Beware of Blind Murphy

There is a thing called Blind Murphy.
As he is blind, so shall you be.
Silent in sight, he?ll crawl and creep,
Until he drags you into the Sleep.
I read the words again, my gaze moving over the soft peaks and valleys of the neat, childish scrawl that lined the front cover of the book. It was just an old, worn down copy of ghost stories?I loved scary stories when I was a kid, and back then it wasn?t as easy to get them as it is nowadays. This book?this one I had actually checked it out before a few years earlier when I was about nine or ten. It had been too hard for me then, but as my love of stories had grown, so had my capacity for reading them. By fourteen I was ready to give it another try, and my excitement only grew at the creepy little poem I found in the front. It hadn?t been there last time I?d checked the book out, I?d have remembered it. And I?d never heard of Blind Murphy before either.
I asked my best friends, Kenny and Roxanne, if they?d ever heard of it, and when they said no, I showed them the book. Kenny just rolled his eyes and said it looked like kid stuff, but Roxanne seemed interested. She read through it a couple of times and then her eyes lit up.
?It?s a riddle.?
Kenny puffed out a disgruntled sigh. We were supposed to be going to play basketball and now I?d gotten Roxy distracted by what he called ?my nerd ****?, which was his general term for anything we talked about that didn?t seem interesting or funny to him. Ignoring him, I asked Roxy what she meant.
She flipped the book around and gave it to me. ?I mean, I can?t say for sure, but if you look at it, it?s not just a poem or whatever. Look how it?s worded. It?s like, he?s blind and you?ll be blind too. Silent in sight?I don?t know what that means, but then its talking about him crawling and creeping and getting you and?well, I don?t know. Knocking you out? Putting you to sleep??
?Like a dawg!? Kenny interjected, earning a glare from Roxy. Ignoring her, he met my eyes. ?Come on. It?s getting late. Can we get going??
Roxy smirked. ?I think he?s scared. Afraid Blind Murphy?s going to come and get him.?
Kenny?s face flushed red. We?d all been friends since fifth grade, but in the last year or two he?d gotten more and more sensitive when Roxy gave him a hard time. ?I am not. It?s just?It?s just dumb ****. Stupid kiddie ****.?
Torn between sympathy and cruelty, I gave into the latter. Looking down at the book, I started reading the poem or riddle or whatever it was over and over like a melodramatic spooky chant. Roxy stood up and started echoing it, dancing around Kenny as he fumed. I knew I should stop?he was going from irritated and a little embarrassed to something deeper?anger or sadness, or maybe some kind of fear I didn?t understand. Or maybe I did understand, at least a little, because my own heart was beating fast now, the words tumbling out faster than I could catch them as I rolled through the lines quicker and quicker, Roxy?s eyes growing startled and wide as she began to jump and dance and scream the lines loud enough that a distant part of me worried someone would come from inside the library and tell us to leave the outside benches where we were hanging out. I could feel something stretching out between us three, drawing tighter and tighter as everything sped up and the air grew thin.
?**** you both.?
Kenny?s words seemed to break the spell for us all?not that he said it, but the emotion behind it. We?d really hurt him, and as he stalked off, he ignored our yells for him to stop, to come back, that it was only a joke. I could see from the direction he was going he wasn?t heading to the court anymore, but going back home, and feeling a stab of guilt, I looked over at Roxy and asked if we should go after him.
She shook her head. ?He?s just being a baby. He?ll be fine. You?ll see.?
The next morning my mother woke me up, crying, telling me my friend Ken had been killed in his bedroom the night before. The police wound up talking to us, but we had nothing really to tell. No explanation as to how or why someone got into Kenny?s room, drug him under the bed, and then crushed his eyes in their sockets.

---

Me and Roxy barely spoke again after that. Kenny?s death was between us now, but he wasn?t alone. Blind Murphy was there too. I knew I hadn?t told the police anything about the words in the book, and I felt sure she hadn?t either. Not because we didn?t think it was somehow important and connected, but because we knew it was. The idea sounded crazy in the daylight, but in the shade of our hearts, we understood that those words?and maybe how we used them against Kenny?had called something to him, and maybe to us as well.
I spent weeks after that waiting for it to come for me. Jumpy, anxious and sleep deprived, I wound up at the ER for a panic attack and that led to therapy and medication to deal with ?grief issues?. It helped some, but time helped more. By the time I was in college, I?d put enough distance from Blind Murphy and Ken that I didn?t think about them every day, much less fear something was going to get me.
That?s when Roxy disappeared.

---

It was big news when it happened. A pretty twenty-one year old is abducted from her apartment in the middle of the night. Her roommates said she?d come in from running in the park looking all upset and flustered, but when they?d asked what was wrong, she?d just shook her head and went into her room, locking the door behind her. When she didn?t come out the next day, they eventually got the landlord to get the door open and check on her. There were some signs of a struggle in there, but no Roxy or sign of where she?d gone. Even ten years later, no one?s heard from her since she shut her door.
Except that?s not entirely true. Because that night, some time between when she got home and when she was taken, she texted me. We hadn?t talked since the summer after high school ended, but I still felt a strange tingle of happy excitement when I saw her name pop up on my phone. Maybe enough time had passed that we could actually start being?
Close your eyes
Close your eyes? What did that even mean? I texted her back a couple of times asking what she was saying or if there was more to the text, but I never heard back. It wasn?t until three days later that police out there contacted me about the message sent from her phone and I first learned that she was gone.

---

Time hasn?t dulled my guilt or fear this time. I?ve known it?s more a matter of when than if, and bleak as it sounds, that inevitability almost makes it easier. Not that I wouldn?t stop it if I could, but I don?t know what it is or if it can even be stopped. And if I can?t do anything to stop it, at least I can try not to worry until it comes, kind of like dying from cancer or a heart attack.
Except cancer doesn?t crawl across the ground as it tries to sneak up on you.
It was just dumb luck that I saw it at all. The sun had set a few minutes earlier and I was finishing cutting the grass when one of my bluetooth earbuds slipped from my sweaty ear and fell behind me. Muttering to myself, I turned and bent down, squinting for it in the deepening gloom. My eyes lit on the earbud for a moment before something a bit farther out caught my eye?movement in the freshly cut grass headed in my direction.
At first I thought it was a bug or even a small snake, but then I realized I was wrong. The movement wasn?t between the blades of grass, but on top of them. Something unseen was pressing them down from above?two smaller patches divided by a much larger patch of depressed grass just behind. As though an invisible figure was pulling itself along, silent and invisible.
Letting out a yell, I stood up and took several steps back. The depression paused its progress before course correcting to keep heading in my slightly new direction. Even without seeing it I knew what it must be, and I was terrified. My strongest instinct was just to run into the house and lock the door, but something stopped me. For now I could see where it was at least, and it was moving slowly, though there was nothing to say it couldn?t jump on me at any moment. The idea of that made my heart pound harder, but I forced myself to just slowly walk backwards while keeping it in view. If I just ran off, I?d lose track of it, and next time I might not see it when it came for me.
Still, just walking around backwards forever wouldn?t work, and it could clearly track me from whereever it had come from. What else could I?
Close your eyes
Roxy?s last words came back to me and I almost shut my eyes immediately, but fear made me hesitate. What if it moved when I had my eyes closed? Or what if it knew I closed my eyes and took the chance to leap on me? Shuddering, I forced myself to stay calm. Why would Roxy say to close my eyes? She?d gotten away from it that night, hadn?t she? And it had taken it a few hours to catch up to her again. What did she know, and how did she know it? Maybe she?d just gotten lucky like me, or maybe she?d figured out?
Silent in sight, he?ll crawl and creep?
?Oh ****.? Taking another two steps back away from the unseen creeping thing, I forced myself to close my eyes.
Immediately new sounds flooded my ears. The sound of it crawling through the dry grass toward me was faint but distinct, though I could only hear it when the whispering stopped. The low, crooning words that Blind Murphy was whispering to me.
?Come, come. Come with me. Sleep by my side and be mine. We will sleep and dream.?
Letting out a gasp, I opened my eyes. I felt a moment of panic when I realized I couldn?t see the depressions in the grass anymore. Looking around, I saw how close I was to the back patio, where there was nothing to mark the thing?s passage. I closed my eyes again
?Oh the things?
And opened my eyes as I turned and took several steps to the side. It had somehow gotten behind me again. It was somewhere up on the concrete. Swallowing thickly, I shut my eyes back.
?won?t miss them. Not at all. And you?ll be with?
Looking up again, I saw a leaf crumple on the patio from some unseen weight pressing down on it. I had to...my eyes landed on the lawnmower. Marking the leaf as best I could in my memory, I ran over to it and pulled the engine to life. Grunting with the effort, I swung it around and charged at where I thought the thing would be, terrified I?d miss it. Suddenly the lawnmower jumped in my hands as it hit something. I grabbed the handle tighter and tilted it up until I could push on top of Blind Murphy and hear the blades begin grinding down as they cut into some invisible bulk. I held it there for a moment, but it wasn?t going to be enough. The blades were already grinding to a halt, and I could feel it trying to struggle out from underneath. Looking back, I saw the can of gasoline I?d used earlier in the afternoon.
I made the mistake of closing my eyes when the fire flared to life. It had struggled out from under the mower as I dumped the gas on it, crawling toward me as I fumbled with the matches I?d found in the shed. But when the match caught, it burned brightly, a searing purplish flame curling up so quickly that I?d closed my eyes in pain.
It was then that I began to hear it screaming. I wanted to relish the sound, to savor some revenge against the thing that had killed my friends, but the sound was too terrible, and after a moment I opened my eyes and stepped away. When the fire had died down, I hacked at the burned patch of concrete with an axe until I didn?t meet any resistance anymore, and then I raked whatever remained into a deep hole before covering it over.
I knew it was dead, I felt sure of it, but I still couldn?t bring myself to sleep in the house knowing it was buried outside. I?d have to figure out something else long-term, but for that night, I got a motel room halfway across town. I was exhausted by then, but it still took me hours to get asleep, and when I woke up, it was still dark. It hadn?t been light that had disturbed me, but motion.
The sensation of something or someone crawling onto my bed.
I went to open my eyes when I heard a soft, feminine voice whispering to me. I hadn?t heard it in years, but I still recognized Roxy calling to me from the foot of the bed.
?You didn?t have to kill him, did you? But that?s all right. That just means there?s more room for the two of us. We?ll be together again in the Sleep. Just let?
I rolled out of bed and ran to the bathroom, flicking on the light.
It looked like I was alone.


Source.