Scary Horror Stories by Dr. NoSleep - The Brittle Man | Part 1

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Head to ⁠NoSleepCoffee.com⁠ and use promo code NOSLEEP20 for 20% off your first order! Haunted by the loss of his son and dragged back into the twisted Crooked Wood, a haunted man must face the Brittle Man—a grotesque, skin-wearing monster born from the souls of murdered children. As ancient darkness spreads from a cursed lighthouse, he battles to stop a cosmic evil that threatens to snuff out all light and hope from the universe. Author: J.G. Martin Check out the author's new book Crooked Gospels here: https://www.amazon.com/Crooked-Gospels-Stories-Supernatural-Nightmare/dp/1963107322 * * * CONTENT DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content not limited to intense themes, strong language, and depictions of violence intended for adults. Parental guidance is strongly advised for children under the age of 17. Listener discretion is advised.  #drnosleep #scarystories #horrorstories #doctornosleep #horrorpodcast #horror Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, a brand new bonus episode just dropped on Dr. No Sleep Premium. If you're craving more nightmares, early access, and ad-free episodes, now's the perfect time to join Premium. Start your seven-day free trial today at patreon.com slash dR. No Sleep. That's patreon.com slash DR No Sleep. It's time to unlock the perks. Start your free trial today. The Brittle Man. That's the name the children gave him. back before they became bloodstains. He lives in the woods, walks on all fours, and wears a coat of skin.

He hides in the trees, they say. Way, way up, so you can't see him while you meander the trails, while you soak in the scant rays of sunshine, peeking through the suffocating leaves of the crooked wood. I asked a girl when he comes down to feed, and she told me it's only when the moon is full, when it throbs and shudders like a spider sack. fit to burst, that's when. And you'll know it because of the way his long, yellowed nails

click-clack along the bark, the way he heaves and gasps like a butchered sow. He never speaks, doesn't have to. He communicates through his victims, through their screams, and the red stains they leave upon the stones and sticks. That's what they tell me. The children do. Rest their hearts. I never went looking for them in my search for the brittle man. They found me. They were waiting at the edge of the wood when I arrived, waving to me in the dying light of the sun. You've seen him too, haven't you?

They asked me, and I nodded. It was a long time ago, back when I was probably not much older than them. I'd been wandering the forest with Charlie, my very best friend. It was the same forest that we'd stumbled through all nine years of our lives, or so we had thought. But as we walked along familiar trails, they began to twist, mutate. The forest seemed to bend, expand, almost as if it were breathing, a living organism that had swallowed us whole. Night fell, darkness poured in. We tried to retrace our path, Charlie and

I, to escape that prison of trees, but our paths led to nowhere. We'd been caught, ensnared. That was the first time I heard the click-clack of those fingernails, crawling down the bark. It was the first time I heard the aching whimper that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. Did he get one of your friends too? I asked the children. Yes. They told me.

Lots. My heart ached. How many? Too many. They turned then, the boy and the girl, and led me into the suffocating shadow of trees. Do you know who you are? They asked. It seemed like a strange question.

Of course I knew who I was. I was me. Why did you come back? They asked. You escaped all those years ago. Now you're back. How come? My lips tasted the coldness of carbon.

Choice, I answered quietly. I woke up one day with a little. my gun in my mouth, my finger tapping against the trigger, my body daring my mind to give the order, to put me out of my misery. Then it happened again. I adjusted the rifle slung across my back, the weight feeling Titanic. The children didn't need to know about the ocean of beer cans I waited through to get to bed, or the way I'd drink myself unconscious just to rest my bloodshot eyes. The truth was simple. If I didn't kill the brittle man, I told them, then I'd kill me. Oof, the boy said. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Yes, I told him. Let's hope.

The children led me down a winding trail, one where the branches reached out like hungry claws, scraping at my plaid shirt and my torn jeans. The further we went, the darker it became, until the sunlight became little more than a memory, all but drowned by the gloom-soaked shade. We passed teeth dangling from thread. They rattled, clattering against one another like makeshift alarms heralding our arrival. It'll be night soon, whispered the girl, her voice sharp with unease. The brittle man will be awake soon. Are you sure you're ready? I felt the rifle across my back, finding security in the sun.

same barrel I'd nearly swallowed just days prior. I'm ready. In fact, I hope we cross paths. I'd like to give him something for the nightmare he put me through. The boy laughed. You can't kill him. Not with that. I shot him a cold look. Then how do I kill the bastard? There's a way, he said, a playful grin flickering on his lips. Just follow us and we'll show you. So I followed them. With every step we took, the forest seemed to compress, to shrink, its branches reaching closer and closer, as if they'd like nothing more than to strangle the light from our eyes. Do you see that? I asked, squinting ahead.

A shadow hung from the bow of a tree, swaying in the humid breeze. Don't, said the girl, but it was too late. My feet were already marching forward, faster and faster as my breath became panicked gasps. I lifted my flashlight, and my stomach twisted with nausea. It was a body, a child's, hanging dead from a noose. I forced myself closer, ignoring the cries of the girl and the giggles from the boy. My heart ricocheted against my ribs, a single thought spiraling around my mind. Don't be Charlie! Please don't be Charlie!

Yet the closer I got, the more my heart sank. The child looked familiar. He was a boy, red shoes, blue jumper. Oh, God. Charlie had a sweater just like that, didn't he? My breath caught as I came right up to him, my legs giving out. The moonlight caught the boy's face. Or what should have been.

It had been removed. His face. His old head. In its place was, It's a teddy bear, I sputtered, horror lacing my every word. They've sewn a teddy bear's head onto his neck. Tears muddied my vision. It hardly seemed real that somebody or something could be so vile,

so twisted that they desecrate a child's body this way. He does this to all the children. The boy told me, matter-of-factly, gazing up at the corpse with unnerving indifference. The brittle man carves off their heads, then flays their faces, stitches them into his coat of skin, and sows their favorite stuffy onto their neck.

I doubled over, wretching into the grass. I'd never seen anything so horrible, but I reminded myself I wasn't the victim here. Charlie was. He deserved to be seen, for his pain to be understood. And so I forced myself to look up at my old friend at what this monster had made him into. But something was off. Charlie's jumper wasn't blue, was it? It was white.

And he'd never had a teddy bear. He had that stuffed animal his mother sewed for him. I frowned, brows furrowed as I racked my memory. My head felt hazy in these woods. It was as if my past was buried beneath some bleak shadow, too heavy to lift. But I clenched my eyes shut and focused. It was a rabbit, I said slowly, the memory emerging from the fog. That's what Charlie had, his favorite stuffed animal.

It wasn't a teddy bear. It was a rabbit his mother made for him. The girl nodded, staring at the dead child with near clinical curiosity. So then this couldn't be him, she said. The boy gave the hanging child's leg a push, laughing as it swayed like a pendulum. What a relief! Guess we can get moving again! He bounded off the boy, leaving the girl and I to walk beneath the eclipse of the trees. She seemed much more serious than the boy.

The brittle man, I asked her. Why does he do this? Her fingers fretted at the hem of her dress, almost like she was deep in thought. Then she said, To seal their souls inside them. Otherwise, they'd leak out through their eyes, wouldn't they? I didn't know.

I didn't know anything anymore. We ventured deeper into that labyrinth of branch and vine. And the further we went, the more my chest tightened with dread. It was a feeling that took me back to that day all those years ago. The day I lost, Charlie, the day we met, I jerked to a stop, ears twitching. The sound, I'd heard it from somewhere up above, a soft clack like fingernails crawling over bark, and labored breathing, like a sow being butchered slow. I reached for my rifle, but the girl's arms,

snapped out, stopping me. She shook her head, she whispered, fear slithering into my veins. It was getting closer. He was getting closer. A putrid stench wrinkled my nostrils, something like rotting skin. The brittle man was close enough that I could smell him now, and the fingernails were beginning to dance faster and faster. I squinted through the gloom. The boy's silhouette knelt ahead of us, crouched by the gaping hollow of a tree. He waved, and hear you two, the creepy old monster won't fit. I gazed at the hollow, my stomach nodding with primal terror. It didn't look like a hole in a tree.

It looked like a mouth, gnarled and hungry, just waiting for the next meal to stumble through its jaws. There's no time. The brittle man was here, and that left me with a choice between dying for sure or dying perhaps. I ducked down. My palms ached against the stone and sticks. My jeans earning another tear as I forced myself through the jagged jaws of the trunk.

And then the ground vanished beneath me. I fell, screaming, down the throat of the tree, swallowed up by the crooked wood. I flailed, kicking and swinging as I fell, devoured by the gullet of the tree. I smashed through vines and branches. My body spun and cracked, bones on roots, muscles pulling and skin bruising, until finally I crashed into a pile of bones, rolling onto the dirt with a painful groan. A voice echoed from the darkness above, bright and cheerful. The boy.

Don't worry, he called down to me. The bones ain't human, just squirrels and such, stuff the groundskeeper used to hunt. Ground's keeper? I heard what sounded like the girl scolding the boy beneath her breath. Then she called down. Look out. I'm coming next. The girl leaped, landing with much more grace than I.

The pile of bones barely shifted it. she rolled off of them, and the same happened when the boy dropped down. It was as if the children weighed nothing at all. Did you say these woods had a groundskeeper? I asked as they got to their feet. Used to, said the boy, dusting off his shorts, though they didn't appear to have any marks. He's gone now. His head got all addled and he died, the girl said quickly. The brittle man got him, just like he'll get us if we don't kill that monster first. She marched forward, uninterested in furthering the discussion. The boy and I followed. The passage was tight, with gnarled roots hanging like nooses. It seemed that we were underground, that we'd somehow

fallen into a network beneath a crooked wood. This was one of the groundskeeper's tunnels, the boy told me in a hushed, mischievous voice. He used to get him to get around the garden, back before his brain became stew. I blinked. Did you just call this place a garden? His eyes went wide, darting to the girl who was far enough ahead she hadn't heard. He shook his head.

What? No, it's a forest, the crooked wood. But you called it a garden just now. He folded his arms. Nope, maybe your brains turned into stew too. Before I could press him on it, the girl's voice rang out ahead of us. made it. Pick up the pace, you two. I lifted my hand, shielding my eyes against a pale light.

It was the mouth of the tunnel. The girl's silhouette stood out in the center of it, her foot tapping with impatience and worry. My God, I breathed, coming up beside her. What is this place? The jagged maze, she whispered, gazing across a labyrinth of twisted undergrowth. Once, this place was my favorite place in the entire world. Brambles and thorns. The boy shrugged. Whatever. It's still the fastest route to the lighthouse. I turned to him.

We're in the middle of the forest. There isn't an ocean for miles. What good is a lighthouse? Ask the riddle man, said the girl darkly. It's how he finds his victims. Or at least, that's our best theory. We think he uses the flame to fight wandering children to track them as they run so he could add their skin to his coat.

It's where he hides his heart, added the boy, dropping down and beginning to crawl into the jagged maze. So that's where we're going, to find that monster's heart and rip it apart. I swallowed, a cold, chill creeping up my spine. Come on, said the girl. The brittle man will catch up soon. So I followed them into that mess of thorns. It was tight enough that I couldn't even crawl. I had to slither after them on my belly, like a snake.

beneath the barbed wire sky. Thorns nicked my cheeks and my arms. They traced bloody lines across every inch of my exposed skin, but I forced myself forward to finally defeat my demon, to finally get revenge for what the brittle man did to Charlie. Yet the further we went, the more unwell I felt. Picture this. It's late at night. You're scrolling, and suddenly you find exactly what you've been looking for.

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See less carts go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their shop pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash DNS. Go to Shopify.com slash DNS. That's Shopify.com slash D&S. That's Shopify.com. It was my thoughts. They were beginning to race, churning inside of my skull like ant-infested honey. Memories knocked at the doors of my mind, the old kind, the haunted kind. I remembered him, the brittle man. I remembered the day we wandered into this crooked wood, and the stranger who had tried to warn us away, to save us from the grim fate that lurked beyond these trees.

How long ago was it? It's so hard to say. It felt like decades, but it just as easily could have been weeks, or even centuries. Time felt funny in the crooked wood. I think maybe it always did, even back then, when Charlie and I first walked beneath those autumn leaves. All I can say for certain is our nightmare didn't begin with the brittle man. It began with him, the stranger.

and I found him at the edge of the wood. That liminal space where the forest we knew became the forest we dreaded. He wore a suit. It was white and tattered at the cuffs, and his top hat sunk low enough that it covered his eyes. Though we stood in the glare of the setting sun, he cast no shadow. Hello, Charlie said as we approached, but the stranger did not answer. How could he? His mouth was full of thorns, coiled like razors spilling from his lips. In retrospect, he was a terrifying figure, impossible and grotesque. But at the time, we felt nothing but ease in his presence. Charlie and I settled onto the grass before him. We sat there and watched him work. He cradled a sketchpad in his arm, slashing a stick of charcoal across it with all the violence of a sword.

It was hypnotic. By the time he had finished, the sun had shrunk and the moon hung lonely in the sky, drowning beneath an ocean of clouds. He turned his pad toward us then, showed us an explosion of charcoal, a jagged cacophony of lines that bled toward the edge of the paper, that made my eyes burn in my pulse race. It looked like evil, only worse. It looked like nothing. like the absence of all things, a portrait of emptiness. The stranger never said so, but somehow Charlie both knew what that thing was. It was as if his sketch had burrowed into our minds,

had shown us revelations that neither sight nor words could put across. It was a monster that much we knew, a force more terrible than any that had ever been, and it lived in this wood. It was called the beast. The stranger's portrait told us many things about it. It told us that he'd chained it here, deep in the trees, locked it away so that it may never escape because if it ever did,

then all the brightness that ever was would dim and die, and so too would all life, until the universe shrank to nothing within its own shadow. It terrified Charlie. I remember his voice breaking, soiled with grief, as he demanded to know what we might do to help stop this beast, and I remember the awful truth the stranger told him. Do you see it?

I blinked, shaken from my reverie. The boy crouched in front of me, his hand parting the roof of the thicket to reveal a haunting horizon. It's amazing, isn't it? He breathed. Even after everything, there's still magic here. Pretty sweet. A lump formed in my throat.

The forest ahead looked surreal, like painting. from a mad artist's unhinged gallery. They resembled skyscrapers, towering and needle-thin. Their tips carved the clouds that wove between them, causing them to distort in the white swirls like foaming rapids. This doesn't look like the crooked wood, I choked out. My voice caught somewhere between awe and horror. The girl nodded.

Her expression detached and severe. No, it doesn't. But make no mistake. We haven't left. It's still the same nightmare. Only we're closer to the source now. See that? I followed her pointing finger, gazing through the walls of trees toward a blue light that did not seem to glow. It sat atop a tower. That's the lighthouse, she told me. It's the source of all this corruption, the rot that's infecting everything else.

Like the boy said, that's where the brittle man keeps us heart. Once we destroy it, we can finally put an end to this horror story and free all the souls he's chained to the land. I turned to her, expression pale with dread. Are you saying that the children the brittle man kills? They don't pass on. Their souls are still imprisoned in the crooked wood? That's right, sang the boy, giving me a feather-light punch on the arm. All of them, every last one of the sorry suckers. Even that kid you knew. What was his name again? I whispered. Right. Him too.

My jaw tensed, teeth gnashing with barely contained fury. The brittle man, that son of a bitch. It wasn't enough for him to just slaughter children. He had to make their souls suffer too. It's how he stays alive. The girl said solemnly, as they're reading my rage. The brittle man has no soul to call his own. So he consumes the children's to keep him satiated, to keep him whole.

The boy whistled. It's no wonder I've been feeling so weak. I narrowed my eyes, a threat of suspicion tugging at my mind. Why would that make you weak? You're not hanging off a tree. He doesn't have your soul. His carefree demeanor cracked, and he gave a nervous chuckle. He was talking about our friends, offered the girl, paying him a look I couldn't read.

It's exhausting emotionally, knowing that our classmates are hanging from trees, caught in a nightmare they can't escape. Right, muttered. But I don't think that's what he was. A crunch of branches stole my attention. My voice shriveled up in my throat. I turned, looked back across the endless expanse of thorns. You heard that too, huh?

Said the boy. It's him, whispered the girl. He's got our scent. He must know where we're going. Perhaps a mile away near the edge of that jagged maze came a rustle of bramble, a guttural snort. Twigs cracked, fingernails clacked. Its every creaking movement was growing faster and faster. Christ!

I gasped, watching the maze part like the Red Sea. How big is he? The girl gripped my arm, her eyes wide with panic. You don't want to know. But my eyes were locked on the monster. My eyes rang with the click-clack symphony of that creature barreling through the undergrowth, heaving with hungry desperation. Don't look at it, said the boy, ganking on my arm. Just run, man.

Trust me, you look back and we're all dead. I nodded absently, digging deep to find my lost courage. Then I ran. Just as he'd said, I kept my eyes ahead. Maybe that's why I finally saw it. Those markings circling the boy's throat. They looked almost like a necklace. Only they were too uneven, too tight against his skin,

almost like they were part of him. Stitches. What happened to your neck? I asked. My gut telling me. me something was amiss. It's all stitched up. Why? The boy reached a hand round, covering up the marks, his cheeks burning red.

It's a long story. He sputtered, tripping over his words. I had a car accident when I was little, that's all. It knocked off my head or just about. He gave another nervous laugh, practically his calling card. They had to stitch it back on. My whole head. Can you believe it? No, I couldn't.

Apparently, nor could the girl. She shot him a scathing glance over her shoulder. Really? That's the story you're going with? That's when I stopped running. The whole scenario feeling rotten bottom to top. The children were hiding something from me. I'd felt it before when they'd skirted around talk of the groundskeeper, and I felt it now in a way I could no longer ignore.

Enough! I snapped. What aren't you telling me? The kids exchanged a look. the kind I'd seen before in my own son, back before I lost him. It was guilt. It was written in their downturned expressions. The way their feet shifted and their eyes darted. They'd been caught in a lie, one they could no longer fool me into believing.

My thoughts spun. I'd heard of monsters using victims as bait. Is that what this was? Were these children victims? Or was the brittle man using them to lure me toward its lair? Was it hoping to finally catch the child that escaped him all those years ago, to finally add my own face to its coat of flesh? Yes, that would certainly explain a lot,

like how the kids just happened to cross paths with me at the edge of the wood, offering to guide me toward a creature cloaked in myth and nightmares. It would explain how they knew the forest so well, why they wandered through the surreal landscape like it were familiar, like it were home. The children were his thralls. pawns of the brittle man. You're part of this.

I spat, jabbing a finger at them. Both of you. That's why you didn't want me to shoot him earlier. You're some kind of followers of his, aren't you? The girl slapped her forehead. See what you've done? She hissed at the boy. All you had to do was stop embellishing and lay off.

The boy said. Just tell him the truth, would you? He won't freak out. No way. Even if he does, we've got bigger problems. I nodded fiercely. Oh yes. The truth would be great.

Feel free to share some of that. It'd make a wonderful change of pace. Behind us, the bramble snapped and broke within the jagged maze. The brittle man was still coming. We haven't got time, said the girl. Make time. She shot me a glare like a bullet, then sighed. She reached back and parted the hair from her shoulders,

then lifted her jaw to reveal the same ring of stitches around her neck. We've all got them, she explained. Mementos, from when the brittle man carved off our heads. My heart skipped a beat. From when he carved off our heads, said the boy, wrenching back on his ball cap, so that his head came off his neck, revealing a grotesque stir fry of tendons and torn flesh. He dropped it back down. Why do you think we both want that brittle asshole dead so badly?

It's payback for what he did to us. I felt the color drained from my face. You both? Dead, finished the girl, her voice tense. Just like every other kid hanging in the crooked wood. It's like we said, the brittle man doesn't settle for taking lives. He takes souls. Jesus.

I thought I had it bad losing Charlie, then losing my son. But these kids, they were ghosts, spirits, lashed to an unending nightmare, with nothing but their hanging corpses and executioner to keep them company. I'm sorry. I stammered. I didn't realize. We don't need your apology, the girl said, grabbing my arm and yanking. We need your help.

Now hurry up and move. That little interrogation might have cost us everything. I didn't think, and just ran. The brittle man was behind us. I could hear him. But strangely, his movements had begun to slow. It was as if he were taking his time, choosing his moment. Was he waiting until we were closer to the lighthouse?

Was he saving himself the trouble of carting our corpses there himself? We thought you'd freak out if you knew we were ghosts, the boy said, burning at my side. Would have told you sooner. I wanted to. She made me promise to keep quiet, though. Ghosts. They were ghosts. How long have you been dead? He screwed up his face and thought. And it occurred to me that even though we were both sprinting, the boy showed no sign of exhaustion. Two years, he said. Not sure, honestly.

Time is funny here. Real talk? It sort of reminds me of purgatory, you know? Like a world between worlds where souls get trapped. A shudder rippled through me. My fingers traced my own heart, half expecting to feel the imprint of stitches on my skin, half expecting to realize that I was no different than the children were.

Just another spirit masquerading as a living, breathing human when the boy laughed. Relax, man, you're not dead. The only ghosts haunting the crooked wood are the ghosts of children. Exactly, called the girl from up ahead. And that means you can do what we can't. And what's that? You can stop him. You can kill the brittle man and free all the souls he's caged in this awful place,

your friend included. My stomach twisted. It was one thing to kill the brittle man, to make him hurt for the pain he'd caused me. But to save somebody, let alone a friend. forest full of dead children? It felt impossible. Gigantic. I'd never saved a single person in my entire life. Not Charlie, not my own son. Hell, I'd even watched my own wife waste away. Her body crumbling to nothing while I drank myself unconscious, pretending the real world

didn't exist. In the end, I wasn't even with her when she died. I was passed out on the floor of my workshop, rolling around in empty beer cans. help us, won't you? The girl asked. Put an end to all of this for good? I'll try. My eyes crinkled with shame, but it was the best I could offer her. Anything more would have felt like a lie. We kept on, rushing through the trees while the specter of the brittle man followed behind. Unseen, unheard, a predator stalking its prey. Before long, the pencil trees thinned out, giving way to an expanse of midnight sky, and a vastest of the vastest of the valley that plummeted toward the earth. And there, hanging above it all was the moon, full and

bright. It looked like a spherical mountain, near enough that the tips of the trees cracked against its cratered surface. A scar split it down the middle, spilling a deluge of red into the valley below. Moon is bleeding, I mumbled, as if somebody ought to know. Has been for years, said the girl, ever since the brittle man finished with the sun. A crow cried somewhere ahead, beckoning us deeper into the wood. We followed a spiraling path, one that wound the length of the valley, with walls of those colossal trees swaying at our sides. Is this even earth?

I asked. My voice haunted. The boy laughed. What do you think? The crooked wood exists outside the earth, said the girl. Always the more serious of the dew. It exists outside of time. That's why you don't find it.

Her words stirred a memory within me. I'd remembered bolting home, frantic and shaking, crying out for my mother. The wood took Charlie, I told them. A monster did. It murdered my best friend and there was nothing I could do. They followed me back to the wood, that little copse of trees that sat at the edge of our farm. We searched all evening, calling Charlie's name. Before long, his mother joined.

Then the sheriff. But it was all pointless. because I could already tell these weren't the same trees that had eaten my friend. This was just the wood. There was nothing crooked about it. They sent me to prison, I said, grief welling up inside of me. It's hard to remember details, but I remember they locked me up. Wouldn't let me leave until I was a man.

For 20 years, maybe 30. They all said I'd killed him. My own brother. Brother, said the boy. I shook my head violently. No, sorry. I meant Charlie. It's just he was like a brother to me.

The sheriff said I hid the evidence that I was trying to pass the murder off on some boogeyman when the real monster was me. Tears stung my eyes, and I quickly wiped my sleeve across my face. My whole family thought I was a murderer, but I'd killed my best friend. The girl was silent.

So was the boy. They kept running. Their face is unreadable. beneath the dark of the twisting canopy, but I got the sense that they felt I was guilty too, that maybe they even knew I was, but couldn't bring themselves to admit it. There was a man, I blurted out,

half to fill the silence, and half to distract from guilt in my gut. Charlie and I met him at the edge of the wood, that place where the forest becomes bent and wrong. We called him the stranger. That's so, said the girl. Yes, he drew us a picture of a, uh, Beast! He said he'd chained it within this wood himself.

Must have been talking about the brittle man, said the girl. That's the only beast I've ever seen. The boy nodded hurriedly. Oh yeah, must have been. I frowned, feeling that same implacable sense of suspicion. The children had described the brittle man to me when we first met, hours ago at the border of the wood. They'd spoken of an abomination, a monster that crawled instead of walked, that wore faces like a coat. But the thing the stranger had shown Charlie and I all those

years ago? I don't think it matched the description. Riding down on my lip, I sifted through my memories, desperately searching for the thread that might lead me back to that night. I'd seen him, the brittle man. I'd seen him steal Charlie away into the trees. I know I had. So then why couldn't I recall what he looked like? There, an image swam to the surface of the world. my mind, rippling like a reflection in a storm, a memory. I saw the stranger then, that man in the top hat who cast no shadow, whose mouth was full of thorns and ivy. I saw Charlie asking what he could do to help stop the beast, and I saw the stranger pull him aside, showing Charlie a sketch I wasn't permitted to see. Afterward, I'd asked Charlie what the stranger showed him,

but he refused to say, it's a secret, was all he said. I rolled my eyes. I rolled my eyes. at him and the way boys do when we tease one another. I told him before he saved the world, he might start by finding us a way out of these trees, because I was almost certain we were lost. And that was the first time I heard him. His fingernails click clacking along the skin of the trees. His breathing, shallow and labored like a dying animal. Before I could ask Charlie if he heard it too, his eyes had already found the same thing mine had. A decrepit shadow, colloquy. It's strange, creeping along the branches high above, its bones creaking with every swing of its scarecrow limbs.