Creepy - Day 10 - Tricksters

Episode Date: October 10, 2021

No treats...***Written by NewtotownJam and narrated by Owen McCuen***Bonus: "Where Do Dreamers Go" written by Sum Gigh***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the bloody disgusting network. No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastures and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of biocations of biopictions. Violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Creepy presents. The 31 Days of Horror. Day 10. Tricksters. Written by Amanda Cecilia Lang and narrated by Owen McCune. 8.57 p.m. I linger on the steps of my front porch, hugging the candy bowl. with a heaviness in my chest.

The last of the trick-or-treaters crunched down my leaf-littered lawn, returning to the shadows of the sidewalk. Teenagers, tricksters, they jostle each other, hooting and whooping it up. Good for them! I'd join them if I wasn't seven decades north of my childhood. I shuffle past my clan of shakily carved jack-o-lanterns. I'll keep the candles burning a while longer. and maybe there'll be stragglers.

The gang of candy bag ruffians I ran with back in the day never went home before midnight. Grinning at antique memories, I settle into the creaking wooden bones of my rocking chair, hidden deep enough in porch shadows to give any visitors who tiptoe up my walkway a nice, healthy scare. If there is anyone left to scare. The street beyond my oak tree rests in moon-dappled pears. But an old man can hope, can't he? One more glimpse of sneaky mischief, of snickering monster-shaped shadows streaking through the front yards. This was the hour when the old gang used to switch out pillowcases full of pixie sticks and atomic

fireballs for sacks of soap and toilet tissue pilfered from our mother's powder rooms. Oh, God, do I miss those guys. Squares by day, helions by night. Good old Emerson with his giddy sense of humor and this out of this world throwing arm. He could chuck a roll of TP higher than any kid I knew. And sweet tooth Charlie, who belly crawled through yards and giggled like a 10-year-old madman at every prank we pulled. These days, they're old men in their graves. Emerson ended up the butt end of a heart attack, and Charlie got suckered by a stroke.

Death snuck right up on the poor bastards. Only nobody was laughing in the end. Of course, back in the day, we thought we'd laugh forever, live forever. Hell, some Halloween's it seemed as if the good times might just roll on and on. Treats and scary stories and tricks. Hot damn, the mischief we caused. And me as our mastermind, always one prank ahead. Hipped every trick in the bag.

The neighborhood never saw us coming, not even dressed as spacemen and masked cowboys and skeletal grim reapers in inky glittery robes. They'd wake up November 1st to find their windows soaked and foggy, their trees and yards haunted with slow wavering streamers like the tattered remains of bedsheet ghosts, and Halloween would last another day. Somewhere down my street, a young lady shrieks. Sharp and sudden, maybe at a goblin or a vampire leaping out at her from behind a parked car. It's the perfect goof for when the walk home turns spooky. I listen for a second scream for bursts of laughter, but the spiced autumn air settles back into silence. With a sigh, I balanced the candy dish on the porch railing and flipped the switch on my transistor radio, same model I had as a kid. Another tradition, I dial in K-103's annual Halloween radio drama, already in progress.

The gang and I used to live for these old shows, crackly and creepy over the airways. My radio clipped to my belt as we capered through sleepy yards and blackened streets. Tonight's story is a classic. The proverbial escaped maniac on the loose with a mask and a hook. The kind who terrorizes nubile couples necking in back seats. They are even playing it as breaking news, complete with buzzing police bulletins. I chuckle. Might fool the kitties, maybe even spook some folks into locking their doors.

But old pros like me are wise to the gotchas of the season. As the newscaster interviews snappy police detectives and weeping survivors, I indulge in leftover chocolate bars and watch pumpkins and porch lights blink out across the neighborhood. One after enough, signaling the time for treats has expired. Somewhere closer comes that second scream. A high-pitched shriek, it echoes between the houses. On the radio, the newscaster's brisk vocal fry darkens in tone.

In the interest of public safety, please, miss, tell our listeners what you saw tonight. A mellow dramatic pause darkens the static airways then. We were driving home from Lookout Hill, says a... voice reminiscent of poodle skirts and strawberry phosphates. There was someone lying in the middle of the road. My boyfriend pulled over and we got out to help. But it was just a scarecrow. Someone's idea of a joke.

We dragged it off to the side, then climbed back into the car. But the keys were missing from the ignition. That's when we heard the most awful sound, tap, tap, tapping on the undercarriage. Someone was hiding beneath the car. My boyfriend and I slammed our doors just as a dark shape crawled out from underneath us and stood up outside my window. A tall, gangling man with a machete.

Shuckling again, I shake my head. In my day, it was a hook. He wore a tattered burlap sack over his head, same as the scarecrow he left in the road, black stitches for eyes and a crooked grinning mouth. He tapped his blade on the glass and tilted his head as if to see. say, gotcha. We weren't going anywhere, not without the keys. He was almost playful at first, circling the car,

tapping his sharp steel blade along the hood and roof and windows. Tap, tap, tapping, right up until he... My porch light blacks out. The radio buzzes to silence. A power outage? Oh, good grief. And just when things were getting hairy. Street lights and glowing windows go black all down the block until the whole neighborhood rests in black and gray gloom and breath-held anticipation.

The only light is the sallow flickering glow from my jackal lanterns. I throw a sideways glance at my dark and silent radio and my pulse goes jagged. That radio runs on batteries. So how the heck did it? A sharp sound cuts across the same. the neighborhood. The sound drifts along the street and through the oaks in my front yard, makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle on end. I creak forward in my rocking chair, squinting at the murky night-stained lawn and the empty sidewalk where, tap, tap, tap, someone knocks on my front door.

I startle, gasp, nearly fall out of my seat, heart clenching like a fist. A short grim reaper cloaked in an inky glittery robe stands alone on my welcome mat. The plastic scythe in his small, pale hand is just like the ones that used to sell at the corner five and dime. The kid withdraws it from my door. Snuck up on me there, didn't you? I laughed the laugh of old fools and clutched the candy dish against my pounding, hammering chest. The trick-or-treater turns to face me in my rocking chair. Beneath his Reaper's hood, he wears a cartoon skull mask with an exaggerated grin and gleaming white and black eyes. Nifty costume, kid. Had one like it myself once. I haul myself up onto bony, uneasy knees, and wobbled toward him.

Sweat prickles my forehead, despite the crisp autumn air, and an eerie heaviness returns like a sack of tricks to my pounding chest. My left arm trembles, tingles, ready with the candy bowl. Lucky kid, think I might dump it all into his pillowcase and call it a night. I just need those three magic words. But the little Reaper tilts his head at me, silent. He reaches out with his plastic scythe and tap, tap, taps my breastbone. What the hey, kid? I try to chuckle.

But my voice has gone gravely. With a swish of his cloak, the kid rushes out into the yard. And, oh! My eyes widened like moons. The candy dish tumbles from my hands with a clatter. Oh, how strange! How impossible and strange! My yard is haunted.

Hundreds of gauzy toilet tissue streamers hang from the oak trees, tendrils of a simpler time. They sway in a lazy breeze, and part like a veil to reveal the dark silhouettes of candy-bag ruffians watching me from the sidewalk. My heart pounds and pounds with the sharp pangs of nostalgia. The old gang. The sweaty, icy awe prickles my spine and antique skin, and I stagger forward and grip the porch railing.

The old gang, these days they're elderly men in their graves. Yet I'd know those. cowboy hats and space helmets and giddy Halloween troublemakers anywhere. They face my house with devilish glinting eyes and sagging pillowcases full of treats. Or is it tricks? I clutch a hand against my pounding chest, pounding, pounding, and the nightscape spinning. I need to sit down. But I'm afraid to look away from yesteryear, from the ethereal spectacle haunting my front yard,

afraid if I turn around this living dream will end, then darkness will sneak up on me. Impish and gleeful, the tricksters disperse into my yard, boyish shadows sneaking through the ghostland of Gossamer White Streamers. Emerson, in his space helmet, tiptoes with slow, exaggerated footsteps, while Charlie and the cowboy hat drops down and belly crawls through the fallen leaves. All the while, the pint-sized grim reaper looms on the sidewalk.

He points at me with his cloaked hand and taps his plastic scythe against the pavement. Tap, the sound is surreal. It floats through the yard, echoing all around me. Sneaking up. I tighten my grip on my chest. A machete burst through my rib cage. Blood sprays out. Splashes the jack-lanterns, and my hand closes around the blade.

I can't believe it. Razor-sharp steel. It slices through my fingers, but I try to hold on even as the jelly goes out of my knees. I collapsed to the porch, old meat and bone and nostalgia. Gotcha, the maniac in the scarecrow mask says, and yanks is machete-free. Should have seen that coming. Of course, in my day, it was a hook. Dying laughter weezes through the frothing ragged hole in my chest.

With a playful tilt of his masked head, stitched eyes, warped burlap smile, the maniac steps over me and blows out my jack-o' lanterns. It should all go black, but instead of flickering to darkness, the nightscape flares around me. Misty and white, as if someone soaked the windows of my soul. The scarecrow maniac stalks back into the night. Tap, tap, tapping his bloody blade down my porch steps, strolling past oak trees laced with spectral streamers and out into the neighborhood. Somewhere farther down, sirens rise, and red and blues strobe against the houses. Help us coming. But that side of the side of the, the side of the the street seems silly and far away now, like how childhood was once long lost.

With the maniac gone, the coast is clear. Charlie and Emerson stormed the porch around me, whooping and hooting and giggling like tiny madmen. I try to protest as they grab my elbows and haul my bones upright. My head droops, but as I squint down at what should be my slashed an ancient torso, cold awe tingles through my chest and bones and spirit. Oh, how impossible and strange! I stand cloaked in a robe of inky glitter, and my tiny, ageless hands grip a plastic scy scythe and a pillowcase. All around me, those tattered gossamer streamers ripple and sway, never darkening or fading. Excitement and sweet terror swell inside my chest as I capered down the steps of my blood-splattered porch.

Still can't believe I fell for that. The machete. But I can only laugh. The night is young again. The neighborhood will never see us coming. A gang of mischievous shadows, we jostle and jest and live it up out here on the sidewalks of our endless Halloween. For your bonus episode. Creepy presents.

Where do dreamers go? Written by some guy. I didn't used to remember my dreams. Life used to be easier that way. I can't say when I started having the only dream I ever have, but I started remembering it a few months ago. In the dream, I'm just walking down the street. Everything feels normal.

or as normal as anything feels in the dream, except that everyone is standing, looking away from me. I can only see their backs, in the backs of their heads. Even when I try to walk around them, they just turn with me. I don't mean their feet move,

I mean their entire body's pivot, so I can't ever see their faces. The longer I dream, the more desperate I get to see their faces. I usually wake up panicky. but I don't really know why I need to see their faces so much. The more I had the dream, the more I remembered it. The more detail wouldn't go away and would creep into my normal life.

I started to get nervous when I see people looking the other way. If I noticed someone standing at the other end of an aisle in the grocery store, I had the overwhelming need to walk to the end of the aisle and see their faces casual, as I could manage. It got worse from there. I started to notice how rarely people actually walk in a straight line without looking from side to side, especially in stores. There always seems to be some chance to get a glimpse of another person's face.

So in those rare instances that I couldn't see them, it would really mess with my head to the point I'd go out of my way to track them down. A few times I even left my shirt. shopping cart in the store, full of unpaid food, and follow people to their car just so I could see their profile or something as they climbed into their vehicle. Living like this has caused more than a few near-miss incidents from people who don't really appreciate some scraggly-looking white guy following them around like a creeper. Most of the time it's easily brushed off with a simple, sorry, thought you were someone else. But eventually the store's security must have gotten

winded me and didn't like whatever vibe I was putting off. I was politely asked to leave and maybe do my shopping down the street. It's getting worse, too, because the more I remember the dream, the more the dream feels real, the more I have a hard time telling the difference between dreaming and being awake. Is there a difference? Does it matter? Because the more the dream seeps in, the more I need to see people's faces, the more people seem to avoid me, turn their back on me, literally and figuratively. People don't really know they're going crazy, right?

I can't remember the saying, but something along the lines of you can't diagnose a sick organ with a sick organ. like a crazy person can't realize they're crazy. So does that mean I need to tell people I'm crazy or tell people I'm not? I don't know anymore. I've started to wonder, what if those dreams where people are turning their backs and me aren't dreams like we know them? What if when we dream we really are in another place, a place where dreamers go?

And what if people live there? And they have to deal with the absurdity of dreamers wandering around, trying to fly, saying insane things. Like a world filled with people in their underwear. Panic that they didn't study for a high school exam 10 years after graduating. What if when we walk past people on the street walking or talking strangely, it isn't really them? What if they're just dreamers who can't process things? What if the people around us are just having dreams about being celebrities and athletes and CEOs and all that? What if the insanity we see and read every day?

The things that no normal person could or would ever say or do is because they're dreaming. And after all, what difference does it make in a dream? Sometimes, if I see someone talking to themselves, I'll walk over and whisper real quiet. wake up. Usually they just stare at me and I see the phone in their hand on speakerphone at their chest. But sometimes, just sometimes, someone will stare at me with wide, confused eyes and give me a little nod. Yeah, it all makes sense, right?

Honestly, I'm staring to prefer the world where no one will look at me. I feel lonely there. and the dreams are starting to feel longer, like I can feel time passing as if I were awake. But it's kind of peaceful there too. People don't talk to me, but that means that people aren't yelling at me. People aren't judging me.

People aren't acting as if I'm beneath them. I'd rather be nothing than be judged by people who don't know me, especially when I'm trying to help them. So, in the off chance, the right kind of person is hearing this. Someone who needs to hear this. All I can say is, wake up. For even more from creepy, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com.

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