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Everyone knew the story of the Weeping Man. It was the story mothers told their children when they refused to sleep. Don’t go out after dark, or the Weeping Man will get you , they would say. Keep the windows shut. Keep the door locked. Everyone knew the stories, Ranboo and Tommy included. There were more to the stories than just keeping your doors locked and windows shut. There was one tale that Ranboo had always found particularly bone chilling.
It had happened years ago, before Ranboo was born. The story told of a boy, the mayor’s son, who was acting a bit strange. Stranger than usual, that is. The boy had never been the most social, preferring instead to spend time in his father’s basement, mixing chemicals and occasionally starting a small fire. Other times, he’d go on walks alone in the woods.
One day, he stayed out a bit longer than usual. Long enough that his father was worried. He sent out a search party and they found the boy in a clearing, sitting on the ground and laughing. The mayor scooped his son up and carried him home.
The boy snuck out more, always found in the clearing, laughing. The mayor supposed he had made a friend with someone from out of town.
“Why don’t you invite your new friend round for dinner?” the mayor suggested.
“I don’t think he’d like that,” the boy said.
“Why not?”
The boy shrugged, and that was the end of the conversation.
Snow began to fall as the boy started coming home later and later, but his father had learned to accept that. He always made it home in the end.
One night, the mayor was awakened by someone banging on his door. He went down and answered it, sleep still clinging to his eyes. A hunter stood in the door, propping up the Mayor’s son, who, the hunter explained, he had found passed out in the forest. A blue handprint marked his face, and he looked like he had been out there for a while. He was cold to the touch.
The next day, the mayor began making changes to keep his son safe. He was not allowed out of the house without his father. He didn’t go back to his hobbies of accidentally lighting the basement on fire, instead, he would sit in front of a window and stare at the forest. He would stare for hours, hardly moving.
The blue handprint didn’t wash off. No matter how many times the mayor made his son scrub his face, no matter how many times he did it himself, it didn’t budge. The boy swatted his father away, face red from harsh scrubbing, but the handprint was still there.
Weeks went on, and a storm came. The mayor could not sleep with the wind howling and wailing, so he went to check on his son, who had never done well with storms. He did not find the boy curled under his blankets, hiding from the storm, but instead at the window, staring out at the storm.
The mayor called the boy’s name, but he didn’t acknowledge him. The mayor walked closer, resting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Whatcha looking at?” he asked.
It was like the boy didn’t hear him. He didn’t say anything, just stared at the same spot. When the mayor looked down at where his son was staring, he saw a figure. It was a man, out in the storm, and he was weeping and wailing. Seeing this, the wailing of the wind grew louder and more human-like. Thick, dark blue tears streamed down the figure’s face. He was dressed in a thin sweater and pants that were stained with the same dark blue coming from his eyes.
The storm continued for days, and every night, the mayor heard the wailing of the figure outside. He spent restless nights sitting in the chair in his son’s room, watching the thing. The ghost. Because that was what it was. It never left any footprints, never left any mark it had been there except for the drops of blue on the snow, which were soon after buried.
The ghost only came at night, weeping outside the windows. It came for days, and then the storm ended. The mayor didn’t expect the weeping ghost to come back. Why would it? The storm was over. Its wails couldn’t be hidden by the howling wind. The mayor and his son were safe now. He slept soundly, content with the knowledge that he and his son were safe.
The next morning, the boy was not in the house. He was not in his bed or the basement, not the kitchen or the dining room. He was nowhere to be found. He was simply gone. Feeling a sense of deja vu, the mayor organized a search party. They searched the woods for hours before they found the body.
It was the boy, the mayor’s son, dead on the ground. He was cold, frigid, unmovingly stiff from the cold. His lips were tinted blue and his eyes stared vacantly into nothingness. Dark blue handprints littered his body and written on his nightshirt, in the same navy liquid was one single word:
MINE
And that was the end of the story.
The story had always freaked Ranboo out. He’d cover his ears when the other kids at the orphanage started it up. He didn’t like it. It scared him. It still scared him, not that he’d say that out loud, but in all truth, he was terrified of the Weeping Man.
Fortunately, he hadn’t heard the story since he left the orphanage. He and Tommy snuck out on the same night and they’d stayed together ever since. They had been acquainted at the orphanage but never really friends; Ranboo had been far more taciturn than the outgoing Tommy, and yet, outside the building, the cold wind of the ending winter, still blowing, the two had decided to stick together. In the months since their escape, they had stayed together, sharing food, money, and shelter. They were close as could be.
Their current place of residence was an abandoned house on the edge of town. Neither of the boys knew the reason it was abandoned, but it more than held them and it was free. Ranboo was on his way home from work one day, and when he got there, the house was eerily quiet.
Now it wasn’t unusual for Tommy to leave after he got home from work, but usually he’d leave a note by the door, saying when he’d be back and where he was. Today, there was none of that.
“Tommy?” Ranboo called. The empty house held no reply for him. He shrugged it off, assuming it was just a mistake and Tommy would be home soon.
Tommy missed dinner, which was quite unusual. The boy loved food and hardly ever missed dinner, yet Ranboo was sat alone at the table, picking at his food, appetite lacking greatly.
The sky darkened as night drew nearer. Tommy was still not back. Ranboo began to get anxious, waiting by the door, checking the windows any time he heard a noise. When the sun was at its final moments for the day, Ranboo lit a lantern and set off to find his friend.
Something he hadn’t noticed on his way home was the set of footprints leading away from the house. It had rained earlier in the day, leaving the ground soft and malleable. Ranboo followed the footprints, guessing that they might have been Tommy’s. Their nearest neighbors were a bit of a walk, so who else could have left them?
The prints led into the woods, which was unsettling. What business did Tommy have in the woods? Ranboo held the lantern out in front of him, taking comfort in the light that it cast, letting it guide him through the forest. He called out for his friend a few times, cursing himself for not bringing a jacket. It was nearly autumn and the nights were getting cold again. After what felt like an eternity, stumbling through the blackened woods, he came to a clearing and there in the center of it sat Tommy.
He looked peaceful, smiling to himself as he sat on the ground. His eyes were open, but unseeing. The lantern cast shadows on him, adding to the overall strangeness of the situation. Ranboo felt almost like he was intruding on something, despite being in the middle of nowhere with no one to disturb.
“Tommy?” he whispered, unsure of why he couldn’t raise his voice any louder. He didn’t like this. It was cold. It was dark. It was wrong .
His friend’s eyes flashed to him, and he frowned. “Where’d he go?” he murmured.
“Who?” Ranboo asked. He hadn’t heard anyone else out here. He hadn’t seen anyone. It was just the two of them.
“The-the man. My new friend,” he said. He looked around the clearing, searching, his brows furrowed in confusion when he didn’t see anyone else. “He was just here. Where’d he go?”
“Tommy, there’s no one else out here. We shouldn’t be out here either.”
“But-”
“Tommy, please.” Ranboo tugged the other boy to his feet. His hands were cold. He’d been out here for hours. “Let’s just go home, okay?”
“He was just here,” Tommy mumbled as Ranboo led him by the hand out of the forest.
The trend continued, of Ranboo finding Tommy out in the woods after work. He always complained when he was dragged home, saying that Ranboo had scared off his friend and that he didn’t like him. Ranboo was unsettled, to say the least, as he’d never seen a sign of the friend. When he asked for details, Tommy didn’t say anything. He spent his time staring out the window towards the woods, as if he were waiting for something. He wouldn’t eat unless Ranboo forced him to.
The situation was unnerving. Something was wrong with his friend, but he didn’t know what.
One night, Ranboo got back later than expected, held up by needy customers and a talkative coworker, along with the foot traffic that began the later you stayed out. When he got home, the sun had already set. Tommy was nowhere to be seen, so Ranboo lit the lantern and went out to get him.
As expected, Tommy was in the clearing, though unexpectedly, he was not sitting and smiling. He was, instead, asleep on the ground. Or, rather, unconscious. Ranboo was no expert in the difference, but Tommy’s eyes were closed and he did not respond to his name being called.
Ranboo lowered his lantern to the floor, shaking his friend by the shoulders to wake him up. The wind wailed past his ears as he noticed a mark on his friend’s face. A dark liquid was dried around his jaw, shaped almost like hands, as if someone had cupped his face with ink on their fingers. The wailing wind grew louder and he could swear he almost heard words in it.
Mine! the wind seemed to cry. Mine! Leave! Mine!
“Alright, Tommy, up, we need to go!” He pulled the boy up, which did get him out of unconsciousness, and into the state between sleep and wakefulness. Groggily, the boy followed his friend out of the woods.
Back home, Ranboo left Tommy on the couch, a blanket wrapped around him, as he made tea. Tommy was cold. When the tea was finished, he poured two mugs and handed one to Tommy. Tommy took the mug, but did not drink it.
“Tommy, we need to talk,” Ranboo said. “You can’t go out in the woods anymore.”
“But my fr-”
“No! Tommy, he’s not your friend.”
“Yes he is,” Tommy mumbled, curling in on himself under the blanket. “He’s my friend.”
“He’s not.”
“He is.”
“He’s not.”
“How do you know?” Tommy snapped, letting the mug of tea fall to the ground; letting it shatter, the tea spilling out over the floor. “You’ve never even met him, Ranboo! You don’t know anything about him! He’s my friend!”
“Tommy-”
“No! No, you don’t get to do this. I’m leaving. Goodbye.” Tommy got to his feet and ran for the door, blanket still around him like a cape.
“Tommy!” Ranboo called after his friend.
There was no time for a lantern to be lit. The wind howled as Ranboo raced after the blond boy. Tree branches grabbed at his hair and clothes as he plowed through the dark forest. He called out for Tommy, but he didn’t stop running. The trees opened into a familiar clearing and Tommy had stopped, but he wasn’t alone.
The wailing of the wind was louder here, despite the lack of movement. A figure stood in front of Tommy, thick navy tears streaming down his face. Ranboo had heard the stories. He recognized the ghost. He recognized the Weeping Man. The ghost’s pitch black eyes met his and the ghost shrieked.
“MINE!!” he cried, holding onto Tommy. “ MINE! ”
“Tommy,” Ranboo tried. “Tommy, snap out of it. We need to go.”
“ NOOO!! ” the ghost shrieked. “ MINE!! ”
“Tommy!”
“ MINE!! ” The ghost pulled him closer somehow. Sobs filled the air at an unparalleled volume and then, all of the sudden, everything stopped and the ghost was gone.
Tommy dropped to the ground like a brick and Ranboo was by his side in a moment. “Tommy, we’re going home now,” he said, rolling the other boy onto his back. Tommy didn’t respond. He felt cold. “Tommy,” Ranboo insisted. “Tommy, not funny. Time to go.”
Tommy did not respond.
Tommy had no heartbeat.
Tommy had no breath in his lungs.
All he had was a word written across his chest:
MINE