Creepy - The Bully Eater & A Ghost Story

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

The Bully Eater***Written by: Steven Roisum and Narrated by: Jimmy Ferrer***Content Warning: violence toward children***A Ghost Story***Written by: Mark Twain and Narrated by: Cole Burkhardt ***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***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.

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

Creepy presents. The bully eater. Written by Stephen Roissom and narrated by Jimmy Ferrer. My father had changed. Not for the better. He told me from his hospice bed at the hospital. Ride that bully bus one last time after I die, Abbott. This bully shit needs to stop.

He tried to sound resolute. Instead, air seemed to leave his body like a slow leaking balloon. The heart monitor beeping lazily. What do you mean, Dad? I was sitting on a couch that I pulled up near his bed. I had taken one of his old-timey notebooks and jotted down every bit of wisdom he had ever told me. I was 15 and not ready to let him go. Having his words would at least leave me with something.

This vengeance-sounding thing seemed unlike him. He was a gentle soul. Kind to everyone. No exceptions. I know someone, he said. His right pointer finger sticking up, as if stating something profound, then that finger drooped again. I thought I heard him softly say.

I met him here. I wished. What? I wished. Mom paid that statement no mind. She walked over to me. She wore her kind smile like a sticker and plastered in the middle of a face, wrecked raw in inevitable loss and sheer misery.

She said, Hun, that's his meds talking. In a voice as soft as wet tissue paper. He'd want you to remember this. She flipped it to a few pages prior. She read, Good days, like bad,

are inevitable. Mom was right. That was the best dad quote. Better than any president, civil rights leader, any none. She said loudly to dad. Honey, do you remember that one?

He waved it away. The way he was talking, it didn't sound like the same man anymore. Dad, the man with the big, big heart turned into a grumpy, curmudgeon at 36 years old. Those three words help me. I know someone. The end of the bully bus. Color me intrigued.

My dad drifted off the very next day. I kept his hand in mine, hoping he'd feel me all the way to heaven. We buried him three days later. Mom and I considered our options for the next day. Does she go to work? And do I ride the bully bus to school tomorrow? I told her they'd leave me alone. I just buried my dad.

With tears and smiles, I said to my mom. And what would Dad say? We said together. Life goes on. There will always be plenty of shit in the barn, to shovel tomorrow. When your head is busy morning, you don't spend a valuable few seconds checking out the weather forecast before catching the bus.

I was nipple hard cold in a sweatshirt and denim jacket in frigging January. Season had been so wimpy up to now. As I stood at the end of my driveway, drifts as thick as claws, already half-covered our roads. Bursts of white pummeled passing the headlights and windshields like common. Makazi bats. For those of us who live outside of town, we are rarely big Mother Nature's pal in the winter. Notebooks stuck out a little bit from a ripped side pocket in my backpack that I pressed against me. The bully bus arrived on time.

Of course, that wasn't its official name. The bus was actually number nine in school's fleet. During the months of my dad slowly shriveled up in our leather couch. He couldn't drive me to school, and mom worked 20 miles in the other direction, so I sucked it up. I told Dad the stories as he lay there on the couch, leaving out the really bad stuff. I could see his fists tighten, only to open again, like flowers as he drifted off. Nine people bullied me on the number nine bus. The others simply looked away.

I hated them all. They saw me like a euphoric drug they couldn't quit. I was fat, a screamer, without muscle to fight back. My chubby face often turned beat red. My eyes bulged. The bullies laughed all of that up. Like psychopathic house cats. I saw a dad's guy nearly right away.

The bus stores swung open. I trumped up the usual three steps in my brittle tennis shoes. He was the guy behind the steering wheel. I'll refer to him as the driver, gray-haired. His blue eyes looked a little too wide and giddy for my taste. He wore a scruffy scarf that wrapped around his mouth, down to his upper shoulders. He set a muffled, hi-up at Blankford. With the same verbal giddy up as a toddler shouting,

Dard just a bit, I grumbled out a cranky, howdy, as I moseyed on by. My gaze remained fixed on the middle aisles as the bus's rumbling diesel engine jostled my already nerve-wrecked wobbly legs. On both sides sat a gauntlet of trippers, nut kickers, liars, ignores, stabbers, laughers, and gut-punchers. More kickers than any NFL football team would see in a deadest. I was there all you could beat prey buffet. The driver smiled at me, sporting, and I'm ready when you are sort of sly grin. He said, Big Day ahead of you. Ah, the good ones.

Just as inevitable as the bad ones. Am I right or not? Today is going to be a good one. It was definitely him. Was he packing a gun? Dad would never send a shooter, so I thought. Maybe this was a private detective. I loved that idea.

Dad adored cop shows. I chose to believe that one. So perhaps you're wondering, with a bit of dread. Did I want to kill them? No. That's for the stupid and unimaginative. I wanted them to be arrested, cooling their heads behind the bars of the county clink. I'd be their only visit.

My fantasy is that the court would leave it up to me to decide when they could be released. And I'd just keep putting that decision off. Past homecoming, snow days, prom, graduation, college. The driver said, Open seat back there. I ran to it. My seat. Green colored and bumps from decades of butt support.

Good freaking enough. A fortress. I assume my defensive stance, which I called my shields up, my back against the wall with my mega-sized backpack on my lap, my legs up on the seat, with my feet not quite in the aisle, although today I thought of all days they'd leave me alone. Let me reemphasize that point and take it further. Ha! Ha!

Movement nearby at the edge of my peripheral vision. Someone smelling like an unwhite butt stuck a stinky hand in my face, while another grabbed my paper notebook. The thief even said zoink as he swiped it out of my bag. They were the stash twins, Russ and Mick, a fraternal. They looked like basset hounds smacked in the face wet two by force. That was their schick. Finding something of mine and tossing it out the window. My quotable dad notebook was now in their hands.

Please don't. Oh, God, I pleaded. Take my heart instead. Not this. Let me have this one thing. Please. Please. Gleefully shaking their heads, no, they slid the bus window open and flung my tablet into the voracious storm.

Pages flailed about in the wind, then landed only to be buried. under a salt truck right behind us. You assholes! You couldn't just give me that? The snowstorm continued to wall up against the windows. The driver cranked the wheel and ran us into a shallow ditch and an explosion of snow. Everyone screamed, me included. I could see my house, maybe a mile at the most.

The driver rose. The scarf remained around his mouth and neck. As he stood, I noticed his left leg was a bit cock-eyed, as if broke and then mended terribly. Some of his fingers were bent in different directions, still good enough to point them with a scolding finger. I've seen enough, he hollered. I wanted to see how bad, and boy, are you guys assholes. No one helped. No, drop the bones.

He swatted them out of the bully's hands. No calling for help. No recording. No podcasting. No, God damn. Memes. And he stomped on all of them. The boy who threw the notebook.

Stand up. I've seen this on countless bus rides. The showdown between the driver and the rule breaker. This felt different. The driver seemed unhinged. He spooled the scar from around his neck and the car. from around his neck and stood up in my seat and saw that man's bottom half of his face was pretty much all teeth with barely a hint of neck or chin.

I felt my internal organs were crinkling and sighed. I managed a quivery. Oh, God. Once Russ saw the guy's mouth, he winced. It kept standing. Unbreakable bully pride. I looked at the driver to see if any sign of a mask or any. No. He was for real. He asked, what's your name, son? Russ, you don't want to sit back down?

I'm fine right here. Even that sentence grew faint, wavered, like he forgot to breathe. The driver's jaw disconnected from the rest of his mouth, dropping lower, swinging freely. It opened wide. From his mouth came to deafening whoosh, like a wind tunnel in reverse, pulling nearly everything towards it. I wasn't even the target, and I could feel myself lifting from my own seat, my hair whirling. Then came the blood. Russ let go. He had to.

The sheer pull proved too strong. He helplessly flew down. the middle aisle, his limbs flailing behind him. His head dove into the driver's mouth face first. A stranger bit down with a wet crunch and tore it off of Russ's body in one pull. Blood pinwheeled everywhere as he tossed the body aside. My now dead bully didn't scream. Why would he? He lost his nose, mouth, eyes and the parts of the skull they rode on. I could hear a piecemeal grinding of Russ's face apart with his teeth, cracking like jawbreakers. I buckled over.

This was too much. Dad allowed this? My dad? No way. Everyone was shrieking, crying. Climbing over seats to get back off the bus. Others huddled, their arms and hands up, as if that would shield themselves. I wasn't any better.

He hollered out, people, people, people. Slow yourselves. He looked at his pointer finger and shot it, pantomime, like it was a gun and his thumb was the hammer. He pointed at Miku dropped like a clipped marionette. Others cried out. He pointed his finger again, leveling it against the other bullies. They all fell, except me. What did you do? I asked.

I can control minds. I simply turned them off for a moment. I thought you'd find my finger-gun humorous. And right now I want us all to march in unison over there. He pointed behind me. I looked. My house was faint, partially covered by flying snow, and it was doable, maybe a mile away, only fields between us and there.

All the bullies were slumped now, fallen over themselves, draped over the seats, limp in the middle aisle. He clapped his hands once. Let's rise, everybody. And holy shit they'd do. did. From what I could tell, no one had his or her eyes open. Their heads lulled to the sides. Now watch this, he said to me. Those in the aisle marched in place. The others got up and stood there too, and a line that stretched well past my seat. Nobody was touching me. He said, Why do it out in the cold? Your house is right here.

I didn't ask for any of this. He said, Your dad gave me all the orders I needed. What's in it for you? He promised bullies. And that's what I eat. There's malice in the meat. He went,

One last time with his finger gun. This time aimed at me. He said, I call myself piecemeal. The last thing I heard was, Because I like to eat bullies, peace, by peace, by peace. I must have marched through the snow, too. I woke at home again, paralyzed from the waist down, still standing, dripping from the melting snow.

We stood in the dining room, a big oval table with the picture window to the right. and unfortunately I couldn't see out of it. The damn white stuff kept piling. He had brought the body of Rustash with him. He now laid upon the table as limp as a CPR dummy. From the looks of him, it was clear that a piecemeal had taken a few more bites along the spine. I looked across the table. There stood Mick, motionless except his eyes and mouth.

Please, Abbott, please, oh please. Tears flowed down his cheeks. Piecemeal stood slightly alongside of us, looking at my eyes and Mix and mine again. I noticed something on the left side of Mick's face, drawn on the forehead, down his eyelid and to his cheek, was the number two. I looked to my left and found everyone else, with only a couch separating the dining room and living room. Bullies sat in the living room chairs, sofa, kitchen chairs, pulled into the room just for this reason, seemingly paralyzed like lump sacks of flour. I looked at my hands and realized I had full control in both. He found me trustworthy, maybe thinking he'd still win me over with all of this.

My fellow passengers on the bully bus sat still with their jackets with a thick, fat, sharpy numbers all over the face. Perhaps in the number he planned to gobble them. Excuse me, please, said piecemeal. Hello, everyone. Thanks for being here today. The day that our boy Abbott Blankford gets justice from you weenies. What you likely can tell is that I can control your bodies. So now, each and every one of you were paralyzed.

That's what good predators do, has paralyzed their preyses. Ray, do you know what's coming next? He tapped his brain, urging them to use their noggins. You saw it before. He talked sarcastically, mockingly slow. And now? Knowing everyone was in a stupor thanks to him. I'm gonna eat you.

Mick started shrieking. Abbott, I'm sorry that we hurt you. My voice wavered. Just stop talking, Mick. Russ's dead body remained on the table. Peacemeal, I never wanted this. Dad wouldn't have either. Oh, exactly like this.

What did you expect? I'd whip out a guitar and sing kumbaya with these shits. We'll keep them in their seats. And one by one. I'll dine. The still paralyzed bullies whimpered when they heard that. I curtly shush them. Save your breath.

I didn't know if their lungs were even working. I could be dead before their turn at the dining table. He told me. Your father loved you. I barely heard him. Couldn't keep my eyes off everyone else. He wanted to make sure that I remind you of that again and again through this deliciously awful experience.

He smiled with his jagged teeth. I sobbed like in the horror movies when the hero realized the sheer awfulness he inevitably has to face. Evil had taken the wheel. I said, not like this. And my God, he bit a human being's face clean off. The image stayed in my mind like a throbbing migraine and I couldn't shake it. You doubt me. I'm the one he muttered to after two in the morning.

I was the guy in the hospital room with you and your mother went back to your house to spend the night in your own beds. Do not tell me that I don't know your father. This is precisely what he wanted. There are creatures always willing to grant the dying final wish. We wait. We hide. I simply walked into his room and soaked up all the want.

He told me your story, and it left me hungry. I told him to wish for me. And then he did. Was Dad even lucid at the time? I couldn't imagine him in agreeing to any of this. Something changed him before he died? How? Was he bullied into asking for this?

During that ran, I felt whatever control he had over my body waning. I lifted my right leg ever so slightly. I could feel it in my left, too. I knew I could walk. I was more limber than the rest of them. Did he trust me? Had he made the mistake, if that was the case? My heart galloped faster.

My thoughts as narrow as the thinnest of laser beams. Do it. Do it. I shoved piecemeal into the dining room floor and scream for everyone else. Run! He got up, so I shoved him right back down again. I heard him hiss as he landed down on a screwy left leg. You pushed me.

You're a bully, too! His eyes gleamed in rage. He reacted like this was a big aha moment. A twist that he didn't see coming. The bullies were rousing. Some prayed while sitting there, others rocking back and forth onto their legs. Some were already on their feet, too dumbstruck to move. I shouted loud and quivery.

Everyone run or I start kicking balls. One cried out. Where do we go? And I said, not here. I took a sharp left down our downstairs hall, a sink to the side, and ahead stood the bench that had. held our winter coats, gloves, and stocking hats. Nothing to throw in his way.

My mouth saw no reason to shut up. Dad didn't send you at all, did he? I bet piecemeal was convinced that I was going to head out the door right up ahead, into the breezeway and then into our garage. Yes, he did, he leaped at me. A bigger temper than mine. He whisked it.

I screamed when I felt his warm breath against the back of my neck. He roared when I got away from him again. His ruined leg gave me an advantage. Piecemeal is a stupid name. Slowest guy in the gym was now the one to beat. Taking a clean 180-degree turn, I nearly thundered up my creaking wooden steps. He snagged my foot. I screamed and hit him with a swift kick in the nose, landing a pleasing crunch. I wiggled out of my canvas shoe and kept on scampering. Once at the top floor, I twisted onto my back and landed another savage kick. At this point, I'm pleading to Dad to be there when I get to heaven. I expected piecemeal to steal back my mind. Nothing. His growls incandescent with rage. I'm not the only one who turns

stupid when pissed. The carpeted upstairs hallway stretched long and wide. It was simply a footchase now. I toppled a bookshelf as I ran. I swore to God that if I had an idea, I had run with it. I dodged into our family bedroom and slammed the door shut and locked it. I yanked the mirror off the wall and jumped into the tub. I wrapped a towel around my right hand and punched it.

He pulled that door open with his bare hands and fired up the vacuum in his mouth. The shower curtains blew right off the rings. Hell, the wall behind me began to bend forward. I could hear the wood and metal pipes groan from the effort, leaving me huddling in my tub. I threw the mirror shards in the air. They weren't arrows but landed their target just the same. He coughed and staggered back. Two landed right in his mouth. Others followed as fast as a speedball pitcher. chucking darts. His lips, his right eye, another speared into his neck. I was right. He couldn't shut himself right off. He unleashed a gurgled scream, crethumped onto the floor. Pond of red bloomed beneath him. Mick showed up in the doorway. He and I sat on piecemeal during his last spasms of life.

Mick said, I'm sorry I've been wrong the shit we did to you. I didn't have anything to say to him. You beat a monster. No one's going to touch you now. That's great, Mick. Now if only every picked-on kid in the world had a bully-eating monster to kill, everything would be cake. Someone did get on the bus radio.

A bully showed some smarts. Look outside and the pigs are flying. I'll believe anything now. I'm too angry sometimes. My left hand bled like a mother. Mom came to the rescue, along with the paramedics and deputies. My driveway had more lights than a rural airport and runway. No one was arrested.

I silently wished the cops would at least take some of them. Mom wrapped a coat around me and wetted some towels to clean off the grass. gore, then a huge bandage. I wanted to hurl. Body-reaking stream of it. They actually closed down the school for a few days. Actually, entirely retired bus number nine. I had hoped that sat parked in a really shitty shed somewhere.

We're pissing raccoons and pooping birds hobnob. Most of the bullies stayed in school. In their own way, they all apologized to me. A nod, a gentle punch in the arm, a quick knowing smile. He even hugs. If Mick was any more grateful to me, he'd be humping my leg. I still didn't want to talk to him. I agreed to a fist bump.

It was much better than leaving him hanging for all that he had lost. Maybe for all that we both had lost. A few nights later, I went to bed after belting a shot of NyQuil. The wind pushed the house almost like it wanted us out of the way. A smack at the window. Not flapping, like some misdirected bird, not like a branch. A very familiar green notebook sat pressed up against the glass. I moved fast before the winds changed again.

I bolted to the window, slipped back as metal locks and grabbed it. Notebook hit the floor, warped, intact. so I opened it. It was flooded with my dad's quotes. All the entries. And my gut sank. A new message. I can send more.

Just wish for them. Did something land on our roof? Is something coiling around the house? My home was groaning from the pressure. Things outside gibbered. Bullies. Bullies. Please. I swallowed hard and read the new message again. Just wished for them. I sat on my bed,

wondering if this was really real or if someone was playing pull my finger with reality. I smacked the notebook. The last quote, tainted everything else to rot. Then I screamed. No words. Just a primal howl of beer and sorrow. No. This wasn't over. At least I thought so at the time. I managed to... No. Mom rushed in.

She grabbed the notebook and read the new entry, and she dropped it too. She covered my ears as she pressed me to hear her side. Whoever did this, it's not funny. She wasn't talking to me. She said she didn't know whom she was talking to at all. This is not something a loving, caring for. father would do. Noises stopped.

I had said no, wish refused. Mom looked at the window. Huh. No one there. She took the tablet. I didn't ask for it back. I finally accepted that it was likely a trickster. A prank.

A bully. Certainly not my dad. He is in heaven. Okay. I wasn't fully. sure of it, but I hoped. I sometimes thought of him out there, with these mad revenge thoughts percolating in his mind like eternal Starbucks coffee beans.

Sometimes people can be broken. Then they can turn into bullies too. Even in death, my favorite of dad's sayings remained. Good days, like bad, are inevitable. Life did get good again. Principal said bullying literally stopped after that day. So maybe Dan's wish did what it was supposed to do. Even if shit went sideways, it worked.

Poor Russ. I'm not sure how I felt about that. What I did know is that there are creatures out there ready to feed on kids being inhumane to other kids, with empty bellies and very, specific appetites. Maybe I was the only teen who knew about them. Maybe others did too. Probably not.

But what if I'm the only one willing to stop them? Creepy Presents A Ghost Story Written by Mark Twain and narrated by Cole Burkart. I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years until I came. The place had long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence.

I seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead that first night I climbed up to my quarters. For the first time in my life, a superstitious dread came over me. And as I turned a dark angle of the stairway and an invisible cobweb swan its lazy woof into my face and clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom. I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mold and the darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there, thinking of by-dawn times, recalling old sands, scenes and summoning half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past, listening, in fancy,

to the voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once-familiar songs that nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to a sadder and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail, the angry beating of the rain against the pains diminished to a tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the distance, and left no sound behind. The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I rose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed and lay listening to the

rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters till they lulled me to sleep. I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found myself awake and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still. All but my own heart. I could hear. it beat. Presently, the bedclothes began to slip away slowly towards the foot of the bed, as if one were pulling them. I could not stir. I could not speak.

Still, the blanket slipped deliberately away till my breast was uncovered. Then, with a great effort, I seized them and drew them over my head. I waited, listened, waited. Once more that steady pull began, and once more I lay torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt a faint tug and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain.

It grew stronger and stronger. stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time the blingets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of the bed. Beated drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more dead than alive. Presently, I heard a heavy footstep in my room, the step of an elephant, it seemed to me. It was not like anything human, but it was moving from me. There was a relief in that. I heard it approached the door, pass out without moving bolt or lock, and wander away among the dismal corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it passed,

and then silence reigned once more. When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself, This is a dream, simply a hideous dream. And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself that it was a dream. dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips, and I was happy again. I got up and struck a light, and when I found that the locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. I took my pipe and lit it, and was just sitting down before the fire when down went the pipe out of my nerveless fingers, the blood forsoot my cheeks,

and my placid breathing was cut short with a gasp. In the ashes of the hearth, side by side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison mine was but an infants. Then I had a visitor, and the elephant tread was explained. I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a long time peering into the darkness and listening. Then, I heard a grating noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor, then the throwing down of the body and the shaking of my windows in response to the concussion.

In distant parts of the building, I heard the muffled slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the clanking of chains faintly in remote passages, and listened as the clanking grew nearer. While it wearily climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an assented rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced, I heard muttered sentences, half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently,

and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded, that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathing about my bed and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft, phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung, and glowed there a moment, and then dropped, two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. They spattered liquidly and felt warm. Intuition told me they had turned to doubts of blood as they fell. I needed no light to satisfy myself of that. Then I saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white, uplifted hands, floating bodies in the air. Floating a moment, and then disappearing. The whispering ceased and the voices and the sounds, and a solemn stillness followed.

I waited and listened. I felt that I must have light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly raised myself toward a sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand. All strength went from me, apparently, and I fell back like a stricken invalid. I then heard the rustle of a garment.

It seemed to pass to the door and go out. When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble, and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat down and fell into a dreaming contemplation of that great footprint in the ashes. By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up and the broad gas flame was slowly wilting away.

In that same moment I heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned. The tread reached my very door and paused. The light had dwindled to a sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. The door did not oh. open. And yet I felt a faint dust of air fan my cheek and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. I watched it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the thing. Gradually its cloudy folds took shape. An arm appeared, then legs, then a body. And the last,

a great, sad face looked out of the vapor. Stripped of its filmy housings, naked, muscular, and calmly, the majestic Cardiff giant loomed above me. All my misery vanished, for a child might know that no harm could come with that benedinent countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once,

and in sympathy with them, the gas flounder, blamed up brightly again. Never a lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the friendly giant. I said, why, is it nobody but you? Do you know I have been stared to death for the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish I had a chair. Here, don't try to sit down in that thing. But it was too late. He was in it before I could stop him. And down he went. I never saw a chair shivered so in my life.

Stop, stop, you'll ruin every... Too late, again. There was another crash, and another chair was resolved into its original elements. Confound it! Haven't you got any judgment at all? Do you want to ruin the furniture on the place? Here, you petrified fool, you... But it was no use.

Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed, and it was a melancholy ruin. Now what sort of way is that to do? First, you come lumbering about the place, bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry me to death, and then when I overlook the indelicacy of costume, which would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people, except in a respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex. You repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on. And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me.

You have broken off the end of your spinal column and littered up the floor with chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You are big enough to know better. Well, I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have not had a chance to sit down for a century. And the tears came into his eyes.

Poor devil, I said. I should not have been so harsh with you, and you are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor here. Nothing else can stand your weight. And besides, we cannot be sociable with you away up there above me. I want you down where I can perch on this high counting-house stool and gossip with you.

face to face. So he sat down on the floor and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sixth bath on his head, helmet fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed his ankles while I renewed the fire and exposed the flat, honeycombed bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth. What is the matter with the bottom of your feet in the back of your legs, that they are gouged up so. Infernal chillblains, I caught them clear up to the back of my head, roosting out there under Nell's farm. But I love the place.

I love it as one loves his old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I feel when I am there. We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked tired and spoke of it. Tired, he said. Well, I should think so, and now I will tell you all about it since you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the petrified man that lies across the street there in the museum. I am the ghost of the Cardiff giant.

I can have no rest, no peace, till they have given that poor body burial again. Now what was the most natural thing for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? Terrify them into it. Hant the place where the body lay. So I haunted the museum night after night. I even got other spirits to help me, but it did no good, for nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to come over the way and haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever not a hearing, I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that perdition could furnish. Night after night we have shivered around. through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and downstairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost worn out. But when I saw a light in your room tonight, I roused my energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness, but I am tired out, entirely fad out. Give me, I beseech you, give me some hope.

I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement and exclaimed. This transcends everything, everything that did ever occur. Why, you poor blundering old fossil, you have out all your trouble for nothing. You have been haunting a plastered cast of yourself. The real Cardiff Giant is an Albany. Footnote by Twain. A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and fraudfully duplicated.

and exhibited in New York as the only genuine Cardiff giant, to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real Colossus, at the very same time the latter was drawing crowds at a museum in Albany. End footnote. Confound it. Don't you know your own remains? I never saw such an eloquent look of shame of pitiable humiliation overspread a continent's before.

The petrified man slowly rose to his feet and said, Honestly, is that true? As true as I'm sitting here. He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantle, then stood irresolute a moment. Unconsciously, from old habit, thrust in his hands where his pantaloon pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping his chin on his breast, and finally said,

Well, I never felt so absurd before. The petrified man has sold everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own ghost. My son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor, friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. think how you would feel if you had made such an ass of yourself. I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow, and sorrier still, that he had carried off my red blanket and my bathtub.

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