PseudoPod 998: The Story-Stealer’s Night
The Story-Stealer’s Night
by Madhu Campbell
Story-teller, Story-screamer
Tell your tales into this night.
The words of the poem rush into Durga’s foggy mind with unbidden clarity. She waits quietly at her school gate on the edge of the beach as the fishing boats make their way to shore at sunset.
Three girls join Durga at the gate, all still in their brand-new school uniforms, but with blankets and flashlights instead of book bags. They are not as quiet as Durga; their audible whispers and nervous laughter push against the silence of their school and the beach. A few teachers watch, expressionless, from high-up windows, but none bother to stop the girls from venturing out after dark.
Durga has done this once before, but the memory flows through her mind like sand through a sieve. And yet she knows where to go, where to stop, which rock to skip over. She knows how to lead the rite of passage every new student, teacher and novitiate at St. Anne’s Convent School for Girls must go through—spend a night on the beach telling stories.
The girls reach a low area on the beach and lay out their blankets to sit as best as they can in their starchy uniforms. A gold ring glints in the moonlight on Durga’s left hand.
“Jewelry is not allowed in our school,” says Rani, in her most pretentious voice, tucking her short hair behind her ear to reveal her own piercing with a small, silver hoop in place.
“The only ‘jewelry’ we’re allowed is the rosary,” says Mary, clutching the plastic cross on her plastic rosary, missing the smirk on Rani’s face.
Durga runs a finger over the cool gold ring on her left ring finger. She didn’t have it on when she took a leave from school three months ago to attend the family funeral. The fog in her mind lifts ever so slightly as she turns the ring around her finger. She starts to feel her surroundings—the wet sand under her thin blanket, her itchy socks, the cold sharp knife tucked away in her blazer pocket. When she reaches for the knife, the fog envelopes her mind again, chilling her curiosity.
“Let’s start!” says Vinuta, wrapping her thick, colorful blanket around her shoulders, shivering as a salty breeze blows across the beach. “I have a great story—”
“I bet it’s the most boring story ever,” says Rani.
“Your face is the most boring story ever,” says Vinuta, scowling. She’s only been at the school for six weeks and is eager to make friends. But her roommates don’t make it easy for her. Compared to Rani’s incessant teasing and Mary’s annoying piety, she finds Durga’s aloofness almost aspirational.
“Please recite the poem,” says Durga, with a quiet authority, barely a whisper over the crashing waves.
Story-teller, Story-screamer
Tell your tales into this night.
Story-stealer, Story-eater
Have a feast before it’s light.
After they all recite the poem—Rani giggling at every other word—Durga straightens her back and asks, “What story do you have to offer?”
Vinuta lowers her own voice to mimic Durga’s authority and begins,
“A long time ago, in a faraway fishing village, a brutal storm raged for three days and three nights. Waves as high as mountains crashed into the village and washed away the low-lying huts. But thanks to the village leader’s foresight, all the people and their livestock survived. All except for one little boy, the leader’s son.
“When the storm subsided, the villagers went looking for the boy. They searched the wreckage on the beach and the sea. But the boy had disappeared. The leader, overcome with despair, wanted to walk into the sea to die with his son.
“But when he saw how the villagers rallied around him and supported him even though they had lost their homes and farms, he realized he had to live for them. He had a responsibility to his people and, as a good leader, he embraced it. Together, they rebuilt the village and grew stronger after the disaster.”
Vinuta bows and looks to the other girls for applause.
“That’s all?” snaps Rani. “I thought this would be the first fun thing to happen at this school and it’s a complete dud!”
“That’s not all!” lies Vinuta, struggling to draw out more story from her mind. “There’s more— ouch!” She yelps, jolting Rani and Mary.
“What happened?” asks Mary in an anxious whisper, gripping her cross.
Vinuta slaps the back of her neck. “Something bit me.”
“It’s just mosquitos. Don’t mind them,” says Durga. “Please continue your story.”
There are no mosquitos on this beach.
The breeze carries a melancholy moan and the sand around Vinuta vibrates in diffuse swirls. Durga fiddles with her gold ring, turning it around, and feeling its cold surface against her finger. A small dose of clarity against her mind’s dull susurrous.
“Anyway,” says Vinuta, rubbing her neck as she tries to ignore the prickling pain, “several weeks after the storm, a fishing boat caught something huge writhing in a tangle of grey tentacles. When they tried to haul it up, the tentacles slipped back into the sea, leaving behind a little boy curled in on himself. The leader’s son!”
As she speaks, Vinuta sees it in her mind. The little boy’s wet face shining in the harsh sunlight—her little brother’s peaceful face just before his cancer got worse.
“The boy lived! Ecstatic, the leader announced the biggest feast the village had ever seen. Everyone celebrated. Everyone, except the little boy.
“The boy didn’t open his mouth once, not to eat or talk. He hadn’t eaten anything for days. Weeks, if you counted his time lost at sea. The celebrations turned to grief. The villagers knew they would mourn him again soon.”
Vinuta swallows a sob bubbling up her throat as the father in the story merges with memories of her own father crying quietly as he heard her brother’s prognosis. It had been the last time Vinuta had seen him before she was sent away to St. Anne’s Convent.
“The leader spent every waking moment with his dying boy, talking, singing, trying to make him eat, but the boy sat wordless, staring at the mud walls of their hut, eyes glassy like the fish on his untouched plate. One day, the father started a story, something about gods and demons his mother told him a long time ago. That was the first time the boy’s eyes focused. He even smiled when the father acted out a fight between gods. The father continued telling stories, and that was all that the boy needed. The boy seemed to survive only on stories, and the father ignored his daughter, the villagers, and even his own needs to tell fantastical tales to his son.
“The villagers gathered around the hut each night after dinner to listen to his increasingly wild stories before going to bed. They didn’t question how the boy survived because, ever since the stories began, they were blessed with an abundance of fish. They didn’t need to go out to sea anymore, the fish swam into their nets right at the beach, as though entranced, and even their fruit and vegetable gardens thrived.
“Only the daughter saw how her father shrank and withered, but she was powerless to stop him.
“One morning, the stories stopped. When the villagers checked, they found the boy sitting alone by the back wall. Dust motes danced around him like flies in the daylight streaming through the small window. The father was gone!”
Vinuta shivers in her blanket as the low moan of a lonely deep-sea creature swallows the edge of her thoughts.
Yet, she can’t stop the story.
“In only a few hours, even before the villagers could find the father, the boy turned sallow. The leader’s daughter, no older than fourteen herself, stepped up to tell the boy stories. She knew the boy from the day he was born, had watched him grow up, even cared for him when their mother died, and their father was numb with grief. But when she saw his sunken, empty eyes, she knew it wasn’t her brother. She knew their father would never leave him. The boy, or whatever had returned from the sea, had wrung out their father until there was nothing left but dust.
“The boy turned his glassy eyes on his sister. She opened her mouth to scream, but the words of a story flowed out instead. As her story continued, the ground beneath her vibrated, shaking her down to her bones. From the corner of her eyes, she saw opalescent tentacles extrude from cracks in the mud floor.
“When the vibrations reached her fingertips, her thin gold ring that she always wore on her left hand resonated with it. She clasped her hands to not lose the ring, her mother’s and her family’s only heirloom. Slowly, painfully, she stopped shaking. But her ring still thrummed, protecting her—she realized—from the trembling ground just as she tried to protect it.
“Frightened and confused, she survived her first night as the storyteller. Then another night, and another. Years passed. She continued to tell stories to the dead-eyed boy with her mother’s ring to protect her.”
Vinuta yawns a long, spine-stretching yawn that gradually morphs in a wail. The little boy in the story no longer looks like her brother; the storyteller girl no longer looks like Vinuta. They both wear the same face—
Durga’s cold, impassive eyes are the last thing Vinuta sees before she collapses to her side. The moaning in her mind stops with a pop as she falls asleep.
A spindly silver limb, longer than a human arm, juts out from behind Vinuta.
Rani jumps— “What’s that?”
Durga tugs on Vinuta’s colorful blanket so that it completely covers her crumpled form, and the limb disappears.
“I didn’t see anything,” whispers Mary. “Did you…?” she turns to Durga.
“Since Rani’s distracted, can you share your story next?” Durga asks Mary, still fiddling with her gold ring.
Mary swallows and grips her cross tight. She has a story ready—a sweet fable with a message of devotion at its core.
“A long time ago,” she starts, her voice shaking, “three missionary sisters traveled across India, to lead… the hungry and poor… to the path of God—”
“Something’s moving!” screams Rani and jumps off her blanket and onto Mary’s.
Durga places her palms on Rani’s blanket and feels a gentle pulse under it. No large movement yet. “Just the sand shifting,” she says.
Rani’s face burns in the cold, salty breeze and she crawls back to her own blanket, facing away from the other girls.
“Please continue,” says Durga to Mary, ignoring Rani.
“Yes… okay, so, the missionary sisters traveled down the coast, but they faced many challenges,” says Mary, gripping the cold cross in her hand. “One day, a monsoon storm washed away their path, stranding them over a hill. But the Lord answered their prayers! A friendly shepherd gave them shelter from the storm—ow!” Mary screams as she realizes something has punctured the skin at the nape of her neck.
“What is it?” whispers Rani.
“Just… just mosquitos, I guess?” says Mary, rubbing her neck. Durga merely nods.
“The shepherd,” Mary continues, “though the shepherd lived in a modest house with only three sheep, he… he… was blessed with abundance? When asked about his prosperity, he told them the story of his hometown… one filled with miracles, like… fish swimming into the nets at shore. He promised to take them there the next day.”
This is not the story Mary meant to share, but the words flow like sweet, sacramental wine.
“When the missionary sisters reached the town, they were amazed that the stories were true—fish did surrender to the fishermen’s nets at the shore, and the villagers harvested a bounty of fruits and vegetables from their gardens every day. A vibrant market thrived on the beach, drawing in crowds from neighboring towns and villages.
“The sisters were led through the large streets with tall, colorful houses and into the older part of town with narrow, winding streets. The buildings wilted, and eventually crumbled into an ancient palm grove. A small mud hut stood in the grove, out of place and time, hidden away from the prosperity like a dirty secret preserved in amber.”
Mary realizes, then, that she knows the hut from a worn-out photo at her aunt’s house—a sepia-toned image of her grandfather in a loincloth, her grandmother in a tight sari with her sagging breasts visible through the thin fabric, their dozen children in tattered clothing, a cloud of flies crowning their heads, smiling with an inscrutable joy. And the small mud hut stood behind them, out of sight and mind of the high-rise buildings sprouting nearby.
“Every night, a small crowd ventured to the palm grove and listened to an old woman tell stories to a little boy in the hut, certain that this tradition brought good fortune to their town.
“The missionary sisters, while curious, didn’t care for the ignorant belief in folk deities. They established their own convent near the prosperous side of town to lead people in the true path of the Lord. Over the years, thanks to the patronage of the wealthy town, their convent grew to rival even the ones in Europe. But they couldn’t quell the superstitions about the storyteller.
“Several years later, a brave young novitiate at the convent, sure that she could guide the locals away from their superstitions, marched into the hut. It was empty. No furniture, no storyteller, no sign of anyone living there.
“She almost didn’t see the little boy with lifeless eyes, wearing only a loincloth, shrinking in the shadow.”
It occurs to Mary that the young novitiate looks like her eldest sister—a pious, god-fearing woman whose devotion convinced her family to convert to Catholicism.
“The kind novitiate took the boy back to the convent. She bathed him and gave him clean clothes and fresh food. But the boy didn’t eat or utter a single word. His eyes focused beyond her, beyond the convent walls. The sandy beach and roaring waves called to him.
“The town was in an uproar that night, and hundreds marched to the convent to bring the boy back. And the first to knock on the convent door was the old storyteller woman, reappearing with a gold ring on her left hand.”
In Mary’s mind, the old woman looks like her own sepia-toned grandmother, and the little boy is all skin and bones like the children in the photograph. Her thoughts fill with the buzz of flies, now swarming around a dropped chalice in an empty church, the sickly-sweet wine spilling over her thoughts.
“The old woman pleaded with the novitiate to return the boy to the hut, blathering about her sacred duty to tell him stories, how she had ignored her own family for the greater good. But the novitiate refused—there was no excuse to treat a child poorly.
“As a desperate final attempt, the old woman asked to tell stories to the boy right there in the convent. The novitiate agreed, and so all through the night, in a small antechamber, she told stories that the crowd gathered outside could not hear.
“The next day, the old woman left without her ring but with the same vacant stare as the boy. And she walked into the welcoming waves of the sea.”
Mary sways to the strange rhythms of her own story, eyes closed, words slurring—
“And the boy? He was nowhere to be found. Only the storyteller’s gold ring remained in the antechamber.
“And so ended the prosperity of the town. No fish came to their shore. The fruits and vegetables rotted quicker and quicker. Their animals died from strange diseases. The townsfolk, proud descendants of fishermen, no longer knew how to build boats, and couldn’t even imagine going out to sea. Many gathered on the beach at night to tell stories to the missing boy, a desperate attempt to regain the favor of their lost deity. But they always returned without their spark for life, merely puppets emptied of their thoughts, emotions, and dreams.”
“The sisters and cloistered nuns at the convent joined the townsfolk on the beach, attempting to share the word of God instead of the vulgar storytelling ritual. But they emerged from it in a similar trance.”
“Stop. Talking. Now,” hisses Rani.
But Mary doesn’t hear her over the incessant drone emanating from the shifting sand.
“Praise the Lord! The misfortune on the town was a blessing for the nuns! It unburdened their minds of worldly thought, replacing it with the low hum of a Gregorian chant. There was no room for anything but prayers and surrendering oneself to God. Even as the town withered away, their numbers grew; more and more local women joined the convent with a clear heart ready to welcome God.
“As the decades passed, the young novitiate became the Mother Superior, her mind devoid of all sin. The storyteller’s gold ring gathered dust in her vault as just another piece of jewelry.”
Mary yawns again as the comforting, somber face of her eldest sister as the Mother Superior turns into…
… Durga’s unnerving, too-wide smile is the last thing Mary sees before the overwhelming thrum of a thousand flies plunges her into sleep.
Rani and Durga are the only ones still awake.
Rani screams and jumps just as Durga grabs her forearm. She bites Durga’s vice-like hand, yanking her arm free, and runs across the beach, away from the school, away from her unconscious roommates, away from Durga. Unlike Mary and Vinuta, Rani won’t go down without a fight.
But no one can fight the beach.
Rani doesn’t get far before she trips over a rock and falls, face-first, onto the coarse sand as it ripples around her, forming patterns of curves and intersecting flourishes. She tries to scuttle away from the pattern when the moonlight disappears and throws her into darkness. She spins around, fearing the monster that she now understands fed on Mary and Vinuta.
Durga looms over her.
“Please tell the story,” says Durga, eyes red with tears. “I’m so close…”
Rani frantically searches the beach, breathing hard, desperate to find someone, anyone, who can help. But it’s all just sand and sea, silvery and gray in the moonlight. Words begin to gush out of her like waves—
“Many decades later, only the convent remained. Other villagers and fishermen settled around it, and quickly learned not to loiter on the beach, not to invite the curse. The stories of the strange village and the storyteller with the gold ring lingered, changed, and spread far and wide, to eventually reach the ears of an adventurous pair of thieves.”
The story comes easy to Rani once she starts. Each time she is left behind in a new boarding school while her parents travel for work, she imagines them as a couple of thieves on dangerous adventures and shares these stories with anyone who listens. Meanwhile, she has her own adventures, ones that get her expelled from school and force her parents to come back to spend a few precious days with her.
A slimy tentacle creeps up Rani’s back, but she can’t move a muscle. A dreadful marine whistle plays in her head when the unseen creature drills into her neck with a numbing pain.
“But this gold ring is special. It belonged to the thieves’ ancestors, and they were willing to do anything to get it back. The couple hatched a careful plan. Their daughter, just old enough to join the convent school, was their inside girl for the job.
“Every night, the girl’s parents waited beyond the beach, wary of the legend even though they claimed they didn’t believe it. As they watched the convent for a sign, the beach watched them, and waited.”
Rani shuts her eyes and hopes with all her heart her parents are waiting for her near the school. Their smiling faces come closer, followed by the deafening sound of uncountable tentacles slithering over her every thought.
“The daughter searched the convent for weeks, in between dull classes and pretend praying. She finally found the ring in the Mother Superior’s office and pocketed it. Alone in her cold dorm room that night, she whistled out her window and got a whistle in response—her parents were still out there! While the school slept, she packed her bag, tucked the ring in a hidden pocket inside, and stepped out to meet the beach.”
Rani sees the daughter—sees herself sneaking out, getting into a car with her parents, and driving away, all three whooping and laughing after a successful adventure. She wants to tell that story. Instead, she says—
“The beach had also tucked away its hunger in the folds of its wavy sands and greeted her with a gentle breeze. Over the years, it had learned to control the rapacious appetite that left its prey as nothing more than dust. A skilled connoisseur now, it could draw out the best, most delicious parts of its prey and savor each indulgent morsel. But after several, patient, weeks—”
Rani purses her lips, suppressing a yawn as the slither closes in on her consciousness.
Durga gasps and grabs Rani’s hands. “Don’t stop,” she pleads. “It’s not enough!”
Rani’s mind is deep in her story. Yet she keeps her mouth shut, swallowing the fishy, bilious words in her throat.
A pair of scaly legs ending in pincers extend from Rani’s back. One clamps down on her shoulder as the other pries open her mouth, and coats her tongue with a fetid slime. The story continues, but it’s not hers.
“The daughter saw her parents in the distance, nothing more than shadows walking quietly on the beach. She ran towards them, as fast as the sand allowed. But no matter the distance she covered, they were still far away, still approaching at their own ambling pace.
“She heard a whistle and spun around to face the ashen waves. Her mother kneeled at the water’s edge, hands reaching towards her, broken, gasping whistles calling her. The daughter turned around to find the shadows still pursuing. She ran towards her mother, legs as stiff as dock poles. Shadowy claws emerged from the chalky sand and snapped against her ankles. She held her bag with the hidden ring tight against her chest; it purred, vibrating gently.
“Whistles sounded from behind, and a pair of hands turned her around and shook her. Her father’s worried face emerged from the darkness, calling her name. ‘Are you alright?’ he asked, again and again. She told him about her mother and the shadows, but he couldn’t hear her. ‘Mama’s waiting by the car,’ he said, and wrapped two arms around her, gently guiding her away from the beach, taking her bag with his third.
Too many arms.
“She didn’t let her bag go, held on to its soothing vibrations with all her strength. But her father pushed her to the ground with a violent roar. The bag flew out of her hands. She screamed for her parents, for the nuns, for her classmates. She screamed and screamed. But the only hand that reached for her was the pair of sharp pincers grabbing her, pulling her down into the sand.”
A head-splitting rattle of claws covers all thought and emotion in Rani’s mind as the face of the girl sinking into the beach, her own face, morphs into…
… Durga pulls the knife from her pocket as Rani falls into a deep sleep in the ebb and flow of wet sand.
The thin, steel blade thrums in Durga’s hand, resonating with her ring. She doesn’t know when or why she stole the knife. But she knows its purpose now—to help her reclaim what she lost. She wants her stories, her hopes, her dreams and nightmares back. She wants all the stories the Story-stealer took from its victims. She wants to feel alive again.
Durga rolls Rani off to the side, leaving the creature visible in the spiral sand pattern, only possible when it’s satiated after a scrumptious meal.
The Story-stealer knows Durga is there—the last surviving descendant of the original storyteller, wearing the gold ring once again. It tormented her with a twisted version of her family’s legacy, unwillingly siphoned from her schoolmates. Now, it lies exposed, contently rubbing together pairs of insectoid legs, digesting its feast. Its many scaly limbs and tentacles of different colors—pincers on some, claws on others—rhythmically reach out and dissolve into its gelatinous mass, frothing nightmares from all the stories, dreams and hopes it has stolen. When its segmented gray body oozes and twists, its victim’s faces—Mary, Rani and Vinuta’s faces, along with a thousand others—writhe under its skin. Multitudes of chitinous shells vibrate and create swirling ripples in the sand that resonate with Durga’s ring.
The last time Durga saw the Story-stealer, she lost everything: her stories, her imagination, her ability to feel her past, to hope and plan and anticipate her future. She lived in the sharp, painful present for two years until she found the gold ring. But in those two years, the creature devoured her parents, her brothers and sisters, her friends. Whether they were lost to sea or in their own minds made no difference. She couldn’t mourn them. How could she? The creature leaves nothing behind.
But she can avenge them now.
Durga raises the knife over her head and brings it down with a war cry. The knife pierces through tough gray skin, into a ghostly unseeing eye, releasing beads of acrid, opalescent liquid. The creature hisses but doesn’t move. Durga hacks and slashes with all her strength. The shimmering blood soaks her uniform, sprays in her mouth. Bitter, rotten dreams rise up her throat to meet the putrid, briny blood. The hiss grows louder, the chittering shell vibrates stronger, and the ring thrums hard enough to cut through her finger.
And then it all stops.
The creature, Durga, the sand, the air—nothing moves.
A gentle foamy wave washes her feet and recedes.
She feels no triumph, only a bone-deep exhaustion; she can fall asleep in the slimy blood pooling around her.
Just as she lowers her knife, the creature rises above her, its innards splayed open. The hiss is incessant, loud, screaming from within her head. She stabs the creature every chance she gets, letting it bleed over her and drench her in its shiny blood. Its outer shell expands, splits into countless sections, and the pieces descend in a clamor around her, isolating her from the world. Her knife looks small and useless as she tries to stab the chitinous barrier. The hiss echoes inside the shell, drowning out her screams. A grey proboscis extends, blooms, and latches onto her face, swallowing her head.
Durga can’t scream as the carapace wraps around her, cocooning her. She can’t scream as the opal blood liquifies her body and rearranges her muscles and bones. She can’t scream as the creature gives her everything she wants—all the stories it has consumed for centuries, starting with the little boy from the fishing village. It is the most exquisite agony, and she slurps it all up.
And yet, she craves more—more joy, more terror, more love, more pain. She sinks into the warm sands, fated to scuttle beneath the surface to find the next storyteller.
When the sun rises tomorrow, and the fishermen pull their boats to the water, quiet and without stories, they might see three schoolgirls in wrinkled uniforms climbing back to the convent with no memories of the previous night. A ripple might appear around the feet of one fisherman. He should know better than to stop, but the allure of a gold ring glinting in the sand will draw him in, giving him a seed of a story to tell his children.
But will he remember how the poem ends?
Story-stealer, Story-eater
Have a feast before it’s light.