🪙 The Nightly Storyteller Presents🚗 The Drive Home A Gold Coin Curse

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🕯️ Intro — The Scarab Signal

> Before we begin…  
> If you have a scarab necklace, wear it. Let the cheap plastic feel cold against your skin.  
> If you have a gold coin, hold it. Feel the impossible weight of it—the heat.  
> And if you don’t—  
> Just listen. Just feel the darkness pressing in.  
>  
> Because tonight’s story isn’t about monsters that hunt.  
> It’s about invitations that are answered.  
> Markings that are recognized.  
>  
> Welcome, my dear listener… to The Drive Home.  
> The shortest, longest journey of their lives.

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🏚️ The Unquiet House

It started like any other Halloween—  
but with a wrong note playing beneath the surface.

Sarah took her son, Leo, trick-or-treating.  
They saved Grandma and Grandpa’s house for last—her childhood home, tucked like a forgotten tooth at the edge of Coldwater Ridge.

The air smelled of damp pine and something else… metallic and old.

She wore a plastic scarab necklace from the Halloween store.  
It blinked an erratic, feverish red and green—less festive, more frantic.

Leo was a small, earnest knight, his plastic sword dragging a lonely scrape-scrape-scrape across the pavement.

Her parents were too quiet.  
Their smiles were wide, pinned, and didn’t reach their eyes.  
Scrubbed clean—  
not with pride, but with fear.

The air was thick with cinnamon and her mother’s old perfume—sweet, powdery, and desperate to hide the dust.

They handed out candy and dropped something heavy into Leo’s bag—  
a foil-wrapped gold coin chocolate.

> “For the brave ones,” her father said, voice flat and unfamiliar.

Sarah’s skin prickled.  
She didn’t remember that heavy iron bowl from childhood.  
Didn’t remember the segmented scarab decorations—  
not plastic, but carved wood and brittle bone—lining the mantle.

A cold dread pooled in her stomach.  
Like river mud. Like memory.

And then—  
a flicker of something she couldn’t quite grasp.  
A flash of her younger self, reaching for a glass scarab on her mother’s dresser—  
and being told, sharply, “Not that one. Never that one.”

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🛑 The Pulse and the Hum

On the drive home, the last streetlights thinned out.

The scarab necklace went dark.  
Then began to glow steadily—no longer blinking, just pulsing.  
A hot, crimson stain against her collarbone.

Leo dug through his candy. “Mom, this coin’s so warm.”

She glanced at it, trying to dismiss the fear tightening her chest.  
“It’s probably just—”

Then the coin hummed.  
A low, resonant MMMMMmmmmm that vibrated inside her teeth.

The radio didn’t just cut out—it screamed.  
A burst of white noise, like a voice tearing through a sheet.

The headlights sputtered. Died.  
The road plunged into blackness.

Then she saw it—  
a shape, impossibly fast, low to the ground, moving wrong—  
like bones learning how to crawl.

She slammed the brakes.  
The ABS screamed. The car skidded, stopped.  
The scarab snapped against her throat.

Fog swallowed the world.  
It smelled of ozone and wet rot.

> “Mom?” Leo whispered. “Is someone out there watching us?”

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🪲 The Static and the Siege

The question wasn’t answered by a voice—  
but by a sound.

Scratching.  
Not glass on metal, but something chitinous.  
Wet. Mandibular.

Then tapping across the roof—  
heavy fingernails.  
Then under the car—  
a dragging sound, wide and slow.

Sarah’s hands shook too hard to turn the key.  
The engine was dead.  
Two blocks from home, and the car was a thin metal cage.

The scarab necklace flashed violently.  
Leo clutched the coin. He didn’t cry. He became angry.

> “It’s not fair,” he shouted. “Leave us alone! We didn’t do anything!”

He threw the coin.  
It hit the windshield with a metallic CLANG, bounced, and rolled into the dead beam of the headlights.

The humming stopped.  
The scratching stopped.  
But the fog pressed harder.

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⚔️ Elric’s Entrance

In the sudden silence, a cloaked figure appeared.

Unnaturally tall.  
Still.  
Cloaked in something darker than fog—something that absorbed light.

Only his eyes were visible.  
Glowing furnace-red beneath the cowl.

Then the creature came.  
Not one thing, but a swarm—  
a shimmering wave of legs, wings, and static,  
buzzing like a thousand power lines shorting out.

It lunged for the car.

But it couldn’t touch the figure.

The moment its claw crossed the threshold of the coin’s landing—  
Elric moved.

He didn’t draw a sword.  
He raised a hand.

A soundless shockwave shattered the air.  
The creature shrieked.  
It recoiled, collapsed, reformed.  
It tried again.

Nothing.

Leo stared. “Who is that?”

Sarah whispered, “I don’t know. Why is he here?”

Elric struck again.  
Not with force—  
with unraveling.

The creature dissolved.  
A sound like dust on a hot stove.  
The smell of burnt sugar and sulfur lingered.

Elric turned toward the car.  
His voice was calm.  
Old.  
Marked by a foreign accent.

> “You’ll be fine. It cannot take what’s been marked.”

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🩸 The Lingering Mark

Sarah threw the door open, gasping.  
Her legs buckled.

> “Who are you? What was that thing? What do you mean, ‘marked’?”

Elric paused.  
His eyes didn’t look at her.  
They looked through her—  
at the scarab necklace, the sweat, the terror clinging to her soul.

> “Elric,” he said.  
> “And you’ve been spared. But do not confuse spared with safe.”

He gestured to the spot where the coin had bounced.  
It was gone.

He looked at her neck.  
The scarab necklace had begun to melt—leaving a red welt.

> “The coin was a lure.  
> The necklace, a signal.  
> They found the invitation you didn’t know you sent.  
> But the creature is gone.  
> It respects the debt.”

He turned.  
Not walking—  
resolving into mist.

Before he vanished entirely, his voice lingered—  
a whisper carried by the fog:

> “Every coin carries a weight.  
> And I carry them all.”

Then he was gone.

The fog thinned.  
The headlights flared.  
The radio returned—playing a cheerful Halloween pop song.

Sarah slumped against the door.  
The scarab cooled and hardened against her throat.  
The welt remained.

She drove the last two blocks in silence.  
The smell of burnt sugar lingered.

> “Mom…” Leo whispered as they turned into their street.  
> “I think he dropped another coin.”

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🕯️ The Coin’s Warning

> Monsters hunt the weak.  
> But some hunt the marked.  
>  
> If the house felt too quiet…  
> If the smiles were too wide…  
>  
> Don’t eat the coin.  
> Don’t throw it.  
> Just wait.  
>  
> Elric only comes once.  
> And his protection has a price—  
> a price you’ve already paid,  
> for a debt you don’t even know you owe.

> Some coins are given at parties.  
> Some are dropped in candy bags.  
> But all of them… are marked.

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Until next time,  
🕯️ The Nightly Storyteller

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Stick around. Subscribe. Share.  
📸 Instagram: @NightlyStoryteller  
🩵 Bluesky: nightlystoryteller.bsky  
🌐 Blog: thenightlystoryteller.blogspot.com  
✉️ Email: thenightlystorytellerblog@gmail.com

And if you dare…  
drop a comment and tell me what you think Elric’s debt will demand from Sarah and Leo.

We’re just getting started—  
and the darkness now knows your name.


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