🪙 The Gold Coin Chronicles: The Lamp and the Boogeyman

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Location: Willowbend, Illinois
Found Object: One gold coin


🎙️ Monologue: “Darkness Pays the Price”

They say every home hides a shadow.
A corner you never quite look into.
A sound that makes you turn off the TV just to listen.

But some shadows… listen back.

As for the coin—no one knows how it chooses.
It doesn’t seek the brave, or the broken.
It simply… chooses.

And once it does, the nights change.

Because you don’t pay with light.
You pay with darkness.

(pause)

I’ve seen that payment before.
I still carry the receipt.


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🕯️ Prologue: The Coin in the Driveway

It was just sitting there.
A gold coin, half-buried in the gravel at the edge of her driveway, glinting in the early morning sun like a wink from fate.

Melanie bent down, fingers brushing cold metal.
It was heavier than it should’ve been—like a disk of lead.
It pulsed feverishly in her palm—heat that didn’t belong to the morning air.

She pocketed it, and for the first time in weeks, smiled.

Sleep had been a stranger.
Every night brought new sounds—dry scratching inside the walls, soft thuds in the ceiling, and that low, wet-static sound from her TV at 3:17 a.m.
It wasn’t a hiss—it was a garbled, choking whisper.

Even though the TV was unplugged.

An exterminator came. Found nothing.
A repairman checked the wiring. Perfectly fine.
And yet… the nights only grew longer.


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🪞 Night One: The Scrape Beneath

That evening, she placed the coin on her nightstand, beside a small brass lamp.
She’d bought it because it felt ancient. Safe.
Like something meant to guard the night.

The wire was frayed, so she’d never plugged it in.

She whispered to herself, “Tonight will be different.”
Maybe the coin would help. Maybe luck was real.

But just after midnight, the scratching returned.
Louder. Closer.

It sounded like a thousand dull needles scraping the paint off the ceiling above her head.

Melanie froze.
Then—a slow, heavy scrape against the wooden floor, right at the foot of her bed.
Something had shifted.

She leaned over the edge of the bed.
The darkness beneath didn’t just sit still—
it watched.

It wasn’t just a shadow.
It was a pit.


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🕳️ Night Three: The Embrace

The next few nights blurred together.
The sounds changed—whispers like breath on glass, laughter that didn’t belong to anyone.

Once, her bedsheets were yanked halfway off.
Another time, the closet door creaked open on its own.

On the final night, she woke to breathing.
Not hers.
Heavy. Wet. Close.

She reached for her phone.
A hand grabbed her ankle.

She screamed, kicking wildly.
Something cold and rough coiled around her leg—like bark, or bone.

From beneath the bed, it emerged.
Tall. Hunched.

Its skin was slick, translucent-grey, and pulled tight over a cage of knobbly bones.
Spindly arms, jointed like a cricket’s legs, ended in hands that were less fingers and more hooked, black claws.

Its eyes were two sunken, starving holes.
And when it looked at her, she didn’t see hunger.
She saw recognition.

The boogeyman had come home.

She fought.
Punching. Clawing.

The coin flew off the nightstand and slammed into the lamp’s brass base—CRACK!
The bulb didn’t just flare—it exploded with a deafening, blinding flash of white.

The creature shrieked—a sound like metal tearing through water.
It recoiled, dragging itself backward into the dark.

Melanie collapsed, gasping.
Alive.


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☀️ The Return

She didn’t come back for two weeks.
When she did, it was with three friends and full daylight pouring through the blinds.

The room was still.
Too still.

The nightstand stood untouched.
The lamp beside it.
But the coin was gone.

She told her friends everything, laughing nervously.
Melanie’s laugh died in her throat.

She reached down to unplug the lamp—the lamp that had saved her life.

Her hand froze.
The black cord coiled neatly on the floor.
The plug was still there, untouched.
It had never been in the wall.

No one spoke.
They just listened.

The air felt heavier near the bed, like someone else had just been breathing there.

And from beneath the bed—
came a slow, dragging scratch.

The sound didn’t stop.
It was tracing the outline of her shoe—slow, deliberate, like a memory being redrawn.


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📖 Epilogue — The Nightly Storyteller

I’ve heard that sound before.
In motels.
In basements.
In the quiet moments before dawn when the air feels… wrong.

The coin never disappears.
It moves.
Always seeking another sleepless soul.

Maybe it’s looking for me again.
Or maybe it never left.

If you find one, don’t keep it by your bed.
And for the love of whatever light still listens—
don’t look under the bed.


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🪙 Case File: Willowbend

Category Status

Coin Status Missing
Object Status The Lamp of Willowbend — Active
Entity Connection The Boogeyman
Case File Closed — Pending Reappearance of Coin



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We’re just getting started — and things are about to get dark.

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