 ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third-party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, it's Thriller Thursday and I have a special one for you this week. This actually comes from a book given to me by my bride, Robin. She was at an estate sale and came across something she immediately knew I would want. A book entitled Alfred Hitchcock Presents a Month of Mystery. It's very much like his TV show where he shared short stories from numerous authors. This anthology was published in 1969 with stories dating back as far as 1936. It's laid out in weeks, seven stories per category with a week of crime, a week of suspense, a week of detection, a week of the macabre and then he fills out the rest of the month with three long stories. You'll most definitely be hearing more of these in future episodes because I love old, creepy stories like these. In this episode, I'm diving into that week of the macabre because I just know that's what you were hoping for the moment I said it. It's a story by Gerald Kirsch, originally published in 1968. It's called Crooked Bone. If you're new here, welcome to the show. And while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to enter contests, to connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. The old commandant had his failings and was apt to be irritable every so often when he had to drink a bottle or two of rum in case of fever, but he was a likeable man in some ways. What can't be cured must be endured, he would say. He was a great joker. He'd always make the new arrivals welcome with Greetings, my friends, and distinguished salutations. I am the humble servant of the government. You are the government's guests, so consider me as yours to command. My house is yours. Make yourselves at home. Feel free to come and go as you please. To students of topography and natural history, our countryside is fraught with interest. A curious mountain shaped like a three-pronged tooth, which you will observe if you give yourselves the trouble of half turning your heads to the left, is, as the wisps of vapor at the summit will inform you, of Hulkano. It is called Cerberus, after, as I am sure, it is redundant to state, the three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the pagans hell. Down here it's hot, but there it is hotter, without benefit of the constant humidity with which we are blessed. Dry as death, beyond jungle, upon the slopes of Cerberus, some of you will amuse yourselves studying geology, collecting interesting specimens of pumice stone and sulfur in basketfuls. Behind you, gentlemen, he put on the voice of a tourist's guide and every head turned to where he pointed, behind you a curiosity of nature which I beg you to consider yourselves welcome to examine at your own risk. The Raton Swamp, assault quicksand, alleged to be bottomless, leading to shark skin reef, all coral and a mile wide. Remember that I heard this speech four times a year for more than twenty years. I could repeat it in my sleep. After the reef, the surf. After the surf, five hundred miles of deep sea between the reef and the islands. Some of us may improve our knowledge of chemistry panning salt at the edge of the swamp. Thirsty work, but the air is so full of moisture that one scarcely needs to pause to drink. Between sulfur and saline and a low diet, a veritable health resort, a spa, bless my soul, rich invalids pay cash for less. Now the good God himself, he would go on, can't please everybody, and there'll be some restless spirits among you that might grow weary of the pleasures we have to offer and feel homesick for the great outside world. Well, my friends, the only way out of our little settlement is the same as the way in over the River Raton, which you've just crossed in a barge. It is shallow, and I do not insult the guests of the government by setting guards there, but I recommend anybody who has a regard for his health not to try it. Have the kindness, gentlemen, to follow me. The guards heard the prisoners to the river bank, and the Commandant says, In the first place, this piece of water is alive with that species a crocodile called the caiman. The caiman is a virtuous reptile. He is perpetually hungry, and yet never loses faith in man nor gives up hope, and is always vigilant. Worse than the caiman is the ratfish. We're rather proud of our ratfish. He's related to the shark and the ray. Ahoy there! Bring the goat. Two guards drag up a goat. They pick it up by the feet. In with it, says the Commandant, and they heave the goat out into the stream. The poor creature tries to come back, but all of a sudden the water seems to boil. The goat screams and raises first one leg and then another, and everybody can see that these legs are skeleton legs now, stripped white. It falls, struggles up again, half the flesh is gone from its head, and now a rotten log comes to life and splits in two halves full of green teeth. There's a snap, and the water is quiet. A million flies come down over the bloodstains, and that is that. The Commandant concludes, zoologically interesting, no more, but of ethnological interest are the Ratan Indians who live in the jungle beyond. Consider how difficult it must be to get a livelihood in that jungle where even the grisly flesh of poor convicts is esteemed as a delicacy. They are clever at making masks out of human skin. They like white men because they have beards to skin and mount as well as to eat, I mean, and have found that the human head peels better when the victim is still alive. But if the Indians don't flay and devour the lost traveler in these parts, the tigers will. And if he has the phenomenal good luck to escape both of these, he won't in any circumstances escape the snakes, leeches, and insects. So, go cheerfully to your allotted tasks, be grateful to the government for having abolished capital punishment and given you a chance to rehabilitate yourselves, and be thankful for your lot. As you will find out, this place is run on humane modern military lines, as they call them, no flogging for insubordination or idleness, only field punishment, number one or two or three and so on. In number one, they just tie your hands behind your back and trice you up so that you're standing on tiptoe hanging from a beam and you're left without water for 24 hours. No bloodshed, except what the flies draw. Number two is simply burnishing a big sheet of rusty corrugated iron. You're on half rations until it shines like a mirror, only the climate being what it is, the metal begins to rust in two hours so that the job is impossible. Like number three, which is to dig a dry trench four feet deep, since you strike water three feet down, it can't be done. After a week or two, sentence is not cancelled out but suspended, confinement in an underground cell that keeps filling up with water. If you don't want to drown, you pump day and night, 20 minutes in every hour. So I warn you to take things as they come, live from day to day, be philosophical and just let time pass. Remember, you're here to have your spirit broken but don't let it happen. Carry on, Sergeant. March the scum away. I took it hard at first, working on the jungle road. That was 20 years ago. We cut the undergrowth from dawn to dark but almost as fast as we cut it, it grew back and we're still chopping that same brush and still there is no road and not likely ever to be, the thought of which drives some men mad. It is the same with the pumice quarrying. We've cut and powdered mountains of the stuff which there being no road to carry it out by, the rains simply wash away. You must not take it to heart but learn to laugh at it. Just be calm. As for the guards, they are to be pitied rather than hated. Consider, for you this is purgatory and wherever you are sent, dead or alive after this will be paradise compared to it. But they are here of their own free choice and this is the best they could do for themselves. More of our story Crooked Bone by Gerald Kirsch When Weird Darkness Returns Sometimes you feel a bit nutty, especially if you're a weirdo. If that feeling transfers to your taste buds as well, I've got some great news for you. Weird Dark Roast Nutty Mummy Coffee Wrap your taste buds around this medium dark roast blend with shrouds of almond, honey, and chocolate. Each bag of nutty mummy is exclusive to Weird Darkness and is roasted to order. Then bandaged, I mean bagged specifically for you to ensure a maximum freshness for you, your mummy, and anyone else you share it with. Entomb your old coffee and bring your taste buds back from the dead with Weird Dark Roast Nutty Mummy at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. I've been luckier than most. A long time ago I happened to notice that certain grasses growing on the edges of the swamp are good for weaving. This having been my trade, I picked some and prepared them and passed spare time making myself a hat. Such a hat as only a man in love or a man in prison would think of taking the trouble to make for himself. He caught the old commandant's eye and he asked me, how long to take you to make that? Half hour here, half hour there, all together a month, your Excellency. How long would it take you working full time at it? Day and a half, two days, your Excellency? How long you here for? Life, your Excellency. And you have all the time in the world at your disposal. You lucky man! What duty are you on? The road, your Excellency. Sergeant, he said, take this fellow off the road and let him make hats. So it was my good luck that I was allowed to build a hut of my own for a workshop and make a lamp so that I could work after sundown. I wove five hats a week and also some little grass dolls which the commandant sold to a trader. I think he got a good price for them, for although he was not bound to give me anything, he made a practice of throwing me a few small coins for tobacco money from time to time, most of which the sergeant took away from me. But I still managed to hide away a copper here and a copper there. It all mounts up. In twenty years I got together over thirty dollars, which I hidden a hole in the ground, along with certain other treasures which I'll tell you about presently. I might have done a lot worse. For instance, I set lines for the big white mudfish that live under the banks and make very good eating, for all they are not very pretty to look at. Sometimes I swapped a fresh fish for some dried vegetables so that I was seldom without something tasty for my evening meal. I could have trapped birds if there had been any to trap, but they avoided our settlement, for there was nothing for them to pack up. What's more, I was never without company. There was no companionship on a gang. Every man is alone, wrapped up in himself, swinging the machete or heaving the dusty shovel or dragging the salt rake too miserable to care. But so that I could give all my time to weaving, I was always provided with some sort of assistant to cut, wash, dry and sort the straw and cut the little wooden pegs the dolls are woven around. Every man has his story, and out here, after a time, people find in their memories things they never knew were stored away there. Over the years I've had many assistants. Some of them, like foragers, unfortunate politicians, perverted school teachers and so forth, well-educated men, I learned a lot from them. I came here ignorant as dirt, but now I could feel comfortable in any company. Not as a talker, but as a listener. Cultivate this habit. It'll see you everything. With stillness and patience, you can sleep unharmed among snakes and tigers. Even the guards won't bother you. The Indians themselves will learn not to distrust you. Believe me, the Bretons are a very queer race of people, the shyest savages in the world. Even 20 years ago, they only very rarely let themselves be seen. Now it may be years before you catch a glimpse of one. They're little and quick and ever so quiet, and they live where the jungle is thickest. They paint themselves gray and green and yellow in spots and stripes to blend in with the leaves, so they can make themselves more invisible than a stick insect and can simply disappear, melt away even as you look at them. They make their tools and weapons out of quartz and other hard rock from the volcano, and I've seen a raton knife chipped out of rock crystal that was sharper than any razor. But of course, iron is better, and so we used that to trade with them in the old Commandance day. We'd leave an axe or a machete on the opposite bank of the river and go away. Soon, out of nowhere, there would appear beside it a heap of fruit and nuts, the carcass of a wild pig or an antelope. Try as you might, you could never see them leaving the stuff. You'd watch and watch and see nothing. Then getting tired, you'd turn your head or close your eyes to yawn and there were their trade goods. If you were satisfied, you took them away and later they would take the machete or the axe. If not, you waited, and they added to the pile until the trade was complete. The stuff they brought was for the officers and the guards, of course. The old Commandant dealt quite fairly with the Indians, almost generously, I may say, and did his best to get on friendly terms with them. He was, in a way, a very intelligent man, and his patience was remarkable. He had picked up rumors of gold in these parts and hoped that if there were gold, the Breton might lead him to it. It was told that it took him five long years to get on speaking terms with one of them, moving slower than the hour hand of a clock, a hundredth of a hair's breadth at a time, and a present every inch of the way. But there was no gold, only roots and berries and some spices and a little fresh meat. Only got worth selling was a few finely made stone spear and axe heads for the museums, but not even some of their dried heads, which nothing in this world would induce them to part with. So the Commandant lost interest and trade fell off. But the Breton liked armchetties and took to creeping into the settlement to steal them. They had no boats, and nobody knew how they crossed the river, which nobody would dare dip so much as a finger into for fear of the ratfish and the caimans. It was said that they had magic powers, a story that gathered strength as time went on, since even the sharpest witted guard could never manage to see or hear them, but only smell them. This calls for two remedies, says the Commandant, an extra strong lock on the storeroom and a pair of nice, fierce cacofuego mastiffs. A cacofuego mastiff, as you know, is brave enough and fast enough to stand off a charging panther. Two of these fine dogs were brought from Gaudiama at considerable expense. Their offspring guard the storeroom to this day, and very dangerous beasts they are. They have pinned more than one prisoner after dark, but they have never yet caught an Indian. None dared to come here after they arrived. The guards almost captured one Breton, though, only a week before the dogs were brought in. He got entangled in some bailing wire and a corporal managed to catch him by the ankle, but he kicked loose and ran. Half a dozen guns went off, and the air was thicker with buckshot than prisoner's soup is with peas, as the saying goes. They had him hemmed in, but he doubled back. I was working late by the light of a wick floating in fat when he came in, dazed for an instant, even by that tiny light. With my thumb over my shoulder, I made a gesture toward a heap of newly sorted straw, and he was under it like a snake. Just as the corporal came in and said, I just caught a Breton. I had him by the foot, but he slipped away like a fish. Stiffing his hand and spitting, have you seen a Breton? I shook my head. What kind of stinking grease do they smear themselves with? I said stupidly, perhaps it makes them invisible. He went away, and when things were quiet, I gave the straw a poke with my foot. Moved out the light, and said, On your way, Indio. He was a little Indian, our Commandant had made friends with, and he spoke our language. He said, You help, Pelotec. Pelotec help you. This bad place. You won't go away. I take you. Over river you come. I said, Oh yes, and be eaten up by the Caimans and the ratfish and the Ratans. No, thank you. You take this, he said, and gave me a carved knuckle bone on a thong. You, Pelotec brother, you take this. If Pelotec dead, his sons know. If his sons dead, his sons, sons know, and no hurt. You take this and keep. It was his identity, his private seal, as you might say, and it marked the bearer of it as one with him. Then he took from around his neck another thong, tied about a fish bladder filled with some waxy feeling stuff. This he told me was Ratan medicine against all the things that live in the river. This make you brother to Caiman, so Caiman no eat you. Caiman doesn't eat Caiman, and the ratfish leave the armor plated Caiman alone. They know its smell and don't break their teeth on it. What the Ratan did was very simple and not magic at all. They cut the musk sack out of the bull Caiman, mixed it with rancid Caiman fat and other things, and made of it an ointment, which they rubbed themselves before entering the water. And the longer it was kept in its bag, he said, the stronger the medicine got. You come, he said, and all of a sudden he was gone, as quietly as a puff of smoke, leaving behind him nothing but the Ratan Indian's smell, which now that I come to think of it, was nothing but the stink of crocodiles. I put the bag and the bone in the same tin box with my money, which I had hidden in a hole. I'd been here only ten years at that time, and had twelve dollars. But my heart beat high, because now I could see my way clear to getting away. Twelve dollars was not enough, though. I needed twenty-five or thirty to get over the border into Contrabano. But with patience, this could be scraped together. Of patience, thank God, I always had my full share. Patience and a quiet mind. Pacifico! My companions would say, calling me by my nickname, How the devil does a fellow like you come to be here? Were you framed? And I'd always answer truthfully. No, I was not framed. I'm here for life, for robbery and murder. How much was it for Pacifico? A roll of American money has thick as my wrist. Do you have yourself a good time, at least, before they caught you? I had the money in my hand, for thirty seconds. Poor old Pacifico, my fellow prisoner might say, You're the sort of mug that goes on the job blind without making a plan, and then gets picked up first time out. Thank God, that's sort of mug. Hunger drove you to what I suppose. A kind of hunger. Then I would shut my mouth, because my shameful little story has never seemed to be fit to tell. Sometimes I've envied great sinners, and would even have been grateful for that knack some felons have of painting themselves quite realistically redder than hellfire in blacker than night. What might they not make of a story like mine, if they had it to tell, but which I couldn't draw out longer than ten minutes if I chose to talk of it? I come from Yisour, in the Zamiya region. I was not ugly, and not handsome, a little better off than most, that I had my skill and my craft, as well as my bit of land. Some men envied me, because I was married to a good and very beautiful girl, Dolores, who loved me, and by whom I already had two sons. Was I happy? I was at peace, a little better off than I am now. It takes a man with the spirit of man that goes upward to be happy. Mine was the spirit of the beast that goes downward into the earth, and knows neither joy nor sorrow, but only the difference between comfort and discomfort. Then my wife's cousin came to Yisour, Teresa Rojas, a widow from Riego, and she was everything that Dolores was not. When Dolores was fair and soft as a flower, Teresa was dark and tough as an old saddle. Where Dolores was deep and round, Teresa was square and flat. Dolores was clean in her person and sweetened any place she set foot in, while Teresa was a slut who carried with her a musky stink as of wild beasts. Dolores was a happy wife and a loving mother, whereas Teresa was insatiable and loveless and barren. Therefore, when Teresa dug her dirty nails into my neck, made hooks of her hip bones and a cup of her belly, blew her tiger's breath into my face and said, the Americans are going after oil around Guadema. Money will flow like water. A man like you, with gold and hands, can make a fortune there. Leave that flabby Madonna and come to Guadema with me and let's have fun. Did I answer, what kind of a crazy man do you take me for? Did you ask me to leave the likes of Dolores and bed down with a polecat? No. I left everything to go with Teresa, and bolts and bars could not have helped me. She was as raw, rank and suffocating as your first mouthful of rum or tobacco, but God help you once you had the taste for her? Alas, for my gold and hands, my little skills, who wanted them in Guadema? Such strength as she left me, I spent on the splintery Derek's giving her all I earned. She was not even faithful to me, and this, in a way, was a relief to me. I had begun to believe that I must have gone mad to run off after a creature like this. She wanted money, always money. What was I to do? I asked her, coin money, print money. What use are you to me? Other women have pretty things. I give you all I have. All you have. All you have. What's the use of all you have? Other men walk with silver buttons on their vests and their girls in silks and satins. What do you want me to do? Go out and knock somebody down for his silver buttons? It would take a man to do that. Don't touch me. Go away. What I think of all I've sacrificed for you. You. Nobody. Go home. Go home to your sore and weave hats. Meanwhile, she had more than her share of pretty things, which on her became ugly things, for she attracted the lowest sort of men, and what she asked for, she got. I was eaten up with jealousy, but she said, if you don't like it, get out. I'm sick of the sight of your sheep's face, or take your knife and fight for me like a man. She loved violence and excited her. I'm no more and no less a coward than the next man, I said, but I have no fight left in me. You've sucked my blood. You are a sheep. Go back for God's sake to Dolores. I cannot. I'm empty. You are a fool without spirit. I'm sick to the heart. I'd fallen very low and had already taken to drinking. It was not far now to the bottom. Soon I'd become a murderer and a thief and then a convict, which brings me to what happened one night at Pericos. Guadema is a rotten place, loose ends and cast off bits of swamp, rock and jungle, kind of rubbish heap of creation, but the prospect of oil had drawn all sorts of people there and Perico did a roaring trade in his café. It was a long, low building with a corrugated iron roof, a room lit by hurricane lamps and furnished with chairs and tables and two dance floors, one of wood for customers wearing shoes and the other of trodden earth for those who came barefoot. A notice at the entrance which most people could not read and those who could read ignored requested clients to leave firearms with the attendant. There was a band, too, of instruments made of burrows, jawbones full of loose teeth, hollowed logs, gravel and empty gourds, pigs' bladders attached to whistling twigs, dried gut stretched on cane frames that made such music as may not be heard anywhere else this side of hell to which everybody danced. I'd been drinking a cheap cactus liquor that turns cloudy when you mix it with water, but then a German with a month's pay in his pocket had come to our table and, civilly begging permission to sit with us, bought fizzy sweet wine for Teresa and strong black beer for himself and me. She was all smiles. I knew it was going to happen, but did not much care. He asked my leave to dance with her. I shrugged my shoulders and said, with my lever without it, if she wants to dance, she'll dance. They added their shadows to the shadows on the walls, and I felt, in all my pockets, knowing that my money was spent. Nothing was there but my knife and three little copper coins. But just in front of me, several Americans in whole suits of clothes, businessmen amusing themselves seeing the low life of Guadema, were throwing money about in handfuls. As I looked, their leader, a great broad man with a tremendous voice, having just paid for wine with a banknote and told the waiter to keep the change, carelessly pushed his wallet into his hip pocket. A corner of it stuck out. He wore loose clothes, but the fatness of that wallet stretched his trousers tight. I stared at it. I could not take my eyes off it. All I had to do was reach out and take it and run. There was enough in that wallet to keep Teresa happy for a long time. My fingers itched, but stayed on the wet tabletop. If I had just one more drink, I thought I'd pluck up courage. But I did not have the price of that drink, and it occurred to me that it wasn't courage I wanted, but the will to steal. I was a poor man, but well brought up, and there were two things of which I had always thought myself incapable, begging and thieving. Ah, damn Teresa. I felt a sweat coming out on my face. To hell with her, I said to myself, I'll go home to Dolores, that woman without stain, and ask for forgiveness. I'll go now. But still I stared at that man's swollen hip pocket, thinking that, after all, one of the first saints to sup with Jesus in paradise was a repentant thief. Then all of a sudden there came out of the cigarette smoke, a little undistinguished man in khaki trousers who, passing in front of me, and moving smoothly as a fish, dipped two fingers into the big American's pocket, removed the wallet very swiftly and gracefully, and was gone in an instant. And in that same instant, I assured myself that to steal is one thing, but to take loot from a thief is something else again. Before the thought had even properly formed itself, I was out of my chair and slipping to the crowd, making for the door. I got one glimpse of Teresa dancing, clinging to the German somewhat as a weasel clings to a rabbit, her mouth just under the ear, and I little knew that this was to be the last time I should ever see her. Money she wanted, money she would have. I saw the thief dodging into the bush, keeping to the black shadows cast by the staring moon, and I smiled. There is no jungle so deep that as a Maya man can't make his way through it by day or by night. My foot touched something hard, an end of rusty iron pipe, half as long as my arm. It was with relief that I picked it up in mid-stride, for I did not want to lay my bare hands on him and heeded the thought of using my knife in the dark, but I did not mean to kill him. From time to time he looked back, but he did not see me, shortening the distance between us little by little I crept up on him. Now he felt that he was safe and stopped to light a cigarette. What kind of sneak thief was this, I wondered, and where did he think he was going? Most of them dived into the rat's nest of the shanty town that was Guadama and took cover in a bank of blank faces all like their own. This one, all alone, was on the path that led to the Guadama River forward. The drink was dying out inside me, but I felt very strange as in a fever dream. My hands did not belong to me, and the iron pipe seemed light and soft as fur. I came within striking distance at last, after four winding miles, and I was proud of my light-footedness because he did not know I was there until I said, pardon me, friend. He turned, and even as I struck him down, I was pleased to see the blade of his knife in the moonlight. He wasn't unarmed. One blow would have been enough, but as he fell I hit him twice more, backhand and forehand. He lay on his face. Now what I needed was a smoke, but having no tobacco, I put my hand in his shirt pocket and took his, which he kept in an old medicine-ten. I rolled and lit a cigarette, sitting on my heels like an honest man resting between spells of work. Very tired then I felt under his shirt, found the wallet, unfolded it, and saw that it was stuffed with money. Now, somehow it frightened and disgusted me. I thought, I'll have another cigarette, and then run back to Perico's, find the American, say, here's your money, which I took back off the thief who stole it, and hope for an honest man's reward. I didn't hear the footsteps of man approaching. Suddenly a strong light flashed into my face and something sharp pressed into my side. A little bayonet on the end of a carbine, and there stood a sergeant of carabiners and two men. One of the men turned the body over and said, He's dead, sergeant, this one. And another flashlight came on, so that I could see the face all covered with blood and jungle soil, the eyes and mouth wide open. The sergeant took the wallet from my hand, looked inside, whistled and said, When thieves fall out, honest men come into their own. He cocked his revolver, run for it, he said to me, but I kept still. He looked into the wallet again, found an identity card and said, Oh, hell, this is the property of Mr. Tracy Broadribb, the oil man, and had better be returned to him intact after all. The man who had turned the body over said, Sergeant, this is the one we're looking for. This is little Geronimo. No, the sergeant cried, bending down to look, while the other man tied my hands behind me, lashing my thumbs together with a cord. Yes, my God, so it is. I thought little Geronimo was always a loner, though. You, he said to me, since when have you been his partner? I could only say I never saw him before in my life. They laughed at that. The man said, Sergeant, shall I remove the head for identification purposes? That's the trouble with the likes of you, the sergeant answered. Science is wasted on you, and you have no idea of progress. Who needs his stinking head for identification? What do you think the Bureau of Investigations for? We've got his fingerprints, so simply go through him for papers and whatnot, and then cut off one thumb. After that, roll him into the bush and let the dogs and the buzzards and the ants take care of him. And to show me that there were no hard feelings, he gave me a drink of rum out of a flask, put a cigarette between my lips and said, You'll get life. Cheer up. Get last forever. I bowed my head in shame and was silent, then and later when I was tried and sentenced, and afterward while serving my sentence. A kind of hunger was the only reason I could give for my act. Crooked Bone by Gerald Kirsch continues in just a moment on Weird Darkness. Your Haunted Lives, True Tales of the Paranormal by G. Michael Vasey, a collection of creepy, often downright chilling, true experiences of the paranormal submitted by visitors to the My Haunted Life 2 website. The tales have been carefully selected and edited and range from apparitions to hauntings to demons through to the downright bizarre. This terrific collection of true stories of the paranormal will keep you looking over your shoulder. Your Haunted Lives, True Tales of the Paranormal by G. Michael Vasey, narrated by Darren Marlar. Here are free samples on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. I told my pitiful little story to only one other man and then in his very remarkable circumstances of which I'll tell you. Alvarado is a person of culture, the kindest of friends, the gayest of companions, and the best helper I'd ever been assigned, although he never spoke of himself without disparagement. About you, Pacifico, he would say, there's a sort of thunderstruck sanctification. Those beautiful, rolling words. You are a consecrated bullock, a sacrificial goat. You are Balaam's ass. To you is thou safety vision of angels, an honest weaver you were and are, and shall remain come hell or high water. Now I'm a hustler and a bomb by inclination, vocation, and proficient. Yet a pleasing laugh and fine white teeth, although he must have been 45 years old, and his red beard was streaked with gray. I have a crooked bone in me. I said, who is not? He said, lots of people have not. You have not. A man with a crooked bone would rather eat the worms out of another man's plate than the beans out of his own. He gets more spiritual nourishment out of stolen shucks than honest corn. Why? Because he has a crooked bone. Why, Alvarado? Because I come of a decent family, respectable, honest, yet not poor. My father was a lawyer. What made me joy, a tortilla rolled in a filthy fist in a marketplace and bought with a copper coin stolen from the poor box rather than a well-cooked meal at the table in my father's house. Why? At school I could do my studies without effort. Why then did I prefer to clamor up a pipe, break into a room, steal a sheet of questions, and pass an examination that way? Why? The crooked bone. I was kicked out of the seminary, asked to leave the university, paid to go away from the home, and stay away. I could have been a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, a priest, but before I was twenty-one I was forger, pitchman, abortionist, blackmailer, con man, card sharp, and pimp. With my gifts I could as easily have sold honest stocks and shares as false stuff, but the crooked bone, the crooked bone. Aye, aye, aye, Alvarado. Yes, aye, aye, aye, Alvarado. Naturally then I gravitated to patriotism, philanthropy, the service of my fellow men. I refer, of course, to politics. In politics, as in hell, everything is justifiable, excusable, pardonable, condonable, even laudable. Rob your father and murder your mother and say, I did it for the cause, and all's well. I slipped up there. The way to get on in politics is to attach yourself to a minority that will soon become a majority. That way you get to be a hero and find yourself in on the ground floor where the real pickings are. I attached myself to Carrera of the Progressive Liberals when he was getting sucker money from abroad. According to my calculation, Carrera was a comer, but Carrera seemed a waiver and weakened. He went into hiding over the border. I sold out to the Janta, just as Medina came into power, and I thought I was sitting pretty. But then came the so-called July Resurgence. Carrera's coup d'etat, he and his men came back out of the cactus like a dust storm, and I was swept away. Poor Alvarado. Was that how you lost your arm? I asked him, for his left arm ended at the elbow. No. This, he touched the stump, is a misfortune, and yet in a way it is not. Lack of this limb, since I can no longer handle cards or dice to my satisfaction, has made a beggar of me. Yet I don't altogether begrudge the loss of it. Half a pair of arms is better than nothing at all, and I came pretty close to losing arms, legs, and everything. My life, I mean. Yes, while there's life, there's hope. Oh, nonsense, says Alvarado, sentimental gook. As the wire worm in the scorpion, so is man. There is no hope, no law but the law of the jungle, and no mercy but the mercy of death. It is all a traveller's story. After that comes nothing, and anything is better than that. And he rolls a cigarette, wonderfully quick, with one snap at the fingers, and goes on, it was like this. Carrera was in, and I was on the run, wanted for questioning. So I did not wait to pick up some money I had put by, but made my getaway in my shirts and trousers, with only a handful of small change between me and starvation. A badly wanted man, and quite conspicuous because of my red hair. Now, as luck would have it, a swindler named Tracy Broadrip was pretending to drill a non-existent oil field at Guadema and selling shares in it. Every rascal in the country was there. So to Guadema I fled. Sure that I could make a steak there, and so escaped to North America by way of Contribano. And sure enough, first time out in a joint called Pericose, what looked like luck came my way. Tracy Broadrip himself, getting drunk with his friends, and with a wallet thick enough to choke an alligator sticking half out of his hip pocket. I said to myself, Oh Geronimo de Alvarado Iguzman, the devil looks after his own indeed. And I took a swift look about me. Certain things one remembers at times like these, and one thing that stuck in my mind was a certain group of people at a table nearby. There was a skinny, dark, flat-breasted woman with a horrible curved smile like a cannibal's necklace of human teeth sitting between two men, and looking just like one of Goya's witches. The man on her left was good-looking, but haggard and empty. The other was fat and pink in full of blood, and it was him she had her eye on. It was something like a bad dream, my friend, but then Broadrip leaned back to laugh at something, and his pocket stood open like a satchel. I had the wallet out in an instant, and an instant later was out in the dark and making for the path that led through the bush to the river Ford. I was safe, I thought, but then somebody said, pardon me, said it not casually, but in a tone of voice as if he really wished to be pardoned for something. As I turned, I caught a glimpse of the pale young man of the Goya group at Pericoes, ghastly in that moonlight, and then there was sunlight and stars and pinwheels and comets and firecrackers as he hit me on the head. The strange thing was that I didn't become unconscious. I couldn't move a muscle or a nerve or even blink an eye, but I was wide awake as sometimes happens in these circumstances. The pale man took Broadrip's wallet. He helped himself to a pinch of my tobacco and a cigarette paper, but put the tobacco box back in my pocket very punctiliously. Then, as he lit a cigarette, out of the bushes came some carabinos. One of them glanced at me and said, Sergeant, this is the one we're looking for. This is little Geronimo. He took my papers, and when they cut off the top joint of my thumb or positive identification, I fainted in real earnest. It wasn't until the ants stung me awake that I came too, naked in the bush in great pain from my throbbing hand from my thumb was festering, which is how I lost my arm. But I was on record now as being dead and was free as the air, and I stayed at Liberty for twenty years after that, and the things I did and the things that happened to me were more terrible and amusing than the Sargosa manuscript and the tales of Hoffman rolled into one. So, I suppose I ought to be philosophic about getting caught at last and having to serve ten years in this place, since I have got away with things that would have got me a thousand years in any civilized jail and a few death sentences into the bargain and have been living on a sort of borrowed time after all. What the devils the matter with you? Have you gone mad? For I had fallen on my knees, clasped him around the waist and burst into tears. I cried, for twenty years I have been praying for forgiveness and for the repose of your soul, but thank God I didn't kill you after all. Then I told him my story as I have told you. He roared with laughter and said it was the funniest thing he had ever heard in all his life. And I see the funny side of things too, he said. What a joke! It would be to march me up to the commandant, cut my throat before his eyes and say, This is the man I was sentenced for murdering twenty years ago. I can't be tried twice on the same charge. What now, Bombay? Don't even think of such things, I said. It is all like a dream, said Alvarado. And yet, as I was saying, although I ought to be taking things philosophically at this stage, I told you, rather than spend ten years in this hellhole, I swear I'll slit my throat. I said, I thought you said that anything's better than nothing at all. He was about to make some interesting reply, but I told him, Be calm, dear Alvarado. I'll get you out of here. I had for him now such an affection as I had never felt in all my life before. A great love. He said, There are only two ways out of you, by air in the bellies of the buzzards and by water in the guts of the caiman. Not so, I said, and told him what pelletetic the Bhutan Indian had given me. I have thirty-two dollars put by, I said. Be patient a year or so while I get together five more, and we'll make our escape together. This lifted him at first into a high heaven of hope, and he embraced me and made me get some rum to celebrate what he called his return to life. He witnessed the pleasure of a father who sees his son come out of a burning fever and call for food. Such was my pleasure in sharing a good drink with Alvarado, and letting him finish the bottle. But then his bright mood clouded over, and it was thirty-two dollars I paid three times that much for a pair of shoes. Five dollars more, my sweet Redeemer. I used to tip my bar by that much. And a year or so? A year or so? You talk easily of a year or so, you burrow of a pacifico. You are a lifer, resigned to this sort of thing and a hardened jailbird, a calloused soul. Can you understand what a year or so in a place like this means to a man like me? And how do you know that the Indian wasn't lying? And even if he wasn't, how do you know his ointment hasn't lost its strength? I said, an hour ago you were ready to jump into the river and chance it. The medicine gets stronger with age. Have faith. But how do you know there's enough of the stuff for two men? A little goes a long way. Oh, if I only had my two hands and a pair of dice. I can make you a pair of dice, dear Alvarado, but with whom could you play? From whom could you win what? Let me look at this precious return medicine of yours, he said. All in good time, friend. All in good time. But then he took the feeling in the thatch of my hut and in the walls, and I knew what was in his mind. But I persuaded myself that I did not want to know. We belonged to each other. Then one day, Alvarado, who never made a false gesture or a clumsy move in spite of his one arm, knocked over the water jar and said with a laugh, I'm getting owed, my reflexes are going. I said, your reflexes are all there, Alvarado, and you were young for your 45 years in spite of the life you've led. I know that trick. The tears trickled down my face. Where the water settles, there's where I dug the hole. After all is soaked in, digging the last place that stays damp. No? I was weighed down with a terrible loneliness. Alvarado, listen, there's no need to steal from me. I'm your friend. Let me tell you something. A man must live by a tale, a traveler's story told in the dark, a long dream. I have no hope of ever getting away from here. Why? Because to tell you the truth, I don't want to. I have been here 22 years, weaving my fingers to the bone, weaving my eyes out, weaving my life away. I'm not the man I thought I was, once upon a time. I'm afraid of the jungle that closes in. I'm afraid of spaces that open out. I'm afraid of new faces. And do you want to know a secret? When I have a touch of the fever, what wakes me up in a cold sweat is the dream that something drags me through a hole in a wall into bright light on an open road. And somebody says, Pacifico, you are free, but I'm an old man and all alone in a world of children. Imagine that. I was crying now. Take what's buried there under the floor. It's yours. I knew in my heart that I'd never use it. I only wanted to keep you with me a little longer or rather I only wanted to keep myself from facing the most horrible fact of all, that I don't want to be at liberty. And I covered my face. He grasped my hand then and said with a beak in his voice, Pacifico, I'll stay and keep you company. Bless your heart for saying so, I said. Just for a split second you meant it, and for that little moment God will forgive you all your sins at last. But even as the words passed your lips, the thought was going through your mind. Why didn't I knock this fellow on the head like the respectable outlaw that I am and get him off of my mind? Now I'll have to whip up a quarrel with him for my pride's sake, damn his eyes. That's what you said to yourself. What puts such a thought into your head, Pacifico? I read you, poor child. Yes, yes, the few dollars and the other stuff are in a hole in the floor where the water is settled. I'll get them out for you. I know the feel of that hole, the way you'd know the feel of a doorway to your own home if you ever had one. Don't work yourself into a rage against me and hate me simply to justify stealing those things from me. I've told you. As far as I'm concerned, it's nothing but a dream. Take them, Alvarado. With my, I know your sort, says Alvarado through his teeth. This is a common informer's gimmick. A dirty little lifer's trick to get a bottle of rum and a few sticks of tobacco is a reward for capturing an escaped convict. I run, you give the alarm, they make a public example of me. I read you right. I tell him, you can't accept a gift in good faith. You've got to con in pilfer. Still, I might have plucked up courage to come away with you in a year or so. I doubt it, yet I just might have. As matters stand, go with God. The guards won't be making their rounds for another hour, and by that time, you'll be over the river and in the juggle. Don't forget to smear yourself thoroughly. Just as a precautionary measure, says Alvarado, picking up the stick we beat out the straw with, I saw it coming, but had no time to guard my head. When I came to, the commandant asked me, why do you take out of that hole in the floor? I replied, all I had, nothing much. It was a strong smell of Indians. Did you see any Indians? No commandant. He had the luck of the devil, swam right across the river, and got over without a scratch. What the retons will do to him is something else again. He was an affable, educated kind of man. Anthropology is a fascinating study. Yes, commandant. Even in the lowest types, there is something of the divine spark. The Eskimos of the far north, armed with only bone spears, slay whales. The natives of the African jungles converse over huge distances by means of drums. The debased black fellows of Australia invented the boomerang, the Wamara, and a national language. The North American Indians converse in deaf and dumb gestures. The retons, we are told, have a kind of system of diplomatic immunity, and are said to issue Lassipase of carved bone, a lucky possessor of one of which may pass unharmed, even guarded to the most dangerous forests. Indeed, commandant, I have never seen one of these bones, and neither to the best of my knowledge as anybody else. Yet they are believed to exist, and woe betide the foolhardy fellow who tries to get by carrying another man's passport. He contemplated me again. He was your friend and comrade, and he robbed you, eh? You shared your room with him, and he cheated you. No, no, commandant. Your head is confused, I see. Well, no doubt he is working out his destiny. Without a Judas, there could have been no crucifixion. More of our story, Crooked Bone, by Gerald Kirsch, when Weird Darkness returns. I'm a man of habits. Okay, truth be told, my bride says I'm boring. I like the same stuff, and that's what I stick with. And that includes what I eat. Even for breakfast, I used to opt for a leftover pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers. Did I mention pizza? Anyway, now that I'm trying to lose weight and cut back on the carbs, I've had to make changes for breakfast. Now, instead of a big, heavy breakfast, I just grab one of my built bars, the best-tasting protein bar on the planet. Built bars satisfy my hunger with up to 19 grams of protein, and also satisfy my sugar craving, despite being less than 3 grams of sugar. And at only about 150 calories per bar, if I'm really hungry in the morning, I can grab two of them and still feel good about it. Try replacing your dessert or even a meal like breakfast with a built bar. You won't even know it's not really a candy bar. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Built and build a box of your own. Use the promo code WeirdDarkness at checkout and get 10% off your entire purchase. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Built promo code WeirdDarkness. So five years passed, and whatever money I made, I spent saving nothing. Then somebody discovered there was a great number of sapodilla trees here about. From the sapodilla comes chicle, of which chewing gum is made, and huge sums of money are spent every day on this strange stuff. Nothing stops civilized men when great matters are at issue. Do we need a level? We abolish a mountain. A canal? We stamp out yellow fever. Chicle gum? Out go the Ratan Indians from their forests and with a vengeance. They could pick us off easily, but when they started shooting their poisoned darts at chicle company men, a major of rangers came in with a punitive expedition. And that was a great day for the anthropologists and other men of science who accompanied the expedition and had their headquarters and some houses we built for them near our own officers' quarters. Carriers came in bearing baskets full of all sorts of primitive curiosities. Weapons, idols, paintings, jewelry, and most important of all, the Ratan tribal treasure of dried heads. Some of them hundreds of years old, and others quite fresh. There were also some prisoners, both male and female. Ratan women are curiosity too, their faces being bound tight at birth so that their noses never grow. The idea this was to make them undesirable to other tribesmen. But such is the nature of man that, before long, this horrible deformity was considered a mark of beauty, and they were doubly sought after. One day one of our guards came to my hut and said, The Commandant wants to see you. He says there's an old pal of yours there. You'll be glad to meet again. I followed him to the ethnologist's shed, and very strange it looked and smelled, lined now with racks of human heads, masks, and wizards' cloaks, over which some men in glasses were stooping, attaching labels. The Commandant was not there, but between two soldiers there squatted on the floor a very old and wisened Ratan. Feeble, as he was, they had a rope around his waist, of which each soldier kept hold of one end. I knew him at once. Palletetic, I said. Who say my name? You were in my place long ago, I said. I hid you under the grass, you gave me some medicine, and a little bone. He said, No, you say what is not. And he fumbled at a string around his neck and held up that carved knuckle bone which I knew so well. As he turned his face toward me, I saw that his eyes were white as milk. He was stone-blind. You know brother to Pelletetic. Pelletetic make brother to go free. Many, many, many sleeps away. Make him brother to Ratan. One heart, one spirit. He felt the carvings in the knuckle bone, smiled faintly, and said, This me, this my brother. I lied, he told me. He had been blind many years, but was not easily fooled. He was a chief among his people and a great doctor. He knew what was what. The man to whom he had given this bone and the Cayman medicine had been captured in the forest by his young hunters and brought to Pelletetic who could not see him but knew him at once for who else could carry that seal. His name was Pacifico and he remembered very well everything that had happened on the night he helped Pelletetic to escape. Ah, my little Avarado. Trust you not to miss a trick, I thought. Knowing my story by heart, seeing that the old man was blind, he had saved himself explanations by simply declaring that he was Pacifico, rescuer of Pelletetic, brother to the Ratan, on the run and headed to Contribano in Liberty. I gave my brother his want, the old man said. He go free. Here a gentleman in glasses said to me, The Ratan have now actual word for freedom. They have one word, Waxat, which signifies safety, victory, not being hungry, needing no sleep, having sexual gratification, and well-being in general. Pronounced with emphasis on the diphthong wa, it means death. With emphasis on the aqso, it means long life. Emphasize the aqt and you say me or self. Waxat, the old man said, touching his breast. Waxat! The gentleman went on. It is contrary to etiquette to let the stranger go and against taboo to let him stay, so this old person probably feels that he has done the man he refers to a very special favor. Keeping him in the family by drinking the ashes of his heart mixed with that palm wine which induces strange dreams, a sort of savage sacrament. I stammered. I understood the commandant to say these bones were, so to speak, a passport to safety. In a ghostly sense they are. The commandant came in then and said, Ah, Pacifico, here's a friend of yours. He ignored Pelotetic, beckoned me to one of the rats and picked up a dried head by its red hair. There I'm a friend. He who laughs last laughs best. Oh, poor Alvarado! I said and covered my eyes and I cried. Good God! I am a simple man. If it was after all your will that I be the instrument of Alvarado's doom, was it merciful or necessary to make such an operation of it? The commandant said, Why, I'd give a year's pay to see a few of my friends' faces on these racks. Now I've told you my story. This year the government declared an amnesty for all prisoners who had served 20 years or more. The commandant tells me that I am free. I say to him, Free for what, Your Excellency? Here I have work, food, drink, tobacco, shelter. Must I go begging on the roads? He replies, My friend, this is not a charitable institution. So with all the facts before you, will you have the goodness to help me word an appeal to the governor? Asking that in consideration of nearly 30 years of exemplary conduct and having regard for the fact that I was never guilty of the crime for which I was sentenced in the first place, I be kindly permitted to spend the remainder of my days here. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. And please, leave a rating and review of the show in the podcast app you listen from. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find all of my social media, listen to audiobooks that I've narrated, shop the Weird Darkness store, sign up for monthly contests, find other podcasts that I host, and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or somebody you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Plus, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Stories on Thriller Thursday episodes are works of fiction and links to the stories or the authors can be found in the show notes. Crooked Bone is by Gerald Kirsch from the anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents A Month of Mystery by Random House. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Romans 8, verse 28, and we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose. In a final thought from Michael Jordan, I have failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.