Supernatural Friday: Beware of Big Hairy Toes! (Retold Folktale)

 

As I am working on a horror wip at this time, I found this old folktale and rewrote for your Supernatural Friday of Memorial Day Weekend enjoyment.  As you go camping this summer, maybe even this weekend, it is spooky tales like this that are told around the campfire. Let's restart a tradition and get that fire going in the woods or at the beach, and tell spooky stories. 

Once upon a time an old woman went out in the woods. She planned to dig up roots to cook for dinner. Suddenly, she spotted something funny sticking out of the leaves. Digging around it, she discovered it was a great big hairy toe. Now it came to her that there was good meat on it and it might make a tasty dinner, so she stuck it in her basket and took it home.
Back at her cottage, the old woman boiled hairy toe soup in a kettle. That night she had the soup for dinner. The old woman went to bed that night with a full stomach and a big smile.
Around midnight, a cold wind arose and blew in the tops of the trees around the old woman's house. A large black cloud crept over the moon and from deep in the woods a hollow voice called out, "Hairy toe! Hairy toe! I want my hairy toe!"
Inside the house, the old woman stirred uneasily in her bed and nervously pulled the covers up over her ears. She forced herself back to sleep.
Something stomped from the woods as the wind whistled and jerked at the treetops. In the clearing at the edge of the forest, the same hollow voice said: "Hairy toe! Hairy toe! I want my hairy toe!"
Inside the house, the old woman shuddered and turned over in her sleep.
A, stomping sound stopped outside the cottage. The night creatures shivered in their burrows as a hollow voice howled: "Hairy toe! Hairy toe! I want my hairy toe!"
The old woman snapped awake and with her heart pounding and her stomach clenching, she leaped out of bed, she ran to the door and barred it. Knowing her cottage was secure, she lay back down to sleep.
The front door burst open with a bang, snapping the bar in two and sending it flying into the corners of the room. The sound of giant feet stomping up the stair came to the old woman’s ears. Shaking, she peeped out from under the covers. A massive figure filed her doorway. "Hairy toe! Hairy toe! I want my hairy toe!"
The old woman bolted upright and screamed: "I ATE your hairy toe!"
"Yes, you did," the giant figure said as it advanced into the room. It grabbed her.
No one living in the region ever saw the old woman again. The only clue to her disappearance came from a giant footprint pressed deep into the loose soil of the meadow beside the house. The footprint was missing the left big toe.