It always started with the chiming of the midnight bell tower, as if the stroke of twelve triggered the floodgates, allowing the witching hour to be unleashed. That’s when the darkness would lash out at the light, like a starving beast whose very movements caused the walls to shudder.
It’s snarls brought the windows down to shut tightly, it’s glare brought the curtains to their knees, the shine of the moon surrendering to it’s influence. The power of it’s pounce sent such overwhelming ripples of fear throughout the room, that it forced the burning heart of the candles to hide among the air, cut into unrecognisable pieces by the shadows.
Finally, there he would stand, the darkness embracing him like a playful lover. Dark fingers only giving me a teasing view of the charcoaled skin, one moment I would catch a glimpse of those two empty pools of space or that crooked pull at the toothless muscles. The very sight that always kept me helpless in the bed, like the teasing tendrils of the shadows had clamped down on my arms and legs.
The Crooked Man had come once again, with his crooked smile, crooked back and his crooked top hat. Cane always raised, for there were deals to be made. A foreboding contract, that left you shaking hands with the devil himself. People always said that nightmares were nothing but figments of our imagination, harmless fear that only does what you allow it to do. The mistake in this analysis is the assumption that the concept is a relieving one… A comforting resolve to the fight against your cold sweat and beating heart.
But in reality that is a most disturbing thought, for every night he returns, every night it’s the same broken record. The realm of dreams, where the plane of fantasy reins as tyrant, that is his kingdom, his domain, his fortress. His court of madness.
Like every night before, the Crooked Man would walk through the shadows, his leg purposely dragging behind him, each step bringing his shoulder (The right one, the one that occasionally let the invisible stitches that held it together come undone) lurching forward to make his whole walk emit a wave of nausea.
Upon closer inspection I could see the detailed cracks infesting his skin like a parasite, revealing a shadow of pulsating movement underneath as if an army of insects were trapped under the skin and forced their way out by scratching away at the inside of the charred flesh.
His now heaving form hovers over me yet again, the top hat missing, his clean blue suit now ripped apart by crimson stained flesh. The cane leaning against the wall with me only now realising that the top hat rested, perch atop a diamond encrusted tip. Shooting me a look of utter disappointment. That was when I realised that tonight was different. The Crooked Man had let the masquerade falter for this moment. It seemed as if he had grown bored.
Empty sockets that had spent centuries without the luxury of an eyeball, they felt as if they had sprouted hands of their own to keep my resilient gaze locked with them. His arm brushing against my shoulder reminded me of the horrid surface of sandpaper rubbing against my skin, though the pain was a short lived and didn’t compare to the agony of its replacement; the mangled bones he called fingers pierced the skin of my upper back. I was given only a moment to satisfy him with a cry of anguish, before the flat tip continued to burrow into my back.
I wanted to beg, to plea for mercy as the burning sensation of my ripped skin spread deeper within my skeleton, through my stomach, past my kidneys; down my arm. I don’t know what it was, perhaps my arrogance or my pride overwhelmed me, perhaps my fear threatened to choke me, but my mouth remained shut and my voice had been ripped from me.
The burning pain that pushed into my arm met the bones beneath the surface head on, splitting my entire humerus in half, my scapula now discarded as broken shards that stabbed at my inner walls in anguish and shock. Finally, it arrived at its destination, my index finger. There was no moment for any sort of preparation, only a second to acknowledge it through tear stained eyes before a bone bursts its way out of the tip of the finger; just under the nail.
The bone’s tip had changed from a flat surface to a sharpened edge, my own blood seeping out of exit site and trickling along the bone’s ‘spine’ only made the edge all the more painful to watch. Instinctively my other hand dragged itself just under the new bone, the first drop of blood felt like a drop of scolding hot wax.
Time came to a near complete stop, teasing me with a dark and inhuman smile as the bone stabbed into the flesh of my other hand. The process of using the bone to engrave multiple words in blood red ink was drawn out, the Crooked Man savouring every scream, with every cut. When it was over I felt empty, numb, violated by my own fear.
The Crooked Man then proceed to bring everything back to normal, returning to his crooked stance, his suit patched and the cracks gone, the hat back to concealing those empty eyes. Satisfied with his victory, his form would retreat to the shadows slowly fading with the return of the light.
Leaving me to my screams of silence.
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