User:OzMillz

The Pin Man: Part 1 By Oz Mills

"The pin man crawls across your floor, unless you drop pins to guard your door... if you don't, you'll meet your demise, when the pin man shoves his pins in your eyes...." I was 4 yrs old when my grandmother taught me that horrible rhyme... I would wake up in the middle of the night because I thought I heard something on the floor... I'd shine my playschool flashlight in the darkness of my room hoping that I did not find my darkest fears standing in front of me... The next morning I took some safety pins, sewing needles, and straight pins from my grandmothers sewing room and placed them all around my room, until I was sufficiently assured I'd be ready for battle with the pin man should he come... That night I slept soundly in my bed, protected by a mine field of pins that lay scattered about the floor of my room... What's that??!! I was jerked from my sleep by a strange rattle.... "The pin man!!" I thought to myself, and with all the courage a 4 year old had I turned to the one place for safety I knew and raised the blanket over my head.... I heard the door open... I heard footsteps enter my room... I Clutched the blanket tight over my head... Then I heard a terrifying scream!!! I flipped the blanket off and pointed my trusty flashlight at my nemesis leaping to my feet with a triumphant "AHA!!!" To only be quickly turned to impending doom when I saw the pissed scowl on my grandmother's face as she clutched her foot... Let's just say that the rest of the night wasn't exactly super-duper as the wooden cooking spoon had a nice chat with my rear... I still was afraid of the pin man even after I was told countless times that he wasn't real...

I grew as kids do, but I developed this unusual fascination with small pointy objects... Be it do to the legend of pin man or some other deep rooted issue... I never questioned it, I was just compelled to collect small metallic objects like keys, thimbles, tacks, sewing needles, nails, and of course safety pins.... I also developed ways of hiding them on me or in special places, so that I would not risk another accident like with grandma... Years passed and I had forgotten why I did it, but the behavior would continue. I now had several shoe boxes filled with small semi dangerous objects and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why I did this, I felt like I was one of those creepy potential serial killer kids... Oct 3 1999, my birthday, I was 15 and my mom thought that taking me out to learn to drive would be a pretty cool thing to do on my birthday, I was pretty excited as lame as it sounds now in 2013... I got home from school and rushed inside and hugged my mom as she wished me a happy birthday, and took joy in my reaction as I marveled at all the cool Halloween/birthday decorations strewn about our tiny shotgun house on Martin Luther King blvd. Unfortunately my dad was out of town that week. I was used to it as he did that often being a truck driver and all, and the compliment of 3 PlayStation games he left on my bed certainly took out any gripes I had about him not be present this year...

My mom shouted to me from the kitchen to grab her keys from the nightstand so we could get on the road... I walked into her room and searched her nightstand not realizing she threw her keys on the bed, and that it slipped her mind that they weren't where she thought she'd put them... I pulled out the drawer to her nightstand and my ears began to ring.... There in her drawer were piles of safety pins, tacks, nails, sewing needles, pocket knives, an Ice pick... I don't know why but I felt faint. I started to hyperventilate... My mom ran in the room to see me on the floor drained of color...... When I was coherent enough to form sentences again, I realized that she was intensely worried about me. She asked what happened in 10 minutes of me being home... I pointed to the still open drawer. "why are those things in that drawer?" I asked her... She couldn't explain... I took her by the hand into my room, reached under my bed, and pulled out 8 shoe boxes, slamming each one on my bed... She asked what is this, and I told her to remove the lid, and she did, and then the next, and then the next, and so on. With each box she opened tears began to roll down her face... "Oh my god..." she said half crying... "What is wrong with me?" I asked her as I felt panic begin to tighten my chest again... So we talked... I think we talked for hours, about our family history, and grandma, and him.... The pin man... She told me that when she was a little girl grandma told her the same rhyme... and that her mother used to put pins in her clothes, she then told me about when her mother died and they cleaned her house, she asked me if I remembered the sewing room. I said yes I took pins from there when I was little... My mom said "Moma didn't sew..."....

I had to stand up, and walk around the room... I unbuttoned my shirt and felt something under the collar of my shirt.... A small silver safety pin.... I looked at my mom, and she lowered he head, I looked in my dresser and pulled out shirt after shirt, each one had a safety pin hidden in it, every pair of pants, every coat I owned, my mom had put a pin in it.... "Who is the pin man?!" I asked her... 1946 My grandmother was 7 yrs old. She was born in Wilmington, N.c. during wartime in 1940, and her father a U.S. soldier fought during the war, but unfortunately died in Italy a back in 1943... The war had ended and her mother being from England and without much money thought it was time to move on, for the benefit of her family. She met a man who was not involved with the military in the summer of 1946 from her husband's hometown of Wilmington N.c.... My mom didn't know his name, and my grandmother couldn't recall it, she knew him by the name she gave him.... The pin man... The Man my great grandmother ended up dating was a drunken, piece of abusive white trash and about 6 months time they were married... My grandmother despised this man... He'd call her mother names, and beat her for the smallest reasons...

In the fall of 1947, things got darker... He came home one night drunk, and tried to force himself on my great grandmother, she tried to fight back but he only hit her harder, she ran into her sewing room and tried to keep the door closed, but he knocked the door off the hinges. My great grandmother tried to defend herself with a huge metal crochet pin... He went towards her and she stabbed him in the arm with it.... He became infuriated, and punched her in the face, threw her to the ground, and kicked her several times, then he knelt over her and with that metal crochet hook, he raised it above her head, and yelled at her "LOOK AT ME BITCH!!! I WILL SHOVE THIS THING THROUGH YOUR EYE WHORE!!!"... BANG!!! A bullet flew over his head threw the wall... My grandmother had watched the whole thing unfold from the hall way, then went into the master bedroom and grabbed his gun from the dresser. She now stood in front of this monster who had every intent of killing her mother and she planned to kill him... BANG!! Another bullet flew by this time closer to his head, he scrambled to his feet and ran from the room through the back door and my grandmother followed right behind him with the revolver firing off 2 more shots... He stood out in the yard yelling and cursing at the 8 year old who chased him out of the house " I'll kill you you little BITCH!! I'll come back and kill your filthy whore mother, then I'll kill you after I make a woman out of you!!!"... He ran off down the road and through a neighbors yard as police sirens could be heard coming closer... To say the least, my great grandmother left Wilmington and moved to Augusta G.a. to live with her sister and husband... However, the damage to my grandmother had been done......

My grandmother began to have nightmares of the man she and her mother fled from... He'd drunkenly crawl across her floor and threaten to shove a large needle through her eyes, laughing at her with this twisted evil grin stretched across his face and haunting milk white eyes... My grandmother began to start gathering crochet needles and hiding them, then safety pin, sewing needles, anything to keep her nightmare from being able to make good on his promise... The nightmares became worse and worse, to the point my grandmother would wake up stabbing the air with a crochet needle.... She was almost committed... When My grandmother was 18 she heard that the pin man had died in the real world. Apparently he was drunk and tried to cross a train track, tripped a cracked his head on the rail and was knocked out cold..... A train did come, and he certainly did die... That should have been the end of it... The pin man haunted my grandmother all through her adult life... She even believed that keeping safety pins in her clothes protected her from him, she even did the same to her children and the only man who was able to handle her "obsession"... My grandmother went to root workers, and even traveling to Savannah Ga to lean and practice the Vodun religion, and even studying witchcraft, anything that could help her get rid of the ghost that she believed plagued her..................