The Tin Mirror & Hunger

Today's episode is presented by A24's Undertone in theaters on March 13th. This is the scariest movie you'll ever hear. It follows the host of a popular paranormal podcast who becomes haunted by terrifying recordings, mysteriously sent her way. The feature debut of writer-director Ian Tuasson has left critics raving. Bloody Disgusting's Joe Lipset wrote in his 4.5 skull review, I can't remember the last time a movie made every hair on my body stand up, but Undertone got me good. Hear for yourself and experience Undertone in theaters Friday the 13th. Get tickets now. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or our simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Hey everyone. I'd just like to start out by apologizing for all the issues we've been having with the show. I don't have a good excuse, so I'm not gonna waste your time with a bad one. Let's just say I was working through some things and it's all been sorted out and behind us and moved forward. And that seems to have made someone want to call the phone lines. If you're listening to the podcast instead of AM Radio in a specific part of Minnesota, yes, I'm still here at the radio station. All that stuff with the job posting has been...sorted out. Again, not worth your time to explain, but let's see what this caller has to say. Hello? John? Jimmy? Why are you calling the station? Are you serious? Yeah, I heard that voicemail from Nate about you thinking that I think that phone calls steal parts of my soul. Which is crazy because at this point...come on, how much has really left? John, I'm calling about whatever the hell was going on with the last episode you posted. I was literally just talking about that. It's fine. Fine? What part of that is fine? It's all taken care of. What does that even mean? Don't worry about it. Everything's back to normal. Normal? Come on, John. Nothing about this is fine. Or normal. Jimmy, let it go. John, we're friends. I'm not just going to pretend... I said, let it go. If you're in trouble, let me help you. I don't need any help, Jimmy. I need you to let this go and just get back on track. Can you at least tell me what that screaming was about? Jimmy, we make audio dramas. It was just that. Audio drama. That doesn't make any sense. It wasn't part of a story. So why did you... There's nothing to help, Jimmy, okay? Whatever you think you heard isn't worth getting into. Not everything can be fixed, okay? Listen, I'm sorry that I went radio silent there, but I had to sort some stuff out. I'm fine. You know you had us all really worried, right? I know, and I'm sorry about that. I don't think it'll happen again anyway. What won't happen? We all have secrets, Jimmy. Some of them aren't meant to be shared. But it's fine. We're all fine. I took care of it. No, sorry to cut this short, but I gotta get back to the intros. Thanks for calling. Sorry about that, folks. But it is nice to know that the people you work with care enough to check in, right? Check in on people you care about. Times ain't easy, are they? So let's focus on our particular brand of horror. First up from writer Thomas Jacob Green and narrated by Megan McDuffie, Creepy Presents, The Tin Mirror. I was tending to my dear old Aunt Lucille's needs. The poor sweet love had been turned over by a carriage a fortnight prior to my sudden arrival, and had been bloodied and bedbound since. The lady doctor at the hospital urged me to take good care of her as I wheeled Lucille from her ward, and I, having no plans, nor plans to make any, had jumped at the chance to remove my rotting mind from its ever-wandering path and into some good-natured work. First, I buried myself in her gargantuan piles of sodden laundry. The carrying, the emptying, the hanging, the folding. A daisy chain of simple tasks which awarded some vaguely comforting structure to my otherwise chaotic life. I would load the fireplace and stoke it when needed, dust the mantles, and so on. My meticulous methods soon proved to be quite efficient, but it wasn't long until I found several moments with not much left to busy myself with. The trouble, as I saw it, lay in the waiting. Waiting for the clothes to dry, waiting for the pots to soak, waiting for the logs to burn, always waiting. Being not much of a reader, I often found myself drawn in these lull moments towards her bedside, sitting and staring idly at Lucille as she slept in her linen quarters. My mind would play its brass racket in the back, but up front I would focus my eyes on my dear old sleeping aunt, her thin skin revealing her faint blue veins, her inner workings, the strange off-yellow patches and darker spots surrounded by a crazed splatter of smaller spots, the texture of her wrinkles, the number of the wrinkles, the width of the wrinkles and the depth of each, each stalked and packed with powdered blush and dead skin. I myself had recently begun to notice in my own reflection some signs of chronic erosion, a certain thinning around the eyes and mouth, a certain unenthusiasm in my complexion, and I would carry Lucille's small tin mirror to her bedside with me and brush out my hair and compare my face to hers and wonder to myself, how long? I formed a strict feeding schedule for Lucille. She would eat at noon and dusk, sitting obediently up in her bed as she did so. She would ask me who I was with a fearful face and it never failed to sting. Being not much of a cook, my meals seldom varied. Lucille, fortunately, had sewn her garden through the season and the patch held a handsome bounty. I would pluck a large carrot or two smaller ones, which she would eat raw with a sprinkle of sea salt and a boiled chicken egg. The old deer never fussed. I washed the carrots and trimmed their ends when needed. My fingernails darkened with raw earth. I, not being much of an eater, was content with a tall ice water, which I sipped with pleasure as I watched the sweet old deer chomp and nibble and slabber. When eventually there were no carrots remaining in the ground, I moved on to parsnips, which she liked less, and potatoes, which she detested. Lucille was a popular woman for her age and regularly there would be a visitor stopping by to both wish Lucille a smooth recovery and to bestow upon us a large meat pie or quiche. Regularly, I would answer the door to the smell of mutton and gravy or rhubarb and find, beyond the jam, an aged skeletal arm reaching into the house to meet my own. Shameless veins bulging from the backs of these bony hands, like thin soup skin loosely draped over a winter's branch. Time darkened fingernails. More yellowing. These evenings I would go to rest in my shaded quarters with my mind fixated on these awful appendages, and I would rub my own hands together, squeezing my palms with my fingertips, frantically confirming my own firmness. These visitings became constant and my days once more were filled with dread and rue. I would shiver at the thought of each and every stretched and white pointed knuckle bound for tapping at our door. I could soon predict the size of the waiting hand, the length and width of the finger, based solely on the timbre of each knuckle's knock on wood. I was rarely wrong. Such was the effect of these intricately unpleasant visions upon my nerves. Luckily whilst hiding away the pots one day, I unearthed a pair of yellow rubber gloves which were stored handily underneath Lucille's kitchen sink. I placed them beside the front door for protection and would sprinkle water upon my blouse at the sound of knocking. Some of the more affluent, more well-traveled women, however, were kissers for which the gloves were no help. Then the afternoon came when a gentleman by the name of Robert stopped by. She never told me about any niece, he said, shaking my rubber-gloved hand. She never told me about any Robert, I said. His face contained a large pink nose of blood. The teeth inside his smile looked to have been placed haphazardly. He let out half a laugh and let himself in. It so happened that Robert was Lucille's special friend. I noticed it almost immediately when he pressed his small, dry turtle lips against hers as she slept. A string of spittle held the morning light within it and hung between their kiss briefly and in my mind forevermore. Robert said he would like to know what I thought about the thought of him boarding in the house with us until Lucille had fully recovered. I said that the thought about the thought made me feel uncomfortable. He would arrive at sunrise with a hand of plucked flowers. Lucille brightened when they were together. It was clear she remembered him fondly. She slept less and sobbed almost never. He brought her fresh apples and roast guinea fowl and plump white loaves and he changed her dressing and her bedpan. I don't have a niece, she would say. I don't have any siblings and seeing her this way caused me great alarm. It's true, there were no paintings of either my father or me in her house. However, Lucille's taste was not for figurative painting. Most of her collection consisted of oils of large, empty fields, winds swept rain clouds on the horizon, a tree or two in some of them. Robert claimed to see no other lapse in Lucille's judgment except for this one specific familial denial. What are you insinuating, I would say? And he would say nothing, only raising his eyebrows in a way which allowed him to claim joviality afterwards. Robert had some strange toys which he often brought into the house, little pocket boxes which lit up colorful and made all manner of different sounds from a frolic to a haunt. He sat beside Lucille in her linen sheets and they would both gop in silence whilst it flashed through its color stream and performed an indescribably strange orchestral piece which had no discernible melody. I myself hadn't the leisure time to waste on such frivolous activities and paid these oddities no mind. Sometimes I found Robert talking to these little pocket boxes whilst Lucille slept, sometimes about myself, though I never showed. I would walk into Lucille's chambers and he would continue talking to it as though I didn't exist, the light from the box whitening his face. And I would sit beside Lucille and study the dry cracks in the skin beside his mouth as he spoke and the thin creases on his cheeks, his blackened bottom dentures and I would hold the tin mirror up to my face and show it to my own teeth. I spent more and more of my moments beside my dear Lucille. Robert had taken over the chores within days of his arrival, allowing me to finally get back to my poor neglected thoughts. She slept less and less by the day until she seemed almost fully recovered. Yet when she woke she would still always greet my presence with alarm and confusion and would have to be calmed by Robert. I would sit beside her in silence and study myself in the tin mirror, dusting away the pie crumbs from the corner of my mouth as the two of them whispered secrets. You've got her eyes, he said to me one day as I studied the mirror and both he and Lucille laughed as though they were at a fine show. I woke to find myself alone in the house. Spring was beginning and the morning was wet, the clouds were gray and low, the rain slid down and drips on the kitchen windows. Robert had taken her out holding an umbrella over her chair, both in tails like a postcard. I watched them from the kitchen disappear at the bottom of the stone path. I watched their human shapes running in the rain, turning into only colors caught in the droplets clinging to the glass. My own reflection also captured in each and every drop, the three of us sharing a pool upon that pain. I shuffled across the house through the vacant rooms in turn. Lucille had taken her traveling vanity and with it the tin mirror. I moved from parlor to library and studied each room's own selection of shadows. Beneath the bathroom sink the shadows were spectral white, the dining room was darker, not a candle lit, the deep pool of black under the baby grand, the inky slices of darkness between each book on the shelf, even a summer's sun would never reach these places. I arrived at Lucille's chamber, bone white sheets trembled from an inside wind. The chamber's casements were wide open, letting in the heavy light. I hadn't thought of myself as cold until I felt its warm embrace. The clouds had cleared, the room bloomed bright from the exposed sun. I draped my arms over the Eiderdown and slid inside her bed. I could see from the sun-soaked bed the rain-soaked courtyard through the open window, the pebbled path and a connecting road, the patch of posies sparkling wet in the new sun. The lawn gleamed. A small garden shed, which I had somehow never noticed before, sat at the bottom of the lawn, an unignorable light reflecting from across the garden into the bedroom from the shed's one small window, and from behind the window's sun-white pane, Lucille's pale, stone face, a tooth-filled smile of glee looking back at me. A different lady doctor returned with Robert and Lucille. It was the roar of Robert's carriage which woke me. He brought her out, the lady doctor, out to the garden shed where I resided. I had given up the rubber glove ritual since the arrival of Robert, as he would more often tend to the well-wishers, which were nevertheless fewer by the day. Gladly, the lady doctor had plump hands with no obvious angles, and I shook them with only minor discomfort. She asked me very many questions and nodded at my answers and left without even visiting with my poor old aunt. I thought that maybe the lady doctor had bumped her head on her way in, for the questions were of the plainest character. For example, what is your name? What country are you in? What year is it? And so on. Fascinating. Robert said when I saw him in the garden afterwards, what is? You are, he said, yet I did not have the tin mirror to see what he meant. Lucille, these days, is now regularly up and about, which remains a delight to observe. It seems the sun now skips beside her through every room. She can often be heard slippering about the house, folding her own laundry, scrubbing her own pots, prodding her own embers. I study the cracks beside my narrowing lips and the glowing window of the garden shed, and listen to Lucille's busyed in with a certain pride. Get out of my goddamn house! She yells at me from the open bedroom window of her house as I sit amongst the pots and tools. And Robert, I imagine, is surely propped up somewhere against a wall or a frame with a smirk listening to the whole ordeal. Lucille is right, in a sense. I still have my own knotted world out there waiting for me to unravel, but I can't leave her that much is clear. Not now, not with her mind still so blatantly at odds with itself. And next, from writer Brady Garner and narrated by Olmcune, Creepy presents... Hunger. Gather round, children. Grandpa's got a story for you. I promise it's not too scary, though it does come with a warning. It's an old story, one from my childhood all those years ago. One that I haven't told you before, but I feel you're old enough now to hear. Old enough to hear about the truth of our world, the truth of the things that lurk in the shadows, and only come out at night. Now, I know your grandmother and your parents wouldn't approve of such a story, but that's why you need to hear it. You see, they're too old to believe. They're far too worried about what swims at the surface of our world to care of what lies beneath the waves of reality. But I've seen it first hand, and now I'd like to share the knowledge with my kin. The only kin who will truly believe what I have to say and not brush it off as some fairy tale or spooky story. Are we all comfortable? Good. Now pay attention, because you never know when you may run into a new friend. A new shadow. I was just a young lad when your great grandparents and I built our new home. They had saved for years to purchase the old farmstead. It said that it was one of the first farmsteads this far west and that the home which stood was of original construction. I remember that old home. We had turned its small one room floor plan into a storage shed after we built up the new house. It was a small building. A sod roof and mud insulated walls staved off the winter's cold and the summer heat. I'd fallen in love with it from the very beginning. I remember spending my days pretending to be a homestead like those who'd built it. I'd help my father work the land and return home in the night to that homestead rather than our new four bedroom wood framed and shingle roofed monstrosity. This old homestead was something like they taught about in school. Something from history that I had in my own backyard. On some nights I'd even sneak from my bedroom with a sleeping bag and hurry to the old farmhouse. I'd move aside the various tools and boxes and curl up on the dirt floor. The old lantern which swung from the center of the rafters would cast shadows that would dance around the walls and continue to jig into my dreams. Eventually your great grandparents accepted my infatuation with the old hut and built another shed for the tools and such. I'd been so excited when they'd done it. They'd waited until I'd gone off to summer camp so to surprise me when I returned home. You should have seen my smile when I got off that camp bus and saw the home return to its old state. My father, your great grandfather, had spent days patching up the holes and fixing the old wooden door and the shutters on the sole window. They told me with a hug that the house was all mine. I could fill it with whatever I wanted and that's just what I did. With my father's help we crafted a bed frame from spare timber and placed on it an old mattress that had been gathering dust. We even got the old chimney cleaned up so I could light a fire to add to the warm glow of the lantern. When it was finally completed and I spent my first night alone in that old farmhouse, well, that was one of the greatest nights of my life. That same night as I was on the very edge of sleep, I saw the shadows on the walls slow their dance. Their jigs swirled and swam until the form of a young settler boy, not much older than I, appeared in those shadows. As my eyes fluttered and my mind drifted away, I saw the shadow boy take shape and rest with folded arms upon the wall. He leaned and watched with a relaxed demeanor. I did not feel fear, children. No, I felt a flutter in my stomach as a rush of excitement overtook me. Was the boy real? Was he the shadow of the boy who had slept in this home before I? Somehow I knew these were questions which could only be answered in my dreams. And so I slept. I slept and dreamt a dream so clear and perfect you'd have thought it were real. Boy, did it ever feel just so darn real. What was it you ask? Well, lead in close children and I'll tell you. I dreamt that I had awoken from a nap beneath the great willow in the yard. It felt like one of the longest and most refreshing naps of my life, like I'd been asleep for ages dreaming of new houses in summer camp and school. It felt like my entire life to that point have been a long, sweet dream beneath the willow. With a rub of my eyes, I arose in the yard of the homestead. I scanned the horizon and saw nothing for miles. An endless ocean of wild grasses as tall as I, waving in the soft summer breeze. There were no roads, just a trail of wagon ruts in the mud. There was no town in the distance. Its buildings did not block my view with their ugly brick and mortar. There was just an endless, cloudless blue sky which could swallow you whole. I did not feel worry for what was missing. I felt at home. At home in the prairies. I remember turning to see the homestead. Its shutters wide and chimney billowing soft smoke. There was a smell in the air and I instantly recognized it as my mother's Saskatoon Berry Pie. The thing is, my mother, my real mother, your great grandmother, was famous for her rhubarb pie. Yet the smell of the Saskatoon Berry's baking was irresistible and familiar. I walked up the drive to the newly crafted door of the one room sod roofed home and I remember pausing. I felt so at home in this world yet I remember thinking that I didn't even know my dream mother's name. If I were to knock at the door, would she recognize me? Would she find it strange that I had knocked rather than walk straight in? Would she chase off the random young boy who'd come wanting a slice of pie or would she invite me in and cut me a piece? I did not have time to decide as the door before me was swung wide. A fair woman stood bearing a smile and an apron covered in flower hung over her protruding pregnant belly. I remembered then that we had another expected sibling on the way. I was going to be a big brother and oh how excited I was! How excited we all were! My entire dream family and I. She knelt and rapped me in a great hug before calling me a name I did not remember being called before. Eli, where have you been? Have you been napping under that willow again? I remembered her voice. It was smooth like butter and soft as a butterfly's wings. I nodded in reply as she stepped aside and led me to a handmade wooden chair at the corner of the table. Before me was a slice of the best darned Saskatoon berry pie in the whole world. Made with sugar I somehow remember getting with Pa from the trading post as a treat for my mother. It was truly divine. After greedily eating the pie, I remember looking around the table at the people I knew I or Eli truly loved to call family. There was Ma and Pa at either end of the table and an older boy, obviously my elder brother staring at me across the fine-plained oak. His soft blue eyes pierced mine as his face fell from that of a soft smile to one of sadness and regret. He reached across the table and grabbed my hand as the rest of the world froze. He spoke softly, Eli, I see you've found a friend. It's okay to leave me. You know I cannot join you after what I've done, after what I've become. Please let this boy awake and forget me. I'm so, so sorry. You know I had to do it, right? You know I had to, so you all could survive. Please, please forgive me. I woke with a start in the old homestead. The lantern's light had flickered and faded as its fuel fell low. I shivered at the oncoming fall cold. It was growing colder by the day and soon enough the morning dew would turn to frost. For a few moments I did not know where or who I was. Yes, yes that's right young one. I'm your grandpa but in that moment all those years ago after that first dream I could not recall for a few moments. As I lay staring at the timber of the rafters above my head, it all came flooding back. All the memories of my real life, of the life I had thought I left behind, begun to clear again in my mind. I lay there a while, hands behind my head and recalled what I had just dreamt. Even then I remember the feeling that what I'd just experienced had been something real, something true. With a smile and a shiver, I threw off the heavy bed cover your great great grandmother had sewn me and reached for the lantern. I filled it with some oil from above the hearth and lit it once again. I looked around and saw the shadows had once more begun to dance and jig their merry dance. When I got back to where the young settler boy had leaned, I nearly dropped the darn thing in fright. He was there. The settler boy was crouching in the corner of the room, a physical being in shadow form. In that moment, I felt joy at knowing he was real, but in the next, I felt terror. The boy was motioning with a dark finger against his lips to be silent before pointing at the door. Somehow, I understood the silent boy's warning and with a leap, I was back in bed with the covers over my head as if their soft, pillowy weaves would protect me from whatever evil was about to come. From beneath my covers, I heard the sounds. They were faint at first, soft huffing and thuds of hooves in the mud leading toward the door of the homestead. Huff, huff, I remember it. Huff, huff, it came to the door. I shrieked as something large clawed softly on the outside of the door. The beast whispered through the cracks in a ragged voice, one that sounded like it had once been, but was no longer human. Heeeeeeey. It moaned before it leapt away into the night. Now, children, I know you may call your old grandpa a coward, but I ran for the house. I ran for the house and for nearly a month I did not return to that homestead. Your great grandparents thought I had heard a coyote sniffing at the door in the night, but I knew, and I knew what I had heard, what I had seen. The pie, Eli, the brother. I knew it was real, and I knew I had to face my fears and return to that world for sleeping in my bed in that giant monstrosity my parents had built brought only regular dreams. Regular dreams and a recurring nightmare of that awful voice at the door. Yieeahhh. And so, in mid fall, I once again returned to the homestead in the yard. I once again lit the lantern and hung it from the rafters. I once again saw the shadows dance and jig. big. And once again, I saw the settler boy emerge from the shadows and lean against the wall with folded arms. Though this time, my stomach was filled with butterflies for a different reason. No, maybe not butterflies, for butterflies are light and bright, and that was not what I felt. What I felt was a belly full of moths of terror, terror that the thought of the beast's return. This time, I did not wake beneath the willow. Rather, I was sitting against the wall of the homestead, looking out at the fields before me. What I saw was not a crop of wheat or grains swirling in the wind. What I saw before me was a field of stubs and straw. My stomach felt the moths of fear and had begun to churn in hunger. The crops had been hit with the blight, decimated in its entirety, all our food, all our money, all our future wilted before my eyes. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Eli's brother. He spoke to me in a soft voice, and the world around did not freeze. Eli, this winter is going to be a tough one, but the crops, his voice had choked up and tears had begun to well in his eyes. With the crops gone, I don't know how we're going to make it. But you gotta be strong, okay? Be strong for ma and pa. They need us now more than ever. He leaned in and wrapped me in a hug as the world around faded away. The beast did not return that night, and neither did Eli's shadow. But in the morning, when I woke, I felt strange as if I hadn't eaten in days, as if the crops truly had been hit with the blight, and my real parents had been the one sobbing in the homestead while their boys sat outside, unsure as to whether or not they'd survived the coming winter. For many nights after, I did not return to sleep in the homestead. That feeling, that feeling of hunger had lingered for days. I didn't like it. I'd never felt anything like that before, and I did not wish to again. But a few weeks later, after the first snowfall, I could no longer resist the urge to return to the dream world once again. Lantern lit and covers pulled tight. I waited for the settler boy Eli to return. But this night, he did not appear after a dance of shadows. This night, he slowly emerged from the darkness. He slowly emerged and drew close before curling into the bed beside me. I felt his fear. I felt his pain. I felt his hunger as I drifted off to sleep. I knew then that this dream would not be a pleasant one. I awoke in a bed I did not recognize as my own. It was Eli's tucked in the corner of the small home. I felt pain in my stomach as if the moss had given birth to worms, worms which threatened to eat their way out if they were not fed. My stomach gurgled and turned as I grabbed it. Outside the winds of winter howled, and they had just yet begun. In my mind, I knew the food had run out already. I scanned the room on the fire, a pot of water with a single chopped onion brewed. We'd be having boiled onion for dinner again. One onion for a family of four with one more on the way. With that thought, a great and deep sadness washed over me. I saw my father kneeling before my mother as she sat at the table. There was blood on his hands and on my mother's dress. I would no longer be a big brother. I began to cry as footfalls in the snow outside led to a rattling of the door. With a blast of cold and snow, my brother threw open the door and smiled proudly before declaring, Looks like we'll be eating good tonight, folks! He held before him a hair he'd caught with one of his snares he'd set before the snow had begun to fall. He looked at me and smiled. He hadn't yet seen my mother and father. You hungry, Eli? He shouted. He seemed so proud then, so proud and so happy. He thought he'd saved the day, but as he followed my gaze to mother and father at the table, his face turned to show that he realized the day had already been lost. When I woke up this time, the lantern still burned brightly, and Eli stood once again with his arms folded, leaning against the wall. I looked at him and asked him if what I was seeing was real. Was this really your life? Did you actually lose a younger sibling to hunger? Had you actually felt this way when you were alive? I did not finish my questioning as a lurching and creaking came from the roof and I froze. It was back. The beast had returned. It was on the roof and was going to dig its way through. The beast huffed and began to claw at the sod. Dust and dirt rained down throughout the house. This time, Eli did not cower in fear. This time Eli stood and cupped his hands and shouted a silent shout. When he did, the beast halted. It halted and huffed a final huff before it left from the roof and crunched on the snow. It paused a moment and then vaulted away into the night once again. That, unfortunately, was the last night I spent in the homestead for a while. You see, children, my parents and I left for the holiday season to be with family in another town, and we did not return until school began again and the true winter had kicked in. That dream, the hunger was only worse, and Eli and his family had been huddled around the fireplace for warmth. Their bodies were frail and weak. At the end of that dream, I looked over at the brother and saw something in his eye. A thought, a dark thought as he looked back and slowly smiled. That dream lasted until the family drifted off to sleep and in the darkness, Eli's brother stood, kissed his mother on the cheek, gave his father's sleeping body a hug, ruffled Eli's hair and disappeared into the night, leaving only a note on the table. That morning after the dream, the dead of winter, I understood what had happened. That morning, when the lanterns light flicked and I saw Eli sitting at the end of my bed, head in hands, sobbing a silent sob, I knew. I knew that next night's dream would be the last, that the story had neared its completion. I returned home that afternoon with a heavy heart, and as I lay to sleep with the lantern lit, I stopped and allowed Eli to crawl in bed beside me. I comforted him as I faded to sleep. Eli and I awoke in the dream world looking at the paper which the brother had left the night before. It read simply, I love you all, please forgive me, don't let it go to waste. Do what you must and survive the winter. PS, stay strong Eli, I love you buddy. The dream then flashed to an image of Eli's mother and father kneeling in the snow before Eli's brother's swinging feet. He had climbed the high branch of the willow under which Eli had always nabbed and done what had needed to be done to feed the family. The family would survive the winter, one less mouth to feed and meat to feed the worms in their bellies. I awoke to a roar at the door, the clawing was merciless, the beast would be in at any moment, and Eli's shadow seemed terrified in bed beside me. Now children, I'm proud to say that your grandpa wasn't a coward this time. No, I swung my feet from the bed, I walked to the door, and I threw it open. Outside the door stood hunger, the beast of nature which can drive people to do the most horrid of things, the beast that had once been Eli's brother. It stepped back, its skeletal frame seemed almost human, but much larger, rotted flesh and maggots hung loosely and fell from its bony figure. Atop its shoulders was an amalgamation of skulls, human, canine and servidate. Its antlers were long and lacking and he felt its claws were that of a wolf or a bear and it walked on cloven hooves. Around its neck was strung a cord of rope twisted into 13 knots and a loop and curled in a sling around its chest lay the corpse of a young baby. This was no monster. This was a young man who had done what he thought was right so his family could survive. This was a boy who delved into the darkest urges of hunger and had decided to fight them. He'd felt the fear and knew he could not allow his family to succumb to such a death. He'd sacrificed himself. He did not wish harm on me or Eli. He was not here to eat. He was here for forgiveness. I stepped forward into the darkness of the night. I felt my bare feet crush through the hard crust of snow and slip into the freezing layers beneath. I'd felt the hunger, but I'd seen the love in the brother's eyes when he left that night. I reached out and hugged the giant beast. It stung and its fleshy frame gave way as I squeezed, but still I stayed for many moments. At last I turned back to Eli's shadow in the candlelight and reached out a hand. Eli stepped forward and I stepped back to allow the two to embrace. As the two collided, the beast began to shift and transfigure. Its bones rattled and shrunk. Its skulls withered and died like the crops of their fields so long ago. In mere moments, the beast had taken the shape of the brother. The noose around his neck faded away and the infant began to coo. All that was left was the love of a brother. I watched as the trio turned and Eli and his brother walked hand in hand toward the open door of the farmhouse. On the threshold, the brother stopped and turned in my direction. He gave a ghostly nod, which I knew in my soul was of gratitude and respect before he and Eli faded into the dancing shadows of the walls of the homestead with their infant sibling in tow. The brother had been forgiven and the family reunited with those who had succumbed to the hunger. I never did sleep in that old farmhouse again, though it still remains untouched right outside by the oak tree. Yes, children, that is the house just out there. I point to the window with a shaky finger as my kin race to the window to peer at the old homestead in the yard. Now, heed me when I say to be respectful of that house and its furnishings, especially the lantern. For when you light it in the night, you will see Eli's brother and his family dancing happily in the shadows. They dance a lively jig all through the night. Happy and healthy and warm they dance. Sometimes even you can smell the scent of Saskatoon Berry pie on the wind or hear a baby's soft cooing off the walls. All I asked you children is to be respectful, be respectful of the house, be respectful of those that came before, be respectful of the sacrifices they made and the love they lost. Now, go get your jammies on and get ready for bed. I hear your mother calling. There. Is that better? For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through Creative Commons share a light licensing or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the Express written consent of the Creepy Podcast Production team and the stories author.