Creepy - Aftermath

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Some mysteries are better left unanswered...***Written by: KeepersCoffin***Bonus Episode: "The Magician" Written by Colin Bishoff and Narrated by Nate DuFort***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Aftermath Written by Keeper's Coffin I have learned a few dreadful things since this started First, don't poke around in dark corners unless you're prepared for what lunches out at you Second This world is full of dark corners

and Monday this began, it was my turn to bring donuts to the office where I work as a data analyst. So I got up extra early and headed to the big box retail stores that sit out near the highway exits. The parking lot never got more than half full since we lived in such a small town. Next closest town has its own shopping center next to its own highway exits, with the exact same big box retail stores, just like every other town. in this country. The only other vehicle in the parking lot was a white pickup truck parked across the lot. I guess the employees all have to park their cars off-site.

Usually, I park unnecessarily far away from whatever building I'm going to. I guess I'd just like to walk. I pulled up into a space about a football field's length from the store's main entrance. There were no other vehicles near me. As I was pulling into the parking space, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a diminutive little figure of a person standing against the front wall of the store. Since this was still very early in the morning and dark, all I could tell was that they were probably a small woman. I remember looking down just long enough to make sure my car was in park. And then when I looked up, that person was standing right outside my pants.

passenger window. It looked like a young woman with shoulder-length hair and a slate build. However, there was something odd about the haircut and the clothes. The dress and overall appearance gave the weird impression of being just slightly outdated. If someone from the early 80s had stepped out of a time machine into that parking lot, it'd look a whole lot like the strange person who was suddenly standing next to my car. They said something to me through the glass. I'm pretty sure it was, can I get in your car? My instinct was to get out of my car and walk into the store as quickly as possible.

I didn't know what this person wanted. And I remember feeling that if I was inside the store, there would at least be some employees in there opening up for the morning. I turned off my car, got out, and closed the door. I walked purposefully past this person and towards the building. As I did so, I asked, as politely as possible, if I could help them. This person then asked for a ride to the next town, the one that's to the north of my town. Then again, I was asked, can I get in your car?

I'm not headed that way, I said, still walking. I'm headed east. They asked me again for a ride. But this time, it was for a ride to my own town, which, of course, was completely in the opposite direction. I was bewildered by this and just kept walking towards the front doors of the store. Then for a third time, I was asked, Can I get in your car?

By then I'd made it to the entrance of the store. This strange little person Who I was thinking maybe was some type of hitchhiker Had followed me for a few paces I'm not headed that way either I sat over my shoulder to the hitchhiker And walked into the store The last time I saw what I now call

The hitchhiker They were standing about halfway between me And where my car was parked Now I do possess at least Some situational awareness If this was a woman who was frightened, like maybe they were trying to get away from a stalker, I would have sensed that. I would have told her to get inside the building with me, and I'd have the store manager call the police.

But my instincts were telling me that I was the one in danger. The hitchhiker didn't seem to be some kind of druggy or prostitute. Yet something was alarmingly wrong with the whole situation. Inside the store I took my time getting the donuts. When I stepped back outside, the parking lot was completely empty except for my car. The sun had just started to peek over the top of the hills at the east, and there was a bit of blue in the sky. There was no sign of the hitchhiker. I remember being hit with this surprisingly intense feeling of paranoia when I went back to my car.

Of course, I know a lot more now than I knew then. At the time, I had no real idea how close to the gaping maw of destruction had unwittingly come. I very cautiously checked the back seat of my car, and then, with a lot of trepidation, check the trunk. I was genuinely afraid that the hitchhiker had hidden in the back of my car while I was inside the store getting donuts. Finally convinced the car was empty, I sent my boxes of donuts on the passenger seat, got in, and drove to work. I didn't think about the hitchacre again all that day. Everything else in my life was normal.

Until the following day. About mid-morning that Tuesday, my wife called me at work. Usually we text each other when we need anything. So to ever call me at work told me right away something serious had happened. My wife was sobbing on the phone. Immediately I thought of our two boys. We were supposed to be in class at their high school. I asked my wife what was wrong,

and she told me that Kathy's husband, Ron, had been missing since the previous morning. Let me back up here a bit and explain that my wife and Kathy are best friends. Kathy was a friend of my wife's family when my wife was a kid, and Kathy bang kind of like an aunt to my wife. They both reconnected a little over a year ago, when Kathy and Ron moved into our town from the big urban center nearby. Since then, my wife and Kathy have been almost inseparable.

Ron and I got along all right. He's a decent guy. Needless to say, it was a terrible shock to hear Ron had gone missing. The paranoia I had felt the previous morning in the parking lot came flooding back to me during that phone call. I thought of the hitchhiker, even as my wife was relating to, me over the phone the details of the emergency. However, I didn't bring up to hitchhiker right then. I didn't accomplish much else that day, despite the fact that my office team was on a deadline

for a big project. The day got taken over by phone calls with my wife, trying to piece together exactly what happened over the previous 24 hours. Quite simply, Ron headed out to work early the same morning I'd made my donut run. He never showed up at work though And he never made it home Late that night Kathy went to the police The following morning in the parking lot of a big box store

In a town about 35 miles northwest of ours Ron's truck was found It was empty Ron was gone and there was no sign of what had happened to him One of the many things my wife did for Kathy on that terrible day was help her file a missing person's report for Ron. I took the next two days off from work, despite the looming deadline for the project.

My wife and I spent the entire day at Kathy's house after getting the boys to school. I was conflicted about taking the time off because of the huge project at work. But this was the spouse and my wife's closest friend. And the situation was getting worse as each hour passed was still no sign around. Kathy, of course, was in a total panic.

Since she and Ron had no children, I suppose it was fortunate for her that my wife could be there for. Those two women called every police department, bus stop, jail, hospital, church, shelter, airport, and hotel within 500 miles of our town. Trying to come up with a clue about Ron. I also remember the police dropped by Kathy's house once that day, and once again the following day. They came in and asked some questions about Ron's social media activity and stuff like that. I didn't get the impression the police were getting anywhere with Ron's missing person's case. I kind of felt like they were waiting for Ron to just show back up on his own. It was then that I got a dreadful feeling we were never going to see Ron again.

Through all this, I kept thinking back to what happened to me in the parking lot at that big box store. I couldn't get the thought out of my mind that a strange little hitchhiker wanted to get in my car. I was somehow involved in this. Despite that, I hesitated to tell my wife about the hitchhiker. I mean, a married father of two has no business talking to some strange woman in a dark parking lot. But finally, I did tell Kathy. and my wife about the strange encounter. As silly as it may seem now, I fully expected Kathy and my wife to be disgusted with me.

But instead, Kathy latched onto this information right away like it was her first beacon of hope. My wife was ecstatic to get this tiny piece of information. For her, it was the first real break in the case. Kathy called the police immediately with this news. That phone call precipitated another visit from a completely different pair of police officers this time. The officers listened carefully and patiently to my account of events from the previous morning, and they dutifully jotted down all the information, but then they just told me to call them if I see this hitchhaker again.

Kathy was frantic to act on this information, with or without the police. We live in a small town, and Kathy happened to know one of the assistant managers at the store where I encountered the hitchhiker. Long story short, they let us view the store's security tapes from the morning Ron disappeared. We found nothing on the tapes except one grainy clip of a pickup truck pulling out of the parking lot and heading north towards the next town. Kathy screamed when she saw the video that that was Ron's truck. Not like kicking myself and not recognizing it before when I saw it in the parking lot that morning. But there's so many white F-150s in our town.

These whole country is full of white F-150s. Also, I never actually saw Ron in person that morning. From the grainy video, we couldn't really see the face of the driver. But Kathy swore that it was indeed Ron. Married couples are like that. One spouse can pick out the other in a crowd just by seeing the back of their head or how they walk. We couldn't see if there was a woman. anyone else in the truck with Ron.

He looked to me like Ron was alone in his truck when he drove out of the parking lot. There was no sign of the hitchhiker. We contacted the police again and had an officer view the tape. All he told us was what they already knew. Ron was probably at that store sometime that morning. Despite the underwhelming response from the police, Kathy and my wife were quickly putting two and two together on their own.

They were convinced the hitchhiker was real and was a key to what happened to Ron. I returned to work that Friday. There was a lot of catching up to do, but I made some phone calls and helped Kathy arrange a meeting with the private investigator, someone my company used occasionally. Kathy hired the private investigator and tasked him with finding out anything about the hitchhiker. This private investigator spent the weekend talking to all the shopping centers. and big box stores in the area, viewing security footage of their parking lots. By Monday, the investigator had come up with nothing on the hitchhiker,

but what he did find was no less interesting. He found a similar disappearance, one that bore the hallmarks of Ron's disappearance. In the week prior to Ron going missing, a man had left his house to go to one of the big box stores near his home. He was to return some shoes his wife had bought, but that it turned out to be the wrong size. He left his house early because he wanted to arrive right when the store opened. This man also had never made it home. Two days later, his car was found abandoned in the parking lot of one of the store's sister locations 30 miles away from the man's home. He has not been found, and there are no suspects.

The case became a missing person just like Ron's, but was being handled by a different police department. To the best of the private investigator's knowledge, these cases were not considered to be connected. With new information, Kathy and my wife stopped all their other search efforts. They feverishly scoured the internet, looking for any other missing person's reports that matched the two we already had. They found several. going back over the past eight months. All of the disappearances involved middle-aged men, traveling alone in their automobiles.

A whole string of cars, pickup trucks, minivans, and SUVs have all shown up in some empty shopping center parking lot with no sign of what happened to the occupant. All of the men were either on their way to work when last seen, coming home from work, or had stepped out for a shopping yard and close to home.

Despite the apparent similarities between, these cases, there's plenty of variations as well. The range of all the men who disappeared was from 35 to 55. There's considerable ethnic and socioeconomic variation. The abandoned vehicles never showed up within the same police jurisdictions. The police had not made any connection between these cases. As far as we could tell, nobody was connecting the dots. I decided to connect the dots. I mean, I'm a data analyst in my job. I used the research my wife and Kathy had done to construct a predictive algorithm. First, I was able to establish that there was statistically more to the connection between

these cases than the immediate and apparent similarities. If I could establish statistical similarities, I could possibly get the algorithm to predict future disappearances. When I told my wife that I was going to try this, she told me to do that. take time off from my job if I had to. Actually, she told me to quit my job if I had to. If that is what it took to get the algorithm working. This was a total shock to me. It was completely out of character for her to even consider risking our jobs. Looking back now, I realized that even then, that dark miasma was slipping its way into the fabric of our lives. Without our noticing,

but affecting who we were. Needless to say, when I contacted my office that day and let them know I had to take more time off, they were not happy. But I had to focus on helping Kathy in any way I could, and would deal with the fallout at work later. I got to work designing the algorithm. Once it was built, I fed it a database of all the shopping centers in our area. Next, I fed the algorithm recent census data and all the men in the system. the area who matched the descriptions of the known victims.

This was a huge task, but I got it done. Then I fed the algorithm the list of known drop-off points for the abandoned vehicles from all the missing persons cases. Finally, I set the algorithm up to pick from the list of shopping center as the most likely location of the next disappearance. I included this last part because, sadly, we had to assume that the trend of disappearing middle-aged men would continue. The algorithm ran successfully, but it returned useless, meaningless junk.

Not only was as very frustrating to say the least, I was certain that my job was now jeopardized. Also by then it had been almost two weeks since Ron's disappearance. Those days were all dreadfully difficult for Kathy, and my algorithm idea had given her some hope. Now my bad idea was turning out to be a waste of time. But then my wife pointed out some things in the data that I missed. First, none of the abandoned vehicle locations were closer to each other than 20 miles. Second, the same location was never used twice. Also, while I was working feverishly on the algorithm, Kathy and my wife had kept doing research.

They found several more missing person cases that matched Ron's case. When I updated the algorithm what the new parameter is and the new data, the results were remarkable. The algorithm predicted where the next disappearance would most likely happen, a shopping center adjacent to a rest stop about 40 miles west of our town. The next disappearance would happen the following morning. We knew it would be no use taking this to the police. were on our own. Kathy declared she was going right over to the shopping center by the rest stop.

She was going to sit there waiting for the hitchhiker to appear. We told her that was a terrible idea. We knew how desperately Kathy wanted to find her husband, but none of us knew anything about the hitchhiker. The hitchhiker could be dangerous. The hitchhiker could be armed or working with accomplices. Let me be clear about something at this point. My wife and I were only concerned for Kathy and Ron. Not for ourselves. We had no idea what we were doing could expose our two sons to any sort of danger.

We were just worried something might happen to Kathy if she went solo to confront the hitchhiker. We didn't know that already we were exposing our own family to a malignance and that a hazard now lay on our own road, just beyond the beam of our headlock. Kathy ended up disappearing. She didn't come home by noon the following day like we'd agreed. But my wife and I were already becoming alarm much earlier than that. Before Kathy left, she agreed to let my wife put a location tracker on her phone. I had the same location tracker on my phone.

I made sure my battery was full. I told Kathy to hide my phone in her socks so there was a backup tracker. Just a few hours after Kathy left us, both phones went dark. My wife couldn't get either one to show up on her tracking app. According to the data sent from both phones, Kathy made it to the parking lot and then remained there, not changing location for just over an hour. At about the one hour point, the data showed Kathy was on the move again. Her pace indicated that she was walking north across the parking lot to the side where there was just a grassy area.

and no buildings. Kathy's movement then halted for about a full minute. After that, we lost contact with both phones. We texted and called Kathy repeatedly after that until it was time for us to get the boys ready for school. We dropped the boys off early at a fast food place a couple blocks from their high school and told them to wait there until school started. Then we sped over to where we knew Kathy had last been.

There was no sign of Cassie. or her car, just cracked pavement, lamp posts, and a few tiny trees that wouldn't give any real shade for another decade. My wife started to cry. It was a panicky, hyperventilating cry. She only cried like this one other time and all the years I've known her. It was back when she was pregnant with our eldest and a cop had pulled us over. He stood at my open passenger side window and bellowed across me at my wife.

were not slowing down enough when she passed him on the road. As soon as the cop stomped back to his car in a huff, my wife started having a panic attack. It was that kind of crying. I was hearing from her right there in the parking lot. I started to get scared. That was the first time during all this that I started to get really, really scared. I told my wife to please drive very slowly along the edge of the parking lot. lot opposite the stores that bordered what was basically just a waste space.

I was vaguely hoping to spot some hint of what happened to Kathy among the wild plants and weeds that grew freely in that unintended no-man's land that you find at the edge of parking lots all over this country. As we did so, a few more cars and trucks pulled up closer to the storefronts. Each time a single passenger would get out, give us a brief first, glance, then turn their backs and walk into one of the stores. After a few minutes of this, I realized how idiotic I was being. I had no idea what I was looking for, or even how to look.

This wasn't raw data on a computer screen that would eventually yield to my will. This was the inhospitable pavement under our tires, the utter indifference of the people walking by, as blind to my plight as the birds and the branches of the tiny wilted trees, all the secrets that mattered had sunk out of sight. Something in this world was swallowing people up, and all it was giving me for clues was the worthless, barren hiss of traffic. So we called the police. We were on the phone for a while, parked on that fringe of the paved world, trying to explain

to the dispatch officer exactly what we were calling about. The dispatch officer told us to come in and meet with the missing persons detective who had just been assigned to Ron's case that morning. We drove straight over to the station. The rest of the day didn't go well at all. The detective sat at a table across from us in a small room, and I went into detail about all the research we'd done, and about how Kathy had now also disappeared.

The detectives asked that we leave the laptops with him, along with their passwords. This stopped me cold. I remember stammering out a question as to why he needed the physical machines when I could just send him the data. My wife asked the same question. It was like all of a sudden we both finally understood the words of a song we'd been dancing to. and they weren't at all what we thought they were. From that point on, we were extracting ourselves from an interview

that was turning out to be an interrogation. When we got home that night, we were beyond exhausted. My wife and I were flabbergasted by the whole experience at the police station. My wife was in a complete rage at that point, actually. My usually unflappable spouse was venting absolute pure fury at the police. She typically never cast aspersions at anyone.

But that night I heard her say awful things about the police, their motives, and their overall competence. This was coming from someone who was raised to respect the police, and it taught her boys to do likewise. This was another example of many very jarring transitions I would witness in my wife over the following weeks. After that we left things in the hands of the police and hoped they were making progress with the case interactions that didn't lead to us but our hopes were in vain

the police weren't looking for Kathy there was no missing person's report for her we were considered the main suspects in bronze disappearance so this is what came out of nowhere to consume our lives I returned to work It felt like being under a dark cloud.

My co-workers were less affable. I found out that I was not being asked in meetings I was usually included in. The missing persons detective made contact with my wife and I weekly. We knew this was a bad sign. Usually in the case of missing persons, friends and family victims have to go to great lengths to get any feedback from the police. but the detective on Ron's case showed up at our house and he showed up at our jobs he was always very friendly

and acted like these visits were just him doing us a favor and keeping us in the loop but we knew this is absolutely not how the police spend their time the detective would never give us any actual information on the case during these visits he would just deflect our questions and continue asking his own questions about our whereabouts,

our acquaintances and our activities. If we had any lingering doubts about the detective's motives, they all evaporated the day police officers came to our son's school and pulled them both out of class for questioning. That's when we got a lawyer. She cautioned us to do nothing further regarding Ron or Kathy's disappearances. We couldn't give the police any excuse to arrest us for impeding the investigation.

A week after that, the raid happened. Several officers in body armor showed up at our house with a search warrant. Me, my wife, and my two very confused boys had to sit on our screened-in back porch for a couple hours while our house was searched. The police took all of our computers, tablets, and cell phones. And through all this drama, of course, there was still no sign of Kathy or Ron. About a week after the raid, I was called into my manager's office. When I saw the lady from HR hovering in the corner, I knew this meeting was not going to end well.

Apparently my computer had already been subpoenaed for any records I'd ever touched. Also, a number of my colleagues had been questioned by the police. My company was not happy about any of this. So HR underage the Google search I'd done on missing persons cases. Unfortunately, I did the search on a company computer and on company time. That was all the grounds for dismissal they needed. Five minutes later, I was carrying a box of my stuff and was being walked to the elevator lobby by the HR lady. My wife was beyond furious at me when she got home and I told her the news.

All the stress and worry the past several weeks finally welled up and exploded out of her in my direction when I told her I'd lost my job. My wife said things to me. Someone typically only says to a person after a long period of secretly harboring a lot of malevolence against them. I slept on the couch that night. When I woke up late the next morning, my wife was still home despite it being a work day. She was sitting at the dining table, silent and slumped, arms crossed. Her work had called her early that morning. fired her. Apparently the police have been paying visits to her office as well. Not only did her work

fire her, they had a court order barring my wife from coming near their building. My wife fell into a deep depression. She took some of the little severance money we had left and used it to buy another laptop. She spent all day in our room with door shut, watching online videos, mostly social media personalities praddling on about this or that banal drivel. My wife had never had any interest in social media before, but now she wasn't even using headphones. The boys were affected by this. The word had spread around the school that something very wrong was going on at our

house. I can't begin to know the destructive effects this had on their secret teenage lives. But I knew this made both boys vulnerable to the thing that. that plague teenagers when there are troubles at home. My daily life devolved into a running battle against those threats. I drove the boys everywhere, so I knew exactly where they were and who they were hanging out with. I fought with them to keep up with their schoolwork.

I made them sit for evening meals. I enforced curfews. Meanwhile, the whole time, I was waiting for a knock on the door. from the police, a nameless but growing throughout was encircling our lives, as unseen and as deadly as car exhaust. For your bonus episode, Creepy Presents, The Magician, written by Colin Bischoff and narrated by need to fort. Madness is a boon. Can you think of any worse of fate than to rot in my cell while my bones wait

at the mercy of time? I tell this tale, a story of my young adulthood, not because I take pleasure in the details, but because if I do not tell it soon, I fear I will lose my willpower and my mind. Already I am fading. My light is poor. my food insipid, and my only tools to write with are this bit of pencil and a few strips of paper no wider than my fingertips I convince the guard to slip through the grate. The words I write are so small, I doubt anyone but I can read them. Yet, if they are ever pieced together, they will tell a story of curiosity and caution, and of how a test of fate led me to a station from which I have found no return.

My story begins some years ago. I'd attended a soiree with a group of my friends, a 16-millimeter double-screening of Louis Bunwell's The Exterminating Angel, and Chris Marker's La Jatie, and overheard from the bartender that Tobias, the once-famous magician, would be visiting our small southeastern town for the first time in nearly two decades for a single midnight performance.

Immediately, we decided to go and see what all the first time. fuss was about. Though none of us had seen the magician, we were familiar with his feats. We'd read the newspaper clippings, stapled to the back of our parents' scrapbooks, had seen the yellowed photographs, secreted away in basement boxes, had eavesdropped on whispered conversations about Tobias and his many tricks. Tobias, the powerful practitioner of black magic. Tobias, the great diviner, an unparalleled clairvoyant. Tobias, the wondrous, the wondrous wordcaster and purveyor of dark arts. We'd heard the stories and believed not a word of them. We were an energetic and ambitious group of youngsters, all well-read, educated, and inquisitive enough

to have considered some of the more elusive theories of the universe. Solipsism, free will, and the artificiality of time were regular dinnertime conversations. Though we weren't above admitting that some of the world's most compelling mysteries fell outside the scope of human understanding, we found it juvenile to believe that a magician's tricks with throwing knives, his dances with fire, and his apparent ability to summon birds and beasts of any kind, rabbits, pigeons, speckled toads, from his leather top hat were anything short of clever slights of hand. Even the most impressive stories we'd heard about the magician, for instance, that he'd once brought a lion on stage, danced with it, and then unleashed it into the audience where, with a roar, it vanished in a puff of

smoke, we thought could be easily explained by something so banal as a film projector in a bit of cunning pyrotechnics. Some people called Tobias a visionary, a true master of illusion in hypnotic art. Others like ourselves saw him for a fraud. The one story that gave us pause was linked to an incident that had caused Tobias to go into seclusion for so much time. Although the reports we read were incomplete and often contradictory, we gathered that some 20 years ago a fire on the stage had maimed the magician, killed his assistant, and burned his tent to the ground. Dozens in the audience suffered injuries,

and at least three people were reported missing. The last detail intrigued us more than anything, as some of the accounts hinted that before the fire began, Tobias had been in the process of his most dangerous and famous act of disappearing members of the audience. On this detail, the reports were unanimous, and though we doubted anything physically impossible had happened, fires, we believed, had a way of spreading panic, misinformation, and lies. We agreed that we couldn't miss the opportunity to see a master charlatan. work. The night of the performance we met around 11 o'clock at the top of a small rise we called

the Blind Man's Bluff, which offered the best view of the town. There were six or seven of us, I believe, no more than eight, all youthfully good-natured and confident in our faded blue jeans and boat shoes and flannel jackets and skirts. We laughed a great deal at the thought of the magician, acting out what we jokingly called his preternatural talents, passing around cappuccino in tin cups and thin cigarettes in imitation of Humphrey Bogart or James Dean. We made a nice picnic on the bluff, gorging ourselves on pork sandwiches the size of footballs,

sparkling in tinfoil and sweating grease, snowy white mounds of potato salad, speckled with bacon and cheddar cheese, vacuum-packed bags of onion-flavored potato chips, we popped noisily for kicks. Being fond of the prince of Andy Warhol and having discovered photography as a mutually accessible means of artistic expression, we all carried Polaroids and spent a good half-hour photographing ourselves

in what seemed by turns, flattering and outrageous positions. We felt cool on the bluff, and as we studied the lights below us, how they glittered like marbles in some still black pond, we couldn't help but think of ourselves as particles in an infinite universal sea. or perhaps, like Wordsworth said, little spots in time. By the end of the night we'd see for ourselves, if the magic was real, or, as we believed, all a bit of cunning sophistry. Just before midnight, we descended the hill to the broad flat field where Tobias had pitched his tent.

Vehicles of all colors and sizes sprawled like beetles along the field, chromed carapaces, oozing greasy food bags and cigarette butts, and crushed cans of beer. We paid $5 each to enter the tent, then passed through the rows of wooden benches toward the raised platform at the front. The tent was crowded and smelled of burnt popcorn and urine and the musty sawdust that carpeted the ground. A red curtain with gold trim, moth-eaten and faded with age, bisected the stage. From the other side, we heard voices and detected faint movement. We were surprised at the number of people who were in attendance, and equally surprised that some of them, perhaps due to the magicians' fall from grace, had disguised themselves.

A good dozen of those nearest us wore paper masks, while others sported broad-brimmed hats or thick scarves or trench coats that obscured their features, smashed into our own row with our sunglasses and cameras in jocular energy. I'm sure we made a shapely, slightly bunch. Unabashed, we fingered our camera shutters and waited for the show. When at last the lights dimmed and the curtain lifted, all chatter ceased, so that the air seemed weighted by the rattle of bracelets and necklaces and earrings, the ruffling of shirt collars and straightening of watchbands, the last furt of snatches into crumpled food bags and sacks of popcorn.

We craned our necks and held our cameras ready, trying to get a glimpse of the magician, An overhead light sparked into existence, reminding us of the chaos of creation, a light ex-Nahilo, something from nothing. It was from the midst of this darkness that the magician emerged. The sight of Tobias on the platform made us rigid. It's true, we knew already that the fire had maimed him, yet the figure we saw rattling, yes, rattling across the stage, defied our wildest expectations.

The Tobias we'd seen in pictures looked anything but frail, with his black top hat, silver cane, and red cape that swept back to reveal a man of meaty muscular build, whose bushy mustache and long front teeth gave him the grinning appearance of a walrus. Though he wore his cape and top hat, the man we saw that night, rolling a wheelchair under the stage, resembled nothing short of a shrunken baby. He was so shriveled, in fact, that we found it impossible to tell where his head ended and his neck began, or if there was any neck inside the puddle of fat that spilled over his chest.

Snickers and hoarse whispers ripped through the tent. People around us coughed. Ignoring them, we raised our cameras and took shot after shot of this crude parody of what had once been a successful man. Without speaking, the magician raised his shriveled hands and, with a light flourish, clapped twice. An explosion shook the tent and suffused the stage with a cloud of pink smoke. Shocked into attention, the crowd whistled and cheered as we, studying ourselves, fumbled at our cameras and tried to find a clear shot. When the smoke dissipated,

a blonde woman in a pale blue dress stood at Tobias's side. Gone was the chair, and in its place the magician held a silver cane he used to hobble across the stage. The audience roared its approval as we, collecting ourselves, realized that, crippled or no, this Tobias and his tricks were more than we'd bargained for. When he reached the edge of the stage, the magician made a shaky half-bow and made a flourish with his cape. The people around us cheered. Uncertainly, we joined in, cameras clicking, as Tobias lifted a hand for silence. "'Friends,' he intoned, in a letter. "'Friends,' he intoned, in a leathery voice that reminded us of our mothers,

snakeskin boots and purses. Tonight, for the first time in decades, I will bring you the greatest display of magic ever seen in all the world. In the brief time it will take you to witness this performance. Here he held up a gold-colored pocket watch, we had to admit, added a nice effect. Rest assured that you will leave this place, free of any doubts. He looked ready to say more, but his knees buckled so that his assistant caught him,

and he had to lean on his cane. The lights dimmed again. His assistant retreated, and the audience broke into cheers that we reluctantly joined. He began with a gamut of tricks, which, simple as they were, clearly evidenced that his skills had not faded with age. In the first act, he spun a pair of flaming sticks, and then downed mouthfuls of hot coals we were certain would tear his age. insides to bits. We clapped with everyone else as he spat flames through his fat purple lips.

Next, he drew a white rabbit and a pair of green serpents from his hat, then unleashed a swarm of pigeons from his sleeves, all of which we captured diligently on film. Just as we became certain that the act had finished, a pair of foxes, sleek and red as a new silk blouse, burst from behind the curtain and leapt yipping from the stage. Amid shouts, a mid-shouted shouts. A mid-mighted, of amazement, we crouched low in our seats and mashed frantically at our cameras, hoping to capture the foxes flying through the air. Yet as quick as they came, they vanished, deliquescing into ghostly shapes that soared above the heads of the audience without ever touching the ground. The crowd roared its approval, and we, joining them, watched an amazement as the shriveled figure

of the magician seemed to swell with the surge of voices, like a spider swells with the juice of a fly, so that we, beneath the cloak and wrinkles, caught glimpses, we thought, of the youthful magician of old. When the applause subsided, the magician drew aside his cape and produced a clay pot like the kind gardeners use. Lifting the pot, he showed the mound of soil and wilted succulent plant, whose tiny leaves barely rose above the lip of the pot. Now, said the magician, I will restore life and make it grow. Now doubting our skepticism, we watched the magician wave his palms above the plant,

mumbling some incantation we couldn't understand yet, which seemed musical in a way that connected with us. As Tobias chanted, the leaves of the plant grew stiffer and more buoyant. Soon, the stalk of the succulent stood rigid and began to curl upward like a beanstalk. slowly at first, but then faster and faster, so that it seemed the chute must be growing straight from the magician's palm. At last, the tip of the plant poked through the top of the tent.

We snapped photo after photo, shutters clicking and bulbs flashing, so that the entire place seemed alive with some strange liquid energy. Then, just as quickly as it appeared, the plant burst into a riot of colored sparks. The audience erupted after that. Cheers, whistles, and thunderous applause split the tent as the lights dimmed and the magician and his assistant bowed. Now that he had our attention, we knew it was time for more elaborate tricks.

When lights swelled again, Tobias threw aside his cane and sauntered onto the stage backed by his assistant who rolled between them a long metal box. "'Ladies and gentlemen,' said the magician, his body swelling once more, "'I will now attempt the very dangerous task of sawing my assistant in half. "'Please remain quiet and give me your utmost attention.' "'Silently we watched the assistant, ashen-faced but calm, climb into the box.

"'Moveing slowly but certainly, the magician removed a toothy handsaw from one of the crates and, balancing himself with his cane, sawed steadily through the box. Minutes passed. No one spoke. Our fingers sweated on our cameras. When he finished, he pushed apart the two sides of the box, showing the pair of long legs in one half, and the assistant's grim but smiling torso in the other. It seemed there ought to be a pile of innards spilled over the stage, yet not a drop of blood was shed. The audience cheered wildly as the magician, practically leaping, pushed the two sides of the box together,

and, to cheers from the audience, helped his assistant to her feet. In the next act, the magician startled us once again by producing a set of curved throwing knives and aiming them at the shiny apples his assistant balanced on her shoulders and at the top of her head. One she even held above her breastbone, so that the slightest miscalculation would have pierced her heart. Forgetting our cameras, we watched, mesmerized,

as he threw blade after wicked blade. The resounding thwack of the blades each time they split the apples in two was rivaled in intensity and volume only by the gasps from the audience. At last, when our eyes stung for lack of sleep, and we thought the night could go no longer, the moment of revelation arrived. Perched on the stage like a king in his court, we heard the magician announce that at long last he would disappear a member of the audience.

A shock of excitement ran through us when he asked for volunteers. Here was the moment we'd been waiting for. Surely we thought it would take more than smoke and mirrors to pull off this trick. Now, finally, we would have our chance to see if the magic was real. We readied our cameras and looked around, eager to capture the performance. For several moments, a sense of uneasiness swept through the audience, so that we felt, for the first time that night, strangely uncomfortable. Tobias spoke briefly with his assistant,

after which she straightened her dress and addressed the audience. The magician has requested that a member of the audience volunteered to participate in the act. A hush fell over the crowd. in exchange for your participation she continued seeming to direct her words to where we sat in the front you will receive the most memorable experience of your life and will be graced by the magician's touch a shiver split the audience and we smelled among the other smells something sharp and pungent that must have been curiosity and excitement and fear now the story of the vanishing participants to us more immediate a danger than it had ever been No one spoke for a while, and when it seemed unlikely that anyone else in the audience would volunteer, we decided that one of us should go. I'm still not certain how I was chosen.

I was neither oldest nor youngest, largest, smallest, bravest, or tallest. Yet soon I found myself breaking from the crowd and, to much encouragement from the audience and my peers, clamoring onto the stage. You'll have to forgive me if my memory begins to fail. at this part of my tale. The events I'm describing happened a very long time ago, and the details of what happened remained difficult for me to explain, even though they have shaped the rest of my life. What I do remember is that when I met the magician on the stage, I had the vague impression that the figure before me was just another illusion, and that the spidery presence still lurked

hungrily nearby. In a smooth, unhurried tone, the assistant explained to me that, during the performance, I would feel no pain, would rather experience something very much like falling asleep, and that I shouldn't worry if I had the impression of slipping into another world. As soon as the act was over, I would awaken just where I began, having lost nothing but a moment of time. Though she smiled as she spoke to me, there was something that unnerved me about the look she gave me and about the warmth that never seemed to touch her eyes. The magician worked quickly. Holding up his watch, he began to recite a strange incantation whose words, though I couldn't understand them, sent tremors down my spine. Studying the watch and hearing the words,

I did as he told me and focused all my energy on my innermost being. I felt, in those first moments, not like a man on stage, but like a man adrift in the ocean of his consciousness, slipping deeper and deeper into myself, until I felt certain nothing of the world remained. At one point, I thought I saw the magician holding a photograph which contained impossibly, the image of myself and my friends posing on the blood, and that the longer I looked at it, the more it seemed to melt away.

Losing sight first of the audience, then of the stage, I felt my body growing cold, then colder, than numb. Like the assistant had warned, I had the sensation that I was slipping through a gap in time. I don't know how long I remained in that inner space, a minute, an hour, a year. Yet when I regained a sense of consciousness, I found myself in this same cell in which I now write these words. At the time I felt certain I had fallen through a trapdoor in the stage, thus proving that the magician's act was just another trick. The place I had landed was, after all, very soft, straw, I think, or else sawdust, and not so far above me, I could hear the magician repeating his incantation. I could hear the whispers of the audience.

I could even hear, so I thought, the faint clicking of the cameras as my friends captured the events on stage. Yet as time passed and I still remained, I began to grow afraid that something very wrong and very strange had happened to me. For the first time in my life, I wondered seriously if there might be some truth to the magic after all. I became very frightened, and to ward off panic, I began to explore my new surroundings,

which were surprisingly large. I call the place my cell because I lack any other word to call it. I am trapped here, but it seems to expand endlessly, like a tomb or catacomb. Though I have now grown used to it, I was surprised to find that, no matter how far I delved into my cell, the noises above me never seemed to grow fainter or more distant.

It was as if I had slipped into some other world, a loophole in time perhaps, so that my world and the world I left seemed to have folded inward on one another, coexisting, yet never moving forward nor backward. Though the noises from the other world, my old world, I should say, have never left me, I have learned recently to tune them out,

just as I have found that there are places in my cell that are different from the rest. The grate is one such place, and the slips of paper and white plates of bland shrink-wrapped food are the first I have found, the guard I speak to on the other side, who I've never seen, or even, strictly speaking, even heard yet another. I have wondered of late if this world I call my cell has any outer limit, or if the limits of my world are defined only by the limits of my mind. I'm not sure there's an answer, though at times when I examine the photographs I've discovered around my cell, prints of myself at the magician's performance,

and on the bluff in which, strangely, I am all alone, both the magician and myself, I suspect some external power may be at work. For now I reach the end of my tale and prepare to slip the final words through the great with the hope that someone will read them on the other side. I don't know what awaits me in the future, if future exists in the place I am now.

All I can do now is write these words and listen and wait. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at CreepyPod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through Creative Commons Sherrillite licensing or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.