I live in a small town just beyond the trees, daylight fades into night; just like it does everywhere else. Sightings of a man gray, and silent, he hides behind the tombstones of our oldest cemetary. At first glance this man seemed fine, but as he withered away in the dusk; a feeling of discomfort crawled up my spine. My curiosity led me to accounts of consistent deaths of civilians in our towns obituaries, I realized one structure housed these individuals, it claimed that they all died of a heart attack due to “natural causes”, yet I sat there suspicious.
I dug through old newspapers , patiently waiting to find a connection between the man who withered, and the house of many deaths. Finally I saw the man in an old photograph, but he bore skin that was lively, and held a strange box in his hands. As I read the front page, it described that a man named Giddeon Carmine, purchased a brick house, and was set on living a normal life. Until he encountered an oak box that read ”Those who possess this case of evil, will wither away for eternity”. The man had ignored the inscripted warning, thinking that it was a practical joke of some sort.
He sat it on his desk, peering at the bronze latch that held it shut, he opens the case. He then fell into a coma, as the civilians put it, but an evil had entered his soul. Giddeon could not eat, and sleep was thing he never found. A woman named Claresse Mclellen took care of him through out the day, but one day after his skin began to appear gray, and peeling. He snapped at Claresse, several heard her screams, the cops had arrived, and before he knew it; police opened fire on him. He was declared dead that afternoon at dusk, they laid him in an unkept grave, marking the inscription “The Man who withered away”. The house was put on the market, and the unexplained deaths followed ever since.
I sat the article down with a look of shock on my face, a knock sounds from my door, I open it up to see his headstone on my porch, the inscriptions tampered with. Only the words The Wither man remain, has he realized my suspicions? I slam the door, and lock it in fear. I sit in my desk chair in fright, creaking sounds emanate from the hallway. The room is dark now, the sounds grow ever the more intense, I see him, his skin hangs translucent and torn from his bones.
He looks at me, and says, “Come child, join my suffrage, and simply wither away,” he said this sentence calmly, trying to lure me in. I was frozen with fear, even if I wanted to speak, no words would emanate. The room grew silent, his horrifying grimace, peered 2 feet away.
“Come child” he screeched, this time dragging me with him. I pulled, screamed, and struggled. It became dark now, a pain in my chest grew evident, as I slowly drifted into the dark, and withered away.