Charlie

About 180 years ago, there was a small town...more of a village, really. A single man owned the entire 900-acre village and built houses for other people to live there with him. The man lived on the highest point of this village, in a beautiful home with his family.

He had a lovely wife, two strong sons, and one small, young, sickly daughter. He loved all his children evenly and never wrong his wife. He hanted his tenants, though. He was always miserly, never inviting anyone from the village to his home for his holiday parties, nor attending the festivities of anyone else, even the funerals of some long-standing tenants.

This upset the villagers to the point of hatred toward their landlord. One particularly rough year, the crops had done poorly. That winter, the villagers were starving...all but the well-to-do landlord, that is. He was throwing his annual Christmas party for his friends and family, enjoying fine feasts, and drinking to good toasts and fine health.

Later that night, the daughter came in wearing a sock that one of the villagers had knitted her to act as a puppet. It was a hideous old rag, but his daughter loved it and the villager that gave it to her was a good man.

"Papa, Charlie says the people are mad at you," was the only thing the girl said before walking out of the room the entertainment was happening in. The father, angry about the interruption of his good time, sought the daughter out in her room, but she was fast asleep.

The one thing that disturbed him was the sock on her hand - turned at an angle that mustn't have been comfortable - looking at him. He ignored it and walked out, imagining he'd just had too much brandy and not enough sleep. That night, as the landlord and his wife slept in their chamber, they heard a knock at the door.

"Mama, Papa, Charlie says he needs to speak to you," said their daughter, voice muffled by the closed door. "Come in then," responded the mother, still partly asleep. They saw their daughter walk in, blood dripping from one hand and the sock on the other, faced up and staring at them both.

"Charlie already spoke to Jacob and Michael," said the daughter, walking and moving the sock as if it was speaking. "Now he must speak with you."

The villagers, seeing no candles in the windows for weeks and no smoke from the chimney, decided to check on the family. What they discovered shocked them.

The brothers, both strong boys comparable to men, had had their heads twisted off and placed on their hands as if the heads were puppets. The same had happened to the parents, both of them also found dead and decaying in their bed.

The most disturbing of all was the girl. She was sitting in the corner, her head upon one hand, smiling with eyes open. On the other hand was the sock, Charlie, as she had called it after the old man that had given it to her. Due to the rigor mortis, it seemed the two hands were speaking to each other.

Just recently, a family moved into the house. They moved to the country because a doctor said it would help their sick daughter possibly recover faster. Everything was fine until one night, when the mother heard the daughter call for her.

Before the mother opened the door, she heard her daughter talking. She peeked in and the girl was fast asleep. "What did she need, honey?" asked the father. The mother paused before speaking.

"I have no idea. She must have been talking in her sleep. Do you know where she got that God-awful sock puppet? She was wearing it on her hand and it almost seemed like it was staring at me."