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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/LCDatkin on 2024-10-16 22:49:14+00:00.
When I got the call that my uncle had been arrested again, I wasn’t surprised. He was charming, reckless, and unpredictable—the kind of guy who knew his way around trouble and didn’t seem to mind it. But this time felt different. It wasn’t just a few months; he was facing ten years. A decade behind bars, for possession of over a pound of cocaine. They said it was hidden in the trunk of his car, packed away as casually as groceries.
It stung. He’d promised us he was clean, that his wild years were behind him. Even at Thanksgiving, he’d go out of his way to remind us all that he was on the straight and narrow. We’d had our doubts—old habits don’t vanish overnight, after all. But a pound? None of us had seen that coming. My uncle swore up and down the drugs weren’t his, said he was framed, that someone wanted to see him gone for good. But when we pressed him on it, he’d just clam up, muttering that spending a decade locked away was better than what "they" would do to him.
After he was sentenced, my mom called, her voice tight, asking if I could go to his place and sort through his things. It was typical family duty—the kind of thing I couldn’t turn down. I wasn’t close with him, but family ties run deep enough to leave you feeling responsible, even when you know you shouldn’t.
So, with him locked away for the next ten years, I volunteered to clear out his apartment, move his things to storage. I didn’t know why I was so eager, but maybe I felt like it was the least I could do. The place was a disaster, exactly as I expected. His kitchen cupboards were filled with thrift-store pots and pans, each one more scratched and mismatched than the last. I could see him at the stove, cigarette dangling from his lips, stirring whatever random meal he’d thrown together in those beat-up pans.
The living room was its own kind of graveyard. Ashtrays covered nearly every surface, filled with weeks’ worth of cigarette butts, and the walls were a deep, sickly yellow from years of constant smoke. Even the light switches had turned the same shade, crusted over from the nasty habit that had stained every inch of the place. It was clear he hadn’t cracked a window in years. I found myself running my fingers along the walls, almost wondering if the yellow residue would come off. It didn’t.
In one corner of the room was his pride and joy: a collection of Star Trek figurines and posters, lined up on a crooked shelf he’d likely hammered up himself. He’d been a fan for as long as I could remember, always rambling about episodes I’d never seen and characters I couldn’t name. Dozens of plastic figures with blank, determined stares watched me pack up their home, my uncle’s treasures boxed up and ready to be hidden away for who knew how long.
It took a few days, but I finally got the majority of the place packed. Three trips in my truck, hauling boxes and crates to the storage facility across town, until the apartment was stripped bare. The only things left were the stained carpet, the nicotine-coated walls, and the broken blinds barely hanging in the windows. There was no way he was getting his security deposit back; the damage was practically baked into the place. But it didn’t matter anymore.
As I sorted through the last of the kitchen, my hand brushed against something tucked away in the shadows of the cabinet. I pulled it out and found myself holding a small, leather-bound book. The cover was cracked and worn, the leather soft from age, with a faint smell of cigarette smoke clinging to it. The pages inside were yellowed, brittle, and marked with years of kitchen chaos—stains, smudges, and scribbled notes everywhere.
The entries were scattered, written down in no particular order, almost as if whoever kept this book had jotted recipes down the moment they’d been created, without thought of organization. As I skimmed the pages, a feeling crept over me that this book might have belonged to my grandfather. He was the one who’d brought the family together, year after year, with his homemade dishes. Every holiday felt anchored by the meals he’d cooked, recipes no one had ever been able to quite replicate. This book could very well hold the secrets to those meals, a piece of him that had somehow made its way into my uncle’s hands after my grandfather passed. And yet…
I couldn’t shake a strange sense of dread as I held it. The leather was cold against my hands, almost damp, and a chill worked its way through me as I turned the pages. It felt *wrong*, somehow, as if there was more in this book than family recipes.
Curious about the book’s origins, I brought it to my mom. She took one look at the looping handwriting on the yellowed pages and nodded, her face softening with recognition. "This was your grandfather's," she said, almost reverently, tracing her fingers along the ink. She hadn’t seen it in years, and when I told her where I'd found it, a look of surprise flickered across her face. She had been searching for the book for ages and had never realized her brother had kept it all this time.
As she flipped through the pages, nostalgia mingled with something else—maybe a touch of sadness or reverence. I could tell this book meant a lot to her, which only strengthened my resolve to preserve it. “Could I hang onto it a little longer?” I asked. “I want to scan it, make a digital copy for myself, so we don’t lose any of his recipes.”
My mom agreed without hesitation, grateful that I was taking the time to safeguard something she hadn’t known was still around. So I got to work. Over the next few weeks, in the gaps of my day-to-day life, I carefully scanned each page. I wasn’t too focused on the content itself, more concerned with making sure each recipe was clear and legible, and didn’t pay close attention to the strange ingredients and odd notes scattered throughout. My only goal was to make the text accessible, giving life to a digital copy that would be preserved indefinitely.
Once I finished, I spent a few hours merging the scanned images, piecing them together to create a seamless digital version. When it was finally done, I returned the original to my mom, feeling a strange mix of relief and satisfaction. The family recipes were now safe, and I thought that was the end of it. But that sense of unease I’d felt in the kitchen, holding that worn leather cover, lingered longer than I expected.
In the months that followed, I didn’t think much about the recipe book. Scanning it had been a small side project, the kind I’d meant to follow up on by actually cooking a few of my grandfather’s old dishes. But like so many side projects, I got wrapped up in other things and the book’s contents drifted to the back of my mind, filed away and forgotten.
Then Thanksgiving rolled around. I made my way to my parents’ place, expecting the usual—turkey, stuffing, and the familiar spread that had become tradition. When I got there, though, I noticed something different right away. A large bird sat in the middle of the table, roasted to perfection, but something about it didn’t look right. It was too small for a turkey, and its skin looked darker, almost rougher than the golden-brown I was used to.
“Nice chicken,” I said, figuring they’d switched things up for a change. My mom just shook her head.
“It’s not a chicken,” she said quietly. “It’s a hen.”
I gave her a confused look. “What’s the difference?” I asked, half-laughing, expecting her to shrug it off with a quick explanation. Instead, she just stared at me, her eyes unfocused as if she were lost in thought.
For a moment, her face seemed distant, almost blank, as though I’d asked a question she couldn’t quite place. Then, suddenly, she blinked, her gaze snapping back to me. “It’s just… what the recipe called for,” she said, a strange edge to her voice.
Something about it made the hair on my arms prickle, but I pushed the feeling aside, figuring she’d just been caught up in the cooking chaos. Yet, as I looked at the bird again, a small flicker of unease crept in, settling in the back of my mind like an itch I couldn’t scratch.
After dinner, I pulled my dad aside in the kitchen while my mom finished clearing the table. "What’s the deal with Mom tonight?" I asked, keeping my voice low. He just shrugged, brushing it off with a wave of his hand.
“You know how your mother is,” he said with a small smile, as though her strange excitement was just one of those quirks. He didn’t give it a second thought, already moving on.
But I couldn’t shake the weirdness. The whole meal had been… off. The hen, unlike anything we’d had before, was coated in a sweet-smelling sauce that seemed to have a faint hint of walnut to it, almost masking its pale, ashen hue. The bird lay on a bed of unfamiliar greens—probably some sort of garnish—alongside perfectly sliced parsnips and radishes that seemed too neatly arranged, like it was all meant to look a certain way. The whole thing was far too elaborate for my mom’s usual Thanksgiving style.
When she finally sat, she led us in saying grace, her voice soft and reverent. As she began cutting into the hen, a strange glint of excitement lit up her face, one I wasn’t used to seeing. She served it up, watching each of us intently as we took our first bites. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but as I brought a piece to my mouth, I could tell right away this wasn’t the usual Thanksgiving fare. The meat was tough—almost stringy—and didn’t pull apart easily, a f...
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