- 9 minutes ago
The Keeper narrates this terrifying tale following Jack as he unearths a newfound treasure. Little does Jack now this treasure has consequences, and those consequences are horrifying. If you like paranormal tales that send shivers down the spine....you found the right video.
For bonus content check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/TheKeeperNarrates
story credit:Stephen Sinclair
More from Stephen Sinclair:
Don't forget to stay tuned with
@XadrumLtd
That will soon publish "Portals". A book containing unpublished work of Stephen Sinclair and Max Rudd.
Thumbnail credit: Bush
Voice actors: @WhisperingScream as the Iceni.
https://www.youtube.com/@morgangoodman as Jack's Wife
Music credit:Myuu (requiem and prey)
Morgan Goodman
For story submissions or inquiries contact us at thekeeperofficial@proton.me (our story submission email)
@thekeepernarrates
For bonus content check out my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/TheKeeperNarrates
story credit:Stephen Sinclair
More from Stephen Sinclair:
Don't forget to stay tuned with
@XadrumLtd
That will soon publish "Portals". A book containing unpublished work of Stephen Sinclair and Max Rudd.
Thumbnail credit: Bush
Voice actors: @WhisperingScream as the Iceni.
https://www.youtube.com/@morgangoodman as Jack's Wife
Music credit:Myuu (requiem and prey)
Morgan Goodman
For story submissions or inquiries contact us at thekeeperofficial@proton.me (our story submission email)
@thekeepernarrates
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Sometimes privilege leads to disaster.
00:03Tonight, we will read a horror story by Stephen Sinclair, Shudder Maw.
00:12Jack was a success at everything he did, always had been.
00:17As a child, he'd been the first in his class to learn to tie his shoelaces and to tell the
00:23time.
00:24He did everything well, comfortably ahead of the bell curve academically, but not to the extent that he had been
00:32thought weird by his peers.
00:34He was good-natured and well-intentioned, but still capable of an appropriate amount of healthy boyish naughtiness and hijinks.
00:43He was popular, people liked him.
00:46Jack had a hard-to-define charm and an easy-going manner.
00:50Jack was also successful in his chosen career.
00:54He was an engineer.
00:57Like most successful people, Jack was deeply spiritual.
01:01Although, like nearly all such people, he would have been deeply perplexed by anyone who pointed this out.
01:08Perhaps laughed.
01:10The nature of his belief, of course, was never conscious.
01:14It could be described briefly as this.
01:17Things are this way because they should be this way and must be this way.
01:23The person who's effortlessly dexterous and creative, good with his or her hands, knows consciously that they have good coordination,
01:33good common sense, and so on.
01:35But deep down, they subscribe, with all their strength, to the real wellspring of good things.
01:42Things are this way because they should be this way and must be this way.
01:48Good-looking people who are successful with people of their choice are often followers of this cult.
01:54It exists all over the world and always has.
01:57Like all its practitioners, Jack was the true believer and didn't know he was.
02:04A formidable faith made more formidable because it's invisible, safely unarticulated, and always springs from real things.
02:14The abilities and good, or at least desirable to others, qualities of its disciples.
02:21Although it's a complete and utter delusion, it was much stronger than any conscious mysticism,
02:27which is often a sop to take the place of qualities the proponent lacks.
02:32During his life, Jack had, like everyone else, encountered difficulties and problems.
02:39But these were not like those encountered by people who habitually struggle, who fail all the time.
02:46Jack's problems and hard times were all episodic.
02:49There was the normal rolling in huge fields of continuous crop of success and happiness.
02:56And here and there a few jagged boulders of hard times and sad times, poking up through as exceptions.
03:04Because he had coped with these, he thought he had character.
03:09The worst thing he had been through was his father's sudden death when he was a student in the mid
03:14-90s.
03:15This, of course, was a huge tour of a boulder.
03:18However, he'd been genuinely devastated and grief-stricken.
03:22Of course, that was a genuine disaster.
03:25Of course, what was a genuine disaster would have been a complete catastrophe if he'd been another type of boy.
03:32If the other lads had not all wanted to be his friends, if he hadn't been successful in his happy,
03:39forthright, almost off-hand way with girls, if his family hadn't been middle class, there was a lot of insurance
03:47money.
03:48He was able to get on the housing ladder when he was still a student and stay on ever since.
03:54His fundamentally naturally high abilities helped him get his degree.
03:59He also fit in to the era of Cool Britannia like a hand in a glove.
04:04As another type of boy, the grief would have been the same and unmitigated.
04:09He would have also been carrying other types of damage already.
04:13He could never have seen or accepted this.
04:16He would have got deeply offended.
04:19He would have used his two biggest condemnations.
04:22People who just don't make the most of their lives.
04:26And the ultimate.
04:27Some people are just beyond help.
04:30In this regard, he was a bit like those middle class writers who failed to portray poverty in western countries
04:37in any convincing way because they've never experienced the low-key misery of meals always off trays, or the eternal
04:46never ever, the frustration of always just enough.
04:52If this sounds brutal, it is because it is.
04:55But like any creed, things are this way because they should be this way and must be this way, offers
05:02consolation of more than one kind.
05:05As a belief, it is, of course, a lie.
05:08It makes no more sense than, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
05:14In common with most British people, Jack didn't believe in God or go to church.
05:20Nevertheless, like people like himself all over the world, he believed himself to be chosen by divine providence.
05:29Jack was now in his mid-fifties, and he was about to discover a true religion.
05:35Shuddermaw had always walked in the woods because he had always been potent and deadly, eternal.
05:42He walked there as he walked in all places, but he walked on unseen.
05:48He walked in a place that was as real as it was unknown and unsuspected.
05:55It was as real as the deeps of space or the floor of the ocean, under shadows in the empty
06:01spaces behind stones, in the void by the shoulders of trees.
06:06There walked Shuddermaw. Mostly, he walked alone.
06:11For ages and ages he could be alone, patient.
06:16If should anything, floundering and helpless, dwell in the same place as he would move by, he would catch it
06:23and feed.
06:24He was always unsatisfied by this feeding, but he always took them.
06:29They were better than nothing.
06:32Shuddermaw once had many names.
06:35One of these was the Lord of Hunters.
06:38Many of the druids who knew all his names had disapproved of that one.
06:43They knew from the ancient wisdom that he was more truly the Lord of the moment of the kill.
06:49Shuddermaw was the living incarnation of the terror felt by all things that are caught, trapped, and pounced on and
06:58torn apart.
06:59Shuddermaw was he who makes them freeze in place.
07:02If the bucolic, tangled green bank described by Darwin is a vicious battleground, then Shuddermaw was the soul of the
07:11pain and fear engendered.
07:14Shuddermaw, essence of terror.
07:17He who rustles on many legs in the darkness.
07:20There are many things people don't know.
07:23One of these is that the Celtic culture partly has its roots in a place long gone under the ocean.
07:30Many other human cultures have their origins there.
07:33It was a place called Lemuria.
07:36Very few, incredibly few, were the actual physical traces of that long gone place.
07:44The greatest treasure of the Isonite tribe had been one of these.
07:48It was called the Golden Basin of Shuddermaw.
07:53Made of gold mined under mountains long vanished beneath the waves.
07:57They had used it to make votive offerings to the lord of the moment of the kill.
08:03The sacred basin was always kept buried.
08:06The sacrifices poured onto the ground above.
08:09For when it was buried under the earth, Shuddermaw had to stay in the other place.
08:16Where the relic was, there Shuddermaw would walk.
08:20Unseen, as he walked everywhere.
08:23For the Isonite priests knew, if it was not kept always piled over with earth,
08:29then the essence of terror, he who rustles on many legs in the darkness, would once more walk abroad.
08:36He was not imprisoned.
08:38They worshipped him, as they worshipped all of their many gods.
08:42When the time came, he would walk again in the world of men.
08:46Time meant nothing to Shuddermaw.
08:49The druids had all been taught as acolytes.
08:53When the warrior strikes with the sword, there is Shuddermaw.
08:57When you exalt sacrifice with a knife, there is Shuddermaw, brother of death.
09:04Long ago, the place where the gold basin was hidden had been forgotten.
09:08Jack had decided to take up metal detecting, not as a member of a club of obsessives.
09:16No thermoses and curling sandwiches for him, nor in a chancy, casual way.
09:22Now that he was in his mid-fifties, he was, as he told his wife, going to systematically blitz it.
09:30He was going to get the best equipment and have a plan.
09:34Then, when he had done the gold dance, he was confident he would sell the gear.
09:40Hopefully, at a profit, then move on.
09:43He didn't think it would be healthy to get too hung up on it.
09:46There was a road nearby that followed the course of one of the old Roman ones.
09:52This was also intersected by ancient Drover's Way.
09:55In addition, there were two ruined castles and several manor houses nearby.
10:01On an Ordance survey map, Jack marked out an area which included all these features.
10:07This he designated as his axis of investigation.
10:11Jack was clever and had chosen the area carefully because there were other things he had noticed.
10:18Although the geography was mostly so flat it looked ironed out,
10:22there was also a few low, raised ridges.
10:26From these it was impossible, because of the trees on them all nearby, to see the sea.
10:33But it might not always have been that way.
10:36Jack wanted his own Sutton Hoo.
10:39He wanted a ship burial.
10:41Life had made Jack an incorrigible optimist.
10:45The other thing was a pet theory he had quietly developed inside his axis of investigation.
10:50He highlighted specific areas.
10:54These were all at what he called boundary points.
10:57The edge of fields, outer edges of wooded areas, and such, especially woods.
11:04His equipment was the latest top of the line.
11:08He would therefore be able to exploit these types of terrain,
11:12which would not have been explored before, either effectively or at all.
11:18He was thorough.
11:20Systematically, he got permission from landowners.
11:23He was at his most charming, in his offhand, hard-to-put-your-finger-on kind of way.
11:29He didn't try too hard.
11:31He wasn't obsequious.
11:33Many of them came away from their encounters with him,
11:36feeling he had done them a favor.
11:38He also checked out the relevant laws and bylaws.
11:41It was late autumn, crops all in, ground hard, but not too hard.
11:48With his wife's slight amusement at what she called Jack's nerd phase,
11:53he took a week off work and got started.
11:56He was only three days in, and already he had done the gold dance.
12:01Just a few yards beyond a drainage ditch, up one of the promising low ridges,
12:07wooded over with old-growth, broad-leaf trees.
12:10He got a good signal.
12:13He dug up a roughly made gold coin about twice the size of his thumbnail.
12:18It had a strange, highly stylized image of a horse,
12:22roughly in the center and something that was either supposed to be a wheel,
12:26or the sun just above this on the left.
12:29Jack had found an Isoni stator.
12:32He had been delighted.
12:34But he also knew it wasn't that unusual or rare.
12:37People found the Celtic tribe's coinage all the time.
12:42Apparently, some people had them on their keychains.
12:45And it was one coin, not a hoard.
12:49After proudly showing his wife, he emailed a friend stateside.
12:54Jack sometimes teased him by asking,
12:57How are things Canada side?
12:59Who he knew was a fanatical history buff.
13:02Jack wrote,
13:03We've no Native American burial grounds, but wait till I tell you what I found.
13:09His friend had been satisfyingly impressed and jealous.
13:13Admitting this in his reply,
13:15Jack decided to spend the next day exploring the area more.
13:19You never knew.
13:21Jack had no way of knowing that the coin he had found was very special.
13:26The last human being to touch the coin had been a woman called Boudicca.
13:30She had walked into the wood long ago when it was far larger,
13:34to the very edge of the holy place where the golden basin was buried in the earth.
13:40She had gone down on her knees and rubbed the coin over her raw,
13:45recently flogged back, and cast it from her into the trees.
13:50Lord Shuddermaw!
13:51Lord Shuddermaw!
13:52She had loudly cried out.
13:54Let the vengeance we take be remembered for all time.
13:59Let the horror of the deaths we deal out be legend.
14:04Do this for me and I will gladly give you mine and my men's lives.
14:10Shuddermaw heard her prayer, and she had kept her word.
14:15Jack got an incredibly strong signal beside a huge moss-covered boulder.
14:20The place had never been under the plow because it was dotted with these.
14:24It had been chosen carefully.
14:27Whatever it was also seemed to be partly under a tree.
14:31He wasn't deterred for a moment.
14:34Long ago, he had devised a clever way of getting tree stumps out.
14:38It had often annoyed him when he bought new houses that there were often tree stumps left in so many
14:45gardens.
14:46He had imagined someone's Uncle Fred telling them,
14:49I can take that tree down, no probs.
14:52Back in 1987, and the stump being left in the ground as if it were a law of nature that
14:58it remain.
15:00His method was simple.
15:02One of those two-handed mallet things you got in a garden center.
15:05A couple of old SS spades.
15:08You dug a small hole beside the tree,
15:11then systematically whacked the tree stump all around the base.
15:16This broke some of the root system up.
15:19Then you put the saw in the hole and cut around.
15:22You used old saws so it didn't matter if you hit rocks.
15:28It was a good, strong signal.
15:31Oddly, a medium-sized tree.
15:34Knowing the type of ground, he'd come prepared.
15:37Everything he needed was in the back of the Land Rover.
15:40Unfortunately for Jack, he succeeded in getting the tree to topple over.
15:45By the time he was finished, he was pouring with sweat.
15:49He really enjoyed the physical labor.
15:51Endorphin rush, he supposed.
15:53He was also increasingly excited about what he was going to find.
15:58He trusted his instincts.
16:00He thought it was going to be good.
16:02Really good.
16:03He was right.
16:05Jack broke the rules and took it home.
16:08He had to.
16:09He felt compelled to.
16:11He reasoned.
16:12This Jack isn't a do-boy.
16:14Me and the wife are going to have a good look at this.
16:18This blow Sutton Hoo out of the water.
16:20It will be going to a museum soon.
16:23Everyone will get to enjoy it.
16:25But we get a look first.
16:27A small Nutty.
16:29He'd screamed with delight when he found it.
16:32Triumph.
16:32It was round and about the size of the basins most people have in the kitchen sink.
16:37The basin was made of high-quality, pure gold bullion.
16:42Solid gold.
16:43It was so heavy it was a struggle to get it out of the hole.
16:47And Jack was a big man.
16:49Well over two and a half thousand years before, the distant ancestors of the Isenai had decorated
16:55its edge with a swirling interlocking thick band of beautifully worked rose gold.
17:01This was so ancient that most of the copper had oxidized away.
17:06What was left showed through in a pattern of red smudges so vivid they almost looked blood-red.
17:12The gold, of course, remained.
17:15The hold-fed effect made it look like lace that had been turned into golden fire.
17:20Jack and his wife had been washing off the dirt on the garage floor.
17:24Upon seeing this wonder, she whispered in an awe-filled voice.
17:30Almost eleven.
17:32He agreed.
17:33In the center of the basin was the true, deep-lustrious Lemurian gold.
17:38Within the deep cup, there were strange pictorial figures laid out in a circle.
17:44They looked to Jack and his wife a bit like stickmen, but the ancient artist had been so
17:50skilled that they seemed to move.
17:52They seemed to be controlled with fear with deft, indefinable touches.
17:57They appeared to cower away from the center.
18:00The bowl, which was smooth, shining, and somehow portentous in its emptiness.
18:06It was at once a wondrous and ominous thing.
18:10They left it in the living room.
18:12They were not worried about hiding it.
18:14The house had a good security system and was located in a nice rural area.
18:20On a sudden whimsy, Jack put some fruit in it.
18:23That night, they went out and celebrated.
18:26They went to an expensive restaurant.
18:29They were sensible and took a taxi there and back so they could both have a drink.
18:35Jack was going to put the basin back the next day where they had discovered it.
18:39They both imagined appearing on TV and in the papers.
18:43They were having a laugh about this when they got home.
18:47Jack pinched her and joked about how young she would look to everyone and about how jealous
18:52she would make the dads and lads.
18:54She pretended to slap his arm and giggled in mock indignation.
18:58When they turned on the living room light, what they saw was so inexplicable they almost
19:03couldn't see it for more than several moments.
19:05It did not compute.
19:07They could not comprehend.
19:10The room was not simply smashed.
19:12It was destroyed.
19:14The back wall was gone.
19:16Half the ceiling had fallen in.
19:18Collapsed.
19:19Everything was wrecked.
19:21A cold night wind was blowing in.
19:24Bizarrely, the dangling light still worked.
19:27There was a huge something there.
19:29Something.
19:30Almost in the same instant, Jack's wife thought it was the huge wheel of an enormous heavy goods
19:38vehicle, whilst he thought of the blades you see inside a jet engine.
19:43Jack's mind cried out.
19:45Air crash, crash plane.
19:47But it wasn't.
19:49Shudder Maw uncurled himself.
19:51When he walks in the world, he has a body like a huge black and reddish centipede.
19:56Along most of his length, his legs move constantly.
20:01They made a rustling noise.
20:04His upper body is like a crocodile's back.
20:07His head is a huge round atrocity that calls to mind both a shark, a cat, and a human face.
20:16Shudder Maw has a spider's eyes.
20:19He has two long arms like tentacles.
20:21They sprout from his neck.
20:24These end in clawed but disturbingly human hands.
20:28Usually, his hands are held together, just under his chin, as if in prayer.
20:33He has a scorpion's tail.
20:36Lightly, tenderly, but too quick to see.
20:40He touched his tail to Jack and Jack's wife's necks, and they couldn't move.
20:45Shudder Maw took first the woman, and then the man.
20:48He opened them, and drained the blood into his golden bowl, and drank.
20:55He has teeth like a shark.
20:57His huge tongue is disagreeably human.
21:00He licked his lips after he had fed.
21:03He was content.
21:05Time meaning nothing to him.
21:07He decided he would go back to his wood, and back into the other place for a time.
21:15I hope you guys enjoyed this story as much as I did.
21:18I want to thank Stephen Sinclair for giving me permission to read it, as well as Morgan
21:24Goodman, who voiced Jack's wife, and Whispering Scream, who voiced The Ice and I.
21:30I've put links to their content and or channels down below.
21:35Stephen has many more works that will be readable soon, once his book is published.
21:40And Whispering Scream has a fantastic YouTube, where she also narrates scary stories.
21:46And Morgan has created some music that I've already used, or will soon be using, on future
21:51videos.
21:52And then, Whispering Scream is a great video series.
21:56You
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