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Hey guys, get ready for the ultimate scare this Halloween season. From number one best-selling author Tony Martirano comes The Curse of Frost Lake Manor, a terrifying tale perfect for the spooky season. As Halloween approaches, immerse yourself in the haunting story of Kevin, an ambitious executive sent to oversee the restoration of Frost Lake Manor, an eerie estate with a dark and twisted past.

But what starts as a career-making opportunity quickly spirals into a living nightmare as Kevin uncovers the horrifying secrets buried within the manor's cursed walls. Haunted by malevolent spirits and pursued by supernatural forces beyond his control, Kevin is trapped in a fight for survival. Tony Martirano, celebrated for his pulse-pounding horror novels, delivers a story guaranteed to send shivers down your spine.

The Curse of Frost Lake Manor is an exclusive Halloween special premiering on the Dr. No Sleep podcast on October 23rd at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. This tale of supernatural terror is just what you need to get into the Halloween spirit. So make sure to click that follow button and turn notifications on. You don't want to miss the scare of the season. Only on Dr. No Sleep.

The day was unpleasant as usual, but I couldn't help but smile as I watched the children trot down the street in their costumes. Cloth sacks, plastic bags, and jack-o'-lantern shaped buckets knocked against their knees as they darted from house to house. Clusters of them stood at open doors, bags at the ready as men and women dumped handfuls of cheap, sugary treats and made small talk with the accompanying parents.

Hordes of children dressed as their favorite fictional characters would already be on the move to the next door before the parents had made it down to the second porch step. It was Halloween of 2023, and I drove slowly through the last residential neighborhood at the edge of town. Another few blocks, and I would be away from the throng of slow-moving cars. Maybe it was my imagination, but it felt like it hadn't taken that long to make it to the old, familiar country lane in years prior.

Trick-or-treating children seemed to line the streets much earlier in the day when I was a child. There were a set of rules, written by no one in particular, that my friends seemed to have followed. Stay within 10 blocks of your own house. Only knock on doors with a porch light on. A closed front door and no light meant no candy. If a bowl of candy was unattended on a porch, you only took one piece. You don't start trick-or-treating until the sun is setting.

Sunset began around 6:45 PM in my little town in late October. So in my mind, the children wouldn't be out and about for another two hours. But the sidewalks were jam-packed a few minutes before 4:45 PM. A few years before, the city council established a curfew requiring trick-or-treating to wrap up before 8:00 PM.

That left a fairly small window of time for kids to make the rounds, which bumped up their start time a good deal. The ordinance made sense to a point, but I also felt like it must suck some of the fun out of the day for the kids. "It's all in good fun," a councilman had said in a brief newspaper article after the ordinance passed. "But who wants a mob of ghosts and goblins knocking on their door at 10 p.m. for a Snickers bar?" Maybe the kids didn't know any different.

For them, it had always been that way. You can't miss a thing you never had. Still, I felt that my generation looked at the daylight trick-or-treaters with a feeling of pity. They would never know the joy of roaming the dark night under buzzing streetlights, swapping favorite candies with friends, and telling one another scary stories as they moved from house to house. Of course, the earlier time in the trick-or-treating curfew was the result of darker things.

Gone were the simpler times, when parents would let their children go out on Halloween without an adult, so long as they traveled in a group and stuck together. Now, that type of carefree fun was over. The evening news, filled with reports of missing children and violent crime across the country had seen to that. A worldview of new horrors had risen from the 24-hour news cycle and left even the most bland event cast in the light of nefarious possibilities.

"Those awful things have always been there," I said to myself in the cab of the truck. "You just see the things you were able to ignore before." That was the truth of it. Those awful things that scared parents to the point they wouldn't let their children out of their sight had always been around. Children vanished, husbands killed their wives, and vice versa. Strangers broke into houses and stole things they had never worked for.

Elderly people were abused and neglected. All day, every day, and all across the country. Van Halen released a music video when I was almost a teenager. Right Now was the name, I think. The text was superimposed on the screen as the band played, making statements about various things that were happening right now. One of them still sticks to my brain like a deep-rooted tumor. Right now, a madman is wandering the streets of the town you live in.

That was true of likely every place in the world, but before the advent of technology that allowed the world to read about it and always tell themselves a comforting lie. Those awful things don't happen here. They happen somewhere else and to someone else. But they didn't, and they never did. Common evil touched every bright and dark corner on the map. Horrible events were no more common in modern times than they were years before.

But blissful ignorance was a thing of the past, and morbid reality was the voice that whispered in the back of parents' minds with every decision they made. Even still, as I drove down the street and the crowd began to thin, I felt bad for the children darting door to door who had been robbed of an innocent time they would never know. I'm afraid my rambling thoughts may have put you under a misconception or two, though.

The first would be that I have fond memories of the carefree trick-or-treating for my youth. That would be categorically false. The truth is, I never went trick-or-treating. Not a single time. It wasn't a luxury I was permitted. No child in my family in the last two generations were allowed to participate. The second misconception is that I have some endearing love of Halloween. That also isn't true. There isn't a day of the year I hate more.

"It has brought nothing but toil and misery to my family for almost 80 years. My family, for a lack of a better term, is cursed. Has been since 1948. If you believe my grandfather, which I do. It all began on a Halloween night, a few years removed from the end of World War II when Pops was only 15.

He knocked on a door he shouldn't have and asked a question he shouldn't have asked. All the time since, my family paid the price for something he never could have known would be a mistake. That's why I was in the truck, making my way through the early evening traffic and watching the waves of children wash across that neighborhood. I was making my way out of town toward a country lane hardly anyone ever used. At the end of the rutted path was a cemetery that was rarely used.

my family, and maybe a half dozen others still buried their dead there. Somewhere in that nearly forgotten cemetery, I would find a shovel gouged into the ground waiting for my hand, and I would dig, dig until I found what I was told to find. It was never a mystery though, how far I would need to dig, 36 inches wide and 90 inches long to a depth of six feet.

roughly the size of a grave. And there it would be, the hellish little object my family was damned to unearth every Halloween. It didn't look like much, but digging it up kept us safe for another year. The first time I heard the story, the true story of how the unending burden had fallen on my family, I was 12 years old. I'd been living with my grandfather, Vernon Gamble, for around nine months at that point.

My father had taken his life unexpectedly a year earlier. My mother, God rest her soul, died three months later. Ran her car off the side of old Highway 41 with an open bottle of whiskey in the passenger seat beside her. Losing my father had been more than she could handle. She crawled in a bottle and never managed to crawl back out.

When I say it was the first time I heard the true story, what I mean is that my father had given me the shortened version when I was much younger. Halloween had always been kind of a strange holiday at my house. When my mother and father were alive, we just stayed home. No parties, no costumes, no late night walk through the neighborhood in search of candy. They would just pop in a VHS tape of some Halloween themed cartoon and set out a bowl of popcorn and candy for us.

I always loved it, but as I grew older, it occurred to me that all of my peers came to school the day after Halloween with bags of candy to eat during breaks. I was probably six or seven when I finally asked my parents about it. "Why don't I get to go trick-or-treating?" I asked. Mom and dad looked at each other for a moment, trading uncertain glances. Now that I'm an adult, I understand what the wordless exchange meant. Are you handling this one or am I?

"Just an old family superstition, kiddo," my father said, losing the non-verbal argument with my mother. "It's a fun night for most people, but it's bad luck for our family." "Did Pops take you trick-or-treating when you were little?" I asked, not quite understanding how the night could be unlucky. "Did something bad happen?" My mother left the room, and my father sat down on the couch next to me.

He ruffled my hair and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close and resting my face on his rough flannel shirt. Long silences must seem twice the length to a child, and I felt like I must have sat there for a half hour leaning against him and waiting for an answer. "No, son, I never was able to go trick-or-treating. Pops made it clear from the time I was old enough to walk that it wasn't something our family would do."

He always had work to do on Halloween and couldn't take me. Your grandmother knew it was important to him, so she kept me home.

Something upsetting happened to Pops when he was a kid, and he thinks our family hit a bad run of luck because of it. This episode is brought to you by United Airlines. When you want to make the most of your vacation, book with United. They're an airline that cares about your travels as much as you do. United is transforming the flying experience with Bluetooth connectivity, screens, power at every seat, and bigger overhead bins to help fit everyone's bag.

And with their app, you can skip the bag check line, get live updates and more. Change the way you fly. Book your next trip today at United.com. What happened? I asked. Ed still pressed against his chest. I'll tell you when you're older, he said, patting my shoulder. Those kinds of things are too much to put on a child. He never did get a chance to tell me, though. By the time I was old enough to hear the story, mom and dad were gone.

Cops put me in the car the day of my mother's funeral and drove us to his rickety old farm nestled in the countryside. It was rustic but charming. All the outdoor activities a growing kid could ask for, but none of the conveniences. The old man had never owned a television set, so the thought of cartoons or a video game system was out the window. I knew there was a perfectly good television and Nintendo sitting in my parents' old house in town, but I didn't want them.

Pops had grabbed my clothes and a few odds and ends when he took me in. But that was all I wanted. Taking anything else would have felt like robbing a tomb. School kept me busy during the day. Homework and chores occupied most of the afternoon. During the evenings, my grandfather and I would sit in the dining room and eat in silence. Vernon Gamble had never been a man with much to say. But even those few words seemed to die off when his son, my father, killed himself.

The specters of grief and loss kept his company at the silent table. I don't mean to paint him as a distant or uncaring man. He was neither. Even at 12, he walked me to my room at night and tucked me in. I wanted to argue at first, but the ritual seemed to do something to bring him a little peace. He never told me this, but I assumed the upstairs bedroom where I spent my teenage years had belonged to my father.

Pops could probably see him and dad walking up the stairs when he tucked me in, so I let him. He stopped after a few months, and I sort of missed it when he did. The breakthrough in our new and awkward relationship came when my social studies teacher assigned us to write a three-page paper on the United States' entry into World War II. I was no history buff, and our textbook was light on detail.

Most gruesome things like that received only the lightest mention in a middle school textbook. I would have to find other sources to cite for my paper. In the spirit of my grandfather's aversion to technology, there was no computer in the house. We would get one when I started high school, along with internet, much to my surprise. But that was still a few years down the road. With no easy access to reference material, I asked Pops if he could take me to the library that afternoon.

Don't your school books have what you need in them? He asked, legs sticking out from below a rusting tractor. The damn thing hadn't run since I was a child, and it never ran again that I could recall, but he tinkered with it on and off for years. Seems like they ought to give a kid what they need to get their work done if they're gonna assign you a damn report to write. I explained to him that most of the other kids at school had internet access, and I had been embarrassed to tell my teacher I didn't.

The library would have books and you could even sign up to use a computer there for a few hours to research topics and print information. It only cost a dime per page for printouts and wouldn't take me more than an hour to get everything I needed. A dime for a piece of paper? Shit, ain't that silly. I guess we'll have to head to town, but I'll need to get cleaned up first. Librarians ain't gonna like me tracking motor oil and dirt down the periodical aisle.

What's your paper on anyhow? World War II, I said, fairly excited that our conversation had continued beyond the two-sentence mark. They rarely did. We've got to write three pages on why the United States joined the war and the impact it had on the outcome. Hobbes pushed himself out from beneath the tractor and walked to an old workbench. He pulled a stained pink rag from a hook and wiped the grit and grime from his hands, chuckling the entire time.

Follow me, kiddo, he said and started toward the house. We ain't gonna need to go to the library today. Let's go to my study. I followed behind him as he trotted into the house. We passed through the kitchen, down the hall, and came to a stop at a finished oak door with a large brass knob. To my knowledge, I had never seen the door open in all of my years, and my grandmother, before she passed, always kept me away from the room.

As a child, I imagined it was full of treasures and secrets only my grandfather was allowed to access. And that was true on a certain level. He turned the knob and pushed the door inward. A belt of stale, smoky air poured out as he batted along the wall, searching for the old push-button light switch. He finally found it, and the room came to life with light.

It wasn't what I had expected, but I wasn't any less delighted than if he had held a secret family treasure. His study was filled from floor to ceiling with books. Mahogany shelves lined the walls, nearly buckling under the weight of hundreds of leather-bound books. An overstuffed armchair was pushed into a corner, nestled against a brass gooseneck reading lamp.

A roll-top desk with an antique clerk's rolling chair sat a few feet away, and the cubbies were filled with yellowing envelopes. In the center of the room, a coffee table was stacked waist-high with photo albums. "Go over to the shelf on the left side of the window, third from the floor. That row ain't nothing but books on World War II. All nonfiction. Should be a few by Stephen E. Ambrose."

"That fella'll bring it to life for you, kiddo. You don't find what you need there, I'll take you to the library tomorrow. Scout's honor." I laughed when he said that. Scout's honor. It was silly, and Vernon Gamble wasn't a silly man. The books were equally surprising. From the way Pops talked, he may have thought he wasn't really a smart man either. His study told a different story. Showing me his study,

Hell, it was really his library. It seemed to open up a whole new phase of our relationship. I don't remember much about the social studies paper, but I do remember that was the day the story started. Pops had been a farmer his entire life. My father had once told me that he dropped out of school his sophomore year to help my great grandfather when they had fallen on hard times.

It was a sore spot for the old man, and it had driven him to prod my father to go to college to find an easier life than he'd had for himself. "Smart as a whip, my father, but he always felt ashamed that he never finished school," Dad had told me once. "I can only imagine what he may have done if he had the chances that he provided to me."

High school diploma or college degree be damned. Pops was far more from uneducated and his study proved it. There were more books in there than I thought I could ever read and he had gone through them two to three times each. Not only that, but he seemed to have nearly memorized them. Our once quiet dinners were now filled with stories from history.

Pork chops as he told me of Hannibal and his troops crossing the Alps. Fried chicken and green beans while we discussed the rise and fall of Rome. Shepherd's pie while he explained the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was hooked on every word and I loved it. I loved him. Pops was a good man in the unenviable situation of caring for his orphaned grandson.

He hadn't been disconnected. He was mourning just like I was. But the books and stories bound us together. It was early October, and Pops had just put a chicken pot pie on the dining room table. The man was a hell of a cook. "All the credit," he told me, went to my grandmother. She worked a full-time job in a day and time when many women didn't, and made it clear that Vernon Gamble would learn to cook.

They split dinner duty in half, and he had become a fair hand in the kitchen. Even after she passed, he always troubled himself to make a home-cooked meal. We settled in at the table, and he plopped a spoonful of pot pie on my plate as we made small talk about my school day. I told him the ins and outs, and he nodded along before telling me the odds and ends he had done around the farm.

mending fences, and the endless tinkering with the derelict tractor. "That son of a bitch will never run again, but I aim to keep trying," he said, chewing his dinner all the while. "So what's it gonna be tonight, kiddo? Are we talking war or foreign culture? Politics ain't out of the question if you want to argue." "I was hoping maybe you could tell me a family story, Pops." "Yeah? What kind of family story?"

Not sure the gambles are the most interestin' of folks. Farmers and coal miners mostly. I ate a few bites of food, stalling for time. My suggestion of a family story wasn't really as open-ended as I made it seem. It was almost Halloween, and at that time every year, I could remember my father telling me that something unsettling had happened to my grandfather when he was young. Whatever it was had scared him so badly that he never let his son go trick-or-treating.

His son, in turn, had never let me go either. I was too old by that point, but still, I had always wondered. "Dad," I said and choked on the word. It hurt to mention him, even nearly a year after he died. Still does. "Dad told me when I was little that something bad happened to you when you were young. Around Halloween, I think. He said it was why you didn't let him go trick-or-treating, and the same reason he never let me go.

Pops dropped his fork on his plate but didn't look up. He just stared at the pile of pot pie in front of him. His breathing became heavy, and I thought he was getting ready to yell at me, but he didn't. Instead, his shoulders began to shake, and tears ran down the deep wrinkles of his face. He pushed himself from the table without saying a word and left the dining room. I didn't know what to do, but I knew I had messed up.

At that moment, I could feel the thread of every bond we established over the last few months begin to snap one by one. In my mind, I couldn't help but think that we would return to the distant and sterile routine of my early days there if he let me stay at all. I'm sure foster care had been on the table at some point. I was clearing the table and washing the dishes when Pops walked into the kitchen. His footsteps stopped in the doorway, but I didn't turn around.

I just continued to wash the dishes and place them on the drying rack beside the sink, hoping he would see that I could accept our uneasy truce and that I wouldn't cause any more trouble. No more questions. Tommy, I'm gonna give you something to read. I gave it to your father a long time ago, but I took it back when... when I went to your house to get your things, when you came to stay with me. Wanted you to be a bit older when we had this talk.

but I'm not sure it does much good to put it off. It'll affect you just like it affected your father. So you read this and we'll talk. I heard something hard smack against the counter and my grandfather left the room. After drying my hands, I walked to the counter and saw an old journal, leather face worn smooth from the years. The edges of the paper were yellow and the smell of mothballs seemed to hang around it.

Thumbing the cover open, I saw a long cursive scrawl on the front page. "To my son, William. Please understand, I did not choose this for you, but it is still my fault." I sat at the kitchen table and began to read. November 1st, 1975. "William, I'm not too sure when you'll read this, but I suppose it's time to put this story down somewhere.

I hope to God that we've had the chance to sit down and talk this out. But if not, it's twice as important that I leave these instructions behind for you. If I don't, I'd be putting you in a damn worse spot than you're in already. Why am I writing this tonight? Well, it's because you're nine years old and pissed off that you missed another Halloween. Your buddies get to run around and trick-or-treat.

but me and your mother make you stay home while I go out to do some work that I've never explained to you. I'm not sure how to say what I need to say here, William. It's bad business, dark business, the kind of thing I don't think most people will be able to believe. But you're gonna have to find a way, so I'm gonna explain to you why we don't let you go out on Halloween. I'm also gonna tell you where I go every Halloween and why you don't see me until the next day.

"This whole mess starts off when I was 15, but I'll try and keep it short. Your grandfather, Cooper Dwayne Gamble, was a hard man. Harder than I've ever been, if you can believe it. Wasn't any time to rest or relax on the homestead. We were barely scraping by as it was, and I'd have to drop out of school later that year to help him tend the farm. We couldn't afford to hire help, so my education days were done.

but a few times a year, holidays mostly. My old man would let me cut loose of the farm for a bit to pal around with a few boys in town. Most of the time, one of my buddies would happen on a bottle of whiskey their own dads hadn't kept an eye on. Sometimes we'd get a bottle of that cheap corn liquor from the bootlegger. We'd sit by the creek, polish it off, and tell each other stories full of lies that made us feel like men. On October 31st of 1948,

Unattended whiskey wasn't available, and none of us had the pocket change for a bottle of Rotgut. So Gary Stinnett came up with a simpler plan. "Let's go trick-or-treating, boys," he told us, and we laughed. All of us was teenagers by that point, and kids didn't really go in for things like that past the age of 10 or so, 12 at the most. And they got some bad looks.

None of us had been in years. But with the rare free evening and nothing better to do, we figured, why the hell not? Only took us 10 minutes to get to the Stenett farm to grab a few potato sacks out of their shed, and we were headed to town. Not much of note happened as we went along. A few houses gave us some hard candies and others told us to get the hell on home. More than half the houses asked if we thought we were just a little too old to be out trick-or-treating.

We just had a laugh though. Wasn't no harm in it. We just thanked them and headed on down the road. The sun had gone down an hour earlier, and I knew my folks would be expecting me home soon. The night off was always followed by a day of schooling and an evening of hard work. I'd need sleep, and your grandfather was likely as not to give me a slap upside the head if I thought of telling him I was too tired to get up and walk to school the next day.

All of us lived out in the same direction, farms bordering the edge of town. So we took to trotting back that way. We rummaged through our potato sacks as we walked, ate candy, swapped a few pieces, and bullshitted back and forth. As we got closer to Briar Vine Lane, we quieted up though. There was a house that sat on a weedy patch of ground, the Bivens House, that everyone said had to be haunted.

As we walked by, Davy Glover pointed up toward the house and said, "I bet one of you all the candy in my sack that won't knock on the door and ask Old Lady Bivens for a treat." We all laughed, but this time, it had turned nervous. Old Lady Bivens was a recluse. In grade school, it was well known that she was a witch who snatched up bad little boys and girls who didn't mind their parents. As we got older, we knew that story was a load of bunk.

But even a teenage boy didn't feel quite so sure under the light of the moon. No one begged off, but no one talked either. The dare ate at me though. I thought I was 10 feet tall and could whip my weight in wildcats that age. Couldn't put a dare in front of me and have me pass, come good or ill. "I'll take that bet, Davey," I told him. "And I'll be taking that bag of candy afterward."

They called jeers and hooped at me as I started to cross the dirt road and through the gate to the Bivens' house. I may have looked brave to them from a distance, but I wasn't ten feet from the front door before I felt sure I was going to wet my pants. I'd have to pray it would be too dark for them to see the spot running down my leg if I did, but I knocked on that damn door. Five times, if memory serves me, stood and waited, my stomach balled up like snakes in winter.

May have knocked one more time, but no one answered. I turned back and looked at my pals, but they were just shadows in the darkness. I wanted to see their approval that I'd done what I could, but their faces melted in with the night. I turned to head back down the steps when I heard heavy bolts snapping from inside the dark house. If I'm honest, I believe there may have been a drip or two in my underpants when it happened. I thought to run away, but I couldn't move.

If the boys could see me from the road, maybe they'd mistake it for bravery. But I was scared stiff. "What business have you got here, child?" a woman asked. She was old and bent over like a question mark, and a fat, tallow candle in her hand lit up her face like a damn skeleton. "I've got no dealings to have with you." I stared at her struck dumb, and her lips curled up like a hateful dog. "Speak up!" she shrieked, and I jumped.

"Trick or treat?" I said to her, but it was damn near a whisper. "What?" she asked, her crony face covered in dancing candlelight. "I said trick or treat, ma'am," I responded. She sneered at me again, but her crooked mouth drew up into a smile. I hated it. Looked like the kind of smile an evil man got when he kicked a dog. "Trick," she said. "I'm sorry?" I asked, but she only repeated herself. "Trick, boy. Choose a trick."

"Oh, no," I said, taken off balance by her answer. "I mean, it's not really a question." "But you asked it," she said, stepping back. "You wait right here." "No, ma'am. I'm gonna go. My old man'll be waiting." "You'll wait here," she said before shutting the door again. And I did wait. God knows why. She came back to the door a few minutes later.

Something was clutched in her hand and she reached toward me. I jumped. She was just a little old lady, but she just had the stink of evil about her. But she didn't touch me. No, she pawed at the hem of my potato sack and dropped something inside. "That's yours to keep, boy," she said. "Don't be stinking for a treat." She slammed the door in my face and I ran back to the street like hell was behind me. Maybe it was, with the ways things have turned out.

Maybe hell has been on my heels for the last 27 years. When I got to the street, the other boys were gone. The chicken shits had run home while I waited for that old crone, and I'll never forgive them. Felt like they left me with the devil. I went straight home and crawled right into bed. The potato sack of candy dumped on the floor like trash, and I had the worst night of sleep I'd had in my life. Thought I could hear whispering in my room, but I couldn't make out the words.

scratching at the windows, creaking floorboards. I told myself they were all noises of the night, heard through a cloud of fear, but I'm not so sure it was. The next day, I went to school and the boys were waiting for me. A few slaps and punches were exchanged, but Davey Glover tossed me a knot of cheesecloth full of candy. His mom would have missed the potato sack being gone, but the cheesecloth was easy enough to miss. Mrs. Glover would want the bag I'd used back.

but it would have to wait another day. "What'd she give you?" they all asked, and I realized I'd never looked in the damn bag. After school, I ran home and found the potato sack still sitting in a pile at the foot of my bed. I dumped it onto my quilt and swept aside the wrapped candies to find a small wooden box with a pewter latch. I thumbed it open and two things fell free, a folded note and a small child's toy soldier made of cast bronze.

The original note is tucked in the back of this journal, but I'm gonna copy the message here. No telling if or when this will make its way to you, and I worry the words would be lost. I chose a trick, boy. But this may seem a treat. The soldier belonged to my son. Clarence loved tricks, you see. He hid his toy soldier all through the house. If his father couldn't find it before the day's end, he would give Clarence a penny.

We loved him so, but his tricks were his end. Our young Clarence liked to hide himself away as well. His father and I would walk the countryside to find him. But alas, one day he hid and we never found him. We sent for the constable who found him down the road, buried beneath a slide of earth in an open grave at Briarvine Cemetery.

Our family walked there sometimes, taking in the air and paying respects to departed relations. Clarence must have thought it clever to hide in an open grave, knowing we may well look for him there. I pray the collapsing earth brought him a quick end. But Clarence still loves to play. This soldier moves about my house still, all these years later, so I give it to you.

"Perhaps Clarence will play his game of hide and find with you and leave me to rest. Watch the soldier, boy. It well may vanish." I thought nothing of it at first, just put the bronze soldier on a wooden shelf above my desk. It sat there without movement for months. I'd glance at it now and again without much thought, and the old woman's note sat in the top drawer of my roll top equally forgotten.

A year later though, the morning of Halloween, I saw that the toy soldier was gone. What put my mind there? I don't know. Most days I paid it no mind, but that morning I felt I had to check. It was gone. I searched the floor behind my desk, certain it had fallen down during the night, but it was nowhere to be found. A coincidence was all it was, nothing else.

I went to the kitchen, ate my eggs, and drank a cup of coffee as my father listed off the chores of the day. I'd dropped out of school before Christmas the previous year and spent my days working the farm. It was toilsome, but I didn't want to watch him struggle. Your grandmother walked to the table, refilled our coffee cups, and dropped a white envelope in front of me, telling me one of my old schoolmates must have left a letter for me on the porch.

I looked at it and saw my name written in childish block letters.

The letter is long gone, but I still remember the words. "Fernan, I would very much like to play. I've found my toy soldier in your room and I've hidden it. If you find it again, you may keep it. I've buried it away in Briarvine Cemetery. You'll find the spot marked by a spade. Dig there until you find my toy and you may keep him another year. If you wish, you may pass him along to another so I may play with them."

One day, long from now, it will pass on to your child when you return to the dust. Then I will play with them. If you fail to find him before midnight of October 31st each year, I'm afraid I will take something from you. Someone, perhaps. I simply cannot wait to play.

I crumpled the note and threw it in the garbage. My mother asked me why I tossed the message away, and I explained to her with as little detail as possible that I figured it to be a dark joke from the old lady who lived in the Bivens house down the road.

usually quite the detective, she shocked me by asking no follow-up questions, but only made a simple statement. "Madeleine Bivens died six months ago, Vernon. Calling her old lady is quite rude. Your humor is ghastly." I did my best throughout the course of the day not to give the note and the soldier much thought, and mostly I didn't. A passing thought here and there, but the day was busy and kept me occupied.

By the time the sun went down, I had a belly full of supper and headed for bed. Your grandmother woke me early in the morning and tossed my old work coat at me, telling me to head to the truck to meet my father. My old man was sitting behind the wheel, smoking and waving me in. He drove faster than I thought that old rust box was able, and we bounced over the old country road. The sun was still pink and fresh in the sky when he finally told me where we were headed.

My uncle had driven by that morning to tell him that my little cousin, Clara, was missing from her bed when her mother went to wake her. They searched the farm top to tail and couldn't find her. My father was taking us to the border of their property to search for her. She was only seven, and they feared she'd wandered into the night. Ten minutes after we arrived, everything they feared came to life. My father and I found her floating face down in Elkhorn Creek.

I still remember her nightgown flowed out like angel wings beside her, and her rough-spun teddy bear was still in her hand. No one knew what happened or why the hell she'd wandered out of the house, but I had a pretty fair idea. When I got home and went to change my clothes, the toy soldier was back on my bookshelf. Little flecks of wet dirt clung to him. Under his flat metal base, a torn piece of paper stuck out.

I never told a soul about the toy soldier. Never told mom or dad where I went every Halloween night after chores were done. Never explained why I came back in the small hours of the morning, covered in wet earth and sweat. I knew Clara died because I ignored that damn note and I never would ignore it again. Every Halloween, I drive back to Briar Vine Cemetery and find that old shovel and dig until I find that soldier.

It seemed to be a little deeper each year, but it's bottomed out not long ago. Stops about six feet deep. It doesn't escape my simple mind that I more or less dig a grave there each year. But I find it and no one dies. Why don't I let you go trick-or-treating? That's all I was doing when that hateful old crone passed this dark task on to me. Would something like that ever happen again? Probably not. But who the hell would have thought it would happen to me?

I'm taking no chances, William. I love you, and our family already stumbled on a one in a million chance. We can't double the odds. No earth-walking demon is going to pass something like this to my boy. If someone dropped a trick in my bag, I fear it could happen to you. You'll have this burden to carry one day yourself, and one is enough. If for some reason I die before I can teach you the process, do these things.

Travel to Briarvine Cemetery each Halloween and search for the shovel. It won't appear until dusk. Dig until you find the toy soldier. Shouldn't be more than six feet deep. Only take hand tools. Mechanical implements always fail. I've tried. A shovel, a pick, and rock bar to move heavy stones seem to work just fine. Don't experiment. It'll cost you time, and the work takes nearly four hours under good conditions.

That's it. Simple, but you've got to stick to it. I'll never forget pulling my little cousin out of the Elkhorn, and the thought of it happening again is more than I can bear. My hands were shaking as I finished the entry, and while I thought there would be no more of my grandfather's looping cursive, I was surprised to turn the page and find one short, final entry. It was dated just days after my father died, November 3rd, 2000. "Tommy!"

If you're reading this, you'll have read the entry before. There's not much more to say and I'm not sure what I'll do. I can hope you're years away from reading this. But the words won't hurt any less whether you're 7 or 70. Your father died because I couldn't make it to Briarvine on Halloween. Had a damn heart attack on the way. And by the time I knew what was happening, I woke up in a hospital room at St. Gracie Memorial Hospital.

It was November 1st, and I knew I'd messed up as soon as I came to. Your dad knew the deal. I'd taught him the process at the cemetery, and he usually went with me every year. Don't know what got into me, but I told him I'd go alone this year. Stay home with Tommy, I said. Watch a movie with your boy. Do more than I did with you. Wasn't any reason for him to think things wouldn't be fine until some emergency room doctor called him in the middle of the night. By then...

It was too late. He came to see me the next morning, but you already know that. I was so happy to see him and he seemed fine. Hell, he even told me you were still asleep when he left and your mom was cooking breakfast. He hugged me and said he'd be back later that day. Not many special people in my life at this point, but all three of them were just fine. I told myself that all those years were wasted. The curse was in my mind.

"My cousin's death was a cruel but completely earthly tragedy. Your father jumped from the top of the parking garage seven minutes after he left my room. I'll do this for as long as I can, but before you're as old as I'd like you to be, I'm gonna have to teach you what I taught him. I can't afford another mistake. I've got so little, but so much to lose. I'm so, so sorry." I closed the journal and set it on the table, hot tears streaming down my face.

"We gotta talk, kiddo." I heard Pops say behind me, "Let me make some coffee." The night with the journal and the long, terrible conversation with my grandfather is so far behind me now that it feels like another lifetime. So what do I do? Tell you the painstaking story of an old man taking a grief-stricken kid to a graveyard as he teaches him to balance the delicate rules of a curse? I'll save you all of that.

Pops did teach me what I had to do, and I went with him year after year to do it. I watched as he became a little weaker each year, struggling to dig the hole, cut the roots, and move the stones. When I tried to help, he'd tell me to sit down. He had never tried letting two people dig the hole, and was afraid it would break some unspoken rule. "Don't experiment," he had written to my father in the journal, and Pops never did.

Whatever actions he had taken in the past, he repeated them. It became a ritual and he never faltered. Pops died in his sleep when I was 26, just five days after my son was born. It was bittersweet watching him hold the baby. His smile was sad. He loved the kid from the minute he put eyes on him. But the look he gave me told me so much. "You've got something to lose now, Tommy. That pretty wife of yours, and now this sweet baby.

You'll be digging a grave every year until you die. Then this boy is gonna be digging graves, all to find a toy soldier that'll haunt this family till the end of time. That look was right. Every Halloween, I get in my pickup truck and drive out to Briarvine. I search in the failing light for the shovel plunged into the ground. It gets tossed aside though. That's part of the ritual. Vernon Gamble never used that shovel. Neither do I.

The neighborhood traffic finally loosened and the rest of the drive to the cemetery passed without any excitement. Long stretches of country road began to curve into thin lanes before giving way to compressed gravel and dirt ruts. I bounced in the seat, taking each bump as slowly as I could. My canvas sling filled with Pop's tools rattled in the bed of the truck, the impact of wood handles against metal making me flinch.

Being out there always put me on edge, and my heart rate reached a pitch that would remain until I was safely back in the truck and driving home. Gaps began to open in the trees lining the old dirt track, giving way to open fields full of knee-high grass, dead and shifting in the wind. I kept the windows rolled up, knowing that I would spend the rest of the evening surrounded by the sound of the dead blades rustling together.

The sound they made reminded me of rubbing your hands together when the skin is dry and cracking, each jagged flake grinding together like sandpaper. The cemetery came into view as I crested a low hill, and I felt a single, harsh heartbeat pound in my throat. I choked it down and swatted at the breast pocket of my jacket. Feeling the pack of camels there, fumbling the flap open, I pulled the soft pack from inside and peeled away the cellophane before stopping myself.

"Not yet," I said, putting the pack back in my pocket. "It's not part of the ritual. Don't do things out of order." Pops would have been proud in a morbid sort of way. I pulled my old pickup to a stop under the swaying branches of an old oak, the branches stripped of their leaves in the fall wind. There was still another three hundred feet from the tree to the gate of the cemetery, but it was the spot I had always parked.

No special reason for the walk, I guess, other than the fact that it was the same spot my grandfather parked when he had taken me there for the first time. It would have been easier to roll just a bit further down the hill and park by the entrance, but so many things about this night had become ritualized that a low fear radiated in my bones if I considered changing up even the smallest detail.

Putting the truck in park, I exited the cab and headed toward the bed, stretching my back and dreading the strain the next few hours would bring. A rusty squeal pierced the country silence when I dropped the tailgate and pulled the canvas-wrapped tools toward me and slung them over my shoulder. Inside, my grandfather's shovel, pick, and rock bar knocked together against the lean muscle of my back.

The shovel and pick will always have just been sharpened and oiled, all part of the ritual, to make the work as easy and fast as such a task can be. I stood by the gate for a moment, scanning the tilted gravestones on the horizon and plucking an unfiltered camel cigarette from the soft pack and lighting it with a match. Smoking was a guilty pleasure that I'd managed to quit a decade earlier, but Halloween night was always the exception.

Before I found myself back in the truck, driving home with the unearthly treasure in the seat beside me, I would have smoked nearly an entire pack. It made me move slower, and my wife would have hated it. But smoking still felt part of the ritual. It soothed me, and I needed it. The voice would start soon, and I needed any small comfort I could find.

A little voice like that of a small child could whisper in the back of my brain, telling me that tonight was the night I wouldn't dig fast enough. Maybe the little metal soldier was eight feet down, and I really wouldn't have time to find it. It would be best to just go home and hug my wife and child one more time, because one of them would be gone tomorrow.

camel hanging from the corner of my mouth. I stepped through the gate, my feet crunching on matted gravel and chips of paint that had flaked away from the fence. Dry, overgrown grass brushed the leg of my pants. The wood handles of my grandfather's tools clattered in the canvas. The wind was cool and the sky was clear, allowing the fading pink of the sun to paint the skyline. It would have been beautiful under any other circumstance.

But the color of the sky reminded me of blood thinning in water. "You gotta keep your eyes peeled for the shovel, Tommy," my grandfather said the first time he had taken me there. "It'll be in a different spot every time. And the cemetery's big. Sometimes you'll find her right away. But others, you'll be looking for a half hour or better. Those days are the bad days. Half an hour of lost time is no good. And lots of work ahead.

It took a little more effort than usual, pushing my feet forward and starting down the lane between the crooked headstones. I could see some of the older graves near the entrance were dipping in, a sure sign the casket below had caved in. Some of them had been there more than a hundred years, but I still felt awful knowing their final resting place was now filled with wet dirt and worms. "That will be you one day, Tommy. Your wife and child too."

Just an old chipped headstone and a sagging plot. At least you'll be buried near your father. He's still here, you know. Maybe there will be room for your wife and son. Go home and hold them. It could be your last chance. And do you want to waste that? No. Even Vernon would agree. None of this has been worth it. Just go home.

The voice was in my head, but I knew it wasn't mine. Those weren't my thoughts. Something alien and probing was there, tempting me and showing me mental images of my home in carnage. They weren't intrusive thoughts. They were being planted there. Whatever force was in that cemetery was playing a game with me. And it was a game I had to play. Pops was right. I had something to lose. It took nearly a half hour to find the shovel.

one of those bad nights my grandfather had mentioned. The situation grew worse when I realized where it was. The head of the shovel was buried half in the dirt, just to the side of a headstone, still in fairly good condition without the staggering lean of the others. William Harrison Gamble, Beloved Husband and Father, 1963-2000.

It wasn't the first time I cried as I dug into the hard earth below Briarvine Cemetery, but I don't imagine I ever cried harder. With every scoop of dirt and shifted stone, I was an inch closer to my father's casket, and I felt like I would go mad. The child's voice in the back of my mind had never been more active, and its words cut deeper than any that had come before. "Your father is only a few inches further, Tommy. Doesn't it feel like coming home?"

Maybe it's not even down here this time. Perhaps I just put the shovel here for fun so I could make you touch his coffin. If you're lucky, the walls will fall in and bury you here. You'll be close to your father. Together again. It's not so bad. And the darkness comes quick once you're blanketed with the earth. I would know after all.

What if his casket is broken, William? You could slide your hand right through the hole and touch him. Wouldn't that be nice? Maybe he's in there now, eyes open and waiting to say hello. The voice went silent as the tip of my shovel came in contact with something hard. I knelt down and brushed the dirt aside, revealing the dull shine of finished wood glowing in the glare of my headlamp.

It was the lid to my father's casket. The wood deeply gouged, and I felt as though I would vomit. I hadn't broken through. But how long until that gouge festered and rotted away, opening my father's body to the creatures who crawled through the dirt? Forcing the thought from my head, I swept my hands over the surface and began to clear dirt and clay from the rim of the casket. I began to panic as a terrifying realization settled in. Is it inside?

I fell back on my rear and cradled my head in my hands for a moment, coming to peace with the terrible option ahead of me. My body ached and a spasm shot up my back. I settled my right hand behind me to try and adjust my spine when something hard and smooth pressed into my palm. I grabbed it and brought it into the light of my headlamp. A bronze soldier caked in clay lay on its side in my palm and I cried. It only took a few minutes to toss my tools from the hole and crawl back out.

I laid on my back, toy soldier grasped in one hand, and my other hanging into the open grave as I caught my breath. The wind picked up and the trees of the distant oak clacked together. Or was there something knocking below me? I stood and used my shovel to push the dirt back into the grave. "You bastard child! I thought you would open it! Coward! Maybe next year?" It had taken me hours to dig the hole, but filling it in was much faster, and that was a small mercy.

I drove home, finishing my pack of cigarettes and listening to the silence. No voices, just silence. Halloween is almost here again and I've made a decision. Not this year, but in 2025, I'm going to take my son trick-or-treating. Don't panic, I've had a year to think it through. There was a loophole my grandfather never really talked about. I ignored it too for the most part.

I don't think he missed it, but he didn't like what it implied. You see, the note my great-grandmother had given him at breakfast all those years ago, the one in the childish handwriting, it seemed to have an escape clause. If you wish, you may pass him along to another so I may play with them. You see, the way I read that is the little toy soldier can be given away. I think Pops knew that all along and I joined him in willfully ignoring it.

but he couldn't cope with the idea of passing that burden onto some unsuspecting family. He shouldered that weight for most of his life, and I've carried it for a considerable portion of mine. It cost him a son and me a father. The thing is, I'm tired. My son is only 10 years old, and I'm in pretty robust health, but I won't always be. Pops wasn't counting on a heart attack, but it rains on the just and the unjust.

you can't account for all of the terrible possibilities a person can encounter. If I met an early and unexpected death, it would only take two years before my wife and son met an awful fate. My town passed a new ordinance last year. When Halloween falls on a weekday, trick-or-treating is moved to the Saturday before. That's five days before the little soldier will vanish from its safe hiding spot in my desk drawer. So this year, we won't go trick-or-treating.

We'll pop in a copy of Nightmare Before Christmas for our son. That, I absolutely maintain, is a Halloween movie rather than a Christmas movie. My wife will sit on the couch and watch it with him, while I sit on the porch with a plastic orange bowl and pass out candy to the neighborhood kids.

But I'm going to pick one. A teenager, I've decided. A kid with a bad attitude. The Penske boy down the block who has been caught breaking into cars and kicks dogs when he walks down the street. I know I'm justifying it in my mind, but I can't give it to some sweet little six-year-old girl dressed like Jesse from Toy Story. That Penske kid will come by my house and say the words, Trick or treat!

I'll smile and dump a handful of candy in his bag, but the little bronze soldier will fall in with it. I won't say it out loud, but I'll hear a little voice in my head. It will be my voice, though. I choose trick. Hey guys, thanks for listening. I want to give you all a quick heads up regarding some upcoming political ads you may start hearing leading up to this year's presidential election.

These ads do not represent my own political viewpoint. So if you hear a political ad play on the podcast and it's not in my own voice, then it has absolutely nothing to do with me personally as a podcaster. Thank you again for being a dedicated listener of mine, and I can't wait to have another amazing year with you guys. I'll see you in the next episode.