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| Free Story Friday: Bloody Bones |
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The thunder came in low rolls that rattled the farmhouse windows, making the glass shake in their ancient frames. Maggie pulled her quilt tighter around her shoulders and stared at the water-stained ceiling, watching shadows dance in the flicker of her nightlight. The storm had started at sundown, just as Grandma Dot was locking the pantry door with that old brass key she kept on a ribbon around her neck.
"Storm's bringing him close tonight," Grandma had muttered, her arthritic fingers fumbling with the lock. "Can feel it in my bones. You remember what I told you, girl?"
Maggie had nodded, reciting the rules she'd heard every night since arriving at the farmhouse two weeks ago: "Don't go near the pantry after dark. Don't whisper his name. And whatever I hear, don't answer it back."
Now, lying in the dark with rain hammering the tin roof, those rules felt heavier than before. The house groaned and settled around her, old wood expanding in the humidity. From somewhere below came a wet shuffle—like bare feet dragging across linoleum.
Maggie held her breath and listened. The sound came again, closer this time, accompanied by a faint scraping, as if something was being dragged along the floor.
Then, impossibly clear above the storm, a voice drifted up through the floorboards.
"Maggie... come see..."
Her heart hammered against her ribs. Nobody knew she was here except Grandma. Nobody should be calling her name in the middle of the night.
"Come help me reach... just need your little hands..."
Without thinking, Maggie whispered back into the darkness, "Who's there?"
The scraping stopped. The house fell silent except for the rain. Then, from directly beneath her room, something laughed—a wet, bubbling sound like water gurgling through a drain.
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The next afternoon, Maggie helped Grandma Dot hang laundry on the line behind the farmhouse. The storm had passed, leaving the October air crisp and clean, though the pond at the edge of the property remained dark and still. It had dried up years ago, Grandma said, leaving only a shallow depression filled with stagnant water and rotting leaves.
"Kids used to swim there once," Grandma explained, pinning a sheet to the line with weathered hands. "Till the boy drowned. Found him three days later, skin all pruned up, bones showing through in places. Folks said it was Bloody Bones that got him—pulled him under and picked him clean."
Maggie shivered despite the warm sun. "That's just a story, right? Something to scare kids?"
Grandma's eyes, milky with cataracts, fixed on her with surprising intensity. "Stories got truth in them. Bloody Bones lives in the water, under bridges, in root cellars and pantries—anywhere dark and damp where bones can be hidden. He don't come for the wicked, child. He comes for the nosy. The ones who peek where they ain't supposed to."
Something in Grandma's voice made Maggie pause. The old woman's hands had stilled on the clothesline, and she was staring at the farmhouse with an expression Maggie couldn't quite read—fear mixed with something else. Guilt, maybe. Or grief so old it had worn smooth like river stones.
"Grandma," Maggie said carefully, "has anyone ever... you know, actually seen him?"
Grandma was quiet for so long that Maggie thought she hadn't heard the question. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, she said, "My sister Sylvie did. Back when we were girls, not much older than you. She was always curious, always poking into places she shouldn't. One night during a storm just like last night, she went down to the pantry after Mama locked it. I heard her scream, heard the door slam, and when I ran down..."
Grandma's voice cracked. "There were wet footprints leading from the pantry, and Sylvie was gone. Just gone. The police came, searched everywhere, said she must've run away. But I knew better. I heard her voice the next morning, coming from behind that locked door, calling my name. Begging me to help her sort the bones."
Maggie felt ice water run through her veins. "What did you do?"
"Nothing," Grandma whispered, tears running down her weathered cheeks. "I was too scared. I told Mama what I heard, but she said it was just grief making me imagine things. Said Sylvie had run off to find our daddy who'd left us the year before. Eventually, I tried to believe it too. Tried to convince myself for sixty years that my sister had just run away, that what I heard wasn't real."
She turned to face Maggie, gripping her shoulders with surprising strength. "But I know different now. I've always known. That's why I lock that door every night. That's why you can never, ever go near it after dark. Because Bloody Bones is still in there, and so is Sylvie. And he's always looking for more helpers."
Blue gingham, Sunday-best—Sylvie’s favorite.
That night, Grandma locked the pantry door at sunset, same as always. But as Maggie watched from the kitchen doorway, she noticed something she hadn't seen before: wet footprints leading from the pantry across the linoleum, ending abruptly in the middle of the floor.
"Grandma? Did you spill something?"
The old woman turned, following Maggie's gaze to the prints. Her face went pale as old paper.
"Get to bed," she said sharply. "And don't you dare come down here tonight, no matter what you hear. I won't lose another child to that thing."
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Maggie couldn't sleep. She lay in the dark, listening to Grandma's television drone through the floor, some late-night preacher shouting about salvation. Around eleven, the sound cut off abruptly, replaced by Grandma's rumbling snores from the living room recliner.
The house settled into silence. Maggie was almost asleep when she heard it again—that wet, shuffling sound from the kitchen below. Footsteps that squelched and scraped, moving back and forth in front of the pantry door.
Then the humming started. A slow, tuneless melody that sounded almost familiar, like a lullaby she'd heard as a child. The kind of song a mother might sing while rocking a baby, except this voice was wrong—too wet, too deep, with a gurgling undertone that made her skin crawl.
Maggie sat up in bed, heart pounding. She thought about waking Grandma, but the old woman was deaf as a post without her hearing aids. Besides, what would she say? That she heard humming? That something was walking in the kitchen?
Her cousin Tyler's words from earlier that day echoed in her memory: "You're chicken, Maggie. Scared of an old story. I bet there's nothing in that pantry but pickles and preserves."
He'd called her a baby when she refused to check. Said she was afraid of her own shadow.
Maggie slipped out of bed and crept to her door. The hallway was dark except for the faint glow of Grandma's nightlight in the living room. She could hear the old woman snoring, oblivious.
The kitchen was just down the stairs. Just a quick look, and she could prove to Tyler—and herself—that there was nothing to fear.
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The flashlight in her hand trembled, casting wild shadows across the kitchen walls. The linoleum felt cold and slightly damp under her bare feet. As Maggie approached the pantry, she noticed the smell—thick and cloying, like pond water mixed with something rotting.
The brass lock gleamed in her flashlight beam, still fastened. But beneath it, she could see water seeping from under the door, pooling on the floor in dark puddles that reflected no light.
"Hello?" Maggie whispered, her voice barely audible above her own heartbeat. "Is someone in there?"
The humming stopped. For a long moment, silence pressed against her ears like water pressure. Then, slowly, deliberately, the doorknob began to turn.
The brass latch didn’t move. The knob turned anyway.
Maggie's breath caught in her throat. The lock was still fastened—there was no way the door could open. But the knob kept turning, rusted hinges groaning, until the door swung inward a crack.
A hand slid through the opening. Long and impossibly thin, with skin the color and texture of wet clay. The fingers were too long, the joints bending in too many places, and the nails were yellow and cracked like old bone.
"Come help me reach," a voice bubbled from the darkness beyond the door. "Just need your little hands... can't quite get the last ones myself..."
The door opened wider. Maggie's flashlight beam penetrated the pantry, and what she saw made her knees buckle.
The pantry stretched back impossibly far, deeper than the house itself, the wooden shelves fading into blackness. But instead of preserves and canned goods, the shelves held jars filled with something dark and red that seemed to shift and move in the light. And hung from hooks along the walls were bones—finger bones, rib bones, delicate vertebrae strung together like grotesque wind chimes.
Between the shelves, something moved. Something tall and crooked, its body twisted and wrong, made of mud and pond water and pieces of things that should have stayed buried. Where its head should be was a mass of tangled hair and rotting vegetation, and when it smiled, Maggie saw teeth—too many teeth, filed to points, with bits of cloth and flesh stuck between them.
"There you are," Bloody Bones whispered, his voice like water running through a grave. "Been waiting so long for a helper. The bones are lonely, you see. They need company. They need to be sorted, counted, put in their proper places..."
Maggie tried to scream, but her voice wouldn't come. She stumbled backward, and the flashlight slipped from her hand, rolling across the floor. Its beam spun wildly, illuminating the thing's legs—twisted roots and waterlogged wood bound together with hair and wire.
The creature stepped through the doorway, leaving wet footprints of mud and something darker. It reached for her with those terrible hands, and Maggie could see that its fingers were actually bones—human bones, lashed together with sinew and clay.
"Don't run," it gurgled. "Running only makes the sorting take longer. And I have so many bones to sort. So many jars to fill. Your grandma won't let me out, you see. Keeps me locked up tight. But you opened the door. You invited me out. That's the rule, child. Curiosity opens doors that locks can't keep closed."
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Then, from deeper in the pantry, another voice called out—a child's voice, sweet and clear despite the wet, bubbling quality underneath.
"Dorothy? Is that you, Dorothy? I've been waiting so long. Come help me with the sorting. It's not so bad once you learn where everything goes."
A figure emerged from the shadows behind Bloody Bones. A girl, maybe thirteen years old, with dark hair in old-fashioned braids and a dress that might have been fashionable in the 1960s. It had once been blue gingham but was now stained with mud and pond water and rust-colored streaks that could only be blood.
Maggie's grandmother was named Dorothy, she remembered suddenly. Everyone called her Dot.
"Sylvie?" Maggie whispered, understanding flooding through her with horrible clarity.
The girl—the thing that had been Sylvie for sixty years—tilted her head with a wet, cracking sound. Her pale eyes brightened.
“Dorothy?” she whispered, voice trembling with something that might’ve once been joy. “You came back for me?”
Maggie froze.
“No… I’m—”
But Sylvie’s expression shifted, realization dawning too late. “Oh,” she murmured, her smile cracking wider. “You’re not Dorothy, are you? You’ve got her eyes, though. Her little hands. You must be her grandbaby.”"
She stepped closer, and Maggie could see that her feet never quite touched the ground. "She was supposed to help me, you know. I called and called for her that first night, but she never opened the door. So I've been sorting alone all this time. Just me and Bloody Bones and all the bones that need counting."
She gestured behind her, and Maggie saw other shapes moving in the darkness. Children, dozens of them, from different eras—their clothing spanning decades. All with the same wet, pale skin and eyes that reflected light like pools of standing water.
"But you opened the door," Sylvie continued, her smile revealing teeth that were slightly too pointed. "You invited us out. So now you get to stay. Isn't that wonderful? We'll be family. Just like Dorothy and I used to be, before she got too scared."
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Grandma Dot woke to the sound of the pantry door slamming. The house shook with the force of it, rattling dishes in the cupboards and sending her knickknacks tumbling from the shelves. She lurched up from her recliner, fumbling for her hearing aids, and stumbled into the kitchen.
The room was empty, but the floor was covered in wet footprints leading from the pantry to the middle of the kitchen and then... nowhere. They simply stopped, as if whoever made them had evaporated into the air. The flashlight lay on its side, beam still flickering weakly.
"Maggie?" Grandma called, her voice cracking with fear. "Maggie, girl, where are you?"
No answer came from upstairs. She checked the bedroom—empty, bed still warm. She checked the bathroom, the closets, even looked outside in case the girl had run. But Maggie was gone.
Grandma returned to the kitchen, her heart heavy with a grief she'd carried for sixty years. All this time, she'd tried to convince herself that Sylvie had run away, that the voice she'd heard coming from the pantry had been her imagination, trauma playing tricks on a frightened child's mind. She'd let the police convince her, let her mother convince her, eventually convinced herself.
But now she knew. Now she remembered with terrible clarity: the wet footprints, the humming, the way Sylvie's bed had been empty that morning. And most of all, she remembered the voice she'd heard coming from the pantry for weeks afterward—her sister's voice, calling her name, begging her to open the door and help with the sorting.
The pantry door stood open a crack, and from within came a faint sound—two voices now, humming that old lullaby their mother used to sing. One voice was young, frightened. The other was older, patient, practiced.
She approached slowly, her old bones aching with each step. When she peered through the crack, she saw shelves stretching back impossibly far, and jars glowing faintly red in the darkness. And crouched together in the corner were two figures—one small and recent, still struggling. The other calm, wearing a blue gingham dress that Grandma suddenly remembered with perfect clarity.
"Dorothy?" the older one said, looking up with eyes that had been waiting sixty years. "Don't worry about your grandbaby. He just wanted a helper. Someone to sort the bones. Someone to fill the jars. And I've been teaching her everything I learned. She's getting so good at it."
The younger figure—Maggie—turned slowly, and when she spoke, her voice already carried that terrible wet echo. "Grandma? It's not so bad. Great-Aunt Sylvie says you get used to it. And there are so many bones to sort. So many jars to fill. We'll never be lonely."
The door slammed shut. Grandma stumbled backward, her arthritic fingers clutching the key around her neck. She locked the door with shaking hands and backed away, finally understanding the full weight of what she'd done—and failed to do—all those years ago.
She'd been too afraid to open the door for Sylvie. And now history had repeated itself, because Grandma had been too afraid to tell the truth.
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Fifteen Years Later
The Hendersons moved into the old farmhouse in late September, charmed by the wraparound porch and the rustic appeal of the property. Their daughter Emma was eleven, bright and curious, always asking questions about everything.
On their first night, while unpacking boxes in the kitchen, Emma noticed the old pantry door with its heavy brass lock.
"Why's it locked, Mom?" she asked.
Her mother shrugged. "Old houses have their quirks. We'll get a locksmith out next week."
That night, Emma woke to the sound of rain on the roof and something else—a wet, shuffling sound from downstairs. And beneath it, so faint she almost missed it, the sound of humming. Multiple voices now, singing in harmony—old and young, patient and eager.
In the morning, she found wet footprints leading from the pantry door.
Her mother dismissed them as condensation. Her father blamed old pipes. But Emma knew better. She'd heard the stories from kids at school—whispers about Bloody Bones, the thing that lived in dark, damp places and collected bones from curious children.
A week later, when her parents were asleep and the house was quiet, Emma crept downstairs with her flashlight. The pantry door stood before her, lock gleaming in the beam. She put her ear against the wood and listened.
From the other side came voices—children's voices, young and eager, spanning generations.
"He says his name's Bloody Bones," one whispered—young, maybe twelve. "And he needs more helpers. Want to come see? It's not so bad once you learn where all the bones go. Great-Aunt Sylvie taught me everything."
"The jars are so pretty when they glow," another voice added, this one older, patient, wearing the accumulated weight of sixty years of sorting. "Come on. Just open the door. Just take a peek. What's the worst that could happen? We're all here waiting—Sylvie and Maggie and all the others. It's lonely sorting bones by yourself. Come be our family."
Emma's hand moved toward the lock, curiosity burning bright as flame.
Behind her, in the living room, something wet dripped onto the floor.
The lock clicked.
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© 2025 Karen Cody. All rights reserved.
This original story was written exclusively for the Urban Legends, Mystery, and Myth blog.
Do not copy, repost, or reproduce without permission.
This tale may appear in a future special collection.
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