Suffer the Child

Poor little Tania Langley. At the age of nine, she’s an orphan, her parents brutally murdered by her older brother, who subsequently committed suicide. Understandably, she is suffering from psychiatric problems, most notably being completely unable to sleep without medication due to horrific nightmares. Her legal guardian, a distant uncle, has had her committed and the devoted staff at the sanitarium is not hopeful that Tania will ever be cured. Tania herself is very withdrawn and shy and speaks very little. The few people that she does talk to say that she insists that a monster killed her parents.

Image by artflow.ai

Possibilities

1 Tania’s uncle is a greedy, sadistic villain. He murdered Tania’s parents and framed her brother in order to inherit. Tania managed to run away, and by the time her uncle found her, he had realized that he could still enjoy the money if he was her guardian. Unwilling to admit the reality of what she saw, she imagined that a monster had done it. Her uncle secretly encourages this belief.

2 The house that the Langleys lived in was haunted by a malevolent entity. This entity had been steadily gaining strength throughout the time that they had owned the house. Unfortunately, Tania’s parents refused to admit it and tried to ignore the unnatural happenings in their house. Tania’s brother realized what was going on, and tried to put a stop to it. His knowledge proved pitifully inadequate, and he only succeeded in allowing the entity a physical presence. The entity killed their parents. Tania’s brother made a last-ditch effort to stop the entity; he was successful, but it cost him his life.

3 Tania’s brother was a dabbler in the occult and had many books of forbidden knowledge, which eventually drove him to the brink of insanity.  He finally went over the edge after reading an old play, The King in Yellow.  His mind snapped, and he killed his parents before ending his own life.  He did in fact go through some physiological changes, caused by his proximity to the essence of Hastur the Unspeakable. (Hence Tania’s belief that it was a monster.) Unfortunately, Tania had a habit of sneaking peeks at her brother’s books, and he had left the play in plain sight on his desk.

So far, Tania’s age has worked in her favor; the mind of a child has some natural defenses that adult minds do not, and Tania neither understood everything she read nor finished the play. However, only time will tell what lasting effects this will have on her… 

© Megan McKnight

Headcutter Jack

In the bayou country there is a tale about a spirit of vengeance known as Headcutter Jack. They say that if you really want it bad enough and you are willing to let yourself be ridden, that Jack will come calling and grant you the vengeance you desire. However, those who take on Jack can never hope to return to their lives unchanged. Most go mad and still others find themselves drawn to the twisted deeds they carried out under Jack’s influence only to become the very thing they sought vengeance against.

But that’s if you believe in Headcutter Jack.

Most folks these days dismiss him like they do the Voodoo ways or the Old Religions – wives’ tales and hoodoo stories to keep little kids in line. That was until recently. That was until Sally Mercury...

Sally Mercury was found in her home in a near-catatonic state, her hands rubbed raw, supposedly trying to remove the blood that covered her otherwise. The home, a modest Victorian-style affair was a veritable charnel house strewn with the parts of what most figure were her family who had been reported missing for several days now - mother, father, two sisters, all gone with only bloody gobbets and unidentifiable tissues to mark their passing.

Possibilities

1 Sally has always been a bit of a troubled child. Discussions with her school councillors and a delving into the local juvenile police records will show a long history of petty crime and acting out. Several calls to Child Protective Services have all been found to be the machinations of a vindictive pre-teen who cares little for her family. However, nobody predicted that Sally would be pushed over the edge and murder her family, all in the name of Headcutter Jack.

2 Sally claims that her house was attacked by a strange woman in a patchwork outfit. The woman was hooded and cackled the whole time she mutilated Sally’s family, but Sally never saw her face. When the woman came after Sally, she hid in an old coal shoot until she was gone. The woman, Sally claims, called herself “Jack”.

3 The remains are not those of Sally’s family. Forensics will show that most of the tissue is not human though it defies classification as anything else in particular. Sally claims that she “they” took her parents and that Jack saved her from “them”. The girl insists that her family is still at her home if not in it. She claims that they, whoever, they are, took her family to where they live. Sally cannot say much more, not knowing who they are or exactly where they took her family.

© Eli Arndt

The Iron Crib

Surrounded by old graves, a cast iron cradle appears one night in the middle of the churchyard of the small, coastal village of Hammon. Upon investigation, the crib is found to be deeply rooted in the soil, with iron reaching down into the bedrock. Yet there are no signs of digging or the machinery that must have been needed to install it, and no explanation for its presence.

Possibilities

1 The crib is an avatar of Yig, and is claiming the souls of children. In the town, a statistically significant increase in pregnancies, stillbirths and birth defects may be observed, and snakes begin to plague the town.  A distraught parent of a dead child reports seeing him in the crib, crying and reaching out. In some cases, post-natal depression leads to hysteria and even episodes of psychosis.

One of the graves near the crib contains the corpse of Augustus Prior, who was alleged to have committed unspeakable acts against children early in the previous century. Although nothing was ever proven, the allegations were all true. Prior was buried in the churchyard under protest, and wards were inscribed on the coffin and tombstone. A recent act of vandalism broke the ward on the tombstone, allowing Prior’s spirit to draw his master to the churchyard.

2 A baby, apparently abandoned, is found inside the cradle on the third morning after its discovery.  A local couple agree care for the child while the police investigate her origins. As the days stretch into weeks with no results from the investigation, the new foster parents find their sleep increasingly disturbed by strange nightmares. Friends and acquaintances find them unnaturally and violently over-protective of the child. If the child is not removed from their care, the couple will go insane.

3 An anti-abortion activist group installed the cradle late at night, intending to reveal its involvement only after media speculation had everyone curious. It was initially intended as a gimmick, metaphorically representing the spirits of the unborn. However, the situation has become more sinister - one of the group’s more militant and literal-minded members (and an occultist) performed a ritual on the night of the crib’s installation to invoke a vengeful Demon-Spirit of the Unborn. The ritual required the mutilation of a stillborn infant. Other members of the group are sickened and angered, but are deeply afraid that their own involvement will be revealed if the story comes to light.

© Barbara Robson and Stuart Barrow