CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "I Met a Man With Hands of Stone" Creepypasta
Episode Date: April 28, 2021CHECK OUT MORE OF THE AUTHOR'S WORKS HERE-►https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/ref=is...►https://verastahl.com/►https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC73P...CREEPYPASTA STORY►by Brandon Fairclo...th: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...Creepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY►Hiroaki Nakanishi: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zA...SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCb...►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R...►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RA...►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪-This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only-
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When I was in college, I worked in a local flower shop.
The store was owned by an old man named Tolliver,
who had bought the place a few years earlier when he moved to town.
He had no particular love of flowers,
but he said that he needed a fresh start and the business had been for sale,
so he took it as a sign.
Judging from my few months there,
he was never going to get rich from owning this place,
but we did enough business for him to pay me more than most places
would have offered a kid at my age.
As you might imagine, our biggest business came from weddings and funerals, and over time,
I'd grown accustomed to dealing with the finicky fiancés and bleakly non-berieved that so often
came through our door or called in an order.
It was rare that I remembered anyone past the parting jingle of the jostled bell above the door
as they departed.
But then again, I'd never encountered someone, like Mr. Dorman.
I'd looked up when he first entered the shop,
and when I did, I took a step back in surprise and fear.
He was a wall of a man, nearly seven feet tall and twice the width for my narrow frame.
The long black raincoat he wore hung off him awkwardly, as though the angles were wrong underneath.
And his face was broad and hard, with pale skin so smooth, it almost looked artificial,
paulless and disturbing in its symmetrical perfection, and not just pauless, but hairless as well.
The man wore a red-knit cap, but I could see no sign of hair on his head or his face, not even his eyebrows.
I began to wonder if he was a cancer patient or burn victim, but was brought out of my thoughts by the deep rumbling of the man's voice.
Is he here?
His eyes were flinty blue that seemed to almost glow in the shadows of his low, jutting brow.
They landed on me only briefly as they can be.
as the store beyond the counter.
I blinked.
Ah, I'm sorry, sir.
Is who here?
The man's gaze fell on me again,
his mouth puckering slightly,
as though he tasted something sour.
Templeton, or Taliver.
He put his hands on the counter between us
with a muffled thump.
I glanced down to see his hands
were covered in leather gloves
that creaked as he squeezed his fist,
Is he here?
Swallowing, I shook my head.
Um, no, sorry, can I get your name or can I help you with something?
The man's expression didn't change.
My name is Mr. Dorman, and no, only he can give me what I want.
He glanced around the store.
When will he return?
Glancing at the clock, I saw.
it was nearly four.
Tolliver usually took her from two until four-thirty,
coming back to work until six or seven most nights.
But I didn't want to tell this guy that,
mainly out of fear, he decided to just wait half an hour.
I didn't want him hanging around,
and I wanted to warn Tolliver before the guy found him.
I had no idea what this strange man wanted from him,
but I didn't have a good feeling about it.
So, looking back to Dorman,
I lied, told him Tolliver would be on a trip until that Friday.
The man did show slightly motion then, a small grimace followed by a nod.
Very well, until then, I will wait.
For a panicked moment, I was afraid he was going to try and wait there, as crazy as it was.
But then he turned and headed for the door, surprisingly quiet as he made his way out into the afternoon light,
before disappearing out of sight.
The only sign had ever been there
were the fading sounds of the bell on the door
and the frantic thudding of my heart.
I called Tolliver immediately.
Normally, a very calm and jovial man,
he grew very quiet for several moments,
and when he did speak,
his tone was deadly serious.
John, I want you to close the door immediately
and is going to stay closed,
at least for a few days.
I'll keep paying you for now, of course.
None of this is your fault.
If I find I can't reopen in the long term,
I'll let you know in advance before I have to stop your pay.
Thank you for warning me.
I went to respond, but the line was already dead.
I thought about calling back, but decided against it.
It was none of my business.
Maybe Tolliver was into something shady,
or owed money to a loan shark or something.
Either way, I didn't need to rock the boat
if he was going to keep paying me.
For now, I should do exactly
as he said, and close up shop.
And that's exactly
what I did.
At the next two weeks, I waited
for word from Tolliver, but
none came.
I even went by the store a couple of times,
but it was closed up tight,
with no sign of my boss having been around.
I knew he was still in town,
or had been a few days earlier,
because I got a month's pay mailed to me
with a local postmark that Tuesday.
And sure, I didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth,
but I also was kind of worried about my boss.
Tolliver was old and a little weird,
but he was also a really nice man.
He was funny and patient, and had always treated me well.
If I didn't owe him because of the money,
I felt like I at least owed something to him for being a good guy.
So, one night after class.
I went to his house.
It was a small farmhouse on the edge of town,
and everything looked as I'd seen it, except for the lawn.
Tolliver normally never let his grasp more than a week or two without cutting it.
But now there were weeds up past my knees.
Frowning, I made my way up to the front door and knocked.
It took a few tries, but he finally came to the door.
He sounded relieved when he heard it was me,
but he still seemed reluctant to open up.
Wincing inwardly, I pushed the issue.
I just wanted to check on him, I said.
Talk to him for a minute.
Make sure he was okay.
After a moment of silence, he opened the door and hurriedly beckoned me to come in,
his eyes looking past me into the deepening gloom of night.
The light in the front hall was dim,
but enough for me to be shocked at Tolliver's appearance.
Normally, a fastidiously neat and clean-shaven man,
he was now sporting at least a couple of weeks of beard growth
and looked as though he might not have bathed in nearly as long.
He shut the door quickly behind me and through the deadbolt,
before turning to look at me with an expression that
the man looked terrified.
Boy, shaking, I blurted other questions I've been pondering for so long.
What's wrong? What's going on, Mr. Tolliver?
Who is that dormant fella?
He was shaking his head, and I could tell he already regretted letting me in.
It doesn't matter, my boy. It will be settled one way or another soon enough.
I could smell a wash of alcohol flow over me at his words, and as he stood there in his dirty
bathrobe, I realized he was unsteady on his feet. He was drunk.
A part of me, the scared, selfish, college boy part of me that didn't want to hassle or deal
with anyone else's mess, wanted to leave right then and there, to extract myself from whatever
drama this old man had going on and just go and find another job somewhere else.
It would be easy, and I could justify it by telling myself it wasn't my business, and he didn't
want my help anyway. But, looking at him in that hallway, he looked so frail, so tired and
news, though, like a faded photograph of the man I'd known and grown to like and respect over
just the past few months. Something was really wrong, I thought. Something he couldn't get out
by himself. And maybe I couldn't help him either. But I knew I had to try. Mr. Tolliver,
please, just tell me, okay? Do you owe Mr. Dorman money or something? Do we need to call the cops?
His eyes widened slightly.
First, I thought he was angry.
But then, he let out a wet laugh and waved his hand.
No, no, that won't do any good.
They'd never find him, never stop him if they did.
He's coming for me, you see.
To finish the path, we set him on.
Tolover wiped at his face, and, as he looked back up,
I saw, he was crying.
I don't understand.
I think we should just call the cops or...
Um, I can tell him to leave you alone.
if he comes around again.
I let out a small yelp as Tolliver
suddenly lunged forward and gripped my shirt
with surprising strength.
No, no, John, you stay away from him,
from this. He will break you
if you stand in his way. I put my hands
on his arms gently.
Please, tell me what's going on.
Please.
Tolliver didn't release my shirt,
but instead fell into it,
crying softly against my chest for several
moments before he began to speak.
Someone was killing the children.
It was when I was young.
I had a family, a little girl and a beautiful wife.
We lived in a small town near Warsaw,
and for three months,
a child had been taken every new moon.
Every time, we found what was left of them three days later,
hanging across the limbs of a tree near the child's home.
We had questioned everyone,
searched out every stranger, patrol the streets at night.
It didn't matter.
When the sky was black a fourth time, our own little girl was taken.
My wife found her on the third morning, hanging from a maple tree we had planted the year we got married.
It broke her, broke both of us.
In my grief, my rage, I abandoned her to mourn alone.
I poured all my energy into one thing.
Revenge.
There are ways, old ways known to me and some others.
Ways of fashioning tools and given them a kind of.
of life, we needed such a tool to find whoever had done this to our children. Something that
was strong and ruthless, relentless and cunning, something to exact vengeance, justice,
punishment. And so, we made a man out of stone and clay. It wasn't as difficult as you might
think. There are methods and words that must be exact, but the most important part was the intention.
We poured our grief and rage and guilt into that thing
And then it blazed with a manner of rough life
A burning will so hot
That our tears sizzled away on its stony skin
And when its eyes opened
It rose and set off on its hunt
Without a single word or complaint
After it went out that first night
I returned home with a lighter heart
I would wait to tell my beloved Beatta
What we had done once the person had been caught
but I vowed to myself that from that point onward
I would devote myself only to her
Any anger or accusation I felt towards her
Or towards myself would leave me once the killer had been expunged from this world
And when I lay down beside her that night
I slept well for the first time in weeks
The man who'd killed those girls was found dead the next morning
Though not by our creature's hand
A big farmer at the edge of town
He'd hung himself two days earlier and left a note describing his sins and his remorse.
Bits of hair belonging to the girls, including my maria, were found among his belongings,
and there was no sign that anyone else had helped him commit these horrors.
It was suddenly all just...
Over.
Or so we thought.
We didn't know where the creature we created had gone to,
but as the days came and went
our group's consensus
was that it had likely been released
as soon as this work was done
perhaps it had even found the man's body
and then wandered out into his field
before tumbling apart like so much rock
and mud
these were the guesses and hopes of fools
myself included
we hadn't understood
the nature of what we had conjured
or the brutal calculus
by which it operates
but it wasn't long before we began to learn both
far too well.
The parents of the first little boy that had been taken
were found torn apart in their home.
Two nights later, the mother of the second child,
just an infant at the time of their murder,
was found dismembered in a front yard.
As with the first killings,
someone or something had broken through a front door
and chased her outside
before plucking her limbs off like petals from a flower.
By this point, the view of us that remained
had begun to understand what was happening.
even if we didn't know why.
After all these years, however, I think I do.
It was what we put into it, you see.
Not just our hatred and blame for the insane man who killed our babies,
but our guilt and loathing for ourselves and our wives and husbands.
When we knelt over that creature and gave it a measure of our life and our pain,
we weren't just creating it.
We were teaching it, molding it with our hearts,
just as we had with our hands,
showing it the faces of everyone we blamed,
even ourselves.
Oliver's lip quivered as he looked up at me.
I tried to save Bietta, I did.
We ran to this country,
and for nearly ten years there was no sign of it.
And then one night it came and...
Boom, boom, boom!
We both screamed as the front door first squealed and then shattered.
Filling the void left behind was the man
I'd seen in the flower shop where we'd seen.
weeks before, though now he was stripped bare.
He stepped inside, his pale, perfect skin glowing in the soft light of the hall.
He was completely hairless, but that wasn't all.
He had no nipples, no gelatin, no toe-nails on the end of his white, mischapen toes.
And then there was hands.
His skin grew scaly, had the wrist, before hardening into something that reminded me of concrete,
mixed with jagged rock.
It seemed impossible, but that stone was alive, moving and flexing as he lunged forward and snatched Oliver away from me.
My friend had the chance to scream, but he didn't.
Instead, he used his last moment to find my eyes and mouth a single word.
Run.
I heard about his murder the next day, and though it sickened me, I pretended to be surprised.
The creature hadn't tried to stop me
And though I spent the next few nights terrified by every sound
I had the feeling that it wouldn't try to hurt me now
That its work was done
Maybe, I thought
If Tolliver was the last life holding it together
It really had finally gone off into the woods to die
It was a nice thought
And it lasted
Until Tolliver's funeral
I was one of only a dozen people there
and the thought of maybe being the closest thing the man had left to a friend or family
only added to the sad loneliness of the whole thing.
I felt guilty that I'd run, that I hadn't done more to save him.
But what could I hope to do against something like that?
It wasn't something I understood or could fight.
So instead I'd sit there and feel sorry for him and myself
because there was no one else to...
There was a man at the edge of the cemetery.
Even at a distance, even wearing that long, mischaping coat, I was struck by the size of the man and the magnitude of his malign presence.
Suppressing a shudder, I glanced away before forcing myself to look back.
He was still there, still watching, and I felt like his hard blue eyes were burning into me.
For a panicked moment, I almost got up and ran again, but then I thought better of it.
No, it wasn't there for me.
I had nothing to do with this.
This was about Tolliver, not me,
and now it was done.
As if, reading my thoughts, the thing turned slightly,
and now I knew it was looking at me.
Staring in horror, I saw its pale face split into a terrible smile
as it raised an arm and gave me a little wave.
The gloves were gone now,
but there was no clay or jagged stone glittering in the afternoon sun.
The hands were made of flesh,
pink and baby fresh, and as he wiggled his fingers at me, my gorge began to rise.
I did get up now, stumbling a few yards away to wretch against a headstone,
before turning back to glance apologetically to the attendants
and to gaze at the empty lawn beyond. He was gone.
