Creepy - The Curse of Sepia

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Libraries are just for learning... The Creepypasta Anthology***Written by M.M. Kelly and narrated by heather Thomas***Bonus episode: "Shortly After Their Sons Are Born..." written Weird Bryce Guy***See how you can support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Produced by Steve Blizin***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.

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ideally first-person narration, but not necessarily if they're really good. Can't wait to see what you have. I'm going to have to start getting ready for October soon. It's almost August. 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 violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy Presents The Curse of Sepia, written by M.M. Kelly, narrated by Heather Thomas, and produced by Steve Blizzin. I always thought ghosts in the library were a cliche from young adult novels.

Browsing for a new book at the main branch of my library got me into this predicament. I have always enjoyed just about any book I could get my hands on, so I jump from section to section, waiting on serendipity to link me to a new topic or adventure. Some days it takes longer than others, but I always find something beautiful. The book I found on that particular day was blank. It was a hardback, mauve with a gold line or two wrapping around the spine and covers. No information on the spine or the cover. The edges of the pages were plain and marked up with pencil and pens.

I fluttered through the pages. Each page was completely devoid of any markings. No text, photographs, drawings, or even scribblings. The pages were smooth like silk. Serendipity. I went to check it out. Something kept tugging me. Something screamed that this book was special.

Maybe it had secrets. Or needed a filter for you to read the mediocre story that was propped up by a cheap gimmick. I knew I had to discover its secrets. Honey, the librarian said, This isn't one of our books. There's no stamp, barcode, or even a spot for a borrowing card. My stomach sank. So I can't have it?

She took it and gave it the exact inspection I did. She kind of sighed and pursed her lips. It looks like an unused journal someone left, she mused. Someone could have even left it on purpose. The book came back across the counter to me. Dear, you can't return your personal books to the library, she exclaimed with an exaggerated wink and a voice loud enough for the entire nearby staff to hear.

I smiled a big, tooth-filled smile. It was probably creepy, but I was too excited to notice or care. I stuffed the book into my bag and ran home. Something about it felt, taboo as I thumbed through the blank pages in the safety of my room. I saw a small, light brown line on the bottom of one of the first couple pages. It seemed too unrefined to be a printed line.

I squinted and strained. It read, 2. Peter, 3.8. I searched the verse immediately on my phone. Apparently it's a relatively well-known verse that some people see as a measure of how God experiences time. It reads, But do not forget this one thing, dear friends. With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

I scoured the pages into the wee hours of the night, trying to find more tiny messages within its pages. A little farther in on my third or fourth run, I spotted something, almost inside of the binding. I had to dig out a mac of my first. magnifying glass to read it. She sleeps, near to the token. An ARG! I thought.

It was clear to me that someone had planted the journal as a game for a stranger to stumble upon. I looked around online for any ARG, similar to ideas that resembled this, but nothing was even remotely similar. I decided to check out the library in the morning. The next day, I set off for the library, the journal in tow. I went to the shelf where I had found it originally.

I searched all of the shelves and books in the immediate area for slips of paper or any other hints for the next step in the game. It was all for not. I sat down at a desk at the end of the row and started digging through the blank pages. Immediately, after cracking the book open on page one, I was greeted with a large M, then an I, C, R, and finally an O.

The page following the O page was blank. I flipped back through, but the pages were blank again. I scratched at the binding trying to find some kind of battery compartment or something. It seemed just a regular book. I molded over while I thumbed through page after page of emptiness.

It hit me. Check the microfilm repository. I knew where it was, but I'd never been down there. I scurried over and hurried down the old cement steps into the basement. It was dim and devoid of other people, but still clean. The carpet with patterns carved into it may as well have had manufactured in 1963, printed every four feet. I didn't find anything other than disappointment.

So I went to go back upstairs. There was a door next to the staircase. I'd never noticed it before, but I guess I just hadn't spent much time down there. I jiggled the door handle with no success. I decided to try the credit card trick and started jamming my library card at the bolt. Fortunately, the door opened away from me, and the card jostled it open.

It was storage, but it seemed to snake on forever. I shook my phone to turn on the flashlight. As far as my pathetic little light could reach were old card catalogs. I unlocked the door and closed it as quietly as I could, before snaking through the labyrinth of old library supplies, books, and darkness. As I slipped deeper into the bowels of the library, I could see a dim, flickering light in the distance. I crept towards it, kind of hunkered down behind old furniture, with my hand stifling most of my flashlight. My sneakers squeaked against the floor.

I froze and knelt down, covering the light completely. It was so quiet that my pounding heart sounded like the bass at a dance club. The silence never broke. I peaked from my hiding spot in the darkness. The light still danced like a lonely tea light in a dark stadium. I snuck up as quickly as I could. There was a sheet that I gently pulled back. At first I thought it was a Halloween prop.

There was a little tea light burning, but next to it was a black mass. I turned my flashlight app back. on. It was definitely humanoid in shape. Its limbs, impossibly skinny. The coal-black skin stretched tight over bone-like furniture. Its hair was the purest white, as were the long fingernails that protruded from the slender fingers. She sat in the fetal position, face frozen with a look of surprise. I reached out and drug my hand across its skin, dry and paste. I pulled the old journal from my backpack. I know I heard her gasp and fall forward into my light.

Her mouth was open now, arms reaching straight out. I jumped back with a scream, dropping the journal in the process. The old dried-out body slowly clawed its way towards the journal. It hugged it against its stomach and gasped the musty, dusty air in. The lights powered on above me. I could see her black skin faded to alabaster. Her hair transitioned to a warm golden blonde. As if someone was injecting everything back into her,

she filled out under her skin from her midsection out to her extremities. My gut told me to run. I plowed through the stacked shelves and chairs. I pushed on the door with all I could muster. A quiet groan echoed through the storage. I jerked on the handle wildly, pushing and pulling at the heavy door. It didn't budge, like it was welded in place. I could see her, standing in the dim light, stretching like she'd been stuck for eons.

She stared right at me with something feral in her eyes and started to shamble towards me. I struggled harder and harder with the door as she neared. I thought she had this unnaturally pointed smile. But eventually, she hit the dim lights in just the right way. She didn't have a mouth at all. Just a brown streak of skin in the shape of the letter V where her mouth should have been. I started screaming, but that quickly collapsed into hyperventilating. She knelt down by me and sat her hand on my cheek.

Thank you, hoared through my mind in a voice that didn't belong there. The hand was warm and wet, but I couldn't pull away. She sat the book down in front of me and opened it. She took her pointer finger and scrawled it across the page. A murky brown ink trailed her finger in a fine line like calligraphy. O, P, E, N. Light poured into the old storage area from behind me. I jerked around and the door was gliding open on its own.

She stepped over to me and disappeared around the corner. I crawled behind her cautiously. She went into the main library floor without a second of hesitation. I tiptoed behind her. peeking around corners quietly to try to stay undetected. No one seemed to notice the nude blonde woman walking through the library. She danced down the aisles, swinging her head from side to side, like she was looking for something, dragging her hand along the spines of the books.

Her slender fingers left long streaks of ink, running down the spines. The shelves shook. The books pulled themselves into the air, before beginning to twist and tear upon themselves. First they rolled into tubes, then they ripped at the ends and twisted the frayed ends. A flap ripped open from the back and rolled into a ball. Two more flaps flayed from the back and splayed behind it.

They resulted in shapes that were at first vaguely humanoid. The ink from the pages started running, drawing faces, and detailing insect-like wings. Black and white fairies filled the air behind her. Their fluttering wings, pitter-pattering, with the sound of fluttering book pages. The other patrons didn't seem to notice. The paper fairies darted along the ceiling. I slipped off into the only direction that didn't seem to be garnering more minions, the bathroom.

I leaned on the sink and noticed the brown splotch on my cheek. I ran my fingers through it. Ink. I scrubbed at it with the wet paper towel. Most of it came off, but there was a spot that wouldn't come clean. Its edges were crisp, like it was tattooed. A hollow circle lined with dots on the inside.

It reminded me of an octopus's sucker. Then the screams came. I wanted to curl up, but I felt like I had to see. I crouched down and cracked the bathroom door. Thumps were coming from further down. I crawled around the corner and peeked out into the ATM. Books were raining down on the people there. Kids were hiding under desks for refuge from the onslaught.

The woman from storage was strolling along the aisles, browsing the books leisurely. After that, she looked right at me. I couldn't see her that well down in the dim storage room, but upstairs she was impossibly white. The mouthmark was gone. Her eyes were black and gray, like they were drawn in pen.

She raised her thin black eyebrows to me and gave me a wink as she pulled a bow. from the shelf. Georgia O'Keefe, the front red, and big bold letters over a flower, like she was deliberately showing me what the book was. Her finger tapped on the cover of the book once, and pages started to tear and swirl from it. They crumpled, twisted, and creased into a canoloon. She tossed it into the air and it fluttered into my hand. She tilted her head to the side and stared at me for a moment. Then she turned and went back to browsing the books. I scrambled through a window in the back of the library. It was one of the old windows that has a

hinge instead of sliding. I barely squeezed through. The pavement hurt my hands when I caught myself going headfirst out of the window. I looked paranoid on my way home, constantly checking around me for the woman or her minions. Once home, I checked the library's live feed they ran for people to watch for the ghosts that people had speculated about for ages. Everything was calm. It was business as usual. I called the main desk. The clerk that I spoke to about the blank book answered. Circulation, Mary speaking. She said with Little effect. I was visiting your branch this afternoon, and there seemed to be someone throwing books. I'm sorry, miss, she replied skeptically. But no one reported anything like that.

I paused. Was it real? I'd never had hallucinations before. It must have been kids playing a joke on me, I said. More for my own benefit than hers. She gave me a few tips about dealing with bullies and bid me farewell. I ran to my bedroom and looked in the mirror on my vanity. That damn mark was still there on my cheek, murky and wet. I scrubbed at it with a soapy washcloth, leaning close to the mirror to inspect the spot. It seemed to endlessly pull brown onto the white cloth, but the spot on my cheek never faded.

I hit my head on the mirror when a sudden thump of knuckles on a window startled me. I ran over to my window. Nothing was out there. I walked back to the vanity and thumbed at the odd blemish. It wasn't faded. Its edges weren't any less crisp, but the thick brown ink still stuck to my thumb. I wiped it off on a napkin in the shape of a smiley face. A faint, childlike laugh wafed through my room.

I checked my phone and tablet for a rogue video playing. I flopped onto my bed as I checked my tablet. The dainty giggle drifted through my room again. This time, I was ready. It was distinctly coming from my vanity. I sat upright, and there I was. in the mirror, like I was still sitting right there. I approached, hunkered down and from the side.

I... She was perfectly still, like a portrait. I had trouble believing what was in front of me. Then in a very practiced motion, she turned her fist and inspected her fingernails. I froze as soon as I detected movement in the mirror. A pleased smile slid across her face before she turned her head to look directly at me. She winked.

After diving across my bedroom in a half-sumersault, I twisted and jerked on the doorknob. The door didn't budge. I kept trying the door anyway, with my body twisted to watch the mirror. My reflection's lips turned a dingy brown, all but washed from its face. then returned as the circle addled with dots, just like the mark on my cheek. I stopped with the door and started to stumble towards her, in some kind of stupor of fascination with the old mouth mark. I made it all the way to the vanity. The childish giggle floated through the room again.

My reflection leaned in close to the glass, scrutinizing every part of my face. The giggle rang again. In the moment, I didn't realize it wasn't coming from inside the mirror. She slammed her hand into the mirror on her side. It cracked and splintered around her palm. My body's response was for me to leap across the room in a single bound. The doorknops spun fruitlessly in the door as I tried to force it open. Then inspiration struck me.

I wiped the ink from my cheek with my pointer finger and traced O-P-E-N right onto the frozen door. I looked over my shoulder at the mirror. Her paper-white hands grabbed the side of my mirror vanity, and she was pulling herself into my room through the mirror. She gave me a nod of approval as she stood on my vanity. I slammed the door shut behind me and quickly wrote on the light-colored press board, L-O-C-K-E-D. The door shook and the knob rattled, but the door didn't budge from its frame. That giggle slid under the door, like it was a recording,

exactly the same every time. Then I heard paper crumbling, a piece of it. of paper slipped under the door. It was a napkin folded into an uneven square. I unfolded it, and laughter burst forward from it. It was the smiley face I half-hazardly drew when wiping the ink from my face. Despite holding the edges still,

the middle bubbled up into the shape of a face. The eye dots and smear of a mouth stretched and redistributed into the likeness of the comedy half, of the comedy tragedy masks. It guffawed again. I panicked and ripped it in half. It collapsed back into a flat piece of napkin, and the dingy ink poured onto the floor. Not enough to make a puddle on the carpet,

but considerably more than I could have had on my thumb to wipe on it in the first place. I tried to wipe it away from the carpet for a second. but it just disappeared into my skin. That's when the blizzard came. Buckets of shredded little pieces of paper shot from under the door, like they were being propelled forward by a leaf blower. They flew past me in a whiteout. A few of them gave me paper cuts.

A few even stuck in exposed skin, like tiny daggers. My hair was filled with them. I turned around and they had landed in a ball. It was a little bigger than a basketball. I tried to kick it, but it was solid like a cannonball disguised as a pinata. You know when they hit something made of metal in a cartoon, and their body reverberates with it? It was almost exactly like that, but only my leg. Fuck!

I shouted in surprise. Then the shape stretched and sucked in on itself like someone squeezing and pulling on wet clay. First it stretched to an egg shape, then a few sets of parallel valleys formed horizontally around the middle and vertically from the ground. The crest of the egg grew and rounded out more. I backed up and instinctively tried to take shelter back in my room. Before she was fully formed, I realized it was the girl, the thing, from the library's storage. Her features grew into themselves. Her nose a bump, her eye sockets dimples at first. The sets of valleys deepened and curved in more, giving her arms and legs form. Her sharp fingers jutted out from her

form first like they were shocked to life. She stretched her back and stood up with only the legs, with an inhuman fluidity. She cracked and popped her neck by rotating her head, then grinned at me with her eyes and drug her fingers across her cheek and chin. The sharp sound of paper scraping against paper. She wasn't aggressive, but she had a sinister air, something that whispered to me that she was more than capable of terrible things. I wrote locked on the door, and it refused to open. She wrote, open on the storage room.

door that had locked, and it opened. G.O. I wrote on my own hand with my finger. Nothing. The ink absorbed rapidly back into my skin. Again, this time, I put the letters backwards and slammed my wet palm into her chest as she approached me. She cocked her head to the side and had the glimmer of a proud parent in her eyes as she started shaking violently. The next moment.

She was gone. You're starting to get it. A voice in my head exclaimed. The same voice I'd heard in the library. But you can't just get rid of me? No, no, child. We are bound together. All of us.

P.E.N. My door swung open gently, as if operated by a phantom doorman. I could see my shattered vanity. The thick journal rested on the broken glass with my disheveled belongings. I checked my phone and sat down, tossing my phone on top of the journal. Then, after a few moments too long, my phone clattered down into the broken glass that rested under the tome. My head snapped to the unexpected noise. Her journal was gone.

I carefully picked up my phone and unlocked it. There was a folder amixed the mess of icons on my screen. It was filled with icons of books. The first one looked like the journal from the library. I tapped it. What opened seemed to be an e-book, a scan of her book, but the pages were filled with manic brown letters. The one word that kept popping up was ink.

It was by and far, absolutely illegible. Yet, I knew with no uncertainty that I understood her words perfectly. I skimmed over what must have been thousands of pages of ramblings, like I just needed to gloss over everything to remember the contents. I went back to the folder, a scroll, a stone tablet, A cave entrance. All copies of things previously written with the ink. I started with the scroll.

It was clear as day, despite not being able to read Latin. When it was a physical object, it must have been miles long. I read through the pictures in the tablet file next. The hieroglyphs were even more beautiful when I could fluidly surmise their meaning. It was also obscenely long. It was walls of hieroglyphs, wall upon wall, enough to build a dozen pyramids. The cave entrance was similar, cave paintings, adorned with ruins. A cave that must have twisted and turned into the bowels of the earth, to the very bowels of the earth.

They all told the same story. what should have been a millennia worth of reading took only mere hours the ink did what they wanted their drawings jumped to life their most fantastic dreams only needed to be recorded to be realized the roman who came in contact with it named it sepia he had deduced the first recorded instance of it had come from a cephalopod that had won by you washed ashore. He also noticed the market left on people very much resembled a squid sucker. What's worse, every single account that was in my folder shared another element. They were all trapped, isolated, yet watching the world go by around them. Time didn't flow. They could read everything that had been written with Sepia. They could write to their heart's content. Eventually, Sepia took control and squelched their wretched existences,

except the girl from the library. I had returned the ink to her, and in turn, she shared it with me. No sooner had I pondered who she was that her voice whispered through my head. Lottie Lewis. I could see the web pages flicking through my head, missing persons, Cincinnati, Ohio, Charlotte, Lewis, 1961. Headlines had her parents pleading to her,

or potential captors, for a safe release, then pleading for even a body, simply for closure. Her voice cackled through my head so loud that I could feel my feelings rattle in my teeth. We were connected. It must have been the ink as it courses through my veins, as it coursed through hers. Something about her seemed different, different than the newspapers described her,

different than her memories of herself, however long it had been since she'd realized she was alone. However long that poor girl had been locked away from the world, it changed her. Every bit of information I could see told me she was meek, mousy. Now, she was fearless. The mania in her words in the journal first came from fear, then gleaned fervor from an acquired distaste of the world. Her presence in my mind felt abandoned. She felt the world had left her to rot in a prison right in front of her. of them. Now, she just wanted to watch it all burn. I wondered. I drug an inky finger across my

pointer finger's short-clipped nail. The ink smeared across the nail, then out into the open air. It quickly turned white. I scratched the pointed nail across the backside of my other hand. paper sturdy like cardstock but still paper it felt like Lottie's thoughts were getting stronger in my head and there was some other chatter muffled behind her voice

draw something she whispered through my head resistance wasn't an option I tried to resist my hand had tremors as the muscles acted independently of my brain as my pointer finger and arm stretched towards the mirror. The tip of my sharp nail scraped against the mirror in intricate swirls and curves. Before I realized it, I'd drawn a beautiful eyeball with the nerve bundle trailing behind it.

My vanity mirror shook and cracked along the lines I'd drawn. The mirror clouded. The areas within the lines bulged out like a bulb at the end of a glassblower's pipe. The nerve bundle filled in red, then wet. The eye was green and rolled in its bubble of glass to look at me. Thin cracks slid across the bubble of glass, and it fell onto my vanity with a wet splat. You see? She asked in a voice that smiled. We can reform the world.

The whole thing seemed wrong. I was starting to confuse Lottie's voice for my own, which made thinking that much more difficult. I searched for Lewis in my area. Obviously, I retrieved more than a few possible relatives. Suddenly, a name jumped out to me. James. My cousin James.

I called. Maybe it was. like the movies and Lottie just needed closure. She seemed kind of ghostish, I thought. Good evening. I blurted out once he finally answered on my fourth attempt. Are you related to Lottie Lewis? He seemed confused, a little fuzzy.

A cousin Lottie? Who disappeared when we were kids? James! James! A voice that wasn't mine called out into the phone. It's me, body. It's me, body. Everything about it was wrong.

Hearing a completely separate voice coming from my mouth was jarring enough, but even the physical act of her talking was unnerving. I could feel my tongue tapping on foreign places in my mouth, unique to her speech and accent, but absolutely alien for mine. I looked in my cracked vanity and dropped my phone mid-sentence with James. I looked like she did. A paper-maché mannequin.

All of my features except my eyes, washed away in paper. I tried to yell. I tried to pull the paper off. All for naught. I was locked in my own head. Hush, child, Lottie whispered, echoed by dozens of other voices behind her. It's my turn to drive. It's my turn to drive.

a little bit. A prisoner. A prisoner in my own body. My mind screamed at my legs to stop moving, for my tongue to stop speaking. I watched as Lottie drew a door. She was focused. The drawing on my wall was detailed, intricate molding, ornate hardware. She even shaded in the grain of the wood. The knob turned crystalline within my wall, then protruded, the yellow-painted drywall shifting to a deep oak. The molding popped out, the groove sinking in, and a bronze candle holder jutting out of the frame. My papery hand reached out and turned the knob. It was stiff, but she rattled it free and pushed the door open. There should have been grass and a broad oak tree outside of the door.

Instead, the front of Bill's barber shop was there. The little barber pole spun and spun as we walked by it. I pointed at the barber. Lottie's voice forced its way through my mouth. Even the way her lips moved felt dirty and wrong. William! She yelled out. William Lewis?

The slightly past middle-aged barber spun around, scissors in hand. His client jumped up and scrambled for the door upon seeing our white visage in the mirror. William stared, dumbstruck. At first it was the fear that froze him in place. Then his brain processed the voice, and it was curiosity that kept him rooted. Charlotte? He asked incredulously. "'Is that you in there?'

She stared at him, and that made him more tense. I could feel what was oblivious to both of them. He couldn't tell she was hesitating. She couldn't read his fear for her anger. "'What should we use?' She asked into the abyss that I floated in, and a cacophony of voices echoed back to her from further down. "'A sword!'

A halberd. A blackened halibut. Along with what felt like hundreds of additional voices that were too muffled for me to understand. Then they were gone. Stifled by the feeling of the bone in my left arm, jutting out of my paper flash. The paper snapped back to the inky bone,

wrapping it, shaping into a winged blade. You didn't. Even luck, I growled at William. Charlotte, what happened to you? Shock had taken him. We couldn't realize it at the time. But after all of those years, he remembered our voice. You left me to that.

She thrust my arm forward. The voices encouraging and cheering her from deep inside of us. You were obsessed. He gurgled out, his blood soaking into her papery skin. She shouted, tormented, tormented, twisted into this, waiting, waiting for someone to free me. I felt some serenity wash over Lottie. It didn't wipe away all of her vitriol, but it soothed her flute for a cobra. A numbness washed over the others.

centuries of bloodlust satiated for the moment. I was a part of that numbness. Just hours ago, seeing this poor man die would have been devastating. From in here, though, I sympathize with Lottie. We share all of our experiences. We're more similar than the others in here. The ones she is holding back. I'm trying to seal her away like she did to the others.

I've learned to conceal my thoughts from her. The ink interfaced with my phone, so I've been trying to find out more. I've managed to keep us isolated from other people, but I need help. I want my body back. For your bonus episode, creepy presents.

Shortly after their sons are born, the fathers of my family mysteriously disappear, written by Weird Brice Guy in every generation of my family. The father eventually leaves and never returns. My own father left when I was 12, his departure unannounced, though not unanticipated. Having noticed the signs told to her by her mother-in-law, my mother tried to stop him. exercised every precaution leading up to that fateful day. She appealed to him in every way she could, even threatened to relentlessly pursue him when he left.

But none of it worked, and his disappearance left no trail. He had simply gone away, like his father had when he was a boy, years younger than I had been. My great-grandfather abandoned my grandfather when the boy was just four. This inheritance of abandonment dates best, countless generations, a lineage of vanishing acts.

It is a curse, doubly so, because this bastard bloodline has produced only boys. No girls have been sired. When my father disappeared, I swore to do everything I could to resist the calls of the curse. Despite its recurrence, no explanation was uncovered by those left behind. There was no way, nor much time, to conduct a substantial investigation. into the mystery. Furthermore, as if to ensure that the family left behind lived dark and miserable lives, the mothers are always rendered barren after the birth of the first child.

Their wounds despoiled a virility. They can only live with the sole son. He himself destined to bring about the fate to his eventual wife. I threw myself into my studies, participated in every extracurricular activity, engaged in substantial and wholesome socialization, I was determined to ensure that my adulthood had no room for unhappiness or regret. I had considered foregoing starting a family, briefly thought to end the accursed line myself,

but after thinking hard about the idea, I realized that I couldn't have possibly been the first to consider it. My very existence was proof of familial inevitability, So rather than be embittered, I decided to accept the man on the fatherhood. And once it was assumed, to all that I could resist the allegedly inevitable outcome, I fell in love with and married a wonderful woman. And shortly after my 28th birthday, we had a child. As I had expected, it was a boy, although my wife hadn't the slightest idea of what it would be.

She wanted to be surprised and never inquired about the sex throughout her pregnancy. I never told her about the curse. Firstly, I didn't expect her to believe me. I think it's fair to say the people today are far less superstitious, and the concept of a curse has all but faded from the realm of believability. Secondly, I had resolved to beat it however I could. and felt that by telling her I would pointlessly worry her. The teller would be to give a power over us,

and I didn't want to do that. We named our son after my father. My wife thought it was a bit odd, considering he had left us. Her knowledge regarding his departure was minimal, and my mother never spoke about it before passing away. I told my wife little information about him, not condemning him for what he did but not excusing him either.

I decided to name our son after him to signify my breaking of the curse and a remembrance of my father and, by extension, all the fathers before him. He would be the last to vanish. In my heart it made sense. And while I didn't offer this explanation, she accepted the decision, no doubt with their own assumptions. I began to feel emotionally unwell around the time my son turned 13. It started as a vague unease, as if I were being watched by someone, scrutinized even in the most private moments.

I hadn't thought about the curse in months, and had even assumed I might have even beaten it. I couldn't recall a forefather whose son had grown to the age mine had. my life was as good and happy as I could have possibly made it. The efforts of my youth had paid off tremendously. My career had flourished and my family prospered. We wanted for nothing. We were in the best of health and had a few close, trustworthy, supportive friends. Things were great.

The uneasiness continued on until one day my wife took notice. She said that I had seemed furtive, restive, that I always scanned a room before entering and needlessly checked on things that were in perfect order. I had anticipated her taking notice of my strange behavior and gave her the

excuse I had conceived ahead of time. I told her that my work was undergoing a restructuring process and that I was being eyed as a successor to my only superior. The explanation from my unusual behavior being that I was simply on edge. The responsibility attached to a role of such a high-statement

being particularly daunting. The tale of workplace succession was unintentionally allegorical. And this told with a sense of earnestness that my wife believed without question. She assured me that I would perform the duties required of me without flaw and that once I settled into the position I would carry them out with a plump. Unfortunately for her, her praise and support had the opposite effect. They broke my heart. Because despite her certainty,

I knew that the curse had returned, and that its power would soon moaned until I heard the call. It came in the middle of breakfast one morning. I had made scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes for the family. After inspecting the kitchen three times in a nervous, obsessive fit, my wife and son had of course been sleeping throughout the entire episode. I had slipped out at bed at 4 a.m. and proceeded to crawl on hand and knees across the cold tile. floor the kitchen, examining every inch for something inimical, anything that could be deemed a thread or interpreted as one. While sitting at the table, I heard a voice speak to me,

even as my wife spoke about her ideas for a family picnic later that day, the voice seemed to play within my head, louder and clearer than my wife's voice, and even my own internal speech. It said, Come, take your place beside me. The burden of your precursors cannot be ignored. You pretend in futility. I didn't have to ask if either my wife or son had said or heard anything. I knew it was the voice which had called out to my forefathers,

beckoning them away from their families to a destination and fate unknown. I was chilled to the bone. Not just because of its ominous summons, but also because of how powerful the summons was. Despite having a beautiful and loving wife sitting across for me and a son I loved, who regarded me as his hero, I felt a despicable urge to abandon them both for that unknown caller. My wife seemed to notice that something was wrong, but before she could ask, I smiled broadly and offered my own ideas about the planned picnic. while the words of that speaker echoed in my mind.

The call came again two days later. Luckily, I was alone when it came and bore the agonizingly alluring words without needing to disguise my unrest. I paced around, screamed for it to be silent, and tried to shout it out of my hat vocally and internally. Of course, nothing worked.

And when it had finally gone, I was left with the desire to follow it They nearly drove me out of the house. As you might have guessed, I left when the third call came. There was no resistance. I hadn't the energy to resist the third time. I was walking with my son to our neighborhood

as he told me about a project who was working on for school. Those baleful seductive words came into my brain. I let go of my son's hand and walked away since I had done everything possible to be an attentive and reliable father to him, he didn't suspect that I was abandoning him. He stayed where he was, only calling out my name, but not in distress or panic, just curiosity. He had no rational reason to fear the truth,

no reason to think his hero wasn't coming back. I won't waste time describing the arduous journey, which led me to the location from my own. which the voice called. I had had my wallow with me during the walk with my son, but I doubt I would have had any trouble reaching my destination if I hadn't brought it. The alluring of the voice was overwhelming, and I would have done anything to answer it. Traversed any expanse, conquered any obstacle in order to reach that place. The source of the voice was located within a secluded and forgotten area well beyond the borders of my home. It was so remote, its land so wild,

and yet I hadn't needed a guide. Neither did I require much equipment and supplies to reach it. I was totally possessed. My body almost pretty naturally fortified and invigorated by sheer desire. Thankfully, no one had tried to delay me during my quest. Had someone attempted to, even from moment. I don't think I would have been able to spare their lives. Once in that near virgin territory, I quickly found the thing which had drawn me from thousands of miles away. It was a gigantic tree, rooted within a yawning cavern, caught into the side of a mountain.

I had never seen a natural structure as large as it, nor had I been in the presence of something so obviously old. Only something which had predated the earliest of the first of the moment. phases of humanity would have grown to such a prodigious size. The trunk was tremendous, rivaling most skyscrapers in girth. Its thick roots were sunk into the very bedrock, while its branches were thrust into the cave ceiling as if holding it up. The crown of the tree bore thousands of dark, man-sized leaves, and each seemed to throb as if

swollen with some odd source of vitality. It was a towering, black-barked monolith of unchecked growth, and eerie atmosphere hung about it in voices. Their speakers unseen murmured unintelligibly. They seemed to lament something. I stood before it as one might stand before a deity that had descended from the clouds. I was in utter awe, too stupefied to be immediately fearful. But as the seconds ticked by and I became somewhat accustomed to the extraordinary environment, terror seeped into my heart. I stood before something which possessed a power stronger than love, stronger than the will of countless men,

a thing which had ensorcelled and commanded from afar. My terror was amplified when its voice, issuing from every direction of once within the cavern, spoke to me. You have come as you were fated to come. Now, inheritor of the summons, you must make a choice, a choice given to all those who have stood before you and will be given to all who shall come after. Will you offer your son, your only child to me, the receiver of offspring?

Or will you do as your precursors have and allow yourself to be undone so that I may feed on your spirit from my own growth? Heed my next words carefully newcomer. This choice does not merely affect you and your bloodline. Its ramifications may very well impact the entire world. Should you offer your child to me, you will sunder the accursed bloodline. You will be free to sire another child with another woman, and the call will not come to him, nor will it come again to you. Your present wife will remain afflicted with her infertility, but you may start anew with another lover, free from the ancestral consequence. Or, if you were to offer yourself to me, your child would live on, until he too is haunted by my husband.

my words and finds himself traveling immeasurable leagues to stand where you now stand, after conceiving his own son, of course. The curse will continue to be inherited at infinitum, until one day far, far into the future. When all the kingdoms that reign today are not but great heaps of dust, I will unearth myself from this place and ascend to the surface. I will become the world crawler. and the age of men will end in a black and terrible cataclysm. This planet, and all those on which men dwell will succumb to untoward chaos, until this system is but an ash-ridden void. The former option ensures the salvation of future generations,

a generation so distant from you that you needn't think of it. If you were even able to fathom such a far stretch of time, The debt will have finally been paid, and I will wither, until this place, which I eternally support, collapses and crushes me. I will die, the future secured, and all it will cost is your child. The latter option requires you proffer your own life to save your sons, perpetuating the cycle once more, as your ancestry has shown. This pattern seems preferable to your ilk. The sacrifice of one's own thought of a son, perverse and deplorable, you have been given the terms,

and must now make a choice. Your son or yourself. A limb, much smaller than the others, then shot out of the tree and planted itself in the ground before me. The speed from which it had flown from the bow was mind-boggling. The power required appears to rock floor, assuredly immeasurable. If you would offer yourself, mount the extended appendage and ascend to the trunk. There, you will be absorbed.

If you would offer your child merely speak his name, and he will be brought here through other, comparably expedient means. Act quickly, or I will decide for you, even though. though my mind was no longer clouded by the alluring spell, I hadn't the time to consider the options. The deal was heinous. The choice is too momentous to deeply consider within such a short span of time. I loved my son and wanted him to grow up, to live a happy life, to have a family of his own, but I couldn't risk the continuation of the cycle, with a possibility that the same decision of self-sacrifice would be made again and again, until the apocalyptic prophecies fulfilled.

He was thirteen, and the happiness I felt that seeing him grow to such an age suddenly turned a poison in my heart, having known my son longer than my predecessors had known theirs. It made the choice to sacrifice him so much more painful. I said his name. My father's name, aloud, barely a whisper. But that was all the nightmarish truth.

tree entity had needed. You have made your choice, doubtless a difficult decision, but perhaps the more noble of the two when what considers how many others. Though unborn they are, you have spared. Your species will persist lest they be destroyed by their own hands. Whatever there do may be, it will not come through me. I will spare you the sight of your son's sacrifice. Go.

I will take him while you are still on your journey home. What explanations you offer to your wife for the events of this day are yours to create. Our business has concluded. My return home was much longer, more troublesome and incredibly tiring. Without that empowering force of will and mindless determination, the trip would be twice as long. My wife had, of course, sent everything in her power to locate me, but of course to no avail. I learned of all her efforts from the authorities who tirelessly questioned me upon my return. According to those who interrogated me, my wife claimed to have witnessed our son snatched by a root that had suddenly sprouted from the ground in our backyard.

She said he was then taken into the very earth through some previously non-existent cavity. The land throughout our house was deeply excavated, but no signs of our son were found, already shaken by my sudden absence. She was driven to madness by our son's inexplicable abduction. She took her own life the following day, and so my tail ends. My family was shattered, my son taken from me, as both payment for some immemorable debt and the dubious assurance of mankind's far-flung future.

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