The case started like any other, but nothing in my years on the force prepared me for this. Reports kept coming in from Gladstone about sightings of a figure the locals had started calling the “Spriteman.” At first, I dismissed it as hysteria—just some ghost story meant to keep kids from wandering too far into the woods at night. But as the bodies began piling up, all with the same vacant expressions and no clear cause of death, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something darker was at play. Every lead ran cold and each witness spoke of the same thing: a fleeting glimpse of something wrong, something ancient, lurking in the shadows.
The Spriteman isn’t like anything I’ve ever heard of. Witnesses describe it differently—some say it’s tall and spindly, others swear it’s hunched and crawling, but the eyes are always the same. They say the eyes burn into you like they’re seeing something far beyond flesh and bone. But what unnerves me most are the whispers. There are rumors around town that the Spriteman isn’t just some phantom or a figment of the collective imagination; he’s an eldritch deity, older than the town itself, drawn by the fear and despair of those he haunts. People talk about cursed places, rituals performed in the dead of night, and secrets buried deep within the town’s history. And every story leads back to him. I’ve been digging through the archives, tracing the first reports of his appearance. The oldest record I’ve found dates back over a century, long before Gladstone became the quiet little town it is today.
It’s clear this thing, whatever it is, isn’t bound by time. I’ve seen my share of killers, and monsters, in human form, but the Spriteman—this is different. There’s no motive, no pattern, just a trail of fear and madness left in his wake. I’m not sure what I’m chasing anymore. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s watching me now, just out of sight, waiting for me to get too close.