house was silent. I read the rest of the article with bated breath, my eyes wide. Some of the details I already knew, but others, such as the radioactive isotopes found on the dismembered limbs of the victims, I did not. I wondered about that. The police claimed that, after finding this strange clue, they had sent a team to inspect the abandoned factory with Geiger counters and look for signs of radioactivity. Perhaps the radium, which had a notoriously long half-life, had accumulated on the surfaces over the decades. But they said the radioactivity within the building was all within acceptable levels. It was just another bizarre piece of a puzzle that no one could solve.
The house was deathly silent. I could hear my own heart beating a runaway rhythm in my ears. A rising sense of anxiety was filling me, but I didn’t know why. It felt like some sort of pressure had changed all around me, as if the first wave of a massive blizzard had just blown into the room.
I heard a creaking from across the dark room. At the same time, I felt a sting on my arm. I looked down, seeing a bedbug crawling across my skin, a small red welt rising in its wake.
“Fuck!” I swore, grabbing it between my fingers and slicing it between my nails. Crimson spurted from its swollen body as if it were a tiny balloon. It exploded, staining my fingers red with my own blood.
“I should’ve never gone to see my brother. Goddamned bedbugs,” I muttered to myself. I hoped that was the only one. If I had picked up some extra travelers at the flophouse, I knew they would spread throughout the entire house within days.
The creaking came again, louder this time, almost insistent. I glanced across the curtain of shadows that hung thick and black in the room, seeing the dark silhouette of my closet door swinging open. I could only stare, open-mouthed. A long moment passed, and then I heard breathing. It came out, ragged and slow with long pauses, like the choking of a murder victim.
Slowly, I raised my phone’s dim light, shining it across the room. On the closet door, I saw four inhumanly long, crooked fingers. They shone pale like the skin of a corpse. They twitched, then started rhythmically tapping on the door. And then I heard it, that rhyme, that horrible, gurgling rhyme. It came echoing out from the door in that same choked voice, like a forgotten wound from long ago.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue…”
It felt like I was in some sort of nightmare, but I knew from the sweat dripping down my forehead and the sensation of cloth sheets against my skin that this was all too real. Even a couple months later, I still remember that sensation of dread, the first of many terrors that this night would bring.
I looked around for a weapon. All I found was a letter opener sitting next to some mail on the nearby nightstand. I grabbed it, a flimsy piece of metal in my shaking hands. I was afraid to move, afraid to call out or do anything, out of fear it might shatter the stillness and cause that ineffable horror to come oozing out. I knew I didn’t want to see what was hiding behind that door.
I looked at the open window. I was on the second floor. I was afraid to even breathe too loudly at that moment. With the letter opener in my hand, I tried to silently slide myself across the mattress to the window only a few feet away.
The bedframe groaned softly as I shifted my weight. The breathing from the closet stopped abruptly. I heard the door creaking open, the floorboards shifting. Heavy steps started in the darkness, heading towards me. As I pushed myself off the bed, I glanced back and saw something twisted loping across the room on crooked legs.
It was the Crooked Man, the nightmare from my childhood. He towered over me with a tophat that nearly scraped the ceiling. His lidless eyes were pure darkness, as black as death. They contrasted heavily with his bone-white skin. His lips and fingernails were a suffocating, cyanotic blue, like the lips of a murder victim.
He stood up tall. The bones in his freakishly long legs cracked as the many strange joints of his enormous limbs bent in ways no human limb should bend. His fingers were strange and misshapen, each a foot long. They ended in sharp points of bone that poked out through the dead, white skin. He wore a black suit on his tall, emaciated frame. He moved towards me like flashing static, seeming to disappear and reappear closer and closer in every moment.
In panic and terror, I dived headfirst toward the open window, hearing the gurgling breathing of the Crooked Man only a few feet behind me. I felt slashing talons of bone rip across my back, a burning pain and a feeling of blood soaking my shirt. Then I was flying out the window and falling headfirst towards the grass and bushes below.
***
Time seemed to slow down as the ground rushed up to meet me. The wind whipped past my ears like the currents of a tornado. Instinctively, I tried to curl into a ball. As I smashed into the first of the bushes under my window, I rolled to try to put the brunt of the impact on my right shoulder.
The thin branches of the bush crumpled under me like wet cardboard. I felt sharp sticks stabbing into my skin, opening up new slices and cuts to mix with the deep gashes on my back.
I hit the dirt hard, a sudden pain radiating through my back. A jarring sensation crashed through my body. I rolled as I hit the ground, smacking my head into the lawn. The world spun around me and went dark.
Suddenly, I was somewhere else.
***
I found myself standing in a dark factory, surrounded by debris. Broken glass covered the floor, twinkling like fireflies under the light of the distant streetlights outside. Strange graffiti covered the concrete walls all around me.
“DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU,” one of the tags read in slashing red letters. Underneath it, someone had spraypainted pure black eyes over a massive grinning mouth full of crooked black teeth.
“Destroy it with fire! SAVE your soul,” another one read in small, blue letters. I ran my hands over my face, wondering if I was dreaming. This all felt so real. I could feel the gentle breeze blowing through the broken windows on my skin, hear the rhythmic chirping of crickets outside.
I heard soft sobbing behind me. I remembered the first graffiti tag I had seen and a sense of panic gripped my heart. I did not want to look back.
“Fuck,” I swore under my breath, trembling as I turned. But I didn’t find some eldritch monstrosity with obsidian teeth and black, lidless eyes waiting there. Instead, I found a woman. She was crying, her back turned to me. She wore a black funeral gown that looked ancient and decayed. With a trembling heart, I took a step forward, wondering if I would regret this.
“Hello?” I called out. She spun, her eyes widening. In front of me stood a pretty blonde woman in her mid-twenties, one that I immediately recognized. For I saw many of my own features reflected in that panicked face: the high cheekbones, the large chin, even the waviness of her hair.
“Grandma,” I whispered, looking around in wonder. “What is this? Am I dead?” She shook her head, her eyes still wet and red. She took a deep, shuddering breath and gave a faint smile.
“Jack,” she said in a soft, melodic voice. “I’m so happy to see you. I’ve been watching you. I’ve been so proud of you. Even though we never met, I want you to know that. I wished I could have lived longer, could have met you. If only I hadn’t been murdered by that thing…” She spat the last word with hatred and fear oozing from her voice.
“I thought you died of cancer, Grandma?” I asked. “What do you mean, he killed you?” She shook like a leaf in the wind, refusing to meet my gaze.
“Everyone in that place was touched by something evil,” she murmured, putting her face in her hands. Her voice quavered like a frightened little girl’s. “The sickness radiated from that thing. It followed us like a cancer, made us weak, and then took our breath away. After the long torture was finished, he came to strangle me. He didn’t just kill me, Jack. He murdered my sister and brother, too. I saw it.” Her head ratcheted up, looking behind me all of a sudden. Her eyes widened in terror.
“You need to kill it, Jack,” she whispered grimly. “He’s woken up again after all these years, and he’s starving. The Crooked Man must feed, and feed he will if you don’t stop him. You need to come to the factory and end it. Otherwise, he will keep on killing. The Crooked Man will never stop hunting you. He will kill you and everyone you love.”
“How?” I asked, afraid to look back as the disturbing sounds grew closer and closer. Grandma backpedaled quickly, as if the demons of Hell were approaching. “How? How do I end it?”
I heard a horrible, choked breathing behind me, then the world faded.
***
I woke up suddenly on the lawn, my head pounding. It didn’t seem like much time had passed. I must have knocked myself out. I raised my fingers to my forehead. My fingers came away slick with blood.
For a long moment, I lay there, hyperventilating and looking up at the cloudless abyss of a sky. My body felt bruised and battered, and I wasn’t even sure if I could walk.
Then I saw a pale, hairless visage peeking over the edge of the windowsill with eyes as dark as night. Its face split into a grin with a crack, making a sound like ripping plastic. The bone-white mask of dead skin looked at me with a feverish intensity, a kind of psychopathic hunger that radiated from every pore of his body. With horror, I saw the Crooked Man’s teeth were as black as his eyes, gleaming like polished jetstone.
A rush of adrenaline pushed me up from the ground. I realized I was tremendously lucky, that I had been laying there with my keys still in my pocket and my cell phone in hand, fully dressed except for the fact I was wearing slippers. I sprinted across the lawn towards my car. I heard the Crooked Man scream out after me.
“You’ll be with Grandmother soon, Jackie boy,” he hissed in his gurgling voice. “No one escapes. No one.”
***
I flew down the highway in my car, the phone in my trembling hand. Looking down at it, I called Iris right away. She answered groggily.
“Hello?” she said.
“Jesus, Iris, it’s after me,” I said frantically. “Something’s happening. I got attacked in my own bedroom!”
“Did you call the cops?” she asked, seeming to wake up instantly. I looked down at the clock in the center console, seeing it was already past midnight.
“It wasn’t a person. I saw something. I think it was the same thing that took those teenagers, and now it’s after me. Are you guys home?” There was a long pause on the other end. I heard whispering in the background.
“Yeah… sure, come over,” she said. I knew Ben was somewhat of a gun nut, and had a nice little collection at the house. I would feel much safer if I made it there. And if I had them on my side, that would be all the better.
***
Ben and Iris lived in the middle of a back road surrounded by forests. The dark trees loomed overhead like priests with their heads bowed. The light from their front porch streamed into the creeping shadows as I pulled into their driveway. The sound of the car idling seemed far too loud in this place where the woods closed in all around me. I didn’t know what was hiding in those trees. I immediately shut it off.
Ben was a veteran who knew much more about combat and guns than I did. His collection was also somewhat impressive- an Armalite AR-15, a Judge, a 12-gauge Benelli, two crappy little .22s, a .45 Ruger, a Nosler 21 and a 10-gauge Mossberg. I had gone out shooting with him and Iris quite a few times. I would feel much safer once I was inside.
The cloudless black sky hung overhead like the lid of a coffin. Their little two-story place with the wraparound porch looked quaint, almost like a little rural cabin.
I stumbled out of the car. I’m sure I was quite a sight, battered and covered in clotting gashes and cuts, my eyes wide and panicked. I constantly looked around, checking my back. Every time I did, I expected to see something there, something close by with blue lips like a corpse and deformed, twisting bones.
I had nearly gotten to the front of the house when I saw, through the narrow sidelights at top of the door, the face of the Crooked Man. Standing only feet away, I heard faint gurgling of his diseased breathing even through the wall.
His hairless face was split into a grin like a death’s head, his lidless eyes bulging and excited. He raised his misshapen fingers to the window and gave me a little wave, opening and closing his fingers slowly. Then he turned and disappeared deeper into the house.
***
I immediately tried opening the door, to yell to Iris and Ben to watch out, but the door was locked. I called Iris. Each ring seemed to take an eternity. Finally, she answered.
“Hello? What, are you here?” she asked.
“Iris! Get the fuck out of the house! You and Ben aren’t alone in there! There’s a man coming in your direction right now!” I screamed, panicked. “Jump out the window if you have to! It’s coming!”
“What?” she said, sounding alarmed and confused. “Are you being serious?” I heard soft murmuring in the background.
“Tell Ben to grab a gun right now!” I started to say, but a high-pitched scream carried through the phone and the house at that moment.
“Iris? Iris! Answer me!” I said. The call immediately went dead.
From inside, I heard the first of the gunshots.
***
At that point, I decided to run back to my car. I needed to get inside and help them. A small voice in the back of my mind asked me what I could possibly do, however. If an AR-15 or a lead slug from a 12-gauge couldn’t stop the Crooked Man, then what could? At that moment, I wished fervently that Grandma would have told me.
I grabbed a tire iron from the back of my trunk and sprinted back toward the front of the house. They had large windows leading into the kitchen from their wraparound porch. Without hesitation, I drew the tire iron back and smashed it. The tinkling of glass seemed explosively loud. I realized that the gunshots and screaming had stopped.
At that moment, something pale came scurrying around the side of the building. I jumped, but I looked over and realized it was Iris, dressed in a white hoodie and white pants. Her pale face was contorted with mortal terror. To my horror, I realized hundreds of small drops spattered her clothes, covering her face and body like crimson raindrops. She had the .45 Ruger in her hands, and she was limping.
“Where’s Ben?” I cried. She shook her head.
“I jumped out the bedroom window… he was behind me,” she said. Suddenly, there was another explosion of glass from behind the house. Something heavy thudded hard against the ground. We heard wretched wailing follow it. Looking at each other with horrified eyes, we both turned and ran towards the noise.
We found Ben laying on the lawn. The right side of his neck was nearly severed. Bright-red streams of blood spurted from the mutilated flesh. His back looked broken as well. He laid there like a hornet smashed under someone’s boot. With dilated eyes, he looked from me to Iris. Terror and agony oozed from his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but only a frothy puddle of blood came up.
Then his eyes turned away, looking straight up into the cloudless black void of a sky. The last exhalation came, the death gasp that bubbled and stretched out until I thought it might never end. He died staring into that abyss, that eternity from which no one returns.
The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 2] : mrcreeps (reddit.com)
submitted by CIAHerpes to TheDarkGathering [link] [comments]


2024.04.30 07:44 CIAHerpes The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 1]

I remember when I first heard the rhyme as a child. It terrified me. To me, the Crooked Man was some sort of boogeyman with freakishly long arms and legs that were twisted and broken in horrifying ways. I still have the rhyme memorized. It repeats in my brain like a skipping record.
“There was a Crooked Man, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”
My brother Benton, who loved to torture me as a child, ended up adding his own parts to the rhyme over time. The extra parts he added did nothing to console me or end my nightmares of this twisted boogeyman who always seemed to slink through the shadows. I remember the rhyme Benton told me by heart to this day.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue.
The crooked man twists and crawls.
He uses his crooked blade to kill.
And when the curtain of night falls,
He comes to get his thrill.”
***
So I found it strange when, a few weeks ago, I was sitting with a couple of my friends drinking and the subject of the Crooked Man came up again. They were rambling about shootings and serial killers and other fairly interesting subjects that I knew almost nothing about. But my friend Iris knew everything about such morbid subjects.
She was a small drink of water, no more than five feet, with platinum blonde hair and green eyes like a cat. She was extremely attractive with high cheekbones and a small nose and chin. She always talked extremely fast and made violent slashing gestures with her hands. Sometimes I wondered if she had a secret amphetamine habit I didn’t know about.
“But did you hear about the murders in Union?” Iris asked, glancing over at her boyfriend, Ben. Ben was the opposite of Iris- tall and nerdy with thick, black-rimmed glasses and a low whisper of a voice.
“I just heard that some kids went missing,” Ben murmured. I shrugged.
“I don’t watch TV,” I said. “The news is all bullshit anyway. They only show you the bad stuff. After all, no one wants to hear about new breakthroughs in fusion technology or discoveries in particle physics. Instead, people just want to watch others get murdered, robbed and beaten, so that they can feel that at least someone else has it worse than them. That’s all the news is, really: a form of schadenfreude, the joy people get from seeing others’ misfortune and suffering. Our entire media industry is built on a foundation of schadenfreude.” I took a long sip from my beer, a Harpoon that tasted like pure raspberries. Iris rolled her eyes.
“While probably true, I don’t care,” she said, turning her green eyes on me. “Don’t you want to know what happened to the kids?”
“I do,” Ben said, leaning forward. “Was it something… supernatural?” Iris gave a sardonic laugh at that. Ben sat back, offended.
“What’s so funny? I heard there was weird stuff going on around that factory. In fact, I heard they used to manufacture some dye there for clocks and stuff, right? So all these people went to work, painting watches and clocks and whatever else they told them to paint. It was this special green dye that would glow in the dark. The factory was staffed by mostly women, and I heard they used to lick their paintbrushes to form them into points. They figured this stuff was just regular paint that glowed in the dark.” I leaned back, interested. Ben started talking faster, getting more animated.
“So what happened?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Well, the workers started getting cancer and dying in huge numbers,” Ben continued as the kitchen lights sparkled off his glasses. “One woman even had her entire jaw rot off. Others had pieces of their faces falling off. So it turns out, they were using radioactive isotopes to make the paint glow! And these women were just licking the paintbrushes and touching the paint…”
“Holy shit,” I whispered, horrified.
“They called them the Radium girls,” Ben said. “That factory killed hundreds and hundreds of people. That’s why a lot of people think it’s haunted. People claim they see ghosts and weird shit around it. And that’s not all. The case gets even weirder when you look at workers’ families.
“It seems a lot of their kids went missing, too. The cops never found any of them. The entire time the factory was operational, and even after it shutdown, the families of the workers kept having strange things happen- children disappearing from their bedrooms in the middle of the night, strange murders and unexplained suicides that kept killing off healthy, normal people all over town.”
“So, anyways,” Iris continued, looking slightly annoyed at the interruption, “the kids that went into that abandoned factory were all found… torn apart. Their limbs were all amputated and crooked.” She leaned forward, using her spooky campfire voice. “And the limbs were long. Freakishly long, as if they had just grown overnight to inhuman lengths before they got lopped off. But they never found the heads or the torsos. All they found was ten legs and ten arms.”
“And no one knows what happened?” I asked. She shook her head.
“Officially, no. The police and media said it was some sort of serial killer, of course. But there wasn’t a shred of evidence anywhere. It was like a ghost had done it. Where the limbs were piled up in the basement, there was no evidence that anyone had been there in months, no footsteps or microscopic evidence of any presence. But the story doesn’t end there. Because there were six teenagers that went into that building, and one of them was found alive three months later, wandering, covered in blood and scratches, mostly naked and totally insane. One of my friends is an EMT and she said that the kid would not stop talking about the Crooked Man taking his friends and keeping him prisoner in some other world.”
At the mention of those words, the Crooked Man, a chill went down my spine. My heart felt like ice.
“What’d you say? What did the kid say?” I asked anxiously. Suddenly the room felt very hot, and the alcohol was not sitting well in my stomach.
“He said he got kidnapped by someone called the Crooked Man,” Iris repeated, taking a long sip from her wine. “According to the kid, it was some sort of fucking monster, apparently. I think his mind must have just snapped. He was probably kidnapped and held in the basement of some serial killer for three goddamned months. Who knows what he saw and experienced? People make up all sorts of crazy shit when they’re traumatized.”
My hand was shaking so badly that I had to put my bottle down on the table. For some reason, my mind kept flashing back to my sister, Emilia, who had been kidnapped from her room in the middle of the night when my brother Benton and I were little. She had never been found. We had never gotten a ransom note or found a body. It was as if Emilia had simply disappeared, vanished from the surface of the planet in an instant.
“I think some of that stuff is real,” Ben said. “People have been talking about cryptids and ghosts for thousands of years across countless different and unrelated cultures. What are the chances that all of them are just hallucinations or delusions?”
I didn’t know, but I thought I might know someone who might.
***
My brother Benton was a long-term drug addict living in a flophouse. I went to see him the next morning. He opened the door with a glazed, half-aware expression. Scars covered his arms and legs. He looked like a walking skeleton. His eyes shone like the last bit of water at the bottom of a dying well.
“Jack,” he said, surprised, appearing to wake up slightly. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said, pushing past him into the one-bedroom place he called home. A cockroach skittered across the wall. As he closed the door, I saw bites from bedbugs all over his body. Benton turned, spreading out his hands.
“Well, what is it, little brother? You know I’m all ears.”
“You remember that rhyme you used to scare me with when we were little?” I asked. “That rhyme you made up about the Crooked Man?” He seemed to go a shade paler.
“I didn’t make anything up,” he said. “That rhyme came from Grandma. She told it to dad when he was little, before she died.”
“Grandma?” I asked, startled. Our grandmother had died of cancer when she was extremely young, in her late 20s. “Did you hear about the murders over in Union? The survivor was talking about the Crooked Man.”
“That’s pretty freaking weird, man,” he said. “Especially considering what happened to Grandma and Emilia, you know.” He sat down on the threadbare mattress, laying back and sighing.
“Why is it weird?” I asked.
“Because, you know, that’s where Grandma used to work. At that factory in Union. Didn’t Dad ever tell you?” I shook my head, feeling sick.
“So Grandma was one of the radium girls?” I said. My brother shrugged his thin shoulders, the stained T-shirt clinging tight to his frail body.
“I don’t know what that is, but whatever she was doing there, it killed her.”
“But what does that have to do with Emilia?” I asked, my heart pounding at the mention of our long-lost little sister. He shook his head in wonder.
“You don’t remember? You were older than me when it happened. Before she went missing, she kept talking about the same thing, saying weird stuff about some ‘Crooked Man’. Don’t you remember what happened the night she went missing?” I thought back, but it all seemed like a blur. I remembered flashing police sirens and my parents screaming. I had tried to block it out, but apparently Benton hadn’t been able to. That night must be like a fresh wound on his mind all the time.
“No, I just remembered… screaming, and police…” I whispered, my voice trailing off into nothing. Benton leaned forward on the bed, looking sick.
“We both saw it,” he said. “The Crooked Man. That thing she was talking about. It was real. We saw it in her room that night- when it took her.” I shook my head, refusing to look at him. Feeling sick, I walked toward the door without looking back. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going home,” I said. “I can’t deal with this shit right now.” But that night, I would find out that the long-lost nightmare from my childhood was not nearly as buried in the past as I thought.
***
I was laying in my dark bedroom, reading the local news on my phone, when I saw an article that disturbed me greatly. I sat up, looking out the window into the cloudless night. The sky hung overhead like a black hole, colorless and empty. Fear radiated through my heart as I glanced back down at the screen and started reading.
“Sole survivor of serial killer commits suicide,” the article read in garish black-and-white letters. “Michael Galentino, 18, was found dead in a psychiatric facility early this morning. In February, Michael Galentino and five others entered a local abandoned building. Friends who knew them stated that they often explored abandoned structures as part of an ‘urban exploration’ group. But this would not be a normal night for the group. They all disappeared, and within 24 hours, police and search teams had been dispatched to look for the missing teenagers…”
The house was silent. I read the rest of the article with bated breath, my eyes wide. Some of the details I already knew, but others, such as the radioactive isotopes found on the dismembered limbs of the victims, I did not. I wondered about that. The police claimed that, after finding this strange clue, they had sent a team to inspect the abandoned factory with Geiger counters and look for signs of radioactivity. Perhaps the radium, which had a notoriously long half-life, had accumulated on the surfaces over the decades. But they said the radioactivity within the building was all within acceptable levels. It was just another bizarre piece of a puzzle that no one could solve.
The house was deathly silent. I could hear my own heart beating a runaway rhythm in my ears. A rising sense of anxiety was filling me, but I didn’t know why. It felt like some sort of pressure had changed all around me, as if the first wave of a massive blizzard had just blown into the room.
I heard a creaking from across the dark room. At the same time, I felt a sting on my arm. I looked down, seeing a bedbug crawling across my skin, a small red welt rising in its wake.
“Fuck!” I swore, grabbing it between my fingers and slicing it between my nails. Crimson spurted from its swollen body as if it were a tiny balloon. It exploded, staining my fingers red with my own blood.
“I should’ve never gone to see my brother. Goddamned bedbugs,” I muttered to myself. I hoped that was the only one. If I had picked up some extra travelers at the flophouse, I knew they would spread throughout the entire house within days.
The creaking came again, louder this time, almost insistent. I glanced across the curtain of shadows that hung thick and black in the room, seeing the dark silhouette of my closet door swinging open. I could only stare, open-mouthed. A long moment passed, and then I heard breathing. It came out, ragged and slow with long pauses, like the choking of a murder victim.
Slowly, I raised my phone’s dim light, shining it across the room. On the closet door, I saw four inhumanly long, crooked fingers. They shone pale like the skin of a corpse. They twitched, then started rhythmically tapping on the door. And then I heard it, that rhyme, that horrible, gurgling rhyme. It came echoing out from the door in that same choked voice, like a forgotten wound from long ago.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue…”
It felt like I was in some sort of nightmare, but I knew from the sweat dripping down my forehead and the sensation of cloth sheets against my skin that this was all too real. Even a couple months later, I still remember that sensation of dread, the first of many terrors that this night would bring.
I looked around for a weapon. All I found was a letter opener sitting next to some mail on the nearby nightstand. I grabbed it, a flimsy piece of metal in my shaking hands. I was afraid to move, afraid to call out or do anything, out of fear it might shatter the stillness and cause that ineffable horror to come oozing out. I knew I didn’t want to see what was hiding behind that door.
I looked at the open window. I was on the second floor. I was afraid to even breathe too loudly at that moment. With the letter opener in my hand, I tried to silently slide myself across the mattress to the window only a few feet away.
The bedframe groaned softly as I shifted my weight. The breathing from the closet stopped abruptly. I heard the door creaking open, the floorboards shifting. Heavy steps started in the darkness, heading towards me. As I pushed myself off the bed, I glanced back and saw something twisted loping across the room on crooked legs.
It was the Crooked Man, the nightmare from my childhood. He towered over me with a tophat that nearly scraped the ceiling. His lidless eyes were pure darkness, as black as death. They contrasted heavily with his bone-white skin. His lips and fingernails were a suffocating, cyanotic blue, like the lips of a murder victim.
He stood up tall. The bones in his freakishly long legs cracked as the many strange joints of his enormous limbs bent in ways no human limb should bend. His fingers were strange and misshapen, each a foot long. They ended in sharp points of bone that poked out through the dead, white skin. He wore a black suit on his tall, emaciated frame. He moved towards me like flashing static, seeming to disappear and reappear closer and closer in every moment.
In panic and terror, I dived headfirst toward the open window, hearing the gurgling breathing of the Crooked Man only a few feet behind me. I felt slashing talons of bone rip across my back, a burning pain and a feeling of blood soaking my shirt. Then I was flying out the window and falling headfirst towards the grass and bushes below.
***
Time seemed to slow down as the ground rushed up to meet me. The wind whipped past my ears like the currents of a tornado. Instinctively, I tried to curl into a ball. As I smashed into the first of the bushes under my window, I rolled to try to put the brunt of the impact on my right shoulder.
The thin branches of the bush crumpled under me like wet cardboard. I felt sharp sticks stabbing into my skin, opening up new slices and cuts to mix with the deep gashes on my back.
I hit the dirt hard, a sudden pain radiating through my back. A jarring sensation crashed through my body. I rolled as I hit the ground, smacking my head into the lawn. The world spun around me and went dark.
Suddenly, I was somewhere else.
***
I found myself standing in a dark factory, surrounded by debris. Broken glass covered the floor, twinkling like fireflies under the light of the distant streetlights outside. Strange graffiti covered the concrete walls all around me.
“DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU,” one of the tags read in slashing red letters. Underneath it, someone had spraypainted pure black eyes over a massive grinning mouth full of crooked black teeth.
“Destroy it with fire! SAVE your soul,” another one read in small, blue letters. I ran my hands over my face, wondering if I was dreaming. This all felt so real. I could feel the gentle breeze blowing through the broken windows on my skin, hear the rhythmic chirping of crickets outside.
I heard soft sobbing behind me. I remembered the first graffiti tag I had seen and a sense of panic gripped my heart. I did not want to look back.
“Fuck,” I swore under my breath, trembling as I turned. But I didn’t find some eldritch monstrosity with obsidian teeth and black, lidless eyes waiting there. Instead, I found a woman. She was crying, her back turned to me. She wore a black funeral gown that looked ancient and decayed. With a trembling heart, I took a step forward, wondering if I would regret this.
“Hello?” I called out. She spun, her eyes widening. In front of me stood a pretty blonde woman in her mid-twenties, one that I immediately recognized. For I saw many of my own features reflected in that panicked face: the high cheekbones, the large chin, even the waviness of her hair.
“Grandma,” I whispered, looking around in wonder. “What is this? Am I dead?” She shook her head, her eyes still wet and red. She took a deep, shuddering breath and gave a faint smile.
“Jack,” she said in a soft, melodic voice. “I’m so happy to see you. I’ve been watching you. I’ve been so proud of you. Even though we never met, I want you to know that. I wished I could have lived longer, could have met you. If only I hadn’t been murdered by that thing…” She spat the last word with hatred and fear oozing from her voice.
“I thought you died of cancer, Grandma?” I asked. “What do you mean, he killed you?” She shook like a leaf in the wind, refusing to meet my gaze.
“Everyone in that place was touched by something evil,” she murmured, putting her face in her hands. Her voice quavered like a frightened little girl’s. “The sickness radiated from that thing. It followed us like a cancer, made us weak, and then took our breath away. After the long torture was finished, he came to strangle me. He didn’t just kill me, Jack. He murdered my sister and brother, too. I saw it.” Her head ratcheted up, looking behind me all of a sudden. Her eyes widened in terror.
“You need to kill it, Jack,” she whispered grimly. “He’s woken up again after all these years, and he’s starving. The Crooked Man must feed, and feed he will if you don’t stop him. You need to come to the factory and end it. Otherwise, he will keep on killing. The Crooked Man will never stop hunting you. He will kill you and everyone you love.”
“How?” I asked, afraid to look back as the disturbing sounds grew closer and closer. Grandma backpedaled quickly, as if the demons of Hell were approaching. “How? How do I end it?”
I heard a horrible, choked breathing behind me, then the world faded.
***
I woke up suddenly on the lawn, my head pounding. It didn’t seem like much time had passed. I must have knocked myself out. I raised my fingers to my forehead. My fingers came away slick with blood.
For a long moment, I lay there, hyperventilating and looking up at the cloudless abyss of a sky. My body felt bruised and battered, and I wasn’t even sure if I could walk.
Then I saw a pale, hairless visage peeking over the edge of the windowsill with eyes as dark as night. Its face split into a grin with a crack, making a sound like ripping plastic. The bone-white mask of dead skin looked at me with a feverish intensity, a kind of psychopathic hunger that radiated from every pore of his body. With horror, I saw the Crooked Man’s teeth were as black as his eyes, gleaming like polished jetstone.
A rush of adrenaline pushed me up from the ground. I realized I was tremendously lucky, that I had been laying there with my keys still in my pocket and my cell phone in hand, fully dressed except for the fact I was wearing slippers. I sprinted across the lawn towards my car. I heard the Crooked Man scream out after me.
“You’ll be with Grandmother soon, Jackie boy,” he hissed in his gurgling voice. “No one escapes. No one.”
***
I flew down the highway in my car, the phone in my trembling hand. Looking down at it, I called Iris right away. She answered groggily.
“Hello?” she said.
“Jesus, Iris, it’s after me,” I said frantically. “Something’s happening. I got attacked in my own bedroom!”
“Did you call the cops?” she asked, seeming to wake up instantly. I looked down at the clock in the center console, seeing it was already past midnight.
“It wasn’t a person. I saw something. I think it was the same thing that took those teenagers, and now it’s after me. Are you guys home?” There was a long pause on the other end. I heard whispering in the background.
“Yeah… sure, come over,” she said. I knew Ben was somewhat of a gun nut, and had a nice little collection at the house. I would feel much safer if I made it there. And if I had them on my side, that would be all the better.
***
Ben and Iris lived in the middle of a back road surrounded by forests. The dark trees loomed overhead like priests with their heads bowed. The light from their front porch streamed into the creeping shadows as I pulled into their driveway. The sound of the car idling seemed far too loud in this place where the woods closed in all around me. I didn’t know what was hiding in those trees. I immediately shut it off.
Ben was a veteran who knew much more about combat and guns than I did. His collection was also somewhat impressive- an Armalite AR-15, a Judge, a 12-gauge Benelli, two crappy little .22s, a .45 Ruger, a Nosler 21 and a 10-gauge Mossberg. I had gone out shooting with him and Iris quite a few times. I would feel much safer once I was inside.
The cloudless black sky hung overhead like the lid of a coffin. Their little two-story place with the wraparound porch looked quaint, almost like a little rural cabin.
I stumbled out of the car. I’m sure I was quite a sight, battered and covered in clotting gashes and cuts, my eyes wide and panicked. I constantly looked around, checking my back. Every time I did, I expected to see something there, something close by with blue lips like a corpse and deformed, twisting bones.
I had nearly gotten to the front of the house when I saw, through the narrow sidelights at top of the door, the face of the Crooked Man. Standing only feet away, I heard faint gurgling of his diseased breathing even through the wall.
His hairless face was split into a grin like a death’s head, his lidless eyes bulging and excited. He raised his misshapen fingers to the window and gave me a little wave, opening and closing his fingers slowly. Then he turned and disappeared deeper into the house.
***
I immediately tried opening the door, to yell to Iris and Ben to watch out, but the door was locked. I called Iris. Each ring seemed to take an eternity. Finally, she answered.
“Hello? What, are you here?” she asked.
“Iris! Get the fuck out of the house! You and Ben aren’t alone in there! There’s a man coming in your direction right now!” I screamed, panicked. “Jump out the window if you have to! It’s coming!”
“What?” she said, sounding alarmed and confused. “Are you being serious?” I heard soft murmuring in the background.
“Tell Ben to grab a gun right now!” I started to say, but a high-pitched scream carried through the phone and the house at that moment.
“Iris? Iris! Answer me!” I said. The call immediately went dead.
From inside, I heard the first of the gunshots.
***
At that point, I decided to run back to my car. I needed to get inside and help them. A small voice in the back of my mind asked me what I could possibly do, however. If an AR-15 or a lead slug from a 12-gauge couldn’t stop the Crooked Man, then what could? At that moment, I wished fervently that Grandma would have told me.
I grabbed a tire iron from the back of my trunk and sprinted back toward the front of the house. They had large windows leading into the kitchen from their wraparound porch. Without hesitation, I drew the tire iron back and smashed it. The tinkling of glass seemed explosively loud. I realized that the gunshots and screaming had stopped.
At that moment, something pale came scurrying around the side of the building. I jumped, but I looked over and realized it was Iris, dressed in a white hoodie and white pants. Her pale face was contorted with mortal terror. To my horror, I realized hundreds of small drops spattered her clothes, covering her face and body like crimson raindrops. She had the .45 Ruger in her hands, and she was limping.
“Where’s Ben?” I cried. She shook her head.
“I jumped out the bedroom window… he was behind me,” she said. Suddenly, there was another explosion of glass from behind the house. Something heavy thudded hard against the ground. We heard wretched wailing follow it. Looking at each other with horrified eyes, we both turned and ran towards the noise.
We found Ben laying on the lawn. The right side of his neck was nearly severed. Bright-red streams of blood spurted from the mutilated flesh. His back looked broken as well. He laid there like a hornet smashed under someone’s boot. With dilated eyes, he looked from me to Iris. Terror and agony oozed from his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but only a frothy puddle of blood came up.
Then his eyes turned away, looking straight up into the cloudless black void of a sky. The last exhalation came, the death gasp that bubbled and stretched out until I thought it might never end. He died staring into that abyss, that eternity from which no one returns.
Part 2
The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 2] : NoSleepAuthors (reddit.com)
submitted by CIAHerpes to NoSleepAuthors [link] [comments]


2024.04.30 06:26 mixtlinube00 Presenta tu tag

Presenta tu tag
Al hablar sobre graffiti me parece importante que presentemos nuestro tag y una breve historia de como llegaron a él
Yo soy mxstar y es una forma de abreviar mixtlistar que es la unión de mixtli que significa nube en idioma nahuatl y star que es estrella en inglés dando como resultado mxstar
submitted by mixtlinube00 to graffiti_mx [link] [comments]


2024.04.30 01:15 awe2D2 Is graffiti culture still strong?

As I drive past a train yard and saw no murals or tags on any of the rail cars it got me thinking how little graffiti I see these days. As an original element of hip-hop thought I'd ask the community here. In my younger days I'd see a lot more but I also was out a lot more, seeing DJs, breakdancing and graffiti artists regularly. I also don't live in a major metropolitan area, but it's still a medium sized city, with some great murals in the warehouse/downtown areas, but I don't see as many pieces in places I used to. Is it still a big part of the culture?
submitted by awe2D2 to hiphop101 [link] [comments]


2024.04.29 23:34 TH14sBoombox Don't fucking ask... DFA for life

Don't fucking ask... DFA for life
New bike and new graffiti. This bridge had a local infamous bit on the other side. Sadly painted over... Now the reverse says DFA for life. Not seen any other tags for DFA locally.
submitted by TH14sBoombox to bikesandgraffiti [link] [comments]


2024.04.29 17:20 Rambooctpuss Album Bucket List Favorite Albums By Genre: What's Your Favorite Ska Album?

70's Alt Rock -King Crimson-Lark's Tongue In Aspic
80's Alt Rock - Talking Heads-Remain In Light
90's Alt Rock- Nirvana- Never mind
2000's Alt Rock-The Strokes-Is This It
2010's Alt Rock Tame Impala-Lonerism
Alt Country -Wilco-Summerteeth
Alt Hip Hop-MF Doom- Mad villainy
Art Rock-Dark Side Of The Moon-Pink Floyd
Brit Rock- The Clash- London Calling
College Rock-REM-Murmur
Emo Rock-My Chemical Romance-Welcome To The Black Parade
Experimental Rock-Swans-To Be Kind
Goth-The Cure Disintegration
Grunge- Soundgarden-Superunknown
Hardcore Punk- Black Flag- Damaged
Heavy Metal-Black Sabbath-Paranoid
60's Hard Rock-Led Zeppelin I
70's Hard rock-Led Zeppelin-Physical Graffiti
80's Hard Rock- AC/DC-Back In Black
90's Hard Rock-Nirvana-In Utero
2000's Hard Rock-Queens Of The Stone Age-Songs For The Deaf
2010's ˙Hard Rock- Tool-Fear Inoculum
Indie Rock-Joy Division-Unknown Pleasures
Indie Folk-Big Thief-Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
Lo-Fi-Neutral Milk Hotel-In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
New Wave-Elvis Costello-This Year's Model
Progressive Rock- Tool- Lateralus
Punk- Ramones-Rocket To Russia
pop punk-Green Day-Dookie
Post Punk- Wire- Pink Flag
Shoegaze-My Bloody Valentine-Loveless
Blues-Nina Simone-Sings The Blues
Blues Rock-The Rolling Stones-Sticky Fingers
Avant Garde- Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band-Trout Mask Replica
Baroque Pop-The Beach Boys-Pet Sounds
Symphonic Rock-Moody Blues-Days Of Future Past
Comedy/Novelty album-Adam Sandler-They're All Gonna Laugh At You
Stand Up Comedy-George Carlin-Back In Town
Americana-The Band-The Band
Bakersfield Sound-Buck Owens-Best Of Buck Owens
Bluegrass-Old & In The Way-That High Lonesome Sound
Outlaw Country-Willie Nelson-Redheaded Stranger
Classic Country-Johnny Cash-Live At Folsom Prison
Country Rock- The Flying Burrito Brothers-The Gilded Palace Of Sin
Dance/Club-LCD Soundsystem- This Is Happening
Christmas /Holiday Album-Vince Gauralidi-A Charlie Brown Christmas
EMD/Techno-Burial-Untrue
Ambient-Brian Eno-Music For Airports
Electronic Rock-Radiohead-Kid A
Space Rock- Spiritualized- Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Synthpop-Depeche Mode-Violator
Synthrock- New Order-Power, Corruption and Lies
Industrial-Nine Inch Nails-The Downward Spiral
Krautrock- Can-Tago Mago
Folk-Bob Dylan-The Freewillin' Bob Dylan
Folk Rock-Bob Dylan-Blood On The Tracks
Southern Rock-The Allman Brothers Band-At Fillmore East
80's Hip Hop-The Beastie Boys-Paul's Boutique
90's- Hip Hop Wu-Tang Clan-Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
2000's Hip Hop-Outkast- Stankonia
2010's Hip Hop-Kendrick Lamar-To Pimp A Butterfly
2020's Hip Hop-Run The Jewels-RTJ 4
East Coast Hip Hop- Nas- Illmatic
West Coast Hip Hop-NWA-Straight Outta Compton
Southern Hip Hop-Outkast -Aquemini
Midwest Album-Kanye West-My Dark Twisted Fantasy
Trap-Travis Sott-Rodeo
Instrumental Hip Hop- DJ Shadow- Endtroducing....
Indie Pop-Belle And Sebastian-If You're Feeling Sinister
Noise Rock-Sonic Youth-Daydream Nation
Post-rock- Godspeed! You Black Emperor-Lift Your Skinny Fist Like Antennas To Heaven
Acid Jazz- Medeski ,Martin, and Wood -Shack-Man
Trip Hop -Portishead- Dummy
Gospel -Aretha Franklin-Amazing Grace
Christian- Sufjan Stevens -Illnoise
Jazz-Miles Davis-Kind Of Blue
Avant Garde Jazz-Ornette Coleman-Shape To Jazz To Come
Swing/Bebop-Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers-Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers w/Thelonious Monk
Jazz/Fusion-Miles Davis-In A Silent Way
Jazz Rock-Miles Davis-Bitches Brew
Jazz/Funk-Herbie Hancock-Head Hunters
Jazz/Rap-A tribe Called Quest-The Low End Theory
Latin- Los Lobos-Kiko
Speed Metal/Thrash- Metallica- Master Of Puppets
Black/Death Metal-Deafheaven-Sunbather
Symphonic Metal-Haken-The Mountain
Glam Rock -T.Rex-Electric Warrior
Hair Metal-Guns N Roses-Appetite For Destruction
New Wave Of British Heavy Metal-Iron Maiden- Number Of The Beast
Sludge-Electric Wizard- Dopethron
Nu Metal-Korn-Korn
New Age-Popol Vuh - Hosianna Mantra
Pop-Prince-Sign O' The Times
60's Pop- The Beatles-Revolver
70's Pop- Carole King-Tapestry
80's Pop- Peter Gabriel-So
90's Pop-Madonna-Ray Of Light
2000's Pop-Madonna-Confessions On A Dance Floor
2010's pop-Robyn-Body Talk
2020's Pop- Perfume Genius-Set My Heart On Fire
Adult Contemporary- Billy Joel-The Stranger
Europop- ABBA- Arrival
Latin Pop-Ruben Y Seis Del Solar-Buscando America
Dance Pop-Dee-Lite-World Clique
Dream Pop- Mazzy Star-So Tonight I Might See
Power Pop- Weezer-Blue Album
R&B- Marvin Gaye-What's Going On
60's R&B-Aretha Franklin-I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You
70's R&B- Stevie Wonder- Songs In The Key Of Life
80's R&B- Janet Jackson- Control
90's R&B Album- Lauryn Hill-The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill
2000's R&B- D'Angelo-Voodoo
2010's-R&B-Beyonce-Lemonade
2020's R&B- SZA-SOS
Disco-Donna Summers-Bad Girls
Doo Wop- The Chantels- We Are The Chantels
Funk-Funkadelic-Maggot Brain
Motown- Marvin Gaye-Let's Get It On
Neo-Soul-Erykah Badu-Baduizm
Psychedelic Soul- Curtis Mayfield-Curtis
Soul-Aretha Franklin-Lady Soul
Reggae-Bob Marley- Exodus
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2024.04.29 15:17 No-Summer-2606 Graffiti synts tag elementary school.

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2024.04.28 17:57 Rambooctpuss Album Bucket List Favorite Albums By Genre: What's Your Favorite Reggae Album ?

70's Alt Rock -King Crimson-Lark's Tongue In Aspic
80's Alt Rock - Talking Heads-Remain In Light
90's Alt Rock- Nirvana- Never mind
2000's Alt Rock-The Strokes-Is This It
2010's Alt Rock Tame Impala-Lonerism
Alt Country -Wilco-Summerteeth
Alt Hip Hop-MF Doom- Mad villainy
Art Rock-Dark Side Of The Moon-Pink Floyd
Brit Rock- The Clash- London Calling
College Rock-REM-Murmur
Emo Rock-My Chemical Romance-Welcome To The Black Parade
Experimental Rock-Swans-To Be Kind
Goth-The Cure Disintegration
Grunge- Soundgarden-Superunknown
Hardcore Punk- Black Flag- Damaged
Heavy Metal-Black Sabbath-Paranoid
60's Hard Rock-Led Zeppelin I
70's Hard rock-Led Zeppelin-Physical Graffiti
80's Hard Rock- AC/DC-Back In Black
90's Hard Rock-Nirvana-In Utero
2000's Hard Rock-Queens Of The Stone Age-Songs For The Deaf
2010's ˙Hard Rock- Tool-Fear Inoculum
Indie Rock-Joy Division-Unknown Pleasures
Indie Folk-Big Thief-Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
Lo-Fi-Neutral Milk Hotel-In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
New Wave-Elvis Costello-This Year's Model
Progressive Rock- Tool- Lateralus
Punk- Ramones-Rocket To Russia
pop punk-Green Day-Dookie
Post Punk- Wire- Pink Flag
Shoegaze-My Bloody Valentine-Loveless
Blues-Nina Simone-Sings The Blues
Blues Rock-The Rolling Stones-Sticky Fingers
Avant Garde- Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band-Trout Mask Replica
Baroque Pop-The Beach Boys-Pet Sounds
Symphonic Rock-Moody Blues-Days Of Future Past
Comedy/Novelty album-Adam Sandler-They're All Gonna Laugh At You
Stand Up Comedy-George Carlin-Back In Town
Americana-The Band-The Band
Bakersfield Sound-Buck Owens-Best Of Buck Owens
Bluegrass-Old & In The Way-That High Lonesome Sound
Outlaw Country-Willie Nelson-Redheaded Stranger
Classic Country-Johnny Cash-Live At Folsom Prison
Country Rock- The Flying Burrito Brothers-The Gilded Palace Of Sin
Dance/Club-LCD Soundsystem- This Is Happening
Christmas /Holiday Album-Vince Gauralidi-A Charlie Brown Christmas
EMD/Techno-Burial-Untrue
Ambient-Brian Eno-Music For Airports
Electronic Rock-Radiohead-Kid A
Space Rock- Spiritualized- Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Synthpop-Depeche Mode-Violator
Synthrock- New Order-Power, Corruption and Lies
Industrial-Nine Inch Nails-The Downward Spiral
Krautrock- Can-Tago Mago
Folk-Bob Dylan-The Freewillin' Bob Dylan
Folk Rock-Bob Dylan-Blood On The Tracks
Southern Rock-The Allman Brothers Band-At Fillmore East
80's Hip Hop-The Beastie Boys-Paul's Boutique
90's- Hip Hop Wu-Tang Clan-Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
2000's Hip Hop-Outkast- Stankonia
2010's Hip Hop-Kendrick Lamar-To Pimp A Butterfly
2020's Hip Hop-Run The Jewels-RTJ 4
East Coast Hip Hop- Nas- Illmatic
West Coast Hip Hop-NWA-Straight Outta Compton
Southern Hip Hop-Outkast -Aquemini
Midwest Album-Kanye West-My Dark Twisted Fantasy
Trap-Travis Sott-Rodeo
Instrumental Hip Hop- DJ Shadow- Endtroducing....
Indie Pop-Belle And Sebastian-If You're Feeling Sinister
Noise Rock-Sonic Youth-Daydream Nation
Post-rock- Godspeed! You Black Emperor-Lift Your Skinny Fist Like Antennas To Heaven
Acid Jazz- Medeski ,Martin, and Wood -Shack-Man
Trip Hop -Portishead- Dummy
Gospel -Aretha Franklin-Amazing Grace
Christian- Sufjan Stevens -Illnoise
Jazz-Miles Davis-Kind Of Blue
Avant Garde Jazz-Ornette Coleman-Shape To Jazz To Come
Swing/Bebop-Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers-Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers w/Thelonious Monk
Jazz/Fusion-Miles Davis-In A Silent Way
Jazz Rock-Miles Davis-Bitches Brew
Jazz/Funk-Herbie Hancock-Head Hunters
Jazz/Rap-A tribe Called Quest-The Low End Theory
Latin- Los Lobos-Kiko
Speed Metal/Thrash- Metallica- Master Of Puppets
Black/Death Metal-Deafheaven-Sunbather
Symphonic Metal-Haken-The Mountain
Glam Rock -T.Rex-Electric Warrior
Hair Metal-Guns N Roses-Appetite For Destruction
New Wave Of British Heavy Metal-Iron Maiden- Number Of The Beast
Sludge-Electric Wizard- Dopethron
Nu Metal-Korn-Korn
New Age-Popol Vuh - Hosianna Mantra
Pop-Prince-Sign O' The Times
60's Pop- The Beatles-Revolver
70's Pop- Carole King-Tapestry
80's Pop- Peter Gabriel-So
90's Pop-Madonna-Ray Of Light
2000's Pop-Madonna-Confessions On A Dance Floor
2010's pop-Robyn-Body Talk
2020's Pop- Perfume Genius-Set My Heart On Fire
Adult Contemporary- Billy Joel-The Stranger
Europop- ABBA- Arrival
Latin Pop-Ruben Y Seis Del Solar-Buscando America
Dance Pop-Dee-Lite-World Clique
Dream Pop- Mazzy Star-So Tonight I Might See
Power Pop- Weezer-Blue Album
R&B- Marvin Gaye-What's Going On
60's R&B-Aretha Franklin-I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You
70's R&B- Stevie Wonder- Songs In The Key Of Life
80's R&B- Janet Jackson- Control
90's R&B Album- Lauryn Hill-The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill
2000's R&B- D'Angelo-Voodoo
2010's-R&B-Beyonce-Lemonade
2020's R&B- SZA-SOS
Disco-Donna Summers-Bad Girls
Doo Wop- The Chantels- We Are The Chantels
Funk-Funkadelic-Maggot Brain
Motown- Marvin Gaye-Let's Get It On
Neo-Soul-Erykah Badu-Baduizm
Psychedelic Soul- Curtis Mayfield-Curtis
Soul-Aretha Franklin-Lady Soul
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2024.04.28 16:48 MereCoincidences Do ya'll ever receive criticism? Have a few questions about graffiti tagging.

Do ya'll ever receive criticism? Have a few questions about graffiti tagging.
I know this is the wrong sub-reddit to ask, i dont imagine this post doing well. But i need help understanding why people graffiti.
Most of the time a "tag" is bearly legible. Wouldnt the point be to spread/mark your "street name" or whatever? So wouldn't it be better to have it recognizable?
I imagine people say stuff like: "Noone wants to see your shitty tag, atleast make some real art" and i can understand where theyre coming from.
I mean.. youre literally just making your part of town look more trashy. Unless its on the inside of an abandoned building or something. Anything that can be viewed from public roads is litterally just making the area look run-down. So why do it?
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2024.04.28 15:17 CIAHerpes The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 1]

I remember when I first heard the rhyme as a child. It terrified me. To me, the Crooked Man was some sort of boogeyman with freakishly long arms and legs that were twisted and broken in horrifying ways. I still have the rhyme memorized. It repeats in my brain like a skipping record.
“There was a Crooked Man, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”
My brother Benton, who loved to torture me as a child, ended up adding his own parts to the rhyme over time. The extra parts he added did nothing to console me or end my nightmares of this twisted boogeyman who always seemed to slink through the shadows. I remember the rhyme Benton told me by heart to this day.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue.
The crooked man twists and crawls.
He uses his crooked blade to kill.
And when the curtain of night falls,
He comes to get his thrill.”
***
So I found it strange when, a few weeks ago, I was sitting with a couple of my friends drinking and the subject of the Crooked Man came up again. They were rambling about shootings and serial killers and other fairly interesting subjects that I knew almost nothing about. But my friend Iris knew everything about such morbid subjects.
She was a small drink of water, no more than five feet, with platinum blonde hair and green eyes like a cat. She was extremely attractive with high cheekbones and a small nose and chin. She always talked extremely fast and made violent slashing gestures with her hands. Sometimes I wondered if she had a secret amphetamine habit I didn’t know about.
“But did you hear about the murders in Union?” Iris asked, glancing over at her boyfriend, Ben. Ben was the opposite of Iris- tall and nerdy with thick, black-rimmed glasses and a low whisper of a voice.
“I just heard that some kids went missing,” Ben murmured. I shrugged.
“I don’t watch TV,” I said. “The news is all bullshit anyway. They only show you the bad stuff. After all, no one wants to hear about new breakthroughs in fusion technology or discoveries in particle physics. Instead, people just want to watch others get murdered, robbed and beaten, so that they can feel that at least someone else has it worse than them. That’s all the news is, really: a form of schadenfreude, the joy people get from seeing others’ misfortune and suffering. Our entire media industry is built on a foundation of schadenfreude.” I took a long sip from my beer, a Harpoon that tasted like pure raspberries. Iris rolled her eyes.
“While probably true, I don’t care,” she said, turning her green eyes on me. “Don’t you want to know what happened to the kids?”
“I do,” Ben said, leaning forward. “Was it something… supernatural?” Iris gave a sardonic laugh at that. Ben sat back, offended.
“What’s so funny? I heard there was weird stuff going on around that factory. In fact, I heard they used to manufacture some dye there for clocks and stuff, right? So all these people went to work, painting watches and clocks and whatever else they told them to paint. It was this special green dye that would glow in the dark. The factory was staffed by mostly women, and I heard they used to lick their paintbrushes to form them into points. They figured this stuff was just regular paint that glowed in the dark.” I leaned back, interested. Ben started talking faster, getting more animated.
“So what happened?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Well, the workers started getting cancer and dying in huge numbers,” Ben continued as the kitchen lights sparkled off his glasses. “One woman even had her entire jaw rot off. Others had pieces of their faces falling off. So it turns out, they were using radioactive isotopes to make the paint glow! And these women were just licking the paintbrushes and touching the paint…”
“Holy shit,” I whispered, horrified.
“They called them the Radium girls,” Ben said. “That factory killed hundreds and hundreds of people. That’s why a lot of people think it’s haunted. People claim they see ghosts and weird shit around it. And that’s not all. The case gets even weirder when you look at workers’ families.
“It seems a lot of their kids went missing, too. The cops never found any of them. The entire time the factory was operational, and even after it shutdown, the families of the workers kept having strange things happen- children disappearing from their bedrooms in the middle of the night, strange murders and unexplained suicides that kept killing off healthy, normal people all over town.”
“So, anyways,” Iris continued, looking slightly annoyed at the interruption, “the kids that went into that abandoned factory were all found… torn apart. Their limbs were all amputated and crooked.” She leaned forward, using her spooky campfire voice. “And the limbs were long. Freakishly long, as if they had just grown overnight to inhuman lengths before they got lopped off. But they never found the heads or the torsos. All they found was ten legs and ten arms.”
“And no one knows what happened?” I asked. She shook her head.
“Officially, no. The police and media said it was some sort of serial killer, of course. But there wasn’t a shred of evidence anywhere. It was like a ghost had done it. Where the limbs were piled up in the basement, there was no evidence that anyone had been there in months, no footsteps or microscopic evidence of any presence. But the story doesn’t end there. Because there were six teenagers that went into that building, and one of them was found alive three months later, wandering, covered in blood and scratches, mostly naked and totally insane. One of my friends is an EMT and she said that the kid would not stop talking about the Crooked Man taking his friends and keeping him prisoner in some other world.”
At the mention of those words, the Crooked Man, a chill went down my spine. My heart felt like ice.
“What’d you say? What did the kid say?” I asked anxiously. Suddenly the room felt very hot, and the alcohol was not sitting well in my stomach.
“He said he got kidnapped by someone called the Crooked Man,” Iris repeated, taking a long sip from her wine. “According to the kid, it was some sort of fucking monster, apparently. I think his mind must have just snapped. He was probably kidnapped and held in the basement of some serial killer for three goddamned months. Who knows what he saw and experienced? People make up all sorts of crazy shit when they’re traumatized.”
My hand was shaking so badly that I had to put my bottle down on the table. For some reason, my mind kept flashing back to my sister, Emilia, who had been kidnapped from her room in the middle of the night when my brother Benton and I were little. She had never been found. We had never gotten a ransom note or found a body. It was as if Emilia had simply disappeared, vanished from the surface of the planet in an instant.
“I think some of that stuff is real,” Ben said. “People have been talking about cryptids and ghosts for thousands of years across countless different and unrelated cultures. What are the chances that all of them are just hallucinations or delusions?”
I didn’t know, but I thought I might know someone who might.
***
My brother Benton was a long-term drug addict living in a flophouse. I went to see him the next morning. He opened the door with a glazed, half-aware expression. Scars covered his arms and legs. He looked like a walking skeleton. His eyes shone like the last bit of water at the bottom of a dying well.
“Jack,” he said, surprised, appearing to wake up slightly. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said, pushing past him into the one-bedroom place he called home. A cockroach skittered across the wall. As he closed the door, I saw bites from bedbugs all over his body. Benton turned, spreading out his hands.
“Well, what is it, little brother? You know I’m all ears.”
“You remember that rhyme you used to scare me with when we were little?” I asked. “That rhyme you made up about the Crooked Man?” He seemed to go a shade paler.
“I didn’t make anything up,” he said. “That rhyme came from Grandma. She told it to dad when he was little, before she died.”
“Grandma?” I asked, startled. Our grandmother had died of cancer when she was extremely young, in her late 20s. “Did you hear about the murders over in Union? The survivor was talking about the Crooked Man.”
“That’s pretty freaking weird, man,” he said. “Especially considering what happened to Grandma and Emilia, you know.” He sat down on the threadbare mattress, laying back and sighing.
“Why is it weird?” I asked.
“Because, you know, that’s where Grandma used to work. At that factory in Union. Didn’t Dad ever tell you?” I shook my head, feeling sick.
“So Grandma was one of the radium girls?” I said. My brother shrugged his thin shoulders, the stained T-shirt clinging tight to his frail body.
“I don’t know what that is, but whatever she was doing there, it killed her.”
“But what does that have to do with Emilia?” I asked, my heart pounding at the mention of our long-lost little sister. He shook his head in wonder.
“You don’t remember? You were older than me when it happened. Before she went missing, she kept talking about the same thing, saying weird stuff about some ‘Crooked Man’. Don’t you remember what happened the night she went missing?” I thought back, but it all seemed like a blur. I remembered flashing police sirens and my parents screaming. I had tried to block it out, but apparently Benton hadn’t been able to. That night must be like a fresh wound on his mind all the time.
“No, I just remembered… screaming, and police…” I whispered, my voice trailing off into nothing. Benton leaned forward on the bed, looking sick.
“We both saw it,” he said. “The Crooked Man. That thing she was talking about. It was real. We saw it in her room that night- when it took her.” I shook my head, refusing to look at him. Feeling sick, I walked toward the door without looking back. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going home,” I said. “I can’t deal with this shit right now.” But that night, I would find out that the long-lost nightmare from my childhood was not nearly as buried in the past as I thought.
***
I was laying in my dark bedroom, reading the local news on my phone, when I saw an article that disturbed me greatly. I sat up, looking out the window into the cloudless night. The sky hung overhead like a black hole, colorless and empty. Fear radiated through my heart as I glanced back down at the screen and started reading.
“Sole survivor of serial killer commits suicide,” the article read in garish black-and-white letters. “Michael Galentino, 18, was found dead in a psychiatric facility early this morning. In February, Michael Galentino and five others entered a local abandoned building. Friends who knew them stated that they often explored abandoned structures as part of an ‘urban exploration’ group. But this would not be a normal night for the group. They all disappeared, and within 24 hours, police and search teams had been dispatched to look for the missing teenagers…”
The house was silent. I read the rest of the article with bated breath, my eyes wide. Some of the details I already knew, but others, such as the radioactive isotopes found on the dismembered limbs of the victims, I did not. I wondered about that. The police claimed that, after finding this strange clue, they had sent a team to inspect the abandoned factory with Geiger counters and look for signs of radioactivity. Perhaps the radium, which had a notoriously long half-life, had accumulated on the surfaces over the decades. But they said the radioactivity within the building was all within acceptable levels. It was just another bizarre piece of a puzzle that no one could solve.
The house was deathly silent. I could hear my own heart beating a runaway rhythm in my ears. A rising sense of anxiety was filling me, but I didn’t know why. It felt like some sort of pressure had changed all around me, as if the first wave of a massive blizzard had just blown into the room.
I heard a creaking from across the dark room. At the same time, I felt a sting on my arm. I looked down, seeing a bedbug crawling across my skin, a small red welt rising in its wake.
“Fuck!” I swore, grabbing it between my fingers and slicing it between my nails. Crimson spurted from its swollen body as if it were a tiny balloon. It exploded, staining my fingers red with my own blood.
“I should’ve never gone to see my brother. Goddamned bedbugs,” I muttered to myself. I hoped that was the only one. If I had picked up some extra travelers at the flophouse, I knew they would spread throughout the entire house within days.
The creaking came again, louder this time, almost insistent. I glanced across the curtain of shadows that hung thick and black in the room, seeing the dark silhouette of my closet door swinging open. I could only stare, open-mouthed. A long moment passed, and then I heard breathing. It came out, ragged and slow with long pauses, like the choking of a murder victim.
Slowly, I raised my phone’s dim light, shining it across the room. On the closet door, I saw four inhumanly long, crooked fingers. They shone pale like the skin of a corpse. They twitched, then started rhythmically tapping on the door. And then I heard it, that rhyme, that horrible, gurgling rhyme. It came echoing out from the door in that same choked voice, like a forgotten wound from long ago.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue…”
It felt like I was in some sort of nightmare, but I knew from the sweat dripping down my forehead and the sensation of cloth sheets against my skin that this was all too real. Even a couple months later, I still remember that sensation of dread, the first of many terrors that this night would bring.
I looked around for a weapon. All I found was a letter opener sitting next to some mail on the nearby nightstand. I grabbed it, a flimsy piece of metal in my shaking hands. I was afraid to move, afraid to call out or do anything, out of fear it might shatter the stillness and cause that ineffable horror to come oozing out. I knew I didn’t want to see what was hiding behind that door.
I looked at the open window. I was on the second floor. I was afraid to even breathe too loudly at that moment. With the letter opener in my hand, I tried to silently slide myself across the mattress to the window only a few feet away.
The bedframe groaned softly as I shifted my weight. The breathing from the closet stopped abruptly. I heard the door creaking open, the floorboards shifting. Heavy steps started in the darkness, heading towards me. As I pushed myself off the bed, I glanced back and saw something twisted loping across the room on crooked legs.
It was the Crooked Man, the nightmare from my childhood. He towered over me with a tophat that nearly scraped the ceiling. His lidless eyes were pure darkness, as black as death. They contrasted heavily with his bone-white skin. His lips and fingernails were a suffocating, cyanotic blue, like the lips of a murder victim.
He stood up tall. The bones in his freakishly long legs cracked as the many strange joints of his enormous limbs bent in ways no human limb should bend. His fingers were strange and misshapen, each a foot long. They ended in sharp points of bone that poked out through the dead, white skin. He wore a black suit on his tall, emaciated frame. He moved towards me like flashing static, seeming to disappear and reappear closer and closer in every moment.
In panic and terror, I dived headfirst toward the open window, hearing the gurgling breathing of the Crooked Man only a few feet behind me. I felt slashing talons of bone rip across my back, a burning pain and a feeling of blood soaking my shirt. Then I was flying out the window and falling headfirst towards the grass and bushes below.
***
Time seemed to slow down as the ground rushed up to meet me. The wind whipped past my ears like the currents of a tornado. Instinctively, I tried to curl into a ball. As I smashed into the first of the bushes under my window, I rolled to try to put the brunt of the impact on my right shoulder.
The thin branches of the bush crumpled under me like wet cardboard. I felt sharp sticks stabbing into my skin, opening up new slices and cuts to mix with the deep gashes on my back.
I hit the dirt hard, a sudden pain radiating through my back. A jarring sensation crashed through my body. I rolled as I hit the ground, smacking my head into the lawn. The world spun around me and went dark.
Suddenly, I was somewhere else.
***
I found myself standing in a dark factory, surrounded by debris. Broken glass covered the floor, twinkling like fireflies under the light of the distant streetlights outside. Strange graffiti covered the concrete walls all around me.
“DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU,” one of the tags read in slashing red letters. Underneath it, someone had spraypainted pure black eyes over a massive grinning mouth full of crooked black teeth.
“Destroy it with fire! SAVE your soul,” another one read in small, blue letters. I ran my hands over my face, wondering if I was dreaming. This all felt so real. I could feel the gentle breeze blowing through the broken windows on my skin, hear the rhythmic chirping of crickets outside.
I heard soft sobbing behind me. I remembered the first graffiti tag I had seen and a sense of panic gripped my heart. I did not want to look back.
“Fuck,” I swore under my breath, trembling as I turned. But I didn’t find some eldritch monstrosity with obsidian teeth and black, lidless eyes waiting there. Instead, I found a woman. She was crying, her back turned to me. She wore a black funeral gown that looked ancient and decayed. With a trembling heart, I took a step forward, wondering if I would regret this.
“Hello?” I called out. She spun, her eyes widening. In front of me stood a pretty blonde woman in her mid-twenties, one that I immediately recognized. For I saw many of my own features reflected in that panicked face: the high cheekbones, the large chin, even the waviness of her hair.
“Grandma,” I whispered, looking around in wonder. “What is this? Am I dead?” She shook her head, her eyes still wet and red. She took a deep, shuddering breath and gave a faint smile.
“Jack,” she said in a soft, melodic voice. “I’m so happy to see you. I’ve been watching you. I’ve been so proud of you. Even though we never met, I want you to know that. I wished I could have lived longer, could have met you. If only I hadn’t been murdered by that thing…” She spat the last word with hatred and fear oozing from her voice.
“I thought you died of cancer, Grandma?” I asked. “What do you mean, he killed you?” She shook like a leaf in the wind, refusing to meet my gaze.
“Everyone in that place was touched by something evil,” she murmured, putting her face in her hands. Her voice quavered like a frightened little girl’s. “The sickness radiated from that thing. It followed us like a cancer, made us weak, and then took our breath away. After the long torture was finished, he came to strangle me. He didn’t just kill me, Jack. He murdered my sister and brother, too. I saw it.” Her head ratcheted up, looking behind me all of a sudden. Her eyes widened in terror.
“You need to kill it, Jack,” she whispered grimly. “He’s woken up again after all these years, and he’s starving. The Crooked Man must feed, and feed he will if you don’t stop him. You need to come to the factory and end it. Otherwise, he will keep on killing. The Crooked Man will never stop hunting you. He will kill you and everyone you love.”
“How?” I asked, afraid to look back as the disturbing sounds grew closer and closer. Grandma backpedaled quickly, as if the demons of Hell were approaching. “How? How do I end it?”
I heard a horrible, choked breathing behind me, then the world faded.
***
I woke up suddenly on the lawn, my head pounding. It didn’t seem like much time had passed. I must have knocked myself out. I raised my fingers to my forehead. My fingers came away slick with blood.
For a long moment, I lay there, hyperventilating and looking up at the cloudless abyss of a sky. My body felt bruised and battered, and I wasn’t even sure if I could walk.
Then I saw a pale, hairless visage peeking over the edge of the windowsill with eyes as dark as night. Its face split into a grin with a crack, making a sound like ripping plastic. The bone-white mask of dead skin looked at me with a feverish intensity, a kind of psychopathic hunger that radiated from every pore of his body. With horror, I saw the Crooked Man’s teeth were as black as his eyes, gleaming like polished jetstone.
A rush of adrenaline pushed me up from the ground. I realized I was tremendously lucky, that I had been laying there with my keys still in my pocket and my cell phone in hand, fully dressed except for the fact I was wearing slippers. I sprinted across the lawn towards my car. I heard the Crooked Man scream out after me.
“You’ll be with Grandmother soon, Jackie boy,” he hissed in his gurgling voice. “No one escapes. No one.”
***
I flew down the highway in my car, the phone in my trembling hand. Looking down at it, I called Iris right away. She answered groggily.
“Hello?” she said.
“Jesus, Iris, it’s after me,” I said frantically. “Something’s happening. I got attacked in my own bedroom!”
“Did you call the cops?” she asked, seeming to wake up instantly. I looked down at the clock in the center console, seeing it was already past midnight.
“It wasn’t a person. I saw something. I think it was the same thing that took those teenagers, and now it’s after me. Are you guys home?” There was a long pause on the other end. I heard whispering in the background.
“Yeah… sure, come over,” she said. I knew Ben was somewhat of a gun nut, and had a nice little collection at the house. I would feel much safer if I made it there. And if I had them on my side, that would be all the better.
***
Ben and Iris lived in the middle of a back road surrounded by forests. The dark trees loomed overhead like priests with their heads bowed. The light from their front porch streamed into the creeping shadows as I pulled into their driveway. The sound of the car idling seemed far too loud in this place where the woods closed in all around me. I didn’t know what was hiding in those trees. I immediately shut it off.
Ben was a veteran who knew much more about combat and guns than I did. His collection was also somewhat impressive- an Armalite AR-15, a Judge, a 12-gauge Benelli, two crappy little .22s, a .45 Ruger, a Nosler 21 and a 10-gauge Mossberg. I had gone out shooting with him and Iris quite a few times. I would feel much safer once I was inside.
The cloudless black sky hung overhead like the lid of a coffin. Their little two-story place with the wraparound porch looked quaint, almost like a little rural cabin.
I stumbled out of the car. I’m sure I was quite a sight, battered and covered in clotting gashes and cuts, my eyes wide and panicked. I constantly looked around, checking my back. Every time I did, I expected to see something there, something close by with blue lips like a corpse and deformed, twisting bones.
I had nearly gotten to the front of the house when I saw, through the narrow sidelights at top of the door, the face of the Crooked Man. Standing only feet away, I heard faint gurgling of his diseased breathing even through the wall.
His hairless face was split into a grin like a death’s head, his lidless eyes bulging and excited. He raised his misshapen fingers to the window and gave me a little wave, opening and closing his fingers slowly. Then he turned and disappeared deeper into the house.
***
I immediately tried opening the door, to yell to Iris and Ben to watch out, but the door was locked. I called Iris. Each ring seemed to take an eternity. Finally, she answered.
“Hello? What, are you here?” she asked.
“Iris! Get the fuck out of the house! You and Ben aren’t alone in there! There’s a man coming in your direction right now!” I screamed, panicked. “Jump out the window if you have to! It’s coming!”
“What?” she said, sounding alarmed and confused. “Are you being serious?” I heard soft murmuring in the background.
“Tell Ben to grab a gun right now!” I started to say, but a high-pitched scream carried through the phone and the house at that moment.
“Iris? Iris! Answer me!” I said. The call immediately went dead.
From inside, I heard the first of the gunshots.
***
At that point, I decided to run back to my car. I needed to get inside and help them. A small voice in the back of my mind asked me what I could possibly do, however. If an AR-15 or a lead slug from a 12-gauge couldn’t stop the Crooked Man, then what could? At that moment, I wished fervently that Grandma would have told me.
I grabbed a tire iron from the back of my trunk and sprinted back toward the front of the house. They had large windows leading into the kitchen from their wraparound porch. Without hesitation, I drew the tire iron back and smashed it. The tinkling of glass seemed explosively loud. I realized that the gunshots and screaming had stopped.
At that moment, something pale came scurrying around the side of the building. I jumped, but I looked over and realized it was Iris, dressed in a white hoodie and white pants. Her pale face was contorted with mortal terror. To my horror, I realized hundreds of small drops spattered her clothes, covering her face and body like crimson raindrops. She had the .45 Ruger in her hands, and she was limping.
“Where’s Ben?” I cried. She shook her head.
“I jumped out the bedroom window… he was behind me,” she said. Suddenly, there was another explosion of glass from behind the house. Something heavy thudded hard against the ground. We heard wretched wailing follow it. Looking at each other with horrified eyes, we both turned and ran towards the noise.
We found Ben laying on the lawn. The right side of his neck was nearly severed. Bright-red streams of blood spurted from the mutilated flesh. His back looked broken as well. He laid there like a hornet smashed under someone’s boot. With dilated eyes, he looked from me to Iris. Terror and agony oozed from his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but only a frothy puddle of blood came up.
Then his eyes turned away, looking straight up into the cloudless black void of a sky. The last exhalation came, the death gasp that bubbled and stretched out until I thought it might never end. He died staring into that abyss, that eternity from which no one returns.
The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 2] : stories (reddit.com)
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2024.04.28 15:16 CIAHerpes The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 1]

I remember when I first heard the rhyme as a child. It terrified me. To me, the Crooked Man was some sort of boogeyman with freakishly long arms and legs that were twisted and broken in horrifying ways. I still have the rhyme memorized. It repeats in my brain like a skipping record.
“There was a Crooked Man, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”
My brother Benton, who loved to torture me as a child, ended up adding his own parts to the rhyme over time. The extra parts he added did nothing to console me or end my nightmares of this twisted boogeyman who always seemed to slink through the shadows. I remember the rhyme Benton told me by heart to this day.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue.
The crooked man twists and crawls.
He uses his crooked blade to kill.
And when the curtain of night falls,
He comes to get his thrill.”
***
So I found it strange when, a few weeks ago, I was sitting with a couple of my friends drinking and the subject of the Crooked Man came up again. They were rambling about shootings and serial killers and other fairly interesting subjects that I knew almost nothing about. But my friend Iris knew everything about such morbid subjects.
She was a small drink of water, no more than five feet, with platinum blonde hair and green eyes like a cat. She was extremely attractive with high cheekbones and a small nose and chin. She always talked extremely fast and made violent slashing gestures with her hands. Sometimes I wondered if she had a secret amphetamine habit I didn’t know about.
“But did you hear about the murders in Union?” Iris asked, glancing over at her boyfriend, Ben. Ben was the opposite of Iris- tall and nerdy with thick, black-rimmed glasses and a low whisper of a voice.
“I just heard that some kids went missing,” Ben murmured. I shrugged.
“I don’t watch TV,” I said. “The news is all bullshit anyway. They only show you the bad stuff. After all, no one wants to hear about new breakthroughs in fusion technology or discoveries in particle physics. Instead, people just want to watch others get murdered, robbed and beaten, so that they can feel that at least someone else has it worse than them. That’s all the news is, really: a form of schadenfreude, the joy people get from seeing others’ misfortune and suffering. Our entire media industry is built on a foundation of schadenfreude.” I took a long sip from my beer, a Harpoon that tasted like pure raspberries. Iris rolled her eyes.
“While probably true, I don’t care,” she said, turning her green eyes on me. “Don’t you want to know what happened to the kids?”
“I do,” Ben said, leaning forward. “Was it something… supernatural?” Iris gave a sardonic laugh at that. Ben sat back, offended.
“What’s so funny? I heard there was weird stuff going on around that factory. In fact, I heard they used to manufacture some dye there for clocks and stuff, right? So all these people went to work, painting watches and clocks and whatever else they told them to paint. It was this special green dye that would glow in the dark. The factory was staffed by mostly women, and I heard they used to lick their paintbrushes to form them into points. They figured this stuff was just regular paint that glowed in the dark.” I leaned back, interested. Ben started talking faster, getting more animated.
“So what happened?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Well, the workers started getting cancer and dying in huge numbers,” Ben continued as the kitchen lights sparkled off his glasses. “One woman even had her entire jaw rot off. Others had pieces of their faces falling off. So it turns out, they were using radioactive isotopes to make the paint glow! And these women were just licking the paintbrushes and touching the paint…”
“Holy shit,” I whispered, horrified.
“They called them the Radium girls,” Ben said. “That factory killed hundreds and hundreds of people. That’s why a lot of people think it’s haunted. People claim they see ghosts and weird shit around it. And that’s not all. The case gets even weirder when you look at workers’ families.
“It seems a lot of their kids went missing, too. The cops never found any of them. The entire time the factory was operational, and even after it shutdown, the families of the workers kept having strange things happen- children disappearing from their bedrooms in the middle of the night, strange murders and unexplained suicides that kept killing off healthy, normal people all over town.”
“So, anyways,” Iris continued, looking slightly annoyed at the interruption, “the kids that went into that abandoned factory were all found… torn apart. Their limbs were all amputated and crooked.” She leaned forward, using her spooky campfire voice. “And the limbs were long. Freakishly long, as if they had just grown overnight to inhuman lengths before they got lopped off. But they never found the heads or the torsos. All they found was ten legs and ten arms.”
“And no one knows what happened?” I asked. She shook her head.
“Officially, no. The police and media said it was some sort of serial killer, of course. But there wasn’t a shred of evidence anywhere. It was like a ghost had done it. Where the limbs were piled up in the basement, there was no evidence that anyone had been there in months, no footsteps or microscopic evidence of any presence. But the story doesn’t end there. Because there were six teenagers that went into that building, and one of them was found alive three months later, wandering, covered in blood and scratches, mostly naked and totally insane. One of my friends is an EMT and she said that the kid would not stop talking about the Crooked Man taking his friends and keeping him prisoner in some other world.”
At the mention of those words, the Crooked Man, a chill went down my spine. My heart felt like ice.
“What’d you say? What did the kid say?” I asked anxiously. Suddenly the room felt very hot, and the alcohol was not sitting well in my stomach.
“He said he got kidnapped by someone called the Crooked Man,” Iris repeated, taking a long sip from her wine. “According to the kid, it was some sort of fucking monster, apparently. I think his mind must have just snapped. He was probably kidnapped and held in the basement of some serial killer for three goddamned months. Who knows what he saw and experienced? People make up all sorts of crazy shit when they’re traumatized.”
My hand was shaking so badly that I had to put my bottle down on the table. For some reason, my mind kept flashing back to my sister, Emilia, who had been kidnapped from her room in the middle of the night when my brother Benton and I were little. She had never been found. We had never gotten a ransom note or found a body. It was as if Emilia had simply disappeared, vanished from the surface of the planet in an instant.
“I think some of that stuff is real,” Ben said. “People have been talking about cryptids and ghosts for thousands of years across countless different and unrelated cultures. What are the chances that all of them are just hallucinations or delusions?”
I didn’t know, but I thought I might know someone who might.
***
My brother Benton was a long-term drug addict living in a flophouse. I went to see him the next morning. He opened the door with a glazed, half-aware expression. Scars covered his arms and legs. He looked like a walking skeleton. His eyes shone like the last bit of water at the bottom of a dying well.
“Jack,” he said, surprised, appearing to wake up slightly. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said, pushing past him into the one-bedroom place he called home. A cockroach skittered across the wall. As he closed the door, I saw bites from bedbugs all over his body. Benton turned, spreading out his hands.
“Well, what is it, little brother? You know I’m all ears.”
“You remember that rhyme you used to scare me with when we were little?” I asked. “That rhyme you made up about the Crooked Man?” He seemed to go a shade paler.
“I didn’t make anything up,” he said. “That rhyme came from Grandma. She told it to dad when he was little, before she died.”
“Grandma?” I asked, startled. Our grandmother had died of cancer when she was extremely young, in her late 20s. “Did you hear about the murders over in Union? The survivor was talking about the Crooked Man.”
“That’s pretty freaking weird, man,” he said. “Especially considering what happened to Grandma and Emilia, you know.” He sat down on the threadbare mattress, laying back and sighing.
“Why is it weird?” I asked.
“Because, you know, that’s where Grandma used to work. At that factory in Union. Didn’t Dad ever tell you?” I shook my head, feeling sick.
“So Grandma was one of the radium girls?” I said. My brother shrugged his thin shoulders, the stained T-shirt clinging tight to his frail body.
“I don’t know what that is, but whatever she was doing there, it killed her.”
“But what does that have to do with Emilia?” I asked, my heart pounding at the mention of our long-lost little sister. He shook his head in wonder.
“You don’t remember? You were older than me when it happened. Before she went missing, she kept talking about the same thing, saying weird stuff about some ‘Crooked Man’. Don’t you remember what happened the night she went missing?” I thought back, but it all seemed like a blur. I remembered flashing police sirens and my parents screaming. I had tried to block it out, but apparently Benton hadn’t been able to. That night must be like a fresh wound on his mind all the time.
“No, I just remembered… screaming, and police…” I whispered, my voice trailing off into nothing. Benton leaned forward on the bed, looking sick.
“We both saw it,” he said. “The Crooked Man. That thing she was talking about. It was real. We saw it in her room that night- when it took her.” I shook my head, refusing to look at him. Feeling sick, I walked toward the door without looking back. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going home,” I said. “I can’t deal with this shit right now.” But that night, I would find out that the long-lost nightmare from my childhood was not nearly as buried in the past as I thought.
***
I was laying in my dark bedroom, reading the local news on my phone, when I saw an article that disturbed me greatly. I sat up, looking out the window into the cloudless night. The sky hung overhead like a black hole, colorless and empty. Fear radiated through my heart as I glanced back down at the screen and started reading.
“Sole survivor of serial killer commits suicide,” the article read in garish black-and-white letters. “Michael Galentino, 18, was found dead in a psychiatric facility early this morning. In February, Michael Galentino and five others entered a local abandoned building. Friends who knew them stated that they often explored abandoned structures as part of an ‘urban exploration’ group. But this would not be a normal night for the group. They all disappeared, and within 24 hours, police and search teams had been dispatched to look for the missing teenagers…”
The house was silent. I read the rest of the article with bated breath, my eyes wide. Some of the details I already knew, but others, such as the radioactive isotopes found on the dismembered limbs of the victims, I did not. I wondered about that. The police claimed that, after finding this strange clue, they had sent a team to inspect the abandoned factory with Geiger counters and look for signs of radioactivity. Perhaps the radium, which had a notoriously long half-life, had accumulated on the surfaces over the decades. But they said the radioactivity within the building was all within acceptable levels. It was just another bizarre piece of a puzzle that no one could solve.
The house was deathly silent. I could hear my own heart beating a runaway rhythm in my ears. A rising sense of anxiety was filling me, but I didn’t know why. It felt like some sort of pressure had changed all around me, as if the first wave of a massive blizzard had just blown into the room.
I heard a creaking from across the dark room. At the same time, I felt a sting on my arm. I looked down, seeing a bedbug crawling across my skin, a small red welt rising in its wake.
“Fuck!” I swore, grabbing it between my fingers and slicing it between my nails. Crimson spurted from its swollen body as if it were a tiny balloon. It exploded, staining my fingers red with my own blood.
“I should’ve never gone to see my brother. Goddamned bedbugs,” I muttered to myself. I hoped that was the only one. If I had picked up some extra travelers at the flophouse, I knew they would spread throughout the entire house within days.
The creaking came again, louder this time, almost insistent. I glanced across the curtain of shadows that hung thick and black in the room, seeing the dark silhouette of my closet door swinging open. I could only stare, open-mouthed. A long moment passed, and then I heard breathing. It came out, ragged and slow with long pauses, like the choking of a murder victim.
Slowly, I raised my phone’s dim light, shining it across the room. On the closet door, I saw four inhumanly long, crooked fingers. They shone pale like the skin of a corpse. They twitched, then started rhythmically tapping on the door. And then I heard it, that rhyme, that horrible, gurgling rhyme. It came echoing out from the door in that same choked voice, like a forgotten wound from long ago.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue…”
It felt like I was in some sort of nightmare, but I knew from the sweat dripping down my forehead and the sensation of cloth sheets against my skin that this was all too real. Even a couple months later, I still remember that sensation of dread, the first of many terrors that this night would bring.
I looked around for a weapon. All I found was a letter opener sitting next to some mail on the nearby nightstand. I grabbed it, a flimsy piece of metal in my shaking hands. I was afraid to move, afraid to call out or do anything, out of fear it might shatter the stillness and cause that ineffable horror to come oozing out. I knew I didn’t want to see what was hiding behind that door.
I looked at the open window. I was on the second floor. I was afraid to even breathe too loudly at that moment. With the letter opener in my hand, I tried to silently slide myself across the mattress to the window only a few feet away.
The bedframe groaned softly as I shifted my weight. The breathing from the closet stopped abruptly. I heard the door creaking open, the floorboards shifting. Heavy steps started in the darkness, heading towards me. As I pushed myself off the bed, I glanced back and saw something twisted loping across the room on crooked legs.
It was the Crooked Man, the nightmare from my childhood. He towered over me with a tophat that nearly scraped the ceiling. His lidless eyes were pure darkness, as black as death. They contrasted heavily with his bone-white skin. His lips and fingernails were a suffocating, cyanotic blue, like the lips of a murder victim.
He stood up tall. The bones in his freakishly long legs cracked as the many strange joints of his enormous limbs bent in ways no human limb should bend. His fingers were strange and misshapen, each a foot long. They ended in sharp points of bone that poked out through the dead, white skin. He wore a black suit on his tall, emaciated frame. He moved towards me like flashing static, seeming to disappear and reappear closer and closer in every moment.
In panic and terror, I dived headfirst toward the open window, hearing the gurgling breathing of the Crooked Man only a few feet behind me. I felt slashing talons of bone rip across my back, a burning pain and a feeling of blood soaking my shirt. Then I was flying out the window and falling headfirst towards the grass and bushes below.
***
Time seemed to slow down as the ground rushed up to meet me. The wind whipped past my ears like the currents of a tornado. Instinctively, I tried to curl into a ball. As I smashed into the first of the bushes under my window, I rolled to try to put the brunt of the impact on my right shoulder.
The thin branches of the bush crumpled under me like wet cardboard. I felt sharp sticks stabbing into my skin, opening up new slices and cuts to mix with the deep gashes on my back.
I hit the dirt hard, a sudden pain radiating through my back. A jarring sensation crashed through my body. I rolled as I hit the ground, smacking my head into the lawn. The world spun around me and went dark.
Suddenly, I was somewhere else.
***
I found myself standing in a dark factory, surrounded by debris. Broken glass covered the floor, twinkling like fireflies under the light of the distant streetlights outside. Strange graffiti covered the concrete walls all around me.
“DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU,” one of the tags read in slashing red letters. Underneath it, someone had spraypainted pure black eyes over a massive grinning mouth full of crooked black teeth.
“Destroy it with fire! SAVE your soul,” another one read in small, blue letters. I ran my hands over my face, wondering if I was dreaming. This all felt so real. I could feel the gentle breeze blowing through the broken windows on my skin, hear the rhythmic chirping of crickets outside.
I heard soft sobbing behind me. I remembered the first graffiti tag I had seen and a sense of panic gripped my heart. I did not want to look back.
“Fuck,” I swore under my breath, trembling as I turned. But I didn’t find some eldritch monstrosity with obsidian teeth and black, lidless eyes waiting there. Instead, I found a woman. She was crying, her back turned to me. She wore a black funeral gown that looked ancient and decayed. With a trembling heart, I took a step forward, wondering if I would regret this.
“Hello?” I called out. She spun, her eyes widening. In front of me stood a pretty blonde woman in her mid-twenties, one that I immediately recognized. For I saw many of my own features reflected in that panicked face: the high cheekbones, the large chin, even the waviness of her hair.
“Grandma,” I whispered, looking around in wonder. “What is this? Am I dead?” She shook her head, her eyes still wet and red. She took a deep, shuddering breath and gave a faint smile.
“Jack,” she said in a soft, melodic voice. “I’m so happy to see you. I’ve been watching you. I’ve been so proud of you. Even though we never met, I want you to know that. I wished I could have lived longer, could have met you. If only I hadn’t been murdered by that thing…” She spat the last word with hatred and fear oozing from her voice.
“I thought you died of cancer, Grandma?” I asked. “What do you mean, he killed you?” She shook like a leaf in the wind, refusing to meet my gaze.
“Everyone in that place was touched by something evil,” she murmured, putting her face in her hands. Her voice quavered like a frightened little girl’s. “The sickness radiated from that thing. It followed us like a cancer, made us weak, and then took our breath away. After the long torture was finished, he came to strangle me. He didn’t just kill me, Jack. He murdered my sister and brother, too. I saw it.” Her head ratcheted up, looking behind me all of a sudden. Her eyes widened in terror.
“You need to kill it, Jack,” she whispered grimly. “He’s woken up again after all these years, and he’s starving. The Crooked Man must feed, and feed he will if you don’t stop him. You need to come to the factory and end it. Otherwise, he will keep on killing. The Crooked Man will never stop hunting you. He will kill you and everyone you love.”
“How?” I asked, afraid to look back as the disturbing sounds grew closer and closer. Grandma backpedaled quickly, as if the demons of Hell were approaching. “How? How do I end it?”
I heard a horrible, choked breathing behind me, then the world faded.
***
I woke up suddenly on the lawn, my head pounding. It didn’t seem like much time had passed. I must have knocked myself out. I raised my fingers to my forehead. My fingers came away slick with blood.
For a long moment, I lay there, hyperventilating and looking up at the cloudless abyss of a sky. My body felt bruised and battered, and I wasn’t even sure if I could walk.
Then I saw a pale, hairless visage peeking over the edge of the windowsill with eyes as dark as night. Its face split into a grin with a crack, making a sound like ripping plastic. The bone-white mask of dead skin looked at me with a feverish intensity, a kind of psychopathic hunger that radiated from every pore of his body. With horror, I saw the Crooked Man’s teeth were as black as his eyes, gleaming like polished jetstone.
A rush of adrenaline pushed me up from the ground. I realized I was tremendously lucky, that I had been laying there with my keys still in my pocket and my cell phone in hand, fully dressed except for the fact I was wearing slippers. I sprinted across the lawn towards my car. I heard the Crooked Man scream out after me.
“You’ll be with Grandmother soon, Jackie boy,” he hissed in his gurgling voice. “No one escapes. No one.”
***
I flew down the highway in my car, the phone in my trembling hand. Looking down at it, I called Iris right away. She answered groggily.
“Hello?” she said.
“Jesus, Iris, it’s after me,” I said frantically. “Something’s happening. I got attacked in my own bedroom!”
“Did you call the cops?” she asked, seeming to wake up instantly. I looked down at the clock in the center console, seeing it was already past midnight.
“It wasn’t a person. I saw something. I think it was the same thing that took those teenagers, and now it’s after me. Are you guys home?” There was a long pause on the other end. I heard whispering in the background.
“Yeah… sure, come over,” she said. I knew Ben was somewhat of a gun nut, and had a nice little collection at the house. I would feel much safer if I made it there. And if I had them on my side, that would be all the better.
***
Ben and Iris lived in the middle of a back road surrounded by forests. The dark trees loomed overhead like priests with their heads bowed. The light from their front porch streamed into the creeping shadows as I pulled into their driveway. The sound of the car idling seemed far too loud in this place where the woods closed in all around me. I didn’t know what was hiding in those trees. I immediately shut it off.
Ben was a veteran who knew much more about combat and guns than I did. His collection was also somewhat impressive- an Armalite AR-15, a Judge, a 12-gauge Benelli, two crappy little .22s, a .45 Ruger, a Nosler 21 and a 10-gauge Mossberg. I had gone out shooting with him and Iris quite a few times. I would feel much safer once I was inside.
The cloudless black sky hung overhead like the lid of a coffin. Their little two-story place with the wraparound porch looked quaint, almost like a little rural cabin.
I stumbled out of the car. I’m sure I was quite a sight, battered and covered in clotting gashes and cuts, my eyes wide and panicked. I constantly looked around, checking my back. Every time I did, I expected to see something there, something close by with blue lips like a corpse and deformed, twisting bones.
I had nearly gotten to the front of the house when I saw, through the narrow sidelights at top of the door, the face of the Crooked Man. Standing only feet away, I heard faint gurgling of his diseased breathing even through the wall.
His hairless face was split into a grin like a death’s head, his lidless eyes bulging and excited. He raised his misshapen fingers to the window and gave me a little wave, opening and closing his fingers slowly. Then he turned and disappeared deeper into the house.
***
I immediately tried opening the door, to yell to Iris and Ben to watch out, but the door was locked. I called Iris. Each ring seemed to take an eternity. Finally, she answered.
“Hello? What, are you here?” she asked.
“Iris! Get the fuck out of the house! You and Ben aren’t alone in there! There’s a man coming in your direction right now!” I screamed, panicked. “Jump out the window if you have to! It’s coming!”
“What?” she said, sounding alarmed and confused. “Are you being serious?” I heard soft murmuring in the background.
“Tell Ben to grab a gun right now!” I started to say, but a high-pitched scream carried through the phone and the house at that moment.
“Iris? Iris! Answer me!” I said. The call immediately went dead.
From inside, I heard the first of the gunshots.
***
At that point, I decided to run back to my car. I needed to get inside and help them. A small voice in the back of my mind asked me what I could possibly do, however. If an AR-15 or a lead slug from a 12-gauge couldn’t stop the Crooked Man, then what could? At that moment, I wished fervently that Grandma would have told me.
I grabbed a tire iron from the back of my trunk and sprinted back toward the front of the house. They had large windows leading into the kitchen from their wraparound porch. Without hesitation, I drew the tire iron back and smashed it. The tinkling of glass seemed explosively loud. I realized that the gunshots and screaming had stopped.
At that moment, something pale came scurrying around the side of the building. I jumped, but I looked over and realized it was Iris, dressed in a white hoodie and white pants. Her pale face was contorted with mortal terror. To my horror, I realized hundreds of small drops spattered her clothes, covering her face and body like crimson raindrops. She had the .45 Ruger in her hands, and she was limping.
“Where’s Ben?” I cried. She shook her head.
“I jumped out the bedroom window… he was behind me,” she said. Suddenly, there was another explosion of glass from behind the house. Something heavy thudded hard against the ground. We heard wretched wailing follow it. Looking at each other with horrified eyes, we both turned and ran towards the noise.
We found Ben laying on the lawn. The right side of his neck was nearly severed. Bright-red streams of blood spurted from the mutilated flesh. His back looked broken as well. He laid there like a hornet smashed under someone’s boot. With dilated eyes, he looked from me to Iris. Terror and agony oozed from his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but only a frothy puddle of blood came up.
Then his eyes turned away, looking straight up into the cloudless black void of a sky. The last exhalation came, the death gasp that bubbled and stretched out until I thought it might never end. He died staring into that abyss, that eternity from which no one returns.
The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 2] : stories (reddit.com)
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2024.04.28 15:14 CIAHerpes The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 1]

I remember when I first heard the rhyme as a child. It terrified me. To me, the Crooked Man was some sort of boogeyman with freakishly long arms and legs that were twisted and broken in horrifying ways. I still have the rhyme memorized. It repeats in my brain like a skipping record.
“There was a Crooked Man, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”
My brother Benton, who loved to torture me as a child, ended up adding his own parts to the rhyme over time. The extra parts he added did nothing to console me or end my nightmares of this twisted boogeyman who always seemed to slink through the shadows. I remember the rhyme Benton told me by heart to this day.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue.
The crooked man twists and crawls.
He uses his crooked blade to kill.
And when the curtain of night falls,
He comes to get his thrill.”
***
So I found it strange when, a few weeks ago, I was sitting with a couple of my friends drinking and the subject of the Crooked Man came up again. They were rambling about shootings and serial killers and other fairly interesting subjects that I knew almost nothing about. But my friend Iris knew everything about such morbid subjects.
She was a small drink of water, no more than five feet, with platinum blonde hair and green eyes like a cat. She was extremely attractive with high cheekbones and a small nose and chin. She always talked extremely fast and made violent slashing gestures with her hands. Sometimes I wondered if she had a secret amphetamine habit I didn’t know about.
“But did you hear about the murders in Union?” Iris asked, glancing over at her boyfriend, Ben. Ben was the opposite of Iris- tall and nerdy with thick, black-rimmed glasses and a low whisper of a voice.
“I just heard that some kids went missing,” Ben murmured. I shrugged.
“I don’t watch TV,” I said. “The news is all bullshit anyway. They only show you the bad stuff. After all, no one wants to hear about new breakthroughs in fusion technology or discoveries in particle physics. Instead, people just want to watch others get murdered, robbed and beaten, so that they can feel that at least someone else has it worse than them. That’s all the news is, really: a form of schadenfreude, the joy people get from seeing others’ misfortune and suffering. Our entire media industry is built on a foundation of schadenfreude.” I took a long sip from my beer, a Harpoon that tasted like pure raspberries. Iris rolled her eyes.
“While probably true, I don’t care,” she said, turning her green eyes on me. “Don’t you want to know what happened to the kids?”
“I do,” Ben said, leaning forward. “Was it something… supernatural?” Iris gave a sardonic laugh at that. Ben sat back, offended.
“What’s so funny? I heard there was weird stuff going on around that factory. In fact, I heard they used to manufacture some dye there for clocks and stuff, right? So all these people went to work, painting watches and clocks and whatever else they told them to paint. It was this special green dye that would glow in the dark. The factory was staffed by mostly women, and I heard they used to lick their paintbrushes to form them into points. They figured this stuff was just regular paint that glowed in the dark.” I leaned back, interested. Ben started talking faster, getting more animated.
“So what happened?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Well, the workers started getting cancer and dying in huge numbers,” Ben continued as the kitchen lights sparkled off his glasses. “One woman even had her entire jaw rot off. Others had pieces of their faces falling off. So it turns out, they were using radioactive isotopes to make the paint glow! And these women were just licking the paintbrushes and touching the paint…”
“Holy shit,” I whispered, horrified.
“They called them the Radium girls,” Ben said. “That factory killed hundreds and hundreds of people. That’s why a lot of people think it’s haunted. People claim they see ghosts and weird shit around it. And that’s not all. The case gets even weirder when you look at workers’ families.
“It seems a lot of their kids went missing, too. The cops never found any of them. The entire time the factory was operational, and even after it shutdown, the families of the workers kept having strange things happen- children disappearing from their bedrooms in the middle of the night, strange murders and unexplained suicides that kept killing off healthy, normal people all over town.”
“So, anyways,” Iris continued, looking slightly annoyed at the interruption, “the kids that went into that abandoned factory were all found… torn apart. Their limbs were all amputated and crooked.” She leaned forward, using her spooky campfire voice. “And the limbs were long. Freakishly long, as if they had just grown overnight to inhuman lengths before they got lopped off. But they never found the heads or the torsos. All they found was ten legs and ten arms.”
“And no one knows what happened?” I asked. She shook her head.
“Officially, no. The police and media said it was some sort of serial killer, of course. But there wasn’t a shred of evidence anywhere. It was like a ghost had done it. Where the limbs were piled up in the basement, there was no evidence that anyone had been there in months, no footsteps or microscopic evidence of any presence. But the story doesn’t end there. Because there were six teenagers that went into that building, and one of them was found alive three months later, wandering, covered in blood and scratches, mostly naked and totally insane. One of my friends is an EMT and she said that the kid would not stop talking about the Crooked Man taking his friends and keeping him prisoner in some other world.”
At the mention of those words, the Crooked Man, a chill went down my spine. My heart felt like ice.
“What’d you say? What did the kid say?” I asked anxiously. Suddenly the room felt very hot, and the alcohol was not sitting well in my stomach.
“He said he got kidnapped by someone called the Crooked Man,” Iris repeated, taking a long sip from her wine. “According to the kid, it was some sort of fucking monster, apparently. I think his mind must have just snapped. He was probably kidnapped and held in the basement of some serial killer for three goddamned months. Who knows what he saw and experienced? People make up all sorts of crazy shit when they’re traumatized.”
My hand was shaking so badly that I had to put my bottle down on the table. For some reason, my mind kept flashing back to my sister, Emilia, who had been kidnapped from her room in the middle of the night when my brother Benton and I were little. She had never been found. We had never gotten a ransom note or found a body. It was as if Emilia had simply disappeared, vanished from the surface of the planet in an instant.
“I think some of that stuff is real,” Ben said. “People have been talking about cryptids and ghosts for thousands of years across countless different and unrelated cultures. What are the chances that all of them are just hallucinations or delusions?”
I didn’t know, but I thought I might know someone who might.
***
My brother Benton was a long-term drug addict living in a flophouse. I went to see him the next morning. He opened the door with a glazed, half-aware expression. Scars covered his arms and legs. He looked like a walking skeleton. His eyes shone like the last bit of water at the bottom of a dying well.
“Jack,” he said, surprised, appearing to wake up slightly. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said, pushing past him into the one-bedroom place he called home. A cockroach skittered across the wall. As he closed the door, I saw bites from bedbugs all over his body. Benton turned, spreading out his hands.
“Well, what is it, little brother? You know I’m all ears.”
“You remember that rhyme you used to scare me with when we were little?” I asked. “That rhyme you made up about the Crooked Man?” He seemed to go a shade paler.
“I didn’t make anything up,” he said. “That rhyme came from Grandma. She told it to dad when he was little, before she died.”
“Grandma?” I asked, startled. Our grandmother had died of cancer when she was extremely young, in her late 20s. “Did you hear about the murders over in Union? The survivor was talking about the Crooked Man.”
“That’s pretty freaking weird, man,” he said. “Especially considering what happened to Grandma and Emilia, you know.” He sat down on the threadbare mattress, laying back and sighing.
“Why is it weird?” I asked.
“Because, you know, that’s where Grandma used to work. At that factory in Union. Didn’t Dad ever tell you?” I shook my head, feeling sick.
“So Grandma was one of the radium girls?” I said. My brother shrugged his thin shoulders, the stained T-shirt clinging tight to his frail body.
“I don’t know what that is, but whatever she was doing there, it killed her.”
“But what does that have to do with Emilia?” I asked, my heart pounding at the mention of our long-lost little sister. He shook his head in wonder.
“You don’t remember? You were older than me when it happened. Before she went missing, she kept talking about the same thing, saying weird stuff about some ‘Crooked Man’. Don’t you remember what happened the night she went missing?” I thought back, but it all seemed like a blur. I remembered flashing police sirens and my parents screaming. I had tried to block it out, but apparently Benton hadn’t been able to. That night must be like a fresh wound on his mind all the time.
“No, I just remembered… screaming, and police…” I whispered, my voice trailing off into nothing. Benton leaned forward on the bed, looking sick.
“We both saw it,” he said. “The Crooked Man. That thing she was talking about. It was real. We saw it in her room that night- when it took her.” I shook my head, refusing to look at him. Feeling sick, I walked toward the door without looking back. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going home,” I said. “I can’t deal with this shit right now.” But that night, I would find out that the long-lost nightmare from my childhood was not nearly as buried in the past as I thought.
***
I was laying in my dark bedroom, reading the local news on my phone, when I saw an article that disturbed me greatly. I sat up, looking out the window into the cloudless night. The sky hung overhead like a black hole, colorless and empty. Fear radiated through my heart as I glanced back down at the screen and started reading.
“Sole survivor of serial killer commits suicide,” the article read in garish black-and-white letters. “Michael Galentino, 18, was found dead in a psychiatric facility early this morning. In February, Michael Galentino and five others entered a local abandoned building. Friends who knew them stated that they often explored abandoned structures as part of an ‘urban exploration’ group. But this would not be a normal night for the group. They all disappeared, and within 24 hours, police and search teams had been dispatched to look for the missing teenagers…”
The house was silent. I read the rest of the article with bated breath, my eyes wide. Some of the details I already knew, but others, such as the radioactive isotopes found on the dismembered limbs of the victims, I did not. I wondered about that. The police claimed that, after finding this strange clue, they had sent a team to inspect the abandoned factory with Geiger counters and look for signs of radioactivity. Perhaps the radium, which had a notoriously long half-life, had accumulated on the surfaces over the decades. But they said the radioactivity within the building was all within acceptable levels. It was just another bizarre piece of a puzzle that no one could solve.
The house was deathly silent. I could hear my own heart beating a runaway rhythm in my ears. A rising sense of anxiety was filling me, but I didn’t know why. It felt like some sort of pressure had changed all around me, as if the first wave of a massive blizzard had just blown into the room.
I heard a creaking from across the dark room. At the same time, I felt a sting on my arm. I looked down, seeing a bedbug crawling across my skin, a small red welt rising in its wake.
“Fuck!” I swore, grabbing it between my fingers and slicing it between my nails. Crimson spurted from its swollen body as if it were a tiny balloon. It exploded, staining my fingers red with my own blood.
“I should’ve never gone to see my brother. Goddamned bedbugs,” I muttered to myself. I hoped that was the only one. If I had picked up some extra travelers at the flophouse, I knew they would spread throughout the entire house within days.
The creaking came again, louder this time, almost insistent. I glanced across the curtain of shadows that hung thick and black in the room, seeing the dark silhouette of my closet door swinging open. I could only stare, open-mouthed. A long moment passed, and then I heard breathing. It came out, ragged and slow with long pauses, like the choking of a murder victim.
Slowly, I raised my phone’s dim light, shining it across the room. On the closet door, I saw four inhumanly long, crooked fingers. They shone pale like the skin of a corpse. They twitched, then started rhythmically tapping on the door. And then I heard it, that rhyme, that horrible, gurgling rhyme. It came echoing out from the door in that same choked voice, like a forgotten wound from long ago.
“The Crooked Man watches you.
His eyes are black, his lips are blue…”
It felt like I was in some sort of nightmare, but I knew from the sweat dripping down my forehead and the sensation of cloth sheets against my skin that this was all too real. Even a couple months later, I still remember that sensation of dread, the first of many terrors that this night would bring.
I looked around for a weapon. All I found was a letter opener sitting next to some mail on the nearby nightstand. I grabbed it, a flimsy piece of metal in my shaking hands. I was afraid to move, afraid to call out or do anything, out of fear it might shatter the stillness and cause that ineffable horror to come oozing out. I knew I didn’t want to see what was hiding behind that door.
I looked at the open window. I was on the second floor. I was afraid to even breathe too loudly at that moment. With the letter opener in my hand, I tried to silently slide myself across the mattress to the window only a few feet away.
The bedframe groaned softly as I shifted my weight. The breathing from the closet stopped abruptly. I heard the door creaking open, the floorboards shifting. Heavy steps started in the darkness, heading towards me. As I pushed myself off the bed, I glanced back and saw something twisted loping across the room on crooked legs.
It was the Crooked Man, the nightmare from my childhood. He towered over me with a tophat that nearly scraped the ceiling. His lidless eyes were pure darkness, as black as death. They contrasted heavily with his bone-white skin. His lips and fingernails were a suffocating, cyanotic blue, like the lips of a murder victim.
He stood up tall. The bones in his freakishly long legs cracked as the many strange joints of his enormous limbs bent in ways no human limb should bend. His fingers were strange and misshapen, each a foot long. They ended in sharp points of bone that poked out through the dead, white skin. He wore a black suit on his tall, emaciated frame. He moved towards me like flashing static, seeming to disappear and reappear closer and closer in every moment.
In panic and terror, I dived headfirst toward the open window, hearing the gurgling breathing of the Crooked Man only a few feet behind me. I felt slashing talons of bone rip across my back, a burning pain and a feeling of blood soaking my shirt. Then I was flying out the window and falling headfirst towards the grass and bushes below.
***
Time seemed to slow down as the ground rushed up to meet me. The wind whipped past my ears like the currents of a tornado. Instinctively, I tried to curl into a ball. As I smashed into the first of the bushes under my window, I rolled to try to put the brunt of the impact on my right shoulder.
The thin branches of the bush crumpled under me like wet cardboard. I felt sharp sticks stabbing into my skin, opening up new slices and cuts to mix with the deep gashes on my back.
I hit the dirt hard, a sudden pain radiating through my back. A jarring sensation crashed through my body. I rolled as I hit the ground, smacking my head into the lawn. The world spun around me and went dark.
Suddenly, I was somewhere else.
***
I found myself standing in a dark factory, surrounded by debris. Broken glass covered the floor, twinkling like fireflies under the light of the distant streetlights outside. Strange graffiti covered the concrete walls all around me.
“DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU,” one of the tags read in slashing red letters. Underneath it, someone had spraypainted pure black eyes over a massive grinning mouth full of crooked black teeth.
“Destroy it with fire! SAVE your soul,” another one read in small, blue letters. I ran my hands over my face, wondering if I was dreaming. This all felt so real. I could feel the gentle breeze blowing through the broken windows on my skin, hear the rhythmic chirping of crickets outside.
I heard soft sobbing behind me. I remembered the first graffiti tag I had seen and a sense of panic gripped my heart. I did not want to look back.
“Fuck,” I swore under my breath, trembling as I turned. But I didn’t find some eldritch monstrosity with obsidian teeth and black, lidless eyes waiting there. Instead, I found a woman. She was crying, her back turned to me. She wore a black funeral gown that looked ancient and decayed. With a trembling heart, I took a step forward, wondering if I would regret this.
“Hello?” I called out. She spun, her eyes widening. In front of me stood a pretty blonde woman in her mid-twenties, one that I immediately recognized. For I saw many of my own features reflected in that panicked face: the high cheekbones, the large chin, even the waviness of her hair.
“Grandma,” I whispered, looking around in wonder. “What is this? Am I dead?” She shook her head, her eyes still wet and red. She took a deep, shuddering breath and gave a faint smile.
“Jack,” she said in a soft, melodic voice. “I’m so happy to see you. I’ve been watching you. I’ve been so proud of you. Even though we never met, I want you to know that. I wished I could have lived longer, could have met you. If only I hadn’t been murdered by that thing…” She spat the last word with hatred and fear oozing from her voice.
“I thought you died of cancer, Grandma?” I asked. “What do you mean, he killed you?” She shook like a leaf in the wind, refusing to meet my gaze.
“Everyone in that place was touched by something evil,” she murmured, putting her face in her hands. Her voice quavered like a frightened little girl’s. “The sickness radiated from that thing. It followed us like a cancer, made us weak, and then took our breath away. After the long torture was finished, he came to strangle me. He didn’t just kill me, Jack. He murdered my sister and brother, too. I saw it.” Her head ratcheted up, looking behind me all of a sudden. Her eyes widened in terror.
“You need to kill it, Jack,” she whispered grimly. “He’s woken up again after all these years, and he’s starving. The Crooked Man must feed, and feed he will if you don’t stop him. You need to come to the factory and end it. Otherwise, he will keep on killing. The Crooked Man will never stop hunting you. He will kill you and everyone you love.”
“How?” I asked, afraid to look back as the disturbing sounds grew closer and closer. Grandma backpedaled quickly, as if the demons of Hell were approaching. “How? How do I end it?”
I heard a horrible, choked breathing behind me, then the world faded.
***
I woke up suddenly on the lawn, my head pounding. It didn’t seem like much time had passed. I must have knocked myself out. I raised my fingers to my forehead. My fingers came away slick with blood.
For a long moment, I lay there, hyperventilating and looking up at the cloudless abyss of a sky. My body felt bruised and battered, and I wasn’t even sure if I could walk.
Then I saw a pale, hairless visage peeking over the edge of the windowsill with eyes as dark as night. Its face split into a grin with a crack, making a sound like ripping plastic. The bone-white mask of dead skin looked at me with a feverish intensity, a kind of psychopathic hunger that radiated from every pore of his body. With horror, I saw the Crooked Man’s teeth were as black as his eyes, gleaming like polished jetstone.
A rush of adrenaline pushed me up from the ground. I realized I was tremendously lucky, that I had been laying there with my keys still in my pocket and my cell phone in hand, fully dressed except for the fact I was wearing slippers. I sprinted across the lawn towards my car. I heard the Crooked Man scream out after me.
“You’ll be with Grandmother soon, Jackie boy,” he hissed in his gurgling voice. “No one escapes. No one.”
***
I flew down the highway in my car, the phone in my trembling hand. Looking down at it, I called Iris right away. She answered groggily.
“Hello?” she said.
“Jesus, Iris, it’s after me,” I said frantically. “Something’s happening. I got attacked in my own bedroom!”
“Did you call the cops?” she asked, seeming to wake up instantly. I looked down at the clock in the center console, seeing it was already past midnight.
“It wasn’t a person. I saw something. I think it was the same thing that took those teenagers, and now it’s after me. Are you guys home?” There was a long pause on the other end. I heard whispering in the background.
“Yeah… sure, come over,” she said. I knew Ben was somewhat of a gun nut, and had a nice little collection at the house. I would feel much safer if I made it there. And if I had them on my side, that would be all the better.
***
Ben and Iris lived in the middle of a back road surrounded by forests. The dark trees loomed overhead like priests with their heads bowed. The light from their front porch streamed into the creeping shadows as I pulled into their driveway. The sound of the car idling seemed far too loud in this place where the woods closed in all around me. I didn’t know what was hiding in those trees. I immediately shut it off.
Ben was a veteran who knew much more about combat and guns than I did. His collection was also somewhat impressive- an Armalite AR-15, a Judge, a 12-gauge Benelli, two crappy little .22s, a .45 Ruger, a Nosler 21 and a 10-gauge Mossberg. I had gone out shooting with him and Iris quite a few times. I would feel much safer once I was inside.
The cloudless black sky hung overhead like the lid of a coffin. Their little two-story place with the wraparound porch looked quaint, almost like a little rural cabin.
I stumbled out of the car. I’m sure I was quite a sight, battered and covered in clotting gashes and cuts, my eyes wide and panicked. I constantly looked around, checking my back. Every time I did, I expected to see something there, something close by with blue lips like a corpse and deformed, twisting bones.
I had nearly gotten to the front of the house when I saw, through the narrow sidelights at top of the door, the face of the Crooked Man. Standing only feet away, I heard faint gurgling of his diseased breathing even through the wall.
His hairless face was split into a grin like a death’s head, his lidless eyes bulging and excited. He raised his misshapen fingers to the window and gave me a little wave, opening and closing his fingers slowly. Then he turned and disappeared deeper into the house.
***
I immediately tried opening the door, to yell to Iris and Ben to watch out, but the door was locked. I called Iris. Each ring seemed to take an eternity. Finally, she answered.
“Hello? What, are you here?” she asked.
“Iris! Get the fuck out of the house! You and Ben aren’t alone in there! There’s a man coming in your direction right now!” I screamed, panicked. “Jump out the window if you have to! It’s coming!”
“What?” she said, sounding alarmed and confused. “Are you being serious?” I heard soft murmuring in the background.
“Tell Ben to grab a gun right now!” I started to say, but a high-pitched scream carried through the phone and the house at that moment.
“Iris? Iris! Answer me!” I said. The call immediately went dead.
From inside, I heard the first of the gunshots.
***
At that point, I decided to run back to my car. I needed to get inside and help them. A small voice in the back of my mind asked me what I could possibly do, however. If an AR-15 or a lead slug from a 12-gauge couldn’t stop the Crooked Man, then what could? At that moment, I wished fervently that Grandma would have told me.
I grabbed a tire iron from the back of my trunk and sprinted back toward the front of the house. They had large windows leading into the kitchen from their wraparound porch. Without hesitation, I drew the tire iron back and smashed it. The tinkling of glass seemed explosively loud. I realized that the gunshots and screaming had stopped.
At that moment, something pale came scurrying around the side of the building. I jumped, but I looked over and realized it was Iris, dressed in a white hoodie and white pants. Her pale face was contorted with mortal terror. To my horror, I realized hundreds of small drops spattered her clothes, covering her face and body like crimson raindrops. She had the .45 Ruger in her hands, and she was limping.
“Where’s Ben?” I cried. She shook her head.
“I jumped out the bedroom window… he was behind me,” she said. Suddenly, there was another explosion of glass from behind the house. Something heavy thudded hard against the ground. We heard wretched wailing follow it. Looking at each other with horrified eyes, we both turned and ran towards the noise.
We found Ben laying on the lawn. The right side of his neck was nearly severed. Bright-red streams of blood spurted from the mutilated flesh. His back looked broken as well. He laid there like a hornet smashed under someone’s boot. With dilated eyes, he looked from me to Iris. Terror and agony oozed from his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but only a frothy puddle of blood came up.
Then his eyes turned away, looking straight up into the cloudless black void of a sky. The last exhalation came, the death gasp that bubbled and stretched out until I thought it might never end. He died staring into that abyss, that eternity from which no one returns.
The Crooked Man murdered my family. Now he has awoken again [part 2] : stories (reddit.com)
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