CREEPYPASTA & Rituals

Mr.Stringy

By OnePageWonder
Song: Going to Hell- The Pretty Reckless

Aunt Sicily died. She was my wife's great-aunt and last surviving relative. My wife, Emily's parents died in a car accident when she was a freshman in college. It was then that she reached out and began communicating with Sicily.

Sicily was old even then and something of an eccentric. She lived alone on a ten acre plot of unincorporated land about seventy miles south of Pendleton. She was a spinster who devoted her time to watching her stories, as she called them, and making dolls that she would donate to terminally ill children.

Emily and I married soon after graduation and used her remaining life insurance money for a down payment on a small house here in Portland. During that time, Emily would call Sicily a couple times a month and regularly send care packages which contained everything from simple necessities to materials for her dolls. For all I knew, that was the extent of their relationship. I had offered to drive us out to visit her on more than one occasion, but she always demurred, making some excuse or other about how it wasn't a good time. I soon stopped offering.

Over time, Sicily began showing signs of dementia. It started small, often with her repeating the same story or asking the same question two or three times in succession. It was a slow descent at first that soon began to snowball. On more than one occasion, I'd catch Emily crying after talking to her.

"She's perfectly normal at first, then she starts talking about those damn dolls!" she'd explain. "Mr. Stringy is being feisty," or "Mr. Stringy won't stop bothering Ralphie." Ralphie was Sicily's dog. He'd wandered onto her property one day and decided to stay. He filled his days hunting rabbits, or stealing Sicily's spools of thread only to vomit them up later, hence the name.

Occasionally, my wife would call Sicily repeatedly without an answer. That's when things would get really tense around the house. Being unable to reach her, Emily would then call the local sheriff to do a welfare check. He'd drive out to Sicily's property and find her confused and disoriented. I urged my wife to put her in a home, but she said that Sicily wouldn't have it and that there was nothing we could do to make her go.

When Sicily failed to pick up the phone after two days of incessant calling, my stomach sank. The sheriff called us later that day to inform us that Aunt Sicily had passed away. He gave Emily his condolences. Emily spent the rest of the day on the phone making arrangements. As it turned out, Sicily had prepared for everything in advance, so there was little to do. She had requested and prepaid for a cremation, asking only that her ashes be spread on her land and naming my wife as her sole heir.

"We should go out there," I told her that night. I could tell she was hesitant, but I felt it was important.

"They can mail anything that I need to sign," she said. "Besides, she explicitly said that she didn't want a memorial, so there's no point."

I spent the next day doing my best to convince her. I told her she'd regret not going, she was family and was nice enough to leave the land to us. She finally relented and we left the next morning. We didn't know where we would stay, so we packed our camping gear and food as a precaution.

That afternoon, after a few wrong turns, we pulled off at a gas station to ask for directions. Inside the mini-mart, we found the Sheriff who had stopped in for a cup of coffee. He said he was glad someone came out for Sicily, it was a shame the way she lived alone like that. He gave us directions, pointing out the landmarks to look for as most of the roads were unmarked.

On our way out, he pulled me aside and gave me a pained look.

"You're not planning on seeing her, are you?" He asked, doing his vest to avoid making eye contact.