The Shaman’s Hand

Posted on a strange forum at 3:14 AM. No username attached.

They always tell you, "Be careful what you wish for." You never really take it seriously until you're sitting alone in a motel room, hands trembling, your family gone—and you can't even remember how it all started. But I'll try.

It began with boredom. My name's Nick, and I used to be the guy who charmed his way through life. I had a killer last name—DeVayne—which I shamelessly turned into all sorts of pickup lines back in the day. "Hey, I'm Nick DeVayne. Don't you think that sounds like the name of a rockstar?" It worked more than it should've.

Years later, I settled down, married a wonderful woman, and we had four kids. My life should've been perfect. But routine has a way of suffocating you. Every day blurred into the next: work, dinner, bedtime stories, rinse, and repeat. I started feeling like a ghost in my own life.

That's when I found the antique store.

It was on a corner of a street I swear I'd never noticed before. The sign above the door read, "Curio & Hexes." Inside, the place reeked of old wood and something metallic, like blood. Relics cluttered every surface—rusted masks, dolls with cracked porcelain faces, dusty books with missing pages.

But my eyes locked onto it.

The Shaman's Hand.

It sat on a pedestal, a severed wooden hand, fingers curled like it was grasping something invisible. Symbols were etched into its palm—lines and shapes that seemed to twist when I stared too long. On the index finger was a tarnished silver ring with a gemstone that glowed faintly blood-red, even under the dim light.

"I wouldn't take that if I were you," the shopkeeper muttered. She was an older woman with cataract-clouded eyes.

"Why not?" I asked, half-joking.

She leaned in closer. "It doesn't like being disturbed. And once it's in your home, it never leaves."

I laughed it off. How could I not? But something about the way she looked at me as I handed over the cash… it felt like a warning, not a sale.

Back home, I showed the relics to my wife and kids, who were less than impressed. "Another one of Dad's weird hobbies," my eldest muttered. I ignored them and placed the hand on the fireplace mantle. It felt like a trophy, something to break the monotony of our lives.

The first night, I woke up at 2:23 AM to a noise. A scraping sound. It was faint, like fingernails dragging across wood. I dismissed it as the wind and went back to sleep.

By the second night, the noise grew louder. Scratches appeared on the walls near the mantle, as though something with claws had tried to climb them. My youngest son claimed he saw the hand move during dinner, its fingers twitching slightly.

"Stop making stuff up," I snapped.

But then, I saw it myself.

It happened on the third night. The Shaman's Hand was no longer on the mantle. I found it on the kitchen counter, its fingers pointed straight at the knife block. The blood-red gem in the ring pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.

My wife woke up screaming. In our bedroom, the hand had carved symbols into the walls, the same twisted lines etched into its palm. They pulsed in the dark, glowing faintly red.

The kids ran into the living room crying, saying something had touched them in their sleep. My youngest had scratches on his arms, thin but deep.

The final straw was the mirror. As I stood in front of it, trying to catch my breath, my reflection didn't match my movements. My reflection was smiling. And in the reflection, the Shaman's Hand was gripping my shoulder.

By dawn, my family refused to stay in the house. We packed hastily and drove to a motel on the edge of town. But the nightmares followed. Every night, we'd wake up with the same dream: the hand crawling across the motel floor, inching closer to our beds.

And then… my family vanished.

I woke up alone in the motel, no trace of my wife or kids. Their belongings were gone, as though they'd never been there in the first place. I drove back to the house, desperate for answers.

The house was empty, too. But the Shaman's Hand was back on the mantle, its gem glowing brighter than ever. The symbols on the walls were gone, but I could still feel them, burned into my mind.

So here I am, writing this on some forum, hoping someone will believe me. Don't let boredom trick you into thinking you need more excitement. Some routines, no matter how mundane, are safe. They're stable.

But once you disturb the wrong thing… you can never go back.

Don't pick up relics. Don't look for meaning in the meaningless. And whatever you do, don't bring home a hand that looks like it's waiting to grab you.

End of post.