Scary Horror Stories by Dr. NoSleep - I Locked Myself in a Motel Room. Then the Phone Started Ringing

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

A paranoid motel guest barricades himself inside his room, convinced the creatures hunting him have finally tracked him down. But when a mysterious voice on the phone tells him a package has already been delivered, he’s forced to decide whether he’s been given a way to survive—or pushed into the final stage of their trap. Are you still drinking that stale, store-bought coffee? Check out ⁠⁠NoSleepCoffee.com⁠⁠ to get 20% off fresh, same-day roasted coffee delivered straight to your door. Just use promo code NOSLEEP20 at checkout for 20% off your first order! Huge thanks to our sponsors: BetterHelp: Sign up now and get 10% off at ⁠betterhelp.com/dns⁠. Shopify: Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/dns. Author:  Chase Shustack * * * CONTENT DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content not limited to intense themes, strong language, and depictions of violence intended for adults. Parental guidance is strongly advised for children under the age of 18. Listener discretion is advised.  #drnosleep #scarystories #horrorstories #doctornosleep #creepypasta #horror Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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He was losing count faster now, harder to concentrate. He had been able to tell time in cigarettes smoked, and at his last estimation, a standard pack might last him a good six hours if he was careful. The bedstand's digital clock now sat in the trash can. God knows that they must have tampered with it somehow, some way. You could put microphones in anything nowadays, really. Same thing with the TV.

He had thought it's safe to work. watch here, but during Good Morning America, the host, the one with the suit who smiled like a cheap car salesman, blinked a message for him like a captured prisoner of war. The TV now sat unplugged and facing the wall where they couldn't see him. How long have I been here? What motel was this again? He sat on the end of the sheetless bed and counted backward from cigarette packs and granola bars until he settled on concrete names. He had camel brand cigarettes, camels. Camels live in deserts. Deserts are hot. Hot equals summer. Summer is three months. July is the hottest month. Ergo, it was July, and he knew this to be true, because it was indeed very hot,

and the cigarette smoke clung to his greasy, sticky hair. So it was July then. July the 4th. That's a holiday. Holiday Inn? No, no, too expensive, and not to mention the first place they'd look. so he was somewhere cheaper than a holiday inn. The days ran together now at such a rapid pace that he was certain he'd only slept for several hours. The sunlight poured in through the dark curtains like a peeping tom, and he scurried away from it. It wasn't the sun that frightened him, but rather the exposure.

He had tried his best to get a windowless room, but the toothless hick of a clerk, with those glassy eyes that lulled around in her eyes' sockets like a dear moments before the impact was of no help. Took the trash bags out of the cans and covered the window with them as much as he could. The darkness gave him security, and it brought him some degree of comfort to know they couldn't peer inside. They could climb up the ladders and the drain pipes, up from balcony to balcony, and pressed their noses against the glass and seen nothing.

He stood up and adjusted the plastic, cautiously peering out through the space between the opaque cover and the fly-stained glass. There below was the road. blood cell cars clotting bumper-to-bumper on asphalt veins, vomiting exhaust and belching oil. They crept along slowly, an inch every five minutes, and the snorting buses and semi-trucks rolled like lumbering brutes on the passing lane as much as they could, nearly plowing through the standstill if they merged a little too early. The cloudless sky offered little protection from the sun, and the rays jabbed down like shimmering knives into the eyes and lungs of the crowd below.

It nearly made him vomit to see the public, that surging, shifty crowd, half-naked in tank tops and jean shorts shuffling below. In and out, out and in, milling around the parking lot or wandering down the sun's scalded sidewalks, pretending they had a purpose in mind. A woman, barely dressed in low shorts and a cut-off shirt, looked up in his general direction, and he recoiled, only just closing the shades before she could glimpse his face. They were masters of disguise. He knew, and he knew this very well. They were smart enough to hide among the populace, those drooling slack-jawed apes, but that was akin to a professor outsmarting in elementary school. No, no, he had picked him out long ago, back as a young man, and for that, they hated him.

Since then, they'd taken on many forms to get to him, to seduce him and terrify him, sometimes in equal measure. Last week, it had been the man walking up the block with the bag of letters, marked to him, no doubt, and each one laced in a toxin. Anthrax? Lie? Should his bare skin touch the envelope? The other day, one of them, with the body of a snake in the head of a cockroach, had slithered down from the air vents and ranted to him in the voice of WC. Fields until he had suffocated it with a pillow.

And that wasn't getting into the heavy thudding thing that nuzzled the door to the neighboring room and that slipped its spindly gray legs through the cracks like a proboscis. Do they know I'm here? There was a 50-50 chance, and even then, a generous estimation to relax himself. He had taken precautions, or at least the most that one man could do against a threat so organized. His house should be a pile of charred timbers by now, or at least assuming that neighbor, that term coat bastard, hadn't called the fire department at the first sign of fire.

He'd left his car behind the 95 rest stop, long after the needle had broken off, Took only the essentials, cash and clothes mostly. Scant prepackaged foods, he gnawed at like a scavenger, nothing traceable. His phone was at the bottom of the river somewhere, and that was after he had pried the computer parts out. Necessary precautions to be sure. Any slovenly donut-eating detective would be stumped by his disappearance, and, had the average lawman been what he was dealing with, he would have breathed a sigh of relief. But they were not ordinary.

Far from it. He might have fooled a few of the lesser ones, the ones with their mouths hanging open like whales, swallowing krill and their feeble minds excited by the shortest bursts of lights and sounds, yes. But it was the older ones, the smarter ones, that he feared the most. No doubt they had been tracing him, already traced him, and were now zeroing in on his location. Horrible things.

Their hideous and vile appearance almost betrayed their incredible intellect. The sound of their suction cup feet snapping through the drywall echoed through the vents, If he closed his eyes to pretend to sleep, he'd hear the dull scratching of their bristly antennae, brushing against the hotel door. Yesterday, the cleaning lady had knocked on his door and offered to change his sheets. A slug-like creature with seven flabby chins and a single bloodshot eye brain disguised as a squat little Mexican woman. It was good he had left the door locked, or else it would have most likely barged right in. They had surrounded him.

A small blessing was that there weren't as many high thinkers in their society as their were drones. A lesser man might crumble against them, turn himself in, give them what they want, in exchange for whatever mercy he imagined they offered. But a well-prepared man, an entirely different story altogether. It'd be a hell of a fight when it finally happened, but he knew he'd at least go out swinging. All you can do, he thought, the cigarette filter falling from his lips. The moment they came in, he'd, beep. The sound caught his attention more than the cigarette embers burning his bare feet. He had spent long enough in this room, this private sanctuary, that he had cataloged all the noises down to their most reasonable sources. The sound of pipe settling,

the squeak of bedsprings when he sat down, even down to knowing whether what was walking by his room was human or not by the weight and rhythm of their steps. This electronic beeping had, then, taken him almost completely by surprise. He scanned the room like a starving barn owl until he deduced that the gasping electric melody came from the hotel phone beside the bed. The receiver hummed loudly, shrieking, and infantile for his attention. Didn't I unplug the phone? He thought, a half-memory of doing so swimming around. Too hard to remember if he had or hadn't.

But for it to be ringing like this meant he had either made a mistake or... He grabbed the phone from the receiver. Hello? The voice on the other end was a woman. At least, he assumed it was a woman. It was cool and calm and reminded him almost of an automated machine. Its words were the same in both inflection and tone, and between them, he could hear a soft, metallic hissing-like static. He swallowed hard and pressed the receiver closer to his ear.

For a moment, he wondered whether it had not registered that he had answered, or it was simply repeating what he had said back. Who is this? Popping, air rushing from a bubble, and a rush of artificial silence as the sound with drew back into the phone coil. Then the woman's voice answered him again. Did you get what we sent you? He jumped at this, feeling naked. Sent what? Who is this? Again, the voice remained cool. He didn't take his panic into account and brushed his suspicions off with an indifferent refrain. Starting a business always sounds exciting until you realize how many little things you suddenly

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tools for things like product descriptions and page headlines and everything from inventory to payments to built-in analytics. It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash DNS. Go to Shopify.com slash DNS at Shopify.com slash DNS. Get what we sent you. His mind raced. He had gotten nothing sent here since he came here. whenever and however long it was ago, or to the best of his memory, he hadn't. He had stopped using the mail back when he had seen the Inspector General man on TV and seen the way his teeth bulged out of his flabby gray gums like those of a horse.

Of course he'd never accept the package. God knows what was in it or who it was from. But even worse were the implications that they, or this woman, knew where he was. I didn't get anything, he stated, trying his best to sound calm. He reached for another cigarette, forgetting about rationing them and his method of telling time. I never got anything from you. We already delivered it, the voice answered back. Two days ago, this is a courtesy call.

Delivered it where? Your room, sir. In your room. He whipped his head around, in terror towards the door, half expecting to see one of them standing there. Their misshapen alien bodies crammed against the walls and ceiling, slouching toward him. But no, the door was still locked as tightly as it had been for the last few days, and the chair he had lodged in front of it hadn't even moved. How did you get in here? I was awake for two days. I didn't see you.

The voice paused again. This time, the cold professionalism carried barely disguised condescension. That's not true, sir. You fell asleep for 15 minutes at 2 p.m. on Monday. We came in then. That's bullshit! He spat into the phone, clutching it so hard that his trembling knuckles turned white. That's absolute bullshit. You can't even get in through the door. We didn't use the door, sir. The window? No. That had been taped over. It'd make a hell of a noise if someone tried to break in that way. The dresser was in front of the neighboring door, and for as clever as they were, they weren't strong enough to push through it. All right, all right, all right. Deep breaths in and out, nearly dropping the barely touched cigarette that hung from his lips. Where is it then? Where did you put it? I can't see it.

Above the bed, third ceiling panel to the center right. The voice spoke as if the answer should have been obvious. Once you get it, call us back. Call you back, Al! You know the number already, don't you? There was a mechanical click, and the phone went dead. Nothing but white noise on the other end. He slowly placed the receiver back onto its cradle

and turned his attention to the ceiling. 78 and a half swirling white plaster tiles, each about 13 by 13, None of them looked out of place, all lined uniform from the day they were first put in. He climbed onto the bed, feeling the bare mattress sigh and squeak beneath his feet. The sheets, stained and reeking of sweat and grease, piled at the foot of the bed. The duvet discarded like a cheap rag. His eyes scanned for the center and then moved, counting like a child on their fingers, three to the right.

Once he settled on the selected tile, he moved to gingerly push it up, feeling it popped from its fittings and slide away into the humid darkness behind it. Reaching in, he removed a suitcase. Ordinary, plain and brown. One of those types with a little padlock on the clasp, just beneath the handle, sealing it shut, he discovered. He shook it, noting whatever laid inside was heavy and firmly packed, not a bomb, or else it would have exploded already.

A search on all sides revealed no markings or logos, save for a pattern in the leather that reminded him of a snarling pig face or a heavily deformed waxing, figure of Abraham Lincoln. Maybe if he, someone shrieked outside. He stumbled, dropping the suitcase on the bed. The wailing melted into the sound of cheerful laughter, as if mocking him for being so afraid. He climbed off the bed end, lifting up the flap of the garbage bag, peaked through the window down into the courtyard below. A family walked in through the doors, the source of the noise being a child, no older than six, weaving between the parked cars, chasing his sibling, shrieking and hollering with childish glee, polluting the air. The traffic had let up, and now it moved freely again,

a coach bus pulling into the lot followed by a pickup. But out of the corner of his eye, squatting down in the tall grass median, he saw it. One of them. As unmistakable as the day was clear, that lumpy, misshapen thing stuffed into a filthy blue jumpsuit that only just covered its festering nub-like body. Its skin was translucent and rippling like bath foam, and it shifted wildly, as if it couldn't stay still, or the matter that it made up its body couldn't keep a cohesive form. Its head was oversized like a football, and in the sunshine he could see the enormous black frog eyes glistening with alien intellect. He wasn't sure what terrified him more, that one of them sat there in broad daylight, and the people, those mouth-breathing dull cattle, walked by gawking

and yelling in ignorance, or that it was here, looking right up at his room, at him like a starving predator. For a moment he considered screaming out the window to alert the people that one of them was here, right among them. But he knew better. The moment he'd say anything, it would probably take off again, transform as they were known to do, and scurry off on 100 tiny insect legs, or fly with fleshy bat wings. Or they'd play him for a fool again, like at the restaurant and Tanner Sport when he had seen one, worm-like and waving its crustacean hands to collect alley mice to eat. They'd want him to call them out, to give them attention. They didn't fear being noticed, for they were already everywhere, like germs or parasites,

now a norm. Beep, beep, beep. The phone rang again. Its shrill melody blared through the room. He scrambled backward away from the window and the black, watchful stare of it down below, and he ripped the receiver from its cradle. It was a man's voice this time. No emotion or inflection, same as the woman before him.

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A pause. The voice spoke again and still did slow barks. Did you check the toy? From across the room, he heard porcelain rattling, heavy ceramic clattering, as if something was jiggling the toilet lid. He dropped the phone and hurried, stumbling over trash and yellow coverless pillows in the dark into the tiny bathroom. A tentacle.

A long, pinkish-gray tentacle. as smooth as the ceramic that contained it, was pushing its way out of the toilet. It pulsed and throbbed, rising from the bowl in a single bundled lump of suction cups and veins, before spilling out onto the floor with a wet splat. He almost vomited at the way it unfurled itself, its flesh, sticky and covered with stinking sewage and clear strings of some salty, viscous fluid. For a moment it laid on the floor, squirming and trembling, before immediately darting out to wrap around his feet. One single deft motion cut off his scream as it pulled him clean, off his feet. He fell backward, and in the attempt to straighten himself, instead fell to the right,

banging his head on the bathtub. The tentacle pulled him along the floor, the mucus burning as the suction cups dug tiny fibrous teeth into his skin. They're attacking me now, he thought, desperately fighting through the pain and terror to cling to the tub. But was the person on the phone warning him? Was he part of them? Why would he tell him anything then? These questions would have to wait. By now the tentacle had already lifted his entangled leg off, and into the toilet bowl, pulling the foot into the bowl. Already his toes dipped into the cold water and against the hole, and he shrieked when it expanded, like a warm, fleshy tube,

crushing his toes inward and swallowing his foot. The tank rattled hungrily as his foot and lower leg disappeared into the bowl, accompanied by bone snapping, dull and painless, as the creature chewed at his leg. But, ah, ah, they had forgotten that he knew this was coming. He had known that they were poised to attack at any moment, and his flight from home, the burning of his home, the disguise as the sleepless nights traveling to gain as much ground as he could,

was not a sign of surrender, but of preparation. Grabbing the bathtub curtain, he gave the opaque plastic sheet a firm yank end. To his delight, the force pulled the curtain rod free from its supports. It landed with a loud bang against the tub, the other end slamming against the sink mirror and shattering it. He grabbed the metal rod with his free hand and managed to steady himself before raising the rod to his side and jabbing it into the tentacle in one forceful rapid thrust. Contact. The tentacle jerked backward violently as the metal sank into its wriggling thin skin.

The pinkish flesh burst open like an overripe fruit, releasing a cascade of teeming greenish fluid. He jabbed it again, aiming directly at the thickest part, and this time it squeezed his leg tighter, a desperate, agonized attempt, but not enough to quell his rage. More blood gushed from the tentacle, now mixing with the foaming, white pus that reeked of ammonia. The tentacle jerked backward and slammed him against the wall, the tiles cracking under the force.

Sucking air through his teeth, he raised the curtain rod again, his javelin, and with a final mighty thrust, plunged it into his foe. The thing thrashed wildly, spewing more of its foul blood across the overflowing bowl and the sink, before wilting over dead, flabby and quivering in its death throws. Its grip on his leg weakened, revealing the rings of scarred red flesh around his ankle and calf that itched fresh blood. His leg came easily from the the toilet bowl, and he was surprised to see that it didn't look like a crushed, malformed mess of bone jutting through flesh. The burning still persisted, though that would be another concern later. Instead, his attention was focused on the limp tentacle, or what was left of

it, as it was now rapidly dissolving into a bubbling mess of viscera and sludge before his eyes. In the foaming, decaying mess, something glittered, a shiny metallic thing that twinkled like a diamond amidst the raw flesh. A key, a small silver key, no smaller than his hand. It felt warm and sticky in his fingers as he picked it up, and the metal shimmered like a scalpel. At that moment, two contrasting thoughts entered his head. Had the tentacle been trying to give him the key, and he had merely murdered some cosmic messenger in an act of confused rage, or had he been warned by the man on the phone to kill the tentacle and secure his prize? But the strangest thing of all was that he knew what to do with the key.

Instinctual, a sort of unspoken understanding of what was needed. He hurried out of the bathroom, tracking blood. toilet water and tentacle rod over the cigarette-stained floor, and back over to the suitcase which waited on the bed. The key slipped inside the padlock effortlessly, and with a gentle click, it fell open. He considered the half-open suitcase for a second, as if afraid to even consider what horrors lie inside the proverbial Pandora's box before mustering up the courage to look inside. It was a Springfield, a semi-automatic one at that, heavy and gray with no numbers or markings. Picking it up, he could feel by weight alone that the same.

it was loaded. He held it close. He held it out, inspecting it from all angles, as if it were somehow a figment of his imagination come to life. Returning to the phone, which still hung from its cord like a suicide victim, he grabbed the receiver. What is this? The voice, as if it had been expecting him, answered with the same cool emotionlessness. What do you think? What do you want me to do with this? Outside your door, go look. He put the phone down again and crept to the door. He moved the chair and the dresser out of the way and peephole, careful not to make himself heard. The moment his eye looked into the small glass partition, he nearly screamed in horror. It was them!

Them with their huge misshapen heads and undulating coiling bodies that overflowed from their ill-fitting clothes with fungi limbs and jagged teeth from anus-shaped mouths. Their smiles wide and perverted, their teeth too small, and their polyped foreheads pulsing and festering beneath their thin gray skin. Three of them huddled outside the door, two short and fat, and the third tall and hairless. The tallest one was pawing its nubbish hands at the lock, murmuring in its obscene and disgusting language as it jerked roughly at the handle. The other two chattered nonsensically, their bloated slug-like tongues,

lolling from their puckered lips as they made sick gestures with what passed for their hands. He stumbled backward, gripping the pistol in his hand to the point flesh and metal fused together. Beads of sweat poured down his forehead. He gulped violently to swallow any rising vomit. He returned to the phone and, nearly choking, spoke to his new friend. Jesus Christ, oh Christ, oh Christ, he said. They're here. They're here. What do I? You know what to do?

The voice answered. Its tone calm and collected. He stared at the gun in his hand. Who's we? Who are you? Banging at the door, the chain on the lock jerked backward violently as the door bulged in. The sound of wet claw hands and sniffing proboscis, radiating from behind it. The voice on the phone barely registered this. You can ask questions, or you can save yourself. Something heavy slammed into the door, and the entire room shook.

He gripped the gun tighter, and the comforting weight gave him courage despite his fear. He glanced down at it, his sidearm, his friend, and he remembered the journey he had taken to come to this place. They had chased him long enough, from his family, his work, his life, and all for the sole crime of noticing them. Seeing what they really were, their grotesque forms. hidden behind the slack-jawed couch potato and the politician in the $1,000 suit. He had done nothing to them but merely observed them,

and for that, they had convinced the world that he was the crazy one, the alien, the parasite, the filth beneath their toenails, and the stinking scum in their teeth to be picked off and thrown away. But no more, no, today he'd finally make his stand. He'd show them! He'd show the whole damn world. He hung up the phone and took a deep breath, aiming the handgun with as much precision as his shaking hands would allow, the barrel aimed directly at the door,

at the things that banged and slammed and kicked against it like sick animals. But as he placed his finger on the trigger, he paused. Voices. He heard human voices, distant and faint, but the unmistakable sounds of English and Spanish accents, muffled to the point of incomprehensibility, but there nonetheless. It sounded as if, for a split second, these voices of familiar humans came from just behind the, No, no, they're tricking me!

Confusing him with their mental tricks to make him think they were mere people to disarm him. They knew he was armed and that he was ready. They were afraid. This thought comforted him as, with a deep breath, he pulled the trigger. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the story, be sure to follow or subscribe and share the show with a fellow horror fan. I'll see you in the next one.