14 Jan Out With the Old

Posted at 11:00h in Strange and Unexplained by CreepypastaStories.com 1 Comment

📅 Published on January 14, 2022

“Out With the Old”

Written by Kyle Harrison
Edited by Craig Groshek and Seth Paul
Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek
Narrated by N/A

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⏰ ESTIMATED READING TIME — 8 minutes

Rating: 10.00/10. From 1 vote.

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I know most of you are probably heading off to get a few drinks with friends and pass the night away watching the ball drop from the comforts of your couch, and if so, I applaud you for not having a care in the world when it comes to the new year.

Not even doubting for a second that it might not come at all.

I wish I could go back to the comfort of that lie. I hope that I didn’t know what my family does…what curse they’ve been burdened with.

It’s possible I might have had one too many drinks myself before sharing this with you, so I apologize if I’m rambling. Hopefully, by the end, this will all make sense.

My family has a very unusual New Year’s Eve tradition, you see, one that I was ushered into only recently by my Uncle Mordecai.

It was a little past eleven at night on December 31, a few years back, when Mordecai pulled me out of my bed in the darkness and passed me a rifle telling me that it was time.

Ever since Dad passed away, he’s been here for the family in almost every way imaginable. Always reliable, always confident. A genuine Jack of all trades.

So it was jarring to be up so late at night and to see his eyes were wild with fear. I had never seen him this way.

We usually get up before the sun at 5 am to get all of our work done. Our family runs a small farm outside the city limits, so going to bed early is necessary even during the holiday season. Going out like this was certainly not normal, and we also never hunted, so of course, as he urged me to get dressed, I had a dozen questions.

“Where are we going? Is Mama ok? Are we in danger?”

Mordecai didn’t answer any of them. Instead, he moved toward the front room and peeled back the curtains, looking out across our farmland as though searching for an intruder.

“Malachi, you’re just old enough now to understand. We have a job to do tonight, something that only we can do in the old woods. It’s going to be dangerous, it will be hard, and it could cost you your life…but it must be done,” he told me.

“Uncle, you’re frightening me…what must we do?” I asked.

“I can’t bother explaining it…hell’s bells, I wish your pa was here. He never wanted you to get involved, but…here we are.”

Mom was up now as well, looking exhausted and petrified. Apparently, she was also aware of this strange hunt Mordecai was about to take me on, and she kissed my forehead. “Make it home safe, Mal,” she said worriedly.

“I don’t want to go anywhere until I know for sure what’s going on!” I told them both.

Uncle Mordecai looked frustrated as if wanting to slap me across the face. But as he cocked his rifle and checked his ammunition, he provided the best explanation he could.

“Midnight brings a monster to these woods, and it’s our duty to hunt and kill it before sunrise. If we fail…if our family ever fails…the whole world could be at great risk,” he said.

We were out the door and into the dark countryside. Not a rabbit stirred on the prairie as we crossed toward the woods.

“Shouldn’t we use the truck?” I asked. I wasn’t sure whether to even bother inquiring about what he had just told me, but if time was limited, I figured it would be necessary to move as quickly as possible.

“There’s a spell across the land. Maybe you didn’t notice when you woke, but none of the electronics on the farm were working. This is what happens when the monster approaches. Now it’s almost midnight, and we need to hurry to the hunting blind,” he insisted.

Mordecai was probably twice my age but moved like a nimble elk across the thick brush and into the woods. I was struggling to keep up, my mind racing as I tried to imagine whatever it was we sought out. But for Uncle, it was as if he had done this all before many times.

His words echoed in my head about how he missed my father, and as we hunched down in the next ditch, I felt compelled to ask a burning question.

“Did Dad die out here because of this thing?” I asked.

Mordecai only nodded, perhaps too ashamed or scared to even relive the experience to me.

“That was only a few years back, and we nearly lost everything. It’s not a mistake we can afford again,” he said as we started to walk again.

Mordecai shouted that I needed to keep up, and I was certainly trying my best, but it wasn’t easy. The old woods were thicker here, difficult to traverse. I could hardly make heads or tails of where we were or what was happening.

Then he held his hand up as we reached a clearing and surveyed the other side of the woods. It seemed like everything was darker here, not a sound was heard, and it felt like everything was suddenly frozen as he watched the surrounding area.

I heard something move soft and slow through the clearing. It made the ground tremble. The forest was trying to move aside for whatever this tremendous beast was.

I saw a long tall shadow slide across the grass, making up a bulbous form on the opposite side of the clearing. It was as large as an elephant, perhaps four of them.

I looked toward the heavens, trying to get a good look at its face. Then as I gazed toward the stars, I realized two of the bright orbs were, in fact, glowing eyes.

“Do not move,” Mordecai warned as the creature slowly moved to the west. It hadn’t seen us yet. And it was crushing trees as if they were toothpicks.

“How the hell are we supposed to kill that thing?” I asked. It was unimaginable how immense it was, but it was thin and lanky and moved almost like a slinky might, its body disjointed and broken as if it struggled to walk. At least it couldn’t chase after us, I thought to myself as Mordecai pulled me into the grass.

“Keep low and don’t make any more noise unless absolutely necessary,” he told me as we moved to the backside of the creature. I kept my eyes on it at all times, mesmerized by how powerful it was.

As I looked closer at the beast, I realized it was holding something with its right palm, a long thin rod that edged into a massive curve at the end. A weapon of some kind, I realized as Mordecai gave me instructions.

“The creature is blind, so distract it with as much light as possible while I move around toward its backside some more. I will whistle, and that will be a signal to you. You should immediately turn your light off and run toward me at that point. Do you understand?” he whispered.

“That weapon could cut us in two!” I shouted back, the mighty beast stopping dead in its marching. It had heard me.

“Blast it all, Mal! Move this way!” my uncle snarled as he pulled me up from the ground. There was a stream only twenty yards or so away as I heard the creature make a moaning noise. It was swinging its immense blade toward us, slamming the sickle into the ground and tearing up the earth as we ran.

“Get in now! Then turn on your light!” he ordered as we slid into the ditch.

I obeyed, too terrified to question any further as I shone the flashlight into the beast’s eyes.

What I saw was the malnourished giant face of a man with a long scraggly white beard.

Every inch of his face showed signs of decay or death, boils and scars covering his grotesque form as he opened his broken jaw and screamed due to the light. His teeth were jagged, misshapen and ruined, bent out of shape from eating God knows what. And his entire body looked like it had been pressed through a cheese grater. Not a sliver of his skin looked healed or young.

“Keep the light on its eyes!” Mordecai ordered as he rushed toward the other side, narrowly avoiding another hit from the scythe.

I was trembling, at a loss for being able to do anything except to keep the light moving as the man reached a long bony hand toward me, grasping into the creek and trying to squeeze the life out of me.

“Uncle, you must hurry!” I shrieked as I felt the giant’s gnarled nails dig into my skin, and he began to lift me into the air.

“Hold steady, my boy! I’ve got a good shot!” Mordecai shouted back as I felt the aged titan’s ragged breath waft over my entire body. It made me want to vomit. A boiling mixture of poison and fumes pushed its way out of his gullet as the monster prepared to drop me straight down his throat.

Then a gunshot runs through the air. Then another. Blood splattered across my face as I saw that Mordecai had struck him right in the back of the head.

The giant moaned and dropped me instantly, my body pathetically flailing to the ground as I fell like a doll. I hit the ground and barely had time to recover as I saw the decrepit old titan begin to fumble and collapse. If I didn’t get to hiding, it would crush me as it died.

I managed to jump back to the creek, my body aching and exhausted as I felt the massive creature let out a final groan, its colossal form destroying the entire clearing as I saw Mordecai move toward its stomach. As if searching for something.

“We ain’t done yet, boy,” he said, waving me over to him. Cautiously I walked past the trembling muscles of the giant as its heart slowed down and saw Mordecai cutting into the belly of the beast.

“We’ve almost run out of time. There’s one final part of this ritual we must safeguard,” he said as he cut away at the muscle as if it were mere paper.

Then he paused at a wall of jelly-like material that looked like an egg sack of some kind.

“I’ll need your help here Malachi, this won’t be easy, but we need to rip this womb apart, do you hear me?” He asked.

More questions buzzed as I stood by his side, using my hunting knife to cut and push the writhing gel aside, revealing that something was making its way out of the old giant.

“That’s it! That’s it! Move back, boy!” my uncle warned. But I was too transfixed by what was happening. I was witness to the birth of a new species.

First, a hand pushed out, gripping the belly like a cave wall. Then another on the opposite side, stretching the hole we had dug from its carcass wider.

I saw at least four arms and six legs, perhaps more, all human in appearance as the strange “skin arachnid” crawled out of its host, wailing like a newborn infant.

It had only a single sharp tooth that it used to eat away at the umbilical cord that kept it tethered to the giant. Then it began to slither toward me, its eyes viewing me as nothing more than food.

I felt Mordecai pull me away just as the baby monster leaped toward me, barely missing my face by mere inches with its claws.

Then it retreated into the forest, hungry and angry, the sounds drowning out my fragile mental state as my uncle led me back to the house.

Dawn broke a few hours later, and I went to find the giant’s corpse, hoping to make sense of the whole ordeal. But not even the bones remained.

“It was gone the moment we stepped away from these old woods. And trying to piece together evidence would do you little good, my boy. I tried taking a picture of the thing once, and it broke my camera to pieces. It’s not meant to be seen by humans, that’s for sure,” Mordecai explained.

“But we saw it. We killed it…you must tell me why,” I stammered as I searched the ground that had once been covered in blood. Not a drop remained. As if the infant creature had returned and licked up every bit of it for nourishment.

“Your father told me that it was necessary to protect the next year…make sure we have another one, that is. It’s an endless cycle that must be repeated or else…God knows what might happen. We kill the old and give birth to the new. And then we go about our lives another year, thankful for what we have been given,” Mordecai explained.

We hunted the beast together for a few years after that, until 2019, when Uncle died during the event. It was like watching my father be buried all over again.

I was more brutal that year to the giant, angry that I was cursed to hunt it for the rest of my days, and I nearly lost my own life. Now it’s just Mom and me, and I worry about what will happen this year if I fail to succeed.

I’ve written to my family, asking they come down for a New Year celebration, hoping to get more hands for the hunt. I know I can’t tell them the truth of what they will face, so I am leaving this confession here for any to hear.

Maybe it will make a difference. Perhaps it will ensure we have a good hunt and a good year. All I know is that I wish I never knew this curse, and I don’t think I can ever have a happy new year again.