24 Jan A New Kind of Year

Posted at 08:47h in Strange and Unexplained by CreepypastaStories.com 0 Comments

📅 Published on January 24, 2026

“A New Kind of Year”

Written by WallaceTheMagpie
Edited by Craig Groshek
Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek
Narrated by N/A

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🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available

⏰ ESTIMATED READING TIME — 10 minutes

Rating: 10.00/10. From 1 vote.

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To the writers of Retlaw and Drummond’s Almanac,

I’d like to thank you for the vestige.

Your county map, in its textured patchwork of onion yellow and copper goner green, was among the last to list my fair town by name. Of course, I understand why that needed to stop.

While I am thanking I would like to say hello to another reader whose name is James. James, thank you for always taking note of my columns. I like to think you’re the reason the almanac publishes my writings but realistically I fear they have no choice.

Every place named by man has its inputs and its outputs, determined by markets greater than any mere creature or its best laid plans. Any spot of space ruled by a name burns the very fat of beings and gives to the wind a smokescreen of tall tales.

Ecology and economy alike abhor a vacuum. In a landscape that strains to yell over itself a few quiet nights spell death.

Such is the hush of Grixemburrough.

Let me tell you of the last of our borrowed time.

Down the winding belts of former industry, past the gutted mills now humming with mechanical pneumonic infrastructure, there is a formidable building where I have roosted, though the only sign of life to an outsider would be the glow of the plastic candle in my window.

I set up shop here as a witness, having observed only from above the paper the disappearance of towns like Muncy, Drophaven and Corner Hook. Sound familiar? No. No, they don’t.

There are no longer other tenants in my building so my door is open to the dark wilderness of the halls. At one point a heavyset, dark skinned hospital orderly lived downstairs. She must have gotten sick of commuting for hours because I know of no hospital in Grixemburrough. There is a clinic but it’s always closed, its “Visiting Hours” sign bearing a clock with no hands.

Occasionally I used to hear an older woman bluster in, slamming doors and raving like a feral cat. She would have arguments all by herself, perhaps stagings of real interactions from the past. Soon afterwards a car would be heard accelerating violently into the distance. Even this occurrence became sparser before dropping out.

It was said that the landlady inherited the house from her father who made his cut in the oil industry. She would often bring wealthy men in to be entertained, emerging at times with bruises and sucker marks. As her body gave out, this became less lucrative.

When the slab of space I call home first dropped off the map, the winter nights took on a new quality, almost softer in the manner of the sugar snow which covered our streets.

On my walks around town I would catch sight of forbidden scenes.

I passed an industrial facility with a 12 foot, spiked fence. On these premises stood a colossal white tent as well as a whole host of cranes, girders and other less nameable implements.

In this seemingly protected lot was a party of three human figures. A man with greasy hair, dark glasses and a paper bag on top of his head, a stout dark-skinned man with no semblance of a neck and a woman who appeared scared, attempting to vanish inside of a windbreaker hoodie. Only the porthole in the front gave her a view of the others.

The three sat, not around a fire but a mechanical box with a window into its red lit, wiry viscera.

In this light, cradled in the young man’s hands was a certain creature, it would be hard for a spectator to say if it were a fat pink worm or a naked mole rat. The little being squirmed and silently opened its mouth so wide to the sky. Its teeth protruded just a bit.

The movements of this creature spoke in an ancient universal language of uncomprehending protest, of a blind little form assaulted by voices, by wind, by the beating of its own tireless heart.

The entrance to the white industrial tent structure parted ever so slowly behind them, revealing blackness.

This is the type of scene a healthy person has the sense to never notice. There are certain things you only see with nails in your eyes.

In one of my wanderings during the lengthy, stillborn witching hour I’ve come to expect from this town, I spotted what appeared to be a little white ranch home protruding out of a textile mill. It was lit by the faint glow of red string lights which rendered the snow in sticky frosting tones.

An inconspicuous sign showed a crudely traced image of a realistic white hare popping out of a hat. Off center, blocky text read “New Years!!! -Is More Of A Good For A Special Reason-“ followed by a hurriedly hand painted “INSIDE”.

I am given to curiosities so I wandered in. The red string lights had slithered through the door and were supported by nails throughout the room which stretched them at haphazard angles, threatening to grab the neck of a rushing visitor. I was greeted by a table of many costume top-hats.

At one corner someone had dumped out a can of cranberry sauce into an antique china bowl, the contents still retaining the shape of their original container. A four foot tall sculpture of the snow shoe hare on the sign was turned facing the wall. By the door stood an enormous prop champagne glass bubbling with seltzer tablets.

I proceeded through a doorway, following only the faint buzz of a speaker in the absence of any lights. I felt around until I came upon an empty row of seats and took one.

Stage lights.

A man who must have been a hundred years old stared off into space from center stage. He was extravagantly dressed in a tux and tails that were several sizes too big for his spritely form. He began…

“Good night!”

There was a long pause. I heard a cough which surprised me because I assumed I was the only one in the audience. The old man continued…

“On twisting blood, and clotted time, a little sprig of columbine, to be a knowing (old ones do), I float down in the floor with you. With la dee da and splendid goose, my leech has milked the moon”

With the year blessed by this incantation the old man took on a more conversational tone.

“Now with that out of the way, I’d like to begin our pageant.”

Behind the old man were several chutes. He grabbed a metal scoop and a sack and began to feed some unknown contents into each. He explained:

“I little bit of dust here, a little touch of gray. There sure are a lot of months. My father was a butcher so he certainly knew how much they all weighed. He brought home a sheep on my birthday and it still hasn’t spoken to me. Call that a sweater…”

This got a laugh out of me.

“Which brings me to the comedy portion of our show…. Here is a ‘Year Joke’.”

A prerecorded drumroll was cued with abysmal timing, slightly cutting off the old man’s words and making him repeat himself.

“Sometimes…. Sometimes there’s a bird……”

On that cue a man entered stage left. This man was the exact spitting image of a dear friend of my grandfather, who used to give lectures at nearby schools. He had a friendly lightbulb head, ever closed eyes and a permanent smile of stoicism. Ever the helpful gent he rephrased and finished the joke.

“Sometimes a fledgling robin will be born without wings. I want you to know… That when it jumps from its nest it is committing suicide!”

The old man’s eyes burst open in mock amazement “Smart little cookie!”

A sound like a piano being punched and a slide whistle losing its way down a back alley played out. These two weren’t bad actually. The old man sang accompanied by synthesizer:

“Little birds, little birds, why did you come from an egg? Little birds, little birds, little birds….”

Once the song was over the old man drove a questioning little finger into the stomach of his guest and said “Now I’ve got a question for yoooouuuu!”

The old man gave a nod to someone standing stage right and a lifeless body was dropped, hanging from the ceiling by an extension cord. This was the exact spitting image of my grandfather’s friend who studied it, casually, watching it sway with a little rubbery creak. In his defense he said “Oh now come on…”

The old man said with a shrug “We might as well get to the new season.”

On that cue but with no further warning stage lights were cut leaving the room in pitch darkness. After a few concerning moments a new light occurred: That of a raging fire, first tracking blue around the room, then into yellow and white hot, the roar of the flames was furious, unwilling to be contained by the little space.

I ran as fast as I could from the home which collapsed behind me with astonishing lightness, almost paper thin. Shreds of the roof blew into the blurring night air, animated by heat.

This was the season of sirens. It lasted 72 hours.

During these hours a gale whipped flocks of papers off the newsstands on which I stocked the almanacs and into the air where they’d cavort in the streets in swirling eddies. Most were from the day before we dropped off the map, what few new ones that joined them were printed over many times in a catastrophically dense tangle, only occasional little phrases could be discerned.

I could read things like “This is neurotic”, “Do you know what I’m going to have to do with you?” And “You break things and act like it’s ok.” Along with unspeakable filth and expletives lost in the tirade of it all.

I got swept up in the excitement of the season as well. When an old wheelchair was carried into the road by a particularly fierce gale I took hold of it, finding myself dragged away by the beast until I caught my footing and hurled it into the side of a bank. We looked like a pair of swing dancers. As it began to wheel away on the sidewalk I jumped in and rolled backwards for a bit.

James caught a glimpse of this scene and cheered me on. He was hurrying through the streets balled up in a hoody. Before he ran off he shouted something to me and pulled a double take over his shoulder concerned that I didn’t hear it. Remember something…

The winds of the siren season soon ceased. One night I could hear them blaring, off key, ascending and descending chromatically. Through this, when walking I would hear men, women and children inside residential buildings. They were all screaming at the top of their lungs, I could even hear their throats giving out. The lights were never on.

The season was not without fertility.

On the third night I came home to find the door to the attic left open. Following the stairs I found this loft space lit up and seemingly inhabited at some point.

In the muck of a clogged sink there were things moving, too bulbous to be rats, too clumsy to be fish.

Pristine tulips were growing out of the floorboards that I found smelled strongly of ammonia.

While investigating I was startled by the clanging of an enormous fire-bell. Its tempo was sparse and erratic, allowing plenty of time for each strike to resound. I couldn’t help but wonder what triggered it. As I was following its wire I noticed something just a tad off.

The fire-bell was becoming furious with some new jammy redness. Soon it was hyper saturated beyond any named color. All this excitement was too much for mere matter so it began to drip, sopping with such perverse life as to heave a wet confession. Like a hoard of drunks commiserating all objects bloomed and fermented into their own nauseated shades of a lost and wretched autumn: Bright fleshy rust, purple like prune stewed liver, screaming rubber yellow and a few which would laugh at names.

There was a hard knocking at the front entrance. I still have no idea who it could have been.

I dead bolted the door and slept on the stairs that night. Occasionally I’d wake up from fitful sleep to check out the window for vehicles. Nothing.

As is the way of nature this season burnt out. It exhausted the very last of the town’s energy and all that was left was the season of the end.

It has been said that a total vacuum will often entertain wild fluctuations of matter. The season of the end had its own ecosystem just as the burnt out electrochemistry of a substance abuser may give way to seizures and hallucination.

I’d see little things, not quite creatures, not quite charms skittering through the halls. A mantis made its way from door to door rolling an 8-ball with scissor scrapes of its scythe-like hands. Must have been a toy.

Bulbs on the streetlights began to burst as if the air was greedy for their source of light.

On the last night there was only the moon and my little plastic candle.

I returned home from an entirely silent walk, kicked off my shoes in the hall and wondered about the nature of time.

I approached the beacon of my plastic candle and looked out at the black canopy of rooftops.

“What are you doing?”

Your voice, James, sounded nauseated, as if some deep wrongness had wrenched your viscera, twisting your mouth open into a snarl.

I reflexively stumbled back behind the table before being relieved to see my old friend. However, he did not look well. James was sitting in the cigarette burnt recliner I had rescued from a curb, blending in well with the tobacco stains. He had always been a very skinny man but now looked like a mere shock of wrinkled skin, winding its way into the upholstery.

James continued “You KNOW we’re not supposed to be here. What is… Why are you still here?”

I stared absently at the cheap warmth of the candle, walling off several thoughts and unruly feelings “Well, it’s not for the food. I’ll tell you that much.”

He continued undeterred “Ok, like… Look… The almanac, right? That was super important. I loved it, you loved it. What did it teach us?! What did you learn writing to yourself?!”

He was entirely right, I had no response. The reason my letters to the almanac have always been published is because I created the thing. All of it. Not only that but James himself was likely my only reader.

It was my wirepulling hand that struck Grixemburrough off the map. It was a mercy, a kindness.

James buried his face in his hands and prodded on, now more diplomatic “You made your choice, man. Now we have to GO. Do you know what’s out there? If you didn’t want all this why did you fucking… fucking drop us off the map?!”

I steeled my nerves and measured by voice “I… hate…”

James looked as if I had exposed him to a vile smell. He threw up his hands and looked away. “What the hell are you talking about? Why are we still talking?!”

I went on, choosing my words calmly with steady deliberation “I hate… Every individual person. Their face and their eyes, how they move. Truly, there are no words to say it. There is a violence in their words, they perform every cough, every moan, their life is an artificial state, an induced fever pitch. They act as if there is something more to them than two holes connected by a failing digestive system. Every shred of their being knows they need to be put out. It’s a return.”

In all of this I still had not answered his question. Why had I not simply dropped the guillotine, snuffed every voice and brought it to the town to the end it sorely deserved? What had to be done was to finish my almanac. I suppose spite is a bit stronger than mercy, it certainly takes command over the animal mind.

I took my pen in hand and signed my name on the last empty page. James deflated in an apocalyptic sigh of relief and signed his on the next page.

The last thing he told me was “I’m sorry man… It was really… A great thing we made. We saw a lot. But you can’t take the seasons with you.”

“James, are we dead?”

He laughed in a comfortingly familiar rasp “There isn’t anything even called death, what’s waiting for us isn’t like that. It’s nothing, really. There’s no word for it.”

James flipped on his dark glasses and threw open the window. “Alright… It’s been real”. He dove, arms outstretched through the drained air. He was even elegant until the impact snapped his bony little arm and compressed him neck-first into the cold dark street.

And with that I bring this almanac to an end.

See the seasons
What they wrought?
Hateful gazes
Brave inkblot

Draw the eye
To skitter scuttle scorn
To draw out the answer
And cycle no more