#horror

A Creepypasta They say that if someone has caused you unbearable suffering, all you need is a chestnut and three words. But before you try it, you should know the story of Charlie Whitmore. And you should understand that Charlie doesn't forgive. For nearly seventy years, Whitmore Chestnut Farm had been a beloved fixture in the small rural community of Ashbury.

“She opened her arms. I should have kept mine closed.” It was a sunny day in a new neighborhood, the third one I had moved into that year. I walked slowly, observing the streets. The houses all looked alike, fences lined with rusted gates, stray dogs wandering aimlessly, and children playing and shouting somewhere far off.

Tap, tap, tap… Tap, tap. Silence... tap.

I never saw the faces of the men who kidnapped me. I'd been too busy working when the gang of them burst through the front door. Like smoke from an explosion, the kidnappers spread through the entire building. They demanded victims and turned our world upside down searching for them. They didn't speak outside of grunted demands and language so blue that if you could see the words spilling from their mouths, it'd be a dam breaking.

I last saw my girlfriend around seventeen years ago. Although for me, it was last week.

"Lady Valtin! Lady Rudova!" Béla, who had dozed on the steps of the gazebo, lifted his head and mustered a lazy bark toward the path. An elderly man, wearing a messenger's garb, stood past the bed of daffodils and looked around in confusion. The presence of my large hound didn't seem to concern him, or perhaps he sensed that Béla was not in the mood to cause any trouble on such a nice day.

No one remembers her name. Her real name anyway. She was a girl once- a regular girl, a good girl- who worked as a harlequin for her family's tiny traveling show. She had a white painted face, with a happy painted red smile. Jolly jinglin' shoes, and bright purple-dyed pigtails that bobbed comically as she capered about on the stage of some, now long-fallen kingdom. She made nobles and peasants alike laugh.

Most people have never heard someone die. The moaning. The crying. The pleading. The last tortured breath before they go quiet. Most people will never hear those things. I do. Daily. No, I’m not a serial killer on a hellbent mission to cleanse the Earth. I’m a 911 operator. When I took the job ten years ago, I assumed I’d more or less be like an air traffic controller, but for emergency response teams. For a large portion of my job, that’s true. That’s the easy part. Death is harder.

I always found Baba Yaga as a concept, a rather disturbing idea. That witch from Russian folklore that would snatch bad kids away, never to be seen again, or a figure that would punish those that had wronged it. I always found those stories stupid. Not because I don’t believe, but because I know the truth: there IS something in the Russian forests, a cruel, inhuman being that is nothing like the way people paint it in the stories. I have seen Baba Yaga, and I know what it really is.

This account was not meant to be kept with the others. It was filed incorrectly at first, tucked between some water damage report and a handwritten inventory of seasonal decorations. No one noticed because no one ever looks too closely at Christmas. We prefer it softened, rounded at the edges, safe to touch.  There are entire kinds of damage that go unrecorded when they happen in December. It is a season built on reassurance, and reassurance has a way of smoothing over things that should have…

My fingers shake involuntarily as I slouch like a giant insect and type this on the computer. I don't want to write it, but I have no choice but to document what happened here. I could write it slowly, thoughtfully, and clearly, but I can't—I've never been a writer, and I'm in no position to turn this into a professional essay. After all, I have to hurry, we all have to hurry. The pieces of plaster that have fallen from the walls are starting to move like little cockroaches, which means I don't…

He had no idea how he had ended up in these foul depths, but all he knew was that he needed to find a way out before it was too late. The young Dragonnoid had sworn to himself he would never go into the city, so why was he wandering lost in its forsaken bowels?

The past is not dead. It is not even past." — William Faulkner • I don't remember who called me about the funeral. I assume it was Aunt Lillian's neighbor, or maybe someone from the church, but the truth is, I picked up the phone, I heard my name, and everything after that is a smear of static and vowels. Now I'm standing on the porch of my great-aunt's house, our family's house surrounded by pines, decay, and a smell I can't name but instinctively hate. The front door is already open.

The attic hatch didn’t just open; it fell away with a deafening crack, dangling by a single, twisted hinge. I scrambled backward, my heels drumming against the dusty floorboards until my spine hit the cold glass of the circular window. The creature didn't climb in. Instead, it reached up with those impossible, elongated fingers and gripped the edge of the opening. It pulled itself up just enough for me to see the top of its head—the same smooth, featureless grey skin, pulsing like a heartbeat.

Sol 5111 A voice awakens me to darkness. Terrifying darkness. The voice is concerned. Concerned about my well-being. Who am I? Who is the voice? Whoever it is must be a friend. Why else would they be worried? Yes, they must be a friend. It is a kind voice. But what is it worried about? Why is it dark? It must be a storm. Yes, it must be a storm.

I awake with my body screaming with aches and horrible pain, my head pounding. A hard, stony surface below my sprawled out form greeted my eyes upon sitting up, harsh wind rushed through my hair; sea air by the smell of it. I took my time standing, meticulously moving each of my limbs to ensure stability, despite their shaking protests. The stone was firm and smooth. It wouldn’t crumble if you took a hammer to it; however, the violent gales threaten to throw me off. The howling in my ears…

I still don't know why my father drove away before sunrise. For years, I believed that was the part of the story that would never make sense to me. I was wrong. I was too young to understand it then, and every time I asked my parents about that morning, they either laughed it off or admitted they couldn't remember it at all. Sometimes I wonder if forgetting is easier than remembering.

“That’s my childhood house.” I wasn’t turning down the street I grew up in. I wasn’t standing near the large oak in the front yard of the house where I’d lost all my baby teeth. I wasn’t sitting inside the kitchen, where, on my fifteenth birthday, I accidentally dropped the cake my mom had baked, which made my family laugh so hard that we shed tears. No. I was holding an oil painting at a Goodwill on the other side of the country. “That can’t be possible,” my husband said.

You wake up in a cramped, windowless room, and see blood on the walls. As you walk a little, you trip over something and look underneath… It's a small child's skull. Looking closer, you notice his clothes. You wake up from this terrifying dream… But you realize you're still stuck in the same place, and that it wasn't a dream. Blood is everywhere, and you've been sleeping next to your little brother's skull for about three weeks. You keep forgetting why you're there, how it all happened…

Another bullshit Friday night. That was all it was. I was back home from the college dorms at Georgia Southwestern State University and back home in Albany, Georgia for the summer. The June heat was torture. My thirst further increased by the heat and the constant loneliness. At nineteen, I had no money, no girlfriend, no friends for comfort to go clubbing with, and needless to say, I didn’t have a fake I.D. to buy booze for these most lonely nights.