Scary Horror Stories by Dr. NoSleep - The Brittle Man | Part 3

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

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

182nd day, 41st year of light. I have sinned, my brother is dead. I killed him with a stone. I was jealous, for the stranger seemed to prefer him to me. My parents refused to speak to me. I cannot blame them. For now that the fire of rage has passed, I miss my brother dearly. I see now that he was a good man, a much better one than I.

184th day, 41st year of light. The stranger has offered me penance. He says I may join him in his garden and serve as its groundskeeper. He believes the purity of this place will help cleanse the darkness from my heart, the same way it once cleansed the darkness from his. He tells me we must forgive ourselves of our failures, but I fear a thousand years could not heal my heart. I miss my brother. Abel is dead because of me. A deafening roar and more floorboards collapsed beneath the brittle man's assault. The girl's face twisted with terror and rage. Hurry!

Shoot the fucking beast before that monster turns all of our souls inside out! And she was right. Even the boy, typically carefree to a fault, was pacing anxiously. The sensible thing seemed to be to unsling my rifle, to shatter that glass cage and put this horror behind us for good. But there wasn't anything sensible about the crooked wood. And there wasn't anything sensible about this journal. The way it beckoned to me, compelling me to turn the page,

to lose myself in those words that felt familiar enough I could have written them myself. I had to know how this story began, how the beast came to be. I had to know what became of the stranger, and how the groundskeeper lost his life, August 5, 1942. I have done as I was asked. The lighthouse is built, though I question its workmanship. I am no carpenter. Still, the stranger appears satisfied.

I know this by the sketch he drew, the same way I know that he built the lighthouse not to illuminate the garden, but as a prison for a light that does not glow. I asked him what it was, the bizarre flame, and he told me it once belonged to him. He had carried it for eons. He could no longer bear to suffer its weight, for it had made him weary and full of wrath. How long? I asked.

Must the garden endure it while you rest? He did not answer. He merely turned and walked back into the dark of the leaves. December 13, 1952. I toss and turn, unable to find rest. It's the lighthouse, I know it is. It's that thing the stranger sealed in the top of this town. tower. It haunts me while I sleep, constricting my heart of all hope and breathing hatred into my

love. He calls it the beast. It reminds me of the way I felt all those years ago, when I bashed Abel's brains in with the stone. It reminds me of the emptiness I felt then. The absence. I had no meaning, no joy, and no belonging. It was a feeling worse than death. Now I tasted with my every breath. January 1. 1. It has been nearly a year since the beast was chained. It whispers to me at night. It whispers to the children too, and the guardian, and even the plants. I see it in the way the flowers wither, in the way the trees narrow and reach toward the skull-black sky. Even the guardian, once an ageless titan of grace, has grown decrepit. His wings are now torn, His flaming sword extinguished.

He has grown sallow and long, his flesh mottled with rot, and the children have taken to calling him the brittle man behind his back. I wonder what they call me when the nightmare slithers beneath my skin. February 64th, 2731. The stranger will not answer my pleas for aid.

I worry he is avoiding me, that he has abandoned his garden to the beast. There is something about this creature that unnerves him. Perhaps even terrifies him. Entree 4242. The so-called Brittle Man is dead. I brought him to the lighthouse to destroy the beast, but by the time he neared that cosmic nightmare,

he'd already collapsed, his flesh atomizing to less than dust. He evaporated there on the floor beneath that flame that does not glow, and I had no choice but to run. Still, the beast's laughter echoes in my mind. Tree 42-43. The garden is a shell of itself. The beast consumes more of its beauty every day.

Its influence leaking from the walls of that lighthouse like a virus. It devours light. It devours hope. It is the antithesis of life. And I fear it may soon reach beyond the garden and bring all of creation to ruin. I must take matters in life. my own hands. There are tombs I have uncovered, ancient ones. They are said to contain spells,

witchcraft that might mutilate a soul just to think of, and yet I am without another option. The brittle man is dead. The garden withers. It is up to me to stall the beast until the stranger returns. Suffering sorrow guilt. The books describe a ritual, one that might allow the creation of a new guardian, a new brittle man. It will take time, of course, and a willing vessel, but a child has agreed. I'll hang her later this evening, ands. Already, the beast has stolen the sun from the sky. Its horror leaks beyond the children's corpses. It's their heads, I think. His essence crawls through the laylines and spills out their eyes, their mouths, as these are doorways to the soul. To be safe, I will ensure tomorrow's batch are hung without their heads. It worked. The brittle

man has ripened, and not a moment too soon. I found a means of protecting this one from the fate of its predecessor, too. The tomes referenced a coat of flesh, one sewn from the sinew of innocence. It won't take long to thread. I need only to harvest the children's smiles. Bleeding 3413. Not even the coat allowed the brittle man to get close enough to destroy the beast. I've inspected the other children hanging from the vines, but none are ripening into fresh brittle men. Their corpses have begun to rot. Their souls, it seems, are being consumed by the beast. I am too old, too tainted to become a brittle man, but perhaps my son, his light may yet be strong enough to ripen, though I would sooner lose the whole cosmos than my boy. The lighthouse, the lighthouse,

shuddered. The floorboards splintered, cracking in a widening tapestry of destruction before collapsing entirely. Half the study crumbled into rubble below. I stood, staring over the edge of the desk as a monster wrenched itself upward, crawling up onto the remains of the hardwood floor. And there, in the light of those dimming lanterns, I saw the noose around the brittle man's neck. No! Not a noose, but a vine. It fed into his throat, an umbilical, cord the garden had used to pour its power into him. The groundskeeper's macabre attempted creating a new guardian from the corpses of children, a being that might be powerful enough to stand against the beast.

The girl swept backwards, shrouding herself beneath the shadow of a bookcase. The boy stood petrified at my side. I thought for a moment about running. But where would I go? We were trapped, all of us, and yet it didn't seem to matter. The brittle man, Charlie, wasn't focused on. us. No, he was lurching toward that ghostly flame that cast no light. He stalked forward on all fours, his black heart rasping, the tattered rabbit's head hanging limp to the side.

Jesus, I whispered, he's dying, and he was. Charlie kept moving, his limbs creaking louder, his breath becoming more ragged with each lumbering step. The decaying flesh beneath his coat of faces was already beginning to flake away, disintegrating behind him like a black snobreting. No. The beast was killing him, just like it killed the other brittle men. Charlie! shouted, racing around the desk. Don't come any closer. You can't! His right arm snapped beneath him. The bone no longer able to support his immense weight. He crashed to the floor, gasping, wheezing, struggling to force himself upright,

a tortured wine pouring from the heart throbbing behind his ribs. Save him! Urged the girl. Destroy the beast! and this. Instinctively, I reached around for my rifle, but again, something stopped me. It felt maddening, insane. The girl had laid it all out for me, hadn't she?

Shatter the glass, extinguish the flame. It seemed so simple. And maybe that's why I felt such horrible suspicion. The journal. It spoke about the beast being sealed, about the groundskeeper's attempts to destroy it failing time and time again. Something didn't add up here. If stopping the beast was as easy as taking pot shots at its glass cage,

then the groundskeeper would have surely tried it. No, the only thing shooting that cage would do is... So, I said, turning to face the children, my eyes darkening. This is what it's been about all along, isn't it? You didn't bring me here to destroy the beast. You brought me here to free it. The boy did his trademark laugh, but I could see by the tremor in his voice,

by the stutter in his words, that he was caught in another lie. I'd seen the beast. I'd felt it as a boy, back when the stranger showed Charlie and I the future that awaited us should it ever break free. All along, I snarled. You've both been working for the beast.

Wrong again, said the girl, jabbing a finger at the journal. Did you even read what it said? Children hanging from trees, corpses rotting to nothing. It's over, okay? All of it. The beast has won. it's going to escape this garden whether we'd like it or not. The boy sighed.

Yeah, the stranger couldn't bottle the beast. The brittle man couldn't kill it. Not even the crazy magic the groundskeeper found could keep it in check for very long. He gazed down at his feet, almost ashamed. We failed, man. We lost. I shook my head, refusing to believe it. No, there has to be another way.

The brittle man gave a weak gasp. His yellowed fingernails dug into the hard wood, dragging him forward, even as its flesh fell away in a dark mist. His button-eye gaze was transfixed on the lightless flame. The beast. Of course, this was what he'd been made for, to stop the beast. All along, he was only trying to kill us because he knew the children intended to free the abomination. Now that he was here, he wanted to try his hand at killing it himself. Only he was sorely outmatched. My friend, Charlie, was losing this fight.

He wants to kill it, the boy said quietly. Only he can't. Nothing can. Tears welled in my eyes. My feet started forward. The girl shouted at me, warning me away, saying it was too dangerous and that if I died I'd ruin everything. But I didn't give it damn. My knees hit the hardwood.

I wrapped my arms around that coat of skin, hugging tight the monster that had once been my best friend. in the entire world. I'm sorry, I told him, tears pushing from my eyes. I'm so sorry. The boy placed a hand on my shoulder, oddly solemn. You should be proud, really? He's the last brittle man.

The only one that managed to ripen after the beast poisoned the rest of the harvest. But that means after him, it's finished. There won't be another. Once he goes, there'll be nothing left in this garden to stand against the beast. I wiped it my eyes, rage and grief fighting in my voice. Then why not just wait it out? Why go out of your way to set the bloody thing free? Because we made a deal, the girl said, not moving from the shadows.

With the beast. I stared at her, too stunned to speak. I mean, said the boy, sauntering forward with flushed cheeks. Technically, it wasn't us that made the deal. It was the groundskeeper. He saw the writing on the wall. that the stranger had fled, that the garden was all but dead, that we were down to our last brittle man. He figured the war was over, that we'd lost. The best we could hope for was to negotiate

terms of surrender. Then the groundskeeper was mad, I spat, or evil. The brittle man whimpered, his hand grasping upward, trying desperately to reach the beast's pale flame. Charlie, even while turning to ashes, still wanted to stop that abomination. Even if it did meant losing his own life. That's how I knew he was still in there, my old friend. The groundskeeper isn't to blame, the girl said. He was left with an impossible task, and he did what he had to do, for all of us, all of humanity. I gave a short laugh, bitter and derisive. Don't believe me? snapped the girl. Then read it for yourself. It's right there, all over the last page. I swallowed, looking down at the journal in my grip. Goose bumps dance

across my skin. I opened it, finding a page that looked different than the others. The ink on it looked fresh, like it was written mere hours ago, and the paper was speckled with what might have been tears. My eyes widened. The printing on this page, it was so much messier than the others. It looked haphazard, scribbled, like it'd been written by a man at the bottom of a bottle. It looked like my handwriting. What's the matter? said the girl, advancing on me. Read it. You said you wanted the truth, and there it is. Just don't say I didn't warn you. My stomach twisted with nausea, with guilt. I stared at the words, and all at once I was overcome

with an inescapable feeling that somehow, some way, this whole ordeal was my fault. But Charlie was dying. The stairwell below had been destroyed. There was nowhere for me to run, nowhere for me to hide, and so I pushed down my horror. And I read the last word. the groundskeeper wrote. Picture this. It's late at night. You're scrolling, and suddenly you find exactly

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coward and a hypocrite. Long ago, he asked me to serve this garden for the murder of my brother. But where is he now? Where is his service? This beast, this darkness, it belongs to him. It is his sin, yet he leaves it to us to carry. Make it stop, make it stop. I saw him briefly six months ago, the stranger. It was in the woods with my son, at the border between worlds. He saw my pain, just as he did when I murdered Abel.

I know this because he did what he could to ease my son's fear. It is the only reason I didn't attack him. him, that he didn't take the stone to him as I had my brother, but I wish I had. For now my son is lost to me, another brittle man ripening upon the vine, the last guardian of this crooked wood, June 66, 6666. The end has come. My boy proved to be the most powerful of all the guardians, even the original who had been forged from the stranger's light, yet even he has begun to crumble. The war is over. The beast has won. It seems desperate to expand, to suffocate the cosmos. So I have offered it terms. I said I would set it free in exchange for a delay of execution,

that when it smothers all light in this universe, it will come for humanity last of all. And it agreed. Now I prepared to set out to inform what children remain in this crooked wood that their souls will soon be released. They'll be free to travel home. to earth, to find what joy they can before the light finally fades from creation for good. I only pray the brittle man will forgive me. I frowned, rereading the final passage. So that's it then, Deeper signed away the whole of the universe to some eldritch god. And now it's up to me to make good on his bargain.

I tossed the journal aside, indignation boiling inside me. How's that fair? He should be the one pulling the trigger, not me. It isn't fair, you hear me. I don't care if the asshole's dead. You can't ask me to do this. Of course it's fair, said the girl. My anger boiled over.

Oh, shut it. It's not you pulling the trigger. That's why you found me, isn't it? Back there, at the edge of the wood, you saw my rifle and figured I was just what you needed to damn the whole fucking universe to complete annihilation.

Somebody who could shoulder the guilt while you sat and watched. Not exactly, said the boy. I glared in him, Seathing. He sighed. The groundskeeper did just as he said he would. He set out through the trees, informing all the children that their souls would soon be set free. Only by the time he reached the edge of the crooked wood, he'd only found two souls remaining. Of course, the boy, the girl. They were all that remained of Eden's children. And the groundskeeper, how'd he die? The boy rubbed

his arm, uncomfortable. Not sure. He sort of got lost on the way. Lost? I exclaimed. How's a bloody groundskeeper get lost on their own grounds? Whoa, don't blame me, the boy said, raising his hands defensively. Blame the beast! It darkens everything in this place. The garden, the sky, even our minds. The groundskeeper negotiated with it for hours. And even at a distance, it still managed to turn his head into mush. By the time he'd made it to the edge of the crooked wood, his memory had gotten more scrambled than eggs. The girl's eyes flashed, rounding on me.

That's right. Hell, it was bad enough that he couldn't even remember his name, or that he'd ever been the groundskeeper. I stumbled backward, heart thundering. He couldn't be. The way she was talking, the thing she was implying. There was no way. You said it yourself, the girl said.

Your friend met the stranger the day that Brittleman stole him. Charlie, that's what you called him. Only you're getting parts of your life confused. Going to prison for your friend's murder? Never happened. You only went to prison for your brother's murder. That is, if you can call this garden a prison. She kept stalking forward.

Her voice dripping with revelation. If I had to guess, your mind probably played a trick to spare you the overwhelming guilt of it all. She continued. You brought Charlie here, offered him to Eden. Charlie, the person you cared about more than anyone. It turned you into a raging drunk, you know. You drink yourself to sleep night after night.

And he got so bad, we weren't sure if you were dying from the beast or the booze. My back came up against a bookcase. The girl marched forward, cornering me, eyes blazing with contempt. Her finger stabbed against my chest. You told yourself Charlie died decades ago, that you were paralysed. to understand what happened to him, but he didn't. He died six months ago, and it wasn't the brittle man that carved off his head. It was you. I collapsed, shaking, gripping fistfuls of my hair in a horrified panic. No! The word kept ricocheting around my skull. No, no, no, no! Forcing me to

meet her gaze. Charlie wasn't your friend, Kane. He was your son. My son. I looked at them then. The brittle man, Charlie. His skin had dissolved badly enough that his mutated bones were visible through the thin layer of flesh. His chest heaved, each breath from that shriveled heart, weaker than the last. I wanted to run to him. I tried to rise, tried to force myself into action, but something ripped me backwards. Another memory. It grabbed hold of my mind, taking me back to that day, the worst of my life.

The day I lost my boy. The stranger, he'd met us at the edge of the wood, I remember, and he looked so tired, so frightened. I'd confronted him then, condemning him for years of absence, for skirting his own responsibilities. I demanded he show me what Eden was up against. What the hell is this beast? I snarled, and he showed me then, Charlie and I.

He sketched the story in charcoal, and all at once I understood the true scale of our nightmare. It wouldn't result in just the end of it. Eden, it buried creation itself. But Charlie, he'd seen the same horror I had and wasn't deterred. In fact, it only strengthened his resolve. He'd just recovered from his sickness, and now he wanted to go again, this time against the most powerful virus in all the cosmos. Yet he was afraid. I saw it in the way his voice broke, and the way his words fell like a shuddered mess from his tongue. And the stranger called to him.

He took my son aside, and he drew for him. And whatever it was, he showed him upon that sketchpad, lit Charlie's eyes up like the summer sun. He told me that the drawing held all the love in the universe, that when he looked at it, he experienced whole lifetimes of joy alongside his mother and I. That's when the stranger left for good. He said no goodbye, for he never did.

He simply turned and walked into the trees. His last act of grace, creating a smile upon Charlie's beaming face. He wouldn't let me talk. He made me take him to the brittle man. He made me promise to hang him from the vine. He made me promise to do all of the horrible things I'd done to the other children because even if he could only give the world another six months of light, it'd all be worth it.

And so I did. And I cried. And when I finally came to speak to the beast, I asked it to birds that memory, I whispered. My voice hoarse as I pushed myself to my feet. The beast, it was part of the terms, that I could live my final months without the guilt of what I'd done to my son. I staggered forward, falling to my knees beside my boy, beside Charlie.

He gasped and weezed. If he recognized me, he made no indication. He was still focused on the beast's flickering flame just above, though he'd grown too weak to grasp toward it any longer. I kissed his forehead. My lips, touching the coarse fabric of his old stuffed rabbit. His mother had sown it, my wife. It was shortly before she passed away,

before the same sickness that ravaged Charlie came for her. A sickness I brought to them both. The beast's corruption. It followed me from the garden, out into the wider world. I remembered now, all of it. It had made Charlie sick, so sick that he barely recovered. Then it came from my wife. And she never made it, just as I'd killed my brother, just as I'd killed my son.

I hugged, Charlie tight, his breathing growing ragged. I'm sorry? I whispered. You didn't deserve this. You deserved better than me. I didn't know if he could hear, let alone understand my words, but I didn't care either. All I cared about was that he knew he wasn't alone, that I was proud of him, and that I loved him more than all the universe. and if he had let me, I would have gladly traded every lousy atom for another month of his smile.

I placed a gentle hand against the coarse fabric of what had become his face. The rabbit head tilted, turning its button eye toward me. With a labored groan, Charlie lifted an arm, flaring those serrated nails, all yellowed and curled. I winced as he brought it to my face. For a moment I thought, or even prayed, he might tear those claws across my throat. But instead, they drifted across my cheek, harmless, almost gentle. Then his strength failed. His arm fell limply to his side, and I knew he wasn't long for this world.

Will his soul be released too? I asked, looking over my shoulder at the children. Tell me that. Will he get to go home? Will he get to enjoy the light for as long as it lasts? The boy didn't speak, nor did the girl. They didn't have to because the answer was plain in their eyes. Charlie's soul didn't belong to him anymore.

It belonged to Eden. It belonged to the crooked wood. A deafening roar exploded from the candle flame above. It shook the lighthouse badly enough that books fell in great swathes from their cases, the whole structure teetering violently. The beast! shouted the boy. It's past midnight. It must be getting impatient. The girl gripped my arm.

I got to finish this before it realizes the brittle man is dying. Once Charlie goes, we lose our last scrap of leverage. The beast can just break itself out whenever it pleases. I looked down at my son, my hand running across where his hair should have been. Beyond his ribs, I could see his shriveled heart beating, just barely. He was alive, hanging on, and the children were asking me to leave him.

To abandon his soul here with the beast, all so humanity could enjoy another couple decades of life. It wasn't fair. None of this was fair. Tears poured from my eyes, the whole lighthouse trembling against the beasts building fury. Another deafening roar escaped the bulb. Cracks formed in the glass. The flame rippled, faster and faster, a great wind whipping up in the study. Now! shouted the boy. Before the beast realizes the brittle man's dead! But the brittle man wasn't dead. Not yet. He was just dying. And for the second time in Charlie's life, he was forced to watch his father sacrifice him. I rose, legs trembling. I hated myself.

And as I unslung my rifle for my shoulder, I wasn't sure who deserved the bullet more, the beast or me. It's what Charlie would want, I said, forcing the words from my mouth. He'd want to protect people, to save them for as long as he could. I lifted the barrel, my chest quaking with sobs as I took aim. My finger squeezed, a crack of thunder filled my ears. and the bullet flew, shattering the glass. And shattering my heart. Nothing happened. The blue flame of the beast kept dancing on its pedestal,

unaware its cage had been destroyed, or it seemed. Then the flame pulsed, a shockwave rippling outward that extinguished every lantern burning upon the wall, that stole the breath from my lungs and filled my veins with the ghosts of winter. A long-grown filled the room, guttural and aching. It felt like a child's funeral or a hospital that had been lit ablaze. It felt like the most terrible thing I'd ever heard.

And then in the space of that thought, everything turned upside down. Darkness burst out from the flame, hungry and vicious. It swallowed up the study. Then the lighthouse. Then the crooked wood. It tore through my flesh like a scalpel of grief, cutting away all the beautiful things I'd ever felt and leaving only emptiness in their place.

And then it spoke. I couldn't see it. But I could feel it, the way the words tore Charlie to pieces, the way they burned Eden to ashes and less. I could feel those words echoing all across the universe. I heard them devour stars, turn whole planets to dust. I listened as they unmade life, galaxy by galaxy, with all the perverse indifference of a landlord evicting tenants passed due on rent. In the end, the beast declared, The horn woke me up.

It was blaring louder than hell. My face pressed against the steering wheel of my truck. What the... I mumbled, sitting up with the ground. My head was pounding. Through the windshield, I saw the hood of my truck crumpled against a tree, a trail of smoke slithering up toward the sky. I touched my forehead.

Blood speckled my fingertips, though it looked nearly dry. How long had I been out for? I cracked the door, and it swung open with a rusty screech. My boots thumped down on grass, and before me was a familiar sight, the wood that sat on the family property. My throat went dry. Was it possible that all of this, the crooked wood, the brittle man, the beast, and all the rest, had been nothing but some dance with delirium brought about by my crash? The thought nearly put a smile on my face.

But then I heard it, a soft scratching, like charcoal carving across a page. My eyes narrowed. My vision's still swimming from the accident. No. Please no. There he was, sitting on the stump of a tree some 20 feet away. A man with no shadow. He wore a tattered Victorian suit.

Top hat pulled down to cover his eyes, a mouthful of thorn spilling from his lips. A sketchpad lay on his lap. You? I growled, taking a stumbling step forward. My knuckles cracked. You have the nerve to show up now? after everything?

I squinted down at him through the blood trickling into my eye, but the stranger didn't move. He didn't so much as acknowledge I existed. He just kept on with his artwork, not a care in the world. I snatched the sketchpad from him, tossing it into the trees with a snarl.

In a fucking drawing! I shouted, spit flying for my lips. This is your fault! Can't you see that? If you hadn't run off, if you hadn't left it all to me and the brittle men, then we might have been able to keep the beast under control. He shifted. I tensed, expecting him to lash out.

Maybe turned me into a pillar of salt, but instead he reached from the brim of his top hat. He paused, hesitant, then lifted it. I drew back on instinct, for I knew well what lay beyond that brim, eyes that burned brighter than supernovas, that shone with enough force to burn all of creation to ash. But those were not the eyes that looked,

back at me. These eyes had changed. Once, they'd painted an infinite canvas of darkness with all the colors of life. Now, they'd become little more than dying candles, guttering in the skull of an old man. No. I wouldn't allow myself to feel sorry for the stranger. I couldn't. You promised us heaven, I croaked, my voice breaking with grief. You sold us all of fantasy of salvation. And now you just give up? My fists wrapped around his collar, and I wrenched against what felt like all the weight of creation. I'm alive, for a little while at least. And do you know why?

Because even the beast could keep a promise. So why not you? I expected then that the stranger might reach for his charcoal, or pluck his sketchpad out of his jacket, as if I'd never thrown it into those trees. He'd scribbled me another abstract psychic parasite, an image that could slither into my mind and miraculously explain everything. But instead he coughed. He keeled over, hacking like he smoked a pack a day.

His face twisted in agony. And I saw it then, the thorns that filled his mouth. He was pulling them out, ripping out great vines of them, and as he did, his pale suit became speckled with red. Hart stopped. His voice. How long had it been since I heard his voice? only it wasn't the voice I remembered.

It was raspy now, faint enough that it threatened to vanish amidst the autumn breeze. He told me then about the beast, what it truly was, where it had come from, and why he could not bear to face it. He said it was his shadow, that the beast and the stranger were one and the same, two halves of one hole, neither able to integrate the other. The beast represented all those parts of the stranger he tried to bury, the rage, the sadness, the hatred, and shame. He told himself if he strangled it inside of him long enough,

it'd suffocate. But the beast only grew more desperate, more volatile, and before long, the darkness began to eat away at the stranger. It filled his mouth with thorns, dimmed his eyes with regret, and now it had taken everything from him, all that he loved. So what? I snapped, tears burning against my cheeks. We all have to deal with our shit.

You want forgiveness? Find somebody else. You knew how badly I struggled with guilt over killing my brother, over killing my wife, over killing my fucking son. You knew it. And still you left me to pull the trigger on the entire universe, like it was my responsibility. My fists tightened around his collar.

Eyes foggy with grief. I wanted to hit him to make him feel my pain. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead, I just collapsed against him, sobbing while he sat there, impassive as a stone. I don't know how long I cried. Hours. Days.

It's hard to say when your heart is spilled open like that. All I know is he sat there through all of it. He never moved. He let every one of my tears crash against him. And it was only once I'd finished that he pointed to the sketchpad I'd hurled to the trees, as if asking me to grab it for him. So I did.

But when I'd tell him, turned to come back, he was gone, without a word, without a wave. I sat down on the stump he'd left behind, and I looked down at his sketchbook, at his most recent drawing, at perhaps the last one he'd ever make, and I broke down crying all over again, but this time with a smile and a heart full of love. I looked down at the sketchpad, and Charlie and his mother looked back, alongside every happy memory we ever shared. That was 20 years ago. The beast has been rampaging across the cosmos for two decades now. And no one alive knows but me, but I guarantee you can feel it. Sure, the world hasn't ended. Not exactly. It's just unwell. People are scared of things they never used to be.

Fear has become a virus, omnipresent and contagious, eating away at our hearts and leaching the hope from our souls. You see it in the faces of your friends, your family, and the way we all argue with each other. You see it in the way the stars feel further away, night after night, almost like they're fading to black. We tell our children's stories about heroes. We say good triumphs over evil, as if it's the natural order of things, as if light is somehow intrinsically greater than the darkness. But we've had it backwards. See, the dark was here first. It's the light that's trespassing. If you enjoyed this story, check out the new book, Crooked Gospels.

A collection of supernatural horror stories by the same author, featuring expanded versions of listener favorites like I Am Happy, Cackle Hill, and the sci-fi horror epic, something twisted crawled out from the edge of the universe. Available now on Amazon, link is in the description below.