Short stories by Mace Styx. Search the name for more.

With the children of the village, "Greenfinger Tom" was not only a suspect, but irrefutably guilty of any number of crimes. A neighborhood boogeyman for decades, he was used by older kids to taunt their siblings and frighten them into obedience.

“If you get out of that bed again, Greenfinger Tom will get you,” seems to have been a common threat used by mothers and fathers who had themselves sprinted past Greenfinger’s garden if they were forced to pass after dusk.

In the tales passed in the playground, Greenfinger took on a supernatural aspect that went beyond any crime. Kids terrified each other with tales of tenebrous vines creeping from the ends of his fingers and winding themselves around sleeping victims. Whispered to each other that under the chair he perennially frequented in his front garden, Tom had roots instead of legs hidden within his pants. Roots that if you strayed too close to his fence, would reach up through the cracks in the pavement or out from the grids and drag you into the darkness below ground.

In reality, Tom Middleton’s fingers were far from green. Rather, they were the rusty orange brown of fingers stained by nicotine. His reputation was warped out of all proportion by exaggeration and myth, which had initially been due to his very real misanthropy and dealings with others, not to mention the "watching"....