Scary Horror Stories by Dr. NoSleep - THERE IS LIFE ON MARS... I think we just woke it up

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

🎧 Check out The SCP Experience podcast here: https://spoti.fi/3zCFjQc 🎉 Ad-free episodes + bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/drnosleep 🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/DrNoSleep �� Send all advertising inquiries to: [e-mail] Author: Jordan Grupe Check out more of his work here: https://www.reddit.com/user/Jgrupe/ DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content. Parental guidance is advised for children under the age of 18. Listen at your own discretion. #drnosleep #scarystories #horrorstories #doctornosleep #truescarystories #horrorpodcast #horror Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to aboard, Viarai. Embarked and profite. Embarque and celebrate. Rigolet. Publied. Savoray. Admire. And profite.

Viaray. The voice that we love. It's something else here now. Something new. From, exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls scary as hell. Everything here is impossible,

but it's also real. Sci-Fi Vision calls it the best show. of streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home.

From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. The frigid, wind-swept surface of Mars has a thin atmosphere. It is constantly bombarded with deadly radiation from above. The air is toxic. The soil is poisonous. And there's little benefit in setting up her traditional base camp there, as had been done on the moon. For us to survive more than a few years on our

top secret scouting mission, we had to build down, not up. And so we made our base below ground. Unfortunately for us, there was something else down there with us, in the caverns below the surface, something that had been lying dormant and forgotten in the darkness. And we woke it up. Kate was swinging her pickaxe against the wall, breaking off chunks of loose rock. The ceaseless ringing sound of metal on stone was echoing and constant in the dim space. Once upon a time I had found it annoying, but I was so used to it now that it didn't even register. It helped that on Mars, sound didn't work the same way. Things were duller, quieter there.

The headlamps on either side of my helmet, illuminated a wide region in front of me as I worked, shoveling rocks into a wheelbarrow. Everything else was blanketed in darkness. Even on the surface, light was only a third of what it would be on earth. Underground, the darkness was actually oppressive. It felt like you were drowning in it. Suddenly I heard a noise, like the wall had just caved in behind me where Kate was standing. A huge wall of rocks fell over suddenly, and I wheeled around it.

see Kate was gone, just gone. I moved as quickly as I could in that direction, maneuvering in the low gravity with my bulky suit encumbering every step. Running over to where she had been, I called for help, asking the others in the main living quarters to come quickly. There was a hole in the rock where Kate had been. When I finally got close enough to see what had happened, I looked through the gap and saw a vast and dark cavernous space behind the rock wall. My head lamp shone through, and I looked down to see Kate struggling on the treacherous terrain where she had fallen. She had slid a little ways down a steep hill made of crumbling dirt and rocks. The loose ground was slipping beneath her feet as she attempted desperately to gain traction.

I need some help! She cried, trying and failing to find her footing. The angle was so steep she was clearly struggling, trying not to show the terror on her face. I got you, Kate! My words, sounding false to my own. ears. Just hang on. But I saw that she couldn't hang on. She was being swallowed up by the blackness below. More and more by the second. She was almost 10 feet down the slope now, and too far for me to grab her. Then 15 feet. Then 20. Bring ropes and climbing equipment. I called to the others in the habitation unit. Double time, guys, hurry! Kate's in trouble! I watched in shock as she slid further and further down into the darkness below.

Hang on, Kate. Now, guys. We need you out here now. Behind her, I could see there was a huge underground cavern. My lamp could not illuminate far enough to see the floor or the other end of it. The dark space had to be massive,

considering the NASA headlamps were top of the line. The high-powered beam of light cut through the blackness for a ways and then was swallowed up. When I looked down again, Kate was gone. She didn't respond on her radio either. The sound of her impact of the floor below did not come back up to me. And I imagined her falling slowly in the low gravity at first.

Her descent quickly increasing, faster and faster, until she reached a deadly velocity, and then it wouldn't matter anymore how forgiving the gravity was. But the sound of her impact never came. Way and Reed ran out of the airlock with ropes in hand, Looking at me with concern, I waved them over and pointed down into the blackness below. This section is hollow. She broke right through with the pickaxe. She fell in and couldn't climb back up. It's all crumbling rocks, so I think she must have slid right down. But how far? I'm not sure.

Captain Reed seemed to consider the options. Time was of the utmost importance. If she was still alive down there, her air supply would be limited. We all stared through the hole into the blackness. and looked up to see the roof of the cavern far above. It was very odd, since our bunker was next to a large vertical rock face that we had always assumed was sturdy and solid. Now we realized the giant mountain of stone right behind our base was hollow, like the fossilized skull of an ancient colossus. It seemed unnatural to my eyes, but I'm no geologist.

Way quickly went in to call back to base as I looked down helplessly into the dark abyss the gabbard. The radio crackled with static, but I could hear her voice in my helmet. Kate? Are you okay? Can you hear me? There was nothing for a few moments. Then I heard the static crackle again. Yes, I waited, but there was only silence once again. You're cutting out. How far down are you? We can lower a rope. There's something down here, Nathan. I can't explain it. A pool of water that broke my fall. Kate? Did you say water? Nothing after that again for a few minutes, despite trying again multiple times. We all stared at each other, dumbfounded.

The average temperature on the surface of Mars is approximately negative 46 degrees Celsius. It was much colder than that in the caverns where we were located, away from the sun's warming rays, far too cold for liquid water. We were protected from the deadly radiation present on the surface, though, and that was the major benefit of being below ground. She must have a concussion or a head injury. Someone's going to have to go down there, I think. I'll go. I volunteered immediately. Putting on the climbing harness, I tried to put one leg in at a time through the loops of woven fabric, the way I had done a thousand times. Still, I found myself struggling. My hands were shaking, and I couldn't get my fingers to work properly.

Finally, I got the damn thing on and attached the other clips and ropes and equipment to my suit. Reed handed me two climbing axes as well, just in case. I lowered myself slowly over the side of the steep cliff edge and made my way down. The darkness surrounded me on all sides as I went deeper and deeper down, feeling suffocated by blackness. I had to remind myself to breathe. It felt like I was descending down. downwards forever as the light above got dimmer and eventually disappeared entirely. The walls looked yellow and strange, vainy and organic when I pointed my lights on them.

But I didn't have time to stop and look. I just assumed it was an unusual type of rock formation. As I dropped down further, my head began to feel light. My vision suddenly blurred for a moment and I had trouble seeing. Then it cleared again, and my ears began to reach. ring painfully. I didn't understand what was happening and started to hear voices whispering in my ears instead of ringing until it seemed as if they were right inside my mind speaking to me. But in a tongue I did not understand, and that was not human. That can't be right. Finally, Kate's headlights became visible. I saw she was standing down below and was touching the surface of the rock wall. But it was not a rock wall. I realized with dawning apprehension.

The walls were moving and shifting. They were covered in yellow web-like formations that I saw were everywhere. All over the floors and walls and ceiling of this unnatural chamber, so close to me I could examine them as I finished dropping down to the floor below. The yellow webs looked familiar for some reason, and it took me a few moments to realize why. The yellow web-like formations were almost identical to slime mold, one of the most curious and interesting life forms on planet Earth.

Of course not known to exist on Mars. Coincidentally, I knew a thing or two about the stuff. Slime mold is not a fungus. It is not an animal or a plant. It is separate from everything else on the tree of life, almost as if it has its own tree of life. Despite the fact that it grows to be very large, up to several feet in diameter in my experience,

it is still a single-celled organism, except with millions of nuclei. And it is potentially capable of some form of intelligence. In labs, they have found that slime mold can solve mazes, for instance. And they grow extremely quickly. They can expand and contract like the muscles in our own bodies, using a vaguely similar mechanism. Thinking about these things in the back of my mind,

I couldn't help but feel afraid as my feet touched the stone floor, and I saw the yellow slime was on me immediately, quickly growing and expanding onto my boots, moving much faster than anything seen on earth. I called out over the radio to Kate once again. She was standing right in front of me, but did not turn around. I began to approach her and looked down to see the strands of yellow webbing sticking and stretching from the bottom of my feet. It was like walking across a movie theater floor covered in gum, each step difficult and taxing.

Finally, I reached her and put my hand on her shoulder. She spun around quickly, and I saw her eyes were surprised and blinking as if I had just woken her from sleep. Kate, can you hear me? There was a crack in the glass of her helmet, and some of the yellow slime mold was oozing around it. With dawning horror, I realized that it was actually inside her helmet, moving around and exploring the space. Some was on her neck as well, and in her hair, and I nearly gagged with the unexplainable revulsion at the sight of it on her. Kate, you have a breach in your suit.

We need to get you back to the lab. She was speaking softly, as if she was sleepwalking, her voice, a lilting lullaby, everything she said in a sing-song tone, quietly, and had a whisper. I wanted to ask her why she was talking like that, why she wasn't listening to common sense. But more than anything, I just wanted to get away. I know that must sound awful, but part of me wanted desperately more than anything, just to get the hell away from her

and away from that yellow slime mold-looking stuff that didn't belong there. Kate, we have to go, please, come on. Understand them, they pushed me away, turning her face to look at me angrily as she did so. Don't touch me! Turning around, I saw the pool of water that she had described falling into. It was not water at all, but a large deposit of the yellow slime mold in a large crater nearby, bubbling and moving around. Whipping tendrils stuck out from it curiously and darted around, seeming to inspect the air.

Bring me back up, I said over the radio. Kate's refusing assistance. There's some strange organism growing down here, and she's not done with it yet. Or it's not done with her. Lazang sur-gillet, Puisance-Moyerned 15 minutes. We're like

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rope, and they began to reel me back in. It didn't feel right, leaving Kate down there. But I told myself I didn't have a choice.

We'd have to regroup and come up with a plan. Maybe she would listen to read if he went down and ordered her to return. The darkness

swallowed her up beneath me, and I looked down at my boots and dismay to see that the yellow-webbed slime mold was hanging on to me still, wriggling and squirming and exploring my legs. It appeared to be searching desperately for a way into my suit.

Bewildered and confused. My mind grappled with a hundred different scenarios, still in shock over what we had just discovered. There was life on Mars, disgusting, slimy, potentially telepathic life, but still, for the first time in history, it had just been irrefutably proven beyond any doubt. I had just witnessed a never-before-seen breed of what I assumed was slime mold growing in the depths of the cavern.

Somehow, it was still alive and thriving, despite extreme temperatures and an absence of any known food supply. The whole thing existed beyond science and logic, and yet there it was. My crew wouldn't believe me, I thought to myself. If not for the remnants of it clinging desperately to my boots. They halt me up through the opening in the rock, and immediately began to ask why Kate was not with me. She refused to come back up. There's something down there, some kind of organism.

This stuff, I said, pointing at my boots. What the hell is that? Wei exclaimed. She was normally calm and composed, but now she was backing away, stumbling over rocks and shaking. Reed began to look concerned as well, and I remembered how something similar had happened to me as I had descended down into the cavern.

I had nearly dismissed the voices in my head as my imagination and fear, until Kate confirmed she heard them too. Oh yeah, that. Just wait, it'll pass, I said, hoping it would as it had for me. After a few long moments it did. What the hell are we dealing with here? Reed asked. I only wished I could give him an answer. The three of us went back inside for a brief rest and to regroup.

Wei went straight to her lab with an odd look on her face, saying she would examine the slime mold and try to give us some answers. She would also communicate with home base from there and explain the newest developments since she had an uplink in her lab. Reed and I stood pacing in the Habitation Unit's kitchen and dining area, debating what the hell we were going to do. Kate had refused to come back up with me

and I told him she didn't seem to be herself. It was like the slime mold stuff was telling her to stay there. I didn't understand it, but there it was. We can't convince her to come up, right? which leaves us exactly one option as far as I'm concerned. We hitch a rope to her suit and drag her back up here. I don't like it, but it's what we've got to do. After a bit more discussion, the two of us decided I would go down again

while Reed stayed up top, since he was the strongest. It was easy enough to pull a person up in the low gravity, but two was another story altogether. If necessary, I told him I would wait down below while he pulled Kate up, And then he could send the rope back down again afterwards. Going down into the darkness again was even more terrifying than the first time. Even though I knew slightly what to expect, the whole thing was going wrong. I could tell that already when I heard Wei's voice speaking over the radio,

she was speaking in a whispering lullaby tone the same as Kate. We don't need to bring her back up here, Captain Reed, she said. I don't understand. Can you repeat, Wei? She must stay down below. Mother is hungry and must eat. Mother must become one. I didn't like the sounds of that one bit. Reed, you need to bring me back up.

Wei is compromised. She's talking like that thing is controlling her. Like it was controlling Kate. She's coming out here, Nathan. She's got a knife. Oh God, get back. Get back. Stop, please, Wei.

Listen to me. He cut out abruptly. The rope I was holding suddenly began to drop in sickening lurches. I fell 10 feet, then 20, feeling sick as I bounced back up with the sudden tension. Gravity pulled me back down, and I held on to the rope desperately, feeling that I was about to die for certain. Beneath me, the ground came into view, and I saw Kate's light now shining dimly from the wall, but I did not see her.

The rope dropped again as Reed was attacked by the thing above, the thing that had once been way, now clearly trying to kill him judging by the sounds of it. This time I fell all the way to the floor below, slowly at first, then faster and faster as the ground sped towards me. I landed awkwardly, twisting my ankle and called out in pain. Looking over my shoulder, I saw the rope was still there, hanging from the cliff above. So Reed was still up there, hanging on for dear life and fighting off way or whatever she had become. I only hoped he was all right. Then I turned around and saw Kate.

or what was left of her. She was enveloped by the wall she had been standing in front of when I left her. Her face stared out at me, and I saw the yellow-webbed slime was now covering her eyes and nose. It was in her ears, and worst of all,

it went into her mouth like an intubation device, going down her throat. Blackish yellow veins lined her face and neck, and her entire spacesuit was wrapped in sticky yellow-webbed slime, which held her tightly to the wall. Despite my terror, I found myself stepping forward, wanting to help her still, somehow wanting to do the right thing and get her out of there. If only I could clip the rope to her suit.

At that thought, the webbing seemed to unravel and released her like a Venus flytrap, letting go of its prey, like a flower opening and bloom. Though her face was covered with yellow slime, she walked towards me, as if she could see me plainly through it. The oozing webs stretched out behind her as she came at me. That was when I realized the voice in my head telling me to stay and try to save her was not my own. It was a foreign voice speaking in a close approximation of my own thoughts, telling me not to worry, telling me to remain calm, to stay, to become one. I ran instead.

The rope was still there, and that was enough for me. I grabbed onto it and began to climb. My feet walking up the side of the steep vertical cliff as quickly as I could. I didn't dare to look back, but I knew that Kate was just behind me. Not Kate, but what was left of her. Struggling up the sheer 90-degree slope, I found myself tiring more and more. The wall seemed as if it was grabbing onto my feet and wrapping them up in webs with every step I took, getting stronger and pulling harder all the time.

The strands of yellow slime grabbed on and refused to let go, snapping in half only with great effort on my part. I pulled myself up the rope and walked up through the living muck as it tried tenaciously to hold on to me. All the while as I walked up the wall, I heard whispering in my mind, louder and louder now. Every so often, I would find my hands beginning to let go of the rope without any conscious effort on my part, and had to fight off the voices and tell myself to hang on. Even though they spoke in a language unknown to me, it seemed not to matter, as their will was made known to my mind, and I had to fight from bowing to its growing power.

Finally, I reached the top and pulled myself back into the light. The habitation unit was visible just ahead, and I saw that the rope was tied off, haphazardly to the door handle. Captain Reed was lying on the dirt floor of the underground space, where all of this mess began. His helmet was cracked, and his face was bloodied, but he was still alive. Wei was lying on the ground next to him. A knife protruding from her chest.

He began, seeming unsure how to continue. She came at me and tried to kill me. I barely managed to get the rope tied off. With dawning horror, I realized I had not pulled the rope up after me. I ran over to the ledge and looked down to see Kate climbing up. She was only a little ways down, the yellow slime mold covering her eyes and mouth like a slimy yellow-webbed bridal veil. Terrified, I backed away, realizing there was no time to cut the rope or stop her. She was almost at the top.

As her hands grabbed the ledge, I looked down to see Captain Reed telling me to go, to run. I hurried inside through the airlock and slammed the door behind me. I hastily took my suit off and ran to the computer to change the access code for entry. Luckily, I was quick with the keyboard and managed to secure the only access point, just as the creature that was once Kate started to... hammer on the door. I looked out through the small window and saw her, covered in yellow slime, which rived and pulsated. The webbed mold was growing everywhere now, on every surface she touched. It expanded outwards at an alarming speed. It spread over Wei's body, and I saw it break

off her head at the neck like a drumstick from a chicken. Hungrily, it dove in through the bottom of the helmet and began to feast. With incredible strength, other parts of the webbed slime wrapped around her legs and broke them apart at the joints, the white bone, muscle, and blood spilling out before being devoured. As the mass continued to grow and spread, malignant and out of control, it reached Captain Reed. His face was a mask of terror, and I held the door with white-knuckled fury, unable to turn away as it broke him in half. The yellow tendrils broke his ribcage open and gushed in like a wave crashing on the beach, taking everything. In my headset, I could hear I hear him screaming until very suddenly I couldn't anymore.

Turning away, I slumped down to the floor and sat, waiting for it to be over. I've been trapped inside for quite a while now. I sent this communication back to base, and everyone thinks I've gone insane, that I've perhaps killed the rest of the crew and am now trying to blame mind-controlling space mold. As if I couldn't come up with a better story than that. I mean, really. The soil is toxic here.

The air is unbreathable. There are a million and one ways to die here. And if I needed to find an excuse for the death of my crew, well, I'd find a better one than this. Luckily, one or two people believe me. They've agreed to get this out there, at least in some fashion. As for me, I wait. It's already inside the habitation unit.

I was too careless when I took off my suit. Now it's starting to grow all over, starting to spread. It's on me now, moving up my legs and my fingers and arms, fine tendrils of yellow branching out slowly and insidiously, infecting me, making me part of it. It tickles my throat as it spreads spore-like downwards, like a black mold growing quietly in a dark, wet corner of the bathroom. It grows. The thing that was once Kate watches me from the window in the door, waiting.

whispering. In my mind, she's whispering to me now, in a sing-song tone telling me to open the door, and all the while it's spreading. Can you hear it?