The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

I was going to post this before, but I forgot about it until yesterday. Earlier on in the month, Matt over at X-Entertainment.com, commented on a PSA advert about drink driving which had given himself and some of his readers a case of the spooks as children. During the course of discussion, DJ D made the error on thinking it’s safe to discuss childhood fears anywhere near me. Poor guy.

A Truncated account of the discussion:

DJ D: I totally remember the skeletons in the car one, and remember it kind of creeping me out, and yet really liking it at the same time. The thing that always got me with the one where they slam the beer mugs together was, how in the world did it not cut their hands all to shreds? It’s funny how when our parents tried to scare the safety into us back then it just really messed us up. I kind of have a similar story. When I was like 4 or 5, we were at the beach and I was running around and ran into some big guy with a long beard who was smoking a cigarette. He said something like, “Hey, watch out, I’ll burn with this cigarette here.” He said it in a way to just warn me and tell me to be more careful, but I took it as a complete threat, and apparently, to hear my parents tell the story, for a few years after that I would get kind of freaked out around any big guys with long beards for fear that they would come after me, lit cigarettes in hand, looking to burn the hell out of me. To this day, the idea of Santa smoking a cig makes me a little uneasy.

…

Guise: DJ D, now I have a great mental image…Old Man Stubbyfingers.

He lurks in closets of small children, and when it’s foggy out that’s really his cigarette-butt fingers filling the air with smoke. Eventually he’ll creep out, stroke his chest length beard, bend over and hold twitchy, burning ended fingers towards the kid. He’ll give a friendly-yet-twisted smile and say “oh, be careful, sonny…or I’ll burn ya!”

…

DJ D: Guise, What are you trying to do to me? You cruel, cruel man.

So, now I present you with a campfire ghost story to tell your friends or children. The Terror of Old Man Stubbyfingers.

Young Jimmy was a popular child at school and his parents rarely had trouble from him, but one night trouble came to find him.

As Jimmy lay in bed in his spaceship pajamas, he heard a strange wheezing sound. He looked around his room, but everything was still. His eyes turned towards the window, where a light fog cast a haze over the crescent moon. He lay back in his bed and pulled the duvet up to his nose.

As his eyes flickered closed, the wheezing began again. He peered towards the closet, and saw through the crack in the door a faint orange glow that seemed to rise and fall like a heartbeat. Sweat began to form on his forehead as he watched the glowing and listened for the wheezing, which seemed to fall in time with the orange light. As the light grew in intensity, Jimmy saw trails of wispy white smoke pour in the gaps between door and frame.

Slowly, the closet door knob twisted and the door eased open.

An old man with a chest-length white beard trundled out, his form hunched over. The old man cast his gaze over Jimmy and stroked his beard thoughtfully. Jimmy’s eyes set on the old man’s hands, where he could see what passed for the old man’s fingers: smoking cigarette butts. As the old man took a breath in, Jimmy could see that he was exhaling through the fingertips, causing them to smolder.

The old man crept along the floor, flecks of grey ash falling like snowflakes from his fingers. As he got closer, Jimmy could see streaks of yellow in the man’s beard and a deranged, friendly smile of sharp brown teeth.

The old man reached the side of Jimmy’s bed, and Jimmy could smell the thick stench of his breath as the old man leaned in close. Jimmy could feel a puddle forming in his pajamas, the warmth spreading across his inner thighs. The old man traced a stubby finger across Jimmy’s face, leaving a trail of ash and sticky yellow tar, causing Jimmy to shiver.

“Oh, be careful, sonny,” the old man whispered, his sickening breath filling Jimmy’s nostrils, “or Old Man Stubbyfingers’ll BURN YA!”

The old man cackled and sucked in a deep breath, as his fingers exhaled the room filled with thick smoky haze. Jimmy couldn’t see anything, and never would again.

When Jimmy’s parents went to wake him the following morning, all they found his bed was a small pile of ash.

Sweet dreams, children.