Creepy - Day 9 - Nyro and the Dark & The Calliope Doesn't Play Anymore

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Nyro and the Dark***Written by: Scott Savino and Narrated by: JV Hampton-VanSant***The Calliope Doesn't Play Anymore***https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/***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.

Creepy presents the 31 Days of Horror. Day 9. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastures and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Good afternoon, J.V.

Hi, Doctor. I'm glad to see you are keeping yourself busy. The art therapist said you had something you wanted me to see. Oh, my. Do you like them? Um, well, they certainly are detailed. Thank you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you've decided to take up rock painting.

Obviously. And what, if I may ask, motivated you to paint erotic scenes on the rocks? Are these representations of dreams you've been having? Nope, just like naked people. It's so much better than the stuff I dream about. And what have you been dreaming? dreaming about. Mostly Nero and the dark.

After the end days, when the hum of civilization crumbled, a blight lowered itself onto the carcass of what remained. It settled in the ashes of every shadowed stoop and prodded its finger into every sidewalk crack until the world was quiet, overcast, and still. There, the boy spent. his life inside, tucked away, as far from the dingy autumn glow that loomed outside as he could get. He feared the dark, hated it. It meant being alone with his thoughts. But the grim gloom,

the world beyond his hiding place radiated, he feared more. Now the passing of days and nights meant nothing to no one. Time amounted to a span of hours spent jumping at shadows and unfamiliar sounds after the light in the sky had faded, and the span of hours you spent hiding from the daylight things. Things that made the world their hunting grounds now that the sun barely shone on the world beneath the smoggy sky. In this time of never-ending October days, the things that surfaced from deep within the ground after life was gone were worse than the silence, worse than the shadows, and worse than the crumbling house where the boy now stayed. The toppled down Victorian, its siding sunbleached and white, like brittle bones,

where he hid, alone. The beam barely sculpted shapes in the dark of the boarded-up room. A flashlight was not enough light for danger, but just enough light if you were afraid of the dark. The light the boy held was just enough to hold back the loneliness dressed in full black. He saw one of the things outside once. Outside, through these very windows before he comes. covered them. It was made of molten, blinding, light and tall, gleaming against the corroded atmosphere as it cast a filter of pure white onto the bed of fallen leaves crunching beneath

its feet. It radiated bright warmth against the gathering chill of fall. And yet, there was something about how it joined together all wrong and moved the way the memories of spiders moved, that told the boy instinctively to avoid being seen. Instead of in the shadows, it crept in the open, sallowed daytime the way a spider wouldn't do, with its many legs sprawling around it like fluorescent lamp posts, too elongated to be natural and far too many joints. They stretched their way across the broken sidewalk in a tangle of light, then skittered across the lawn while he watched.

Its body shimmering with what felt like an invitation to come outside to join in the muted sunlight, whispering on the brown of the dead grass littered with red, and orange leaves. Every spot it touched should have burned, should have caught fire, but instead the ground just smoked and smoldered and turned what was left of the lawn to footprints of ash. The words it whispered crawled along his skull, promises of soup, of safety, of someone's arms holding him close, of warmth. The soul nid spoke, building unstable dreams on a scaffolding of rickety lies, using his mother's voice,

or what he supposed was his mother's voice. So much time passed since he'd heard it last, he couldn't be sure if he remembered it anymore. He almost went outside and joined it, until he saw the body it dragged. A boy, no older than him, still twitching, was wrapped in shimmering white, fibrous ropes, covered everywhere, except for his smiling face. He bled across the leaves, across the dead smoldering lawn as the soul-nid dragged

him, whispering comfort the whole way. That was the day he boarded up the windows for good. Solnid spun silk as they outshone the meek sunlight, yearning to reach the ground through the gloom above. They used their bright glow to lure. And that silk, not to wrap to make warm, but to strangle. It was the third night after he boarded up the windows of the house, when the last batteries he'd found, in months began to die. The flashlight was barely holding on when he heard the voice.

There's not much left of that, and you're wasting it. It said calm, clear. The voice came just behind his right ear. The boy froze, eyes wide. It doesn't protect you, you know. The voice continued. You hide behind it, just like you hide from the light outside.

It leaves you more alone. The flashlight flickered, and the boy tapped it hard against the palm of his hand until the flickering stopped. The light was slightly brighter for the moment, too. He cast the beam around, hoping it would carve out the shape of what had spoken to him the dark. Nothing was different in the room. The house was the same. Dark and nobody was there with him. Or was there? Wait. Was there presence? A calm manifested now, seeming to lurk within the walls? You won't find me like that, said the voice. The flashlight clicked off on its own, and the boy made a noise that was somewhere between a gasp and a shriek.

Who are you? He whispered to the empty air. At first there was no reply. Then the darkness identified itself. Nero. The boy didn't sleep that night, and although Nero didn't reveal himself, he didn't leave the boy alone in the dark either. He stayed just at the edge of hearing, whispering nothings, a heartbeat in the shadows. Each night after, Nero returned, but only if the boy left the lights off.

Only in total darkness. One night, the boy lit a candle. He could still feel Nero there with him in the room, in the shadows of the corners, in the dark space beneath the bed. But Nero didn't speak to him that night, not at all. I exist in the abandon. When you bring your light into the dark,

you bring your fear along with it. It makes the darkness. sick. He explained to the boy the next evening, You don't have to stay in the place where you are. Enter the shadows. The things that burn in the daytime cannot follow, but this fear you have of the unknown,

of the things you can't see, you must leave that behind. So the boy extinguished everything. He hated it, but he hated living in the same world as the Solnids more. They knew he hid inside, and every day they called to him from the lawn below in voices he supposed must have belonged to people he used to know. At first, it only happened once, then twice, then a dozen times a day. Nero never promised him soup or warmth.

Nero never pretended to be his mother. And Nero never asked him to smile. You're learning. Nero said one night as he sat with the boy in the darkness. You might be ready soon. Ready for what? To stay. With you?

The boy asked. Nero did not respond. Nero was never cruel. He was quiet and careful. And spoke of the darkness as if it were the only safe space left. Something the bright world had forgotten. A place only truly open to the blind. Those who no longer feared what they could not see.

You must give yourself over to it, Nero told him. You cannot tremble. You cannot gasp. You cannot give in. You cannot give in to any such impulsion. Move quietly, slowly, feeling your way with your hands, with smells, with sounds, with the taste, of the air. Let go of the world shaped by their light. Let go of what you see. The boy tried. Each night, just before he got deep enough, he would gasp or whimper. Once, he didn't trust his hands to find the way. He grew afraid, and his footing, in Nero's world, unseen, what? was clumsy. He fell. He cried. Nero was silent. Still, the boy kept trying. Each night,

slower, quieter, braver. Until the night he succeeded, he did not shudder, he did not weep, he gave himself over entirely. In that stillness, Nero came. came one last time. You're ready, Nero whispered, his voice like wind slipping beneath the door. You've done it. The boy smiled faintly. So I can stay here in the dark now, with you? He waited.

There was only silence. Nero did not answer. He waited longer. hours maybe, maybe days. It was hard to tell in the empty place, hard to count time without the passage of daylight. The world he'd left behind still existed, out there. He couldn't see the soul nids now,

in this darker place he'd surrendered himself to, but occasionally he still heard them. still heard them calling in what he guessed was meant to be his mother's voice. Only now, he wasn't afraid. He was beyond their reach. Nero? He whispered. Nothing. That's when he understood.

Nero had never offered him a place beside him. Nero never promised the dark wasn't. the loneliness the boy had always known it to be by the flickering light of flashlights and candles. He only promised a safer place to hide. Safer than the dilapidated sunbleech house where the Solnids called to him, left smoldering footprints and dragged twitching boys across the fallen leaves on the parched dead lawn. The boy hadn't been invited to join as a companion.

He had only been offered a safer place. Passage to this emptiness where stillness was disguised as peace, where loneliness wore a voice of a friend. He started to forget the world shaped by light more and more as time passed now that he had let go of everything else. Light, fear, memory? He had no way back. He tried to remember his name.

He tried hard. Pushed against the wall of his own thoughts. All he could find was the name of the voice that led him here. He wasn't sure how much time passed. but one night he became aware of someone else in the house, another survivor taking shelter, trembling, flashlight in hand. One night, that survivor will hear a voice in the dark. It will say,

There's not much left of that, and you're wasting it. Calm and clear. Rising just by, behind their ear. He'll tell them a safer place awaits if they can abandon the world shaped by light, if they can embrace the quiet, if they can move in the land of the blind, and leave behind everything they fear. Then they can disappear safely into the know.

their survivor asks his name, the boy will respond. Nero, without hesitation. Because even though the empty place is safer, you can't be captured by things that stalk the daylight across broken sidewalks and through dead forests on long, spindly, blinding, bright legs. Safer than the crumbling cities made of sun-ruined brittle bone. Safer than the world you left behind,

where survival means hiding in broken, crumbling houses from things that want to drag you off in silken, glowing threads to smolder beneath the sun. And eventually, that survivor will take the boy's place in the blind world of the dark, because in the void there's only space for one. The only companion in the emptiness is stillness. Silence.

All else is forgotten. And when someone asks, who are you? The only response left will be the name that has been passed on and on within the abyss like a virus. and when the time comes to answer, there will be only one thing left to say. Not because that name was ever his, but because the only name the dark can ever remember is its own.

Thank you. I'm going to continue my rounds now. May I suggest that you not want to share your hobby? with some of the other patients. Of course not. These are just for me. Okay, then. Carry on. See you later, Dr. Hall.

Fine. Like what? Oh. Yeah, yeah. Of course I do. My dream? Sure. It was about how the calliope doesn't play anymore.

It's strange with St. sticks with you. Some people remember the face as someone they loved. Some remember the last words someone ever said. Me? I remember the color of the sky the night Chris disappeared. Not the stars, not the moon, just the sky. It was this pale, oily gray like the world was waiting to exhale. That was 30 years ago. And I hadn't thought about Edgewater Park for a long time. Not until last week when I got the letter. No return address, just a single sheet of paper folded one sitting in my mailbox. The gates are open.

The ride is starting. No name, no signature. But there was a postmark on the envelope. It was from Millhaven. The town just ten miles east of the park. I hadn't been back since the night we broke in. I told myself for years it wasn't my first. fault. We were just kids. Chris wanted to go more than I did. It said there was something in the

fun house, there was something buried under it. He'd read it online, one of those old Angel Fire conspiracy pages filled with black text and red blinking headers. I laughed it off. We both did, but we still went. And only I came back. Now standing at the rusted front gates, 30 years older, with knees to crack when I crouch and more fear than I'll ever admit out loud, I feel like I'm 13 again. The gates creak when I push it open. The old ticket boots are still there. Boards broken, covered in bird shit, windows long since shattered.

The archway overhead still reads, Edgewater Park, where memories are made. But most of the letters are hanging by rusted screws or missing entirely. Still, you could see the faded wood where they'd long hung. I don't know why I came back. Well, that's a lie. I came back because I need to know if Chris is still here. And I need to know if what I saw that night was real,

or just the last flicker of childhood fear before the darkness fully sank in. We did the old sleepover trick. I told my parents I was sleeping over Chris's and he did the same with his parents. Our parents each saw us leave on our bite. to what they assumed was each other's houses, when in reality we met at the park. Chris had his flashlight his dad used for hunting, long, heavy, and bright enough to blind a raccoon at 50 yards. I remember the way the beam cut through the fog as we squeezed between the broken boards on the service gate. Too young and dumb to even consider that such a flashlight would have alerted anyone

in a five-block radius, especially security guards. The park had already been shut down for six years by then. Some kid lost a hand on a tilt-a-wirl. A teenager hanged himself in the house of mirrors. Urban legends mostly, but enough to scare the parents and spike the insurance rates. To us, kids living in a world before streaming services and Wi-Fi, that made it the perfect place to explore. The rides stood frozen in the mist, silhouettes of rust and rotting paint. The Ferris wheel looked like a skeleton. Its chairs dangling from frayed cables. The carousel stood still.

Horses chipped and sunbleached mid-gallop. From the moment we weren't more than ten feet past the security fence, Chris kept saying he felt pulled towards the center. Kept saying there was something under the fun house. Not in, but under. I remember laughing and calling him a dumb ass, but the truth is I felt it too. Like the whole park had gravity.

It dragged you in slowly until the idea of leaving started to feel impossible. The ground crunched beneath us, not just gravel or glass, broken bottles, shattered bulbs, tiny teeth. I didn't say anything about the last one. Maybe I didn't trust my eyes or maybe I didn't want to. Or more likely, as was the story, I told myself over the years, it was candy. Are those wax smiles broken apart over time? They couldn't be real.

It took us about 30 minutes to get to the fun house. By then we were in almost total darkness. The moon was just a sliver. The fun house looked like it had been scorched as Chris swept the light beam around. The entrance clown's face was melted, its mouth gaping wide and, black, like he'd have been screaming just before getting hit by lightning or something. One of the hands was gone, snapped off or pulled away. Chris didn't even hesitate. He just slipped inside without any need for a dare or the typical young male posturing. I remember calling out,

You're a lunatic. And he laughed at this high excited sound like a clown that echoed way too long. I stood there for a second, trying to decide whether to follow or not. Then I saw the clones remaining eye move. Just a twitch. Maybe there was some old mechanical still grinding away sporadically, refusing to give up the ghost. There was probably nothing. Counting on the ladder, I stepped inside anyway. Inside the fun house, it was wrong from the start.

I don't mean creepy wrong. I mean physics don't apply here. are wrong. This is where my memories of it all start to fall apart. I don't know what really happened and what just sort of grew over time in my mind. But I'll tell it to you like I remember it. The hallways were longer than they should have been. I know, cliche to any Doctor Who fan.

But to a kid, the hallway might as well have been a mile long. Some corners bent at strange angles only to lead to dead ends. The mirrors didn't reflect right. They showed versions of us, but not us. Not exactly. Not like the typical fun house mirrors that stretch or squash your image. In some of them, Chris was older, but I was the same age. In others, he wasn't smiling and I was crying.

In one, I wasn't even there at all. Chris kept moving. Kept saying something about the basement. but feel on the floor breathe. I'm not ashamed to say now that I was losing my nerve, but back then I kept walking, mustering whatever fake confidence I could manage. We passed a room with mannequins,

broken, dust-covered, dressed like carnival workers. One of them had its head spun around, staring in our direction. We'd walked a few steps past it before Chris stopped, his hands suddenly grabbing mine and squeezing. He didn't say anything. Just turned around and shown his light on the mannequin again, tracing the beam down to its hands. They looked wrong. They didn't reflect the light like the way it did in the rest of the fiberglass body.

I felt my stomach clenched as a wave of nausea washed over me. The hands. They were real. They were flesh. We didn't run. That's what bothers me most looking back. We should have run. When I saw the mannequin's hands, real pale human hands hanging limpid its sides with dirty fingernails and small crescent scars on the knuckles,

I didn't scream. I didn't pull Chris back or turn around or do any of the things the same person would have done. I just turned with Chris who'd sense let go and. on my hand and kept walking. Because something in that place had its fingers in my spine. It wanted us deeper. The art changed as we moved further in. It got warmer and thicker.

Like a boiler room buried in a swamp. There were no mirrors anymore. No lights either. The only glow came from Chris's flashlight and even that looked dimmer somehow. like the beam was being absorbed by the air itself. But it had to have just been the batteries, no matter how many times Chris claimed he'd change him before getting on his bike. We found a stairwell behind a false wall made of canvas clowns.

A section hung loose, flapping slowly despite the air being still. Behind it, stone stairs led downward into blackness. In that moment, Chris's entire attitude, who lightened and he grinned. There's a room under the park. I knew it. I didn't answer. I was focused on the sound.

Like rusted gears turning somewhere beneath us. I didn't say anything to Chris, but I convinced myself that it was whatever had caused the clown face to blink at the entrance. We went down. Like the hallway, the stairs went further than they should have. At least three stories deep, maybe four. Or not. It felt like when I'd go to the dive pool and try to sink down to touch the 10-foot

mark. The swim up always seemed to take so much longer than it should. Air just always out of reach. By the time we fell on the bottom of the stairs, it didn't feel like we were underground anymore. It felt like we were under something else entirely. The walls were made of wood. Old, damp wood.

The grain looked like faces if you stared too long. Twisted mouths, slitted eyes, warped by mold and moisture. What's that called? Paradalia or something like that? Seeing faces and inanimate objects? There was no lights down there, no power. Not that we should have expected anything. Frankly, it should have felt even scarier to see lights on

after all those years of inactivity. But when we saw something glowing just ahead, we moved toward it. It was a pale blue circle, like, a spotlight shining upward from the floor. Chris stepped into it. That's when everything stopped. No sound, no hum. Even my own breath felt distant,

like I was watching from outside my own skull. The floor beneath Chris began to open, slowly, silently, boards curling down in a way like wilting flower made of rotted timber. below it wasn't dirt it was just a hole a perfect void not black not even empty

just like someone had peeled the skin of reality back left it raw and open Kristen's scream he just looked back at me with wide eyes and said no that's not right

he didn't say anything his mouth open and I swear I remember his jaw moving, but there were no sounds. He just dropped. The light went out, and the board snapped shut. And I ran. I don't remember getting out of the park. Next thing I knew I was standing in my living room in the middle of the night,

mud on my shoes, just frozen there. My parents must have heard the door open and found me like that. When they or anyone asked me what happened, Words just sort of came out of my mouth, crafting a lie. I told him that Chris and I had lied and that we were going to go camping in the woods near his house. But when we got out there, Chris decided he wanted to go to the fun house to check it out. I said that I had gone as close as the gate but hadn't gone inside. I went on just lying and lying and lying until it felt like the truth.

I said that Chris told me to only begin. on for 10 minutes and when 20 minutes had passed I got scared and came home to get help. It wasn't even close to being a good story but no one ever grilled me on the details. The focus was on Chris. No one ever found him. His parents moved a year later. The town stopped talking about it after a while. My parents act like nothing ever happened as if my involvement was their shame.

or or they knew all along that I was lying and just didn't want to know the truth everyone forgot about it but I never really forgot and the park stayed quiet until now it's collapsed in places

swallowed by overgrown shrubs and weeds and decades of rot the clown face over the entrance is still there but its smile is cracked down the middle like broken wishbone, its eye sockets are empty. But I feel it's still watching. I don't even hesitate this time. I stepped through the mouth into the ruin beyond.

The smell hits me first. Wet wood, rust, something foul and accurate under it all, like old milk spilled in a crawl space. The mirrors are shattered, but the glass hasn't fallen. It still clings to the frames, trembling faintly in the dark like it's breathing. Every step feels like I'm trespassing inside my own memory. My flashlight beam flickers.

Once, twice, and studies, I don't look at my reflection. I already know what I'll see. I head straight to the canvas clowns. The flap is still there, still twitching. I pull it aside and the stairs yawn open in front of me, descending into that impossible dark. The air rushes past me as if it's exhaling, as if whatever's been waiting down there finally realized I was back.

I go down. The steps creak. The wood's soft. Too soft. On the third step, something beneath the boards shift. Something big is stirring just below. When I reach the bottom, I stop breathing. It's the same.

Thirty years and the place hasn't aged a day. The floorboards are warped, but exactly as I remember. With the same bloated patterns in the grain, with faces trapped amid scream like I've seen in my dreams for the last 30 years. Same image I've seen in my head on those quiet nights when I'm alone. The guilt overwhelmed my ability to bottle it up. The smell is stronger now, though. More alive.

In the circle's back. Glowing pale blue. I'm waiting. I step into it. I want to say I was brave. That I did it for Chris. But the truth is, I don't know why I stepped into the light. Maybe part of me never really left that night.

Maybe part of me has been standing in this circle for 30 years, waiting for the rest of me to catch up. You, I'm just hoping that whatever happened to Chris would happen to me so I could stop hating myself. The light hums. Not loudly. More like a whisper along my spine than the fingers that guided me all that time ago. Then the floor opens, just like before.

The wood peels back like rotten lips and the hole is waiting. Still perfect, still hungry, still impossible. But this time I don't run. This time I let it take me. The fall doesn't feel like falling. It feels like being forgotten. time stretches and collapses. I can hear things moving in the dark around me, scraping, whispering, crawling over themselves.

Like I've dropped into the belly of something that never stops swallowing. When I land it's on something soft, something warm. I roll over and feel breath on my face. Not mine. Something is crouched above me. I shine the light. It's Chris, or what's left of him. He hasn't aged, not exactly.

But his skin looks stitched together, lips are gray, eyes milked over. He's hunched like a marionette someone dropped. But he smiles. It's not a cruel smile, it's relieved. He reaches toward me. Then I see the strings. Actual strings. They rise from his shoulders, his wrists, his ankles,

impossibly long, stretching into the dark overhead, disappearing into pulsing red fissures in the void. They pull at him gently, like he's not in control of his own shape anymore. He opens his mouth, and I hear music. It's not a song. It's just,

A calliope. Distant. Off-key. Somewhere above on the surface, the carousel has started turning again. The music gets louder. Not clearer. It still sounds like it's melting. Like the notes are being played on warped waterlogged pipes.

But it's definitely a calliope. The same kind of edgewater used to play through cheap speakers while parents stood in line with sticky-finger kids and teens. nature snuck off behind the Tiltor world, the smoke. It shouldn't be playing. There's no power, no crowd, just me, Chris, and whatever's controlling his strings. I shine the flashlight upward. The beam doesn't reach far. The ceiling, if there is one, is lost in blackness. But the light catches something moving above, twitching between folds of red and flesh-colored fog. It's not gears or pullies pulling Chris.

It's fingers. Massive ones. Thin and endless. The kind of fingers a God might have if a God hated the shape of people. They move without urgency, tugging at the strings like a child

idly playing with a broken toy. Chris's body slumps, twitches, smiles. I take a step back and the floor beneath me pulses. In approval, the whole chamber takes a breath. I can feel its rhythm climbing into mine, sinking my breath with its unseen heartbeat.

I finally understand. This place, the whole park, is not abandoned. It's fed, satiated. It's a machine that runs on memory, fear, grief, and children. It let me go all those years ago because it got Chris and because I wasn't ready yet.

I hadn't lived long enough, felt enough. But now, now I'm full of exactly what it wants. Chris was the offering. I'm the payment plan. The seed that had planted and cultivated over years, and years of painful guilt. I feel the strings rising from my shoulders before I even see them. Thin silver cords stretch upward into the dark,

threading through my clothes, pressing into skin without pain, or at least any version of pain I can explain. Sowing itself not just into my flesh but my existence. I don't resist, I can't. I look up at my strings, disappearing in my life. to that same endless canopy. Somewhere far above, I can hear the carousel turning. The horse is creaking, music groaning.

The park is awakened again, and it needs performers. Chris looks at me and finally speaks, though his mouth doesn't move. The words vibrate to my bones like a low hum through wood. The ride doesn't stop. Not until the seats are full. Then he laughs, dry and empty, like old wind over broken glass. His jaw lolling open and closed like a broken ventriloquist dummy. I don't remember lying down, but now I'm on my back.

The floor beneath me goes soft, almost welcoming. Above their red glow pulses like an open wound. The music begins to loop, faster now, off-key and starving. and I understand what's coming next. The park has called me home. The show is starting. And the Calliope doesn't play unless it's got something to play for. And I know one of you hears it.

One of you feels it. Because there's still an open seat on the ride that needs to be filled. You're welcome. So... Time to stretch your legs a bit. Stretch my... Is something wrong? Would you rather not go to the gym?

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