There was a time when the people told stories in the long nights of winter. The stories were sacred and nobody would leave or interrupt while the storyteller spoke. If someone had to stop the story for any reason, then everyone would have to wait until they returned before the story could be finished. In the silence and darkness, they would imagine how the story would end.

The stories must end, for there is magic in the story, as the gathered listeners wait for the conclusion. No such stories were told in the warm days when they would occupy the people when they should be working. Stories were never told outside, because the stories often depicted animals and nature being outwitted by the people. If the trees or the birds heard the stories, then they would become smarter, and impossible to trick.

There are some stories that are so evil that they must not be told, and certainly they must not be heard by anyone. These stories are true stories that contain the darkness and the coldness of winter. To know such a story is to have the cold night of everlasting winter in your heart. This story, the story of Rattle Bones, is one of these stories. If you begin this story, you must finish it to the end, or else Rattle Bones will still be alive, and she will follow you, hungering for you.

In the coldest and darkest of winter nights, there was a quiet time when the old people had fallen asleep during a very long story about the men who had gone hunting and caught many animals. It was the kind of story that made the old people fall asleep, despite their efforts to politely stay awake. So when they began to snore, the storyteller had to pause the story, and it was just a quiet time and everyone had to wait for them to awaken and say "I am awake and listening." so the story could be concluded. During this time, one young couple became restless and chose to go outside, seeking an adventure together, instead of the dullness that was making their bodies tingle with unspent energy.

They wandered away too far, intent on spending the rest of the night in a shelter in the woods. But they were lost out there, as it snowed and the night was too long. It was very cold and the young woman said: "I will make a fire, go out and get something to eat. Surely you could hunt an animal while it sleeps. Bring it back and we shall have a meal."

He did not want to disappoint her, and filled with overconfidence, he went out into the nearby places and searched for an animal in its den, sleeping in the winter. The animals were already too smart for this, and he found none. He was gone for so long, and the night seemed to go on forever, that the young woman was alone with her hunger and restlessness. While she tended the fire she began to play with it. The fire became angry at her teasing and it burned her hand with such sudden reprisal that she didn't even really feel the burn.

Her shelter filled with the smell of cooked flesh and a strange feeling of lonesome wickedness overcame her. This is something that can happen to someone when they are alone in the longest nights of winter and they have already broken the spell of a good story. She got a bad idea and she bit into the roasted part of her own hand. She chewed a bit of it and then she began to feel the most awful and insatiable kind of painful hunger, as though she were starving. It was like a kind of feverish madness and she began to cook her own arm and bite into it. When it was just ragged flesh and dripping bones she looked wildly at her other arm. This too she cooked and fed upon.

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As she ate she only became more and more famished. Her legs did not satisfy her, nor did her belly or her ribs. She cracked open the bones and sucked out the marrow, leaving them hollow. For a short while the living marrow did sate her hunger, and to celebrate her gruesome feast she took the pebbles around her shelter and began to put them into her hollowed bones. Then she stood and danced to the rattling of her own bones. This is why she is called Rattle Bones.

Now the young man who was her lover became weary of the game of hunting animals he could not find. He followed his tracks back to the shelter, for he could not find his way home, as they were stranded from their runaway adventure. As he neared the shelter where he had left his girlfriend, he heard the macabre music of Rattle Bones, the creature she had become. He saw her as a butchered skeleton, all of her flesh eaten away and dissolved into something no longer human. Then he saw her dancing in the firelight, and he stared in horror, unable to look away.

Then she saw him there and her eyes glowed in the firelight. Her hunger overcame her and she intended to eat him and gnaw on his bones for the rest of the winter. She was still clever in her madness, enough that she tried to call him to her, covering herself with their blanket and hoping he would not see what she was. "Come to me, my love. Come and bring me the meat you have brought so that I may feast upon it. I am very hungry."

Her voice was strange and hollow, and the young hunter was filled with dread. He shook his head and stepped back away from her and the shelter. As he did, she walked forward and the blanket fell away, revealing the terrible thing she had done. He could hear the sound of the pebbles in her hollowed bones, and he knew she was now Rattle Bones.

"Do not forsake me. Have I not given you all the joy and comfort that I could? Are we not the best of friends and well-matched lovers? Am I not the one you intend yourself for? Come back to me." Rattle Bones spoke to him, pleading with him and appealing to his emotions. He pitied her and hesitated to abandon her.

While he stood there she got closer and closer, and she would have caught him and overwhelmed him with the supernatural strength she had gained from her dire hunger. When she was almost within striking distance, she reached out her skeletal hand and her bones rattled with such sinister and predatory intention that the young man was shaken from his pity for her. He knew what she would do to him, the same as she had already done to herself, and with his heart beating with terror he turned and fled.

It was very dark out and he did not know the part of the forest he was in. He kept stopping to catch his breath and look around, but each time he did he could hear her coming for him, following his trail in the snow and it was the sound of Rattle Bones. She was angry now because he was running from her, and she sometimes screamed, and it was an awful and howling noise of a monstrous creature chasing its prey.

Then the young man came to the river that his people lived on. He followed it for a short distance but realized he could not lead her to their home. Instead, he crossed the freezing waters and stood on the other side of the river, shivering. "I will come across and get you!" The angry Rattle Bones glared at him and her eyes were full of rage and wickedness. He knew the woman he had loved was dead inside, consumed by the fleshless creature Rattle Bones.

Then Rattle Bones, in her fury and ravenous appetite, made a fatal mistake. She tried to swim across the river that gave life to her people. The freezing waters did not buoy her and so she sank. It was as though the goodness of the clean water was trying to suppress the evil that had emerged from the forest. She drowned then, vanishing into the depths, never to be seen again.

Only in this story does the creature live on, contained by the details of the circumstances of her existence as Rattle Bones. And so let not this story be half told, nor should it ever be offered, for it is too awful to tell. And never speak the name, or else you might be pursued at night by Rattle Bones.