My girlfriend Melissa was an adventurer. She loved exploring ghost towns, especially ones that were not well-known to the public. She was keen on finding the grave of Abby Henderson in the short-lived town of Hollowed Cup. Located in rural New Hampshire, Melissa told me most locals had no clue the town even existed. Melissa was also a history buff, and she was fixated on coming face-to-face with Abby’s headstone to see if the quote written on it was truly there. We were a few miles away from the town when I started to question Melissa about the significance of discovering Abby’s resting place.
“So, you mentioned this Abby woman was a prostitute or something like that in the early nineteen hundreds, and she brought in men from all over New England who were looking for a good time. What’s the big deal about that?”
“Ethan, it’s more than that. She dabbled in the dark arts. Rumor has it, she made a deal with the devil to kill one thousand men in exchange for a power beyond human comprehension. I don’t know exactly what that means, but apparently every time she got intimate with a man, she pricked one of their arms, peeled back a piece of their skin, and ate it.”
“Are you serious? That’s disgusting.”
“But that’s not the end of it. When the men returned home, they got deadly sick and suffered a ghastly demise. Each and every one of the men she hooked up with died within days of being with her. We’re here!”
I looked ahead out the passenger-side window. A deserted shack of a house with vast unkept farmland next to it. Melissa put the car in park.
“I don’t see much of a town here,” I said.
“The town itself only had fifty-two people, but after word spread that Abby might have had something to do with the first handful of deaths, the hard-working families of Hollowed Cup abandoned the town. They were too afraid to confront Abby. It was only after months later that a group of women from another town banded together to put an end to her.”
“What did they do?”
“A friend of a friend tells me these were women who were married to the men who had died of the sudden illness.”
“So, they cheated on their wives?”
“Yes, and the women who killed Abby did so in a horrific way. They found her in her whore house, pinned her to her bed, and set her ablaze. But even more disturbing, accounts from two of the women mentioned hundreds of arms reaching for them from within the flames.”
I let out an uncomfortable chuckle. “Okay, that sounds ridiculous.”
We both stepped out of the car. Melissa ran over to the wooden fence and hopped over it.
“What are you doing? That’s trespassing!” I yelled.
“Ethan, look around. There’s nobody here. We haven’t seen a person in miles.”
We walked for ten minutes and then stumbled upon the headstone.
“It says it, I can’t believe it! Here rests Abby Henderson and the skin of a thousand arms.” Melissa nudged my shoulder. “This is incredible.”
“The smell, what is that? It smells like a sewer,” I said.
I walked behind the headstone. A huge pile of rotting clumps of flesh were resting against the back of it. Before I could vomit up my lunch, Melissa wrapped her arms around me from behind. A slight stinging pain emerged from my right arm.
“What are you doing? Did you prick me with something?”
Melissa nodded. “We’re here. We have to make a sacrifice and pay our respects.” She motioned toward the pile of skin. “As you can see, everyone does it.”
“This really hurts. I can’t believe you did that.”
Melissa shot me a look that said I’m sorry, please forgive me, but she was determined to leave a piece of me behind on Abby’s grave. The wound on my arm was no bigger than a pinky fingernail, but it hurt like hell. Melissa pulled the skin and gently tossed it on top of the other flesh.
Annoyed by her gesture, I refused to speak to her the rest of the day. When we got back to her place that evening, she promised to make it up to me. And I knew exactly what she had in mind. I was in my boxers waiting for her under the covers. After she removed her clothes and climbed into bed, she positioned herself on top of me. And then it happened, the most disturbing images my eyes have fallen upon.
An arm poked out of her mouth, the hand scratching wildly against my face. A dozen more arms broke through her chest and clawed at me. Her eyeballs popped out as more arms emerged from her eye sockets. I was unable to free myself. Melissa’s head exploded, as hundreds of arms jutted out like firework sparklers. There was no more Melissa. Just arms.
I remembered her story about Abby. I knew there was a lighter inside the bedside table next to me. Somehow, I managed to reach into the drawer and grab it. The buzzing orchestra of arms pummeling me finally came to an end when the flame connected. The arms squealed and scurried along the floor for a few seconds before they finally went silent.
Of course, I’ve had no luck in convincing officers into believing my story about Melissa’s death. As far as they are concerned, she is a missing person case that needs to be solved. But I know what I saw that fateful evening. Abby Henderson still has power beyond our comprehension.