Creepy - The Unfortunate Fate of Willy VanKlein

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

Uncle Henry has another story to tell...***Written by TW Grim and narrated by Joe Stofko***Check out our reward tiers 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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well before I ever got into podcasting myself. I never imagined that when I started creepy, I would get a chance to share the stage with the No Sleep crew on their live tours. Host David Cummings and their crew have inspired and supported me, and I'll always be the gold standard for me both in terms of podcasting and in terms of their character. They've markedly improved my life and I try to live up to their example every day. If you aren't already listening,

do yourself a special favor today and check out the No Sleep podcast wherever you're listening to us. But before you do that, Now, 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 violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents the unfortunate fate of Willie Van Klein.

Written by T.W. Grimm and narrated by Joe Stofko. If there's one thing I hate, it's when a story ends on a cliffhanger. I don't want to wait to find out how the story ends. I need to know right here and now. The last time I was out at the farm, Henry had rambled off on one of his tangents and mentioned the gruesome death of one Willie Van Klein. A long-time neighbor ran an apple orchard down the road. I'd heard him mention someone named Willie Van Klein a time or two in the past, but I didn't know who he was, and I wasn't even aware that had ever been an apple orchard in the area.

According to Henry, Willie's operation had suffered some kind of catastrophic. failure in the early 70s, and Willie himself committed suicide in a gruesome fashion, cut his own throat with a straight razor. According to Henry, Willie Van Clan's unfortunate fate came with a disturbing backstory, and he told me to remind him about the next time I paid him a visit. Unfortunately, real life has a shitty habit of getting in the way of our desires. Better part of a month went by before I was finally able to clear an entire time. day and drive out for a visit.

I picked up a couple six packs and bucket of chicken on my way out of the city. And I was burning down the countryside roads at 20 over the limit with let it bleed pumping on the stereo. Curiosity was eating me alive. Henry's stories usually unfold organically over the course of our conversation. But I was too impatient to spend half the day talking about the installation of weeping tile and rising price of feed corn before we got down to story time. Twenty minutes after I wrapped on the front door,

I had Henry sitting at his kitchen table with a beer in his hand and a wary look in his eye. What are you so fired up about? You barely got in the door for Christ's sake. Can we just relax and talk about the weather for a damn minute? He demanded. Last time I was here, you asked me to remind you about your neighbor down the road, Willie Van Klein. You said,

Now that's a story. Remember? Well, here I am. Baring gifts of food and drink. So tell me the story. Henry goggled at me in surprise. He weezed. Well, shit.

I said I'd tell you about that? I don't know. Maybe not, kiddo. It's not good to speak ill to the dead. I pleaded. Come on, Henry. Don't do this to me. I never even knew the man.

So you're basically talking about a complete stranger from my perspective. Henry still looked doubtful, so I added. You're the one who brought it up? Come on, make with the story, old man. Oh, old man, you're right in the nuts, shitbird. Henry grinned. Eh, well, I suppose you're right. You wouldn't know, Willie, from a hole in the ground.

He died before you were born. He and his wife Ingrid were friends of the family. Good neighbors are worth their weight in gold when times are tough. Just remember that, kiddo. I shrugged and said, I don't know any my neighbors. I prefer it that way. Henry snorted.

Oh, you live in a fancy high-rise in the big shitty. That's a different situation entirely. All your neighbors are a bunch of white-collar assholes with expensive briefcases and candal haircuts. Don't be a cranky old bastard, Henry. Not everyone can be a farmer. Like it or not, the world needs white-collar assholes, too. Henry scoffed at this and said,

The world would get along just fine without them as far as I'm concerned. Now, before I begin, I'll go ahead and remind you of something, Mr. College Boy know it all. It's a big, weird old world out there, and we don't know jack shit about it. People pull an awful lot of assumptions straight out of their ass, and then they clap themselves on the back for making shit up as they go. Take the great pyramids, for example. Some folks think it would have been impossible for people to create such a thing back then.

And other people disagree, but in the end, it doesn't really matter how those pyramids came to be. does it? Space aliens or the work sweat of 10,000 slaves, it doesn't matter. Because one way or another, they got built. Reality doesn't give a shit about your beliefs or your perspective. It just is. Henry lit a cigarette and let it smolder in his favorite ashtray.

A three-pound rectangle of glaze ceramic that was probably 50 years old. He looked at me through the smoke with mild half-litded eyes and popped open his beer. Now, fuck it. He sighed. It ain't known yet, but I reckon it's close enough. Now, that orchard of theirs, the Van Clines, that orchard was a laborer love. They bought the property in the 30s,

and they planted all those trees by hand. The bank gave old Noah Van Cline a sweetheart of a deal on a hundred acres of arable land, with 15 acres of first-growth forest, two irrigation ponds, and a 20-foot well already dug and capped. It was a goddamn steel for the price. If you didn't know the story behind why it was standing unoccupied, that is, and no one from the area wanted anything to do with it. Henry heaved himself out of his chair and pulled a couple plates out of the cupboard.

Well, let's get some food in us before we get too deep. deep into that beer, grab a loaf out of the bread box, would you? Butter's in the dish over there. We sat down to our primitive lunch of meat and bread. Henry continued talking

between mouthfuls of chicken. The last people to live on that acreage was a sect of Anabaptists, maybe a hundred or so people in total. They called themselves the brethren, and their leader was a grim reaper-looking son of a bitch named Helmut Schneider. Tall, pale,

Scarecrow of a fellow with a beard that hung down to his chest. They were scratch farmers mostly, only grown what they needed and tended some livestock. Well, the locals were mostly Catholic or Lutheran back then, maybe a few Orthodox, but they tolerated the brethren because they kept to themselves. Still, it was rumored that Helmut Schneider was a doomsday fanatic, and that made people a tad nervous. yourself some religion is all fine and good, but fanaticism is a powder keg. And Helmut Schneider was a deeply disturbed man.

It was rumored he would make his people congregate in the barnyard every Sunday for an outdoor church service. Rain, shine, snowstorm, it didn't matter. Helmut told anyone who asked that the open sky was the ceiling of God's divine cathedral. He would yell and scream about the horrors of Judgment Day until he couldn't yell no more. Then he'd pick a few people out of the crowd and make them stand in a line. Men, women, children, didn't matter.

He'd make them all stand in a line with their eyes closed and he would beat the living tar out of them with a broom handle for their sins. I snorted. Fuck that. I wouldn't let someone do that to me. Crazy. Well... Thener mused.

I wouldn't either. But I suppose most of them didn't know any better. They were probably born into that life, and that's all they'd ever known. Now these days, maybe he wouldn't get away with doing something like that for very long. But those... They were different times. Hell, your own grandma once broke a wooden ladle over my head. She did it because I kicked over a kerosene lamp while I was horsing around.

while I was horsing around with your dad, and I damn near caught the shed on fire. He got a few good wax with the belt in just for being there when it happened. Today, that'd be child abuse, but no one would ever bat an eye over something like that back then. That winced in sympathy and said. I never knew that side of Grandma. I'm glad I didn't. Ouch. Well, I won't say it was the right thing to do, but I will be.

say, I probably deserved it. Anyhow, even though most folks weren't too comfortable with the goings-on at the farm, the brethren kept to themselves and didn't bother anyone, so people left them alone. But when the First World War broke out, public opinion started to change. The brethren claimed their religion didn't permit them to enlist. They called themselves conscientious subjectors. Well, that didn't sit very well with most people, not when their own sons were being shipped off to the meat grinder across the pond. Yeah, I can imagine there'd be some hard feelings over that. Oh, that was just the beginning. Hainrus snorted. A few months after the war broke out, Helmut wakes up one morning and tells his people God came to him in a dream. He says,

God ordered them to build a giant cross in the middle of the cornfield. The good Lord wanted it to stand at least a hundred feet high and 50 feet across. The crazy old bastard put those people to work that very morning, and that cross was sticking up out of the ground not more than six days later. Henry put his hand on his stomach and grimaced. He pushed his plate away and lit another smoke. I'd noticed he hadn't put much food on his plate. I ate and it eating even less.

I could see in his face he wasn't feeling well. And I wondered if the beer maybe wasn't such a good idea. I have a negon suspicion Henry's livers and doing so hot these days. Helmets Cross was a hundred and ten feet

from the ground to the very top. It was probably the tallest structure in the area at the time. You got an old picture of it in the shoebox somewhere. It was taken some time in the 30s, I guess. In the picture, you can see the cross

was made out of tree trunks, all lashed together with rope and chains. They dug a deep bastard of a hole and dropped it in. Oh, I can't even begin to guess just how goddamn heavy it must have been or how much cement they must have poured into the hole to make the damn thing stable. Every single man, woman, and child

that was old enough to help were involved in some way. They worked six full days, and nights to get that thing in the ground, and on the seventh day, Helmut commanded them to rest. A lot of them just dropped to where they stood and slept on the ground. I let out of low whistling said, Holy shit. That's nuts. So why did this dude think God wanted a giant cross in their cornfield? You ever explain that to anyone?

According to Helmut, the entire world was about to be surprised. mirds in a new flood. Only this time it would be a flood of murder, madness, and sin. Just like Jesus supposedly took all the world's collective sin into himself when he was being crucified, Helmets Cross would absorb this flood of evil like a sponge, and it would save our souls from drowning. I'm guessing he was referring to the mayhem going on during the First World War. Henry gave me a somber nod and sipped his beer. now people had been pretty tolerant of these wackos up to this point but everyone was pretty goddamn mad about this big crooked eyesore of a cross towering over the landscape the reeve of the township came out in person and ordered helmet to take it down helmet called the reeve a foul papa to satan and kicked him off his land in the end there wasn't much anyone could do about it the cross was there to stay

it wasn't long before something awful strain started to happen the wood kept getting darker and darker in color and it started to smell bad if you were down wind from the damn thing the stink could just about make your eyes water People said it smelled like sewage and sulfur and rotting flesh, just an awful stench. I gave him a skeptical look and said, That's really weird. What would cause that? Some kind of fungus? Henry offered me a cryptic smile and opened a fresh beer. Maybe.

In a manner of speaking, anyhow. Want more of this chicken? I patted my stomach. and shook my head. Henry cleared the table. His movement's slow and careful. I could tell his arthritis was acting up again, but I knew better than to ask if he wants some help.

Henry's a proud man, and his independence means everything to him. Henry finished cleaning up and stood at the window for a while, gazing into the forgotten past through the dusty panes of glass. Not long after the war ended, the township evicted the brethren. from their land for not paying their property taxes. They had to physically drag helmet out of his cabin.

He was ranting that the Lord would demand blood sacrifice if anyone ever removed the cross, just screaming a whole lot of Old Testament hellfire and brimstone at the top of his lungs. And the cops tossed them all off the property and told them to beat it. And no one ever saw him again. Now, straight away, the bank tried to pay

someone to take down that cross, but every handyman and contractor in the entire county flatly refused to go anywhere near the damn thing. They had a hell of a time trying to sell that land. No one wanted anything to do with it, not with that fucking nightmare blooming tall over the fields. After a while, everyone in the area just got kind of used to it. Now, a few more years went by and people started believing that maybe Helmut was right. Maybe it needed to be there. I guess there was no such thing as Homeowners Association back then. I smirked and Henry let out a dry little chuckle.

He said, That's just human nature. Something unwanted gets introduced into your life and everyone yells about it. Then a year or two goes by and everyone gets tired of being mad and starts accepting it as the new normal. A few more years than they're making excuses as to why they actually need things to be that way. By the time the Van Clines came along,

it was a pretty much unanimous opinion among the locals that it would be best to leave that awful fucking eyesore right where it was. Now, Noah Van Cline didn't like that cross one bit, but he didn't want to piss off his new neighbors either. In the end, he told the bank, so be it then, and be damned with that abomination, maybe the horrid old thing will scare the birds away. Henry Water back to the table and plunked himself down with the ground.

Not long after the last apple sampling went into the ground, Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began. Right away, Helmets Cross started rotting again. As the war dragged on, the rotten wood started to lean under its own bloated weight. It snapped and fell on the evening of August 5, 1945, right around the same time we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. It shattered into a million pieces on impact, and the smell was enough to knock you off your feet.

All that was left was a stubby, twisted. pole that stuck out maybe eight feet out of the ground. Willie always said it reminded him of a crooked fang, as if years of erosion was slowly uncovering the skeleton of some gigantic beast. The stump always had a kind of low, unpleasant odor to it, but every time there was a major conflict of disaster somewhere in the world, it would start to rot again and it would stink to high heaven. He went down his empty can and nodded at the fridge. Ah, I'm dry, kiddo. Give me another beer, and I'll keep going.

Now, I obliged his command with a mutter curse under my breath. Henry popped the tab and held up the can in a mock salute. Oh, come on now. Don't be like that. He grinned. Respect your elders. Anyhow, when Noah passed on in the late 50s, he left the orchard to Willie. It was the only son that stuck around to keep the business going, so his dad gave him sole ownership of the land and the business.

There were some hard feelings about that in the family, but it was Noah's final decision, and there wasn't much they could do but grumble. Well, they tended the orchard with his family, and the Van Clines made a decent living as the years rolled by. They were a good family. They were good neighbors. Henry sat back in his chair with a wince and a groan.

He poured a few lungs, swallows a beer down his throat with a trembling hand and stifle the belch. Well, it used to mean something to be a good neighbor. You looked out for each other. You folks that live all crammed together in a concrete beehive, hell. You simply can't give a shit about that many people at once, not on a personal level. Back in the old days, your neighbors were your lifelines. They helped you take in the crops at harvest time, and you drank to each other's health on the holidays. Gently, I interjected.

Well, times change, Henry. Henry slept his hand on the table and scowled. They do change, and it's usually for the worse. Time started changing for the Van Kleins in December of 1969. Willie's oldest son got a draft card to the mail. He came back ten months later in a box. He had never seen such a broken man as Willie on the day he put Will Jr. into the ground.

Willie had always been a big, strong, rambunctious, son of a bitch. You know, a big man and a big personality. But from that day forward, he was diminished. He kind of faded away until he wasn't much more than a shadow of the man he used to be. And all the while the Vietnam War was raging on, and that nasty stump of Helmut Schneider's cross kept rotting away in the background, stinking like a corpse, and almost oozing with death and corruption. Willie started obsessing over it, always talking about how ugly it was, how

wrong it felt whenever he was forced to lay eyes on the awful thing. For Willie, the cross was a constant reminder of what happened to his boy. He started drinking himself to sleep every night, and then he was drinking during the day, too. The booze made him mean. I had an idea that maybe he was taking it out on Ingrid and his other boys. You know, getting free with his hands when he wasn't in the bottle. I tried to talk to him about it,

and he told me to mind my own goddamn business. You could have called the cops. I began, and Henry cut me off with a snort of cynical laughter. Now, in those days, the cops didn't care what passed between a man and his family. It was considered a personal matter. Uh, yes, the good old days. I said, and I rolled my eyes. Never said it was all roses back then.

Henry countered. Society had its problems. There's no arguing that. A woman wasn't her husband's property exactly, but it was definitely a junior partnership. I never agreed with any of that. Hell, I believe we should give a woman a crack at running the country for a while. Men have been fucking it up for years. Let a woman dry her hand and flushing the economy down the shitter.

What hell not? I gave Henry a sarcastic thumbs up. That's very progressive for you, Henry. He grinned and flapped a dismissive hand at me, raising his beer in another mock salute. Eh, to the good old days. And don't be a jackass. I am no Archie Bunkard type, you know that. You want to hear this story or not?

I nodded in motion for him to continue. Anyhow, Ingrid finally had enough of Willie's abuse, so she took the kids and left in December exactly one year after Will Jr. got his draft card. Willie was crushed. He came over here the day after she left and bawled his eyes out in my garage, drunk as a skunk, and reeking like a distillery. He kept saying, I never meant to hurt them. It's that goddamn cross, Henry.

I can't ever get it out of my mind. I can feel it in my head every minute of every day. I told him, you've got to get yourself together. Stop drinking. Maybe she'll come back if you get sober. Well, he just turned away and started crying even harder. I didn't know what else to say to him, so I just stood there quietly and let him get it all out.

When he was done, Willie straightened himself up, wiped his face on his sleeve, and said, All I've got left is the orchard, Henry. It's all there is. The look on his face was awful, like his soul was dead. decaying right along with the remains of Helmut Schneider's cross.

He walked out into the night without another word, and I didn't see him again for the rest of that winter. Henry stopped a lot of smoke. I squashed the urge to ask for one. I'm trying to quit. I pulled out a pack of Nicoret and Henry made a sour face. Oh, he's, that stuff tastes like mint-flavored dog shit. He weezed.

He wheezed. I'd rather chew on a lot. goddamn battery. You're trying to quit, are you? I said, yeah, it's time to give it up. It's hard. Well, good for you. No sense in paying good money to give yourself cancer. Henry regarded the cigarette clamp between his fingers with disgust. I can't give him up. I've tried so many times, but I just can't do it. I won't be running a marathon anytime soon. Now your dad, well, he could run like

like the wind when we were younger. He could run and jump just like an antelope. I remember we were down in the gully one time, and I... I interrupted his tangent with the polite... And added, you were telling me about Willie Van Klein. Stay on course, Captain. Ah, right, Willie. Well, I hadn't seen hiding a hair of him in months,

so I dropped by one morning and early May to check in on him. He wasn't in the barnyard, but I heard his tractor running somewhere out in the orchard, so I went looking for him. I found him out at the stump. He dug a deep hole around it with a shovel, and I came walking up just as he was looping a length of the chain around the base of the stump. The other end of the chain was hooked on to the tractor hitch. I waved my hands to get his attention, and yelled, Are you sure you should do this? and Willie hollered back your goddamn right I'm sure

I stood back and watched as he slowly tightened up the slack on the chain inching ahead a little bit at a time chain sank into the rotted wood Willie gunned the tractor and snapped the stuff broke off just above the big block of concrete the brethren had poured the anchored into the ground it disintegrated when it hit the dirt

just completely shattered into a a million shreds of rotting splinters. It released a blast of stench that made me turn and gag. Oh, it smelled like the depths of hell. Henry tipped back his beer and plunked the empty can on the table and jerked his head at the fridge. I jumped up and fetched us both another round. Henry struggled with the pole tab on the beer can. He mumbled.

He attached a scraper blade to the tractor hitch and started filling in the hole. I watched him do it with butterflies in my stomach. That ugly bastard of a cross had been there for as long as I could remember, and now it was gone. I had a bad feeling that Willie made a terrible mistake. I thought, ah, for Christ's sake, I couldn't open this fucking thing to save my life. Here, get that open for me, will you? He slid the can across the table, and I popped the tab with mixed emotions. Henry had to be doing pretty badly

if he was a low-warning himself asking someone else to open his beer for him. I made a mental note to buy him a soda-can tab opener. Ah, thanks, kiddo. Well, a couple days later, Willie comes over in a panic. He says, Come back to the orchard. I have something you need to see.

So I go over there with him, and I'll be damned if there weren't some kind of blight creeping over the ground where the cross used to stand. The vegetation was withering up and dying off in a rough circle, maybe 50 feet across. Everything inside that circle was curled up and dried out, and there was a low, unpleasant stink in the air. Willie gives me this helpless look and says,

It started right after I pulled down the rest of that cross. It's spreading fast. I told them, I don't know. I never seen anything like it. It's probably a fungus. Try spraying it down with a fungus-eyed. Willie just shakes his head and says, It's not a fungus.

I asked him what he thought might cause such a thing, but he didn't answer. He just pointed at the freshly turned dirt and says, Don't you see it? Henry gave me a grim smile and said, By Jesus, I shit you not. That soil had turned black. blacker than midnight. I realized I was standing inside that circle of diseased earth,

and I jumped right out of there like I had springs on my heels. Woolie ran his hand through his hair and said, God Almighty, Henry, what have I done? I let it all out. All the misery and death, I let it all out. We stared at each other for a few moments. Then he pointed to the ground and said, look, you can see it spreading. And you could. You could actually see the weeds drooping and sagging before your very eyes, full of life one second and dying the next. I stood there with my mouth open, watching the thing spread,

and all I could think was, I've got to get out of these boots right pronto. I didn't know what to tell him. Henry said, and his eyes were mournful. He'd always been a good neighbor to us, and I felt awful about what was happening to him, but I had a powerful need to get home and get those goddamn contaminated boots off my feet.

And I'll admit, a small part of me wanted to sneer at him and say, I told you so, you big, dumb bastard, when other people suffer an unfortunate fate, it's comforting to believe it was their own damn fault in the first place. When you believe that, you can pretend such a terrible thing

would never happen to you because you know better. When other people are suffering, it's easier to be cruel than to be kind. I blinked at the simple, unflinching power in this statement. Slowly, I said, Henry, sometimes I think you need to write a book of your accumulated wisdom. It would fly off the shelves.

I don't have to have to. a wise bone in my body, kiddo. I'm full of bullshit just like everyone else. Anyway, I can hardly hang on to a pen at all anymore. I ain't writing a book. Shit. I have days when I can't even open a beer. You're the writer in the family, not me. You take that bullshit of mine and write the book, and you make yourself a million dollars. You have my blessing. Anyhow, I went straight home and I burned those boots out in the fire barrel. I took threw my clothes in there, too, and watched it all burn wearing nothing but a bath towel. When it was all burned to ashes, I got in the tub and I scrubbed myself damn near raw.

I couldn't stop thinking, how far will it go? I was scared of the answer. At the rate it was spreading, the blight would take over Willie's entire property within a week, and then what? Would it crawl over the ditch, jump across the road? Would it reach our own farm? Farther even? I was scared shitless to find out and I didn't have a damn clue

what to do about it. Willie called me a few days later and all he said before hanging up the phone was you need to come see this. I told your aunt I was heading over to help him with some chores and she just scowled and said he's a louse

drinking and carrying on, slapping around his wife and kids? What happened to Will Jr. doesn't excuse any of that. You shouldn't even bother yourself with that man. Make him do it himself. Well, I apologized to her and made some bullshit excuse why I had to go. I drove over in my truck, and the first thing I noticed when I stepped out onto his driveway was how silent it was. I couldn't get over it. Usually, the barnyard would be boiling away with activity at this time of year, but everything was still and quiet as a tomb.

I knocked on the front door, and Willie came shambling out onto the veranda and dirty overalls and a pair of big mirrored sunglasses. His hair looked like a bird's nest. He said, come out to the orchard and see my ruination. There was a dirt lane that led out into the orchard. was out there in my truck. I didn't get very far before I jumped on my brakes and yelled, hot damn, at the top of my lungs. I knew it was coming, but I still couldn't believe the sheer devastation I was looking at. Almost the entire 70 acres of fruit trees, all of it gone. All those strong, healthy trees withered and shriveled into row upon row of black mummified

carcasses. It was horrific. and not just the trees either, but all the vegetation, grass, weeds, and all, everything just as dead as dead can be. All of it gone in just the space of a few days. I was speechless. I threw the truck in reverse and turned back for the house. I'd seen enough.

I pulled up in his driveway, and we sat there in my truck for a while, not talking or anything, just sitting there. I slowly realized that Willie wasn't smelling so good. In fact, he smelled downright fucking awful. I thought about how fast the blight was spreading, how it killed everything in its path. And I turned to Willie and I said,

I'm sorry, but I think you need to get out of my truck. Right now, I have to go. He smiled a little and went, You don't want me sitting so close to you? I don't blame you. He got out of the... truck and you lumbered around to the driver's side window. I was watching him real close with my hand in my pocket. I had your grandpa's 38 special in there. The fact I brought a gun to see an old

friend in dire need either says a lot about me or a lot about the situation at hand, probably both. Henry struggled out of his chair and walked over the big storage closet beside his front door. He hauled open the sliding doors and started digging around inside. Willie leaned down to look me in the face. Henry said. His voice slightly muffled in the depths of the closet. He said, I'm not long for the world, Henry. It's in me. And he pulled down his sunglasses. Henry emerged from the closet with the old shoebox clutched in his bony arms.

He dropped it on the table and pointed it to his eye. The whites of Willie's eyes were all mottled with brown and yellow, and each iris had turned from blue to pure black. There were the eyes of a rotting corpse. He stuck out his tongue and, by Jesus I damn near fainted. It was covered in patches of black and purple and brown, like it was decaying in his mouth. His teeth were turning gray at the gum line. I drew back from the window and said, Holy mother of God, Willie, you need a doctor.

Old Willie just shakes his head and says, You saw my orchard. There's no cure for that. I fucked up, Henry. I thought I would release my boy and set him free, but all I did was unleash a plague on this world. I can't stop it. But this land will always be tainted.

Willie started crying then, and oh my Christ, his tears look like drops of pus from a septic. infection. I bit down on a scream through the truck in reverse and gunned it down the driveway. He yelled, You know what I have to do, as I whipped out onto the road, but I didn't stop to answer him. I just stomped on the gas pedal and got the hell out of there. When I got home, I scrubbed the passenger side of the bench seat with hot water and bleach. Henry sat down and started raffling through the contents of the shoebox. It was filled with stacks old photographs and Ziploc bags, along with few miscellaneous trinkets from our family's past.

I didn't tell Eustace what happened over there, but I couldn't stop thinking about those thick green tears rolling down into Willie's beard. I was getting ready for bed when it finally dawned on me what Willie had meant when he yelled, you know what I have to do. I said, oh hell, and told Eustace I had to go check on something out in the fields. I drove down the road to Willie's Orchard with my heart and my throat. He wouldn't answer the door, but it wasn't locked. I found him lying on the floor in the bathroom. He cut his own throat wide open with a straight razor.

He was surrounded by big, dark puddles of the foulest smelling crap I've ever encountered before or since. I thought, holy Jesus, what the hell is that? and then I realized it was Willie's blood. And uttered a satisfied grunt and thrust the black and white photo into my hands. Here's that picture I was talking about. It's Helmets Cross. Picture was smudged and greeny, but it clearly depicted an enormous cross rising out of the sparse-looking cornfield. I squinted at it closely, and I saw that the cross had indeed been constructed.

from a patchwork of multiple tree trunks. Comparing it to the rows of corn stalks nearby. Cross must have been close to four feet in diameter, a crude and darkly sinister monolith of staggering proportions. There appeared to be a tiny figure standing in the foreground, solitary speck of humanity wearing a long black overcoat and a hat with a round brim. I wondered if the figure might actually be helmet-shin-lawed. himself even though I knew it couldn't have been him I still felt goosebumps pop out on

my arms the cross was a product of a union between another worldly influence and Helmut's own disturbed imagination even if he was no longer physically present at the time the picture was taken Helmut Schneider was part of the cross and the cross was a part of him Henry blew out a deep breath and It ended in a nasty coffin fit. When he was done, he croaked. Willie left a message for me on the mirror. He wrote it in shaving soap.

I guess he was counting on me being the one to find his body and not someone from a utility company. The message said, burn it down. So that's what I did. I put a lit candle beside the old sofa in the living room. Then I made a torch out of a two-by-fifference. for and some oily rags I found in his garage. I walked out to the orchard and lit up any branches I could reach

without stepping inside that god-awful circle of dead vegetation. The trees were dry as cardboard. They went up almost instantly. Now, by this time, the blight had taken over the entire orchard. Henry said. He started to draw an invisible map on the table. It was creeping into the woods on one side, it was damned near into the ditch beside the road on the other.

It wouldn't have been long before it would have infected the entire country block. And then beyond. How far beyond? Who the hell knows? All that concentrated evil, so much madness and death, all bottled up on just waiting to be released into the world. The entity that spoke to Helmut Snyder in his dreams demanded a sacrifice, to stop the flood and that's exactly what it got a sacrifice of blood a sacrifice of hope

henry lit a smoke and gazed off into the distance it dawned on me that the tale had drawn to its conclusion henner was probably going to start prattling on about the activity at his bird feeder at any moment i had a couple burning questions that needed to be answered first i waved my hand to get his attention get his attention and asked, What happened to the brethren? They just disappeared down the road and were never seen again? Hainter shrugged and said,

Well, kind of, I guess. We moved to another county somewhere close by from what I can gather, and not long after that, one of Helmets' wives attacked him in his sleep. She put a knitting needle through his eyeball. He chased after her with a knife, and she shoved him down a flight of sight.

stairs. He broke his neck on the way down. I raised my eyebrows and said, Oh shit, there you go. I'm sure it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. He was an awful man, no doubt about it. That's not why she killed him. The poor girl claimed Helmut was regularly convening with an evil spirit in his sleep. To be honest, I can't say she was right about that.

I think something awful was guiding that man's actions through his dreams. He believed it was God. Oh, but I doubt that very much. One last question. What happened after you set fire to the orchard? Won there an investigation? Not really. Henry sighed.

He looked tired. I told the cops I hadn't seen anything unusual that night, and they believed me. They probably decided Willie had done. done it himself before he put a razor to his throat. I really don't know. I never came back to talk to me again, so I can only guess. But I heard Ingrid got the insurance money, so at least some good came out of that horrible mess. Henry put out his half-smoked cigarette and shot a glance at the grandfather clock in the corner.

He pressed his lips together in an unhappy line and said, Listen, I appreciate you coming out here like this, kiddo. But I'm not feeling so hot today. I think I'm going to lay down for a while. Here, why did you grab something out of that box before you head out, a keepsake, you know? I said, sure, of course. I'm blindly reached into the box. I wanted to ask him what was going on, but I knew I wouldn't get a straight answer.

I swallowed down a sudden lump in my throat and pulled a worn little pocket. a knife out of the shoebox. I showed it to him, and a fleeting smile skitter crossing his lips. That belonged to your father. You should keep it. He was a hard man to live with, but you know he had his reasons. He found it when he was serving overseas in World War II. There's a hell of a story behind that knife, but it'll have to wait for another day. I need to lay down now. Henry showed me the door, and I walked down the gravel driveway with lead in my feet and they dread my heart. I don't want Henry to get sick, and I certainly don't want him to die. It's probably selfish, but I don't care.

I don't want him to leave. He has a gift, and when he dies, his gift will die with him. But as Henry said earlier, I'm the writer and the family. It's my job to document the world around me. And you better believe I'm trying my best to capture his worth before he's gone. I was halfway back to the city before I felt a knife bouncing around in the breast pocket of my shirt. I cursed Henry out loud.

He did it to me again. A clever old son of a bitch. He started an interesting story and left me hanging. Well, I guess I'll just have to try. drop in at that farm again soon and ask him about this pocketknock of mine. I don't mind a long drive. I really don't. In fact, I look forward to it.

It gives me time to think, and time spent thinking is never time wasted. Until then, I bid you all a good night. And if you take away any less than at all from the unfortunate fate of Willie Van Klein, Remember this Sometimes It's better to just leave well enough alone Even if well enough Doesn't seem so great at the time

No matter how bad things might look They could always get a hell of a lot worse For more information Including pictures and videos of the stories told on this podcast Or to suggest stories for a few future episodes, please visit us. At Creepypod on Twitter, Instagram. All stories told on this podcast can be found at creepypasta wikiya.com

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