This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/camwalker22 on 2024-10-11 13:35:35+00:00.
I dragged myself down to the cellar and tossed the blanket back over Carl’s chest. Part of me wanted to open it, to stamp the jawbone to pieces for what it had done to Evie. But I was scared. Did I have the bravery to deal with it alone? If it was to be trusted, the bone had my stepdad begging on his knees for forgiveness every night. It made the big, stubborn man beg, for God’s sake. If it could do that to him, what could it do to a weakling like me? I gave the chest a petty little kick and trudged back up the stairs.
A couple of weeks have passed now and I’m really noticing Carl’s trips to the basement. He mainly consults the bone before he goes to sleep, but not always. I opened the front door one morning to go to school and stepped out into the cold, my breath fogging. Turning to lock the door behind me, I saw the blurred shape of him through the frosted glass pane, emerging from below. Does he spend full nights down there?
There’s another problem too: someone else is going down to convene with the jawbone. In the small hours, I hear a slight scratching from Evie’s bedroom. Then footsteps. Tiny creaks that disappear down the stairs ever so slowly. Evie’s eyes are perpetually sunken and distant, her arm bound in a sling. She whispers to herself, and avoids me.
“She’s on a cocktail of painkillers, Matt. Best to leave her alone.” My mom said when I raised the change in behaviour one night.
“Mom, that’s not the reason. You don’t understand–”
Then Carl stepped over the threshold, returning from work.
“What have you been doing today? Hm? Using my water, my electricity, my heating, I suppose?”
“Nothing, really.” I replied sullenly.
He swiped a finger over the wooden sideboard in the hallway and showed me the tip of his index finger, now grey with dust.
“Sorry.” I said.
“If you were sorry, I wouldn’t be walking into my house all dusty like this. Not good enough.”
I stood with lips pursed, my face an artificial mask of contemplation as he took off his shoes and strode past. The routine was hateful, but necessary. For some reason, Carl needed this saga to be played on repeat. To fight with him was to start World War Three, and all the shouting, tears and pleading that came with it. It’d be my mom who suffered the most if I took that course of action and forced her to side with one of us. She’d be torn apart by it.
Knowing that he’d be monitoring the depth of my repentance for the dusty sideboard from the corner of his eye, I remained frozen while my mom fussed over Carl. Eventually, I slunk up to my bedroom and settled in for an early night, but sleep felt far away. I kept seeing, and hearing, the chest snap shut on Evie’s arm. Her shock. Her terror. Her pain. I lied in bed reading, my eyes scanning whole paragraphs, before I realised I hadn’t taken in any information. All I could visualise was what had happened when me and Evie went down to the basement that night.
Yesterday morning, I found my mom fussing over Evie at the dining table.
“Are you sure your arm doesn’t hurt, Evie, darling?”
“No, honestly, it’s OK.”
I raised an eyebrow and went to grab the cereal. I’d fractured my elbow at soccer practice last year and knew full well that it hurt in these early stages. Hurt like a bitch. The injury to Evie’s arm was ten times as bad as what had happened to me.
“Well, if you need me to spoon feed you, that’s no trouble. Oh, I remember doing that for you when you were a baby, Matt, just like it was yesterday.”
“Sleep well, Evie?” I asked knowingly.
She scowled, face still paler than it usually was.
“On and off.”
After breakfast, I saw Evie brushing her teeth with her broken arm in the bathroom. She bent over the sink to spit and started brushing with the other one.
“Don’t think I didn’t see that.” I said.
“I already said it doesn't hurt.”
I considered her for a moment, standing there, obstinate. “What’s the deal? I know you’ve been creeping down to the basement. What has that thing in your dad’s chest asked for to heal your arm? Or is it a freebie? A generous gift? Out with it!”
Evie’s eyes were glassy as she came close, skin so white it was almost translucent.
“Why did you do this to me?” She asked.
“Do what?”
“Slam the lid on my arm! I know you did it!”
“Evie, no, I pulled you out of there. You fainted. You went to touch the jawbone, and it slammed shut.”
“Lids don’t slam shut on their own! Get out of my way!”
“Wait.” I said, before her bloodshot eyes widened and she bit down on my arm. I shrieked and Evie pushed past me, closing the bedroom door behind her. I examined the raw, red bite mark and pressed myself up against the door.
“I’ve known you ten years, Evie. We’re family. That jawbone has known you for two weeks. Don’t let it do to you what it’s done to your dad. I’m going to talk with it.” I said.
Any faint-heartedness from the day before had vanished. My heart burned with a solid ferocity, like iron at the core of the earth. That fucker in the chest was corrupting the relationship between me and my little stepsister. I marched into the basement while my mom was talking on the phone, flexing my hands into fists. No need to turn on the light this time as daylight seeped in from the small windows on ground level. I ripped the picnic blanket away and forced the lid up. The jawbone sat on its black cushion contentedly.
Boy.
“So, that’s the deal, huh? You turn Evie against me and in exchange, you heal her arm? What exactly is your game here?”
Bone knows bone. I merely repaired what was broken. Would you prefer to have the girl suffer?
“It was never that though, was it? Evie gets her arm fixed, while you get your…your fix.”
She asked if it was true. If her father was a murderer. Do you know what I told her?
“Whatever you said, it was a lie.”
A pause. The jawbone looked pallid, pathetic almost. Small and nesting, alone in the dark. The voice resumed.
I was a general from an old family who progressed beyond the age of battle. I toured military bases to give advice on strategy. At night, I liked to wander the grounds. To see bright lights shining down on flat buildings and parade grounds from afar, in the quiet, with the breeze.
One night, I found myself strolling around the perimeter when I happened upon a small unit of men conducting a nighttime firing drill. The men lifted up their night vision goggles and saluted. I bade them continue.
A soldier in the leftmost firing lane was struggling to hit anything, so I approached, but his aim only worsened. I put a hand on his shoulder in between shots and against all protocol, he swivelled, pointing the barrel of his rifle at my midriff. A shot rang out, and I fell onto my back. The world was spinning, but I recognised the face above me as darkness closed in. A face you and the girl know well.
A family as ancient and prestigious as mine cannot just be snuffed out, heirless. So the one who was my ultimate undoing was called to the gravesite some years later. Cursed to dig me up with bare hands and become my thrall. He only had the heart to linger long enough to grab the jawbone out of the coffin, the craven. At last, however, I could return to find a spiritual heir to my family. To find you.
You can have that inheritance, boy. I see potential in you. The others can go to rot. Reach out and take it. Take it!
I reached towards the jawbone. Dipping under the lid, I found the air to be stale and rank. A few rotten teeth were still lodged in the bone. Brown, yet sharp. Memories flashed into my mind’s eye that weren’t my own. A large house under a heavy night sky. An aristocratic woman lying crushed under a marble dining table. A room full of riches. Chalices. Ornate swords. Antique rifles. It was dizzying. Intoxicating. The tip of my finger drifted towards a molar.
“Matt? Matt, are you down there?”
I frowned. Recoiled. Banged my head on the upper lip of the chest and fell backwards onto my haunches, paralysed with fear over what I was about to do.
“Y-yeah. I’m OK, mom.”
Feet pounded down the basement stairs and I turned to see Carl standing there, cold fury in his eyes. My mom followed, confusion written across her face. Then Evie, higher still up the stairwell, and wary. Without ceremony, Carl strode over to me and drew back his fist.
“Dad! Stop!” Evie cried.
Carl hesitated.
“The things that bone says about you...don’t prove it right.” She said.
His fist dropped to his side.
“I’m not a murderer, Evie. Don’t believe it,” Carl said. His shoulders slumped and a pleading, whimpering tone entered his voice. I found this more disturbing than the raw anger it had replaced. A hollow laugh echoed out from the depths of the chest.
Yes you are.
“I didn’t mean it!” Carl snapped, half turning.
That’s not good enough.
“You disturbed me halfway through the drill! I was acquitted!”
Carl stepped toward the chest and I scrabbled to my feet, back against the wall.
I’m just as dead. You craven, murderous thrall. Shame on you! Beggar eternal! Bow to me!
“I hate you!” Carl screamed, before striding over to the chest and shattering the jawbone into pieces with the sole of his foot. The lid slammed shut on his kneecap once, twice, three times. It snapped open and closed piranha-like all the...
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