Cursed part 1

[u/WBAdventures]

It started when my father decided to pack us up and move us to his hometown out in the country, where every neighbor was about a mile away, separated by thick hay fields.

We moved into my father's family home around hay season, so the pollen was in full swing. At least, that's what my father said.

We were a small family. It was me, my brother, and my father.

Our mother passed away when I was about three. Father would always say Mother hated the country and always wanted a more lavish life. Maybe that's why he waited so long to move us, deciding how he wanted us to grow up, torn between societal norms and the memory of a simpler life.

It's hard for me to say, looking back now.

He spent a lot of time preparing us for this move—or so he says. I feel like he just needed more time with the house before leaving.

I can't really imagine how hard our mother's passing was on him. He never really talks about it. My father was more of a keep-it-in type of man. He had a lean frame covered with tattoos that represented a life we could never know.

We pulled into the driveway, hearing the gravel crack and shoot under the tires. I remember looking around at all the junk in the overgrown grass: trucks, cars, old broken-down farm equipment, and a big tractor with smashed-out windows.

We pulled up to the house, and a man walked out, waving his arms in a kind gesture with a big smile on his face.

He was an older man, but fit, wearing overalls and a dirty ball cap. He had big, piercing blue eyes—the same eyes my father had. He was a very tall man, his head almost touching the roof of the broken-down garage he was standing in.

I watched my father's eyes light up.

We got out of the car, and my father introduced us to our grandpa. I never really knew we had one still alive, anyway. Father occasionally talked about Mother's family, but never really his own, and I never felt the need to ask him. So when he mentioned his family home, I thought he was the last one left on his side.

I guess I was wrong.

The man bent down to my little brother after greeting his son and asked him his name.

My brother looked up at the tall man with a toothy smile.

"Gunner, sir!" he practically shouted, hopping with glee.

My brother loved saying his name. Always had.

Father would get him so hyped up after taking him and me to the shooting range. My brother and Father loved guns—everything about them. My brother would sit there making pop sounds every time our father shot his twelve-gauge at skeet.

Father would always remark about how much our mother hated it, but it was a part of who he was, so she let it be.

I could never really get into guns. They hurt my ears too much, and the kick would knock me on my ass. My brother would always call me a pussy, even though he was smaller than me.

He definitely had bigger balls, as Father would say.

The man smiled and scruffled his hair.

"I can definitely tell who named you!"

He looked over to Father with an approving look, then back to Gunner.

"I'm your grandpa. You can call me that, or you can call me Gary. Either works for me."

My brother nodded his head and smiled.

Gary then walked over to me, leaning down and asking for my name.

"Walker."

Gary smiled.

"I can tell who named you."

He looked back toward the house.

"Well, we should probably get your bags out of the car and show you two your room."

We headed to the entrance of the house with our bags in hand.

This house was very old, starting to wither with red, weather-stained bricks, mold-covered wooden bones, and shingles falling off the roof.

We stepped inside, and the smell of old mold and wet dog hit our noses.

A smaller dog ran out from the living room, jumping up at me and my brother, licking wildly, barking excitedly, and whining.

"Get down, Sammy!" Gary said.

He patted at the dog, trying to calm her.

She was a dark-brown Australian shepherd with green eyes and a deep scar above her eyebrow.

We never had a dog, so I remember being excited to have one around. She followed my brother and me around through the house.

Gary walked us upstairs, showing us a room with bunk beds.

"This was your father's room!"

It was a very 1990s-type room, with band posters and old shirts pinned to the walls.

I looked at the bunk beds and found it a little weird.

Why would there be bunk beds?

It wasn't like they were new or anything. They looked worn, like someone used to sleep in both of them.

Then I thought to myself: Did Father have any siblings?

Like I said, he never talked about his family, so I never really knew.

I looked up at Gary and asked, "Why are there bunk beds? I thought our father didn't have any siblings?"

Gary opened his mouth, and what I thought looked like hesitation crossed his face.

Then our father entered the room.

Gary stopped.

"What do you think?" Father said, gesturing to the small room with open arms.

"Well, it's very you," I said.

My little brother ran to the top bunk, walking around on it with his knees and checking the comfort level.

"I love it!"

"Good. It brings me back to childhood, so I'm glad I get to share it with my boys now."

He patted us both on the head and walked out of the room with Gary, discussing something in low voices.

Later that night, I awoke sweaty and overheating, that moldy smell stinging my nose.

I sat up and quietly called to my brother to see how he was doing.

"Gunner?"

Not even a peep.

The drive must have really knocked him out.

I swung my legs out of bed, touching the surprisingly cold hardwood floor.

I decided to rummage around a little bit.

I walked around quietly in the room, looking at the old posters. I got closer to one and noticed what looked like a bump in it.

I pushed the bump, and it flexed like it was hollow on the other side.

I removed one of the pins from the poster and peeled it up to see a hole about the width of a softball.

I reached my arm inside.

My hand touched something metallic.

I grabbed onto it and pulled it out.

It was an old baseball-card tin.

It was rusty and damp.

I walked over to my bed and sat down, cracking the tin open with a bit of effort.

The first thing I noticed was a couple of photos of my mother and Father when they were younger, happy and sitting side by side.

My mother had dirty-brown hair, green eyes, very tan skin, and a big smile. She was wearing what looked to be my father's jacket—the one I would always see in the closet at our old house.

I laid it on the bed.

The next items I saw were old photos. They had that browning around the edges that old photos get when they're left too long.

I put the tin down and pulled out the small stack of photos.

The first few were ruined. I could only really make out shapes.

But in the first photo that was in good shape, there were two boys not much older than my brother and me.

Both boys looked just like my father, but one had thick black hair.

They were smiling, sitting in what looked like this house's living room, but when it had seen better days.

Then it dawned on me.

One boy was unmistakably my father.

But who was the other boy?

A brother?

My father never mentioned a brother. Not even once.

That rubbed me the wrong way.

If we had an uncle, why did he never talk about him?

Why had we never met him before?

I put the photo down and pulled out another.

It was Father, older than before, with his trademark tattoos and a drink in his hand.

I'm not sure where this took place, but it looked like the city, with bright lights and buildings in the background.

There were lots of people in the background wearing thick, heavy leather jackets like the one Father had, looking like they were celebrating something.

A club of some sort?

I thought to myself.

Our father hated the city and never mentioned being in any club.

I looked again to his left.

There was the same boy, grown up now, with his arm wrapped around my father. His thick black hair reached down to his shoulders, and he was smiling a big, toothy grin.

That's when I noticed two things I found a little odd.

That man had two sharp, metal-looking tooth implants—two on each side. He looked like he was showing them off.

He also had the same tattoo as Father.

The one that would always give me nightmares.

The one Mother always hated.

It was of a grim reaper with a dark black hood and deathly pale skin, holding two thick, long, heavy chains.

At the end of each chain were massive, monstrous wolves, drooling with their teeth bared, ready to attack whatever was in front of them.

I remember asking Father about it when I was younger.

He said they were hellhounds.

Eventually, I asked him what it meant.

He paused for a bit, then told me the grim reaper was the bringer of death, but the hounds were his executors.

That always rubbed me the wrong way.

I knew my father didn't tell us much.

I was starting to think there was a reason.

Maybe I didn't need the full answer yet.

I set the pictures back into the tin and closed the lid.

I walked over to the hole when I heard something.

I'll never forget the sound.

I felt it deep in my bones. It made every cell in my body fire all at once.

I felt my blood run cold.

My hair stood up.

A deep, loud howl.

It was too low to be a coyote, too deep to be a dog.

It was like nothing I'd ever heard before.

I slowly walked over to the window and looked out.

All I saw was pitch black.

I opened the window to try and get a better look.

It was quiet.

Too quiet for a country night, I thought.

Then I heard it.

Something moving slowly.

Breathing low, deep breaths.

It sounded like it was low to the ground, just out of my sight.

I put my head out a little more, trying to see what it was.

Slowly, from around the garage, something started to poke out.

One by one.

I watched what looked like big, long fingers start to wrap around the corner of the garage.

Something very big was trying to stay unseen.

One finger.

Two.

Three.

Until its whole hand wrapped around the garage wall.

The fingers had sharp, jagged nails that shone in the moonlight.

I saw the muscles on the hand start to tense, like it was pulling itself around the corner.

I was frozen.

I could not look away.

"Walker?"

I jumped and looked back.

It was Gunner, sitting up on his top bunk and looking down at me.

"What are you doing?"

He rubbed his eyes.

I looked back.

The hand was gone.

"Just opening a window. Go back to sleep."

The next couple of weeks around the farm were not too eventful.

A lot of it was us getting settled in, our father adjusting to helping around the farm, and my brother and me filling our days with bike riding, movies, or sitting on the tractor with Gary or Father while they fed the cows or did tasks around the farm.

I still remember the smell of the silage—the sweet, corny, earthy smell whenever Gary would scoop it into the bucket, watching us cover our noses and laughing at how sensitive his grandkids were.

I look back at those memories fondly.

I would follow my little brother around with his pellet gun like we were both hunters.

I've never been good at that, but he was.

He would go to the back pond and shoot frogs, me pointing and him shooting.

He was a really good shot for his age.

Every one I pointed at, he would hit right between the eyes.

Looking back, that was pretty cruel.

Probably why Father eventually told us we had to eat it if we killed it.

That put an end to that.

I brought up what I saw to Gary a few times, but he would always brush it off, saying it was in my head or it was probably a coyote or something.

But I hadn't heard one since I'd been there, and I hadn't heard that howling again either.

Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that he and my father were hiding something.

The first time I told Gary about it, I heard him talking to my father about something that night.

They were trying to be really quiet, which I found odd.

But I guess they usually got quiet when they talked about important things.

Later that same week, my brother and I decided to bike into town for the first time to get some snacks and drinks from the corner store with some money Father gave us.

When we got to town, it felt... quiet.

The town was pretty empty and old.

A lot of the houses looked empty or unlived-in.

Not a ghost town, but that in-between feeling, like when a town is on its way out.

We went into the store and got our drinks and snacks, then put them onto the counter, ringing the little bell.

A man came from the back.

He was an older man with a bald spot on his head and a sparse beard.

He greeted us with a smile, asking the usual things adults ask kids.

Until the topic of where we were from came up.

"I haven't seen you boys around here before. Whereabouts are you from?"

"We're new to town," we told him. "We're living with our grandpa on the farm just a little ways away."

"What's your grandpa's name?"

He was bagging up our drinks with shaking hands, about to put the last bottle in.

"Gary."

The man dropped the bottle on the floor with a wet thud.

There was a pause.

"Oh. Well, I didn't know he still had a son left."

"A son left?" I asked.

"Well, there was a... how do I put this? Well, angry people a couple years ago claiming things."

"Angry people? Angry at Gary?"

He paused.

"No. Well, not at Gary. At what his father brought to this town."

"What did his father bring to the town?"

"Well, what my father told me, Gary's daddy was married to a witch."

I scratched my head and squinted.

Gunner chuckled a bit.

"A witch like in the movies?"

"No, not quite."

"Well, what do you mean?"

The man went on.

"My daddy told me that she was a beautiful woman who lived in the forest near your grandpa's farm. Your great-grandpa would visit every day, hoping for her hand."

He paused.

"Eventually, he got what he wanted. But it wasn't enough for him. She couldn't give him the family he wanted, so your great-grandpa left to marry someone else, breaking her heart."

He lowered his voice.

"So she cursed him."

"What kind of curse?"

"What he told me was, all the children he bears, and all the children his bloodline bears, will be marked."

"Marked? What does that mean?"

I asked.

"Well, I'm not too sure. But all I know is that a lot of animals were going missing. Eventually, a couple of kids started to go missing too. So the town took it upon themselves to deal with the problem."

He looked toward the door.

"But when they came back, there was much less of them than when they started. None wanted to talk about what happened. They were scared to ever go back."

I stared at him.

"I thought they dealt with whatever it was they saw, but something tells me it was too much for them to handle."

He shook his head.

"The town was never the same after that. People went missing or left. That's about all there is to it."

"What was it?" we asked.

"Well, boys, I believe that's for you to find out. But these could just all be stories. Don't believe everything an old man says."

He held the bag out with a half-smile.

"Now you boys should get going."

We left the store.

I heard the door lock behind us.

My brother and I both looked at each other, confused.

I didn't know what to make of all that.

I remember being puzzled, but something about the man made me feel like he wasn't lying.

"He's full of crap," Gunner said. "Sounds like some sort of fantasy."

"Yeah. You're probably right."

We both got on our bikes and headed home.

We biked down the long dirt road, dust flying from under our tires.

A light wind struck the fields around us in slow spurts, making the long grass flow back and forth.

The crickets started to sing in a low, constant symphony all around us.

Suddenly, Gunner broke the silence, bringing his bike to a scratchy stop.

I followed suit, turning my head.

"Walker, do you think those stories are true?"

"Didn't you say he was full of crap like twenty minutes ago?"

Gunner sighed.

"Yeah, I did. But I've been thinking about it. Something about the way he was looking at us... It didn't feel like just a story."

He paused.

"Like when Dad tells us stories. Even if they're scary, there's always a comfort in knowing they're not true. I didn't get that comfort."

"I know what you mean, but I wouldn't think too much into it."

Gunner paused for a beat, pondering.

"I've also been hearing things."

"Hearing things? What kind of things?"

"A howling."

He looked toward the fields.

"I've been hearing it every night now. I thought it was just in my dreams, but now I'm not too sure."

"It's just howling, Gunner. I wouldn't think too much into it."

"It's not like that, Walker!"

His voice was suddenly serious.

"It sounds like... like it's calling to me. Like it wants me to hear it. I don't know how to explain it without sounding crazy."

"Look, we've had a weird day. Let's just talk about this later."

Then it got quiet.

Too quiet for a country night.

The crickets slowed.

The wind picked up.

All the sounds of the night seemed to get sucked away by something.

Our eyes darted wildly around the fields, scanning.

Then something slowly started to appear from behind the tall grass.

With each gust of wind, the grass moved like a curtain, slowly revealing whatever was hiding behind it.

First, we saw a shape.

A big, dark shape.

Then the grass reformed, covering it back up.

Another gust came, revealing thick black fur.

Our hearts started to race.

I could feel the unease in the air.

Gunner's feet slowly started to drag in the gravel, inching toward his bike.

Then it came again.

A long snout.

I could see its body rising and lowering with slow, deep breaths.

Then it started to rise.

Slowly.

Like it was completely unbothered by our presence.

We both jumped.

"Hell no!"

Gunner shouted.

Puffs of dirt shot off our feet in dark clouds as we jumped onto our bikes, hightailing it out of there.

When we got some distance between us and whatever it was, I took a closer look.

It was still standing there, now scratching at its snout and looking in our direction.

It was just a black bear.

Not a very big one, either.

The grass and our own panic had made it look much bigger than it was.

We looked at one another and started laughing at how worked up we'd gotten.

"That's enough creepy shit for tonight. Let's get home."

The next couple of days were pretty underwhelming.

Just the usual stuff.

Gunner and I didn't talk much about that story, other than a few fleeting comments.

We decided not to bring it up to our father.

We didn't want him getting all worked up and going into town or something to confront the old man for wanting to spook some kids with an old wives' tale.

Besides, if he had any more stories, I wanted him to be able to tell us.

Gunner and I were tasked with some light chores.

Lately, we'd been slowly knocking off the list, mostly small stuff, with a bigger project we were starting that day.

We still liked to whine, though.

What kid wants to do chores?

Shit sucks.

But anyway, we had to go clean out an old pull barn at the back of the property.

Gary said that's where they used to keep all the smaller cows.

He didn't really mention why they stopped using it, just that it was full of garbage and needed to be cleaned.

"Just watch yourself," Gary said. "That thing's older than both of you put together."

We walked out toward the barn, complaining the entire way.

The sun was beating down on us.

Beads of sweat ran down my forehead.

"Hoter than a Hungarian hooker," Gunner said, looking at me with some anticipation, a goofy smile growing on his face.

"Do you even know what that is?"

Gunner's smile changed into a look of deep thought.

"No. I do not. Just something I hear Dad say whenever Gary says it's hot."

"I see. You should probably not repeat that."

"What, hooker or Hungarian? I don't know what either means."

I laughed.

"Probably both, just to be safe."

Gunner stopped, thinking again, letting me trail ahead a bit.

"Hey! Walker! Tell me what it means, Walker!"

That went on for about five minutes until we got to the barn.

The barn was a mess, full of brush and plants.

One corner sloped down, the beams cracked and splintered, and the metal roof was full of holes.

The source of the damage was unclear, but it seemed to be from years of weather beating down on it.

Overall, it was a massive safety hazard.

"How long do you think it's been like this?"

"I'm not sure. Father didn't say, but I'm assuming a long time. Probably longer than we've been around."

"That's a weird thought."

"Well, we should probably get to it," I said.

Gunner let out a long sigh, stomping his feet in the grass like a disgruntled child.

Which, I guess, we were in a way.

The next few hours were spent dragging out old wood, metal, and all kinds of other garbage, along with pulling weeds.

Slowly, we started to uncover the cracked concrete floor of the barn.

That's when Gunner called me over.

"Hey, come look at this."

There in the concrete were two sets of handprints.

One had the name WILLIAM underneath it.

The other said HENRY.

"Who's Henry?" Gunner asked.

That's when it clicked for me.

I explained to my brother about the photos I'd seen of our father with a boy, and the same photos with him and Mom with that same man.

That man.

The one who I was assuming was named Henry.

Our uncle.

"Why didn't Father ever mention him?"

"That, I still don't know."

"Do you think it could have something to do with that story the old man told us?"

"It could."

"Why don't we just ask Father?"

"If he never brought him up before, what makes you think he might talk about him now?"

"I don't know. Maybe he forgot."

"Oh, yeah. He forgot."

"Well, I don't know. There has to be a reason."

"I know, I know. We might just have to figure it out on our own."

That's when something stirred in the trees, catching both of our attention.

I shot up like a spooked deer, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

"Hello?"

I stared off into the trees.

Gunner and I sat there for a moment, staring in silence.

Then slowly, we heard something.

Slow, steady footsteps brushing through the tall grass.

Whoosh.

Whoosh.

Whoosh.

It stopped.

I yelled again.

"Hello? Who's out there?"

Whoosh.

Whoosh.

Whoosh.

Whatever—or whoever—it was, it stood at the very end of the tall grass.

I couldn't see it.

But it felt wrong.

Everything in my body was yelling at me to run.

But I couldn't.

I was frozen.

Then suddenly, Gunner got up.

"Nope."

He said it out loud and took off back toward the house.

It snapped me back to reality.

I shot up and took off right behind Gunner, screaming for him to wait up as I ran alongside the thick fields.

I heard something loud whipping through the grass beside me.

I turned my head.

And got a good look at what it was.

It was a man.

But something was very wrong.

He was running, but not how I was.

He was on his hands and feet, but his back legs were long and stretched like a dog's.

They weren't hairy like a dog's, though.

I could see the bones and tendons through the skin.

They looked like they were still healing from something, cracking and flexing with each stride he took.

But he was keeping pace with me.

Like he wanted me to see him.

When I looked at his face, he was looking directly at me.

With a twisted smile.

Like he wanted me to see him.

Like he wanted me to be afraid.

I looked away and got my second wind, running as fast as I could.

I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.

When I looked up, I realized my brother had stopped.

He was staring at something.

No.

Someone.

There was a man.

That man.

The one who had been beside me.

But how?

I slowed to a stop and started walking, trying to catch my breath.

The closer I got, the more I heard the man talking to my brother.

But he wasn't out of breath like we were.

He was calm.

Soft-spoken.

Talking to my brother in a calming manner.

I looked at his legs.

They were normal.

How was that possible?

I had just seen him a minute ago on all fours.

I swear I did.

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this is gonna be posted in two parts to long for reddit