Good evening, it's Spooky Boo Rhodes coming to you from the beautiful lighthouse in Sandcastle, California. Tonight, among the redwood trees and the waves of the Pacific while hidden in the fog and the ferns I saw a little creature that looked like a small devil roaming around. It could have been a child playing around in a Halloween costume or maybe a new creature stalking the residents. We never know here in Sandcastle but I guess we'll just have to find out next month! Today is the 30th of September and that means tomorrow is the beautiful month of October. Are you like me and you wish Fall and October lasted 3 months instead of one? It's so beautiful and festive. I love the pumpkins and decorations. I love the scary stories people tell and the line up of horror movies on the different tv networks. There is nothing better than October! Which is why I have some very exciting things happening in October!
First, I have released most of my podcast stories as a collection called "Sandcastle Horror Volume I" in paperback and Kindle. You can also get it in PDF format through PayPal or other means. I will also be releasing these stories on a daily basis as individual short stories on Kindle. Every year I will do the same, although the stories will be put out on Kindle as a short story first so people can read along with the podcast. Another way to get access to the stories and the larger ebook is to subscribe to my Patreon page. The podcast on Patreon is commercial-free. Visit www.spookyboorhodes.com to get links to Patreon and all of my other fun online places or visit my website at www.scarystorytime.com. On another note, I will be on Creature Features again very soon. Subscribe to their channel at www.watchcreaturefeatures.com to find out when.
Now let's begin...
Devil's Knots
Written by Mr.estrus
Granny always told me as a boy that if the devil ever crossed you, yank a knot in his tail. In southern Louisiana there was always talk of the devil. I've never been a history buff, but I'm sure the same old cauldron-and-broomstick superstition was conceived back in colonial times. The Holland family rose out of the ashes of the war, and within the marsh bogs and swamps of the south, created an empire of cotton and textiles. Many people blamed my great, great grandparents' wealth on their affairs with the ungodly, which always sounded preposterous to me. Stories of voodoo dolls and black cats were mere campfire talk. Especially considering my family's enormous financial collapse during the Great Depression, leaving us virtually homeless forever.
Nowadays, we live in the same old swamp. The land where Holland Manor once stood is now completely inhabitable. In life it seems the forces of nature always have their way and will snatch any crop of land from even the most successful of parasitic humans. My house is a small shack just off from that specific crop. It's a one-story, white-walled, little muggy trailer with cracked windows vines sprung out across it. Poverty is an understatement when it comes to my property.
I live alone, luckily. I could never afford someone's residence alongside me. I can never hold a job and my pathetically self-righteous parents gave away my inheritance to charity and church. They're dead now. And living without their aid has been viciously crippling. I work a part-time job at a fast food joint nearby. I've had to sell most of our property, most of the possessions I've carried from my childhood to present, and really anything that isn't a necessity. We were always poor but since their demise in a car crash over a year ago I have never felt such hopelessness and financial ruin.
I don't spend much of my time at home. When I'm not working twelve-hour shifts, six days a week, I am usually at the local public library. Books have always been something I've loved. I'll never have the money for an education, but books and internet were something I could soak my brain in. Internet especially. During my adolescence, I went there every day as I transitioned preferences from books to internet. I've always loved the digital world. Worshiped it, if I may be totally frank. But I've never had what I was looking for. There's just not enough hours in the day to spend on the library's computers. And there's never enough reliable internet "juice" for my purposes. I hate it when there's a disconnection or something goes wrong.
The internet was something I wanted for my own house, to have for my spare time. I could never afford it, nor did they even offer it out in the Holland swamps, the very definition of the middle of nowhere. I didn't expect that to change anytime soon, but a man could always dream. It wasn't until a fatally humid Monday morning that it all changed.
I remember perfectly, the sun was a pale orb behind the haze of black storm clouds. The heat was still potent enough to make me strip down and lay spread-legged in the middle of the floor of my dangerously cluttered living room. I felt the sweat produce from my skin and fall aimlessly everywhere. My body seemed to shed twice its weight in water from the putrid summer spell. That's when I heard the knocking on the back door. Three times it knocked. Knock. Knock. Knock.
Immediately I presumed a robber, for such peculiarity as to knock on the back door. I couldn't help but rush to the baseball bat I had hung above my couch, taking it from its wooden display and dashing through the kitchen and to the door. As I ripped it open, expecting some thug with a ski mask, I found no one. Empty air, that's it. "Someone there?" I called, poking my head out of the door frame. No response. Nothing. "Maybe it was just a noise," I mumbled at myself, closing the door behind me, pushing the hot air back outside.
Crash. I could hear the hard pinging of glass shattering and flowing out across my kitchen floor. With caution I turned and began to move, halting as I saw the strange substance sprawled across my white tiled floor. It was thick and black, like charcoal and chocolate. Dirt and mud smeared across my floor―in the shape of cloven hooves. The prints were splattered treacherously across the tiles, turning my stomach as I felt the blood leave my face. I clutched the bat tighter, following the tracks into my own kitchen and eyeing the glass cup that had tipped over from the counter onto my floor. "The hell," I started, "Did an animal get in?"
The silence was uncanny, filling the hairs of my head with a coldness that still remains unmatched. Then, with certain subtlety, a whistling pronounced through the air just behind me. My body whirled around, moving with such panic-induced speed I have never matched. My naked body dripping profusely with sweat, but not that of heat affliction―rather of fear.
Amidst the dark before me was a tall man of white skin. He wore no clothing and for a moment I thought he was a mere delusion―a reflection of myself. But within seconds I saw that he was different. His body was slimmer than mine and had a white and gray color scheme to it. It was almost reptilian in having scales and a sleek texture. His midsection was covered in dark hairs that swallowed him down to his feet, which were twisted black hooves. His head was odd in that it was crowned with the horns of a mighty ram and his face was serpentine with a small nose and elliptical pupils in those foreign crimson eyes. Thick black lipstick bathed tight, slender lips. His fingers were tipped with long, black claws and his ears were pointed like those of a fairy. His lips parted and revealed a forked tongue flickering from broken, mangled fangs. But what caught my eye the most was the giant tail swinging from his bottom. It was an enormous tail with scales and a checker-board-colored rattle.
"Ave, dear August Urban Holland." the man said, grinning. His voice was gentle but dominate as thunder. It was melting with inconceivable passion that I so desperately wanted to enkindle. The way his tongue flowed with the pronunciation of my name was magnetic.
I would've thought my body to go limp, but there was an aberrant lack of fear. My body was being pulled to him, called from him, mastered by him. I took steps toward him as I inspected his form. "You're the―" I began, barely able to start before he interrupted.
"Wordless be thou, I am aware," he said, "thou needn't be fearful, for I come to bargain with thee and not destroy. Prostrate thyself now in my company, for where be the presence of God is gone, there be I. I am many things. I am the god of this world, I am the prince of the power of the air, I am called Beelzebub and the Devil, I am the one who slips from the recesses of Pandora's Box, I am thy greatest fears: Mephistopheles." It was all and more than I needed to know from him. In his presence, I felt safe.
"What will you do to me?" I asked, though more curious than afraid. Mephistopheles hoofed his way forward, making loud clicks along the tiled floor. He reached forward, and with a cold hand clutched my face. It was as though electric was sent through my body. Every sensual gland of my innermost soul was stimulated.
"The ruin of this man is loud," he said, "Such that I pity him above all men who walk the earth. Therefore my proposal is this: that he give up his very soul for things of flesh."
I removed his hand from my face but held onto it still. I could not bring myself to let go, to deprive myself of such intoxication. "I'll give you my soul at that very price," I replied.
"Name it," said Mephistopheles.
"Give me free and unlimited internet access. The highest speed and the highest quality," I replied. And a wide grin grew across his scaly face.
"Shall I seal this deal?" Mephistopheles asked as he held me by the head and lurched forward. Forward. Forward. I only nodded and immediately felt the pain of a long, warm tendril piling down my throat. His pink tongue stretchi
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The original Spooky Boo's Scary Story Time telling spooky, scary stories since 2016. Here you'll find true scary stories, fiction stories, urban legends, creepypasta, and other tall tales from the darkest corners of the internet.
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Ambient Backgrounds from My Podcasts
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