The NoSleep Podcast - Nosleep Podcast #18

Episode Date: February 5, 2012

Our 18th episode of The Nosleep Podcast presents two tales of tormented children. Featuring horror stories from the Reddit.com horror writing community, these stories will keep you awake as the darkness of the night surrounds you. This episode is the final episode of Season 1 of The Nosleep Podcast. This episode features these stories: The Ice Cream Man written by Nick Thaler (Redditor kitsune623) and read by Max Glaspey (Redditor MonthlyMarmot). When You Wish Upon a Star written by Anna Smith (Redditor notwhatiwishedfor) and read by Christina Scholz (Redditor giant_squid). This story was the winner of the Nosleep Writing Contest for November 2011. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Through the murky darkness of the night, when fear banishes sleep. It's the No Sleep podcast. Born from the nightmares of Reddit.com's No Sleep Forum, and featuring tales from Reddit's authors of horror, we present you with tales intended to frighten and disturb, and keep you awake as the night slowly creeps. past. Welcome to episode 18 of the No Sleep Podcast. This episode is the finale of season one. The No Sleep podcast will now begin an indefinite hiatus. We have been proud to bring you 22 episodes in the

past 33 weeks and are looking forward to some time off to retool and recharge. We hope you've enjoyed this season. We appreciate you listening. Now on with the last episode, or The first tale is entitled The Ice Cream Man. There are few things more exciting for children than the sight of the ice cream man's truck on a hot summer's day. But the trust placed in the provider of such sweet treats is betrayed when a mysterious new truck visits the playground. This tale was written by Bill McGuire and is read by Max Glasby.

Summers in Los Angeles were notoriously hot. It's the desert, you know. People don't realize that behind the glitz and glamour of the Hollywood elite, there's just bone-dry sand and dust settling under the paved roads and suburban parks. People think that L.A. is a superficial city, with no depth behind its artificial glimmer, but the truth is so much worse. I know this now, in part because of the events I'm about to unfold to you all.

The year was 1989. The month was June. I was seven years old and fresh out of school, ready to take on three months of uninterrupted decadence and bliss. In those days, the streets were still considered safe, and us kids would take to them by storm, assaulting the parks and parking lots with unprecedented vigor. We'd start the day right, playing baseball or four-square with boundless energy, and then idle down to lazy games of horse or hide-and-seek as the sun bobbed its head and dipped beneath the Pacific. Of course, we always took a break when the ice cream man came by.

The ice cream man. Oh, I can still remember his jingle. That sweet crescendo of notes sliding upon our delighted ears. And the subsequent scramble to his dinky white truck for chocolate Eclares and Mickey Mouse bars. As kids, we barely paid attention to the man himself. So fixated we were on the sugary treats. But I recall he was an older gentleman, always quick to flesh us. a smile, though not overly friendly

either. It didn't matter. Inhaling gobs of gooey treats was all we ever cared about when he came by. Every day at 1 p.m., as reliable as a clock tower, the ice cream man would turn lazily down our neighborhood and herald that, yes, today was another hot, sticky, glorious summer day.

Our band of miscreants fluctuated day by day, though there were a few constants. Jenny, our leader, Big for a girl, her age, and therefore by default a giant in our midst. She was a bully, but she looked out for all of us in her own weird way. Artie, the Jewish kid. His dad worked for someone who worked for someone important,

and he liked to tell us that in his snot-nosed, uppity voice. Leika, who I secretly thought wasn't so bad for a girl. Mike, John, a couple of others. Me. I was a chubby one, the one whom the others liked to rag on. Ever since I could remember I was softer than the others, rounder somehow. I didn't think that was fair, seeing as I wasn't really that different from the others, but you can understand my reticence whenever the ice cream man came by. After all, what seven-year-old wouldn't laugh at the little fat kid pumping his sausage legs

towards his daily dose of sugar? When I think about it now, I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I was born a little thinner, or perhaps had a little thicker skin. If I didn't always hang back, waiting until the others had collected their treats before ashamedly stepping up and pushing a dollar into the old man's hand. But, of course, ruminating on such matters is useless. I can only relate what happened.

On a particularly hot day that June, I was walking home from the playground with Lika and John. We were chatting about something or other, alternating between distractedly switching topics and running around as kids are apt to do. We were turning the corner when we saw it, the ice cream truck, parked in the shadow of a copse of palm trees.

We skidded to a halt like three little pigs, jaws agape. Immediately, Lika shrieked, Ice cream! And took off for the truck. John and I hung back, both puzzled. The ice cream man usually came to us. It was strange to come across his truck like this.

We watched Lyca as she approached, stalking the truck like this. a puppy after a dragonfly. She peered up and got a disgruntled look on her face. Turning back, she shook her head. No, no one's there, she called. We shrugged and resumed walking,

immediately losing interest. Leica skipped ahead while John and I argued over the logistics of a battle between Optimus Prime and Shredder. We'd nearly completed the block when Leica glanced back and waved. It wasn't at us. The ice cream truck had come to life.

It inched forward slowly, impeccably down the street towards us. Lika made to run back, but something in me made me stick my hand out at her. I shook my head silently. What? Lika pouted. Listen.

We did. Like a heavy myasma, the air hung thick and absent of the jingle. He's probably not open, I said. Lika shrugged in acquiesce and we resumed walking. The truck's low rumble creeped up behind us. Maybe we all sensed it, but none of us felt like talking.

It was like something to send it down the three of us, smothering our carefree play. We walked in uncharacteristic silence, ears straining to hear the truck. Its motor was rapidly growing loudly, a rumbling beast stalking its prey. I dared not look back, but instead quickened my pace. Lichen and John didn't protest, but followed suit. The truck approached, steadfast. and implacable. There were no chimes.

Where were the chimes? I finally looked back. The truck was idling again in front of another house. This time I looked carefully at its exterior. The scratched white paint, the colorful images of cream sickles and sundays adorning the surface. I could see pits in the pictures, where the plastered on images eroded away.

It wasn't the usual truck, when the old man drove. This one had an eye on it, carved sloppily into the steel. The eye was wide and bare, and there was a black hole right where the pupil should be. Inside that hole, there was only darkness. I tried to peer inside through another means, but the windows were tinted black. Were they always that dark?

I craned my neck trying to see who the driver was. Then the truck roared to life. The three of us startled and jumped back as it whizzed by us, tearing down the street at a full. frightening speed. I know what I saw then, though the other two denied it, but the side window wasn't tinted, and the driver inside wasn't that friendly old man. He looked heavy, set, and dressed in a colorful motley. I wiped my eyes from the exhaust and looked at my friends. The three of us stared at each other for a moment, and then dissolved into hysterics. The moment

had passed, whatever it was, and we could resume our journey home safely. Evening came all too quick, and our games took on a frantic pace as we tried to squeeze every last drop of that summer glow from the day. Laika, John, and a whole bunch of us were gathered at the park by Laika's house, where the parents could keep an eye on us. We could see them in the distance, stalwart figures keeping keen eyes on their progeny. To us, though, they were the timekeepers, all too ready and eager to set into motion and drag us from our idyllic bliss.

The day's offense had long since passed from my mind, and we were engaged in a deadly game of dodgeball. I hooked the ball to Laika, and then laughed as it bounced from her hands. Butterfingers! I crowed, thankful that it wasn't me this time who messed up the game, but Laika didn't care. Her eyes were only for the ice cream truck that had suddenly appeared in the distance. Look, she pointed. Heads whipped around in a frenzy. Ice cream!

One boy shouted. He came! He came! Shrieked a girl, oblivious to the fact that, yes, the ice cream man always came. But usually he came earlier. When the sun reached its zenith and customers were piling up.

He never came this hour. When the light hit the trees at that angle where the world burned. We didn't care. We knew what the truck meant. As usual, I hung back and watched my thinner, faster peers flocked the truck. I could see parents,

moving forward too, as oblivious to this anomaly as the rest of us. Slowly walked up to the truck, then froze in my tracks. It was the same truck as before. That eye peered out in the midst of the plastered images, and this time I could see that there was a second eye next to it. How did I miss it before? And those images below, those weren't pictures of ice cream. What I thought were chocolate bars were holes.

The vanilla cakes were the color of... bone and adorned a broken smile, which was lapped with rich ruby red. Nessled in the midst of the colorful treats was a horror to look at. A wide, grinning skull with bleeding lips turned up in a rictus. Nobody could see it but me. The children paid and were hastily unwrapping their bars. Looking back, I think I knew even then what was about to happen. In my imagination, I surged forward, slapped hands away from the ice cream. screamed loud and long. But instead, I just waited and watched.

The first girl bit into her bar. She chewed with bliss, and then her eyes popped wide. I watched her little body go stiff and her breathing increase. I watched her chest rise and fall, rise and fall, spasming as she doubled over, choking. By then the others were choking, too. Each fed their own special poison, hand-picked by the ice cream man. It didn't take long. By the time the last one started choking, the first girl was frothing on the ground, feebly batting away the bubbles from her mouth.

Parents were screaming, rushing by me. One knocked me to the ground and I felt my head hit the grass. I closed my eyes, wondering if this is what my friends were feeling. There was a roar of the engine, and then more screaming. I propped myself up, ignoring the writhing figures about, and watched the ice cream truck. drive away. In the end, 11 children died that day. I was supposed to be number 12, but I was chubby for my age,

reluctant to join my friends in their frenzy, always hanging back and always watching. They never caught the guy, you know? Some of you might wonder who he was, or why he did what he did. Really doesn't matter to me. As he was back then, he remains an irreconcilable.

force, something that should not have been there on that summer day, yet he was so very much there. You might think there's no depth to this city, but you are wrong. It's only that beneath the surface of it all, there is but howling, black, purposeless madness. 21 years later, my life remains defined by that day. The media loves me, so to the psychologists. I let them drink their fill. I smile and nod and tell them, sure, maybe someday I'll write a book. Though, first, I thought to share my story with all you good people.

Life seems dull somehow. Vogged by a gray I cannot shake. My mom tells me I should meet a nice woman, but all I can remember is that little girl's spasming body. Was it Lyca who I had watched in her final moments? Or someone else? I really can't recall any of their faces now, and that's the saddest part. Like a, John, Jenny, everyone. I'm sorry I couldn't take the plunge with you all.

I'm sorry I was so scared, so self-conscious of my fat little body. I know he's still out there, watching, waiting for his next move. I hope he knows he forgot to serve one kid. Lately, I've been taking long. long walks by myself, hoping to turn that corner and find waiting for me my redemption. That little bit of peace can only come from someone as beloved as the ice cream man. Our final tale is entitled When You Wish Upon a Star. A young girl seeks solace in the comfort of wishing upon a star,

only to discover that a dark presence is trying to harm her. This tale was written by Anna Smith and is read by Christina Schultz. I've always suspected that there might be something wrong in my head, that I'm sick, twisted. I need to get this off my chest. I've never told anyone what I've experienced throughout my life until now. Despite coming from a loving family, I craved attention as a child. I suppose it was only natural. My younger sisters were both born with special needs and I felt somewhat neglected by my family.

I'd often do disturbing things to catch the attention of my parents. Force myself to throw up, deliberately walk into the coffee table to bruise my skin, cry for no reason, lie through my goddamn teeth. Like I said, I'm twisted. It was obvious when I was surprised. child. Anyway, these stupid acts always meant that my parents would immediately focus on me, so my actions were without purpose. After behaving like that, I felt like the center of the world again, like I was a necessary being, not just a decorative piece of flesh to pad out the

family photo on the front of Christmas cards. As I got older, my parents began to wise up to my tricks and started to focus on my siblings again, leaving me to sit in front of one of my Disney VHSs with a bag of sweets to keep me satiated. My favorite was Pinocchio. Do you remember that old song from it? The one which tells you that your dreams will come true if you wish upon a star. My father got a new job when I was eight years old and we moved to the other side of England. I started a new school on a cold Monday in February, halfway through the school year. I didn't make friends easily. Children can be fickle, and although I was interesting to them for the first day,

they soon grew bored of me and were irritated by how different I was to them. They started to ignore me too. I vividly remember walking home from school on the Thursday afternoon, kicking the puddles that formed along the pavement and muttering to myself about how I'd show them that I was interesting and worth that time. I tunelessly hummed the song from Pinocchio the whole way home and decided when I walked through the door and was immediately greeted by, Get out of the way for God's sake! To see if wishes really could come true. I wish more than anyone could possibly know that I hadn't.

That night, after being kissed good night and tucked in by my frazzled folks, I crept out of my bed and towards my window. My eyes caught the sky searching for a star to wish on. I didn't want to pick the brightest, everyone would be wishing on that one. It would be a waste of time. I settled for one that was almost out of sight, semi-tucked behind the roof of the house that our garden backed onto. It looked like any other star in the sky, but had a touch of pale red to it. I liked that. The star was looking to stand out just like I was.

I closed my eyes and began to murmur wishes. As impatient as I am now as an adult, I had a far shorter attention span back then. Why wasn't anything happening? Why weren't my wishes for love, attention and devotion coming through immediately? Why were my parents still snuggled up together downstairs without me? I got angry. I cursed at the star, telling it there was no way it could ever make my dreams come true. It was a stupid, worthless star.

No wonder everyone preferred to look at the bright, shiny one instead. I slammed the window shot, dragging the curtains back together and stomped back to bed. I pulled the covers over my head to go. create my own little den in which to quietly seethe. Soon enough, I fell asleep. What I dreamt next would change my life forever. My dream started off normally enough. I got a lift to school because it was raining harder than I'd ever seen. My mother nearly ran a red light, unable to focus due to my sisters screaming in their car seat. I ran into my classroom from the car park. It was temporarily housed in a shabby mobile unit due to building work going on in the main body of the school.

The windows leaked and the wind whistled through the gap under the door. I walked into the classroom and nobody lifted their head. My Wellington boots quenched dejectedly as I made my way across the sodden carpet to sit at my desk. The teacher came in and asked us to settle down and take out our pencil cases. I grabbed mine and felt a sharp stab in the palm of my hand. By the time I glanced down, the blood had already began to drip onto the wet carpet beneath me. I yelled. The teacher told another girl in the class to walk me up to the nurse's office

to clean my hand up and see whether I needed to go to hospital. We left the classroom and started walking. Along the way, we stopped into the ladies' bathroom as she wanted to use the facility. coming out of my cubicle, I looked down at my palm as I washed my hands. The blood mixed with water was the exact shade of pale red that the star had been. I smiled to myself, thinking of how childish I had been to think that wishing on a star would actually work when a cool draught played across the nape of my neck. I looked up into the mirror.

A woman stood behind me, head tilted down. Although her hair created a thin veil across her face, it was sparse enough to see her facial details. She had the most prominent cheekbones I'd ever seen, though perhaps they were exacerbated by the hollowness of her cheeks. Her skin, grey and listless, looked stretched over the bones of her face. It was flecked with age spots and small pale red bruises. A thin, twisted mouth hovered beneath her nose.

quivering. I gasped and turned around. There was no one there. It must have been a trick of the light. Perhaps this cut was more serious than I'd first thought and I had lost enough blood to make me hallucinate? I didn't really care if it was real or not. I needed to get out of here and away from this bathroom. I turned off the tap and foolishly glanced up at the mirror again. She was there, closer. Her head almost rested on my shoulders. I screamed and she opened her eyes. Her pupils were mere pinpricks in the center of a bloodshot eyeball. She smiled at me, hot breath spilling onto my shoulder. She had three rows of teeth, much like a shark, each blackened with decay. They were pointed and growing longer before my eyes. She tilted her head slowly and reached for her.

forward, through the mirror and shoved my chest so hard that I fell backwards. My head slammed into the hand dryer and I woke up, knotted in my soaked bed sheets and heaving dry sobs. My parents burst into the room and held me until I drifted back into restless sleep. Now that alone would have been enough to terrify any eight-year-old child, but it was just the beginning. I woke up on my own. my father singing and my mother laughing downstairs and smelled my favorite breakfast. Pancakes. I quickly joined them, forgetting all about my horrible dream. I ate my pancakes staring out of the window. It was raining harder than I'd ever seen before. I put on my

Wellington boots and rain jacket and bounced out of the front door only to soak myself in a gigantic puddle. The rain dripped inside my boots and stuck my toes together. I liked the way it felt, clammy. My mother insisted on giving me a lift to school on her way to drop my sisters off at daycare. She ran a red light on the way and my skin prickled with a sense of deja vu. Pushing it to the back of my mind, I ran to the classroom where I squelched my way to my seat. The teacher blustered into the classroom, shaking her umbrella out and told us to take out our pencil cases.

I took mine out as told and felt a piercing pain in the palm of my hand. My heart steadily began to beat faster as the blood dripped onto the sudden carpet before I could look down. I must have turned a shade of white because the teacher noticed and told a girl in my class to take me to the nurse's office. We walked slowly. The entire time I was telling myself that everything would be fine as long as we didn't stop off in the bathroom.

paused outside the bathroom door. Please don't go in, I begged. Why not? Are you scared to be out here on your own big baby? She taunted. You were supposed to take me to the nurse's office, not stop off and kiss yourself in the mirror, I fumed. That did it.

She glared at me and pushed me aside to get into the bathroom. I wish I'd gone enough to her, but I couldn't. Every part of my body felt as though it was super glued to whatever it had been touching the moment she walked into that room. My feet glued to the floor. My tongues tucked to the roof of my mouth. Even my blood seemed stuck inside me. My palm had stopped dripping. A minute later, I heard a desperate scream.

Not a typical high-pitched Hollywood girl in a horror movie scream, but a real throaty scream from a terrified eight-year-old. old girl. It hung in the air, thick with desperation. I found myself able to move and ran to get the nurse. The girl was found in a crumpled heap on the floor. Her head bleeding from a hard impact with the hand dryer. The taps were on and the plug was in. There was water all over the floor. The nurse said she must have slipped on the water and fallen backwards. She had fractured her skull and broken a hip. I knew better. I went to visit her in hospital while she was unconscious. I wanted to apologize, to shout at her for not listening to me, to cry and hug her, a myriad of emotions.

In the end, I just sat at the edge of her bed, trying not to make eye contact with her sobbing mother. I hated myself. It should have been me. I walked myself home from the hospital. I walked myself home from the hospital stomping in puddles as I had done that day before everything changed. I looked down into one and I swear I saw an old woman giggling to herself before my foot splashed her into a thousand pale red droplets. My dreams after I wished upon a star when I was eight years old grew more and more disturbing. I'd often have flashbacks to the woman who appeared in the mirror. I don't remember the point when this started to spill out into my waking life.

I'd brush my teeth before bed and she'd appear behind me in the mirror, flashing her twisted smile, her knolled hands reaching for me. I'd take a bath and when I let the water flow down the plug hole afterwards I'd hear faint low laughter from the drain. Things started to appear physically too. Climbing out of the bath I'd reach for my towel and I find it coated in the air. in gray stringy hair. Fingertips would scrabble from the plug hole

when I'd let the water out from washing my face in the sink, reaching for me. My parents, of course, thought I was lying again to get attention. Any physical manifestations of the old woman would conveniently disappear the moment I ran for help. In the end, I learned to stop running to them, pale-faced and wide-eyed, after an encounter.

No one would believe me after how much I'd cried Wolf, and I couldn't blame them. She spilled out into every element of my life whenever I became lonely, wishing for someone to pay attention to me. Even though I knew how she would thrive on my desire for company and would become more powerful the more desolate and unwanted I felt, I began to consciously resent the time I spent alone. Of course, this increased her desire to toy with. with me. I'd walk near a television and it would crackle turn to static. When washing the dishes, glasses would shatter in my hand, always piercing that same point on my palm. It began to make a pattern, although I would not realize this for a number of years. She would mess with the songs on the radio,

pruning over the top of the latest pop song in a creaking sing-song voice. The worst incident, however, was after I was sent to my room for swearing at my mother. I'd failed a test for the first time at school and came home wanting attention. My mother was busy and tried to tell me to wait until she had finished doing whatever it was that she was doing. I snapped. What's the fucking point?

My father led me by the arm to my bedroom in the attic of the house and told me to say there and think of what I had done. He knew my tears were because I was being punished, but he had no idea how much. The attic of my childhood bedroom was a vast space with two crawl spaces on either side, which had doors leading out into my room. My parents used them for storage and kept the doors locked as some of the floorboards were missing. They became stiflingly hot during the summer and freezing in the winter.

They had always scared me. My few friends and I were at the time obsessed with monsters and scary stories. When playing in my room after school, we would sometimes lock each other in there as a prank. We shared dark fantasies about the monsters living in there, creeping out in the dark of the night to devour us, and how we would slay them and become heroes. I think, looking back, that it is natural for a young child to be afraid of a dark night. narrow space, especially when they daydream about monsters living in there. This fear is doubly justified when the child in question has something malevolent toying with them. After my father

took me into my room, I sobbed until nightfall. I eventually crawled into my bed and pulled the sheets over my head, a habit I had brought with me from early childhood, whenever I was angry or upset. I felt invincible when no one could see me, when no one could read my facial expressions. It felt utterly private. I have made that transition from quietly seething and weeping to taking myself off into my dream monster world when I heard a scrape. I froze in my bed. Maybe it was just the wind creaking through the floorboards again. The room was silent for a few more minutes.

I relaxed and my mind drifted once more. There was a deep scratching sound this time coming from the storage space. I wasn't hearing things. This was happening. I heard a squeak, a sound of uneiled hinges moving. I knew the door to the storage space had opened. A slow, shuffling noise, much like the sound of a four-legged animal dragging itself across the floor, combined with a shuddering, rasping intake of air.

To say that it made my heart jump into my mouth is a gross understatement. I thought that if I didn't move, didn't breathe, she wouldn't be able to find me. If only my heart wasn't throwing itself wildly against my ribcage. I felt light pressure on the bottom end of the bed as my quill shifted. The game was up. She had found me. I felt the breeze flutter over my ankles a moment before I realized what was going on. Her hand took a sudden vice-like grip on my left ankle.

I felt the same piercing pain I had felt in my palm the first day she appeared in my life, followed by the moist, thick, grickle of blood down the sole of my foot. A metallic scent hung in the air. I screamed as hard as I could and lashed out, trying to kick her off of me, which made me fall off of my bed. I landed in a heap with my quilt cover, wrapped around my face and torso, my legs still bare and threshing. My father, to his credit, rushed into the room the moment he heard me thought to the floor. He stared, Ashen faced as he took in the scene. He didn't say a word to me, but took me into the bathroom where he showered the blood off of me from the wound on my uncle.

I kept my eyes squeezed shut as tightly as I could, terrified of seeing her fingers groping towards me from the drain. I kept my mouth shut too. I didn't want to involve him with the horrible situation I had landed myself in. After bandaging me up, he carried me to my parents' room where I leapsed into fit of. full sleep. I didn't move out of their bed for three weeks. I rang my father this evening to see if he could remember this incident. He spoke softly, Jesus Christ, Anna, I didn't know you remembered that, but yes, that's pretty much how I found you. But you had your eyes clamped shut the entire time I was cleaning your ankle up. You didn't see what had cut you so badly. It took some pushing to get him to tell me

the full details, but he did in the end. Geez, I don't know. I've tried ever since that night to convince myself that you'd rolled over onto that rock that you brought home from our trip to the beach, but I can't lie to you anymore. I never heard my father cry before. Now he was openly weeping, his voice shaking. Shit, Anna, it looked like someone had bitten you. He'd found a brown decay.

too. What happened to my ankle played on my mind relentlessly for months after it happened. By this point, the wound had healed into a small, pale red scar. It would throb late at night when I was scared, or when I felt alone. When I turned 13, I realized that the woman would appear to torment me whenever I craved love and attention, so I made it my mission to stop doing this. I filled my time reading books out loud to myself, acting out plays with myself, singing to myself, anything I could think of that would keep my mind busy and would show anyone watching me that I was perfectly fine on my own. I'd fall into bed most nights at around 2 a.m., exhausted, and sink into a deep dreamless sleep almost immediately. Of course there were times when I messed up,

when I let myself think about how it might be nice to have a partner to act out a scene with or someone to tell jokes to. Most people say that when they see a ghost or a spirit, the air turns cold. Whenever I slipped up and inadvertently admitted a wish for company, things were different. It's hard to explain the feeling. It felt like most of the air had been pushed out of the room, and the air that was left had expanded and was thickly with it. It surrounded me suffocatingly warm. I began to think that maybe the woman was taunting me, not just when I felt lonely, but because I gave her the ability to by feeling empty.

This thought terrified me. I'd sneak into the kitchen and occupy myself by filling myself as full as I physically could. I'd eat slice after slice of bread, smothered with jam, bunches of bananas, noodles, ready-cooked meat, anything I could get my hands on. By the end of a binge I'd feel so full that there couldn't possibly be any empty space inside of me. Then panic would set in. What if she appears and I'm too full to run? What if I ate too much and she's angry? What if the few friends I'd managed to make it cool didn't like me because I was getting fat? I'd have no company at lunchtime and might trigger a visit from the old woman who seemed to want nothing more than to hurt me.

That would do it. I'd run as fast as my little legs could carry me into the bathroom and sick up all the food. I know it's ironic. I told you that I used to throw up for attention. Now I was making myself ill to avoid it. All in all, though, I was doing quite well. Although I'd felt someone watching me, I'd not actually seen her since she crawled under my bed covers. I relaxed.

I began to go to sleep. earlier. I began dreaming again. She noticed. At first it seemed inconsequential. I'd dream of falling over, twisting and skinning my knee, and I'd wake up and do it. In the mornings I'd wake up and tell my mother to have a bandage ready, and by the afternoon she'd be rapping at the round my kneecap, an incredulous look on her face. Things slowly, very slowly began to increase in severity. It took a while to realize that if I'd shut her out of my waking life, she'd take control of my sleep. It went from skinning my knee to chipping my tooth, from chipping my tooth to slicing my elbow, from slicing my elbow to burning myself, despite the fact that I would

purposely stay away from heat and flames when I had these sort of dreams. One day I woke up after dreaming that I'd burned myself from my neck to my waist and decided to stay in my bedroom the entire day. I lay in bed, reading until about 8 p.m. I felt the air rush out of the room as my eyelids all of a sudden dropped. I woke up fully clothed in the shower, the water so hot it scolded me. I screamed and jumped out, sliding as my foot skidded in a pile of stringy grey hair and what looked like dried blood. I ran into the kitchen and pressed myself into the ice of the freezer until the morning, mouth set and determined not to show weakness, despite the throbbing, scorched skin of my chest,

making me want to cry. She was controlling me through my dreams. As seems to be the pattern with my recollections, I'll explain my worst experience during this time period. I had been up half of the previous night, binging and throwing up food, so by the time I got into school, it was already halfway through the first class of the day. I wandered, dazed into the classroom, and headed to my seat, when one of the girls I ate lunch with spoke up. Ew, Anna, what's that smell? Have you not got any clean clothes? You fucking stink!

I hadn't realized that I'd wiped my mouth with my sleeve after puking. and had not changed my shirt. This wasn't an unusual outburst from the girl in question. She was undoubtedly the leader of our little group and asserted her dominance by showing the other girls how horrible she could be to me and get away with it. You can't sit with us today! What a shame!

She said with a bitchy smirk. I spent the morning at a four-seater table on my own, bile slowly rising in my throat as I gave in to panic. Our school had a big playing field where the school's football and cricket matches would take place. Behind this field was a small forest which led on to another field and then some houses. It was an easy shortcut for me to take to get home instead of walking the long way. As the lunch bell rang, I made up my mind to just go home for the day, so I headed towards the field. I couldn't control my thoughts, my mind was racing and I was finally giving in to the

panic of no one wanting to waste their time with me. As soon as I realized what I was doing, I felt the familiar role of warm air expanding around me, pushing in on me. Whenever that happens, staying conscious feels like trying to keep my legs moving and my head above water in the middle of a storm in the ocean. I can't do it. I opened my mouth to scream and passed out. The next thing I knew, I was in a tree. I know it sounds comical, a scared little girl walking through a short cut blacks out and finds herself up a tree, but it wasn't.

Maybe if it had been a small tree, maybe if it had been a height that I could have climbed to, maybe if it had been the type of tree that had low branches that you could use to pull yourself up. This tree didn't. I was sat on a small tree. platform with no leather in a tree that I physically could not have climbed. I had no idea how I got there.

Time had obviously passed as the sky was a pale red. I didn't know whether it was sunset or sunrise, but I did know that I had to get out of here and get home. I was facing inwards looking at the trunk of the tree and puzzling over my location. I regulated my breathing and was about to shift my way to look for a way down when I heard something's cutling around the forest floor below. A rasping, wheezy intake of breath and the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor.

Tweaks popped and leaves crunched as my mind boggled and my eyes strained. I stayed as still as I possibly could, not daring to turn my head and look over the platform to see what was making the noise. A sudden sharp yelp of pain from the forest floor made me jump. The quiet croaky snigger that I heard the moment the yelp stopped made the helm at the back of my arm stand on end. I was straining my ears to hear more when I heard tissue tearing and bone snapping. I couldn't help it, I let out a whimper. I held my breath and crushed my eyes shot.

What felt like hours passed until I'd dead. I stared to let out my breath and open my eyes as I turned my head. I stared into those red pinpricks of pupils in a bloodshot eyeball. Her eyes were watering at the sight of me. She was crouched directly behind me on the platform, like an animal on her hind legs, slowly rocking her head from side to side. I had no idea how she'd got up there. her rasping breath hit me in a wave of feet, it stange as she opened her mouth into a grimace.

She opened her mouth further and further until I was sure her jaw would dislocate. It didn't. It seemed to stretch. She let out a soft growl, which quickly grew in intensity and pitch until it was a deafening roar that made the platform I was sitting on quiver. Flex off rancid spit hit my face, but I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move to wipe them off. She grabbed me by the joint of my right shoulder with that vice-like gripper had experienced a few years beforehand, and a white-hot pain caused through my body as I screamed with pain. It was at that moment that I decided that I wasn't going to let her sink her teeth into me again.

It took all my effort, but I managed to roll myself off of the platform. All I can remember is that split second of panic as her stomach drops when you know that. you've slipped and it's going to hurt. I knew pain would be a small price to pay to get away from her, though. It all went black. When I came to, it was the middle of the night. I felt for broken bones with my left hand. I could tell without moving that my right shoulder was dislocated. I had a deep cut on the back of my head and the backs of my legs were bleeding. Satisfied that I was safe to move, I picked myself up and wandered home. My parents were nearly hysterical.

The girl who had been mean to me had disappeared. They were worried I had too. My parents took me to the hospital where I told the nurse that I thought I'd fallen when I was sleepwalking. She said, Oh, that's nice dear, and continued to read my chart. I don't trust nurse as much anymore.

I was quiet for the rest of the trip. We got back home, and my parents installed a small gate at the top of the stairs that led to my bedroom so I couldn't hurt myself from sleepwalking again. My father looked at me as if willing me to tell him what had really happened. I didn't have the heart. I couldn't stand to see the look on his face if I told him that her mouth was open so wide I could see every single tooth in her mouth, except for one that was missing.

They never found the girl. This concludes this episode and season one of the No Sleep Podcast. Thank you for listening and for supporting us through our inaugural season. I'm David Cummings, the producer of the No Sleep podcast. Be well and beware as you stay awake through the gloom of the long night.