Creepypasta stories

The Thing That Will Kill Me

I grew up in a tiny town in Vermont. Tiny in terms of population, not size—there were huge sprawling farms and wooded areas, but almost no people. More cows than people, which is standard for a lot of small towns in Vermont. So, clearly, not the most fun in the world for a kid who was sick of freezing winters and awful, balmy summers surrounded by boring Vermonters that didn't have many kids my age.

My only close friend was Tina, who was a year older than me. We spent almost all our time with each other, constantly dreaming about life outside of Vermont. The people in our town were strange folk. Different. Different than in other places. One thing I didn't realize about small towns until I moved to the city is how incredibly superstitious the people could be. They believed in the strange, the paranormal. They believed in Luvia.

Luvia was an older French-Canadian woman who had moved to Vermont when she met her husband. And everyone in town thought she was clairvoyant. Psychic. Even my own parents did. One day, my mother lost her wedding ring. She had looked around everywhere for it. They called Luvia and she immediately told them it was "under old, rotting wood". They looked in the backyard, where my father had been tearing apart a decaying piano he'd found. My mother had helped him one day. The ring was there. Under old, rotting wood.

After hearing a lot about Luvia from older townsfolk who seemed to think she was 100% credible, Tina and I decided to go see her one evening to try to find out whatever she could tell us about "the future". I was skeptical, but it seemed like a fun thing to do as a joke.

So, we dropped by her house in the early evening, and she opened the door as we walked up the pathway to her house, before we even had a chance to knock. Tina elbowed me hard in the ribs and whispered that Luvia was clearly a psychic—she sensed us coming to the door! I whispered back that it probably had more to do with her house being full of windows, and the fact that she probably saw us coming from a long way away. Either way, I started to feel strange the minute we got close to her. She was very, very old—very tiny and kind of... sunken. Sunken eye sockets and sharp cheekbones and a sort of concave chest cavity. It was more than a little unnerving. But she smiled, and was sweet to us, and I started to warm up to her. Nothing about her or her house screamed "creepy psychic" to me—just a well-dressed older woman in a cabin-style house. It looked like how you'd imagine any typical grandmother's home—doilies, knitting, family magazines, etc.

We told her that we were interested in a "clairvoyant reading", and handed her about twenty dollars that we had scrounged together between the two of us. She led us to her kitchen table, and asked which of us wanted to go first.

"What can you tell me about my love life?" Tina asked.

Luvia had no crystal ball, tarot cards, or tea leaves. She just closed her eyes and sat silently for about two minutes. Then, she took a deep breath and said, "Michael Carten."

Tina stared at her for a few seconds, until Luvia repeated: "Michael Carten. The man you're going to marry. Michael Carten."

Tina thanked her, and repeated the name to herself a few times. Michael Carten. Michael Carten. Michael Carten. Luvia then turned to me.

"Whatever you can tell me, I'd like to hear," I said. "It doesn't have to be about my love life or anything."

Luvia closed her eyes for a few seconds, but information about me seemed to reach her much quicker than her visions of Tina's husband. She looked straight into my eyes, grabbed my hands and said:

"The thing that will kill you is shedding its skin."

"The thing that will kill you is sharpening its teeth."

"The thing that will kill you is washing the blood off of its claws."

"The thing that will kill you is gathering skins."