Creepy - What Was Left Behind

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Never look back...***Written by: Rob Gillham and Narrated by: David Ault***Bonus Episode: "Integument" written by: Maxwell Marais***Check out our reward tiers 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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Cloudwood's right. 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 may contain graphic deductions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents.

What was left behind? Written by Rob Gillum and narrated by David Alt. We leave Devon at sunset and the sky is red like murder. The four of us crammed into Ludglum's old Toyota along. with a loot from our trip. It's pretty tight. Me and Squeaker sharing the back seat with boxes of scrap metal, tools, clothes and a bunch of books we scrand from the cottage. The boots full of scramed, tin stuff mostly, worms medicine and the other bits and pieces we picked up in the town. We should be pretty jolly, headed back to London with all this loot, but no one looks that

joyful. Ludglooms in a bad mood, and that always brings everyone else down. My car, my rules, he always says. And that includes how he should feel. Of course, it ain't really his car. Finders' keepers says it's all of ours, but Lugglum's the oldest and the only one what can drive. I'm wondering if I should tell Lugglum about the little statue in Worm's coat pocket, but he's already angry at us twice.

Once because he had to turn back after 15 miles, when Worm realised he'd left his inhaler behind, and second because we brought Squeaker with us. We came here to scrounge stuff we can flog, Parrot, Luddglum says. So unless you're going to sell her, she's just taken up space. What about all them books in the back, I told him? No one wants to buy that junk. Ludglam just gave me this narrow-eyed look.

Too much stuff's been forgotten by dumb little brothers, what don't read, he said. Anyway, I ain't looking after her. He was joking about selling Squeaker, of course. We don't go in for trading girls or boys for that matter. Some lads might go in for that sort of thinking, but not us. Leave that to the other mobs. Worm's in the front passenger seat, chattnering away to himself. He's got a big box of medicine for his inhaler on his lap,

but I know he's got one hand on the ugly little piece of wood in his coat pocket. Worm and me found the statue in a sort of cubbyhole in the wall in one of the codger's bedrooms. Leave it alone, Walmsley, I told him. There's loads of better scrounge in here than that old thing. We only call him by his real name when we're telling him off him being the youngest and all but Worm weren't listening to me

he only had eyes for that nasty little statue it was an ugly thing not much bigger than his hand and carved out of wood with these big boldie eyes and a body too small for its head but Worm just kept staring at it turning it over and over in his hands

it's junk put it back I told him Worm shook his head and his face screwed up the way it does when he's about to cry. Find us keepers, he said. Ludglam told me once that when the ancestrals came, some people tried to pray to them, you know, the way they used to pray to God.

They'd make little statues and leave them out with gifts. They had praying meetings asking the ancestrals kindly not to take them nor theirs. Only the ancestrals weren't no gud, and they didn't care if folks prayed or made little statues or anything. they came for the people anyway. They took them apart, put them back together in different ways, and when they was tired of this fun and games, they ate them. Or something like that.

Then when there weren't no more grown adults left, the ancestrals went away, simple as. That's what Ludglam says. The wind from the open window is flapping Ludgum's dirty long locks all over the place. He always stares dead ahead at the road as he drives. I reckon you could drive straight down it for hours without even looking, because we never saw another person the whole way to Devon. The only other cars was just old wrecks at the side of the road.

That's Ludglam all over, though. Always fearing the worst, always watching out. His real name is Ludlum. It was me what first called him Ludglum on account of his moodiness. I'm good at naming. Ludgum and Worm were easy because they sound like the real names. Parrot is my real name, but Ludgum says it's a lot of. I'm a good name because I squawk like a parrot and I don't never know when and shut up. I named Squeaker too, though I didn't never know her real name. I don't reckon she remembers it neither. When we decided to bunk up in that cottage, we thought it was empty. We didn't see no one the whole time we was in Devon, not till we found Squeaker. She was living like an animal

in one of them big sheds next to the cottage, all skin and bone and dressed in nothing but this filthy old nighty. She wouldn't talk or come near us and she wouldn't go in the house. I started leaving a little scran out for her and she gobbled that up and dab by day, she just got used to us, I reckon. After that, she started trailing round after us. Still didn't speak though. She loved Ludglam the most for some reason, staring up at him the whole time with huge shiny brown eyes, even though it was only me and worm what showed her any kindness. If you feed a dog, it follows you around but that ain't love. He's just another mouth to feed, Luddlum said.

when it was time to leave. Worm started crying and said Squeaker was one of us now. Then Ludglam got angry and said she weren't family, not like him, me and Worm was. Worm said he hated Ludglam, that he was a mean big brother, but that ain't true. Ludglam looks out for us, not like the big brubs of other mobs.

They make you look out for them and they don't mind if you get cut sometimes because of it. They might even sell your ass if you're small and pretty and another big brother with something they want is minded that way. That's why it's better being just the three of us, Ludglam says. Anyway, eventually Ludglam sort of sighed and shook his head like a new worm couldn't be argued with. You won't get a squeak out of her, he said. She's scrambled. Cuckoo. Ludglam meant she must have lost a voice and a mind after seeing what the ancestral's done to all

adults, but that didn't seem right. She's too small and scrawny. Scramble kids are ones what can remember the ancestrals. Squeaker can't be no older than me or Worm and we don't remember nothing. Of course, we get the dreams sometimes. Everyone gets those. Don't matter if you're a big or little brother. It's just that little bros like me and Worm can't picture what really happened, but we still get the dreams.

Worm cries in his sleep and pisses himself. I never tease him about that, because it ain't no one's fault what happens in their sleep, I reckon. Me, I don't recall nothing when I wake up sweating in the night, but there's always this tangy metal taste in my mouth, like all those bad thoughts of poison, what my body wants shot off. Ludglam don't talk about his dreams, but then he remembers his real family and the ancestrals,

and what happened to all the adults. I reckon that's why he's always said. About three hours after we leave Devon, we passed a sign what says, Redding 25 miles. The last of the red sky has turned to blackness. The car slows down. Ludglum starts effing to himself.

What's up? I ask. Juice, he says. We need to recharge. Don't want to get stuck in Reading with no battery. I reckon Ludglam's right. Places like Reading and Oxford are dangerous. Ludglam says everywhere around London it has its own mobs and they don't like anyone scranging on their territory.

So we've got to go all the way to places like Devon for fresh loot. That's why we travel at night too so we can swoosh past places like Redd in while all them lads is asleep. Ludglam parks the car up. There's a couple of wrecks we passed a quarter of a mile back, he says. No point wasting juice. I'll walk there and see if there's any electrics with battery we can leach. Just our luck if they're all petrol engines.

I don't recall precisely what petrol was. I know some cars ran on it, but it's all vaporated now, so it's no good to no one. Ludglam gets out the car and gets the leech box and cables out of the boot. Stay here, he tells us, and gives worm his don't fuck around look. Parrot's in charge till he gets back, he says. When he's gone, we all sit nice and still for a bit, just staring out the window at the blackness. It's quite out here in the in-between places. In London, there's always noise after dark, something going through the rubbish, someone running away from something, packs of dogs fighting.

Here, though, you feel like you got to be still was the night, like you mustn't be the one what breaks the sun. silence. Ben Worms says, I like Devon. It was all green and it smelled nice. I wanted to stay. Why we got to go back to London, Parrot? I don't know, I say. I'm annoyed at him for making a sand. I could tell him why we're going back because it ain't safe. The countryside is too big and empty. There ain't enough places to scrounge. It's too black at night and easy for something to creep up on you. But I don't say any of that because Worm's using his baby voice. which generally means he just wants to moan. After a minute he says,

Parrot, why didn't we go to the sea? Ludglam said we could visit the sea in Devon. Shut up, I tell him. We went there to scrounge. This weren't no holiday. I wanted to go to the seaside, he says. I clench my fists and tell myself that Ludglam left me in charge because I'm older

and I've got to be calm like. When I don't say nothing, worm shuts up for a bit. The inside of the car is dark as the blackness outside. I can't even see him, but I imagine he's sulking. Then he starts whispering. They ain't my friends. It's just you and me.

Ludglob and parrot ain't nice bruffs. They're mean to me. You can be my brough, though. You and squeak alike. She's all right. I listen as he keeps on in that fashion. It's better than him crying, I suppose. Only I'm used to his baby tantrums.

This is different somehow. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I just wish he'd be quiet. Moonlight cuts through the black like a knife and makes this thin, bright line through the rear seats. I get a glimpse of squeaker, her eyes shining, wide open and fixed on me. Worm, I say, as friendly as possible, are you talking to that statue?

You know, if Ludlam finds you've kept that, he's going to clip you around the lug hole. I hear worm shifting his seat. His face appears between the front seats, white as plaster and grinning like, like a loon. You won't let him take it away, will you parrot? He says and holds up the statue.

I scrape my tongue against my teeth like I've just woken up from a bad dream. The statue ain't six inches tall and I can't barely make it out in the blackness, but when it catches the ray of moonlight I see them little arms and legs curled up like a baby's. It's big head and then boggly frog eyes. Squeaker makes this little cry and reaches out to the statue. She grins and her mouth opens like she wants to swallow something bigger than her own head. It's the first time I ever hear a peep out of her. Both me and Worm are so surprised we don't do nothing as she wraps her fingers around the statue.

Then Worm snatches it away from her and hugs it to himself. Stop her parrot, he yells. Tell her to keep her mitts off it. Squeaker doesn't fight. She just starts making this burbling noise that ain't exactly laughing. Her hands still reaching out to the statue with her fingers all flexing and point. What's she saying, Parrot? Worm says, shrinking away from her.

It's gibberish, I say. It don't mean a thing. Make a stop. She wants me statue, Parrot. Tell her she can't have it. I put a hand on Squeaker's shoulder. She shrieks. It's high and loud and I wince. Next thing I know, she's up and clambering through the gap between the front seats, cheering away again like a bird again while she grabs at Worm. I hear the front passenger door and lock. The next thing I know, worm is getting out of the car.

I ain't getting back in until Squeaker quits acting crazy, he sobs. Make a stop, parrot. Squeaker lets out another ear-splitting note what ends in a throaty rattle. I never heard nothing like it. It's happy and sad all the same time, like that feeling just before you're proper awake when you smell something safe and familiar, but no matter how hard you try once you're awake, you can't hold on to it.

Now squeaker's in the front seat and out the door, still singing her weird noises as she goes for Worm. He squeals like a terrified pig and then he's off into the night with Squeaker right behind him, arms reaching out like she wants to hug him. Worm hurdles the barrier and he's running up the steep grass bank on the other side towards the line of trees at the top. Then squeakers over the bar too. For a second I can see them in the moonlight, two little ghosts running up the hillside. And they reach the trees and they're lost in the black. My first thought is to go after him.

They wouldn't have gotten far. I could drag them both back by their hair if needs be. Lock them in the car, threaten to brain them with the crowbar if I got her, and wait for Ludglum. Little bruvs always do whatever comes into their heads. Big bros got a stop and think first, Ludglam always says. I force myself to take a breath and sit still for a moment. Then I'll get out the car, open the boot and get the crowbar. There's wild animals and God knows what else.

else out there in the blackness. Then I go around to the front passenger door. Sure enough, Worm's inhaler is on the seat, so I put that in my pocket and then I'm headed into the blackness after him. As soon as I've crossed the barrier and started up the bank, I realised I didn't do nearly enough thinking. The grass is tall, thick and wet. My trainers make squelching sounds as I run.

The legs of my jeans are soaked up to the knees. Worm and Squeaker are both much shorter than me. I hope they both get proper. drenched. Perhaps that'll make them stop and see what prats they're being. I doubt it though. Whatever's gotten into them to make them rush off into the night like looms, I don't reckon a bit of mud is going to change that. I reach the line of trees and plunge in, waving the crowbar in front of me like a blind man in a fight. Piny branches whipped back, scratching at my face and hands as I blunder on. Ten or twenty metres in, it occurs to me if I wasn't frashing

around like an idiot, I might be able to hear squeaker and worm making their own racket. I close my eyes and listen. Only out here, the blackness ain't quiet. The creek and rustle of the trees is everywhere. Ludglam told me once these piney trees didn't grow here till people planting them for some reason. He read that in one of his books. The piney trees grew real fast and killed off all the older kinds

like a new violent mob moving in on another mob's territory. I have this idea that they're angry with us now, for being on their turf, disturbing their stillness. Then I'm angry at myself for having such a weak baby full, like a proper dumb little brother. There's another noise I can just make out over the din of the trees. It's a sort of wheezing, hiccuping, not far ahead, and I stumble towards it.

I get a couple more painful branches in the face for my troubles before I nearly trip over worm. He sat on the ground with his legs spayed out in front of him. I can't see his face, but when I almost fall on top of him, he lets out a yelp that turns into a dry cough and I know it's him. Parrot, is that you? he says as I crouched down beside him. Parrot, I lost my inhaler. I'm sorry. No, you didn't, you pratt, I say, pressing the inhaler into his hand.

He sucks greedily on the inhaler. I think about the best before date on the medicine boxes and wonder whether that was today, yesterday or even years ago. Ludglam says it don't matter what the date says, but I reckon they must have put them on those boxes for a reason. Squeaker took off, parrot, worm says. I thought she was chasing me, but she weren't. She was just singing and laughing and running around like a loon. When I couldn't go on no more, she just ran off straight past me. I ain't seen her.

Which way did she go, I say. She didn't even want the statue, worm says. I reckon she just got all excited by it. Look, I say, I'll find Squeaker, don't worry. Can you get yourself back to the car, worm? "'I'll reckon,' he says, and I can't see his face, but I can tell he's trying not to cry. "'I drop the statue,' he says in a whisper. "'I don't want it no more.'

"'Good lad,' I tell him, and give his shoulder a squeeze like Ludglum does when he wants you to know it's going to be all right. I'm old enough to know he doesn't always believe it himself, but the squeeze still makes you feel better. "'Go back and wait for Ludglum,' I tell him. "'Which way did Squeak ago?' takes my arm and points it off to my right. Sort of that way, he says. Wait at the car, I'll be back as squeaker soon, I say, and I'm surprised at how sure I sound like a proper big brother. When I'm sure worms heading back in the direction of the car, I push through the pines and head the way he pointed me. It's harder going now. The trees are closer together and the branches in my way are thicker

and stronger. I've got my left arm over my eyes and my right aches from holding the crowbar out and front of me. I'm starting to fret because I don't know if Worm got back to the car and I still ain't got squeaker. If Glugglum gets to the car and finds us all gone, I reckon it's best if he never finds me. Then, all of a sudden, I'm out the trees. I nearly fall flat on my face because my eyes are still shut and I'm still waving the crowbar, only now it ain't hitting nothing but thin air. The weight of it almost pulls me over. My right arm hurts so much, it's like it's screaming, so I dropped the crowbar. than I lowered my left arm from my face.

The moon is out full and huger than I've ever seen it. It lights the whole hill back down to the road. Somewhere in the trees I got turned around. I've come out a ways back on the roadside. Four car wrecks by the side of the road are lit up in white and silver. In the middle of the road is a small figure, crouched in the middle of a dark, shiny pool what reflects the moon and stars like a mirror.

At first I'll reckon the liquid. must have leaked out of one of the cars, only that ain't right. There's nothing left in these dry old wrecks. As I reach the bottom of the hill, I can make out Squeaker more clearly. She's kneeling in the pool, cupping her hands like she's about to wash her face. She's filthy. Her clothes are stained dark with mud from her romp through the woods. I don't want to scare Squeaker. Can't risk her running off into the woods again, so I hold my breath and just keep walking towards her. Now I'm nearer. I can see that the pool has other things in it. My mouth is bone dry and my tongue tastes like copper.

Then I know that I've seen shapes like these before and I know what they are. I want to spit. Only I can't get any saliva going and I wretch. Squeaker sits up. Her head turns in my direction. With the moon behind her, her face is in shadow but I can see that it ain't mud on our hands and knee. She makes this first chirping sound. It ain't a question, ain't angry or sad, or, oh, look, it's you, parrot.

It's more like, here I am. Squeaker lifts her hands to her mouth, and the blood cupped in them falls into her mouth and spills down her front. She drops her head real low like she's praying. Then her bowed back splits apart and squeaker sort of unfolds. Something shiny with too many. limbs climbs out of her like an insect shedding its husk. It unbends more joints than a person has. Two of them flexed, then open up and become wings. The thing squeaker was cocks its head. Black, bulging eyes blink and swivel in my direction. They flicker over me then away like

I'm no more interesting than the trees or the moon. It makes that clicking, chirping noise again. and then it spreads its wings and with a sand like a tarpaulin in a storm, it's gone. I'm still for a long time, just staring at the stains on the road and the shapes in him. I look at Ludgloom's face and try to be sad, but I don't feel nothing except sort of dull. I think about how he don't seem angry or sad like he usually does.

He looks almost happy, like squeaker ripping him apart was doing him a favour, like this was an end to all that watching and worrying. I'm glad when the moon is covered by cloud and I can't see him no more. The thought that Ludglum was glad to leave us alone makes me angry. I stepped carefully through the shapes in the drying pool.

I pick up the leech box and check the charge finding it's full. And I turn towards Redding and start walking back to the car where worms waiting. I can't cry. I can't allow myself to, but worm will. Lill. Blood glum and Squeaker is going to make him difficult for a time, but I'll see him through. I reckon I know enough to drive the car.

We'll head back west, and I'll take Worm to see the ocean. He has enough medicine to last in months, or as long as it still does any good. I'll tell him not to worry about that. I'll get him more when it runs out. If we stay out of trouble, we might even grow old enough that Squeaker and her kind will become interested in us, but that's not something I'm going to tell Worm. I'm his big brother. I've got to be.

I'm all he has left. The moon is gone and the sky is now dark blue like a bruise. I begin walking east towards worm and this bright amber halo on the horizon like all the world is on fire. For your bonus episode, creepy presents Integuement.

Written by Maxwell Moray. It's been three months stationed at the lighthouse. And of all things, John Adley has grown in immense hatred for painting it. It's the sour, cloying smell. It's the way it chips and flakes with age like old scabs. It is the constant, ceaseless need to keep coating the stuff on. The lighthouse board, it seems, puts great stock in a well-painted building. That much was apparent from the moment he walked into the place.

There are no corners in the lighthouse. There were once. There are joints in the wood where there should be a corner, but all of them have been smoothed over, made blunt and rounded under layer after layer of paint. Sometimes it seems like it was never even fully allowed to dry before some former keeper had slathered on another coat of white. There's a spot halfway up the stairs to the light, Adley knows, that still has not dried.

It refuses to, despite all effort. Every night he walks past it, and every night it glistens as though freshly painted. It has a sort of blister-like nature, this spot, the way paint tends to sag and balloon outwards when filled with water. Or rather, it must have been this way at some point. because there's no water in it now. So instead the paint hangs folded over itself like old, unpleasantly fleshy drapes. He thinks about this whenever he walks past

and unconsciously scratches at the calluses on his palms where blisters had routinely formed when he first began work here. When he goes to trim the wicks each night, the draft blows in from halfway up the stairs. No matter the weather, it is warm. It is August, and overhead hang thick and roiling clouds, waiting with frustrating indecision to storm. Hadley checks and double checks the lighthouse's integrity and waits. No storm comes.

The clouds hang. The sea fog rolls in. The air is sticky and moist and filled with the final straggling gasps of summer warmth. the rank scent of rotting seaweed washed up on the shores of the island. The lighthouse stands glaring white against the darkened haze, jutting into the cloud cover like a tooth. Routine is no solace anymore. What once kept his mind focused and occupied now is tedium, distraction.

He cleans the station. He patches a hole in the roof. He checks the light. It's clockworks. He trims the wicks. He paints, and he paints, and he paints. By the time more than a week has passed without a fog clearing for the first time in his life, John Adley wishes for a storm. At least then his work would be for something. At least then, there would be change. It is a wish he isn't granted. staring out of the windows of the station one morning,

he realizes that he has never once seen a ship sail past. The distance between him and the harbor has begun to feel impossibly far of late. What purpose does a lighthouse serve, with no ships to guide? What purpose does he serve, trapped inside it? He thinks of tales of other keepers. one's dead or mad or missing, ones who were not found when their beacons went dark and incoming ships met with catastrophe.

Sometimes, if only for a few cynical moments, he thinks he understands them now. John Adley stops painting the lighthouse. It is enough. There cannot possibly be in need for more paint. He starts picking away at the crest of the crest of, the edges of the spot that will not dry halfway up the stair wall to the beacon. Just a little, just a few flakes each time he walks up or down. He can feel it slough up under his fingernails when he

scrapes it free. After days, his fingertips are raw, and the now pock marked edges are stained in spatters with a rusty shade of old blood. The spot remains. He is still all. Only scraping at paint. In the limited sleep he gets, having to keep the light burning much longer under the cloud of darkness, Adley suffers dreams. Cold, empty, terrible dreams.

He is paddling away from the station into the fog, but there is no harbor, only a vast expanse of sea, eerily still. He shouts, and his voice dies. No, he decides. His voice is eaten, eaten by the haze and the water and the nothingness of it all, torn apart by fine little needle-point teeth. They unweave his voice into silence,

and with their appetites wedded for the taste of existence, they begin to unweave him. They fray his skin and peel back, muscles and organs, slide into the marrow of his bones, and gnaw until there is nothing left. In the end, he is gone completely, and he wakes with head reeling to stare out the station windows into a fog indistinguishable from the one that had consumed him only hours before, and he wonders if he is living or dead. There's a horrible smell coming from the spot halfway up the stairs, old paint and mold and something distinctly rancid.

Dead things are low tide in the stinking breath of a drunkard leaning in too close. It has begun to leak something dark and viscous, which Adley pointedly avoids. But he knows he cannot leave the spot untouched forever. If nothing else, it has to be threatening the light structural integrity. and somehow he has managed to cling to a sense of duty for keeping the thing intact. He remembers the fog that presses against the lighthouse windows, waiting, and in those moments he is acutely aware of how very thin the walls are between him and it. Even coated as they are in their bone white shades,

he resolves one late tired night to peel back the still wet paint. As he climbs the stairs to reach it, the smell it exudes is pungent. The stair is sticky underfoot with that thick, dark fluid. He presses his sleeve to his nose and raises his hand to hook his scabbed fingertips into the glistening blizzard paint and yanks. He is reminded, as it splits and pulls downward, of the sensation of skinning an animal. The miasma that rushes out at him hits like the wall that should have been there underneath. And then he sees. The man who keeps the beacon lit over the next few days is only dubiously, Adley.

It is him physically. But he scarcely thinks. Scarcely does anything more than wind the clockworks, trim the wicks, keep up the semblance that everything could carry on as it has before, as it always has, as it must, as is his duty, but there are no ships, there is no harbor, and the lurking worry at the back of his mind nags, there may not be anything anymore.

Outside of himself in the station, and the white spire that watches over him with its luminous eye and its mistrouted mouths open and waiting. He can feel its pulse now. It was there before, has always been there, in fact, just beneath his feet, just quiet enough to be unnoticeable. He'd assumed it was the rhyme of the waves, of the tide beating against the shore. But he feels it now, steady. Slow, the thrum of the veins of something colossal and endless and inescapable. Beneath the paint in the lighthouse is flesh.

A web, almost, of interlocking veins and arteries and patchworked skin. A collection, an amalgam. Every keeper, every sailor, every soul who set foot in the station. A life humming around him and above him and below him, inspiring awe and terror and revulsion at once. All of them, here, were the fabric of existence frays into nothing, entwined into one final state of desperately attempting to be. Dead or mad or missing, or this.

The waves have gone still, and the surface of the sea sits like a mirror to the dark. Adley's footsteps make no sound as he cuts his way through the fog to the lighthouse. His breath makes no sound. In fact, there is no sound from anything. Even his own thoughts feel muted, warped in a thick layer of cotton of mist. He can feel himself begin to unweave even now. He steps into the lighthouse, even as muffled. His mind screams not to.

He is repulsed by the flesh beneath him, truly. But he is also horribly, horribly afraid. His hands shake, and his chest feels ready to cave in on itself, and the thick, stifling air inside the lighthouse makes every breath and effort. and he is never, not once in his life, felt so completely and entirely alone. The very idea, the very concept of the existence of John Adley, the lighthouse keeper, is unraveling at its seams, and he is terrified. And here, here is the chance to continue.

Here is the chance at an end to his solitude, at an end to his fear, at an end to running to a harbor that no longer is. The lighthouse is warm, and the sound of the knot blood that rushes through its veins and coats its steps and floor sounds, he finds, as familiar as the pulse in his own ears, the paint in the stairwell has liquefied, pulls up in long, sticky strands as he trails his hands over the railing. He climbs to the top of the stairs, looks one last time into the great swinging light. Its beam has nothing to shine on. It dies the second it passes beyond the filmy glass. Adley snuffs the wick.

Let the ships dash themselves on the rocks. Neither exist. He takes a long, slow breath of the fetid air around him. Flesh and blood and bone, paint and decay. He descends. There is a sensation of melting as he climbs into the hole in the lighthouse wall. Of pulling apart, stretching thin. He cannot see his hands in front of him anymore.

He's not sure that he even has hands at all. Bile rises in his throat The stench of paint and rot In the thrum of the creatures around him Of him he realizes Is all consuming The dark sets in Something winds through the place

Where his sinus cavity would have been He is all of it And none of it He It day the lighthouse the island the water

the last thread of that which is the emptiness of that which can no longer be he shuts his eyes and his eyes and his eyes and he waits

from the silence thunder rolls the first raindrops of a storm begin to fall. 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.

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