Mask on the Wall

Hi friend, Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Today's stories have to be taken with a slightly more open mind, not literally, of course. Are you ready. My name is Edwin, and here is a Scary Story mask on the wall. Grandma has a strange collection of items, and among them are a bunch of creepy old dolls and board games that I don't understand. When I was younger, they were fun. I mean, I didn't know how to play any of them, and my sister and I just made up the rules as we went. But as we got older, we started noticing a few things that no kid ever pays attention to. Some of the cards had pictures of old clowns that didn't look so creepy when we were little, but they do now. Some of the pieces of the games where things like metal toy hatchets and bottles and paws of animals, all pretend stuff, of course. But by far the strangest thing that I was afraid of was one of her rooms. It had been recently cleaned out and the mattress and the rest of the furniture had been replaced. I was excited about it at first because it was my mom's room when she was a child. That was kind of nice to think about. It was late at night. There was a big alarm clock with lit up numbers on the nightstand, but the time was wrong, so I don't really know what time it was. Everything was quiet, not even birds or cats were around. All this time. I had gotten used to noises at night, you know, people walking outside, cars driving, just things like that. So silence at night except for the crickets was terrifying. Despite my best efforts to not look at the wall, I turned around anyway and I had to look once more. There was a mask on the wall, a type of decoration, I'm assuming something that gave me the chills. I used to talk to myself back then. I'm not sure if you do some of the same things, but I used to whisper to myself at night whenever I felt scared of something. I was saying that it was nothing to worry about, and just to prove it to myself, I opened my eyes once more. There it was the pale mask of a man with a mustache. He had a sinister smile, which I guess was supposed to be a happy one, and dark eyes made from the holes at the top that doesn't scare me, I whispered to myself, there's nothing to be scared about. It's just a mask. But my eyes were glued to it. The more I looked at that wall, the clearer the wrinkles and the dips of the facial expression stood out to me. The way the skin seemed to be pulsating, just like my breathing, growing away from the wall and then shrinking back down. I caused my eyes and turned the other way, afraid of imagining that mask moving its mouth or jumping out and grabbing me with invisible hands. And then somehow I managed to fall asleep. I woke up late that morning, like very late. It was almost noon, and Grandma had already come into my room to leave a glass of milk and toast to eat, but I hadn't heard her do so. From the exhaustion, I stretched and took a bite of it, looking up at the wall. From the night before, Grandma had taken down the mask. She knew how scared I would be of it. When Mom picked me up, I told her that everything had been fine, that I had slept too much and wasn't able to go with Grandma to the farmer's market. Mom was upset about that, thinking that going with her that morning was a whole point of the trip. I told Mom that it wasn't my fault that I had trouble sleeping, and finally told her why. Mom froze in disbelief and had me describe the mask on the wall several times before she called Grandma to tell her about it. I had to interrupt Mom during the call to tell her that I meant a mask, not a man, which she kept mentioning to Grandma. She shushed me and went back to talking about the man on the wall. Mom visibly frightened by the whole thing. Once the call was over, I told her that I had been a mask, not a man on the wall that I had seen. She stopped me and told me that when she was little in that same room, she had seen the same face against the wall. The whole time, she had thought that it was a mask too. Then one night, terrified and unable to turn around, she looked down at the floor and she saw his shoes. The woman and the hills. The old woman walked up the street once again right at dusk. She was haunted and didn't know it. Haunted by the stairs of the townspeople who spoke of her behind her back, talking about her clothing, her hopeful smile as she walked between the patches of trees and up the hill. Some would say that she would point into the distance and stand up on the rocks she was sitting on back when she was younger. Eventually, she simply stood in front of it, holding both of her hands in front of her, and then looking up, thinking the God that made her wish come true, and then take it away once again. The kids and people new to the town, involving in their own ways after many years, all seemed to find doubt about her. There was a pastor who wished to speak with her and take her in for a time after hearing the rumors, but he was promptly scared away. Nobody could touch her, and some say that whenever she would buy things at the store, she would murmur to herself the things that her husband had told her, happy things, promises and wishes. She had gotten married at a young age, and her household struggled from the beginning. The husband used to work as a merchant who would buy things from out of town and then sell them elsewhere. Rugs, ceramics, and fabric. The woman would walk with him all the way to the edge of town, near the peak of the hills, and waved goodbye to him as he disappeared over the valley. She had warned him once the big storm was coming and everyone was securing their roofs and walls for the downpour. But if he didn't go, what would they eat. The neighbors had helped the struggling couple long enough, and with the sacks of beans now empty in the handkerchief where they wrapped their money, not looking any better, her husband decided to go for the half day trip. They both stood on top of the hill to say good bye as the rumbling thunder approached them with the early light of the morning. She offered to go with him, and he refused, further acknowledging the dangers he was about to face on his own. Then they hugged and kissed goodbye. He promised to return when the sun set. There would be a few days before The neighbor started leaving food and other items for the lonely woman. Whispers were going around town about the storm, disappearing salesmen from the neighboring towns. She wrapped up some food for her husband. Would be hungry and walked toward the hills right before dawn and waited. The cold food would sometimes remain there, and other times she would eat it on her way back home, smiling because her husband would be coming soon. And the days grew two months and her skin began to darken with the heat of the sun. Once the spring brought summer, her skin was dried up once again when winter came, and every day she would walk up the hill and sit on her rock and wait, just wait. Years and then decades, and the seams of her dress started to blend with the air with the many washes she gave to it, till one day the townspeople noticed that her dress was now combining with the colors of the earth. Eventually her house was cleaned out, some say by her relatives. Anothers say by the woman herself. That couldn't be. They say that she finally went to search for her husband, who had likely died, just like the hundreds of others that trekked along the dark paths of the hills on dark nights. Some claimed to see her with her white cloth and her basket, taking a warm meal to her hungry husband, returning from the hills. She whispers, hopeful and smiling, the same promises her husband made to her that they will be back when the sun sets. He'll be back and she'll be back. Two. The following story is about visions or beings that are with us that not all of us can see. The boy crawling on the wall is coming up right after this. My aunt is one of the most interesting people I know. Before she got divorced and moved in with us, she would normally invite us out for ice cream or to go to the movies. Then we would spend the rest of the evening with my brother talking about it and making up the sequels and stuff like that. I started noticing that she would get a bit too descriptive with some of the things that she would tell us when she mentioned any scary stories. Some of those images are still stuck vividly in my mind. One of these, and the only one I'll share with you, is the story of a boy, the boy who crawled on the walls. I'm not sure where this comes from, and the rest of my family can't confirm this, but I know that the place we used to live in had been passed down from even before my grandfather was born. The plays had been fixed up and expanded in certain areas, from a farm to a regular residential home, and then split into a duplex, then combined once again, but still had been the same place. One thing we all knew about it was that strange noises seemed to come from the ceiling late at night. Nobody could explain them. Mom would tell us stories about how they would climb up to the attic and tell scary stories with their friends, along with my aunt, who claims that they did to get along well when they were growing up. Mom won't tell us about the story of the boy, simply stays quiet. When my aunt used to bring it up, she said that one night, while they were both sleeping in the same room, she started hearing those noises that we all had gotten used to, tapping and dragging against the walls and ceilings. My aunt woke up first and looked around the room. She had a flashlight on her something that she would use to go to the bathroom late at night, and the void turning on the lights to the hallway, so she grabbed it, turn it on, and then shined the light on the wall. She caught a glimpse of the tiny legs and shoes crawling up on it. She raised the flashlight as the boy climbed up to the corner of the room and then crawled across the ceiling to the opposite corner. Freaked out, she screamed and yelled for Mom and Dad, who came rushing to the room. Mom was upset that she had been woken up, was more confused than anything. I mean, that's a story that she tells. Supposedly, my aunt and my mom were woken up one night by the same taps and dragging sounds around the room, and Mom was able to see the boy crawling around the room, dressed in blue overalls and a white shirt, long uncombed hair dropping off to the side. They both ran out of the room after hearing him grunt and laugh, and both refuse to sleep in that room again. When Mom gets asked about it, she doesn't say much. She sighs, and then tells my aunt to stop telling us stories like that and to make us feel better. My aunt reminds us that the room is now where my dad works, that there's nothing to be afraid of any more. He had not been spotted anywhere else. I know. It's just a story, but it's tough to forget it late at night, when I can't fall asleep and I hear those taps and dragging sounds against the walls. Imagine that little boy crawling around the boom like an insect in the dark. Scary Story Podcast is written and produced by me Edwin ko Arubias, and you can find me over on Instagram at Edwin Cove that's E d w I n c O V, or at the website Scary Story podcast dot com to get in touch. If you're on Discord, you can head over to scarypod dot com, forward slash Discord, or find the Discord logo on the website to grab your free invitation until next time, Thank you very much for listening.