“Well I’ll be hogtied, it’s Danny Long Legs!” he says as a twinkle glimmers in his eyes and a soft smile draws itself across his wrinkled lips as he looks over the photograph that Clare passed him.

“D-D-Danny Long Legs?”

“Yup! We used to sing songs about him when we were kids, not that D-Danny Long Legs w-was his real name, it’s just what we called him back in the day on account of his long legs.” Harry says as he hands the photo back to Marilyn with a shaking hand. “To be true I don’t think I ever knew his real name, but he can’t be your guy because Danny’d be dead by now, so I’m sorry you made the trip all the way up here.”

Clare looks down at the photo and bites her bottom lip, then looks up at Harry once again. “What if I told you this photo was taken last week.”

Harry looks at her a chuckles softly, “I’d still say it’s not Danny, he looked like that when I was a kid, so maybe he’s a grand child, or some close cousin, but there’s no way it’d be Danny for that to be him, he’d need to be at least a hundred and fifty years old, and lady time I heard that’s impossible, not looking like that anyway.”

“B-But what if it was him, what he was even older than one-hundred and fifty years, or even two-hundred! What then?”

“Then I’d be telling you that you’re the one that needs to be in one of these places instead of me.” he scoffs as he thrusts a thumb over his shoulder with a playful wink.

“T-Tell me about the song you used to s-sing as a k-kid?” she asks nervously.

“It was just a song, the kind kids sing to make fun of other kids.” he grunts as he forces himself to his feet uneasily. ”It won’t solve any mysteries for you Clare, it’ll just open new ones, so stop looking for answers in the past, because they ain’t there. Now if you don’t mind, I-I-I, I have to have my afternoon nap, you’ll understand you’re my age,” he says as he turns and shuffles away.

“Danny, Danny, crawling on the wall. Danny, Danny, taller than tall. Danny, Danny, under your bed. Danny, Danny, he’ll make you dead!” Clare coarsely sings off-key. Harry stops in his tracks and slowly turns back to her, his eyes bright and alive once more as they dance with energy.

“I knew he’d come back one day! I-I-I, I told Duncan, I told him that he was just sleeping, that he wasn’t really dead.” Harry says excitedly as he scrambles back and snatches the photo from her hands. “Was this taken down at the old mill, or at the toy factory?”

She stares at him for a few moments, almost dumb founded by the questions as her bottom lip trembles and her gaze moves past him.

He slaps her across the arm with the photo, “Come on girl, don’t come all this way and get my hopes up just to clam up in the end game. Where is the devil?”

“I-I-I, I never sh-should’ve c-come, I-I-I, I led him to you,” she says as she looks at Harry, terror written across her face. “T-T-The so-song, I-it wasn’t the k-kids who sang it, w-was it?” she asks nervously, but she needed wait for Harry to answer as the light flicker and a raspy voice starts singing. “Danny, Danny, crawling on the wall. Danny, Danny, taller than tall. Danny, Danny, under your bed. Danny, Danny, he’ll make you dead!”

***

Follow the below link to purchase A Twisted Halloween 2021 to read all 31 five minute short stories.

Before you lies a piece of a puzzle far grander than you could ever know or imagine. For scrawled in blood upon the pages hidden within the above tome is stories twisted thirty-one in all, soaked in the embers of my insanity. Five minutes to glimpse inside the eyes of someone new, five minutes to answer, five minutes to sin, five minutes to do almost anything. A god, a demon, a harlot, a whore. A fascist, a killer, a sinner, a door. Death and division, humanity askew. A belfry of bats, a sea of black cats, so many moments out there to see, so many things you could see with me. So take a seat beside me and call it voodoo, because now you ride with me too…

 

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