Creepy - The Yellow Wallpaper

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

The Yellow Wallpaper***Written by: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Narrated by: Nate DuFortStory link: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Yellow_Wall-Paper***The South Florida Technique***Written by: Michael Rook***Content warning: Child abuse, child death***Twenty Past Ten***Written by: H. Robert Barland and Narrated by: Rissa Montanez***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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please check out the donation tiers at patreon.com slash creepypot. As I just alluded to, I'm just finishing packing up to head out to this year's creep boy camp. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to being able to relax and unwind with the other narrators, just me and them for the entire month. Nothing to do but commune with nature and tell stories around the campfire. Yep, absolutely nothing else is going to happen. No drama, no surprises, just exactly what I expect to happen with no possibility of things going completely off the rails or chances that will be joined by any unexpected guests. Can't wait. I'll see y'all on the other side. Camp kicks off Wednesday, April 2nd with new episodes on Wednesdays and Sundays,

which means until then, we still have some stories to tell you. No, this is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for. for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. For our first story this evening,

a summer rental and a colonial estate turns out to be more than two friends were prepared to handle. Creepy Presents The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. and narrated by need to fort. It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral holes for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house,

and reach the height of romantic felicity. But that would be asking too much of fate. Still, I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it. Else, why should it come so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted? John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense whore of superstition,

and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures. John is a physician, and perhaps, I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind. Perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see, he does not believe I am sick. And what can one do? If a physician of high standing and one's own husband assures friends and relatives that there is nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression, a slight hysterical tendency.

What is one to do? My brother is also a physician and also of high standing, and he says the same thing. So I take phosphates or phosphites, whichever it is, and tonics and journeys and air and and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to work until I'm well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work with excitement and change would do me good. But what is one to do? I did write for a while in spite of them, but it does exhaust me a good deal,

having to be so sly about it or else meet with heavy opposition. I sometimes fancy that my condition, if I had less opposition and more society, and stimulus, but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition. When I confess, it always makes me feel bad. So, I will let it alone and talk about the house. The most beautiful place. It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and

gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people. There's a delicious garden. I never saw such a garden, large and shady, full of box-boarded paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbores with seats under them. There were greenhouses, too, but they're all broken now. There was some legal trouble, I believe. Something about the heirs and co-ares. Anyhow, the place has been empty. for years. That spoils my ghostliness, I'm afraid, but I don't care. There's something strange about the house. I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draft and shut the window. I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never

used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition. But John, John, John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control, so I take pains to control myself, before him at least, and that makes me very tired. I don't like our room one bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings, but John would not hear of it. He said there was only one window and not room for two beds and no near room for him if he took another. He is very careful and loving and hardly lets me stir without special direction.

I have a scheduled prescription for each hour in the day. He takes all care from me and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more. He said we came here solely on my account that I was to have purpose. perfect rest and all the air I could get. Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear, said he, and your food somewhat on your appetite, but air you can absorb all the time. So we took the nursery at the top of the house.

It's a big airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium. I should judge, for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls. The paint and paper look as if the boys' school had used it. It is stripped off the paper in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.

What of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every, art. It is dull enough to confuse the eye and following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame on certain curves for a little distance, they suddenly commit suicide. Plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions. The color is repellent, almost revolting, a smoldering, unclean yellow. strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulfur tint in others. No wonder the children hated it. I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.

There comes John, and I must put this away. He hates to have me write a word. We've been here two weeks, and I haven't felt like writing before, since that first day. I'm sitting by the window now up in this atrocious nursery, and there's nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength. John is away all day and even some nights when his cases are serious. I'm glad my case is not serious. But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.

John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfied. him. Of course, it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me, so not to do my duty in any way. I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort. And here I am a comparative burden already. Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I'm able, to dress and entertain and other things. It is fortunate Mary's so good with the baby. Such a dear baby. And yet I cannot be with him.

It makes me so nervous. I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so much about this wallpaper. At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give away to such fancies. He said that after the wallpaper was changed, it would be the heavy bedstead,

and then the barred windows, and then the gate at the head of the stairs, and so on. You know the place is doing you good, he said. And really, dear, I don't care to renovate the house just for a three-months rental. Then do let us go downstairs, I said. There are such pretty rooms there. Then he took me in his own. arms and called me a blessed little goose and said he would go down to the cellar if I wished and have it whitewashed into the bargain.

But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things. It is an airy and comfortable room as anyone need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim. I'm really quite fond of the big room, all but that horrible paper. Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deep-shaded arbors, the right as old-fashioned flowers and bushes and gnarly trees. Out of another, I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There's a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths in arbor, but John has

cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will in good sense to check the tendency. So I try. I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little, it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me. But I find I get pretty tired when I try. It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit, but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillowcase as to let me have those stimulating people about now.

I wish I could get well faster. But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if I knew what a vicious influence it had. had. There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down. I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd unblinking eyes are everywhere. There's one place where two breaths didn't match and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than other. I never saw so much expression and inanimate thing before, and we all know how much

expression they have. I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store. I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend. I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce, but I could always hop into that chair and be safe. The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we've had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom, they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder, I never saw such ravages as the children have made here.

The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother. They must have had the perseverance as well as hatred. Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered. The plaster itself is dug out here and there. And this great heavy bed, which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars. But I don't mind it a bit. Only the paper.

There comes John's sister. Such a dear girl as she is and so careful of me, I must not let her find me writing. She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick. But I can write when she's out and see her a long way off from these windows. There's one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding road, and one that looks just off over the country.

A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows. This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so, I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design, their sister, on the stairs.

Well, the Fourth of July is over. The people are gone, and I am tired out. John thought it might do me good to see a little company. So we just had Mother and Nellie and the children down for a week. Of course, I didn't do a thing. Jenny seized everything now. But it tired me all the same. John says if I don't pick up faster, he shall send me to wire Mitchell in the fall.

But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he's just like John and my brother, only more so. Besides, it's such an undertaking to go so far. I don't feel as if it's worthwhile to turn my hand over for nothing, and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and querulous. I cry at nothing and cry most of the time. Of course I don't when John is here, or...

anybody else, but when I'm alone. And I'm alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very often by serious cases, and Jenny is good and lets me alone when I want her to. So I walk a little in the garden, or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal. I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper, perhaps because of the wallpaper. It dwells in my mind so. I lie here on this great immovable bed. It is nailed down, I believe, and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determined for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to

some sort of conclusion. I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation or alternation or repetition or symmetry or anything else that I ever heard of. It is repeated, of course, by the breaths, but not otherwise. Looked at it in one way, each breath stands alone. The bloated. curves and flourishes, a kind of debased Romanesque, with delirium treemines, go waddling up and down and isolated columns of fatuity. But on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds and full chase.

The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of it going in that direction. They have used a horizontal breadth for a freeze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion. There is one end of the room where it is almost intact. And there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, like an almost fancy radiation after all.

The interminable grotesques seem to form around a common center and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction. It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap, I guess. I don't know why I should write this. I don't want to. I don't feel able. And I know John would think it absurd,

but I must say what I feel and think in some way. It is such a relief. But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief. Half the time now I am awfully lazy and lie down ever so much. John says I mustn't lose my strength and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat. Dear John, he loves me very dearly and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest, reasonable talk with him the other day

and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and, Julia. But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there, and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished. It's getting to be a great effort for me to think straight, just this nervous weakness, I suppose. And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs, and laid me on the bed, and sat by me, and read to me till it tired my head. head. He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake and keep well. He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use

my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me. There's one comfort. The baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper. If we had not used it, that blessed child would have. What a fortunate escape. Why, I wouldn't have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds. I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after all. I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see. Of course, I never mention it to them anymore.

I'm too wise, but I keep watch of it all the same. There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, nor ever will. Behind that outside pattern, the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous, and is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder, I begin to think, I wish John would take me away from here.

It is so hard to talk with John about my case because he is so wise and because he loves me so. But I tried it last night. It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does. I hate to see it sometimes and creeps so slowly and always comes in by one window or another. John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till it felt creepy. The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern just as if she wanted to get out. I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move and when I came

back John was awake. What is it little girl? he said. Don't go walking about like that. You'll get cold. I thought it was a good time to talk. So I told him that I really was not gaining here and that I wished he would take me away. Why, darling, said he, our lease will be up in three weeks, and I can't see how to leave before. The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course, if you were in any danger, I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better. I feel really much easier about you. I don't weigh a bit more, said I, nor as much, and my appetite may be better in the evening when you are here, but it is

worse in the morning when you are away. Bless her little heart, said he, with a big hug. She shall be as sick as she pleases, but now let's improve the shining hours by going to sleep and talk about it in the morning. And you won't go away, I said gloomily. Why? How can I, dear? It is only three weeks more, and then we'll take a nice little trip of a few days while Jenny is getting the house ready. Really, dear, you are better. Better in body, perhaps, I began and stopped short,

for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern reproachful look that I could not say another word. My darling, said he, I beg of you, for the sake and for our child's sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind. There's nothing so dangerous, so fascinating to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so? So of course, I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep before long. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn't, and lay there for hours, trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately.

On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law that is constant, irritant to a normal mind. The color is hideous enough and unreliable enough and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway and following, it turns a back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions. Why? That is something like it. That is, sometimes. There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself,

and that is that it changes as the light changes. When the sun shoots in through the east window, I always watch for that first long straight ray. It changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it. That is why I watch it always. By moonlight, the moon shines in all night when there is a moon. I wouldn't know it was the same paper. At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight,

and worst of all, by moonlight, it becomes bars, the outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind it, as plain as can be. I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed, behind that dim sub-pattern, but now I'm quite sure it is a woman. By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it's the pattern that keeps her so still. It's so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.

I lie down ever so much now. John says it's good for me and to sleep all I can. Indeed, he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal. It's a very bad habit, I'm convinced, for, you see, I don't sleep. And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them I'm awake, oh, no. The fact is I'm getting a little afraid of John. He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jenny has an inexplicable look. It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, that perhaps it is the paper.

I have watched John when he did not know I was looking and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I've caught him several times looking at the paper. And Jenny, too. I caught Jenny with her hand on it once. She didn't know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible what she was doing with the paper,

she turned around as if she had been caught stealing, looked quite angry, asked me why I should frighten her so. Then she said the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and Johns, and she wished we would be more careful. Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself.

Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see, I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better and am more quiet than I was. John is so pleased to see me improve. He laughed a little the other day and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wallpaper. I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was because of the wallpaper. He would make fun of me.

He might even want to take me away. I don't want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week more, and I think that will be enough. I'm feeling ever so much better. I don't sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments, but I sleep a good deal in the daytime. In the daytime, it is tiresome and perplexing. There are always new shoots on the fungus

and new shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep count of them. I've tried conscientiously. It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper. It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw. Not beautiful ones, like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper, the smell. I noticed at the moment we came into the room,

but with so much air and sun it was not that bad. Now we've had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here. It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs. It gets into my hair. Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it, there is that smell. Such a peculiar odor, too. I've spent hours in trying to analyze it to find what it smelled like.

It is not bad at first and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this damp weather, it is awful. I wake up in the middle of the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house to reach that smell. But now, I'm used to it. The only thing I can think of that is like the color of the paper, a yellow smell. There's a funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mop board, a streak that runs around the room.

It goes behind every piece of furniture except the bed, a long, straight, even smooch, as if it'd been rubbed over and over. I wonder how it was done and who did it and what they did it for, round and round and run. round and round and round and round and round. It makes me dizzy. I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night when it changes, so I have finally found out. The front pattern does move, and no wonder,

the woman behind shakes it. Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then, in the very bright spot she keeps still, and in the very shady spot she takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard, and she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern. It strangles so. I think that's why it has so many heads. They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down and makes their eyes white. If those heads were covered or taken off, it would not be half so bad.

I think that woman gets out in the daytime. I'll tell you why, privately. I have seen her. I can see her out of every one of my windows. It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes, she hides under the blackberry vines.

I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight. I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once. And John is so queer now that I don't want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room. Besides, I don't want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself. I wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once, but turn as fast as I can,

I can only see out one at a time. And though I always see her, she may be able to creep faster than I can turn. I have watched her sometimes, way off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow and a high wind. If only that top pattern could be gotten off from under one, I mean to try it little by little. I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time. It does not do to trust people too much. There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice.

I don't like the look in his eyes. And I heard him ask Jenny a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report to give. She said I slept a good deal in the daytime. John knows I don't sleep very well at night. for all I'm so quiet. He asks me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind,

as if I couldn't see through him. Still, I don't wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months. It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jenny are secretly affected by it. Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough.

John is to stay in town, overnight and won't be out until this evening. Jenny wanted to sleep with me, the sly thing, but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone. That was clever, for really I wasn't alone one bit. As soon as it was moonlight, and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.

I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper, a strip about as high as my head and half around the room. And then, when the sun came, and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish it today. We go away tomorrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they were before. Jenny looked at the wall in amazement,

but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the viciously. thing. She laughed and said she wouldn't mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired. She betrayed herself that time. But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me, not alive. She tried to get me out of the room. It was too patent, but I said it was so quiet and empty and even clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could, and not to wake me even for dinner. I would call when I woke. So now she's gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, and the canvas mattress we found on it. We shall sleep downstairs tonight, and take the boat

home tomorrow. I quite enjoy the room. Now it is bare again. How those children did tear about here. This bedstead has fairly gnawed, but I must get to work. I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path. I don't want to get out, and I don't want to have anybody come in till John comes. I want to astonish him. I've got a rope up here that even Jenny did not find. If that woman does get out and tries to get away, I can tie her. But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on. This bed will not move. I tried to lift and push it until I was lame,

and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner. But it hurt my teeth. Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach, standing on the floor. It sticks horribly, and the pattern just enjoys it. All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision. I'm getting angry enough to do something desperate, To jump out of the window would be an admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try. Besides, I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.

I don't like to look out the windows even. There are so many of those creeping women and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of the paper as I did. But I am secure. fastened now by my well-hidden rope, you don't get me out in the road there. I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard. It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please. I don't want to go outside. I won't, even if Jenny asked me to, for outside you have to creep on the ground and everything is green instead of yellow. But here, I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way. Why, there's John at the door. It is no use,

young man. You can't open it. How he does call and pound. Now, he's crying for an axe. It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door. John, dear, said I in the gentlest voice, the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf. That silenced him for a few moments. Then he said, very quietly indeed. Open the door, my darling. I can't, said I. The key is down by the front door, under a plantain leaf. And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see. And he got it, of course, and came in. He stopped short by door. What is the matter? he cried. For God's sake, what are you doing? I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. I've got out at last, said I, in spite of you and

Jane, and I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back. Now why should that man have fainted? But he did. And right across my path by the wall, so that I, had to creep over him every time. For our second story this evening, while helping his nephew out of some legal trouble, a lawyer stumbles upon a local legend far darker than anything he could imagine. Creepy Presents The South Florida Technique, written by Michael Rook. Did they really do this to kids? Anonymous, posted to...

Ask Professor Religion 924, 2003. Removed by Administrator 926, 2003. Accessed, Wayback Machine. In South Florida, evil children get bronzed. Did you know that? Does anyone? I had to go there for a family problem. My nephew had gotten in trouble again, and my brother called because I'm a lawyer.

Even if I keep telling him I'm not that kind of lawyer. So I went, and in those long hours at the courthouse where you're just waiting, I kept hearing the same story. I heard it from parents and grandparents and whoever was there worried over some other kid. Even if I didn't believe it, it's not the kind of thing that's real. The only reason I listened was we've seen a lot. Recently, we've all seen a lot. Then there was last night.

It was so humid and I was trying to think, so I was out wandering the streets around my Airbnb, and I saw those enough. I promised myself I'd write this straight out and click post without looking back. It's probably the only way I can. But if you see something wrong, and if no one else is saying anything, you've got to do it.

Duty, I guess. At least you've got to ask some questions. Dale and Jackson Groveswood are at the heart of it. I know that. All through 1983, their father, Burke Groveswood, kept telling him not to mess with fire at the marinas. In addition to being a welder at the North Miami Shipyards, he'd lost his wife and his boy. Anyways, nine and seven. Look, you work in juvenile law or your family drags you into it, and you realize some kids are just off.

I don't know why, but it's terrible, especially for the parents. You see moms and dads stagering out of the courtrooms, their eyes not settling on anything, their faces drained skin and old bones. They know they can't give up on their kid, but they know they can't fix him either. The kid won't be fixed, and worse, whatever happens, it's going to fall on them. The parents, that's got to be a lonely kind of hell. Dailan Jackson? In October 83, a fishing boat burned to the keel just minutes after its 70-year-old owner woke up from a nap and went cocktail hunting.

The boder found the boys behind a commercial ice chest, flicking their lighters open, watching the blaze. He screamed at him, but they just gave him a look like he was scenery. They paid for it, though, with six-month groundings each. That's a long time. You'd have thought it would have done something. But like I said, some kids, that summer after more fires at the doctor, Dahl and Jackson were sent to a group home for nearly a year. This time they had been caught drenching a manatee with gasoline and lobbing fireworks onto its back.

I guess that made Bert desperate. He begged his priest for an answer. Look, I'm not religious. So this makes no sense to me. Had any hurt a therapy? Scared straight camps? I can't imagine thinking some damage to you. type who choose celibacy and begging folks for 20s rather than singles in the collection

plate would have a solution. It all sounds like simple answers for stupid people. But the things we've seen, the things I've seen, and the people at the courthouse were so sure. I feel so weird posting this, but it bothered me so much. I have to. I need to say that right now. As the story goes, Bert and his priest met in their church after dark,

probably whispering between mission walls stood up by the Spanish in like the 16th century. In the days after, the old priest looked through rotting books that told the story about other children, those of the first colonists. Those kids, all under 12, had burned a quarter of their village to the mud, sparking the fires house after house night after night. A bunch of the isolated settlement had died, many of them in their sleep. And a fast inquisition had found that even more kids seemed drawn to the ritual, even after the terrible nights of blazes,

though they couldn't explain why. Or wouldn't. According to the church's records is because of this. they become afflicted by an alma de fuego or a soul of fire pack water crazy right but there are so many people who told me about it and whispers

even this part to end the fires and the spread of the affliction the town leaders and their priest employed a technique invented a century earlier by the holy office in Seville By torchlight, the surviving villagers, crying families included, headed deep into the Everglades. Many carried their sleeping daughters and sons, who they drugged with an anesthetic root. Drugged, the priest met them along small bonfires, which burned under iron cauldron sizzling with an odd-smelling liquid. But even the priest, who communicated directly with the Holy Alphiards,

office, recoiled when they dipped the first boy into the substance, head first, as instructed. The child whipped awake, his little body convulsing. The priest shouted, a wordless thing, I guess. Then he told the handlers to dip the boy all the way down. Then, among all the hisses and the smells of cooking meat. The group waited. Yes. The families waited. That's what I was told.

They stood by while this happened. They were that devout. We're afraid. I can't imagine it. I don't want to. But the people who told me swore to it. As a lawyer, I've seen a lot of liars, and I'm telling you, the people who told me this believed what they were telling.

The priest ordered the boy raised. Finally, parents began to shout, the boys especially, what the process had done to the kid's flesh. But the priest stepped in. It is to be expected, he said, adding that future touch-ups and coatings by church artisans would restore the child to his original looks, leaving him as smooth as bronze. Boy's parents fell back. Whimpering prayers, no one else moved. It took hours to complete the application of the technique to all the guilty children.

Afterwards, it must have been too much. Maybe it was the heat, maybe the smell. but some of the parents, possibly finally realizing what they'd done, what they'd really done, stepped forward, their hands clasping their sword hilts. They circled the town leaders. But again, the priest interrupted. He shook a little, too, so the story says. But he raised his hands. He told them what he'd been told. The Holy Office had certified that the technique would seal the infecting demon within its victims.

And it was a demon. And the children were victims. And only the technique would end the spread. The choice was theirs. Sacrifice those children already infected and save the rest. Or let the devil take their remaining kids who'd, burn their parents and siblings as sure as the hell servants they'd become. What did they choose?

This is where, and I know it sounds crazy, I could not sympathize, not empathize, I could peek into the minds of those parents, thinking of their own lives and those other families. because I've seen the faces of the parents of off kids. The villagers fled home, the town leaders too. The priest, sweating, blessed the draft statues and found his way to their end of the sad line. And you know what comes next? The fires stopped. Records from years after about the village and the towns built.

on top of it, boasted of perfect progeny. The priest showed the dirty pages saying this to Bert Groveswood. I saw the words myself at a local historical society. There's no mention of the technique, but I found perfect progeny, those exact words, just like the families had said in an old book. Stomach acid burned my throat when I read them. him. And what happened when the words were shown to Burt? His priest asked him the same question. The one that the other priest had asked the villagers centuries before, but to the welder's credit,

he yelled no, even to a trip to see the original children, who were now a shrine of sorts deep in the mangrove, which you could find if you knew the way. And every priest had had to learn about the spot until the late 1960s, and have been ordered to take susceptible children there to see the statues before they sinned. On hearing all of this, though, Burke cursed his priest and nearly knocked over the holy water as he ran out. That could have been the end of it. Should have been.

But if there is a god, and I'm not saying there is, why couldn't there be a counter-force? A devil Sure, call it that I'll just say it could be a cruelty A cosmic cruelty One just as powerful as a devil And one just as unstoppable Without some terrible intervention

Because on a chili for Florida Sunday In November 1985 A grand waterfront canteena went up And roasting smoke burning until parts of its mortar crumbled. Inside, a party of 130 guests, including children and grandparents, had been celebrating a wedding, and the canteenas doors hadn't only been locked from the outside. Their hinges had been welded into place.

Later that night, Dale and Jackson were stopped as they tried to return a welding torch to a marina boathouse, alongside a half dozen of their friends. All the kids stunk of the gasoline they'd thrown onto the canteenas walls and matches and cherry bombs. It's in the papers. It's in the goddamn Miami newspapers from 85. I took pictures and sent them to my wife so someone would tell me they were real. She did.

I asked her how this could keep happening without being exposed. She reminded me of something I'd said. What's the worst kind of conspiracy? She asked. Before I could answer, before I had the guts, she gave me the answer. My answer. The kind that happens partially in the open, the kind that has that much power behind it. The next morning, Bert went looking for his priest,

and found him. The next details I'm going to cut and paste from my notes, from my last talk with those parents at the courthouse. After Groveswood bronzing, the per capita fire rate in South Florida plummeted below national average. Local schools, all, report less behavioral problems in anywhere in the nation, by far. Enough of the children are so increasingly.

incredibly good that articles about their teachers appear in the New Yorker and Boston Globe. The globe includes a picture of bronzish statues of playful children standing in thick mangroves. A kindergarten class is visiting. The caption reads, A traditional trip for local schools. The influx of young families to South Florida continues to this day. In the last few years,

the fire rate has inched up, but remains within an acceptable range. That was the last thing the families told me. Acceptable range. None of them would say if there had been any recent uses of the technique. They shut right up about that. But none of them said it wasn't being used either. Then there was last night. That's when I found the statue.

of Dale Groveswood. I found him and his brother, Jackson, who's riding on Dale's shoulders, piggyback style. They looked just like they did in the Miami Papers, except they're bronze. The statue is outside a hotel in Palm Beach Gardens, right in the open, like it's meant to be seen. And it isn't the only one.

There must be a dozen statues. Sometimes one kid at play, sometimes as many as three whirling in a circle. Their laughing smiles frozen on their faces. I said I wouldn't stop until I hit post. I'm hesitating now. But I'm also sitting on a shitty bench waiting to be called back into the courtroom to hear my nephew's sentence. And his dad, my brother, is shuffling around. by the windows, looking at everything and nothing all at once.

It can't be real. I know some kids are, which means some adults are, but I'm a lawyer. Just tell me it's insane. Tell me, there's nothing to worry about. For our final story this evening, an aged care worker finds herself in the middle of a mystery about a mysterious clock that vanished decades ago and the strange signals that begin to emerge, will they be deciphered before time runs out? Creepy presents 20 past 10, written by H. Robert Barland and narrated by Rissa Montpennes.

The thing they don't tell you about receiving your diagnosis is the flood of what ifs that assails you afterwards. As the ADHD meds kick in and focus crystallized in front of you like a high school science experiment, you wonder how things might have been like if you've been diagnosed as a child. Might you have been more than you are? Might you have been more successful? Happier. More normal? On reflection, my diagnosis explained a lot.

But it couldn't change the past. You start to obsess on all those times my unmedicated brain let me down when events slipped across my Teflon memory to reappear at some inopportune moment and one far too late to do anything about it. The regret about those moments curls up inside you. It gnaws at you, like a sullen vampire stealing sleep and self-esteem. You want examples? Oh, I have those stories.

The deadlines I didn't meet. the bills I forgot to pay and the subscriptions I left uncanceled. I could tell you about the parents I didn't visit, the friends I never called, the lovers unintentionally ghosted. All neurodiverse staples. No, I'll tell you about the one example

that truly haunts me, the one that wakes me in the middle of the night. And it's one that I don't know if I even believe in myself. It's about a man I never met. Or rather, about the brother of a man. I did. Did you know I used to work in aged care?

It suited me then. I helped people who had no one to care for them. Some were people who'd outlived their families. Sometimes that meant temporarily, but too often referred to their perceived utility. Oscar Killingworth was one of the former. I hurried up to his door on a late autumn morning. A fine old townhouse in a once fashionable part of the city. Tall windows set into stone let the place an air of slender fragility that matched the sole occupant.

He stood centered in the doorway. The house's dark interior framed his stick-like form with a border of shadows. One palsied hand held my card, unread. He declared me late. His voice was a low rumble that seemed to start from far away. It would envelope you only to disappear, echoing off into the distance. It was a roll of thunder given human voice, and it didn't suit his tiny frame. I was not a tall woman, but I looked down on his thinning paté.

Tartiness when first meeting a new client sets the wrong tone, and I didn't know it at the time, but my brain had already set about undermining my day. Little things like parking always took longer than I into the same. dissipated. My inner critic always kicked into gear. No one can be as hard on me as my brain. I kicked me hard in the stomach. My face flushed and I dropped my eyes to my clipboard. I looked up to find his dark eyes upon mine. He informed me that his name was Killingworth, but Oscar would be fine. He made no other comment, but his dark eyes hadn't missed me checking my paperwork. My apology sounded hollow, even to me.

I was making a hash of this. New to the area, if not the roll, my uniform still held the creases from its packaging. The unisex uniform should be retitled as desexed. It stole my femininity with the efficiency of advanced decomposition. Killingworth held his breath a moment before snorting it out again, then turned back into the house, leaving the door open. He ushered me into the study. Bookshelves, the height of the room,

lined two walls and faced a worn but well-maintained sofa. The green of its leather at home amongst the heavy curtains. The wan light of winter struggled through irregular panes of glass and the droplets of rain that ran down them. Glass-fronted cabinets dotted the room, standing in front of paneled walls of dark wood. A broad fireplace provided heat, and high windows, light.

Two desks faced each other, one side covered in dust. The smell of polish was strong and comforting. Conscious of my failings, I sought some way to ingratiate myself. For reasons I have never quite understood, my eyes alighted on the clock on the wall. By my too often unchecked watch, it was almost 11, but the clock read 1020. I blurted out that his clock was wrong. I do that sometimes. He hypothesized that perhaps it had paired itself with mine.

The sleek lines of the clock's chrome border didn't suit the room, and I stupidly said as much. A belated realization of my rudeness sent me to apologizing. I couldn't seem to get myself together today. I blamed it on a new job. This wasn't a new role for me, but I'd moved to a new town at the insistence of the family of an inmate. existing client.

I have no idea why they wanted me. My new charge looked over his glasses at the clock. One shoulder rose in a shrug. Tailored for a much younger, Oscar Killingworth. His tweed jacket wouldn't have looked much different than when it hung on a hanger. Oscar told me I wasn't the first to comment on it, and I felt my nodded stomach began to uncoil. He went on to tell me that it was some kind of radio-controlled self-setting clock that his

brother had symptom. Perhaps as some kind of unfathomable joke. I stepped closer to the timepiece. A pictogram of a radio tower surrounded by wave supported his radio-controlled claim. The glass appeared etched with fine lines. Irregular fragments of pale leather replaced each of the numbers on the face. Each one decorated with a symbol written in red-brown ink. Oscar tottered over to the mantle and looked up. He informed me that those were magical symbols. as he and his brother were once believers in the occult. Oscar glanced sideways from under snowy brows as he told me he thought the leather might have been human.

I shot him a glance, but the twinkle in his eyes suggested he was joking. At least, I hoped. Oscar's older brother, Edgar Killingworth, had been a great collector of things occult. Oscar swept a spindly arm across the room taking in the usual. over-stuffed bookshelves and glass-fronted cabinets containing curiosities that I couldn't name. The gestures set him to coughing, a racking cough that bent him over. It spoke too many years of damp and loss. He allowed me to walk him to the sofa. He hemmed and awed, starting to speak his brother's

name, then stopping. I felt Oscars need to tell his story. So I let him. Oscar and Edgar. a headlight about their age and gone to serve in the World War II. They'd been too young, too foolish to miss out on all the excitement, but they'd left it too late and missed out on all the fighting. He scoffed as he said it, and the actions set him coughing again. Assigned to the same unit, they'd spent their time on the continent recovering stolen artifacts. Racking down things Hitler's cronies had squirled away. Art mostly but also.

other things, things we didn't quite understand, and probably should have left alone. Oscar's brother had appropriated some of them. Some books, a wave-bladed knife, an amulet crusted with dark red, that sort of thing. Oscar looked out of the window as he told me that most of it was junk, silly nonsense. But some of it? Well, they weren't too sure. It was enough to peak Oscar's interest, and enough to intrigue Edgar. Oscar had paused there to rid a hand through his hair, flicking white strands from his fingers.

He turned away from me to stare at the empty desks. The silence in the room seemed to somehow push back the sound of the rain on the window panes. For a moment, I thought Oscar had fallen asleep. I jumped when he launched back into his tail with the gesture at the desks. after the war they'd returned to England. Edgar resurrected the family business and ran it well. Oscar went to work for him. In their spare time, they'd embarked on an investigation of the occult.

The smile ghosted across his face as he told me it had been quite the adventure. Tracking down obscure books, visiting exotic locales and meeting with some very eccentric people. much of it proved to be nonsense. Various combinations of charlatans, fools, myths, and misunderstandings. Oscar had grown tired of it, and when he'd met Mary, he decided to settle down. Oscar's smile then became bittersweet. But for Edgar, there were enough tidbits,

enough hints of something more to keep him going. He didn't want attachments, distractions. Our parents had died during the war. I was his only family, he said. Oscar's smile had faded. They'd had a falling out over money of all the petty things. Edgar was spending more and more money on his obsession, and the business was beginning to suffer.

Oscar said he convinced his brother to let him take over, but they continued to squabble. One day those arguments became heated. Oscar's Mary was pregnant, and the business wasn't doing well. Oscar had told him he'd indulged his little fantasy for far too long, and it was time to focus on what was important. Oscar's smile returned.

A rueful thing crafted from loss and regret. Edgar stormed out into the frosty night. He didn't return that night. Or ever again. It was at that point. I realized my mouth had fallen open. I closed it with a snap, and Oscar grinned as my teeth clicked and I blushed. Edgar had cleaned out his bank account the next day and left the country the day after.

Oscar then levered himself to his feet and shuffled to the desks. He pulled a rosewood box. box towards himself. Then he lifted the lid. Inside's were scores of letters. He ran his fingertips over the letters. Like a caress. Edgar would write every so often, but Oscar never knew when to expect the next one. It might be weeks or years. Their adventures had been extensive, but Edgar's eclipsed all that had come before. Iceland, Morocco, South America, China, all with no discernible pattern. Never the same place twice, but in the end, the letters all said the same thing.

I didn't find what I was looking for, but I have a new lead. Oscar took a letter from the box. He bit his lip as he unfolded it with infinite care. It opened with ease. Some of the creases had parted to flop down like the, arm of a dead man. Writing covered both sides and resembled little more than scratches of ink on the page. I frowned. I'd seen this handwriting before. Oscar looked up from under his long eyebrows, noted my expression, then flicked his eyes to the clock. Those same thin lines made up to symbols

on the clock. Oscar nodded to the clock. As soon as he'd seen the clock, he'd known. It was Edgar's hand. Oscar apologized at that point, saying he'd jumped ahead. He turned a thin finger at my watch and asked me if I had the time. A quick glance and a quicker nod to set Oscar back to his tail. Color faded from Oscar's face as he told me that by this time, he was alone. He couldn't articulate the words. All I could make out was The Birth and They Both.

I gently lay my hand on his arm, and he raised a hand before I could speak, and told me that it was fine and that it was a long time ago. His voice cracked a little, and he took a deep breath telling me that some things were never meant to be. Oscar's shoulders sagged. It was as if all the years had fallen upon him all at once. Oscar's voice rumbled back growing stronger as he lost himself in Edgar's tale. He tried to find his brother. to convince him to come home. Oscar pulled a couple of letters from the box,

still in their envelopes. He turned them over in his hands. There were no return addresses. Detectives proved useless. Happy to take his money, producing nothing in return. He tapped his finger on the edge of the box, then slid the letters back into the box.

He closed the lid, pressing it down with grim finality. It wasn't before, long that the letters stopped coming. The last letter contained something he hadn't seen before, and its significance didn't register until much later. Oscar turned to me and asked me if I knew of the order of the infinite star. I'd nodded, and he'd nodded in return. My phone buzzed in my pocket, pulling in from my pocket, I glanced at the screen. Oscar's pale green eyes, startlingly clear behind his glasses, looked at me.

I swiped the screen and tucked it away telling him that it wasn't a call. I set myself alarm so I don't miss appointments. Another would sound soon, as I do often forget them. Edgar's last letter referenced an infinite star. Oscar opened his hands outwards, like a bird spreading its wings. It was oddly poetic phrasing from a man more in tune with a woman. machines and technology, then verse and rhyme. The Order had yet to achieve their international infamy, and Oscar didn't immediately make a connection. Rumors of devil worship and human sacrifices

abounded in the weeks and months after the Order claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack in Naples. Hooded and masked in white, they'd carried glass globes filled with a neurotoxin of a type never seen before. Or since, I did ask Oscar if he thought Edgar had enmeshed himself with the cult. Oscar shrugged, telling me that he hadn't seen his brother for years. His letters had become more and more confusing, and he could not follow his thought processes. Edgar alludes to the thing that Oscar knew nothing about, made references that he didn't understand. It became clear that he'd become obsessed with his own mortality, being unable to unravel these mysteries before he would pass on. Oscar ran his slender fingers across the innlay on the lid of the box. He said that he wasn't sure

if he really knew his brother at the end, but he'd like to think that he wouldn't hurt others. Oscar's hooded eyes drifted to the empty desk, and in them, I found uncertainty. That's when I remembered the clock, and how forward it was at me to ask about it. Oscar told me that a few days before everyone disappeared at the infinite star compound. A box had appeared on his doorstep. It had been redirected so many times that no one could tell me where it had originated, he said. Someone had written some instructions on the parcel in Spanish at one point. Arabic at another.

Exactly when? He couldn't say. In the box were Edgar's effects. A ring, their father's watch. And that's when Oscar's quavering finger pointed up to the clock. It clung to the wall, silent and accusing. He'd recognize the handwriting immediately. But as a gift, it was so unlike his brother, so odd.

But it did become much odder. I pulled my eyes away from the clock and then glanced back. Had the hands moved? The clock had arrived already running. but it never worked as it should. For a time, it would work as expected, keeping perfect time. And then, at random intervals, both hands would wave up and down. They'd move, pausing a moment before moving again

as if trying to determine where in the world it was, and what time it should show. Oscar had once thought the clock defective until he'd realized that the movements weren't random. The hands always moved to the same. positions, then repeated a pattern over and over. He became obsessed, convinced that it must be a message from his brother. Perhaps he wasn't gone after all, and Oscar missed him. He said, I did all I could to decipher the message. With a slow shake of his head, he was laden with

disappointment. His eye bore into the clock as if daring it to move, but he found nothing. Nothing had worked. Edgar's books, the internet, not even a prayer. Oscar turned his hands over slowly, bringing the tips of his fingers together before dropping them into his lap. I pointed out that the clock wasn't keeping time now. Oscar took a deep breath. About ten years ago, a man came to his door, delivering a parcel. It had been a miserable day.

Cats and dogs and all that, he said. He'd invited the poor chap in for a cup of tea, sitting where I sat now. I looked down at either side of my seat as if looking for the ghost of the man who'd been there. The man was a former sailor. He'd abandoned his nautical life for one with his family. He'd had a little girl. Oscar stared up at the ceiling as if the memory resided there, and after a long moment he seemed to remember that he had company.

The man was sipping at his tea when the clock was halfway through its connoptions. He'd commented on its strange behavior. Making light of it, Oscar told him that the thing had started out by waving its hands up and down. At that, the man's face drained of color. He sat down his tea, spilling it in his haste to snatch up his delivery pad. He'd begun to write. Oscar had asked him what the devil he was doing. But inscribed on the pad, soon to be seen, were a series of letters.

Two groups of letters were circled. Oscar took a plastic folder from the drawer. Sealed within was a slip of yellowed paper. In unsteady handwriting, a string of letters ran across the paper. As an evil man, Oscar's visitor had learned flaged semaphore. The waving of both arms up and down was a signal that a message was a message was about to be sent. Oscar turned the paper to me.

On it were the letters. P-M-E-H-L-P-M-E-H-E-L. The pen circled the words, help, and me. Oscar's eyes stared past me as if you no longer saw anything. As they sat, the pattern repeated, the hand swinging faster and faster than ever before. Oscar's brows narrowed and his eyes fell into deep shadow. It was as if the clock knew it was being observed.

And then the hands came to an abrupt stop. After a long moment, the hands moved again, but this time, spasmodically, like the random movements of someone unsure of what they were doing. They twist to a new position. One, the hands had never come to rest on before. Oscar pointed to the clock as it stood. 10.20.

The ex-sailer's jaw had dropped ever further. He turned his head towards Oscar, but left his eyes locked on the clock. That meant Anul. Ignore the last message. Then there came the smell of sulfur. Oscar's visitor had shaken so much that he'd been surprised he could speak. From somewhere, the man pulled a crucifix with knuckles white as he gripped the talisman. He then stumbled from the house and into the torrential rain, without more than a word.

Oscar sank back into the sofa. He seemed to shrink in on himself. And that man, he never returned. I raised my hands, turning them, palms up, wanting more. Oscar had followed up on what he'd been told. What he said was true, but it was too late now. The clock had stopped. The hands locked on 10.20. And it had not moved since.

There were no more messages, no more clues. Oscar closed his eyes, his rumbling voice, losing strength as he spoke. If Edgar was still out there, and if he needs help, Oscar had no way of knowing where he was. His voice was now little more than a whisper. Edgar was lost. Oscar's chin dropped onto his chest. I waited for a long moment.

Then the snores began. Not quite knowing what to do, I looked back at the clock. It appeared to taunt me. I dragged a chair before the mantle and stood upon it and removed the clock from the wall. A fine yellow powder sifted down from the clock as I removed the clock from the wall. It stank of eggs that had gone rotten. Side quests is what I call them now.

Little tasks that I set for myself to complete. Black burn marks stain the battery compartment. I removed both the batteries. Green and white encrusted the terminals. Moving into the kitchen and rummaging through the drawers, I found what I sought in the third drawer. It's always the third drawer. One of many hobbies over the ears involved pulling electronic devices apart.

I've had so many hobbies that starting new ones was a hobby in itself. I brush both terminals clean with a wire brush and replace the batteries. There was no dial to manually adjust the time. I turned over the clock. The hands remained at 20 past 10. This close to the clock, lock, I could see fine lines etched into the glass. I pulled it away to find the lines weren't on the surface at all. Somehow, the etching was within the glass itself. I move and toggle the hands until they

surrendered to my ministrations, yet still remaining lifeless. With a shrug, I returned to the study where Oscar still slept. A brown ring marred the surface of the bricks where the clock had rested. The paint bubbled as if seared. I made a mental note to bring some paint next time. A note that, of course, I'd likely forget. And that's when my phone buzzed, with an urgent alert that popped up. A glance at my watch revealed that I'd been so focused

that I'd missed the alarms. I was late. Popping the clock back onto the wall, I dropped to the floor. I knew I needed to hurry. My next client's anxiety would be. be spiking. Sleep battered at the windows with desperate intent. I adjusted the blanket across Oscar's knees, gave a last look down the hall, and then stepped

out into the street. I ran past the windows to Oscar Killingworth's study and skidded to a halt. The hands of the clock were moving. My phone buzzed again. My client must have been approaching a meltdown by now. Commitments must be honored. And I could always come. come back. With that, I sprinted out into the night. I'd spend a long night calming my client down.

Her distress infected me. I'd held her hand and uttered soothing words until sleep claimed her, and exhaustion claimed me. I'd stumbled home and slept most of the day. My supervisor called me into the office for the late shift. Oscar Killingworth had died that night, and his his place in my roster had already been filled with a new client. I darted from the office to confuse shouts. Leaping into my car, pale faces race past my window. All devoid of color and smeared with anonymity. As soon as I arrived, I knew that I was too late.

Oscar's place had been cleared out with indecent haste. I darted up the steps and found the door unlocked. I shoved it open. and sprinted to the study. The clock was gone, and all that remained was the smell of polish and sulfur. For more information on this podcast,

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