Grimoire Volume 2

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YOU CAN BELIEVE ME IF YOU LIKE.

-When I was 8 years old and stuck in winter daycare, I tried to get the other kids to share scary stories. Of course, the kids would either shy away or rehash the same 2-3 urban legends we knew in the area. There’s a haunted street nearby, a killer is hiding in your house, or a ghostly monster that steals kids away at night. I decide to tell an original story, completely improvised. This was the story:

"On a lonely hill in woods outside of town stood a Red House. I lived there when I was very little but it was torn down after I moved to my new house. The house had many doors: the stairway has a door on the first floor and a door to the second. A door into the kitchen, a door into the living room.

A door into the basement, and a door into the hallways connecting each room. Before I got there, a mom moved into the house with her newborn. The dad has been gone for a long time. The mom and her baby live in the house for two nights I think. On the first night there, the baby was crying.

Not unusual for a baby to do, but when the mom opened the door to the baby’s room, she's in the bathroom instead. The mom probably thought she just opened the wrong door. She closes it, goes to the door next to it and it opens into the kitchen. The kitchen is on the first floor, and she knows she’s on the second. The baby cries louder and louder. She panicked: she runs and opens every door, finds a different room, and tries this again and again. The cries are getting louder. The baby is screaming now and the mom keeps screaming for her baby. The screams are only getting louder when she opens the wrong door. She opens a door into the stairwell and falls down it. She bangs her head against the door at the bottom. CRACK! She can’t move. She’s can’t stand up. Her baby’s cries go quiet. She’s trying her hardest to stay awake, but she slips into sleep. She won’t wake up. She does not wake up.

The man wakes up from a nightmare. He heard his baby crying and the mother of his child breaking her neck down a flight of stairs. The cracking noise feels too real. He drives up to the Red House to check on them and finds the house is gone. No ashes or wood, just a clearing. But then he hears a huge CRACK and his baby crying towards the center of the clearing. He gets closer and sees a face sticking up from the ground. He gets closer and sees it’s his baby! He flings himself towards his baby and starts trying to dig the baby out. The baby’s eyes open and in a low growl says:

'The devil lives down here'

While the dad is confused and distracted, two, rotting arms stretch out of the ground and grab his neck. They pull his neck against the earth, choking all the life out of him. He struggles with all his strength to get up, but the grip is just too strong. He starts sinking into the earth, the cracking noise ringing as his neck bones break from grip around his throat. The last thing he hears is his baby and the mother saying, we’ll all live together here now. The man is never heard from again. People followed the tracks his car left behind to see where he went, they find the Red House still standing there. I’d hear the crying sometimes, but the cracking noise was the worse. The dad would whisper the story in my ear when I was ever alone in my bedroom. I don’t remember what he sounds like anymore but sometimes, I hear someone say:

“The devil lives here now”

-Now I know this story sounds a bit bland, but imagine an 8-year-old saying this to a bunch of other kids in a monotone voice. It scared one of the kids bad enough to snitch on me to one of the daycare workers. The daycare worker told my parents and I've been in therapy ever since.

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Manish Rao Jawade (INDIA) Forsaken-Saga of unheard heroes Cover Road to subconscious p 46 God is watching p47 Vatapi p 48 Lia Mori (GREECE) Return of the Repressed p1 Conscience Grimm p2 Uncanny Valley p3/4 Ina Kaur (INDIA) Fit Together p5 Stick Together p6 Piece Together p7/8 Weronika Wrzosek (POLAND) Explosion p9 Fire p10 Portrait with a mask (1&2) p55/56 Aïcha Snoussi (TUNISIA) Exils p11/12/13 Alexander Schmidt (GERMANY) p 14/15/16/17

Alex Manea (BUCHAREST) Famine p 39 Crapula p40 Climate Strategy: Get Arrested p41 Ileda Yeur (PORTUGAL) Particles p42/43/44 Hannah Krichen Schheider (TUNISIA) You Can’t Hide p45 Amalia Shipman-Mueller (SCOTLAND) Openings p49/50 Rim Bouras (TUNISIA) Long Dream p51 Can’t hear, Can’t see, Can’t speak p52 p53 Molly Lambourn (UNITED KINGDOM) Isolation Portrait p 54 Adiele Obinna (NIGERIA) Lost p57 Ezi agwa bu mma (Good character is beauty) p58

Viktoriia Dovhadze (UKRAINE) The eye p 18 Falling down p 19 The basement p 20 The body p 21

Alicja Kalandyk (POLAND) Life p 59

Nitiksha (INDIA) Spirit of desire p 22 Movements and shapes p 23/24 Suspicious Formation p25

Amir Chelly (TUNISIA) Out Of Shadows p61/62/63/64

Sister Chapman (UNITED STATES) P26/27/28/29/30 João Santos (PORTUGAL) Acorda Vem Ver a Lua p 31 > 38

Orlando Mee (AUSTRALIA) Untitled p60

Bobby Marcus (UNITED STATES) You Can Believe Me If You Like p65 Pawel Pacholec (POLAND) PSYCHEDELIA The Eternal Journey p66/67/68

GRIMOIRE TEAM Yasser Jeridi / Bochra Taboubi / Oussema Gaidi