The Hanged Man Tale

Dear Reader,

This will surely be a tale to haunt you, so please keep reading. You see, this little story was written especially for you. It was crafted especially for your eyes, intended for your delight. I initially wrote it for myself. It was too good not to share. Therefore, I will tell you the story—the story of the hanged man.

I have never been much of a superstitious man, no. Folklore held little sway over me. Yet, at the village's yearly Valken Folk Carnival, destiny, it seemed, intervened. I chanced upon a fortune teller’s tent. She was standing outside in the twilight, smoking a pipe. I was completely mesmerized by her vibrant, almost unnatural chartreuse lips. Her offer of a reading hung in the air, a siren's call I desperately wanted to refuse, yet the strange allure of those green-tinged lips rendered me helpless. I could not even tell you the color of her robe.

I sat opposite a weathered oak table within the confines of the tent, the woman with the vibrant lips meticulously shuffling her cards. Her dark eyes glinted in the flickering candlelight as a slow smile played on her face. I could only stare. With deliberate movements, she spread the cards across the table in a peculiar arrangement. Then at last she spoke. She painted a portrait of my arduous upbringing (a universal truth, perhaps), my persistent clinging to the past (a surprisingly accurate observation), my frustrating creative struggles (another unsettlingly precise hit), and finally, my disheartening romantic failures (a cruel twist of the knife, I thought).

I tossed a coin onto the table and curtly thanked her for the ruthless dissection of my existence. As I rose, her hand, with nails the same shocking shade as her lips, grasped my arm. She said she hadn't yet revealed my destiny. I sank back into my chair, feeling anxious.

With deliberate slowness, she deposited the card upon the table's surface. The image was familiar – a figure inverted, dangling from a wooden stake, The Hanged Man. My gaze fixed upon her, awaiting interpretation. She, who had so avidly established my history and current circumstances, now contemplated the card, a peculiar smile playing on her lips.

“Surrender.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Surrender, sacrifice. That is your future. Your stubborn resistance to transformation has held you back. To attain genuine greatness, you must give something up.”

The seer’s words gnawed at my conscience for weeks. My past, a haunting specter, I cannot let go. I have no romantic companion and am struggling in my profession. Absurd, I told myself. Yet, each evening I toiled at my typewriter for hours. Each night concluded with a brimming wastebasket. What was I to do?

Those cards. Those cards told that woman everything about me. Perhaps they would speak to me as well. Mother, a devotee of the…crafts, she would have a deck hidden among her things. After an hour of sifting through my cobwebbed attic, I found them- fragile remnants of a forgotten past, yet potent enough for my purpose. With flickering candlelight illuminating the scene, I carefully shuffled the aged, delicate cards. I closed my eyes, the questions pressing upon me with agonizing intensity: What must I sacrifice to pay for my transformation? What profound relinquishment is demanded? What must I forsake to achieve my destiny?

Z

I shuffled the cards again until I reached one card in particular. It felt warmer in my hand than the rest. It resonated with that uncanny familiar feeling of…destiny. I placed it on the floor and opened my eyes.

The Devil.

My insides tightened. A chilling certainty gripped me; I knew what must be done. I understood—the method was ingrained, a grim inheritance from my father, God rest his filthy soul. Returning to the cobwebbed attic, I recovered the necessary items. My father's dark nature was evident in the number of neatly arranged containers. He had done this more than once.

Then I embarked on the journey several miles down Tarrow Road to the fateful crossroads. This was the site of my father's transgression, the precise point where I entrusted the box to the earth's care, burying it deep within the dusty intersection. When the task was accomplished, I lifted my gaze to the moon. A silent witness to my pleas.

“Bring my words to life. Take my soul and make my writing real. Make it significant. Let its impact echo through time.” I prayed with all my heart. All my soul…

Eventually, with no incident occurring, I returned home. I told you I was not a superstitious man. My earlier actions were simply a lapse in judgment, a momentary surrender to impulsive behavior—a familial inheritance, mirroring my parents' own tendencies. Solitude, I finally decided, was preferred. My professional life offered rewarding ascents. I would wait for the next pinnacle in my writing. Besides, a creative surge had possessed me. Perhaps it was pulling the devil during the card session, or burying a cryptic container at the crossroads, attempting a deal under the full moon, or the increasing recollection of my departed parents after all the years. The surge of inspiration could not be ignored. And this, dear reader, is where this story becomes interesting.

You see, I could not stop thinking about the hanged man. Eternally inverted, a symbol of sacrifice…surrender. Tragic. I envisioned my own hanged man. A horrific, nightmarish creature that haunts the ones who dare utter his name. This monstrous creation would relentlessly pursue its victim, a torment so unbearable, so soul-crushing, that it would force a final, desperate act: to surrender…to sacrifice…their life.

My fingers danced over the typewriter, well into the night. The creation was breathtaking, yet utterly terrifying. The world will read this. They will believe in monsters. They will believe in me and acknowledge my presence. With this grotesquerie, I will become formidable. If only you, dear reader, could absorb the mastery of that original piece. But no, you will hear this imitation. For this narrative is far more frightening, far more potent in its dread.

I woke up the next morning at my desk. The exhilaration of the previous night’s triumph was already a distant memory. I gathered my work and reviewed it. Yes, a compelling piece. It will do. My monster was created. I had only to weave him into a story. Unbeknownst to me at this point, he was woven into my story.

Initially, I wasn’t aware of anything odd, anything amiss. I was alone. As the woman said, my incapacity for connection extended even to the most diminutive creature. No feathered friend, no furry companion, existed to betray the subtle shift in reality. No feline to bristle its fur, no canine to emit a warning growl. Only the prickling hairs on the back of my neck. I dismissed it as chills.

Then came the nightmares. Recurring visions of ropes hanging from trees, ceilings, and every threshold. Everywhere I turned, these ominous nooses materialized. I would awaken, drenched in cold sweat, my body trembling. I cursed myself for letting a night of susceptibility torment me. I cursed Mother and Father.

Then it escalated. Emerging from the tub, or rising from the basin after cleansing my face, I'd be confronted by an apparition in the mirror —there and then gone. One morning, I inflicted a nasty gash on my cheek with the razor, starting so badly. Then I could only stand there, with blood flowing down my face, transfixed on the space where the shadow had been.

Objects started going missing in my house. My ink, my matches, my shoes- all disappeared. I would often find the attic door open. Paralyzed by fear, my courage waning by the day, I merely closed it back up. Again, and again. Day after day.

Insomnia consumed me; food was unappetizing. I was fading, a ghost in my own home. Each sound sent jolts of terror through me. Especially when the scratches started… Horrible, echoing screeches that ran down the walls, then ceased abruptly. I could not tell if they were inside the house or outside. Only an animal. That’s what I would desperately convince myself as I sat, rigid with fear, another meal untouched, another night without a wink of sleep. I sat up through the night in my chair, every lamp lit and every candle burning.

Terror was weighing on me. Yet I could not leave. The reason eludes even me; an inexplicable force bound me to that house. Perhaps it was because I was alone. I had nowhere to go. And I was not a superstitious man. This was not real. I decided to distract myself with the familiar solace of writing. Drown out the noises and the menacing shadows. I would write.

But words failed me. It wasn’t the lack of ideas or the absence of vocabulary. They simply wouldn’t show on paper. First, I tried my typewriter. I typed, but the keys were unresponsive. Pen and pencil yielded the same frustrating silence; the pages remained infuriatingly blank. In a fit of frustration, I scrawled on the table, etched on the wall. Nothing. Nothing!

Overcome with despair, I threw myself into my chair and cried until sleep took me.

I had awoken, but kept my eyes closed. Some sensation had roused me, but the source was unknown. I strained my ears; the only sound in the house was the rhythmic tick of the grandfather’s clock. Suddenly, goosebumps prickled across my skin. My breath hitched, anxiety seizing me in its tight grip. I was not alone. A presence, malevolent and near, pressed against me. Someone-or something-loomed directly before my face, radiating a disconcerting, unnatural heat. I twitched, but fear paralyzed my eyelids.

Then I felt the air move like breath, and something grazed my cheek. My eyes snapped open, a strangled gasp replacing the scream trapped in my throat. I was looking at…him. There he was. His being filled my vision. He was suspended upside down from the ceiling, directly above my chair. I gaped like a fish, a desperate urge to flee warring with the paralysis of terror. I was frozen, staring into those glowing gold and green eyes, precisely as I’d envisioned him in my narrative. His complexion was a vile mix of bilious green and coal black, the hue of advanced decay. Sparse, matted black hair cascaded around his upside-down head. He had unnaturally elongated fingers, accentuated with sharp ebony claws. His mouth, a grotesque parody of a smile, was a disturbing fusion of black and chartreuse lips, marred by patches of white like festering mold. As I stared, it slowly bloomed into a grin, revealing luminous, rotten teeth. Upside down, it was almost a grimace. A rotten, luminous smile-grimace.

I finally got my wits about me and employed my legs to propel the chair backwards. The chair fell back, and the back of my head bounced off the hardwood floor. Despite my daze, my body continued to scramble away. I crawled across the floor, a desperate, instinctual feeling to move toward the staircase—a beacon of potential escape in my addled mind. I reached up, grasped the banister, and chanced a glance backward. He had vanished.

A choked sob tore from my throat as I stumbled up the stairs, my gaze darting widely across the room. Especially towards the ceiling. More scratches sounded. I tripped and fell to my knees on the landing and buried my face in my trembling hands.

“What do you want?” I screamed. “What do you want from me?!”

I heard a creak to my right and slowly, agonizingly, I looked over. The attic door was open… a sinister rope suspended from the gaping square. My body convulsed in a spasm of primal fear. No. No, no, no!

“I can’t,” I cried softly in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t.”

This…this perversion could not be what the woman meant by sacrifice. What conceivable gain could arise from surrendering my life? Is my monster telling me the world would benefit from my absence?

No.

Suddenly, I could hear him-no feel him, in my head. It felt as though his very essence had infiltrated my thoughts, a chilling violation. I gripped the sides of my head, yet I still listened to the whole message. All that he wanted me to know. There was another path, see, another sacrifice to achieve greater value for myself. I must sacrifice something greater than my life…I must surrender to him and relinquish my most cherished possession…my writing. I am allowed one final masterpiece, then I will write no more. Only then will I achieve success, achieve peace, achieve…liberation from him.

I got to work immediately. The narrative flowed with such ease. I wrote about the hanged man as if…well, as if I had met him. I wrote about the fear he invoked in me and will soon invoke in others. Yes, it was easy. I spent most of the days and nights writing after that. It came along quite nicely. A profound lightness possessed me, without the burden of my soul. My writing was my soul. And I was surrendering it to him. It was all part of his design. The story was complete; all that remained was one final offering.

That’s where you come in, dear reader. Perhaps I am an evil man. Perhaps I am a monster. Yet, triumph demanded a singular path. A path that evaded my own demise. I now remember the true meaning of the Devil card. Release. I now release my superstition. I release my history and all its burdens. I release my monster unto you.

Such is the nature of this grim undertaking. I do apologize. To rid myself of the hanged man, I had to put him on paper and unleash him upon you, my readers. For my words now come to life. It is real. It is significant. Perhaps you have already felt the prickling of the hair on the back of your neck. Or perhaps heard the insidious scratches on your walls. Be cautious when looking in the mirror, dear reader. Sleep with the covers over your head. Consider nailing your attic door closed. Because he is near. The hanged man is coming.