Creepy - Knock Knock

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

Are you ready?***Written by ViciousMock and Narrated by JV Hampton-VanSant***Bonus episode: A Family Matter Written by Leanne Desmond and Narrated by: Michelle Kane***Content Warning: Death of loved one, implied sexual assault***Check out Undertow at: https://thedarktome.com/undertow/***Find our reward tiers and how to get your bonus magnet at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Steve Blizin of Black Crow Audio***Title music by Alex Aldea 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.

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Whether these stories truly happened or our simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy Presents Knock Knock, written by vicious mock, and narrated by J.V. Hampton Van Sant. If I were to describe my family in one word,

it would be prepared. That's the nice way to put it. Some may have said paranoid or dysfunctional. As a family, we regularly practiced what to do in emergencies. By the time my sister and I were five, our evacuation time, parents, children, and dog was down to 23 seconds.

I know what you're thinking. Sounds like good parenting, right? You got to teach your kids what to do in emergencies. Well, people thought we were strange, I guess. The neighbor once called the police when they saw our parents dangling us out of the window. They were teaching us what to do if we needed to evacuate, and the stairs were blocked. That one took some explaining. There were burglary drills, too, of course.

According to our parents, the safest thing for children to do if a burglar came into the house was to pretend to be asleep. And oh, did we practice pretending to be asleep. You don't want to be too still or too straight, you see. It looks unnatural. People tend to sleep in strange positions, especially children. To be convincing, you want your arms and legs at strange angles. Fake snoring isn't the easiest to get right either. Go steady with the snoring.

Then there's the issue that if a burglar makes a loud, noise, it's unrealistic that you wouldn't even stir. So if that happens, you should stir. Move your head slightly, smack your lips lightly, a soft groan, before quickly slipping right back into your heavy sleep. But most importantly of all, don't open your eyes. If you open your eyes and see the burglar, they might kill you so you can't identify them. Good parenting, right? Well, in all the time I was growing up, we never had a house fire, and nobody ever tried to burgle us. But if any of those things had happened, you'd bet we would have known what to do.

The reason I mentioned this is to explain why what we were told on our 10th birthday didn't seem all that strange at all. You two aren't little kids anymore. You've grown up so much. Soon, you're going to notice some changes, Mum said. We exchanged glances, mortified. I mean, school had already told us a little bit about the changes that were going to happen to our bodies. But were Mom and Dad really going to talk to us about it together?

I mean, don't Dad usually talk to the boys? boys and mums with the girls. Don't get me wrong, Amy and I were close and everything. But I definitely don't want to hear all about that stuff, girl stuff. I wasn't even sure what the girl stuff was, but I'd heard enough to know it was gross. Soon, and I don't know when, you'll start to hear knocking on the doors of the house. This confused us further. We had always had a strict no-knocking policy in our house.

One time my friend came around for dinner and knocked on the bathroom door to check if it was occupied. Dad went insane. The poor kid was terrified. After that, I was one friend down and clearer than ever that knocking was absolutely. was absolutely not allowed. When this happens, no matter where you are or what you're doing, you must close your eyes.

And you must keep them closed. Closed tight, no peeking, no looking, no squinting. Who will be knocking? Burglars? I asked. Much worse than burglars. When you hear the knock, you must close your eyes, and you must keep them closed. Dad said. How long for?

At least five minutes, to be safe. Why can't you just tell us when it's safe to open them? Said Amy. When the knocking starts, you must not trust anything you hear. Anything. Under no circumstances must you open your eyes until five minutes have passed. Dad said. But Danny can't even tell the time.

Amy laughed. Shut up. Yes, I can. That was one time. I just thought the little hand was... I started. Enough. Have you listened at all?

Dad snapped, silencing us both. How do you think you are going to check the clock without opening your eyes? I... I... But then... How do we know? Amy said. Amy was Dad's little princess and was not used to him speaking to her so sternly.

You must count in your head with your eyes closed. Three hundred seconds. But to be safe, count to 500. With Mississippi? She asked. Always with Mississippi. Dad said his tone softening slightly. That will take forever, I complained.

Well, then, you better get used to it quickly. Let's practice. We didn't practice with real knocking, of course. Over the next few days, our parents would just leap out from nowhere and shout, knock, knock. And we would instantly and immediately close our eyes, whether we were watching TV, reading, or in the bathroom. They'd prepared us for the fact that we might hear something.

strange or upsetting things once the knocking started. They told us we mustn't take any notice. As long as we closed our eyes and kept them closed, it would go away again. I know what you're thinking. Hadn't we noticed growing up that every now and then our parents randomly closed their eyes for five minutes? Well, we did.

they didn't really explain it. They just told us that whenever it happens, you must stay quiet and wait for them to open them again, and in the meantime, not to get into any trouble. Our parents stopping and closing their eyes for several minutes was to us just one of the weird things that grown-ups did sometimes. Usually, we would just carry on playing, not too concerned. Maybe we would have started to find it weird as we got older, but we didn't have to wait long before we started experiencing it ourselves.

It was months before I heard it. Knock knock! I slammed my eyes shut immediately. One Mississippi, two. Mississippi. Danny, your dinner's ready. Mum called out. Amy, get your brother. Dad shouted, it's getting cold. Seven, Mississippi, eight Mississippi.

Danny, help me. Amy's voice was piercing, and I scrunched my eyes closed tighter. She's dying. Mum cried out. For God's sakes, Danny, help us. Dad's voice was so loud that I was sure his face was only inches away from mine. 19 Mississippi, 20 Mississippi. Danny, we need to get out. Danny, we need to get out at this house right now. Come with us. I didn't know who was speaking.

It was all of them at once shouting and banging. We're going to have to leave him. It's not safe in here. Danny, you need to come. come with us. 32, Mississippi, 33 Mississippi. Don't get me wrong. I wanted to open my eyes. I wanted to so badly.

But their voices were so close and so real. But all I could think was my dad's warning. Under no circumstances. The awful things I was hearing frightened me, but made me more determined to just keep counting. I lost count several times, somewhere in the 300s and the 400s, so I went back to the last number I remembered saying in my head,

just to be safe. Looking back, I imagine I sat there with my eyes scrunched tight, my hands clasped over my ears for at least 20 minutes. When I felt safe to open them again, Mom, Dad, and Amy were all next to me staring at me. I burst into tears. Amy looked confused. I knew immediately that she hadn't heard the knocking.

She looked a bit frightened, too. In the past, it was our parents that would close their eyes, and we never thought much of it. But there she was, on her own. The rest of us sat with our eyes closed, while she was. while she just watched and wondered when she would start hearing it too. Mum and dad both hugged me, which was a rarity for them. Then Amy started crying and joined the hug too.

They told me I'd done so well and that they were proud of me. I didn't feel proud of myself at all. I just remember thinking that I wanted to go back to being a little kid forever. and never hear the knocking again. What did you hear? Amy whispered to me that night. Our room was small and our beds were close enough that we could whisper to each other easily.

Mum and Dad had told us that soon they were going to turn the home office into another bedroom because in a little while we wouldn't want to share a room anymore. When they told us, were both relieved. As much as Amy and I got along, we were getting older and sharing the space was getting more difficult. But that night, I was glad she was there. I wasn't sure how to answer. I didn't want to scare her by telling her exactly what I'd heard. Yet, I also wanted her to be prepared. Our parents hadn't told us exactly what to expect. Just that we might hear.

scary or upsetting things, and that it was the knocking, trying to trick us to open our eyes. I wondered whether it would have been better or worse if they'd been more specific to prepare me. I didn't know. It was... It was scary, Amy. It's hard not to open your eyes. It's really hard. When it happens, just...

Just keep counting. Don't believe anything you hear. She sniffed, and I realized she was crying again. In a way, seeing it happen to me and seeing how upset I got afterwards, seemed to scare her more than anything. Or maybe she was scared of the unknown, realizing it would start happening to her soon and she didn't know when. She dealt with the first time quite well considering. I wasn't sure what she heard, but for me, it was even worse than the first time.

I heard banging and thudding, and our dog whimpering and crying. I heard laughing, although I couldn't tell whose voice it was. When I did open my eyes, our dog was, of course, napping on the couch, legs sprawled out, content as could be. Mom and Dad's eyes were already open. They probably didn't count all the way to 500 like we had to. Presumably, we were given the number 500 to be completely sure that we didn't open them too early. And I counted as honestly and carefully as I could every time, which meant that I never opened my eyes before they did. Amy must have taken it seriously too, because her eyes stayed closed a couple minutes longer.

She didn't cry afterwards like I had, but she was quiet for the rest of the night. Our parents ordered pizza that night, and they even let us order our own mini-individual pizzas so we didn't have to argue about toppings, but Amy just nibbled at hers and said she wasn't hungry. When I whispered good night to her that night, she just rolled over without answering. But not long after, when she thought she thought, I thought I was asleep, I heard her sobbing into her pillow. I didn't say anything. Maybe I should have, but I didn't want her to know I'd heard. As distressing as the situation was, the knocking only happened once every few months, so in between that, we lived life as normal,

or at least as normal as it could be in a family like ours. Our parents had told us that we only needed to close our eyes when we heard knocking at home. But it was hard not to do it instinctively. One day at school, another teacher came to our classroom to ask Mrs. Thorpe if he could borrow some calculators. He knocked on the classroom door before walking in and I instinctively closed my eyes and covered my ears. As I sat there with my eyes closed and thought about it, I knew I didn't have to do this at school, but I couldn't bring myself to open them

in case I was remembering wrong or in case maybe dad had been wrong. I was understandably looking back, simply terrified at that point of the sound of knocking. Of course, I didn't hear the awful things I heard when it happened at home. I just heard my teacher calling to get my attention, asking if I was going to sleep and the other kids laughing. Still, I couldn't bring myself to open my eyes until I reach 500. My parents were called in to discuss my concerning behavior, but they downplayed it to the school,

as me going through a phase of rebellious behavior. The school dropped it, of course. It wasn't like I I'd done anything wrong, really. I wasn't in trouble exactly. They were just worried and confused. I'd already been known as somewhat of a weird kid, and this incident cemented my reputation. I had a couple of friends, but they weren't close friends, and they weren't the kind of friends I didn't fight for dinner or anything.

I guess that suited my parents, since it made everything easier. Amy was different. Amy seemed to change after the first time she heard it. Or maybe it was nothing to do with that. Maybe it was just growing up. But the girl who had cried and hugged me after the first time I heard the knocking disappeared.

She became popular at school and soon liked to argue with mum and dad about everything and everything and anything. If they told her we were having chicken for dinner, she only wanted pork. If they told her she was getting a hundred pounds, she wanted two hundred. If they told her the sky was blue, it was green. Amy and I didn't argue, really, but we became distant.

She didn't seem to dislike me exactly. If anything, she seemed completely indifferent to me, which hurt more. When I tried to speak to her about anything, she'd seem awkward and embarrassed, like I was a stranger to her. With my lack of friends, not having a sister to talk to made me feel lonelier than ever. I was hospitalized for severe depression at age 14. I won't go into details, but it was a bad time in my life. I don't even have many memories of the hospital. The ones I do have are dreamlike and distant, and I'm not sure if they were even real.

Nevertheless, eventually, I was deemed healthy enough to get out. I remember that day clearly, because when our parents came to pick me up, Amy came too, and she ran over and hugged me, really hugged me, like she did when we were kids. The car ride home could not have been more different than the car ride in. Our parents put on the radio and we all sang cheesy pop songs. Amy sat in the back with me and chatted away to me about her friend's new boyfriend and the new skirt she'd bought that Dad wouldn't let her wear in public because he said it looked like a belt.

I remember looking in the mirror to see Mum and Dad's reactions. and seeing how they smiled as they listened to Amy complain about them to me as if they weren't there. I spent the car ride home in a state of euphoria. We were in the living room that evening watching a movie. Our parents had let me choose the movie, and Amy hadn't argued at all. She just smiled and told me that it was a great choice, even though I knew she couldn't have hated it more. I was on my second slice of pizza when it happened.

Knock, knock. All four of us closed our eyes in unison. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. Please, please stop. Get off me. You're hurting me. I ignored the sound of Mum's desperate voice the best I could. She's okay, this isn't real. Five Mississippi, six Mississippi.

You're a fucking embarrassment, said Amy's voice. Nobody likes you, you know, or all just pretending so you don't end up going all bat-shick crazy again. You're going to have to do better than that. I'm not opening my eyes. Eleven Mississippi, 12 Mississippi. This time wasn't as bad as it had been before. I thought of the rest of my family. they were all counting two. I wondered what number they were all up to. I could hear the movie still playing in the background and tried to concentrate on this story. 374, Mississippi, 375, Mississippi.

Amy, what have you done? No. No. Help her, Gary. The main character in the movie had just found out that her new boyfriend was actually her half-brother as they'd been born from the same sperm donor. It wasn't a very good twist since there had been no hints whatsoever leading up to this moment. It was a bit disappointing. I wondered whether Amy would continue pretending to like it after that. 456 Mississippi, 457 Mississippi. When I opened my eyes, I knew immediately that something was wrong. Mom and Dad didn't look over at me at all. They were crowded around Amy, who was sitting on the floor in silence, staring straight ahead,

as if looking right through them both. I don't know what Amy heard that time that made her open her eyes. I don't know why that time was different. compared to all the other times. I just know that, after that, Amy was gone forever. She wasn't dead. No, it was worse than that.

That might seem like a horrible thing to say, but it's true. Never again did Amy smile or complain or argue. In fact, she never spoke another word. She was still alive for all intents and purposes, but she wasn't really. She would eat when food was put to her lips. My mom had to shower her and take her to the bathroom and put her to bed. They had to take her to a doctor, of course.

The doctors concluded that there was no evidence of any injuries or damage to her brain at all. They were simply baffled. I remember mom and dad getting several visits from social services. Luckily, the knocking didn't happen when the social workers were there. I remember a lot of hospital visits with a lot of different doctors, but in the end, nobody knew what was wrong with Amy or what could be done to help. I changed then. I stopped being the weird, quiet kid.

I got angry, you see. It was okay when the other kids at school were making fun of me, but when they started making fun of my sister, I had to teach them a lesson. After several fights, I was excluded from school and had to go to a specialist school for those with behavioral problems, with small class sizes and a lot of security in place.

I was angry at everyone, I was angry at Amy for opening her eyes. I was angry at myself for being in hospital and missing out on the time I could have spent with Amy in the last months of her being herself. I was angry at my parents, too. I couldn't even articulate what I was angry about. I blamed them for the whole knocking thing, whatever it was. They'd never been able to explain what it was.

explain what it was or what it meant or what had happened to Amy when she opened her eyes. My anger turned into a burning hatred of them. They didn't deserve it, really, but I needed to blame someone and I couldn't bear to blame myself. Once I was old enough to move out and live alone, I sort of got my life together. I mean, I got my life together and the sense that I didn't end up in prison or dead. Life became much easier without the knocking, and without the constant reminder of what happened to Amy. I got myself a minimum wage job where I was treated like shit for eight hours a day and got my girlfriend knocked up when we

were both far too young, but still, better than I expected to turn out. I didn't visit my parents again, which is something I deeply regret. They continued caring for Amy who never recovered until the day they died. Ironically enough, considering their preparedness, they died in a house fire. Amy survived because she'd been taken to the zoo by one of my parents' friendly neighbors in order to give my parents a rest. When they came back and found out what happened, Amy apparently didn't flinch or react at all. So, Amy moved in, with me, into my shitty apartment.

I was a bit ashamed that I hadn't seen her in years, but to be honest, I'm convinced that she isn't even in there anymore. So she's not aware of whether I've been to visit her or not. It's not the personal care that bothers me, or the way she still stares straight ahead, as if she's looking right through you. Those things were difficult to get used to, but I did get used to them. What bothers me the most is that ever since she's moved in, I've been hearing knocking. Knock, knock, I closed my eyes. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. You did this to me.

It's Amy's voice, a voice I haven't heard in so long. Four Mississippi. Five Mississippi. I'd forgotten how long counting to 500 Mississippi takes. It's definitely much, much longer than five minutes. Anyway, it's the weekend, which means my daughter will be getting dropped off here soon. She's going to turn 10 next week,

so I guess I'm going to have to explain to her about the knock-es. For your bonus episode, creepy presents A Family Matter, written by Leanne Desmond and narrated by Michelle Kane. My town is not one you will have heard of. That's deliberate. It's a dangerous place, a dark one built on cursed land. There are werewolves in the woods, something old and ancient under the pond and once. and once only our dead can return home. It isn't easy. Coming back means denying whatever afterlife awaits, turning your back on the light or its opposite,

and making the long, difficult walk back across the blistering sands. You condemn yourself to an eternity of wandering, of loneliness and introspection. Not a choice many are willing to make. Those who return are always one of two things. Angry. Or desperate. 400 people live in my town.

Overall, we're mostly solemn, careful to keep mostly to ourselves. Family means everything, because it's all we have. Occasionally, someone moves away. They get married, try to settle elsewhere. But we all come back here in the end. My sister Maya always finds. felt like she belonged somewhere else. Our mother died giving birth to her,

but none of us ever really blamed her for that. Sometimes bad things just happen. Our house was old, and we didn't realize how dark it was until she came along. Her innate vibrancy, illuminating every corner of the old crumbling cottage we called home. We don't have a father now. He left after Maya was born.

We were raised by our grandmother, older than time, hobbled now by the weight of passing years. She was Maya's opposite, dark where my sister was light and I was gray, balanced precariously between the two, waiting for the scales to tip. Together we were whole. A family. This place is dangerous, certainly, but we protected each other. You soon learn the paths that are safe. safe and the ones where the hungry things roam. Our family has lived here a long time.

We made bargains, mutually beneficial arrangements that mean none of us will be stolen away in the middle of the night by the long-limbed white creatures that haunt the fields. But living here takes something from you, eats your light until you're a shadow of what you could be. And I couldn't bear that happening to Maya. I stood on the Boeing porch as she danced gracefully around the sun-dabbled pines, long, glant hair flowing in the early spring breeze. And it was in that moment I knew that I would not let this town have her.

I couldn't know then that I wasn't the only one watching. Someone else in town had seen she was special, and they coveted her. at the same time wanting no one else to have her after them. She didn't want to leave, but I think a part of her was relieved, just as I was when I regularly received the photographs, showing her with friends and eventually with her girlfriend. She was making a life away from here, in a way none of us had been able to.

She left before this place could sink its claws into her. It hurt to see her moving away from us, but the pain was sweet. She'd never be tainted like we were, or so I thought at the time. Our grandmother died suddenly. All bodies wear out eventually, but her death was not natural, nor was it easy. A spell went wrong, badly so, and rather than released what she had raised, she took it. into herself, rotting away in a matter of minutes, miles from home. I tried to heap the news to myself. Maya would return otherwise, and if she did so, might not be quite as willing to leave me here alone. She found out anyway, though she later said she'd been thinking for some time about returning.

As much as I wanted to deny it, this place was part of her, too, fused into her blood and bones. She arrived without warning, coming inside, bowed down by the huge backpack she'd carried all the way from the next town over. I was equally furious and ecstatic, shouting and protest but pulling her to me even as I did so. There are few bonds sweeter than those between sisters. She made me want to be better, and in another life, I might have been. We cried together, washed our grandmother's skin, and plated beads into her long, dark hair. We sewed the burial shroud together, and Maya painted the symbols onto the marker. We buried her beneath our favorite tree, the one with the dryhead.

Maya lingered on past three watching days, when our grandmother's body was most at risk, and I knew then as she planned to stay. I was working out how exactly to change her mind without hurting her when she disappeared. I went to the next town to sell the statues I had carved. I used the money to buy my sister's ticket back to the city. When I returned in the thickening gloom of early evening, she was already gone. I found her three days later. Body left on the outskirts of my property.

A deliberate act and no doubt part of his house. fantasy. The thing that stayed with me, through the many sleepless nights that followed, was her hair, or rather, the lack of it. He had cut it off. Those beautiful honey strands I had combed almost every day of her life lay around her, stained with her blood. She was missing her jewelry, as he had wanted to keep some parts of her clothes. so that he might relive her final moments, there first together. I buried her beside my grandmother. I tried everything to find out who he was,

but someone in our town had done this. Outsiders never make it through the woods alive. He knew how to counteract spells, to hide the traces of him that I might have found. There is also one rule in our town that no one ever, breaks, and even in the depths of my despair, I was no different. We don't involve the authorities in village business. Six months passed, the grass beginning to grow over the two graves outside the house. Eventually, the crisp red-orange autumn leaves covered the ground and tucked

them in tight. I can't speak of who I became by the time winter's bite hung heavy in the air. Maya's death left a gaping, bleeding void in me, into which the shadows crept. I was no longer gray, but black, as dark within as the gritty soil that covered the two people I'd loved most in the world. The turning time had approached the day when the veils between the worlds are pulled paper thin, filled with holes through which the determined dead can pour. I knew my sister would come to me, the same way I knew whoever killed her would try very hard to stop this from happening. Death is bad, true enough, but there is something worse, a ritual we call dispersal.

The dead are weak by the time the journey is done, diminished and vulnerable. The right combination of herbs and spoken words can scatter them to the void, condemning them to the endless, uncaring, nothing. It's cruel, forbidden, but then so is murder, and my sister's attacker had no problem with that. My second worry was that I didn't know the route my Maya would take. She knew the roads we walked every day,

but the dead need not be scared of the sharp-toothed denizens of the forest, and so she might take the quicker path home. Despite my many abilities, I can't be in more than one place at a time, so I knew there was a terrible risk that I could miss her. Lose her again. I might be too late to save her for a second time. I think even then I knew he was one step ahead of me, had likely planned this for years before he had even taken her. It had not been intuition that had brought Maya home, but words in the same. the depth of the night, our grandmother, trying very hard to tell her something, but fading before

my sister could understand. I wondered what my grandmother had been trying to say. The dark dawned at last, and I left the house. The turning day had cast its strange spell over the land, and the air was alive with the whispers of a veil torn asunder. The restless dead awake at last. I burned with the need for justice. No, now that is a lie and I promised to be honest. I wanted revenge, my pound of flesh. I donned the black robes, painted my face, and wove my spells, so that I might make Maya's journey a little easier. I wished I could be beside her the whole way, holding her hand and have her tell me another story. One with fair maidens and knights, a world where the good always wins in the end. Not this rotten, unfair place we are condemned to endure. The woods were dark and deep,

and I, like Robert Frost, had promises to keep. Blanketed by the night, the mile stretched ahead like an endless empty highway, and I felt more alone than ever before. All was silent, even the wolves stayed snug and safe in their burrows. The crows already flown west, to the deadlands and the masters who waited there. The air was cold, overripe berries hanging gloated and leaking from their branches. Everything smelled like wet dirt and distant graves yawned open, like hungry mountains. like hungry mouths.

I hummed the song I had soothed her with as a child when she had still been scared of the woods before she had made her peace with our strange town. I hoped she might hear it, be guided to me sooner. For as much as I wanted revenge, in that moment I wanted nothing more than to see her again. The hours passed, and there was no sign of her.

and I felt something inside me twist, tearing places unseen, for despair gnaws readily on the bones of hope. I think it was then that I realized something, a huge flaw in my plan that I hadn't even considered. Most of the town's inhabitants die naturally, a few from mishaps like my grandmother or sometimes from accidents. People fall from ladders everywhere, even here. It had been a long time since someone was murdered, and because of that, I forgot something my grandmother had once told me. The souls of the murdered are different, often confused, drawn first to the place in which they died. I've already said that the murderer covered his tracks well. Maya had been found in that overgrown field, but had not.

died there. In that terrible moment, I knew I would not see her again. He had known she would return, and of course he had prepared for that as well, possibly before he had even killed her. I held at the blood-tinged moon and just for a moment. I heard my pain reflected somewhere distant, as if what was left of my sister was lost in the wind. I felt her absence all over again and a wound within, barely scabbed over, pursed open and blood anew. There was nothing I could do to end her suffering any more than I could end my own, no spells I could weave to bind her scattered pieces back together.

There would be no goodbye, no whispered words of love to soothe our raw, weeping edges. Maya was gone forever, and the world was worse for it. I had forgotten the one important thing about my sister's return and had doomed us both to an eternity apart. But I wasn't the only one who was distracted. Her murderer had been as excited as I was for my sister's return, albeit in a different way, and I had no doubt that he'd overlooked one important thing. My sister wasn't the only member of my family to die in the past year,

and was not the only one who could return. I hadn't expected it myself until I turned to find the shade of my grandmother behind me. She had sensed something awful was coming to our family before it happened. She had decided to call upon a powerful entity when she didn't entirely trust. She was too old, too worn out to stand against the entity when he demanded the ultimate payment. She gave her life to see ahead of time my sister's murder, but died before being able to do anything to bring her. prevented. I said that some spirits are desperate, others angry, and I'm sure you can guess which of the two

motivated my grandmother to make that long, dangerous walk back to me. And the loneliest part of the night we came together and made our plans against him. The murderer was not someone I knew personally, but I had made it my business to change that. After all, I had little. I had little else to do. He lived alone in a home as old as mine, on the outskirts of town, split over two levels. The staircase was stone, uneven and mossy, easy to take an unexpected temple in the depths of the night. I watched them carry his body out, his neck lolling strangely, but he did not have another mark on him, for I didn't want anyone to suspect he might return on the next turning day. I said that dispersal was cruel, but it is not the worst thing you can do to the dead.

My grandmother taught me that. We have our own version of the voodoo doll, this one not designed to punish an external foe, but instead to bind a spirit within it. Traditionally, the dead are bound within small earthenware containers, a bit like a genie in a lamp. so the caster can harness their energy for more complicated spellwork. That is not my intention. He is, after all, no longer the only human monster in town.

You already know that I'm no fairy tale princess. More like the wicked witch, and I want him there forever. able to think and feel every second of his eternity. I sewed the doll over a few days, making it from one of my grandmother's old dresses, as she had suggested and stuffed it with my sister's bloody hair. I took breaks to write this. I think Maya would want her story told. Even so, I'm sure you understand that at its heart,

This is a family matter, and therefore my grandmother and sister must be included in his punishment. In one way or another. His prison has to be made from cotton, you see, because I will need somewhere to stick the pins. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at CreepyPod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through Creative Commons Share-A-like licensing or with written consent from the authors.

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