Creepy - The Old Man of Llanhun

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

There's a place...***Written by: G.T. Rogers***Bonus Episode: "Los Grillos" written by: Lindsey Goddard and narrated by: Jimmy Ferrer***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Title music by: Alex Aldea 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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Listener discretion is advised. Creepy Presents The Old Man of Than Hun Written by G.T. Rogers There's something wrong with Thanhun. The small, quiet village is decidedly off. Most locals, born into this tangible queerness, do not even notice it enough to comment upon. So thoroughly has it saturated their lives.

Yet the infrequent visitors here seem to perceive it almost immediately. Though it is difficult for them to say, when they've escaped back to civilization, what it is. something in the air or in the ground beneath their feet, a subtle disquieting of the soul. Maybe, they might think, it's just a sensation of being out of time, of stepping out of their car and directly into the world as it was two decades earlier.

Or perhaps it's the sharp attention that their presence seems to draw as a foreign body amongst the insular community. Yet these are only some of the less unique symptoms seen in the remote villages the world over. On the other hand, if the visitor is fluent in Welsh, then they may grasp upon a truer thread of the mystery when, knowing that the commonplace prefix of then by and large means church, they notice that there is no steeple or square tower rising above the tightly clustered homes of Thanhan.

And if it's a clear day, then their searching gaze may find instead, high up on the surrounding hilltops in a break in the sweeping conifer woods, what appears to be a black crack in the sky, watching silently over the valley. The errant church, and this distant black stone pillar, suggest that the source of the secret wrongness that has long suffered thanon, but do not define it. Such is left to the long dead or certain books once held in a certain family's library. I will say more on the latter later. But for now, it's enough to know that the off-ness of Thanon is old and has permeated deep,

deep into the heart of the valley. May that help explain what is to come, one. The old Francis cottage had stood empty a long time before the neighbor took it as his layer. Perhaps I should have suspected right at the off what was being set in motion through the sheer oddness of it. But at first I simply laughed along with the rest of then, Hun, at the bizarre and ill-conceived notion that someone was moving into the valley. rather than fleeing it. And what's more, that they plan to renovate that particular monument to decay? The state the crumbling cottage was in, knocking it down and starting over might have been an

easier option for the neighbor, while investing his money somewhere far, far away from here would have been a smarter one. This valley is a tired and withering place, with little desire or purpose for new. More money than sense. The fool, declared then on, with a knowing shake of the head. I could but agree. Still, move in the neighbor did. Near enough three years ago now, I watched him pull into the old Francis Cottages' steep drive

in a builder's van with a ladder and fresh timber planks strapped to its roof. The closest to my own of all the satellite dwinds. that perch in the hills above then on, I've always considered the Francis Cottage something of a kindred spirit. Ever since its long past and sudden abandonment by the titular family, we've shared together the hardship of rain and wind and dragging years of loneliness. Dyer indeed are those that count a heap of wood and brick among one's few companions. Anyway, all this to say that I watched the neighbor with a suspicious intensity of a jealous friend,

even from the start. Even before Catherine. It was to my hard-to-earned surprise that I watched the neighbor ingratiate himself with shocking rapidity in the Than Huns' shield wall of a community. The man himself is rather plain. Indeed, harbinger of evil was not what first appearances screamed. Some 40 or 50 years old and white, of course. I chuckled myself to think of the fluster the alternative might have caused. With gray speckled hair and weathered features that leave room to be deemed handsome,

if one were of a mind to look hard enough. He shook hands about the village, and even wrought a few smiles from the hard, tired exteriors of the locals. I believe his accent helped, as even if it did mark him as from the south of the country, rather as a native gog. He could still claim some patriotic alliance, and soon then undeemed that he was certainly no big city fellow come to challenge their thinking and doing. Suppose he's not too bad.

village reluctantly came to grumble. Another non-native who had never even gotten so much as the half-hearted seal of approval was Catherine Jones. She who'd married into Thanhan from her well-to-do English ruts after meeting local lad Douglas Jones at university. The young couple had been forced to move back to Thanhan, only temporarily to run the family butchers after Doug's father fell ill. but ended up needing to stay on for nearly a decade before the elder Mr. Jones finally passed away,

and by then, well, what other life had the couple to go back to? Catherine had never held this run of events against Doug, but that didn't mean she much liked it either, or so the common consensus held. It also held that she didn't fit in too well with the Thanon locals, Or maybe more that she didn't try to, though what more she could have done, I cannot tell you. The village stockpiled myriad anecdotes of Catherine's snooty comments and the general attitude of superiority to support their views. But the crown jewel has always been Catherine's fancy road bicycle, one complete with those clip-in shoes and all.

wasn't she a woman closer to forty than thirty? Just look at those grays. And still, that thing was her pride and joy, like a child's new toy on Christmas Day. You'd not believe how much Douglas paid for that thing, then unnattered with a sneer. Think she's bloody fleshy, doesn't she? Seeing Catherine out and about on her rides,

old Mrs. Davis had kindly offered the use of one of her horses instead. They could go riding together. Now wouldn't that be nicer? Catherine refused her. Of course. No. Come rain or shine she would be out for hours on that bike. You'd not believe how far she goes on that thing.

Like she can't get bloody far enough from here. One of Catherine's favorite roots was up Forestry Road, which climbs for a mile at a shocking gradient from the center of Than Hun all the way to the exposed roof of the valley. Up here on the tops, the lanes thread for countless miles along the undulating hills, skirting the deep valleys as the quiet roads wind through the sprawling woodlands, or offer views out across the rugged hills spotted with hearty hill sheep.

The wind blows bitter and strong, seeming to come rushing down all the way from the great realm of snow-capped peaks in the far west, which you can see on those rare days when the rain and clouds keep off. Those same days on which you can spot the black stone pillar looking down on Tanin from on high. Yes, Catherine spent many a day roaming the lanes of the tops, only to get there. Forest Road happens to pass right by me. And before that, the old Francis Cottage. It amuses me how commonly folk here add the moniker of old to things. People, places, animals, trees, or any number of inanimate objects. It could be dismissed as a lack of creativity.

But I think more that it speaks to the ancient and weary air that seems to the ancient and weary air that seems to hang like a perpetual mist across this valley. Another symptom born of Thanhun's wrongness. I believe that air was already thick when the Anglo-Saxons came looking for lands to be lords of. And even before then, when far-ranging Romans came a conquering, did it fester here. Maybe that's another subconscious reason why Catherine found herself drawn to the tops. To escape that stifling atmosphere and breathe more freely, six months in, and the neighbor began replacing the cottages boarded up windows.

Hardly a day had gone by where I'd not watch him working on the house in some way. Yet by all appearances, it was hard to see exactly what progress was being made. Steadily he went. Carefully he measured. Delicately he appeared. appeared even to hammer. And so it was much out of character for me to see him rushing along outside the cottage and losing his grip on one of those expensive new double-glazed window panes.

The thing exploded at his feet. And not a breath after the pieces stopped bouncing did the neighbor have his broom out sweeping them up, depositing them straight into his yellow skip, which had become a permanent fixture outside the Francis house. So went all that broken glass. All except one green carrier bag full, which I witnessed the neighbor whisk away inside the cottage. Nothing of note, I assumed.

Until a few days later, in the pre-dawned twilight of a Sunday morning, I spied the neighbor walking up his drive onto Forestry Road with that very same green carrier bag in hand. Now, Sundays were Catherine's favorite day to be out on her bike, and nine times out of ten, that meant she'd be off up the tops to while away the morning and afternoon in rough beauty and lonely peace. A shame then, to see her that same Sunday walking her bike back down Forestry Road in the early morning. But a happy coincidence that the neighbor was also an early riser, and downing tools as she passed, went down to see what was calling her home so early.

There was talk and some laughter, and much examination of Catherine's decidedly flat tire, before a bucket of water and a pump, along with two cups of tea, were fetched out of the cottage. The two toiled and chatted, and eventually seemed to declare the inner tombs an utterly lost cause, And so, with gestures at the darkening clouds overhead, the neighbor at last waved Catherine on into the house. And in she went. The police came to Thanhun three days later. What the police means out here is only officer-fenly from Bothner Town eight miles away.

And his investigation into the missing persons report filed by Doug Jones extended to driving between various local homes and asking in his placid, monotonous way some placid, monotonous questions, while a wildfire of talk blazed through the valley, of real bone-biting, stomach-stirring, stomach-stirring, sleep-scaring concern, there was none. It may surprise you, but this is then, Hun, remember? Nothing sinister ever happens in this sleepy, weary place. No need to get all excited. Catherine had never liked it here anyway, had she?

Far too good for simple village life. Poor Doug might be out of sorts, but he must have seen it coming. Give the man time and he'd even out. Such went talk through the valley. Paid pony, don't worry. Before heading back to Bothner, full to burr, First thing with tea and biscuits and local gossip, Officer Fentley did stop in on the neighbor. Yes, the neighbor had seen Catherine that Sunday, but only heading off over the tops as she often did.

No, he'd not seen her come back. Of course, he'd been inside waiting out the rain all afternoon. I watched Fentley nod along to this, tip his cap to the neighbor, and head back. to his car, though he did stop on his way to peer into the yellow skip outside the cottage. It was empty, the contents having been carted off to the tip earlier that week. After, that was, I'd witnessed the neighbor sweeping away with his broom on Forestry Road, on the stretch just beyond his drive. In the middle of the night, too.

The neighbor took up swimming. It was springtime. He was 14 months into his project with new windows, half a new roof and not much else to show for it, despite his near constant activity, when he decided to start dedicating his mornings to walking into the valley via the footpath that tumbled from forestry road,

down through Ypresnez, the lower wood, and spilled out into the secluded spa where the Thanhun River took a sharp bend, creating a wide, calm pool at its elbow. There he swam for an hour each day. It didn't take long for me to surmise what the neighbor had now set his sights on. Gareth Morgan was a particular lad. So said then on.

From the very beginning, he and his father had not seen eye to eye, well, with the boy having no interest in the farm, that was his father's entire life. Oh, Garrett had plenty of other interests. Just none, his father, Kai Morgan, endeavor to turn him onto. And endeavor he did, with carrot and stick. But no matter, farming was a bloody hard game at the best of times. never mind steep and stony valley side fields and most weren't cut out for it

a shame for Guy for sure but that's how it goes sometimes on the other hand what was definitely not how it goes were some of the interests that Gareth developed as he turned into a young man not in Dan Hun anyway

Words started to hold a Morgan lad had little interest at all in his bonny classmates. It's funny how these little innocuous details once commented on Bloom into common conversation in a small community. All it takes is an observation here. A question between two mothers over tea there. Still no girl that's cracked sweet Gareth. then? And what a handsome lad he is, too. And it becomes a thing, a fact, a point of interest.

It would have simmered away in the village's back pocket for many more years, tucked somewhere between Ronwin Lacey's drinking problems and the Morris's mutt the family believed ran away, but was really shot by the gamekeeper, kept there to be taken out every now and then and idly passed around at had it not been for kai's big to-do with the drovers then it became big talk back pocket no longer get it up on the mantelpiece garret and the drover's youngest had been fast friends since they met in year seven at the boston secondary school and only grew closer as they grew older By the time the pair were near to finishing school, they were inseparable, darting off together to whatever seclusion could be found whenever they had the chance to find it. The village still didn't know exactly what kicked it off, though it is a favorite past time to speculate. But one day, around that time, Kai is suddenly banging down the door at the Drover's house.

His battered defender parked halfway across their front lawn, and delivering on to them one hell of a row in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. Hardly two weeks later, and words got out that the drovers are selling up and moving away. No one saw Gareth in those two weeks, or the young drover boy. And it would be almost two months till anyone did see Gareth. He missed a little prom they'd started throwing a wise gothbantir for levers. When he did emerge, it was like he'd been through a cocoon in reverse. He looked be years older, far skinnier, and carried dark bags under his eyes and a slowness in his step.

He'd also shaved his head. By the time the neighbor was spending his morning swimming in the Thanon River, Gareth was He'd recovered much from that troubled summer in his looks and bearing, but it remained something of a recluse, at least in Dan Hun's hard unforgiving eyes. To the folk of the valley, he was a pale ghost haunting the village's peripheries. Much was muttered about him. Little was said to him. The boy didn't seem to mind.

I counted myself among the few who took him. note of his wanderings, of the lad's long hours exploring the still and silent and shadowed places of the valley, the forests and footpaths, the brocks and copses, the moss-covered stone circles and time-sunked and burrows. Even the edge of the woods it surrounded that black stone pillar high in the hills. But his favorite spot to spend a morning was, so chance would have it. why Prina is, and in particular a small glade beside a wide bend in the river where the cold, deep waters slowed and pooled, and that Thanhun air seemed just a little less stifling. I watched them talking day after day, stumbling through subtle smiles and dangerous laughter,

and recalling their first encounter. The neighbor's easy charm and Gareth's nervous surprise after this near-naked man had slipped from the dark waters of the river, like something escaped from a Greek myth, or a German folk tale. He was a sight indeed. In the wood and river, freed from the collared shirts and cotton jumpers and hooded raincoats in which he forever did his slow, meandering work. The neighbor was revealed to be a well-built man with a broad chest and wide back, and his plain features inherited a more defined edge amongst the trees. and their strange shadows.

And more, there were the tattoos. My, how my old bones quivered the first time I laid eyes on them. In the dappled shade, those mad, esoteric ruins seemed to ride across his chest and back with their long-jaded strokes, some of which cut off sharply on his chest, only to resume on his back and vice versa, as if they were not drawn onto his skin, but right through his very being. Gareth, too, had drunk them in, as his hand unconsciously traced the tattoo which climbed his own neck,

and which supplied in your constant source of chagrin for Kai Morgan. From that first moment, fate seemed sealed. Yet steadily, steadily, did the neighbor move. such a patient man Spring warm to summer As the pair flitted through impromptu rendezvous On a weekly, then near daily basis Gareth shared his photos

And the neighbor carried down architectural sketches Rolling them out to cross the forest floor To talk the young man through his plans Then one day, after so much tiptoeing It happened all at once Gareth, laughing, set his hand onto the neighbor's chest, and for a moment I half expected him to yank it back, scorched by the tattoos it covered. But no, the young man's touch melted into a caress,

and the neighbor brought his own hand to Gareth's cheek. There was a moment where all the valleys seemed to hold its breath. Then they were ascending the footpaths. at a gallop, rushing and laughing with hands now linked together. I watched in silence as Gareth disappeared into the cottage there on the hillside. Slow old Officer Fentley came once again. Once again he shared tea and biscuits with the locals and once again found that gossip and then-hun was the most abundant refreshment on offer.

For Gareth Morgan, even more so than for Catherine. Jones. Fentley at least seemed a bit more energized this time, seeming to partially shake off this sluggish apathy that blossoms in such abundance in Than Han. Maybe it was due to this being Than Han's second missing purses report in two years, which doubled that of the last decade. The last before Catherine, being a quickly resolved case of the local young farmers group putting a paralytic underage member of their club onto a ferry to Ireland as a playful prank. Or maybe Fentley's energy came from the reports of screaming matches between Gareth and Kai, and the not-so-suttle hints that things may have escalated beyond verbal over the years.

Fentley took Kai in for questioning. Did his best to rally up search parties, and even managed to. get in contact with the Drover family. But all that was for naught. Never did fit in, did he, that lad? Off to London or somewhere more his speed, I reckon. Such was the Thanon consensus, accompanied by a tut. Poor Kai.

Following Gareth's disappearance, it was Kai's turn through that devastating cocoon, and these days his hulking figure is diminished. Impoverished. His cocksure walk is now heavy, hesitant. His once intense gaze is fleeting, Bim. The farm that was all important to him has run to ruin, and while metals and ragwort flourish, the livestock looks thin and sickly. Kai has replaced his son as the ghost, haunting the valley's peripheries. And so the wrongness of the wrongness of the world. than hung grows a little stronger, reaches a little deeper. Three.

The neighbor has made good progress this year. The outside of the old Francis Cottage is finally all but new, and so in recent months, he spent his days hidden away inside. He stopped swimming in the autumn, lay low during winter, and spent his spring evenings descending into the valley to visit the sole pub and talk to his prey. gently prying for the slightest opportunity or the smallest weakness, a fox chatting to the chickens about the integrity of their coop. It's late summer now,

and scarcely ten days ago I spied the neighbor knocking on the door of a small house tucked away in Punk Close, which sits over the river at the nearest end of the townhun village. He'd heard that an elderly woman lived there with her younger sister until that sister had recently died and, good Samaritan that he was. The neighbor had wanted to see how the old girl was getting on. She had no family left, you see,

and no friends to speak of in the village. In fact, there seemed to be an air of hostility surrounding that particular woman, and folk only half-jokingly warned the neighbor to stay away. Of course, he was not to be so easily put off. Some 50-odd years ago, it had seemed that Saren Win was the shining, swirling star at the heart of Thanhun. Beautiful and funny and wild. The valley was full of her admirers and friends, and of course, many heart-sick lovers.

Saren's typical friendships and romance is burnt bright, but briefly. In short was the time between bouts. Young men and women fell over themselves to catch her flicker of her brilliance. But the older folk tutted and grumbled and wagged fingers, all the while promising would end in tears for the young woman. By the time it did inevitably go wrong, Saren had been going with Louis Griffith for a couple of months, which in itself made for big talk,

as the success of Saren Souters usually last. lasted less than a week, and yet what made it even more titillating was a Lewis Griffith was himself a big name in the valley. In the last decade, this being the 70s, Griffith had swept into Thanhan with nothing but his lovely young wife and a scheme to buy up huge swaths of woodland from the financially floundering local landed family. The scheme worked well for Griffith, and less so for the the gentry, as within two years the toffs were packing up everything that wasn't nailed down, including their library's treasure trove of local history, and disappearing, ne'er to be seen again,

while Griffith's logging business was booming so loudly he and his wife could afford to move into their recently vacated Oak Hall. Now, among the oldest of those crumbling tomes that the gentry absconded with were certain chapters pertaining to disturbing and fanciful rites performed by the pagan cults who had occupied the Thanhun Valley in the murky depths of time before civilization. Passages spoke of terrible things set loose in the world and other things locked away, and one might have abandoned. the sane and rational, deciphered through the warnings and prophecies and heathen prayers

is what truly propagates the wrongness of Thanhun, and what vile task awaited those who wish to meddle with it. But those books are gone, whisked away southward. Who inherited them? No one knows. But one can always guess. Lewis Griffith's logging business was largely conducted on the tops above Thanhun, and sobrow welcome employment and money to the village,

quickly establishing Griffith as a local hero, a common man working his way up in the world. Although nobody stopped to ask where he'd gotten all the initial money for the venture from, as that would have taken the shine off the story and ruined the secret. covetous notion that any of them could one day be like good old Mr. Griffith too. With his wife, suddenly seeming not quite so lovely and young as she had before marriage and success, installed safely and soundly and securely in the grand old call several miles up the valley from Thanhamton. It was only natural that shining sarin would catch Griffith's efficacious attention.

Lucky bastard was all the last. village had to say on the matter, often with a rueful, jealous smile. Gets it all, those that Griffith. Then Saren was pregnant and distraught, and Mr. Griffith was no longer seen driving her around or walking along with his big arm wrapped possessively about her slender shoulders. In his absence, Saren made no secret of her pregnancy. in fact she'd tell all who'd listen that Lewis Griffith was the father and moreover he had promised her time and again that he was soon to divorce his wife and marry her instead yet upon hearing the news of a pregnancy had sworn the child could not be his and that he wanted nothing to do with sarin in fact he insisted he had never had anything to do with

Sarin in the first place. These revelations were met with silence across the village. Lewis Griffith was a good and powerful man, not someone to go slinging accusations about to all and sundry. And young Sarin, well, who'd take her side over Griffith's? A common consensus was quickly formed, accompanied by a sly raising of an eyebrow. everyone knows lewis to be a fair man to work for and do business with whereas sarin well we all know about her don't we the neighbor took it upon himself to replace elderly old sarin's attic insulation With the village above, with dire warnings of a bitter storm approaching,

Folk commented with begrudging respect about the soft-hearted handyman helping out his elder, even if the elder in question was that wicked old schemer, Must Bees heard the stories, and it's all in aid of getting in her will. I wonder how much she has left, and who else has she to leave it to anyway? He spent the afternoons down and punk close, carrying huge rolls of yellow insulation into Sarin's cottage, and carting back out huge, puffy, ragged bundles of the same stuff. Only gray with old age. One such bundle was so large he had to half drag it across the gravel driveway to get into the back of his van.

I observed a couple watching him work as they left their nearby house one afternoon. As they walked over the bridge, they lied out of the close. I studied the confusion on their faces. One thought ringing clearly. I thought you didn't typically remove old insulation. By the time Saren started to show she was hysterical. So said Than Hun. Many in the valley had doubted the veracity of Saren's claims,

thinking it all a cooked-up gambit. for Griffith's wealth. Yet such views were hard to sustain as her bump grew. I recall even Griffith himself turning green at the gills and speeding up on one of his daily drives through the village when he passed for the first time a swollen-bellied sarin who shook her fist and screamed after his car. Not long afterwards, when she'd sounded every ear in the village for a shred of sympathy for what must have been a third, fourth, fifth time, and come up short yet again.

She showed up at O'Call itself. It was not Lewis that answered the door, but his dear wife, beaming to at last have a visitor, though her smile would soon falter. Griffith returned home an hour later to find a scene plucked directly from his nightmares. his wife and his supposedly pregnant mistress sharing a pot of tea in the sitting room. They say the man's yelling could be heard in Than Hun, and that his wife's could be heard in Bothner. The rest wrapped up behind closed doors,

yet the details of most every story in Thanhun have a way of leaking, or being pried, out into the light. Griffith paid an unknown amount of money to Samhans, at the insistence it is said of his wife. A large amount it was, too, reckoned and still reckons the village. With that money, Sarin bought a house to live in with her baby, yet a baby never came. Of course, that sent it in on rumor mill into overdrive. A miscarriage?

We left in an orphanage. Well, the most cynical heads forgot all the people. about the bump and cried, Well, of course, we were right. It was a trick all along. A scheme, a plot. All make-believe to get a Griffith's money. And all the talk of money lured many of those one-time admirers, friends, and lovers to come creeping back.

Discreetly, of course. But Saren's fury sent them scampering. And so they too joined in the thriving trade of cold words, and cruel jokes. Mrs. Griffith spent another two years safely tucked away in that big, silent, still house before she died. Wine mixed with her medication.

An accident, the police decided. Business took Mr. Griffith elsewhere shortly afterwards. Other ventures, other conquests. Too big a man for all Thanhan. Saren gave the house she'd bought to her brother-in-law and sister, her only steadfast supporter, to raise their family and live with them when they insisted she moved in. The husband died young, raising a number of theories about Saren and her scheming ways.

Then, much later, the sister passed. And now, since the neighbor's helpful afternoons at the house there and Punk close, Well, I have watched each day and night and seen no one coming or going. Only one light in the house can I see at night, one that stays on all night. And though it's hard to tell, I believe that same light stays on all day as well. Officer Fenley has not been called for Sarin. No inquisitive neighbors have even knocked on her door, to query that unflickering, damning light.

They do not notice, or they do not care. Either way, the result is the same. Four. The old Francis Cottage is old no longer. It is done. The neighbor has completed his steady, unerring work, and there is only one thing left to him now. One last deed.

As if drawn to the occasion, the promised storm has arrived to break over the valley and plunge the night into turmoil, and beneath its rage, I watched the neighbor leave his layer. He drives up, Forestry Road, and turns off into the nearest woods on the tops. After a few moments, the neighbor emerges from the trees and walks across the barren patch of land that surrounds the black stone pillar with a duffel bag held character. in his hands, and the distant sunken lights of Thanhun shimmering in the pounding rain beyond him. Lightning flashes in the black vaults overhead. Thunder crashes between the hills. The ranks of conifer trees bow on the wind. The neighbor stops before the great stone to kneel in the

mud, drag off his shirt and begin to unpack the duffel bag. In the bottomless pit of my watchful days and nights, I scarcely dared dream that this day would come, that the wrongness of Thanon would prevail, that the disease of weariness and fear and insularity would take hold so tightly, so deeply, so successfully that the task could be completed. Bones From the bag they emerge, Shockingly white, In the raging night.

Three there has to be, Each harvested from one of the valley's own inhabitants. Such were the balances put against the ends the man seeks. Such was the challenge to overcome, The obstacle to grind down over decades and centuries. His tattoos come alive now as he chants, changing from ink to swirling, burning shadow. Patient to the last. He ever so carefully constructs a grisly triangle before himself.

Then draws a knife. His chanting swells, the lightning dances, my bones tremble, and the blade bites. The ancient tower of stone. The black manir, Why and whirth on, shakes and shudders and groans. The spells binding rust and flake away on the wind, and as thunder explodes above, the black stone pillar cracks asunder,

its two halves falling away from one another and causing the ground to tremble as they come crashing down. And it is done. I draw myself up from the earth where I've spread for generations, untold like toxic roots beneath the valley, feeding the hate and bitterness and spite just as it has fed me, sustained me, freed me. I slip back into my ancient, aberrant bones and taste in night once more. the neighbor's slowing heart, upon seeing my unfathomable form emerge from the wreckage, gives one final, almighty spasm, and is still. No amount of reading, planning, and dark deeds could prepare him for the reality he has brought forth.

My insatiable, void black gaze slips from his crumple body to the sad, lonely village down below. Thank you. I rasp and my voice cracks through the air, hisses in the rain. A voice containing all the dreadful wrongness of then on for your bonus episode. Creepy presents Los Grios, written by Lindsay Goddard and narrated by Jimmy Ferrer. Around 630,000 people go missing in the United States every year. Many of them are never heard from again. Over 20,000 unsolved cases are still active, last I checked.

But is a person missing if there's a witness who saw exactly what happened? Much like the tree which falls in the forest and nobody around to hear it. Does the truth mean anything? If no one will listen, I try telling the police. I'd be surprised if the statement I wrote survived the paper shredder that day. I called the newspaper too. I said, I don't know if it was supernatural. It could be a scientific explanation, but I saw a man turn into bucks.

laughter on the other end of the line revealed that I was on a speakerphone with a full audience. So I gave up. I stopped telling my story. I tell it now only to make it known in case I disappear, in case it's my photo on the next missing person poster, because the curse of Los Grillos has returned. I call it Los Gros because that's exactly what the man who showed up on my doorstep kept saying. No such curses mentioned in the books and online articles. And I have poured over in search of answers.

But at this point, the very mention on Los Grillos turns my stomach, because I know it's real. The night was warm, even for a summer in Texas. A swollen yellow moon hung low back on the horizon. I often stood on my front porch to survey the land. A habit passed down to me from my papa. I was considering turning in for the evening when I spotted a figure darting away from the gravel road just beyond my driveway, stumbling toward my house. Even from where I stood, dozens of yards away, their body language spoke of utter hysteria,

arms flailing as they ran towards me. That's when I heard the chirping. of crickets, a rhythmic sound, ever increasing in volume. Sometimes I heard them at night, sure, but on a normal evening, it was a comforting distant song from the forest. A little barbershop quartet. These crickets were more like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, loud and impossible to ignore. I squinted and saw a man with a black mustache and a beard. His eyes bouncing in the shadows like huge white marbles. I cut my lips and called from the porch.

What is it? He raised his arms over his head and waved them from side to side. He looked behind him, nervously. What is he looking at? I wondered. He passed a yucca plants at the edge of my yard and the floodlights clicked on. spotlighting the shock on his face. His eyebrows were raised high.

His olive skin was slick with tears and sweat. His beard drenched. Even with the pulse of crickets in my ears, I could hear the man sobbing as he closed in. Deep, desperate sobs. He tried to catch his breath but choked on it instead. He coughed and sputtered. Then, with the door,

Windling energy he had left, he screamed Los Grillos and pointed behind him. Suddenly I noticed the eyes. A dark ripple in his wake containing thousands of beady little eyes. Probing antennae and flapping wings. My skin crawled. My heart pounded in my ears. Almost loud enough to drown out the relentless chirping. A sound that didn't seem to come from the swarm of crickets itself, but from everywhere around us.

Some of the insects had traveled ahead of the man and began to surround me, dotting the siding and the railing of my porch with black spots. One landed on my hand, and I grimaced and flung it off. The sight of those I wanted pests covering my favorite chair. The rocker my abuelo had made with his own two hands. felt worse than their hard little exoskeletons touching my skin. I grabbed the man by the hand and sprinted for the house. I tugged him inside and slammed the door. I ganked at my shirt, held my head upside down, and swatted my chair, knocking a few bugs loose.

Heat rushed to my cheeks. I turned to the man and demanded, what the hell is going on? His lips quivered, and he fell to his knees on the terracotta floor crying, down on all fours. He leaned his weight against his palms, fingers spayed. He looked up at me for answers I didn't have. Help, I didn't know how to give. In a cracked whisper, he repeated. Los grilles.

Then he was gone, in the blink of an eye. Just like that, I had squeezed my eyes shut as I swatted at a cricket on my cheek. And when I opened them, where the man's body had been crouched on all fours on the floor, there were only crickets in the shape of a man. I swear those disgusting black insects had taken his exact form. Right down to the angles of his bent limbs, inside that shame. A thousand antennae twitched. Their beady eyes watched me.

Then the collected mass of crickets lost its human form. A myriad of six-legged bodies hit the floor with small, tapping noises, and jumped in every direction. I screamed. I was terrified that I would meet the same fate. Certain I felt them squirming inside me. I even took a moment to pause amid the chaos of hopping crickets. To steady myself and examine the flesh of my arms to make sure it looked normal. normal, that I was okay, and that nothing crawled beneath my skin, threatening to burst free.

Satisfied I ran for the kitchen, gagging the whole way at the sound of crutching underfoot. I armed myself with bug spray in a broom. I went to battle with the invaders, fighting for my home. I swept as many as I could out the door, killing the rest in small batches and filling the trash with their corpses. At some point I noticed the Mormon tabernacle choir of crickets had stopped, replaced by a comforting calm. The crickets had all dispersed by dawn.

I told myself that whatever evil had visited my home, it was gone, and everything would be okay. But everything's not okay. I see the man's face in my mind, his tormented eyes that shimmered like melted chocolate. His beard, ebony with stains of gray, his trembling lips, which whispered Los Grillos. That poor guy didn't even make the news. There was nothing on TV, nothing in the local papers. His disappearance was never a topic on radio shows or podcasts, and I'm willing to bet, not gossip circles either. But one day, nailed to a splintered post and badly tattered by the

weather. I spotted a flyer with the man's photo and details. That was it. One single flyer. I called the phone number listed, but I lost my nerve when an elderly woman picked up. Sounding as frail as my abuela on her deathbed. What was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to tell her the truth? That I had witnessed her loved ones final moments, that I had listened to his tormented cries before he transformed into something utterly repulsive. No, I couldn't do that. So I hung up and never called back. But I couldn't stop thinking about the man. One sleepless night, rather than toss and turn and sticky sweat having nightmares of the man one second longer, I searched his name, which I had learned from the flyer and couldn't seem to forget, no matter how

I tried to push the thought away. His name echoed through my mind like a holler through a deep cave. The search pulled up an address not too far from my home. I got in my car and started driving. I don't know why. I had no intention of approaching the house or knocking on the door, especially since it was well past midnight by then. Guess I just swore to see where the man had lived.

Dust swirled in the headlights then began to settle as I parked. The yard was so tiny. I had no problem seeing the house from the road. Not much sturdier than a hovel. It stood nestled in a thick corpse of shrubbery and trees. Unpainted wooden shutters covered the windows, causing a boarded up effect. Several clay pots of withered plants lie in the stone walkway. A bicycle stood prop near the front porch.

No cars in the drive. Moonlight shined from behind the shanty, but something was off. Darkness obscured the house's edges, like a huge shadow loomed over the place. With the moon in full glow, I should have been able to decipher the hard lines of the roof and the adjoining walls. But it was all so blurry. I squinted, studying the shadowy details. And in the starlit sky, I saw two giant antenna twitch and two bent legs ready to pounce. Pulse racing, I put the car in drive and hit the gas pedal.

As I peddled away, the cricket choir started singing their menacing song. A song that sounds so different from the lull of normal crickets, a song I'd hoped to never hear again. I knew right then that Los Grillos would come from me. Papa once told me that this country only cares when a certain kind of person goes missing. Some faces don't sell copies of papers or look good on the evening news between money-making advertisements. So we don't mean a thing to the powers that be. I never put that much stock into his complaints until now. I'm scared that this curse will take me.

and nobody will bat an eye. The choir of Crickets has returned, assaulting my air trams. The glass window panes hum with the vibration of their song. My house is surrounded. I blocked the cracks under each door and plugged the vents and sealed any perceivable entry. Yet the crickets still come. Yet still, the crickets come.

God help me. Hundreds of thousands of people go missing every year. Tens of thousands are never heard from again. I know. I know this from my research into the missing man. And all I could think is this, I don't want to disappear. Please, don't let me disappear. But the sound of crickets fills my head,

and the feeling of them fills my insolns. 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. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.