Charles

Written by SoleilArya

I know you don't want to go to school, but you don't want to become like Charles, do you? You know why he was turned into a monster? Because he didn't go to school when his mother told him to. A mother, trying to scare her child with the story of Charles

The legend of Charles started in immemorial times, when parents had to find a way to convince their children to do things they didn't want to, without punishing them, and invented a terrifying figure, a child who disobeyed his family and was turned into a monster of nightmares, result of the worst possible thoughts they could come up with on the spot. Over the years, more and more children were told this story, and slowly, reality changed. The collective belief of so many innocent souls brought a fluctuation of the Arcana in the universe, and Charles was born. His behavior and personality have evolved over the time, but his appearance is generally that of a horribly distorted creature with teeth over his entire body, result of the belief he would eat misbehaving children.

Charles and its countless teeth

Charles always appear in the shape the myth initially described it as: a horrifying, warped entity, vaguely humanoid, covered in cracks and crevasses, with countless teeth covering its body.

Charles ready to bite

Although the body left is always recognizable, Charles likes to bite its prey extremely hard, to the point it bleeds out, but each wound looks like it could have been inflicted by a knife, hence the suspicion of the parents when the body is found.

Charles is a rare case of what Arcanists refer as an involuntary summon: when a belief is strong enough, or backed by enough minds, it can influence the fabric of reality enough to will it to reality. Although it is primarily seen and perceived by its targets, children, there has been reported cases of it hunting adults as well. It sneaks in houses at night, when everyone is asleep, approaches the children, scares them into waking up, and then bites them. Come morning, the parents wake up to dead kid, and the creature keeps tormenting them, sowing the doubt in their minds that the other did it, until they eventually either snap, or fall into deep depression, as if it was punishing them for making their children believe in the thing that eventually killed them.
It is unknown if there's only one Charles, jumping from house to house to chose his next victim, or if there is a whole set of them, maybe as many as there is people believing in it. But the very few times a competent Arcanist has realized its presence, it was either too late, or it was unable to catch it before it disappeared. It has now become a real creature of legend, to the point many doubt his existence. This, however, does not matter, as long as parents keep using its existence as a way to convince their children, and their faith keep the creature alive. It will remain on the planet, killing kids, haunting their parents, and fullfiling its purpose, what it was brought to reality for, until every single kid on Amaanturis obeys their parents. But perhaps the scariest theory of all, is that each time Charles takes a kid, the kid themselves, become Charles, taking its place in an endless, hellish cycle.

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This is an entry for Spooktober 2024, check out my hub there: