The Hat Man Has Candy 

Slowly creeping through your home in the dark is never a good idea, but when it’s late at night, the lights are off and you hear the sound of crackling bones and cellophane in your living room you might take a peak around the dark corners with whatever light you have at hand. 

That’s exactly what I did... and have been doing every night since the first time I heard that exact sound. It happens at different times on different nights, but it’s always the same sound. Crackling as if stiff bones are rubbing together and then the twist of cellophane like... candy wrappers untwisting. It’s an unsettling sound to hear. You’d immediately think critters or rodents, but I can’t find them.  

Then there is always that unsettling feeling of a presence in the room with me. That feeling when you play hide-and-go-seek blindfolded with a friend. You know they are there with you but you can’t see them standing right next to you. That feeling, but awake, alone, in your home, standing in the middle of a dark room. Open space feeling bigger and smaller all at once. Did I hear breathing? 

The shapes and shadows in the room begin to make their own new shapes and shadows. Staring in the dark is a surreal horrifying experience. The classic pile of clothes in the bedroom looking like a monster sitting in your favorite chair. Trees outside catching light and fooling your imagination into thinking arms are crawling into your room, into your bed, into you. A lamp in the corner looking like an intruder. But here I am now, standing in the middle of my dark living room staring at the corner of the room. The corner that has no chair. The corner that has no windows and no trees. The corner with no lamp. I stare into the corner seeing a tall figure with a hat on starring back at me. “Snap. Twist.”   

I stop breathing and paralyze myself. I blink over and over again trying to figure out what I am seeing and hoping that the figure will go away or at least bring sense back into me. Maybe I did put something over there? Maybe it’s just.. “Snap... Twist” 

Now I am quite sure the figure is slowly moving. Slowly getting larger. Slowly... getting closer? 

I feel myself slowly rock back and slightly moves away from the corner, but this dream state won’t let me move at any proper pace. I don’t know if I am moving at all to be honest. It’s moving closer. HE is moving closer. 

As the tall figure grows bigger and closer it moves into the slightest splash of light from outside the window across the room. I can see the silhouette of a man in a large, brimmed hat leaning forward, only his mouth enters the light. I can see the chiseled jawline and his lips as they crack an eerie smile. I hear it again, “Snap.. Wist..”  His overly long and pale fingers protrude out into a lower splash of light to present a wrapped hard candy. 

Frozen, only my eyes can move to look at the candy in his hand. My eyes jet back up to his mouth that has now pouted it’s lips as if curiosity and anger have come together. And then to my surprise, he begins to whistle a terrifying tune. 

The tune slithers through the air, shrill and broken, like an old music box struggling to remember its song. My ears ring. The air thickens. Every breath I take feels like inhaling syrup. 

He tilts his head, the brim of his hat dipping low enough to swallow his eyes. The candy glints faintly in his hand, the wrapper trembling between his fingers. He holds it out toward me—closer now, impossibly close—and I smell something sweet and rotting, like sugar gone sour. 

The whistle stops. 

“Go on,” he says, though I don’t see his lips move. The voice crawls into my mind instead of my ears. “It’s yours.” 

I shake my head, but my hand… it doesn’t listen. It rises on its own. My fingers—trembling, cold—reach toward the candy. The wrapper crackles in my grasp. “Snap… Twist…” 

As it unwraps, the sound echoes from every corner of the room, like a chorus. I can hear it behind me now, above me, beneath the floorboards. 

Inside the wrapper, there’s no candy. Just a small, yellowed tooth. 

He smiles wider—too wide—and begins to hum again. My vision folds in on itself, the corners of the room stretching like fabric. My jaw aches. My teeth rattle in their sockets. 

Then I understand the sound I’ve been hearing all along. 

“Snap.” My own jaw.
“Twist.” My neck. 

The darkness bends forward and swallows the light, and all that’s left is the faint rustle of cellophane… and his soft, whistled tune, coming from the corner where I used to stand.