CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "The worst part about my grandfather with dementia is hearing the things he confesses" Creepypasta

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

CREEPYPASTA STORY►by ChristianWallis: 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►Francois Codourey: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/q9...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-

Do we need another girl? I was used to him asking me questions, sometimes ones that didn't even make sense. But this one surprised me. He looked at me with an odd glint in his eye that I'd never seen before, not even as a kid. He'd always been a quiet, withdrawn man, disinterested in anyone who wasn't my mother. But something about the sly tone of voice made me feel like I glimps some part of him I shouldn't have. And I struggled to think of anything to say in response. In the end, all I managed was,

What do you mean? He briefly looked angry, but some kind of realization dawned on him and his features softened to a sullen disappointment. You net his boy, he asked. Yeah, I said, I've been looking after you the last few months. He turned his eyes to his frail legs before eyeing the beeping machine and the oxygen tank

that sat next to the recliner. After a long pause, he sighed and his shoulders slumped. Do you want a cup of tea? I asked. He took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. Why not? he grunted before blowing his nose. It was only meant to be two, he said from his chair, and something in his voice made me look up from the dishes and gave him my full attention. He sat, delighted, and staring at the mute TV.

Three girls, he carried on, a trade with that thing in the basement. You know books will say things like rules, but that's just a waste of everybody's time. If these things followed rules, they'd be working like the rest of us. Something about that image made him laugh, and I realised it was probably the first time I'd seen him smile since moving in. What is it with people, eh? Acting like you make rules up for a world that we all know damn well

will do what it wants when it wants. I remember thinking to myself, why too? Why does it have to be two girls? He laughed, and this time it wasn't so playful. What were we going to do once it gave us what we wanted, eh? Give it back. No, it had us on the hook and it knew it. It asked for a third, a fourth, a fifth and a sixth. He turned in his chair and looked at me, and I realized he wasn't really rambling or trapped in some long-forgotten memory. If anything, he looked more lucid than he had the entire three months I've been caring for him.

None of them were easy. No one follows anyone into a basement without getting spruce. No one of them knew why exactly, but they knew enough. Hardest thing I ever had to do. With that, he turned back around and unmuted the TV, and I was left struggling to make sense of what he just said. If any part of it stood out, it was the mention of the basement, and without meaning to, I found my gaze slowly drifting towards a quiet little corridor that I knew led to the house's only cellar. The basement door had always frightened me as a child. The whole house had been a culprit haunted labyrinth of ancestral figures looming down at me from ancient oil paintings. Everything was too old at touch.

Every door led to a new room. Every action I took had my grandmother or mother shuffling after me and crying reproaches, eyeing me like I was about to step out into oncoming traffic. The greenhouse was full of broken glass that I could cut myself on. One room belonged to my grandfather's sister, who died at a young age of a penicillin allergy. Another room belonged to his father's first wife Who spent a life going mad or writing children's fiction Of ours on one shelf might be older than America

Another might be worth more than our family car Everything was to be looked at but never touched And with every new visit I was left with the impression That the whole damn house was a mausoleum filled with disapproving ghosts He never had to ask if the house was haunted It was an inevitability

and on the nights where my mother made me stay over, I couldn't escape the feeling I was one wrong door away from stumbling into some Victorian specter's clutches. But the basement. I never got a lecture on the basement. No child wanted to go near that thing. No story surrounded it. It only existed.

The door standing alone at the end of a long, dark hallway with a single bare bulb that looked like it had been smashed on purpose. and for some reason, and I'll admit I never got the courage to ask. Someone had sketched an enormous X across the ancient door in red duct tape, like some kind of modern-day plague warning. I had deliberately stayed away during my time as a carer, secretly thankful I hadn't been given a reason to go down there. But, after my grandfather had mentioned some girls, and the basement,

well, it wasn't a huge leap of imagination, right? My grandfather wasn't a loving man And our family had been rife with black sheep for generations Scandal followed us like a bad smell Had it my grandfather's own aunt once abducted him And his sister for a whole afternoon Only to be found it appeared filling their coat pockets with rocks I couldn't help but wonder what a lifetime of trauma had done to him

The family graveyard was full of dates They spoke of tragically short lives Could anyone be raised amidst all that And still be normal I had to know Not just because it was my family But because I was stuck there Ferrying tea and food to this man

And washing him down day after day If he really had done something If there was something down there That people should know about Then I might be the only person willing Or able to do something about it So, with much trepidation I went to the door

And spent a few hesitant seconds Tracing the duct taped X with my hands It did not escape my attention that the tape was brand new, but without knowing how to interpret that knowledge, I pushed it aside and forced myself to turn the handle. The seal broke with an audible hiss, and the air that rushed out stank of ethanol and compost. Using my light, I took in the first few steps

and saw that they were made of solid stone and a grooves worn in from a thousand feet. I hadn't seen anything like that since a holiday in Rome, and I immediately knew that this part of the house must be somehow even more older than the rest. Heading further down, I found a surprisingly mundane-looking cellar, filled with old moving boxes and spiders as big as my fist, many of which hung dead and petrified in the webs. I did, however, noticed one archway, made of the same stone as the stairs,

and went through it to find yet another room filled with the same junk as before, if only slightly older. It turned out the cellar was every bit as big as the manor above, housing dozens of large chambers, each separated by vaulted archways made of ancient stone. The whole place was organised in a haphazard fashion that made it all too easy to get lost, and I marvelled at the way it seemed to never end. Not all the rooms were for storage either. One was an old workshop for a carpenter where his tools had rusted to the hooks they hung on,

and the machine I saw lacked motors and wires. Another room was filled with glass files and distillation equipment for brewing some kind of alcohol. Dark bottles plugged with corks, sat in crates, and not surprised they find that they were full of sloshing fluid. Another was a dark room for photo development. Only the cameras were so old, they had cloaks for the photographer to hide behind and metal plates as big as my head. Looking through some old picture books piled up in the corner, I found a well-preserved picture of a young girl standing next to a grave. It was dated in 1968, and to my surprise, I recognised the young girl and the name on the tombstone. It was Michael, the name of my mother's brother, and the Povey's child must have been my own mother.

A photo taken at a funeral as some kind of remembrance, perhaps. I'd vague memories of a dead uncle somewhere. The only problem was I'd met an Uncle Michael and more than a few birthday parties, so it made little sense that it was his tomb she stood over. I waved the discrepancy off and moved on. Maybe I was just misremembering my uncle's name. After all, I'd only met him three or four times. One after another, the rooms went on,

and after a good hour, I was no closer to having explored them all. This became especially clear after I found an old stairway descending to another level. These steps were as worn down as the others and looked every bit as old. And when I showed my light down them, I damn nearly had a heart attack as a young girl became visible in the beam. For a moment, she was a featureless child

slumped against the wall halfway down the stairs until my eyes adjusted and I realized I was only looking at a doll. I breathed a sigh of relief and nearly went down there to pick her up but I faltered at the last moment.

The darkness lurking at the foot of the tunnel was as thick as water and I had a strange notion it wasn't empty. The silence around me seemed unusually heavy, and I couldn't escape the feeling my eyes and ears was sensing something and my brain hadn't caught her. Any boyish curiosity I'd felt while exploring was gone in an instant,

and I was painfully aware of the vast subterranean space that surrounded me. Looking behind me, the flashlight picked out a thousand wiry shadows, painted by box after box of long-forgotten knick-knacks. Could I be sure I was alone down there? I tried to laugh the idea off What could be lurking in those shadows? I asked myself For the fact I didn't have an answer Only unsettled me further

And before my mind could begin filling in the blanks I decided to leave I took one last look down the stairs And froze When I saw it empty of everything but dust and stone The doll Was gone I ran to the exit

it. When the doorbell rang, I jumped, and my grandfather let on a little chuckle. I had an inclination he knew I'd be rummaging around in the basement, but I couldn't be sure. Maybe he just found my newfound nerves amusing. Ever since coming back from that damn basement, I'd struggle to shake off an insipid paranoia. That'll be Elizabeth from the village, he said. Brings me food now and again. Cakes, that sort of thing. They're good. Go let her in. I did as he asked and went to the door,

and found a young woman standing on the other side. Hello, Alex, she said with a beaming smile, sliding past me and into the kitchen without another word. Oh, hello, I said. And in trying to clear my thoughts, I found myself going to the usual polite refrain in this kind of situation. Would you like a cup of tea? Yes, please, she said.

I made her a drink. or you both filled the silence with small talk. She augly unpacked several brown boxes from a plain brown bag, dropping more than half of them and picking them up with stiff fingers. Opening one that had fallen, she laughed and offered me a battered custard tart that I gleefully took and ate. Sorry, she said, I've always been quite clumsy. But as I ate and we continued to speak,

I couldn't help but notice that something was off with a young woman. It wasn't that she dropped the odd box, or even that the tea in her hands shook so badly that half of it ended up in the saucer. It was the way she began to grimace with every small motion, tightening her lips and exhaling squealing squealy breaths like she was in tremendous pain and doing everything in her power to ignore it. And the longer we talked, the worse it became. She began to sway from side to side and a movement became stiff and rigid.

When she'd finished spilling a tea, I offered to take a cup from her pale and shaking hands, but she waved me off and tottered over to a nearby counter with all the difficulty of someone walking on ice skates once there she turned to face me with a girlish grin and went to speak but instead slumped suddenly to the side her ankle twisting unnaturally beneath the skin I couldn't keep the expression of shock from my face

and it only grew worse when she caught me staring and gave a flirt just wink from where she lay bent over the counter at an impossible angle Like a click of the fingers, she snapped back upright, and I winced at the sound of creaking bones. Sorry, she giggled, I'm just a little nervous. He talks a lot about you, the third. Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself upright and leaned against the counter, and what I think was supposed to be a friendly pose. She even pressed her ear to her shoulder, coquettishly, before going to say something.

But the pose lasted barely a second as her elbows bent inwards like a piece of straw, and she hit her head against the marble top. I rushed towards her, instinctively trying to help, but I stopped when I realized the hysterical squeal she let out weren't cries of pain, but rather laughter. Sorry, she said, putting a hand to her mouth as she cackled. I'm such a mess today. I've waited so long to meet you.

That looks painful, I stuttered. Are you okay? Oh, it's fine, she cooed, as she tried once more to balance. on her feet. It's just... Just a condition. Your grandfather, angel that he is, oversaw my treatment when I was just a girl. Is that right?

I asked. He's a generous man, don't you think? She looked like a drunk person, trying sincerely not to laugh. And I had a distinct feeling that she thought this was some kind of joke. As if, to confirm this, she raised one arm and pointed at me with finger guns while pulling the trigger and winking.

snap. Without any warning, her arm broke in two, dangling halfway between a wrist and elbow. Looking down, the girl muffled a chuckle that slowly turned into waning and hysterical laughter. With a flick of her elbow, the arm reset, and she appeared suddenly sober. Hey, she said, want to see something really funny? She collapsed screaming, eyes wide open, mouth agape, a whole party turning into a mess of crumpled bones. She lay in the floor looking like someone had draped a rubber sheet of her model village

and the sight turned me sick to my stomach. Then, without any warning, she snapped up into a crawling position and came howling at me like a moth to firelight. I'd barely taken a few steps back when a hand latched around my ankle and squeezed unnaturally hard. I was still trying to figure out where one part of her started and the other ended when she was already using the other hand to clawed deep couches in my leg. The pain, at least.

helped me get my priorities straight, and I lashed out, kicking her so hard I heard teeth clack. But it didn't slow her, not in the least. She just spat out a few and grinned at me with a bloody mouth. I switched tactics and tried using my hands to pry a grip away, but only succeeded in letting it tear the back of my right hand to ribbons. The scratches hurt so bad, I snatched a nearby kitchen knife from the counter. I had this notion I'd cut hand right off with one clean swipe, but the blade hit bone immediately and flew out of my hand.

I still hoped that the deep cut would hurt her, but if anything, her expression told me she considered it a funny little joke. That hand has to come off, I thought, as she continued to shred my calf and ankle. I threw myself after the knife, but she had my one-leg pinned so well that I fell over. With cat-like ease, she twisted her broken body upwards and over me as I dragged myself backwards. She was visibly delighted in my revulsion, but whatever her play was, she didn't seem impatient and she sat upright, savoring my attempts to reach the knife. I kept expecting her to stop me, but after only a short few lunges, I managed to wriggle within

reach of the knife. By the time I twisted back around and drove the knife into her face, I realized she'd been expecting the attack. She looked positively delighted and thrust her head onto the knife. the blade entering vertically into her open mouth. She held her jaw rigid as it ground between her central incisors, letting out a delighted squeal as she stole my jab with a clenched jaw. She could have easily stopped me.

Her hands were free, but she just kept leaning into it. I tried to reverse the direction, but she was having none of it. With one short, sharp effort, she gave a final thrust and plunged a knife into the back of her throat, where I felt it tear through thick muscle and cartilage. Her arms went slack with a final blow, but she continued to convulse and lean further backwards. Carefully, I slid out from under her,

grimacing at the way her seizures caused the broken bones to rub together like broken shards of glass. She remained kneeling in a half or bright position, blood pulling in her mouth as she twitched and groaned as if in awe of the kitchen ceiling and its correct plasterwork. She always was an odd one. My grandfather stood in the doorway, looking at the scene with a tilted head. What the hell just happened?

I gasped, already shaking at the first signs of shock. Just an early draft, he said, kicking the heel of her foot. Come on, we need to drag this one back where it came from. Took a while to make them come back right, he said, as he watched me roll the brown sack down the basement stairs. By this point, I was hardly surprised he had a waterproof body-sized bag on hand. If anything, I was secretly thankful. But out of the two, Lizzie here was the best of the bad lot. First one came out with the wrong soul.

Lizzie, well, she was put together in a funny way. But for the most part, she had all the right pieces. At that moment, the bag slipped from my fingers, and both my grandfather and I were left a grimace and wince at the sound of Lizzie's mishmashed skeleton, tumbling down the last few unforgiving steps. It sounded eerily similar to someone dropping a sack of plate, She was one of the girls who brought down here, wasn't she?

I asked when the bag finally came to a stop. The second, he answered, how many were there? In the end, it got nine, but the bargain began with two, he replied. When it was over and we got what we wanted, we used it to bring back the first two as a kind of practice. When you're able to have kids, you might understand one day. I would have done anything for mine, anything, and, well, I did.

He gestured to the broken bag that lay at my feet. Just leave it there, he said. She'll make the rest of the way on her own. He turned and went back upstairs and I followed. Don't forget the X, he said as he handed me the duct tape at the top. Won't anyone come looking for her? I asked. Lizzie, he cried. She's only resting.

You come back once and after that, he did. doesn't stick. You just get worse. If anything, we've given the village a chance to rest easy for a few nights. This is well known in the area for not being kind to children and pets. Came back from what? I asked as I stressed the roll out and apply the first bit of tape. He didn't reply. Instead, he looked at me like I was an idiot. What about the other girl? I asked, where is she? They're all still down there, rotting away. Yes. He said. He said, we only brought two back. Well, three counting.

He stopped like he just let slip a terrible secret. For a moment, I thought he tried to steer the conversation back around. But instead, he went quiet for a little while before speaking up in an almost broken whisper. It didn't eat the kids, he said, idly playing with some loose wool on his jumper. You can't trade a soul, but you can ruin it so badly its creator won't take it back.

That's what it wanted. We flat out refused torturing them, but in the end we compromised in starvation. That meant we had to live our lives upstairs or knowing they were down there, going hungry, cold and alone. That was exactly the kind of stain it wanted to see growing on our souls.

So we starved them, and after it gave us the knowledge we wanted, we went down and brought a few back. I thought we could have our cake and eat it too, see. Only, it didn't really work out. Lizzie was the best of the bad lot, but even then, I'm not sure we ever should have let her out. Jesus, are you saying there's another one like her? I asked, realizing the important part of what he was saying.

Oh no, he sighed. No one was like her. The other one was much, much worse. The first basement level I'd explored weeks earlier had been a dusty tomb-like place, filled with junk going back a century. But the second level down felt positively inhuman. The walls were bare stone that lacked any sort of finish and shone chalk white in my torch. And soil stamped into dry paths that constantly diverted into curving tunnels

that I lacked the bravery to explore. And the air was hot and fettered, so that at times I was worried I wasn't walking along a dry tunnel at all, but rather had stumbled into the gullet of some grotesque monster buried in the hills. This was a place where people did. secret things that much I was sure of. Every now and again I'd find a little alcove filled with bizarre paper trinkets and pressed flowers, but no sign of who the tributes had been left for.

In one empty room I found a plain robe, in another there was a scythe, and one wall was covered in what looked like cave paintings. Throughout it all I was terrified, but nothing I'd seen was remotely dangerous. The things I occasionally found tossed aside or hidden away were all ancient, whoever had held them and used them, they'd come and gone a long time ago. But then I found the room with hay in the floor and the dripping atmosphere immediately terrified me. The sight of it caused my breath to catch my chest and my heart to stammer. Far from fresh, the soft padding on the floor reeked of pee and mould, and the walls were smeared with tar-like mess.

The jam on the stone entrance was also smeared with long finger-trails of blood, and the floor by the entrance was disturbed by dozens of strange drag marks. Sheeplessly flicking the light from side to side, I glimpsed a bundle of old toys in the corner. I say toys. There were sticks and stones and garrously painted bundles of old cloth. But something about them may we think of toys anyway. Maybe it was the chains that lay broken on the floor and the unmistakable realization that it was here, my grandfather must have left at least one poor victim to starve to death.

and of course there was that all too familiar doll sitting right beside them both tragic and terrifying I felt shame looking in there that was my family's legacy staring back at me and for the first time since descending I began to wonder if I had it in me to see this through I had to wonder what would this thing want from me that was when I heard the giggle and it felt like the world was going to fall out of my stomach For a second I was paralyzed with fear As the skin across my body tightened And blood rushed to my head so quickly I felt faint

For the first time since this ending I actually dared to think of how I was going to get out And a whole new type of panic took hold Every tunnel looked the same Not that I had any choice in my route There are only two doorways in the room And something lurked in the tunnel I'd just come from It took away out of sight when my torch came close

But I caught a fleeting glimpse of pay and leathery skin and an unnatural silhouette. Once again, a giggle rang out in the dark, and I was forced to back away towards the nearest exit in the hope of putting some distance between myself and that thing. To my relief, it did not chase me, at least not with speed. I began to walk quickly down one tunnel after another, picking branches at random,

and it always stayed just out of sight behind me. I started to think it might be afraid of the light, but I didn't want to bet on that fact I just wanted to get away from it because every time I glanced back my light caught a little more of it and I saw something straight out of a damn nightmare he might have looked like a child once

but something else had gotten into her the head was too large by far easily as wide as my chest and God if I couldn't stop thinking that his mouth was large enough to make a serious go at swallowing me whole at the very least it might be able to work its jaws around me given enough time.

Perhaps that's what she wanted to do, I thought. Perhaps she'd catch me and trap me and leave me there to whittle away sometime before she came and began to choke me down like a snake swallowing its prey hole. When I turned back once more, the thing stood its ground against the light and chuckled. I swore it had some insight into my panicked thoughts. Those speedy black eyes were mocking me and my flight. but what else could I do except to keep going? I kept hoping to find a way out, some sign of my passage into the Warren tunnels,

but my pursuer picked up its pace and I was no longer able to walk briskly from one turning to another. Each time I looked behind me, it lingered in the light for longer and longer, until at last and no longer hid at all, but instead bore down towards me in full sight of the torch, and I was forced to turn and sprint for my life. Those black eyes had fixed me malevolent hunger, no longer playful or happy to bide its time. I got the strangest sense who was angry at me. It was not a good thought to have.

What I'd seen spoke of gangly but muscular limbs that clutched at wall, ceiling and floor, as if there was no difference. And even though I counted no extra limbs, the way each arm and leg had grown and bent to new shapes left me feeling strangely arachnophobic. I thought then of what my grandfather had said. One came back with the wrong soul, he told me, and I began to wonder, perhaps, if that was what he meant. I didn't have time to mull this idea over. I came at last to another tunnel, and just as I went to lift one foot and spring past the threshold,

my remaining leg was caught, and I was sent slamming into the floor with dizzying speed. I got a good view of the tunnel ahead, and was surprised to see steps leading even further down, but time was not on my side and had to scramble forward to my hands and knees even as that thing began to pluck and tear at my shirt my hands managed to grip the first step just as the creature flit me over

and I was left staring into its eyes my grandfather was right she was much much worse she it looked wrong

all wrong and in an instant I realized I was looking at the victim of a cosmic joke. A soul of a chittering thing put into the body of a human and tossed back into the world of the living. It was a bundle of pain that walked the very flesh it lived in, twisting it to breaking point as it fought to act on instinct that simply couldn't function in that kind of body.

Somehow it already walked its host into something utterly inhuman. And all too quickly, my sympathy was overridden with disgust. In the brief law where it stopped its assault to look down at me. I kicked out and pushed myself past the arch and went tumbling, head over heels, down the stony steps. The last thing I remember was it crying out after me. I don't remember finding it, the thing that can teach you anything. That doesn't surprise me, but I can't help but wonder how much time was lost wandering down there. All I know is that after I was thrown down to the next level, my experience is blurred and my mind's ability to stitch one event into another

turned to mush. Some of the images felt like I lived them a decade ago, wondering or struck into a vaulted cavern that rivaled any theatre I'd ever been in, for example, while other memories are recent and clear, albeit disjointed. Did I spend a desperate few hours trapped in one dead end, sobbing hysterically, or was it a few days instead? My fleeting memories of scraping algae from rocks and looking condensation of my fingers. Just as I remember laying in an alcove, overcome with despair, messing myself freely. But I couldn't have possibly been down there that long. Hours, perhaps, but not days.

At least, that's what I tell myself. What is clear in my mind, at least, is finding the thing. I still struggle to see it whole, or even in pieces, but I'm left with the impression. of a tree, something that shimmered in the dark, iridescent with a blue and purple sheen of exposed membranes and glistening organs. It was huge, filling the largest subterranean chamber I'd ever seen right to the very top and pushing veins into solid rock. But then there was a sense of space again behind it, of roots buried in unseen places that existed just beyond what was plainly visible. I have no real way to describe this aspect of it, except the, to say that it seemed like it had folded itself into a space too small to contain it.

Just thinking about it makes my eyes hurt. When it spoke, my ears bled, and yet it wasn't a god. It wasn't interested in being worshipped. Oddly, I think it just wanted to chat. It asked me about things. Sometimes they were mundane, like how a clothespeg was used to fix items to a washline. Sometimes it asked about technology, about the past, even about people who, it seemed, it once knew.

When I finally worked up with the courage to ask it for the gift I'd come down seeking, it emitted a sound that I guess I can only describe as a laugh. Why would you want that? It asked, its voice, a boring worm in my head. That door still remains open to you, just as it does for all the others. That's all I remember of the first. first thing that lived down there. After that, there was Elizabeth, then light, and then my mother. I wish you would stop chasing this nonsense. I woke to the sound of my mother's voice,

fresh from some feverish nightmare where I had been trapped in a wooden box. I found myself no longer in that dream, and instead now lay in my bed while my mother sat at the foot of it. She looked down at me with both her approach and pity. Michael, I stuttered. You brought him back. Oh, you poor silly thing, she cooed. Michael is alive and well, and always has been. I saw the photo of you by his gravestone.

Michael was the name of more than one brother, she said. You know this. My father remarried and his second wife had an existing son who later passed away. He'd been sickly his whole life and died at the age of 15 when I'd barely known him for more than a few years. But your uncle, my brother, is two years younger than me and has never seen an illness that couldn't be cured with antibiotics. I don't understand, I said. Who did you bring back?

Why did Grandpa go through all that misery if not to bring back his dead son? He did it for me, she said, as she reached out once more and stroked my leg. I never should have let you come here, but it was all but impossible to get you to stop. At least you have a kind of life here, I suppose, looking after your grandfather. He's supposed to keep you safe, but, well, I can't ask more of him than I already have. He promised me a miracle, and to the man's credit, he delivered. And ultimately, he was right about letting you stay here. At first I was terrified you get too close to that thing and start to lose your memory.

But now, I see that might be a good thing. you might finally forget your own funeral