Creepy - Hark! The Whispers of Those Uneasy Dead

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Do you believe?***Written by: L.P. Ring***Bonus Episode: "My Name is Charlene Brunt" Written by: Kevin Ground and Narrated by: Heather Thomas***Content Warning: Mental illness, mention of molestation***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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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please check out our donation tiers at patreon.com slash creepypod. Okay, cool. I gotta get going back to camp. No landlines out there needed to find a pay phone. Plan on getting this in earlier this year, the whole halfway to Halloween thing. Things are going. Fine.

Um, I should go. I've been gone too long. Also, I'm out of quarters. Hopefully things go well. And I'll be back to fill you all in about the great time we had next week. Until then, no. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepypastas

and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories make. They contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents. Hark, the whispers of those uneasy dead. Written by LP Ring.

Your atheist blithely attributes that rattling window frame, the scraping sound in the dead of night to the raging wind, to a mouse or a cockroach scavenging for scraps. Science arrogantly dismisses the spirit world. Our bodies are but vessels faring cells around the globe. Our minds only ship captains steering blindly towards a final mooring point. Hopes of an afterlife exist for the fool craving consolation against life's failures, who cannot abide the cold-hearted reality of death.

Well, lean closer. Had a nip more whiskey to your glass to save off the cold. I will not sermonize, but simply explain how the spirit world is real, and how it holds no fear for the God-fearing and the humble. Instead, heed these visitors, should they stand at our door or worry our sleep. My first teaching post landed me overseas at a parochial high school, where a severe, middle-aged office lady sat me through reams of paperwork before sweeping me through introductions with our taciturn principal and fellow colleagues. The Westminster Chimes actuated the shuffling of feet and animated student exchanges. The students would not have questions, I was informed. My co-teacher, I shall call her Joanna, alluded to the stack of folders and chapters to push through.

The first afternoon passed in a march of formulaic self-introductions, titters, and thanks. One whispered interaction tickled the borders of the conversation. As the final class bustled out, I wiped the board and inch desks back into place. There were no forgotten umbrellas, drop of pencils, or creased papers like in our classrooms. Reaching those final desk rows, I reached up and rubbed the back of my neck as I felt a curious weight settling upon me. Now tell me, have you ever sent something watching you? Not a person or an animal casually eyeing you, you understand. staring. Her hair feathered outwards. Her face only lightly touched by makeup. Her suit

jacket puffed slightly at the shoulders. My, hello, prompted no reply. I risked my few words of classroom language. Bored, desk, tidy. Glancing away, I missed her leaving. No sound of leather shoe on tile in her footfalls. The corridor was empty when I reached the door. Are you finished? Joanne's voice carried from the staff room entrance. Almost. The weekend came, and I cycled the neighborhood. Little kids regularly chasing and calling out to me while their parents laughed.

The evenings I spent alone, drinking weak beer and eating deep-fried seafood. My pigeon language attempts often left me feeling a fool. Welcome dinner for new teachers, me, came the second Friday. Even the principal attended, though, aside from one clink of glasses, my time with him would be rather limited. He drinks with the same few teachers year after year. Some he met in university, others have been here many years. Only two types of teachers get replaced, the women and the foreigners. What was the foreigner before me like?

He left suddenly Very inconvenient A shake of the head communicated both Joanna's disapproval of my predecessor and a dismissal of this topic Hindsight ensures I judge something else in her dismissal too

The principal and I did Indie clink glasses for a few photos One even snapped of us side by side surrounded by the other teachers The gym teacher drank enough to try English One of the history teachers had spent two years in London and could even produce a passable East London Cochney, Govna. People would stop me on the streets and asked me if I knew Kung Fu,

he remembered, with a rueful chuckle. I wonder how I was never beaten up. He asked how I found the work. It's a very rewarding experience, I answered. I'm learning lots about the educational system. The first thing to learn is that this system's shit. He refilled my glass. The second thing is that we all know this,

while like hamster's on a wheel, there's nothing we can do. The gym teacher wrapping his tie around his head Rambo's style was my cue to leave. I sensed in their return goodbyes, a definite relaxation in the room. The evening was warm, the speckled firmament above carpeted stars. At the crossing guard, I ducked underneath the dropping barrier, half expecting to hear an unctuous salaryman's admonishment as I darted over the tracks. Again, the weight on my neck prompted me to glance back. I called out.

She took a step back. The silence of her retreat at school could at least now be explained by her stocking feet. I took a step forward, removing my headphones just in time to hear my name screamed. The piercing train whistle drilled through my skull. I flung myself backwards, not seconds before barrel passed, piloted I imagined by an appalled driver. I lay there, Walkman smashed, catching flashes of her between the carriages. With the last carriage gone, so was she. Joanna stood over me, asking if I was all right, asking what the hell I was doing.

Are you drunk? I darted beneath the rising barriers, back across the tracks and sprinted a few hundred yards, peering down every side street. Returning, questions to my still waiting colleague tumbled out of me. I only saw you almost killing yourself. I wasn't... I shook off the comment. I saw someone.

My insistences only garnered another wave dismissal. Many people in their lives on tracks like these. I will walk you to the bus stop to make sure you concentrate and pill you're safe in your apartment. She kept my brush with rail-assisted mortality secret. Monday arrived. People were a bit friendlier. The gym teacher looked sheepish.

They'd been singing afterwards in a fairly raucous rendition of living on a prayer with air guitar. Evidence of the threat of God's presence even there. The lessons went smoothly enough. The students warmed too much. me, some even using my first name like I asked. By all accounts, I was turning into the fine and satisfactory teacher you see before you, which, on an admittedly slightly selfish note, made what began just shy of Halloween all the worse. The Westminster chimes prompted the usual squeaking of desks and fumbling with bags.

Sunshine shimmered through the windows, catching swirls of dust and chalk. outside students called out farewells before heading to their cram schools or athletic practice. I straightened one final desk, turned around, and gopped at the thick letters slashed in chalk across the board. How did someone sneak in and write them in the seconds my back was turned? What did they even mean? Duster and Hannah was diverted by a cry from the door. Joanna stood trembling. pointing.

Erased that. Now! Her cries hasten my efforts, the frightened tone in the now rattling me. And you did this? She persisted. Her expression showed she only half believed my vehement denial. What does it mean? I asked.

That they're watching. I glanced back at the chalk residue streaks. "'Who?' Her brisk footsteps were already receding down the hall. I finished straightening up the classroom before returning to the staff room. She'd already left. I taught the following day's class alone, and I'd be much ashamed if any of you could witness those failures.

At lunchtime, I placed my head on the desk, exhausted, little caring what the rest of the staff room might think. The history teacher handed me something caffeinated with a sympathetic smile. Keep your energy levels up. My colleague had made juggling 30 students with varying degrees of ability while adhering to a lesson plan seemed so easy. But my explanations were gopped at,

much as once was the parable of the seeds in the sewer. Instructions were misinterpreted or even ignored. I was barely getting through 30% of the work. There would be a lot to catch up tomorrow. I thought ruefully as the final student left with a airy farewell. At least tomorrow was Friday, she didn't show up then either. I woke at 4 a.m. that Saturday morning still in my work clothes and with the feeling I hadn't dreamed well. I fumbled from my torch, stumbling to the bathroom where a disheveled, bleary-eyed, mess gazed morosely from the mirror.

The principal's desire I continue teaching alone for now, reverberated to, the part of my brain not wrestling with a beer-generated headache. He didn't know when Joanna would return. Frankly, nobody did. But you have another teacher who could help? I asked, quaking at thoughts of the weeks ahead and the battalion of unfinished materials piling up. She was already teaching another teacher's class as well.

What happened to that teacher? That's a difficult. question was the evasive answer. The tone was cautious, eye contact avoided. I understand now, of course, that my awkward questions were, in truth, are rude. I skipped a shower and brushing my teeth in favor simply undressing. I crawled back under the covers, cribbing from my humanity's education of how, while losing one an English teacher might be considered unfortunate, blah, blah, blah.

The flimsy knowledge of wild wouldn't help. I hadn't done much use in university, and it wouldn't matter miles from anywhere, with even passing interest in that Dublin-born-in-parison-turned-scrib. I pulled the sheet up to my neck, my teeth chattering, thinking I should have stayed wearing my work clothes. How are these temperatures in October possible, for goodness sake? In misery, my thoughts returned to Wednesday. My final normal day of teaching.

And those words dobed on the chalkboard. Who was watching? Who were they watching? I shivered, wishing I'd invested in blankets. Somehow my feet were uncovered. I scrunched my knees up close to my chest. I didn't shiver any less. A woman's murmurs accompanied the wine of a bicycle's wheel.

A scraping sound from overhead compounded my misery. Some of my neighbors were very early risers, rustlers, and slammers of doors. But on a Saturday? I reached for the torch. I hadn't reached the complaining to the neighbors section of my language studies, but knew enough to ask that murmuring woman on her bike had a problem. The outside air was typically, and frustratingly, balmy. A sharp opposition to the inclement temperatures indoors.

There was no sign of an insomnia-stricken female or squeaky wheel. I shut out any more mosquitoes, shown the light back towards my bed, and dropped the flashlight in fright. Time froze. My heart may have stopped. I grazed the lights which with my finger and knowing the freezing air wasn't responsible for the goosebumps or my trembling breaths. Did I crave confirmation of what I could still consign to imagination?

Those whispers continued. The same phrase, I realize now from the cadence and flow repeated over and over like a pining beautitude or surrah. Would she be there still? Would she turn to face me? I gritted my teeth, seeking safety and life. light. When I did inch my eyes open, the empty room was bathed in that jaundiced yellow I despised. Nobody hovered at the base of my futon. Lines of chalk, angry slashes, which my former colleague

would probably have recognized, now stroked the ceiling. My hands trembled. My breath missed it like I was in the deepest winter. I would not cheapen the trials of St. Paul by comparing his Damascus conversion to my first brush with these other planes of existence. What I will say is that it wasn't wild Dickens or Shakespeare that brought me Sikor the rest of the night. I delve through memories of Sunday services. If I possessed a rosary, I might well have rubbed those beads to mere molecules. Dawn came. Prayer still rattled from my lips.

Instead of turning heel like Jonah, I swore to persevere, but I did not truly believe. Yet, my colleague's greetings were a mixture of surprise at my unscheduled showing and likely contempt in my unkempt insomniatic state. The history teacher I already bore the despondent look of all staff members settled with a foreigner. Outside, I talked while sharp whistles put the baseball charges through their early paces. I described everything in a garbled rush, the classroom, the crossing guard, and the nighttime visitation. The writing dobed across the blackboard and now across my ceiling.

He puffed out his cheeks. He hadn't checked his watch in some minutes, but his homeland's history from 1853 to 1989 wasn't changing. One thing I will still say about the nation's people. they rarely offer an ill-considered thought. Has anyone checked on our missing colleague? They knocked, but his size stretched out like an end of the budget report. His excuse that only two days had passed didn't even sound right to him.

I'll speak to the principal. He rose, brushing imaginary dust from his trousers. Another sharp whistle from the athletic field signaled the commencement of batting drills. But first, I must address how the nascent rumblings of the Industrial Revolution swept away a thousand years of society and tradition. And you must return home and consult a mirror. Bald exasperations from the athletic field told me those first batter swings were mostly misses. I was accepting that by the afternoon I might have made a complete fool of myself.

But at least I was not just waiting for the night to fall. The stolid principal accompanied us. That five-minute drive negotiated in complete silence. Her bicycle was still chained outside. Her landlord stood at the door, a bunch of keys in his hand, wearing a confused expression. Cards were exchanged. That mine was at home brought an exasperated tick from the principal. After unanswered knocks and queries, hesitations and grudging mutters,

The landlord unlocked the door. Worried undertones whispered about the glint of light beneath the locked bathroom door. The principal's knock and whispered entreaties brought no answer. I found myself perspiring, sniffing the air for tell-tale signs. As the principal shepherded us out, murmuring police, I shamefully worried over how my part and all of this would be seen. The interpreter's translations were unsure. His clarification questions were legion.

A dictionary surfaced as they scribbled and scrubbed out notes. I learned words like death, dream, and ghost. She died Thursday night, laying in the bathtub while I labored through Friday's lessons. While I slept in my work clothes, saw that figure by my flashlight's beam. While I waited for my colleague to finish explaining why a heavily weaponed, though under-trained army had defeated a determined rebel force, a teachable moment for those holdouts who value tradition over the brute regime of progress. Officers ransacked my apartment, ferreting for evidence of her presence,

asked if the writing on the ceiling was hers or possibly another disgruntled girlfriends. In those days, every local male harbored the misconception that every foreigner was a Casanova or a Svangali, duping the female populace. Consensus circled somewhere above disbelief at my tale. Speculations insisted a tawdry or a reality must lie beneath. Heads would shake. Frustrations vented as my narrative refused to conform to convention. It isn't that we don't believe in spirits or dreams,

the lead detector offered in a moment of rare sympathy. Just that we've been increasingly taught to only see what exists. before our eyes. He offered me a cigarette and lived his own. Now, let's go through some of these answers again. At 9 p.m., the lead detective returned my keys and informed me they were keeping my passport. The history teacher and principal spoke briefly outside, while each passing local took me for a murderer, drug user, sex pest.

The principal is departing frown, offered little reassurance. schools cancelled for a few days out of respect But anyway I believe your teaching days here are done Even the appearance of impropriety is enough The principal agonizes He doesn't think I'm a murderer Neither do the police

I think But they do not understand your story A woman dies in a locked bathroom in a locked apartment by your own hand. And we're alerted to this by a dream or a ghostly visitation, which should be a tragic yet common enough story of human loneliness as far from typical in its details. It wasn't hurt in my apartment.

I couldn't yet utter the word spirit or ghost without feeling foolish. We'd arrived outside a fluorescent dog building, offering room rates by the night or by the hour. The beds are comfortable and reasonably cheap. Are you okay for money? I was. My final night began beneath a mirrored ceiling and sconce with sparkling cutouts of stars and planets. I sprung the tab on the first beer and slurped at some tepid flavorless noodles

while a dub but still sneering Clint Eastwood has some street punk if he felt lucky. I drained that first beer quickly and, crack the second. No work tomorrow, none on Monday. If the police did come knocking, I thought peevishly, they shouldn't find my hangover so surprising. I woke with the final beer can upended next to a damp patch on the carpet. The white static on the TV screen was soundtracked by a familiar low-level buzz. I switched it off, stretched, and retrieved the can. The carpet, and indeed the bed I'd been sleeping in, had likely experienced far more personal spillages. The heater half-sputtered, ticked ominously, and refused to cooperate.

The sound of shower curtain rails being pulled aside almost made me run. My heartbeats accelerating as a shard of ice slip down my spine. But to where exactly would I go? Joanna had slit her wrists. trickles of crimson dribbled from those open veins, dripping from her cold fingers and speckling the bedroom's carpet floor. Her face was as pale as porcelain. She didn't speak or even beckon.

But instinct bade me to follow. I trailed a dozen yards back through the deserted streets over the crossing guard. If anyone happened to glance out their window, all I wonder what they saw. What they wouldn't have heard was the prayers that trembled on my lips. Beyond the edge of town, beyond where streetlights dotted our way, where moonlight spread across fields, to when it shimmered even brighter.

I found myself stung by nettles, stumbling over rocks, to the outer edges of the last field before the trees, to where the moonlight settled on the edge of a drainage, ditch. I begged for this to not be so. But the insistences of the uneasy dead summon us all force. She sent me to task, and I dug, the earth wedging beneath my fingernails, the stone scratching in my knuckles and scraping my palms. The bicycle was found first. The wine of one wheel's half-hearted spin as I dragged it from the earth sounded all too familiar. I continued half-possessed, fearful of what I'd find, but certain that here lay the only

possible end. I'd no idea how long he was watching. But my hand grasped a stockinged foot and I heard him say, stop. She's fine where she is. He continued, there's no need to disturb her rest. Who is she? Some believe she disappeared to Tokyo with your predecessor. Dig a little further, and you'll find him too.

Romeo to her Juliet. Right down to the poison they unknowingly shared. I'm not one for games or ghost stories. I want to know how you found this. And why, if you knew, you kept quiet at the station. No ghost stories left little for me to say. You know the best hidden hotels, don't you? My wife doesn't mind my entertainments,

especially not after the second-born was the grandson her father craved. Sometimes I travel farther afield. But for a while, I had all I needed right here, from partners, including our recently deceased colleague. But all good things end. A cloud hid the moon, and I ducked left, stumbling away from the road and down the ridge, making more than enough noise to be followed by managing to dodge his flashlight beam. Don't make me shoot!

I reached the grove and shoved through the low-hanging branches and bushes just as a moonlight return. No shots yet. I tripped and sprawled, my head ramming against the tree trunk. Days I regained my feet only to weave and stumble into that embrace of a tree's burlain. branches. His roars and clumsy footfalls grew louder. The bob of the flashly peeped closer. When he reached me, his glare briefly blinded me as he paused, wheezing against the trunk. A ray of moonlight settled on the blade grasped in his right hand. No gun after all. They watch, you know. Leave messages. Wait in quiet places. They're watching now.

I squinted and raised a finger, pointing behind him. Why insist on stupid games? Can't you hear? Those same words from my bedroom, lilted over the breeze, rustled through the trees. His flashlights beam swung away from me, darting left and right. Those words finally reaching his ears too. We're not alone, I said, shifting away from the trunk. scanning the space behind him.

But I did what they asked. I brought them, you. Out of the corner of my eye, a ray beam had some sod and felt smear cloth. The need for temptation was long since gone. Penance was at hand. Mine won't be the only classes not running this semester. The flashlight beam started back and forth.

A gray-skinned hand grasped at a tree trunk. A head darted beneath an overhanging branch. Those whispers were louder, a final swing of the beam down where it's lit on a barefoot caked in filth. He called out for me to wait, begged me not to leave. I broke through the trees and ran. Where the field ended, wire fencing tangled in my clothes and gouged at my palms. I wrenched free of the barbs and scrambled up the gravel and onto the tracks. He trailed a few yards back, not chasing me now, but also fleeing.

I stumbled, blinded again by the light of the train bearing down on us. Instinct and prayer drove me across and clear. His final scream was drowned out by the wailing of the train's horn, as it signaled its approach towards the crossing guard. I awoke to persistent knocking, a voice repeating my name in tandem with the wraps as I blinked in the light bulb's glare. I'd slept in my clothes again. The futon was now caked in filth.

The principal stood flanked by two detectives from the station. Yes? I glanced to my wristwatch and winced. It was well past noon. Your hotel informed us you didn't check out. I was more comfortable here. I ignored the raised eyebrow and the look in my soil-crusted clothing. The detective translated.

His colleague gave to his quizzical facial expression. I calibrated my found response to the vaguely worded news about my colleague's train misadventure very carefully. In fact, maintaining that detective's eye contact through his follow-up questions was one of the easier things I did that week. Finally, he sighed and nodded to his colleague who produced my passport. Your school's principal informs us. you are leaving your post. The detective glared over my head at the writing I'd attempted to scrub clean at about 3 a.m.

And on policeman like frown marking his features. It bothered him to let me go. But there were many more tangible things to investigate now. The two officers left. The principal offered a bow. I hope you will remember the good things about your time here more than the bad. If my surprise that his English amused him,

he remained as impenetrable as ever. What really happened, sir? A dreadful accident. With a dreadful discovery also. He glanced meaningfully in my trousers before continuing. These last few days have left a great absence over our school and indeed our town. The principal shook his head, his mouth turned downwards. If you need a letter of recommendation, please contact the office.

Goodbye. I watched him stride to the top of the staircase, a man who believed that what remained from loss was the necessity to carry on. Packing would not take long. I could be at the train station within the hour, and from there the airport, and then, it was still some weeks before I slept with the light off, or didn't jump at the squeak from a bicycle wheel or the blare of a trainshorn. By the end of the year I'd returned home until my parents I wished to attend seminary.

The beginnings of a new chapter. And I could now believe in worlds beyond ours as fervently as a true believer would. Although I, like the Apostle Thomas, needed to see, to truly believe. To those who say there are no ghosts, I've simply presented a fireside curio. Sometimes the rattle at the window is only the wind. The chill in the air only winter's deft fingers slipping through a gap in the frame. Sometimes that scraping you hear at night is only a forging rodent. For me, who once scoffed at tales like mine, I'll settle for another poor, thank you.

Another night of pleasant dreams, an uninterrupted sleep. leap me away. But should a whispered summons come from the post-mortal world, you shall find me ready. For your bonus episode, Creepy Presents. My name is Charlene Brunt, written by Kevin Ground and narrated by Heather Thomas.

The case file in Matron's office records my name as Charlene Brunt, sex female marital status single age 42 no next of kin recorded no children or other dependents recorded a brief summary of my character

notes I am a middle-aged single woman who has no conception of moral sensibility or social interactions a person at high risk of doing harm to herself or others due to her actions or inactions The rest is legal stuff about the need for ongoing care in a secure establishment, drug charts, treatment plans, and a contact form for next-of-kin, or close friends to be contacted in case of emergency.

I don't have either, so that form's never been filled out, which is just as well, actually, as the doctors and care assistants are no one's friends. To be fair, they don't have a lot to be friendly about. locked up in a secure unit 12 hours a day. By the time the shifts change, any spark of friendly compassion they might have had has long since crashed into the sterile austerity of the place, washing over the unpredictable madness confined behind the rusting bars

and heavy steel doors. Strength spent like rolling waves back into the ocean after struggling to climb ever higher up the beach. The only difference being that the cares can't, isn't refreshed by an ocean of unfathomable immensity. It's gone forever into the uncaring fabric of the red brick building. No trace of its passing. Blake Banner Hospital, and all its outdated asylum-like melancholy,

has soaked it up and turned kindness into another unpleasant stain for the cleaning crew to mop up. Along with the rest of the bodily fluids leaking from the incontinent patients, madness, muted into malleable acceptance, patients shuffling around in a state of drugs smothered indifference. Boul control is another sensation, lost to chemical restraint. Of course, if, like me, you know how to play the system. It's not so bad. Three meals a day, two showers a week, and one size fits all white hospital-issue gowns that slip over the head. and hang like shapeless drapes from slumped shoulders, hiding the abused bodies from view,

leaving just confused, disoriented shaven heads poking at the top, like tortoises blinking in sunlight, showing the identity and possible sex of the wearer. Like I said, you have to know how to play the system. I'm not stupid. Dangerous maybe, but never stupid. I take their keep me calm tablets without a murmur and give them no reason to use the needle for anything stronger. The shatterheads that rave and scream and bite the carers end up paralyzed and restrained in a pool of their own juice. Stinking corpses that breathe, yet don't live.

I keep to myself. Don't speak unless one of the uniforms addresses me first. That's what I call the carers and nurses and anyone else I come into contact with. Uniforms seem sensible, probably the only sensible thing in this place as they all wear a uniform of one sort or another. When one of them speaks, I smile and nod. When they make a snide remark about how my parents should have drowned me at birth, I smile and nod in agreement. I smile and nod so much the uniforms all call me naughty and pretty much ignore me.

That's the idea. blend in with the dark stained woodwork and hide in plain sight, staring off into space whenever anyone looks my way. The uniforms see me, but look straight through me, freeing me to do as I please to the shufflers, unnoticed. That's what I call the patients like me that are allowed out of their cells to wander around unattended within the indoor recreation space. Drugged into mental lethargy, most of them,

but not so much as the odd word or phrase doesn't sink in. Falling between the cracks to end up somewhere inside, where understanding still clings on by its fingernails. Repertition is the key. I shuffle around with the shufflers, mimicking their mannerisms, blending in, standing not quite by their side or just beside them. Anywhere but in front of them, so as they don't know it's me doing the talking,

my voice whispering. My words, creep, creep, creeping along, along. Like the red red robin in the song my father used to sing about, before he died of a mysterious overdose of his diabetic insulin. My mother used to love hearing her husband singing, and my little sister laughing as she clapped along. So I made sure I sang and clapped good and loud when she clutched her chest and slipped sideways out of her wheelchair.

Danceed a bit as well, while she reached out for her angina pills rattling away in my pocket. Like little castanets they were, rattling away while she went all gray and sweaty. That's the trouble with being elderly and ill, with only a daughter who likes to pull the wings off of flies to look after you. You become a fly that can't fly. like all the other flies lying wingless on the floor. I simply loved her where she was when she died. I had other flies to catch.

Lots of them, as it happened, especially when mum started to go off a bit. Her house was full of flies for a while, and I was busier than ever catching and pulling and catching some more. So many flies. The floor was covered in little bodies that crunched under my feet and stuck to my toes like sand at the beach. I liked that.

Made me smile and remember memories of the seaside when I was a little girl. Everyone crying and yelling when they found my sister lying dead on the beach. Her swimming costume had a bright yellow sunflower pattern that shone like her blonde hair on the warm sand. No sand in the hospital, though. Just slip on rubber shoes, slapping flat-footed against the green floor tiles. No seagulls crying out or children laughing at the fair. No sugary donuts and toffee apples staining lips and cheeks.

Just gurgles and grunts as decaying teeth grind down in unfeeling mouths, staining the white shapeless gowns with soaking drool. I drool a bit myself, little bit of spit to moisten the lips and the odd rope of saliva hanging from my chin to keep up appearances. I saved that little trick for when I shuffle past the nurse's station. Give the plastic frame a little tap, then shoot whoever's on duty behind the safety glass, a vacant smile. Notting away like I haven't a care in the world, which actually isn't far off the truth. I know this world of stale smells.

Noisy plumbing and harsh fluorescent lighting isn't everyone's idea of paradise. But that doesn't trouble me. I don't concern myself about the worries of the world. The carers do all the worrying. mainly about each other's lives, if my blended in eavesdropping is to be believed. This old place with its wide corridors and high-ceilinged wards carries sound around the whitewashed walls better than any concert venue. A whisper may as well be a shout when there are keen ears like mine to hear it.

Money worries, unfaithful husbands, problem children, car trouble, failed relationships. This old place soaks it all up and gives nothing back in return, adding layer upon layer of sadness and worrying depression to the fabric of its existence, sponge-like in its unlimited capacity to absorb the grit and grime of life's futility. The weight of its ears pressing in on kept and keeper alike as starched wing collars and frilled nurses' caps gave way

to plastic aprons, polo shirts, and crease-free tunics. Now then, naughty, how you doing? Like you have any idea what day it is. The metallic clang of the red-painted fire escape door closing behind the gingered hair uniform sounds dull and heavy as I smile and nod in response, blowing a few spit bubbles for good measure. The smell of cinnamon-vaped smoke clinging to his uniform, giving a little. giving the game away.

The fire escape, witnessed to so many clandestine cigarettes and latterly vapes, has a permanent odor of mingled tobacco smoke and vape flavors, all overlaid with the permanent smell of stale disinfectant. It always reminds me of home in a way,

so many smells mingling together. Mum had smelled really strong for a start, but the smell passed after a few weeks. Once she dried out, there weren't so many flies either, which, to be honest, wasn't a big deal. I had pulled so many wings off I was getting a bit bored with it. The shufflers are my thing now. Pulling their wings off takes a lot more effort, but it's worth it.

Watching the words whispered in their almost insensitive ears, burrow inside and fall head over heels through the madness, until they hit the bottom. Where they lay, until a moment's lucidity between injections, shuffles them into a readable line of text. Long job, though. It can take weeks, sometimes months, from my whispered words and suggestions to filter through

and line themselves up into anything meaningful. But when a shuffler finally gets the message that a uniform has been molesting them while they're trapped inside themselves, or a daughter suddenly realizes her parents lied about loving her and had her committed before her unstable schizophrenia killed them all. That's when the excitement starts. Of course I make sure I'm off to one side when they kick off.

I like that saying, kick off. It's all kicked off or it's kicking off big time. The uniforms all talk the same after a while. In the reports they write up about any disturbances, It's always very formal. In real life, when they're hanging on to a shuffler who's suddenly kicked off, as they call it, bad language is the least of their concerns. I love it.

The screaming and yelling. The uniforms trying to hold someone down. Loose vowels exploding and filthy teeth gnashing down on anything they can bite into. A uniform's hand? So much the better. Of course the rest of the shufflers start acting up as well. Monkey see, monkey do sort of thing. Balling and hollering, shouting anything at anyone and throwing themselves about like rag dolls in a tumble dryer.

The old place really gets its groove on then, rocking and rolling like a drunk in a festival beer tent. The acoustics ricochet the noise through every space until half the hospital is seething and the other half howling. uniform scurrying around like wingless flies, while the alarm bells ring, ring, a ring a ding, ding. I play it cool and sit on the floor with my back to the whitewashed wall, knees drawn up under my chin, hands clasped around my shins, rocking a little for good measure. I have to appear upset, but not so dramatically as to warrant a needle's worth of tranquilizers clocking me out. I have a front row seat after all, and I don't want to miss a moment of what I've worked hard to create. Squeezing a few tears for good effect, I feel really full of myself, like I'm a somebody in a distorted world of nobody's.

Presenting for this one-time-limited engagement only, the amazingly devious manipulator of shattered minds, par excellence. Ladies and gentlemen, please show your appreciation for the kicking-off queen of misery-ridden shufflers. The sensational Charlene Front, seated on my throne of disinfectant-washed green floor tiles. Silent laughter fills every fiber of my body, and a smile so wide it could glide clean over the high brick walls and not touch the razor wire on top, stretches my mouth. good and wide. The uniforms aren't stupid, and I don't want to give the game away and ruin my chances of a repeat performance.

No matter that they play out in minutes, the effect can last for hours, and my expertise grows with every moment of unleashed madness. So I make my smile and silent laughter part of my act, like a white-gowned swan swimming against the tide, calm on the surface. whilst it paddles frantically beneath.

Later when the uniforms have everything back under control, I am always the last one they escort back to their little cubicle room. Come on, Noddy. Show's over. Let's be having you. I never resist. I clamber upright and shuffle off with an agreeable nod of the head, blowing a spit bubble or two for good measure. careful to walk around the pools of chemical vomit. Some of the uniforms are bloodied,

others covered in strange smelling stains. Some were shaken up and reduced to frustrated tears, compassion spent wrestling and restraining. The sharp end of working in a secure unit rammed home hard enough to make at least one uniform decide they'd had enough. The insociable hours, mountains of paperwork, and the stink, grit, and danger,

of never knowing where the next issue is coming from, finally hammered home by the effects of my whispered malice on an unstable mind, fantastic in one way, as I have caused yet more problems others have to deal with. But a nuisance in another, as I would have another new uniform break into my way of blended in thinking. No big deal.

I have all the time in the world. They're never going to let me out. When the old busybody neighbor called the police about the strange goings on next door, the police broke in to find me sleeping in bed next to the remains of my father. That was that, as far as they were concerned. My mother lying like a bag of old bones in the living room didn't help matters. Especially as she was a bag of old bones, now her body had pretty much wasted away. My father never liked a fuss and didn't want a fancy face.

funeral. So I left him where he was, lying on his bed like he was resting. Shot through with grief and dementia. My mother didn't even notice he was gone. Besides, she was never the same after my sister died. She used to look at me and cry a lot, but as long as she had her heart pills, she just rolled along, until I decided to pull her wings off. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't get me wrong. I don't tried. I fed her sometimes and changed her clothes, but when my father died, I had no one to remind me to do anything. So, of course, I did nothing, just like when my sister died. I didn't do anything when I could have done something, but no one reminded me I was supposed to care. So when she fell over in the sea, I let her drown while I watched the tide go out. Her little sunflower body left

behind on the wet sand when the waves rolled back down the beach. Now I don't have to remember anything. A uniform always remembers, and I get hot dinners and clean clothes, and I can spend my days whispering to the shufflers without worrying. The uniforms have lives filled with worries. I don't. The old place likes that. I can tell when it's happy.

Feel it through the whitewashed walls and through my bare feet on the cold, green floor tiles. It tells me stories of when it was first built. A grand place it was then. All turrets and spires. The big arched windows were overlaid in ornate ironwork, and the pioneering doctors of the day prescribed hosing the patients down, before plunging the worst of them into ice baths. The botamies and electrical treatments were the fashion then. Drilling holes in patient's skulls to expel the morbid vapors and release the pressure of an inflamed brain. Treatments long since consigned to the history books, like the grandeur and status of Blake Manor Hospital itself, a red brick embarrassment from another age, standing alone on the edge of an industrial estate,

like an unknown face at a funeral, an underfunded, decaying dustbin for the criminally insane, falling apart from the inside out like the ghosts of the cruelly used patients who wander the old place from Souther to gabled rooftop, searching in vain for release from the place of their living torment. Much good it does them. There's no escape. There never was. But who's going to tell them?

And would they believe it if anyone ever did? Probably not. Blake Manor Hospital doesn't do truth. Just like me, it does madness and despair. Just so you don't forget, I'll leave you with something to think about. I killed my father, my mother, and my little sister. I don't do friends, but I'll be waiting to whisper in your ear when you come through the triple-locked security door into my white-washed, kicking-off world of green-tiled, disinfected misery.

This is Blake Manor Hospital. My name is Charlene Brunt. You're mine now. You're never going home. 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 common share-a-like licensing or with written consent from the authors.

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