The Slinking Thing From Sinking Spring

"Others emerged from the light, shadow, and sound of a lonely wood. Others are straight-out lies, cousins to the tall tale, spun by frontiersmen, woodsmen, cowboys, and carnival sharps to prank the tenderfoot and pass the time. All are part of an unnatural natural history that reaches back to our earliest mythology." 

- Alvin Schwartz on his book 'Kickle Snifters and Other Fearsome Critters'

Transcript

Copy

On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery

Percy Bysshe Shelley

It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, 

  Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;  

Below, far lands are seen tremblingly; 

  Its horror and its beauty are divine. 

Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie 

  Loveliness like a shadow, from which shrine,  

Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,  

The agonies of anguish and of death. 

Yet it is less the horror than the grace  

  Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone;

Whereon the lineaments of that dead face  

  Are graven, till the characters be grown  

Into itself, and thought no more can trace; 

  'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown  

Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,

Which humanize and harmonize the strain. 

And from its head as from one body grow, 

  As [   ] grass out of a watery rock, 

Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow  

  And their long tangles in each other lock,

And with unending involutions shew  

  Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock  

The torture and the death within, and saw  

The solid air with many a ragged jaw. 

And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft

  Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes; 

Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft  

  Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise  

Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft, 

  And he comes hastening like a moth that hies

After a taper; and the midnight sky  

Flares, a light more dread than obscurity. 

'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;  

  For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare  

Kindled by that inextricable error,

  Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air  

Become a [ ] and ever-shifting mirror  

  Of all the beauty and the terror there— 

A woman's countenance, with serpent locks, 

Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks. 

I’d always pictured Hell as fire and brimstone, devils and darkness. The things you see in movies and read about in books. But Hell is none of those things. Hell is a cleansing so all-consuming that you yourself disappear, little by little.

I wish I could tell you my name, but it’s long since left me. My head is full of too many other things these days. 

My childhood is blurry at best, like some mostly forgotten dream. Adulthood is better, but only slightly. I remember the name of the college I went to, and if I try hard, I can still remember the face of the first girl I ever kissed, but it’s fading every day. The memories that never fade, though, the ones that only grow more and more clear with each passing day, are those of Sinking Spring, and the slinking thing that followed me home and burrowed deep into my head. 

It was a beautiful summer day when everything went bad, almost a year ago now. The sun had me and my friends, whose names I no longer remember, feeling bold. We wanted to go and soak it up, but the smoke in the air meant that we shouldn’t. We compromised with a long drive to a short walk, and picked the Great Serpent Mound as our adventure of choice. 

The Great Serpent Mound was the oldest tourist destination in our state. It was an animal effigy earthwork, built somewhere around when BC swapped to AD. For something so old, so precious, so unique, there would have been someone watching over it, wouldn’t you think? But no, all that protected it was a small sign to remind people why two thousand years of history were so important. Those who wanted to ignore it could and would. 

I was with two friends that day, I remember that much, but all I can remember about them were the things I’d rather forget. We walked the perimeter first, breathing in air that was clearer than our part of the state, but still made us sneeze.

From the ground, it was hard to see the shape of the full mound. We examined the snake one coil at a time, starting at its spiraled tail. The Mound Builders, a culture we knew approximately a sentence and a half about from the gift shop, had built the snake with the sun in mind. They’d designed it so that the snake's tail lined up with the sun at its peak on the winter solstice. From the tail, it unfurled enough to be a series of short waves, ones that took several minutes to walk past. More if you stopped to really take it in, and we did. 

The smoke had kept us cooped up and anxious all summer. I remember the mound and the forest around it feeling otherworldly, magical, almost, because it was the first escape we’d had outside in so long. We took in everything, the gently grassy rise of the snake's body, the lightly clouded sky overhead, the birds, the wind. I remember being enamoured by tiny blue flowers that bloomed all along the snake's slopes. 

When we reached the snake's head, either I, or one of my friends, who’s so blurry now, reminded us all what we’d only just read. That the snake’s head lined up with the sun’s peak during the summer solstice. That the whole site was in an ancient crater. I remember marvelling at that, wondering if the people who’d built it had chosen it for that reason. As if they could sense the prehistoric importance of the place. 

I wanted to capture the day however I could. I’d brought my camera, of course, but I’d also brought a little book for leaf and flower pressing. I looked around before I did it, like I knew I shouldn’t be taking what I was about to take, but I did it anyway. I grabbed one of the little blue flowers from the head of the great snake and pressed it into my book. I had my pictures, sure, but I wanted a keepsake. 

Our last stop was an old lookout tower that let us see the serpent from a bird's-eye view. We stood up there for an eternity, breathing in air that was ever so slightly tinged with ash but still so lovely.

The new perspective helped us see the true shape of the snake, and I noticed something peculiar about its head. It was separated from the rest of its body. It was a perfect oval, and built a foot or so away, the snake's neck curved around it, decapitating it.  As I studied it, I wondered if maybe the oval wasn’t actually its head. Maybe what I’d thought was the neck curving around was actually a mouth reaching out to swallow the sun itself. 

On the drive home, our cabin fever had us looking for any excuse to stop and stretch our legs, and we found it in a town just minutes north of the Serpent Mound. It was a place with a strange name: Sinking Spring. 

Sinking Spring looked like every other small town we’d driven through, the lone landmark being a strange building shaped like an octagon. But it represented a delay to us, a short reprieve from going back to our houses and apartments and hiding from the news and from the world. 

We treasured every quaint farm house, every storefront, as we drove slowly through. As the town ended and the forest began, it gave us one last surprise when we pulled up into a cemetery on a hill. And just like at the Serpent Mound, just like every other place I’ve ever visited, I wanted to take a part of it with me. At cemeteries, I always took the same things. 

I always took the names. 

I had a different little notebook for these, and I carried it with me everywhere. That one was a plain white sketchbook, and in charcoal, I’d take etchings of the most interesting or the most weathered names and death dates. I liked to use these for my stories, my poems. I thought I was giving the names a new life. 

I wish I could remember the things I used to write. They were so important to me in another life. But I don’t have space for them in my head anymore. 

My friends walked around, enjoying the air, while I hopped from gravestone to gravestone, choosing favorites. I got closer and closer to the woods at the cemetery's edge, and as I did, something was making its way closer to me. I don’t know if it came from the forest, or another world, or hell itself, but it found me. I spotted it when I held my paper up to the light to admire an etching I’d taken of the name and day-long life of an infant. 

It blended in with the trees at first, until it shifted, quickly but quietly, closer to me. There it was in the trees, a thing made of grey brown flesh, the color of bark, but smooth. I saw its arm first, and my eyes had to adjust to its camouflage to see the rest. I zeroed in on the small movements of it swaying and breathing, puzzling out the rest of its body. What I could see of it anyway. My eyes followed its skeletal arm, all the way up to its jagged shoulder, then up to its long, long neck and its round, round head. A head that was dotted with a dozen milky white eyes. 

I stared into those eyes for what felt like an eternity, then snapped out of it when it jumped closer. Faster than I could blink, it was at a new tree, one that was several feet closer to me. It hadn’t made a sound. 

I remember yelling, but they weren’t words. My friends understood the sounds nonetheless, as ones that meant we needed to leave. Urgently. 

And so we did. I must have told them what I saw, but the car ride home, and the rest of that summer have mostly left me. Trying to remember anything but The Serpent Mound and the demon thing at Sinking Spring is like trying to catch a river with a fork. 

The only memories that I can dredge up on command after that are the ones involving the creature, as if the entire rest of my life wasn’t worth remembering. As if those moments of dread and terror were all that were worth keeping. 

I remember the leaves were just starting to change when I saw the slinking thing again. I was walking on a path in the woods, but shallow enough that between the trees I could see cars and houses peaking out. I wonder if I walked there often? It seemed a pleasant enough place. A peaceful one, had the demon not invaded it. 

But I can’t conjure any memories of peace, no, my memories only start right as I sensed something watching me. I turned and saw the trees swaying, but some were moving against the wind, and there I once again picked out the many peering eyes of the demon. Its arms were elongated, snaking through the trees. It was a short run away from me, and I hoped that meant I was safe, but I’d seen how fast it could move. 

I backed away, and as I did, its head stayed still, but its arms crept towards me, one, then two, then three of them, peeking out ever so slightly from the closer trees. 

I ran away, and the next thing I can remember is the next time I saw the slinking thing. This time, I was in the deep woods, the leaves in full sunset bloom. I don’t understand why I’d let myself go to the wilderness knowing what was after me. This time I was wearing hiking clothes, with a heavy backpack slowing me down. I looked behind me, and saw the thing moving fast, but the thing is, I never saw it jump from tree to tree. It appeared silently, behind each trunk, as if it couldn’t exist in the spaces between. 

I ran right into the next memory and found myself walking through a dirty city block. The hairs on the back of my neck told me the thing was nearby, and I looked behind me for long enough that when I finally looked ahead, it was right on top of me. 

This time, I was close enough to see its face better as I stumbled to a stop. This time, I could see its milky white eyes shift and slosh, like the liquid inside them was trying to escape. For a split second, I looked for a mouth, a nose, any of the other features we expect to see, but all it had, from what I could see anyway, were those cloudy eyes. 

When I think about it now, it’s like one continuous chase. It’s taken all of my memories that it couldn’t invade. I ran out of there into a dark hallway, then the woods again, this time with the leaves barely hanging on. Then I was jumping out of what I can only assume was my bed, but the lone memory I have of it is being chased by the dreaded slinking thing. I was in a church, then in a series of hallways, and finally in the woods one last time. 

As a gentle snow fell, I fell to my knees, wheezing and out of breath, and I let the demon approach me. Though I made no effort to run, it wouldn’t come fully out into the light. Rather, it extended one of its smooth, branchlike arms, one of many, and opened its palm right above mine. Into my hand it dropped one milky, bloody eye. 

Winter came, the snow fell, but all I can tell you about this time were visions that were not my own. 

I’m sure I must have been going to work or school, whatever it is I did with my daylight hours, because I still had a house of some kind. I still found myself dressed properly, on the bus or out walking. But all that I can recall are fleeting glimpses of this life, my memories starting only seconds before terrible visions brought on by the slinking thing. It didn’t need to find me anymore, I’d simply be sitting or standing or sleeping, and I’d feel its wet eye appear in my hand. 

Then I’d find myself somewhere else entirely. 

The first place I found myself transported to was a bedroom. There was a mattress on the floor, and the peeling walls were bare. The only other furniture in the room was a large wooden box. It reminded me of a coffin, but it was worse because from the inside, I could hear someone crying. I tried to get closer, to let them out, but I couldn’t move beyond the shadow of their bedroom door. 

The next vision was an ancient battlefield, where the soldiers wore leather armor that I couldn’t quite place and fought with spears and swords. I only caught glimpses of the carnage from beneath a shallow bridge, once again trapped in the shadows. 

Between the visions and the second long glimpses of a normal life, the thing that took over my skull allowed me to remember my half-hearted attempts to rid myself of its curse. Pretty much all I know about myself is that I collected strange and morbid things, and that when the slinking thing found me, I tried desperately to get rid of them. 

I remember bringing the pressed flower back to the Serpent Mound, I remember burying the pages of cemetery engravings I’d taken back at Sinking Spring. I remember throwing fossils into a creek. I remembered taking bones I’d found in the woods, ones I’d guessed were deer bones, but I’d never been quite sure, and mailing them to the police. 

In one of my visions, I watched a train crash and burn, lighting up the snow on a winter night. But I didn’t feel either the heat or the cold. I watched just a few survivors crawl out of the wreckage, dressed in clothes from a bygone era. I tried to reach out a hand from the trees I was hiding in, and I found I finally could. But I also found that the hand was wrinkled with age, bloody, and bruised. I tried to look at the rest of my body then, but the vision dissolved. 

I remember printing out and burning my writings then, worrying about ideas I’d used, inspiration taken from dark places. 

At some point when I remember blinking back to my old existence, I stared at the empty closet where I’d kept my collected things, and I screamed for the creature to tell me what else it wanted, that I’d given back everything I’d stolen, everything that wasn’t mine. 

In another vision, I watched a woman get lost in the woods and take her last breath. I watched her body start to rot, and as it did, I tried to study my own. I couldn’t look straight at any part of me, but if I squinted out of the corner of my eye, I could just barely make out tattered and bloody clothes.

The last vision I saw from my voyeuristic perspective was a little boy walking to the store alone on a cold gray night. He looked incredibly sad. He soon turned around as if he sensed me, but surely that was impossible. But still, his eyes widened, and he ran off. He looked so familiar, in fact, the whole scene was familiar to me. A little boy walking alone on a cold winter night, seeing a half-dead old man watching him from the shadows. I knew I’d heard that story before. I also knew I’d stolen it, written it into some silly little story. I just wish I could remember one last time the face, or even just the name of the friend who’d told it to me. 

It was only when spring began that things slowed down. I was walking around outside, presumably having a better day, when I spotted the creature watching me from a bush dripping with pink flowers. I was in some kind of topiary park, and I couldn’t help but wonder why the hell I kept going outside even after everything that had happened. The creature reached out to me and I let it, hoping that maybe it would either end what was happening or at least speed it along. But it didn’t. It just handed me a hand. It looked to be one of its own, severed but bloodless and limp. I held it. What else was I supposed to do? And it curled into my fingers, holding them tight. 

I thought maybe it was letting me go. The gesture was almost comforting. 

Then I fell into Hell. 

I’d get small glimpses of normalcy, then I’d feel cold fingers lacing into mine, and pulling me into other worlds. Many of them were the same visions as before, but I was no longer a spectator. 

This time, I ran through the woods with that lost woman, getting colder and more tired with each passing day. Time moved as if in a dream, like I was there with her for an eternity, but also only for a few breaths. 

I fell into that ancient battle next, hearing last words and threats in a language I didn’t know. Soldiers dropped around me, and the scent of blood filled the air. I escaped death in that vision, just barely, only to meet it in the next one. 

This time, when I visited the site of that old disaster, of the train that crashed and burned, I appeared inside it. And when the passengers began to burn, I burned with them. 

The glimpses into my real life were all the same between these visions. I was in an apartment that became increasingly bare and filthy as I spiraled, waiting to die over and over again. From fleeting glances outside, I gathered that summer was approaching. 

Time has lost all meaning to me. But if you were to watch me from the shadows, that’s where you’d find me now. Curled up on my kitchen floor and waiting for the end. I know it’s coming soon because my phone has made me a little present. Popping up in pictures was a little collage titled “one year ago today.” And it’s me and my friends, the ones I wish I could remember, all smiling in front of the village sign of Sinking Spring. 

It’s not long before I feel the bony grip of the demon's hand, clapping my own, and I’m off again. 

It takes me to a place I haven’t been since this nightmare began. I’m in the bare bedroom with the peeling walls, and I’m looking at the box that looks so much like a coffin, but holds someone living. I suppose in this vision, there’s no room for me to be stuck in there with her. As I approach the box, I realize the voice crying sounds familiar, even if so much younger. I know then what I need to do, as a precious memory that’s one of my own resurfaces. 

I don’t remember her name, but I’d seen her face on my phone that morning, and I could just barely remember her confessing her secrets to me one night. On the kind of night where you all overshare with each other, and never talk about it again. I remembered so clearly then what she’d told me. 

I reached my bruised and bloodied hand into the box, and it went through like I was a ghost. I found her small hand, and I held it for a while. Then I whispered to her the words I remembered her whispering to me not so long ago. I whispered, “One day you’ll get out of here.” 

As the room dissolved, I entered the next vision with less dread. I wondered if perhaps the thing with the milky eyes and the many arms wasn’t a demon at all. 

For the first time, I found myself alone in the vision. I’d always been alongside those I watched before, in the fray now, but still a spectator. This time it was just me. This time, when I looked at my hand, the creature was once again holding mine, but this time, its hand was attached to its arm. Though it already had me, it kept its distance, hiding in nearby trees. Unable or unwilling to come out into the light. 

Slowly, as my eyes adjusted to the day, I took in the rest of this new vision. I was in a forest, this time in the summer. The air was clear, with just a bit of smoke, and the sky above was beautiful. I was in the trees, but in the distance I could see shapes moving, people and cars.

I studied my body first, bruised and bloody and wearing strange clothes. It was the way I’d looked in all my other visions, but this time I could look closer. I had some kind of protective vest on my chest, and in my aged hand was a gun. My pants were blue with a logo I didn’t recognize embroidered in. It was a two-headed snake, with both heads poised to bite each other. 

Slowly, my ears began to take in sounds around me, and I breathed heavily like I’d just been knocked over. I heard gunshots and screaming from further in the trees, but they all sounded muffled, like my ears were recovering from something. My hand, the one holding the creature's smooth, long fingers, was dotted with a fresh burn. 

My eyes followed it back to the trees, and I realized it had company. Hiding beneath the sun-dappled leaves were other people watching me, ones who looked far removed from whatever battle I was fighting in. 

There was a man, naked and covered in sores, peering at me from behind a peeling birch tree. He seemed unaware of his own plight, though, and looked at me with pity. There was a girl in a corset and layers and layers of dressy clothes with her hair done up, her body half concealed behind an oak. A little boy in pajamas watched me with curiosity, reaching up to his face to fix glasses that weren’t there. A woman in some kind of camouflaged bodysuit, that changed to match the trees behind her, stared at me inquisitively. Her throat was slit, and a river of blood ran down her neck, but she seemed completely unaware. 

Further out in the trees, closer to whatever battle was happening, there were others.  They looked from different times, different places, many in varying states of injury. All of them hiding behind the trees.

My vision started to go blurry then. I breathed in the air, fresh but tinted with just a little ash, and just a little copper, but no less glorious. I looked up at the sky again, taking it all in.  

The creature squeezed my hand once more, then let go, and I fell back onto my kitchen floor. 

The gunshots in my ears were replaced with knocking, and yelling, and I got up to answer the door. As I did, I felt my own name, and the names of those I heard yelling on the other side start to come back to me. When I opened the door, I recognized their faces, not just from here but from long ago. 

The girl in the box, all grown up now, gave me a hug. While the boy I’d seen on that cold winter’s night, the one where I’d given him such a fright, stared at me for just a second before joining in. It was as if he recognized me finally, as if my year of hell had aged me just enough that he started to see the face of a half-dead soldier he’d seen in the shadows, walking alone in the dark so long ago. 

They’d come because they were worried, and because the air was clear. Whatever had been happening to me, they’d hear about it as we walked outside and looked up at the sky. On clear days now, that was more urgent than anything else. 

As we walked, I started to remember the rest of them, the bits not attached to some terrifying visions from childhood. And though I’d lived through those with them now, that was far in the past. And on the other side, whatever strange war waited for us in the future, that was decades away. But today, today the air was the clearest it had been all summer, and the sun was out. And when we got outside and I looked into the trees, there was nothing hiding in the shadows. There was nothing looking back at me. 

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the podcast inside your house! To hear every tale of terror as they are released, subscribe to our show on your podcast app or on Youtube or follow us on Facebook and Bluesky.Until next time: Remember that you can find inspiration anywhere, but that also means that there’s nowhere to hide when it wants to find you.