Dark Artifacts: The Key to Everywhere

A few years ago I developed a fascination with Creepy Pastas, not as a new breed of urban legend that may or may not be true, but as a new way to tell stories.  After reading and listening to hundreds of them, I decided to try my hand at writing them.  

Most of them, even the ones with interesting or truly disturbing premises, are pretty badly written.  Doesn’t stop them from being worthwhile reads, if only for the ideas they plant in your brain, or the chills they can inspire.  Most are credited to safely anonymous usernames, or go completely uncredited, and (I think) put out into the world with the hope that they will go viral, not necessarily to earn their authors money or notoriety.  

I’m not planning on making any money from these, though I certainly wouldn’t mind them going viral.  I’m writing them because it interests me to write them, and I’m sharing them because I am honestly curious to if my readers find the form as engaging as I do.

Most of these little creepy pasta style Knightmares fall under one of three categories; Dark Artifacts, Dangerous Games, and Sinister Cryptids, and I might collect them all when I have enough to make a collection worth while.

I hope you enjoy them.

Brian

Dark Artifacts: The Key to Everywhere

Find the oldest antique mall in your city, and go there on a Sunday morning.  If it isn’t open on Sundays, then you are at the wrong place.  You’ll need to find another mall in another city.  Arrive as soon as it opens Sunday morning, because once the local church services end a blue haired old woman in a floral print dress will arrive to browse the carnival glass.  There is more to this woman than meets the eye.  If she sees you, she will try to kill you.  Whether or not she succeeds, your search for the key will end and that location may be forever closed to you.

When you step inside the clerk will ask what you’re looking for.  Tell her you’re just killing time.  If she doesn’t ask again, you’re in the wrong place and won’t find what you’re looking for.  If she does ask a second time, tell her you’re interested in vintage pewter.  She’ll point you in the right direction.

The room she sends you to will be disorganized, none of the items for sale priced, most of them stored in old wooden crates.  The lighting in that room will be low, flickering, and may fail completely, so you should be sure to bring your own light source.  Once you step into that room, you have no more than a half hour to find the key.  If you haven’t found it, or given up and left before your thirty minutes are up, the old woman in the floral print dress will join you in the pewter room and attempt to kill you. 

Among the jumble of antique pewter candlesticks, pitchers, plates, and figurines you’ll find an antique clown bust piggy bank.  Put a penny on the clown’s outstretched hand, and ask “Grobiano Villis, how did you survive the fire in Mystic that destroyed the rest of your troupe?”

Push the lever on the back of the clown’s head that makes him tip the penny into his open mouth.  After it swallows the penny, release the lever.  As the hand drops back down below its mouth, a key will fall from the open mouth and land on it. 

They key is yours now.  You’ve already paid the clown for it, so don’t attempt to pay the clerk for it on your way out.  Any attempt to pay for the key a second time will summon the old woman in the floral print dress. 

You can purchase the clown, if you want to.  There is no telling what other strange treasures the clown might give you.  If you do purchase the clown, be sure to store it safely away from where you live and sleep.  If it is near you while you sleep, it will speak to you in your dreams.  It may appear and speak in your dreams even if you leave it where you found it, but it’s influence increases with proximity.

No good will come of this.  It will tell you many interesting things, and the knowledge it gives will drive you mad.

The key will open any door or unlock any lock.  Be aware that some doors were never meant to be opened, and not all doors you open with the key lead where you think they should.  Many people have been lost stepping through doors they were never meant to open.