The NoSleep Podcast - Nosleep Podcast Bonus - Bedtime and Other Tales of Terror

Episode Date: February 14, 2013

In this special bonus episode of The Nosleep Podcast, we feature three tales from author Michael Whitehouse.  These stories are a part of his upcoming novel entitled, "Bedtime and Other Tales of Terror".All stories written by Michael Whitehouse.Bedtime read by David Cummings (Redditor MikeRowPhone).Tunnels read by David CummingsForgotten Valentine read by Michael Whitehouse (Redditor Mike_Rants). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The No Sleep Podcast is proud to present a special bonus episode featuring the writing of author Michael Whitehouse. The three tales in this episode will be featured in Michael's upcoming novel entitled Bedtime and Other Tales of Terror. The stories will be introduced by the author himself and Michael will narrate the final tale. To learn more about Michael and his novel, please visit the no sleeppodcast.com and look for the show notes for this episode. Now, settle in as Michael leads us on this frightening journey. My name is Michael Whitehouse and I am the author of a number of horror stories which first appeared on the Reddit page, No Sleep. I'm honoured to have been given the opportunity to explain where some of the author of some of the story of the story. Some of these stories originated on this, one of my favourite podcasts.

I really do hope that you enjoy them. Our first tale is entitled Bedtime. Bedtime is the most personal story that I've ever written. While suspension of this belief is taken as read for most no-sleep stories, this is not required for bedtime, as the events are ones which actually took place. The first two parts of the story, of which the first appears here, are based on horrific and traumatic experiences I had as a child. They were not ones which I had readily shared with anyone at the time, for fear of ridicule

and in writing the story there was the sense of a lifelong weight being lifted from my shoulders. I am sceptical by nature and by no means do I claim that the following events took place objectively, but nonetheless they are ones which felt as lucid and as real as anything I have ever encountered. So real, in fact, that I still shudder when I think of them. Time is supposed to be a happy event for a tired child. For me, it was terrifying. While some children might complain about being put to bed before they have finished watching a film or playing their favorite video game. When I was a child, nighttime was something to truly fear. Somewhere in the back of my mind, it still is. As someone who was trained in the sciences, I cannot prove that what happened to me

was objectively real, but I can swear that what I experienced was genuine horror. A fear which in my life, life, I'm glad to say, has never been equalled. I will relate it to you all now as best I can. Make of it what you will, but I'll just be glad to get it off my chest. I can't remember exactly when it started, but my apprehension towards falling asleep seemed to correspond with my being moved into a room of my own. I was eight years old at the time, and until Until then, I had shared a room quite happily with my older brother. As is perfectly understandable for a boy five years my senior, my brother eventually wished for a room of his own, and as a result, I was given the room at the back of the house. It was a small, narrow, yet oddly elongated room, large enough for a bed and a couple of chest of drawers,

but not much else. I couldn't really complain because even at that age, I understood that we did not have a large house, and I had no real cause to be disappointed, as my family was both loving and caring. It was a happy childhood. Well, during the day,

a solitary window looked out onto our back garden. Nothing out of the ordinary, but even during the day, the light which crept into that room seemed almost hesitant. As my brother was given a new bed, I was given the bunk beds which we used to share. While I was upset about sleeping on my own, I was excited at the thought of being able to sleep in the top bunk, which seemed far more adventurous to me. From the very first night, I remember a strange feeling of unease creeping slowly from the back of my mind. I lay on the top bunk, staring down at my action figures and cars strewn across the green blue carpet. As imaginary battles and adventures took place between the toys on the floor, I couldn't help but feel that my eyes were being slowly drawn towards.

the bottom bunk, as if something was moving in the corner of my eye, something which did not wish to be seen. The bunk was empty, impeccably made with a dark blue blanket tucked in neatly, partially covering two rather bland white pillows. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I was a child, and the noise slipping under the bottom. Under my door from my parents' television, bathed me in a warm sense of safety and well-being. I fell asleep. When you awaken from a deep sleep to something moving or stirring, it can take a few moments for you to truly understand what is happening. The fog of sleep hangs over your eyes and ears, even when lucid.

Something was moving. There was no doubt about that. At first, I wasn't sure what it was. Everything was dark, almost pitch black, but there was enough light creeping in from outside to outline that narrowly suffocating room. Two thoughts appeared in my mind almost simultaneously. The first was the first was the same.

that my parents were in bed because the rest of the house lay both in darkness and silence. The second thought turned to the noise, a noise which had obviously woken me. As the last cobwebs of sleep withered from my mind, the noise took on a more familiar form. Sometimes the simplest of sounds can be the most unnerving. A cold wind whistling through a tree outside, a neighbor's footsteps uncomfortably close, or in this case the simple sound of bed sheets rustling in the dark. That was it, bedsheets rustling in the dark, as if some disturbed sleeper was attempting to get all too comfortable in the bottom bunk. I lay there in disbelief, thinking that the noise was either my imagination, or perhaps just my pet cat, finding somewhere comfortable to spend the night.

It was then that I noticed my door, shut as it had been as I'd fallen asleep. Perhaps my mum had checked in on me, and the cat had sneaked into my room then. Yes, that must have been it. I turned to face the wall, closing my eyes in the vain hope that I could fall back to sleep. As I moved, the rustling noise from underneath me ceased. I thought that I must have disturbed my cat, but quickly I realized that the visitor in the bottom bunk was much less mundane than my pet trying to sleep. or sinister. As if alerted to and disgruntled by my presence,

the disturbed sleeper began to toss and turn violently, like a child having a tantrum in their bed. I could hear the sheets twist and turn with increasing ferocity. Fear then gripped me, not like the subtle sense of unease I had experienced earlier. but now potent and terrifying. My heart raced as my eyes panicked, scanning the almost impenetrable darkness out a cry.

As most young boys do, I instinctively shouted for my mother. I could hear something stir on the other side of the house, but as I began to breathe a sigh of relief that my parents were coming to save me, The bunk beds suddenly started to shake violently, as if gripped by an earthquake, scraping against the wall. I could hear the sheets below me thrashing around as if tormented by malice. I did not want to jump down to safety as I feared the thing in the bottom bunk would reach out and grab me,

pulling me into the darkness. So I stayed there. White knuckles clenching my own blanket like a shroud of protection. The weight seemed like an eternity. The door finally, and thankfully, burst open, and I lay bathed in light while the bottom bunk, the resting place of my unwanted visitor, lay empty and peaceful. I cried, and my mother consoled me.

Tears of fear, followed by relief, streamed down my face. Yet, through all of the horror and relief, I did not tell her why I was so upset. I cannot explain it, but it was as though whatever had been in that bunk would return if I even so much as spoke of it, or uttered a single syllable of its existence. Whether that was true, I do not know. But as a child, I felt as if that unseen menace remained close. Listening. My mother lay in the empty bunk, promising to stay there until morning.

Eventually, my anxiety diminished. Tiredness pushed me back towards sleep. But I remained restless. waking several times momentarily to the sound of rustling bed sheets. I remember the next day wanting to go anywhere, be anywhere, but in that narrow, suffocating room. It was a Saturday, and I played outside quite happily with my friends. Although our house was not large, we were lucky to have a long sloping garden in the back. We played there often, as much of it was overgrown, and we could hide in the bushes,

climb in the huge sycamore tree, which towered above all else, and easily imagine ourselves in the throes of a grand adventure in some untamed exotic land. As fun as it all was, occasionally my eye would turn to that small window. ordinary, slight, and innocuous. But for me, that thin boundary was a looking glass into a strange, cold pocket of dread. Outside, the lush green surroundings of our garden, filled with the smiling faces of my friends,

could not extinguish the creeping feeling clawing its way up my spine. each hair standing on end. The feeling of something in that room, watching me play, waiting for the night when I would be alone, eagerly filled with hate. It may sound strange to you, but by the time my parents ushered me back into that room for the night,

I said nothing. I didn't protest. I didn't even make an excuse. as to why I couldn't sleep there. I simply and sullenly walked into that room, climbed the few steps into the top bunk, and then waited. As an adult, I would be telling everyone about my experience,

but even at that age, I felt almost silly to be talking about something which I really had no evidence for. I would be lying, however, if I said this was my primary reason. I still felt that this thing would be enraged if I so much as spoke of it. It's funny how certain words can remain hidden from your mind, no matter how blatant or obvious they are.

One word came to me that second night, lying there in the darkness alone, frightened, aware of a rotten change in the atmosphere, a thickening of the air as if something had displaced it. As I heard the first casual twists of the bedsheets below, the first anxious increase of my heartbeat at the realization that something was once again in the bottom bunk. That word, a word which had been sent into XVI, Filtred up through my consciousness, breaking free of all repression, gasping for air, screaming, etching, and carving itself into my mind. As this thought came to me, I noticed that my unwelcome visitor had ceased moving.

The bed sheets lay calm and dormant, but they had been replaced by something far more. hideous. A slow, rhythmic, rasping breath heaved and escaped from the thing below. I could imagine its chest rising and falling with each sordid, wheezing and garbled breath. I shuddered and hoped beyond all hope that it would leave without occurrence. The house lay, as it had the previous night, in a thick blanket of darkness. Silence prevailed. All but for the perverted breath of my as-yet- unseen bunkmate. I lay there terrified.

I just wanted this thing to go, to leave me alone. What did it want? Then something unmistakably chilling transpired. It moved. It moved in a way different from before. When it threw itself around in the bottom bunk, it seemed unrestrained, without purpose, almost animalistic. This movement, however, was driven. by awareness, with purpose, with a goal in mind.

For that thing lying there in the darkness, that thing which seemed intent on terrorizing a young boy, calmly and nonchalantly, sat up. Its labored breathing had become louder, as now only a mattress and a few flimsy wooden slats separated my body from the unearthly breath below. I lay there, my eyes filled with tears. A fear which mere words cannot relate to you or anyone else coursed through my veins.

I would not have believed that this fear could have been heightened, but I was so wrong. I imagined what this thing would look like, sitting there listening from below my mattress, hoping to catch the slightest hint that I was awake. Imagination then turned to an unnerving reality. It began to touch the wooden slats which my mattress sat on. It seemed to caress them carefully. running what I imagined to be fingers and hands across the surface of the wood. Then, with great force, it prodded angrily between two slats into the mattress.

Even through the padding, it felt as though someone had viciously stuck their fingers into my side. I let out an almighty cry, and the wheezing, shaking, and moving thing in the bunk below, replied in kind by violently vibrating the bunk as it had done the night before. Small flakes of paint powdered onto my blanket from the wall as the frame of the bed scraped along it, backwards and forwards. Once again I was bathed in light, and there stood my mother, loving, caring as she always was, with a comforting hug and calming words which eventually subdued my hysteria. Of course she asked what was wrong, but I could not say, I dared not say. I simply said one word over and over and over again.

Nightmare. This pattern of events continued for weeks, if not months. Night after night, I would awaken to the sound of rustling sheets. Each time I would scream so as not to provide this abomination with time to prod and feel for me. With each cry, the bed would shake violently, stopping with the arrival of my mind. mother who would spend the rest of the night in the bottom bunk, seemingly unaware of the sinister force torturing her son nightly. Along the way, I managed to feign illness a few times and come up with other less than truthful reasons for sleeping in my parents' bed. But more often than not, I would be alone for the first few hours of each night in that place.

The room where the light from outside did not sit right. Alone with that thing. With time, you can become desensitized to almost anything, no matter how horrific. I had come to realize that, for whatever reason, this thing could not harm me when my mother was present. I am sure the same thing could have been said. for my father, but as loving as he was, waking him from sleep was almost impossible. After a few months, I had grown accustomed to my nightly visitor. Do not mistake this for some unearthly friendship. I detested the thing. I still feared it greatly, as I could almost

sense its desires and its personality, if you could call it that. One filled with a perverted and twisted hatred, yet longing for me. Of perhaps all things, my greatest fears were realized in the winter. The days grew short, and the longer nights merely provided this wretch with more opportunities. It was a difficult time for my family. My grandmother, a wonderfully kind and gentle woman, had deteriorated greatly since the death of my grandfather. My mother was trying her best to keep her in the community as long as possible.

However, dementia is a cruel and degenerative illness, robbing a person of their memories one day at a time. Soon she recognized none of us, and it became clear that she would need to be moved from her house to a nursing home. Before she could be moved, my grandmother had a particularly difficult few nights, and my mother decided that she would stay with her. As much as I loved my grandmother and felt nothing but anguish at her,

illness. To this day I feel guilty that my first thoughts were not of her, but of what my nightly visitor may do should it become aware of my mother's absence, her presence being the one thing which I was sure was protecting me from the full horror of this thing's reach. I rushed home from school that day and immediately wrenched the bed sheets and mattress from the lower bottom. removing all of the slats and placing an old desk, a chest of drawers, and some chairs which we kept in a cupboard where the bottom bunk used to be. I told my father I was making an office, which he found adorable, but I would be damned if I'd give that thing a place to sleep for one more night. As darkness approached, I lay there knowing my mother was not in the house. I did not know what to do.

My only impulse was to sneak into her jewelry box and take a small family crucifix which I had seen there before. While my family were not very religious, at that age I still believed in God and hoped that somehow, this would protect me. Although fearful and anxious, while gripping the crucifix under my pillow tightly in one hand, sleep eventually came as I drifted off to dream. I hoped that I would awaken in the morning without incidents. Unfortunately, that night was the most terrifying of all. I woke gradually. The room was once again dark. As

my eyes adjusted, I could gradually make out the window and the door, and the walls, some toys on a shelf, and even to this day, I shuddered think of it, for there was no noise, no rustling of sheets, no movement at all. The room felt lifeless,

lifeless, yet not empty. The nightly visitor, that unwelcome, wheezing hate-filled thing which had terrorized me night after night, was not in the bottom bunk. It was in my bed. I opened my mouth to scream,

but nothing came out. utter terror had shaken the very sound from my voice, motionless. If I could not scream, I did not want to let it know I was awake. I had not yet seen it. I could only feel it. It was obscured under my blanket. I could see its outline. I could feel its presence, but I dared not look.

The weight of it pressed down on top of me, a sensation I will never forget. When I say that hours passed, I do not exaggerate. Laying there motionless, in the darkness, I was every bit a scared and frightened young boy. If it had been during the summer months, it would have been light by then, but the grasp of winter is long and unrelenting, and I knew it would be hours before sunrise, a sunrise which I yearned for. I was a timid child by nature, but I reached a breaking point, a moment where I could wait no more, where I could survive under this intimately deviant abomination no longer.

Fear can sometimes wear you out, make you threadbare, a shell of nerves leaving only the slightest trace of you behind. I had to get out of that bed. Then I remembered the crucifix. My hand still lay underneath the pillow, but it was empty. I slowly moved my wrist around to find it. minimizing as best I could the sound and vibrations caused, but it could not be found. I had either knocked it off of the top bunk, or it had, I could not even bear to think of it, been taken from my hand.

Without the crucifix, I lost any sense of hope. Even at such a young age, you can be acute. aware of what death is and intensely frightened of it. I knew I was going to die in that bed if I lay there dormant, passive, doing nothing. I had to leave that room behind. But how? Should I leap from the bed and hope that I make it to the door? What if it's faster than me? Or should I slowly, slip out of that top bunk, hoping to not disturb by uncanny bedfellow. Realizing that it had not stirred when I moved, trying to find the crucifix, I began to have the strangest of thoughts.

What if it was asleep? It hadn't so much as breathed since I had woken up. Perhaps it was resting, believing that it was. It had finally got me, that I was finally in its grasp. Or perhaps it was toying with me. After all, it had been doing just that for countless nights. And now with me under it, pinned against my mattress with no mother to protect me, maybe it was holding off, savoring its victory until the last possible moment.

like a wild animal savoring its prey. I tried to breathe as shallowly as possible, and mustering every ounce of courage I could, I reached over slowly with my right hand and began to peel the blanket off of me. What I found under those covers almost stopped my heart. I did not see it, but as my hand moved the blanket, it brushed against something.

Something smooth and cold. Something which felt unmistakably like a gaunt hand. I held my breath in terror, as I was sure it must now have known that I was awake, not stir. It felt dead. After a few moments, I'd be able to be. placed my hand carefully further down the blanket and felt a thin, poorly formed forearm. My confidence and almost twisted sense of curiosity grew as I moved down further to a disproportionately larger bicept muscle. The arm was outstretched lying across my chest with the hand resting on my left shoulder,

as if it had grabbed me in my sleep. I realized that I would have to move this cadaverous appendage if I even so much as hoped to escape its grasp. For some reason, the feeling of torn, ragged clothing on the shoulder of this nighttime invader stopped me in my tracks. Fear once again swelled in my stomach and in my chest, as I recoiled my hand in disgust at the touch of straggled, oily hair. I could not bring myself to touch its face, although I wonder to this very day what it would have felt like.

Dear God, it moved. It moved. It was subtle, but its grip on my shoulder and across my body strengthened. No tears came, but God, how I wanted to cry. As its hand and arm slowly coiled around me, my right leg brushed along the cool wall which the bed lay against. Of all that happened to me in that room, this was the strangest. I realized that this clutching, rancid thing which drew great delight from viremen, violating a young boy's bed, was not entirely on top of me.

It was sticking out from the wall, like a spider striking from its lair. Suddenly, its grip moved from a slow tightening to a sudden squeeze. It pulled and clawed at my clothes, as if frightened that the opportunity would soon pass. I fought against it, but its emaciated arm was too strong for me. Its head rose up, writhing and contorting under the blanket. I now realized where it was taking me into the wall. I fought for my dear life. I cried and suddenly my voice returned to me, yelling, screaming,

but no one came. Then I realized why it was so eager to suddenly strike, why this thing had to have me now. Through my window, that window which seemed to represent so much malice from outside, streaked hope, the first rays of sunshine. I struggled further, knowing that if I could just hold on, It would soon be gone.

As I fought for my life, the unearthly parasite shifted, slowly pulling itself up my chest. Its head now poking out from under the blankets, wheezing, coughing, rasping. I do not remember its features. I simply remember its breath against my face, foul and as cold as I. As the sun broke over the horizon, that dark place, that suffocating room of contempt was washed, bathed in sunlight. I passed out as its scrawny fingers encircled my neck, squeezing the very life from me. My father offering to make me some breakfast. A wonderful sight indeed.

I had survived the most horrible experience of my life until then and now. I moved the bed away from the wall, leaving behind the furniture I had believed would stop that thing from taking a bed. Little did I think that it would try to take mine and me. Weeks passed without incidents. Yet on one cold frost-bitten night, I awoke to the sound of the furniture where the bunk beds used to be, vibrating violently. In a moment it passed. I lay there sure I could hear a distant wheezing coming from deep within the wall, finally fading into the distance.

I have never told anyone this story before. To this day, I still break out in a cold sweat at the sound of bed sheets rustling in the night, or a wheeze brought on by a common cold. And I certainly never sleep with my bed against a wall. Call it superstition, if you will. But as I said, I cannot discount conventional explanations such as, sleep paralysis, hallucination, or that of an overactive imagination. But what I can say is this. The following year, I was given a larger room on the other side of the house, and my parents

took that strangely suffocating, elongated place as their bedroom. They said they didn't need a large room, just one big enough for a bed and a few things. They lasted 10 days. We moved on the 11th. The following story is called Tunnels and takes place in the unseen sewers of Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. The story refers to the history of that city, along with the atrocities committed during the Holocaust in the 1940s. This was in my mind after visiting Anne Frank's house while on holiday, and something which has lodged itself there ever since.

I was travelling alone on the way back home and while in my cabin on the ship to Newcastle, I jotted down most of the story in one night. I've always been fascinated by the strange and unusual experiences a few have spoken to me about while working underground in the dark. I've spoken to those who have found evidence of people living down there, even of old streets and buildings

walled up and forgotten about by the modern outlook of those above. The strangest of those experiences are of those who will never return there, claiming that something lurks in the darkness. I once knew a man who was afraid of nothing. No monstrosity, man-made, nor fictitious, could subdue his spirits

and the mere mention of the word supernatural would elicit a most cynical example of laughter. This bravery was both his greatest strength and his most profound weakness, for ignorance and heedlessness can often be mistaken for a deep and foolhardy sense of courage. He was to learn the limits of his bravery down in those oppressive tunnels, deep below the streets of Amsterdam. His name was Henca, due mainly to his Finnish ancestry on his father's side, and although his parents had passed away at an early age, it was clear that he believed his courageous convictions could be attributed to his father's character. I had met Henka

four years earlier while traveling with some friends on a rather common right. passage, backpacking through Europe during a university break. He and a few of his friends were on a similar trip and happened to be staying at the same youth hostel as myself and my companions in Rome. We all got along well, but both Henca and I struck up an immediate rapport with one another, as he was a keen musician, and I was at the time still filled with. the self-promise or should I say delusion of stardom through my own musical pursuits. This friendship continued onwards and we maintained it via email, swapping musical discoveries, talking about politics, and generally getting to know one another as best two people can

through simple correspondence. I grew to enjoy our friendly debates over the years, and on a few occasions we even visited one another. Henca moved around a lot, and as such it gave me a good excuse to visit a number of mainland European countries, not to mention that he always knew which local pubs served the best beer and which restaurants were to be best avoided. Last year, I visited Henca in Amsterdam. The Dutch city seemed to be a good fit for him, as he always liked to live in the liveliest of places, and with countless meandering canals, bridges, and walkways, swamped with millions of tourists every year,

Amsterdam, Forhenka, felt like the very embodiment of life and vibrancy. At the time, he had been recently hired to carry out some. important maintenance work on the Reichs Museum, which is one of Amsterdam's most impressive buildings, and this seemed to have rooted him to the one place for longer than was usual. When I met him in a small, darkened corner of a local pub, well away from the burgeoning tourist trade, I was shocked at his appearance. Here was a friend I had grown to know as being larger than life, exuding bravado, and yet I was presented with a shell of a man, slight in stature, and racked with self-doubt. He proceeded to impart on me the circumstances which resulted in his

precarious condition, of which I will relay to you now. Hanka had been working as a civil engineer for some time and relished the challenge of renovating and maintaining the Reichs Museum, a building with such a long and compelling history. The museum houses Amsterdam's finest collection of historical relics, and being given access to some of its more hidden places which are inaccessible to the general public, piqued Henke's fascination for the obscured and unique. He had been hired most specifically to lead a maintenance crew which had been assigned to assess and repair the building's foundations. This oldest part of the structure dated back centuries and had a most bizarre, and it must be said, quite horrific history.

The Rijks Museum itself had been constructed in 1885, but what it had been built about, Pond possessed a much older and interesting history. In the bowels of the building, under its marble floors and deep red brickwork, lay a labyrinth of abandoned tunnels, which at one time served as part of the old city's sewer network. They had long been disused and fallen into disrepair, but they were nonetheless an essential part of the building's foundations. and had to be assessed and repaired. Otherwise, the entire structure would be in danger of subsiding. The ground and upper levels of the museum were beautiful

and displayed many wonderful historical relics from all over the world. So welcoming and warm was the atmosphere of the building that it was difficult to imagine the darkness which festered below. After some quick words with the building manager, Henca proceeded to an old, seldom used room at the back of the museum, which housed a rather antiquated, creaking, and cage-like elevator, which was being used to access the lower levels and the sewers underneath. Pulling on a pair of dirt-covered yellow overalls, complete with hard hat and headlamp, Henca entered the elevator for his first descent. On his trip downwards towards the abandoned sewers,

Henca thought to himself that those of a nervous disposition may let such a dank and isolated place prey on their minds. This may have explained why the previous man in charge of the repairs had left so abruptly, citing nervous exhaustion and refusing to. to ever so much as set foot in those pitch-black corridors of cold stone ever again. The elevator winch and engine stuttered as it lowered Henca down four levels into the basement. With each passing floor, he observed a slight dimming of the lights, and each subterranean level appeared more sparse and stone-like than the one before.

A rusted plate attached to the elevator betrayed its age. It struck Henca that the year of the construction, 1932, must have been amongst the last periods of maintenance carried out there before the persecution of the Jewish people and the outbreak of war in Europe. Henca knew much of the shameful history of the region as he was part Jewish and his great-grandfather. had died during the Holocaust. Many had fled to Amsterdam for sanctuary from the Nazi regime in the early 1930s, but the long blighting arm of Hitler's horrific final solution eventually reached the borders of Holland, sweeping many thousands away to those shameful and barbaric concentration camps. The elevator shuttered to a halt, and after forcing the rusted sliding door aside, Henke disembarked. The tunnels, comprising Amsterdam's disused sewer network, were curious in construction

and steeped in a history which stretched back much farther into the distant past than that of the museum itself. Having spoken to his employing, Hanka had been specifically told to pay heed to the assessment and repair crew's knowledge of the tunnel layout, as the place could be disorienting, and as the lighting system required to illuminate repair work had not been fully installed yet, that he would find it all too easy to get lost. Most importantly, Hanka was informed that the two-way radios normally used to kill communicate between team members had been playing up and that they were very unreliable due to interference, probably produced by nearby metallic deposits in the ground. This meant that

communication between his team members would have to be carried out verbally, or by using the light from their torches to convey simple messages via Morse code. This was particularly useful in the longer tunnels. In any case, it struck Henca that the catacombs below really were isolated, lonely places. Care must be taken. Henca was greeted by Jones, his second in command. Jones was a substantially stout fellow and was rather humorous in nature. He debriefed Henka on the current progress being made.

by his new team, informing him that the initial mapping and assessments of the tunnels had gone well. All in all, there were 16 four-man crews, each of which would be assigned a section of the sewers to repair. Henca would supervise two of the crews which were working in one of the more isolated tunnels. After walking for 15 minutes, Henca arrived at the area which would be his workplace for the next few months. The sound of occasional drilling could be heard in the distance as the workers continued to install the still non-operating lighting system. As Henka's men would be working further away from the other crews, it seemed logical, although not desirable, that they would have a lighting system. installed last. Each passageway seemed oddly shaped with no two tunnels being quite alike. This entire section of the sewer was, in fact, so antiquated that it had been built long before

the careful planning of such constructions had become commonplace. One tunnel would arch onwards for over several hundred meters in a strange semicircle, while others bisected it at right angles, carrying on in a regimented straight line into the darkness. Hanka even found a passageway which seemed to dip and rise only to slither its way along in an unnatural S shape. Some tunnels seemed to go on forever. Others stopped abruptly as if the original builders had been unable to complete their work, leaving in a hurry. Jones tried to keep the conversation light,

and with his experience of walking through the tunnels for the past two months, Henca was glad to have a guide to show him the way. Waiting in a large alcove were four of Henca's team. They would work this section of the tunnels during the day, while the other shift would take over later, working through the night. Jones introduced each of them. They seemed nice enough, but Henka was surprised to find the men largely in the grips of silence. In his experience, humor was normally found in abundance, with repair crews using it to slice through the monotony of working in, such cramped and repetitive conditions.

Here, though, he found them uttering not one word, sitting in silence in that imposing alcove, removed from any consideration of camaraderie or fellowship. The only inference that they were not a collection of subterranean statues was the occasional movement of their headlamps, altering the shadows around them. They seemed wholly disconnected from, not just each other, but the very environment in which they worked. Henca brushed this feeling of unease aside and committed himself to cultivating conversation.

If these men were in some way angry or uncomfortable with one another, then Henca would soon lay that to rest. A happy workforce is a pretty. productive one. The first order of business was to survey this section of tunnels and decide where repairs were most pressing. Preliminary assessments had already been made, but Henka liked to evaluate any repair project he was involved in from the ground up. Henca walked the catacombs with his team and noticed immediately that they were still on edge, that they seemed frightened in an almost childlike way. No amount of questions, casual or otherwise,

could elicit anything other than one word broken replies. As they toured the numerous tunnels, lighting their way with the small torches attached to their safety helmets and taking notes about failing walls, water damage and estimations of any possible repair time, Henca pressed the men on their obvious sense of fear, asking why such an experienced crew, who no doubt had worked in many tunnels before, were so apprehensive of mere bricks and mortar. They avoided the questions, looking nervously at one another and changing the topic of conversation

with monotoned lethargy whenever it veered towards their experience. experiences of the old sewers, or of their previous bosses' unceremonious departure from the job. It began to dawn on Henke that the men's verbal and physical awkwardness was not the result of tensions between workers, but rather of a deep-seated and worrying apprehension of what he did not know. What was clear was that his team seemed to be counting down the minutes until their shift ended, when they could finally clamber out of the darkness into the safety of the world above. As the beam from his headlamp trickled over the damp and crumbling brickwork of the tunnels, Henca again conceded to himself that some may find such a setting unnerving,

but not him. Whatever had caused such trepidation and disquiet amongst the men working down there was surely a simple case of idle superstition, mischief-making, and the quite understandable psychological toll of working in a dark, cramped, and forgotten part of the world. Even Jones, who had, through most of the catacombs, been jovial and to be jovial and to, talkative, now adopted the same sullen expression and seriousness of disposition as the others. The passages wound and meandered their way through the ground, long, steady trajectories, intermittently and abruptly interrupted by sharp blind corners, which made it difficult for Henke

to identify exactly where they were. There were so many winding corridors that Henka felt slightly disoriented and was ready to joke with his men that if they didn't like him as a boss, that they could probably leave him there and he would never find his way out. But his men were no longer with him.

He was standing at the mouth of a tunnel. And while he had continued onwards talking, trying to fill in the difficult silences, his men had stopped at the last junction. They stood motionless some twenty feet behind, staring at Henke with blank expressions, occasionally betrayed by the slightest flicker of a very real and gripping emotion beneath. A look of suppressed terror. When he asked why the men were not following, they whispered in reply that where they stood was where the last of the repair work was needed. Pulling out a map and perusing it intensely by the light of his headlamp, Henca surmised that he must have wandered into the most remote part of the sewer network, at the back of the catacombs.

and while the tunnels continued into the foreboding distance, this must have marked the boundary of the Rijks Museum's foundations. What confused him was that where he stood had been marked for repair. He was standing at the entrance to what appeared to be a rather innocuous tunnel. But on the wall next to the opening, Henke could clearly see that someone had been placed an identification plaque there, marking it for repair. It read Tunnel 72F, water damage and falling brickwork. After double-checking his map, it was clear to Henke that Tunnel 72F was indeed still under the Reichs Museum foundations and had to be appraised and repaired. But when he told his

men this, they simply informed him that where they stood was as far as they would go. Anger began to take over, accompanied by frustration that the team he was supposed to be supervising were being so difficult. But even raising his voice and demanding that they head into the tunnel did not seem to move them. Just as things became heated and Henka began demanding, that the men do as he say, Jones interjected. We've worked down here for two months, Henka. This is a good, hard-working, talented crew you have.

They will do exactly as you ask, when you ask it. But you will have to accept that for them and me, our work stops at this junction, and that none of us will go near Tunnel 70, 2 F. Whether you want to believe it or not, there is something in there. Taking a deep breath and calming himself, Henka explained to his man that he understood the stress induced by working in such an environment for an extended period of time. But that repairs in that tunnel had to be carried out. He would talk to them later about it, but for

now, he would carry out the survey himself. As Henka stepped over the threshold and into the apparently forbidden tunnel, Jones and the other men protested vehemently, shouting on Henka to leave the passageway immediately. But he saw this as foolish. He would not be swayed by unsubstantiated, superstitious nonsense. There was nothing in this tunnel to fear, and once more Henka would prove to others that they should not be so scared by stepping up, being a man, and pushing forward into places others who are more timid in nature fear to tread. It was a point of pride for Henca, he believed in always being bold. While the tunnel seemed fairly common in its construction at first glance, as Henka progressed deeper into the darkness, it was apparent that this was

unlike any sewer he had seen before. The ground was uneven. The floor dipped and rose much like some of the other tunnels, but what was peculiar was how fractured the surface felt under his feet. The ground was obscured by a thick, almost oily water, which in places reached up as high as his knees. He trudged through the stagnant water slowly, not because he was scared, but simply to ensure he had a sound footing. one thing was apparent. However long the water had lay there, it was long enough to fester and produce an unpleasant, rotten stench. The walls were of a different, much older composition than most of the brickwork he had seen in the sewers elsewhere. Whatever the material was which had been used, it was hundreds of years old and was obviously failing. With law,

penetrating cracks scarring the surface of the increasingly unstable walls and ceiling. The light from Henka's headlamp was enough to illuminate much of the tunnel, but as he ventured further towards what he thought was a dead end, he realized that the passageway was narrowing and that the tunnel itself did not stop there, but rather tapered slightly before. for curving abruptly into a blind corner. Henca estimated that he was around 80 feet into the sewer, and while his curiosity for what could be beyond that corner urged him to move forward,

he believed he had made his point to his men, and would now ask them to abandon their fears and enter the tunnel with him. He unholstered the black handheld radio which all the workers had been issued with from his side and began requesting for Jones and the others to meet him at the corner of the tunnel. No one responded and nothing but a quiet buzz could be heard from the radio speaker. Of course, Henka now remembered that he had been warned about how unreliable the radio could be, but just as he was about to turn and shout on his men, something caught his eye. Surely not.

There was nothing in this old tunnel but stagnant water and himself, but pushing relentlessly against Henka's bravado and self-assured disposition was the creeping reality that something was standing at the end of the tunnel. Obscured by the turn, Henca could only see a glimpse of it, but it was unmistakable. A ragged piece of cloth poked out from around the corner, and although Henka's mind was unwilling to accept it, the cloth was obviously part of a sleeve, a sleeve which contained an arm of whose or what's he did not know. Disbelief.

Stubberness can be an effective tonic for even the most horrifying and unbelievable of situations. Henca's belief in himself and his long history of triumphs over adversity welled up inside of him, Filling his chest with pride and with a strong, confident stride, Hencom marched towards whatever was behind that corner. The slush and slosh of the black water echoed throughout the tunnel, as he made his way to that blind turn.

Apprehension now turned to sadness and empathy for standing there, Shivering and disheveled was a girl who could not have seen more than 13 years. Her face and hands were blackened with grime and dirt, hiding her pale and malnourished frame. A ripped shirt was all that she wore, hanging from her loosely, with much of her body exposed to the cold of that dank, isolated place. gazing at him between strands of dark matted hair, Henca was struck by how beautiful the young girl was, and how afraid she must have been. At first, he believed that somehow she must have made her way into the sewers and lost her way,

but no matter how softly he asked her, she would not answer, appearing afraid and nervous. Henca tried his radio again, but was greeted with the same meaningless static. Regardless, he had to get her out of that tunnel, back through the sewers and into the Rijksmuseum, and seen by a doctor.

He did not want to shout on his men, as it may have added to the girls' disquiet, so he decided to lead her out of the passage himself. As he approached, Henka spoke gently to the girl, explaining that he would take her up above to safety. She seemed terrified of him, and this made Henka feel uncomfortable, as he prided himself on being someone

who would do anything to protect the vulnerable, and not at all somewhat to be feared. She made no sound, but as head caneered, she raised her hand, pointing one finger at the light on his helmet. He suddenly realized that the light must have been frightening her somehow. So he merely took the lamp off and held it in his hand. The torch now illuminating the girl's shirt, more starkly. The changed angle of the light brought something unsettling to Henca's attention.

Pinned to the shirt was a yellow cloth star. It surprised him as it was entirely familiar, but it took a moment for his mind to grasp the memory. It was exactly like the yellow stars forced upon the Jewish populations during their persecution, to allow non-Jews and members of the Nazi regime to identify them. Henca's mind fought against the ramifications of such a discovery. After a momentary pause, he once again was resolute, disregarding the cloth star and asserting to himself that he must take. take this poor girl out of such horrible surroundings.

A tremendous sense of sadness overcame Henka as he grew closer. The torch flickered unusually in his hand as he looked down at the girl. Her face momentarily illuminated by the shifting light as he prepared to carry her out of the sewers, if need be. But this sense of duty, this compulsion to be brave and assertive in even the darkness of places, was now replaced with something which Henka had never felt before. Up his spine and from the very pit of his stomach, fear gripped him. Terror took him. And a horror so potent made him feel anxious.

weak and unsteady. For Henka had not noticed something so subtle, yet essential to his predicament. The girl had not stopped pointing at him as he drew closer. Her arm was rigid and her finger remained outstretched. Even the light which was now in his hand seemed entirely unimportant. to her. Realization swept over him like a plague of abject dread. The girl was not pointing at the light. She was pointing behind him. He did not remember much more of what happened in that tunnel, but he knew that he had indeed

turned to face whatever was standing there. He thanked God, not. something he was normally inclined to do that Jones and those men who feared that dark hollow so acutely had dispensed with this fear and ran into the passageway as soon as they heard his screams. Henca regained his composure back at the alcove where he had met the men, but he immediately pleaded with them that they take him back out of the tunnels, with which is what they did. Once back in the elevator room of the Rijks Museum, the men sat and had a frank discussion

with Henca about what had been happening down there over the past few months. Jones explained that the first survey team, which had encountered that specific sewer passageway, resigned from their posts after just one night down there. Week later, one of their co-workers who decided to stay on committed suicide after complaining to everyone that he could hear whispers coming from that tunnel while he worked nearby. Not long after that, Jones's previous supervisor had seen someone standing at the mouth of Tunnel 72F and had followed them inside. One of the clean-up crews found him crawling out of the sewer on his hands and knees, crying hysterically like a child.

He had been heavily medicated ever since, but no one knew exactly what he had seen down there. He would not talk of it, but the men who recovered him claimed he was repeating one word over and over, frantically. Nazi. Anka was a nervous wreck after his experience and ordered that no one go into Tunnel 72F. He continued to work down in the sewers day after day in the dark, but he was consumed by the notion that he had seen something so frightening that he had forced himself to forget. Over the next few weeks, he lost weight and had trouble sleeping, often waking up in a disturbed state, drenched in a cold sweat, unable to recall what he had been dreaming about.

The very idea that brave Henka could be reduced to this, that he could be affected so deeply by something he could not even remember in its entirety, prayed on his pride and his sense of self-worth. He first tried to combat this feeling of helplessness by increasing his knowledge of the tunnels. Knowledge, as they say, is power. And Henka felt that if he knew more about that place in the dark, that he would somehow be less afraid of it. He read about the history of the museum, and while he found very little of it helpful, one local legend struck a chord with him.

It was rumored that during the Second World War, a number of Jewish families took refuge in the tunnels below the Rijks Museum. When two SS officers were tipped off as to their whereabouts, they entered the tunnels with some local volunteers, hoping to arrest them down there and probably send them off to a concentration camp. The rumors were that the families ambushed the SS officers and their Nazi sympathizers, killing them and dumping the bodies somewhere in the sewers. This was the story Henka related to me. It was so sad to see him so shaken and vulnerable, a strong, powerful individual who had never shown so much as a hint of fear for, or of, anything, to be reduced to a diminished man living on his nerves. Unfortunately, the story does not end there. Some men are haunted both by what they have seen

and by what they cannot understand. Ego can be a terrible burden on anyone. Once it is fractured or damaged, the lasting effects can be devastating. Henca could not let go of his pride, nor his desire to feel strong again, whole. He had never been afraid of anything before, and no matter what was in that tunnel, no matter how much I attempted to dissuade him,

he was determined to confront it and reclaim his self-worth. Three days later, Henka's body was found at the mouth of Tunnel 72F, stuffed into an old duffel bag. It was a heart attack which had killed him. But whoever broke, twisted, and shoved his body into that morbid sack after he died was never caught. I should mention that the bag was of particular interest to the police in case it could reveal something about Henka's death. It was traced to Germany, army issue to be precise, and hadn't been manufactured. since 1941. The following story is called

Forgotten Valentine, and it is one which I wrote a few years ago. Sometimes it is difficult to entirely trace the genesis of a story, and that applies here. Despite this, Forgotten Valentine is deeply personal to me, and is based on an accumulation of both my own experiences and those of a few individuals

I have had the pleasure to meet. I wrote this while dealing with the loss of a loved one through suicide and I believe that the sense of regret, one of anger at your own inaction, is present in the story and comes from that. Also, there are other influences which I can see within it with the luxury of hindsight. The first experiences of death which many have

is when a child from your neighbourhood or school dies and it may be the first time you realise that mortality, affects us all, regardless of age. That's a potent and frightening realisation. Lastly, I have a distinct memory of being a child and going on an excursion to the Glasgow Necropolis, which is an historically important graveyard full of huge, architecturally impressive tombs. While standing next to one, myself and a few others heard a young girl singing beautifully

from behind it, but there was no one there. What's interesting about Forgotten Valentine, to me at least, is that it started out as a very different tale, one of obsession and manipulation from beyond the grave, perhaps a more standard horror story. This may all sound incredibly morbid and depressing, so I'm delighted that the story became something positive, something uplifting, bittersweet rather than just bitter. Regret can be a terrible thing,

but it can also make us who we are for the better, and in a way that is what forgotten Valentine is about. I had managed to keep a healthy scepticism of ghosts, ghouls and all things supernatural, until I was 28.

I found most claims of such things to be dubious at best and harmful at worst. I was very very. I was very very much in the camp of the classical sciences, as I had studied physics at Edinburgh University several years earlier. While my profession has never taken me back into the scientific arena, I had, until this time, maintained a ruthless opposition to pseudoscience and superstition. My friends often wondered about the change they saw in me at that time. What surprised them was the

it wasn't a slow, steady change of heart, but rather a complete turnaround overnight, a transformation, if you will. It may have appeared as if it occurred so very quickly, but in fact, it happened over a slightly longer time scale. Two weeks, to be precise. It was February. In fact, it was the week of Valentine's Day. Around this time, I was going through a...

socially isolated phase. It's something which often happens in the bleak Scottish winters, where I become increasingly wrapped up in my own loneliness and passing bitterness at those who fit in. It was, and still is, a neurotic hangover from my teenage years, one which has plagued me for far too long. Two weeks earlier, I had found myself wandering through the cobbled street. streets of Edinburgh to clear my head.

Walking, as it musing as it may seem, has always been a great comfort to me. You are, in every sense, alone with your thoughts, but that part of you which craves the company of others is slightly

appeased by being in the world. Even if you're only in it long enough to share a glance with a passing stranger. Edinburgh is a very old city, and has remarkably kept much of its former self. The cobbled streets meander down the steep side of what was once a volcano, breaking off sporadically into narrow lanes,

which occasionally open up into secluded courtyards. These numerous courtyards are often flanked on all sides by tall terraced houses, huddled together as if whispering of a secret and long forgotten past. The impressiveness of Edinburgh as a city is often lost on those who have lived there long enough to find beauty commonplace. As often happens when gripped by depression, I hadn't been sleeping well. I had finished work the previous evening around 5pm and while I managed to get a few hours sleep, my mind just wouldn't let me relax. come six in the morning, even though it was a Sunday and I could for once have a long lie,

I conceded defeat in my attempts to have a proper rest and got up to greet the world however reluctantly. By the time I had set out, it was still early morning, and the cold January air stung my face. Although Edinburgh is, for want of a better expression, a tourist city, at that time it still seemed relatively deserted, even for a Sunday. A slight mist had risen out of the water of leaf, making it feel all the more colder as I passed through the narrow lanes and down empty pavements, entirely oblivious to where I was going. As the shops opened and the first trickle of tourists bled out onto the cobbled walkways from their hotels,

I deliberately headed for a quieter, often forgotten network of streets. My wandering mind had indeed taken over. For as I broke through the haze of a daydream, I found myself standing at the gates of an old graveyard. I had been thinking of turning back and heading home, but something about this place awoke a compulsion in me. I had to explore it. I found it curious that the gates, constructed out of blackened steel rods, were lying unlocked as early in the day as this.

Entering the cemetery, I immediately noticed the overall isolation of the place, enjoying the sound of gravel under my feet which pierced the silence as I moved slowly along a path littered with small white stones. It wasn't a large graveyard. It seemed to consist of two separate plots, with the older graves at the front, bordering the fence and gate, filing backwards up onto a diminutive nearby hill where the more recently deceased residents lay. The oldest graves bore the weathered scars of age. I found one which was dated 1776, but the epitaph was illegible. I felt a sadness staring at the headstone, wondering about who it belonged. to and indulgently contemplating about myself as a forgotten or lost soul.

Eventually I moved off, wandering up the hill towards the newer graves. I found myself drawn to a large old sycamore tree which loomed over several graves below it, with an almost protective demeanour. I stared at one of the headstones, reading the words but not registering them, as my mind was engulfed by yet another daydream. The grave stood out somewhat from those around it. The headstone was white in colour, while those which accompanied it were forged out of a deep black marble.

Without thinking, I ran my hand over the smooth stone, feeling the occasional mark of the elements upon it. At the foot of the headstone lay a small, innocuous vase. It was made of a brownish metal, copper I assumed, as the surface exhibited small veins which were blue in colour due to its exposure to the weather. As I stood there, something rose up out of my mind. Something which bothered me greatly. At first I did not know what it was, experiencing it merely as a low, growing sense of discomfort. As this feeling of unease reached a crescendo, I suddenly realized what was wrong.

The name on the grave was Lisa Main. I knew that name well, everyone in the local area did. I had known her when I was growing up as we went to the same school together. She was someone that I watched from afar, full of life and exuberance, while I was shy, reclusive and reserved. I possessed that intense infatuation and desire for her, which only a first love can produce. The words on her headstone came into sharp focus.

Age 15. I was overcome with a tremendous sense of grief and loss, one which took me entirely by surprise, so much so that I had to leave that place. I just couldn't be. bear it. As someone who prides himself on being level-headed and immune to flights of fancy, I could not shake the profound unease which often comes with outrageous coincidence. I exited the graveyard as quickly as possible and headed home, ignoring the now cluttered Edinburgh

streets. I did not look back. Over the following few days or so, I was preoccupied. I was overworked and was having trouble sleeping, but that was not unusual for me. What was unusual were the immovable thoughts and memories of Lisa Mayne, thoughts which now stayed with me wherever I would go. I had been terribly affected by her death, as we were only 15 years old at the time. But that was over a decade ago, and I had not thought of her for many years. It was as if seeing that gravestone had awoken a house.

a sense of loss, a sense of pain which I had managed to bury so far deep inside of me that I had persuaded even myself to forget it. A carcophony of memories now haunted me, beautiful and terrifying. At any one moment I would be exhilarated by the thought of her smile, her hair, her kindness, and at the very next engulfed by despair at the image of her lying under six feet of earth, cold and alone once full of life now a decaying husk which had long ago housed

that beautiful soul if I had told anyone of how I felt they would have called me overly emotional or sentimental for the fact remained I barely knew Lisa watching her for years across a classroom I imagined myself talking with her

sharing those intoxicating moments which mean so much to a teenager, the first connection with someone you adore, the first feeling of being loved, the first kiss. I had in fact hardly ever spoken to her until only a few weeks

before she died. In one of those embarrassing manoeuvres which teachers often pull, the pupils were all forcefully partnered with someone to take to her first social dance. Social dancing was a torrid affair. For someone like Lisa, it was fun and to be enjoyed.

Well, for me, it was something to be detested. I was embarrassed, possessing none of the talent to be a dancer and even more so afraid to spend time with a girl, held back by my own teenage awkwardness. It was the end of January, and Lisa quickly set me at ease in social dancing class where we practiced. I cannot convey the simultaneous sense of joy and fear which I felt when she asked me to walk her home that day.

Some people find social interactions to be exhausting, much like myself always worried about saying the wrong thing. But some individuals can set others at ease with the smallest of effort. Lisa was one of those people. As we walked across an elegantly Victorian bridge towards her house, the winter sun bathed their surroundings and a cool, comforting glow.

I couldn't have been more content to be in the presence of this happy, kind-hearted girl. She was so beautiful, with an incredible smile and golden locks of hair which seemed more at home in a fairy tale than our surroundings. For weeks we walked the same route home every day, talking, laughing, something I really did, and growing ever closer. When you are at that age, everything is so potent. Most can fall in and out of love in a heartbeat. I didn't have many friends, and I lived alone with my mother,

who was not a particularly affectionate woman. So in that short time, I fell in love with Lisa Mayne. On the 13th of February, we stopped outside her house. We stood talking for a moment, and then, for the first time, Lisa became distant. She stared straight at me in a way that she had never done before. I felt uneasy yet exhilarated. There was a moment, a tiny moment where we said nothing to one another.

Then she hugged me. Her fingers slid through my hair. I will never forget how sweet she smelled, how alive she felt, and how grateful I was to someone for showing me a kindness I had never previously known. Lisa slowly let go of me and then skipped up to her front door. Just before she disappeared, she turned and smiled at me one more time. Then she was gone.

Immediately I knew what I was going to do. For the first time in my life, I was full of purpose and focus. a desire to do just one thing. I ran as fast as I could to the local shops. I was lucky as most of them were shutting up for the day. A kind old man who ran a rarely used card store allowed me into his shop, even though he was just closing.

I was going to buy my first Valentine's card. It had to be perfect. It had to be just right. after looking at almost every card I could afford I found one it was faked the card was red with a white circle in the middle in that circle was a boy and girl

walking hand in hand into the distance together I do not care what it said inside because I have always had a way with the written word and knew I could put something down which came from the heart I bought it After leaving the card shop, I went straight into my local newsagents. I had kept aside my last two pounds.

My mother gave me an allowance to buy my lunch at school every week, and I knew she would not give me more should I spend it. Despite it meaning I would have to go without lunch for a few days, I bought a box of chocolates to accompany the card. I rushed home, walked straight past my mother, who barely greeted me, grabbed a pair of scissors from the kitchen and went upstairs. I knew I would get into an unbelievable amount of trouble for it, but I didn't care.

I cut a slither of material from the red curtains hanging in my mother's room and tied the makeshift ribbon around the box of chocolates. In my mind, it now looked like a Valentine's gift. I wrote in the card explaining how I felt about Lisa and how much those walks home had meant to me, signed it, sealed the envelope and slid it under the ribbon so it sat nicely with the chocolates. I waited for the next day. It came all too slowly. The 14th of February. I will never forget the excitement of getting ready for school.

I took one last look at the chocolates and card before slipping them into my back. I think I made it a little too obvious that I was carrying something important and delicate as I cradled the whole bag in my arms for most of the day. I was so enthused, so focused, and I was going to march straight up to Lisa and give her the gift without a care for what the others, some of whom could be, very cruel, would think. But she was not there.

She wasn't in the playgrounds, she wasn't in her classes. For the subjects we shared, I just sat and stared at her empty desk and chair. School finished and I found myself walking the same route Lisa and I would normally. I stood outside her house, holding the chocolates. I can't describe the feeling I experienced there. Call it the effects of a lack of food or the exhaustion of having been so prime for the day. But anxiety took me and as a result, I couldn't bring myself to knock on her door.

I went home, dejected. I couldn't so much as eat a bite of the undercooked ham my mother threw down in front at me, so I simply went upstairs and crawled into bed, barely sleeping all night. For the next two days, I walked that same route and found myself holding on to those chocolates, not daring to cross the threshold of the little white fence in front of Lisa's house. house. On the third day, I asked our teachers about Lisa's absence, something which just hadn't occurred to me to do. I associated any authority with being cold, distant and unfair, and as a

result, normally avoided contact with my teachers at any cost. Mr. Randall, our history teacher, told me that Lisa had come down with a bad fever and was very ill. She could be off for weeks. With this news I was resolute. I was going to knock on her door and knocking her door was just what I did. I knocked and knocked and knocked but no one answered. The next day I did the same and again no one answered. It had now been five days since I had last seen Lisa. It was a Saturday, and, once again, I went over to Lisa's house, chocolates and card in hand. As I approached their house, the sky clouded over, casting a dull hue over Lisa's seemingly deserted streets. It was clear to see that Lisa's father was not a gardener.

The garden path split an overgrown and patchy lawn in two, with clambering weeds stretching up towards the sun through numerous cracks in the concrete slabs. I stopped to look around and focused my gaze on what seemed to be a smallish-known figurine, smothered in the undergrowth. It had sadly been broken. Many suggest that when something is wrong, a person knows. They may not be aware of precisely what has happened, but they can almost feel a palpable sense of dread in the air. I looked around and continued towards the front door.

Something was different. I was sure that the house had seemed as deserted as it had had on the previous days I had visited, and while the house was for all intents and purposes exactly the same as before, there was one change. The front door was open. I was convinced that it had been shut when I had arrived, but I dismissed this as simply the by-product of my fascination with the condition of Lisa's garden. You see, I can't quite explain it, but there was something suffocating about that house on that quiet street.

I reached the door and grasped the door-knocker, chapping three times. No answer. I repeated my knocks more forcefully this time, but still, no one came. The door was only slightly ajar and as such I couldn't really see much of the interior. All I could tell was that the house was dark and that the air escaping through the doorway was musty as if nothing had stirred inside for days. I started to feel nervous. I didn't really know why. Clearing my throat and stammering slightly, I asked,

Hello? Several times, without answer. The street was empty and the whole place felt devoid of life. Then a thought began to ruminate and gather momentum

within me. What if Lisa and her father were hurt? I started to play out all of the possibilities in my mind, the two of them lying somewhere in the house injured without food or water for days. Then I remembered that my history teacher had said Lisa was ill.

He must have spoken to someone to know this, probably Lisa's father. I hoped that she was not so sick that her father had taken her to hospital. Despite the logic of my thoughts, I still could not dismiss the horrible feeling that something was indeed wrong. Fear began to grip me, yet I closed my eyes only for a moment and found the memory of the memory of the moment. Lisa's embrace all the solace I needed to overcome it. I held on tightly to the card and chocolates as I pushed the door fully open. It moved silently, but I was sure the noise of it hitting a door stop on the floor would alert anyone to my presence as the bang echoed throughout the house. But still, no one came. The house was bathed in darkness. I took one. I took one. I took one

last look around me and crossed the threshold. While Lisa did not come from an affluent family, the house had an upstairs and must have had at least four bedrooms with an attic. Perhaps the fact that Lisa was an only child made the house seem all the larger, or emptier. But as I slowly made my way down the hallway, I felt as if each footstep echoed throughout distant passages and rooms. Beginning with the living room on the ground floor, I moved from room to room, occasionally asking if anyone could hear me. But I quickly became aware that I was only talking to myself. The air was stiflingly hot, and running my hand across a radiator, I realised that the boiler

must have been on for some time. As I moved into the kitchen at the rear of the house, I heard something. It was an almost rhythmic, dull, thudding. I couldn't identify what it was, but I knew it was coming from somewhere upstairs. I left the kitchen, which I was glad to do as it was filled with the smell of rotting foot and walked to the foot of the stairs. The staircase was quite narrow and ran along the inside of a wall. At the top of the stairs

was a landing which curved round to the left and led on to the other rooms. The dull thudding was now more pronounced and as I slowly climbed the stairs the same fear which had gripped me at the door returned. The realisation of wandering into someone's house uninvited came to the fore.

Stopping for a moment I closed my eyes and thought of Lisa again. I continued on. As I reached the top of the stairs, the thudding noise stopped. I shudder now, even just thinking of it. There were three doors leading to the other bedrooms, and one leading to a bathroom which I could already see was empty. The door to the first bedroom lay open. I peered in slowly, almost expecting to find someone there. There was no one. It was Lisa's father's room, neat, organised, with almost no objects of any note. The only curiosity was that the curtains were not drawn.

The door to the second room was closed. Again, I was overcome with a sense of intrusion. I was walking around inside someone's house without invitation. In effect, I was a trespasser. I knocked on the door quietly. Waiting for a moment, I realised the room must be empty and turned the brass handle on the door. It opened.

As I pushed the door, it creaked, and then suddenly stopped after only a few inches of movement. Something was behind the door. I pulled it towards me again and then pushed again, but no luck. with each attempt the wooden door bashed off of something I suddenly became aware of the noise I was making as each attempt echoed throughout the house it was not dissimilar to the thudding I had heard before I tried one more time pushing against the obstacle as hard as I could

no luck I was about to give up and move on to the next door when I saw what was blocking my entrance I will never forget the cold, glassy stare of the face which seemed to be peeking out from behind the bottom of the door. The skin, a pallid grey, a few retreating locks of hair covering an otherwise balding head, globules of sweat congealed under. Most of its features were obscured by the door, but the only visible eye still stared, clouded and covered in shade.

shadow. I didn't scream because I quickly realized that not only was this the face of Lisa's father, but that he was very much dead. I felt numb, but looking back, I realized I had handled the situation much more calmly than many of my age would have. But then, I did have a strange fascination for such things, reading many accounts of quite horrific death scenes. I stared for a moment, composed myself and then instantly turned to thoughts of Lisa and where she might be. Was she in the same room? Was she in the attic? All I could hope for was that she was okay. Something then happened. An event which I have to this day repressed, ignored and avoided as much as I possibly could. Something which shook me to the core. Something which I have never told a soul.

The face, staring up at me through that gloom-filled gap in the doorway, moved. At first it was only slight, and I disregarded it as the effects of shock. Then it moved again. Suddenly the door began to shake violently as if being punched and kicked by the body lying behind it. The head turned upwards as the cracking of rigourg mortis from the neck struggled against each sharp, and vicious movement, a putrid gurgling sound gasped out, enraged from deep within its bloated throat. I closed my eyes. I was sure it was not real. The banging stopped, and the house fell once again, into silence. I let out a sigh of relief and opened my eyes. What I saw I can barely describe now.

The face had moved upwards from behind the door To be level with mine The door shook and rattled under the strain As his venomous attacker tried to claw and batter its way through Finally the face pushed and squeezed through the gap in the door Revealing its repulsively loathsome features in their entirety Dead, swollen with clotty blood gasping relentlessly for air

all the time staring straight at me through hate-filled eyes with lips pulled back over teeth gritted together grinding against one another and wretched hatred I do not remember much of what took place after that perhaps I am glad to

I know I escaped and I know that I ran home confused, crying and babbling like a madman I also know one more thing While the memory has been pushed so deep inside that I can barely recognise it I know whatever was in that room slipped

through the gap in that doorway slipped through and grabbed me How I escaped I do not know The truth was more horrifying than I could have imagined Lisa's father had lost his job A couple of weeks earlier and as Bill's mounted combined with the pressures of looking after his only child, he snapped.

When the police entered the house, they found poor, sweet Lisa's body in the cellar. Her wrists were tied to a radiator. She had been strangled to death. After killing his daughter, Lisa's father had then went upstairs and hanged himself in her room. after a few days of hanging there the cord he used to choke the life from himself seemed to have snapped the police found his body slumped

behind the bedroom door but the door was open as time eroded the memory the explanation of these events altered greatly through my years of study at school and then university I read of psychological pressures and how trauma could bring about

vivid hallucinations I had convinced myself that had found Lisa's father dead and that the shock had produced the rest of the experience. No matter how real it felt, the idea that a corpse, twisted by rage and hate, perhaps even by the love I felt for his daughter, could somehow come back to life and attack the living, just did not fit in with my scientific and atheistic understanding of the world. I dismissed the entire experience, but one thing had still managed to. to haunt me until I was able to hide it from myself.

The police reported that Lisa had been tied up for a couple of days before she was killed. The date of her death was recorded as the 15th of February. She had been in that cellar, tied up, frightened yet alive, when I had come by to give her her Valentine's gift. People talk about hauntings and spirits, but the memory of that contorted face was. rising up through the doorway was nothing compared to the knowledge that had I went into her house that day, that maybe, just maybe, I could have saved her. Yes, I was a child, but I could have done something. I grew up, but I never felt that love again. That feeling of connection with another human being.

I developed an unhealthy attachment to my own company and found myself more interested in burying my head. in textbooks than perhaps meeting others or even falling in love. The friends that I did have were never that close to me, nor did they ever truly understand who I was. Seeing Lisa's grave had brought it all flooding back to me. Those stolen moments, that thing in the house, her death. The funny thing is that of all those memories both traumatic and precious, the one thought which would not leave me

was of the Valentine's gift I never gave. While I still hoped that the dead thing in Lisa's house was of my own imagination, and that the world was still very much material, lacking in the spiritual. I still felt the need to rectify this. I had kept the card all those years. In many ways it was both my most cherished

and loathed possession. cherished for the memories which it drew up from within me and loathed for the same reason. On the morning of the 14th, I walked through the cobbled streets of Edinburgh towards Lisa's resting place. On the way, I stopped at a little newsagents and picked up a box of chocolates. On my first visit, I had wandered there by accident, vaguely negotiating each street in a daze. But this time I was focused and resolute. Sentiment is a curious thing, and it had encouraged me to keep not only the card, but also the ribbon I made for the chocolates. When I entered the graveyard, I gazed up towards that lonely hill where she lay.

I felt hesitant. Not because I did not want to leave the gifts by her graveside, but more so because I did not know the extent to which the feelings of remorse, sadness and bitter nostalgia would. overcome me again. Nevertheless, I took a moment and then made my way up over the whitened path, up towards the hill, up towards her. There I stood. The sun was still relatively low in the sky, and it cast long, contorted and exaggerated shadows over everything. After standing there for what seemed like an age, I pulled out the ribbon, tied carefully around the box and then placed the chocolates and the card against the cold headstone. I don't know if I said anything. At the time I probably didn't as I was still convinced that

she wasn't there to hear me. But once your loved ones pass away, they are gone forever. The death is the end. I do know that I cried. I cried like I hadn't since I was a child. I fell to my knees and buried my head in my hands. I was inconsolable. Those moments of utter sadness, utter despair at the cruelness of life, and what it had done to beautiful Lisa were the last I had as a true sceptic. For as I knelt there, the wind blew gently through the graveyard, gently caressing those stone markers of loss and those who attended them.

I have heard and read about people having a religious or spiritual experience and while I cannot truly accept others' testimonies, I can say that what I felt at that moment was profound, an achingly beautiful feeling of companionship and love. I looked around. No one was there, but I felt that someone was. I tried to shake the feeling off as my mind simply plain. tricks on me, but no matter how much I tried to stick to that interpretation of events,

I simply could not do it. That feeling shared a twin emotion. I had only once ever felt that way before, when Lisa hugged me the last time I saw her. As the sensation washed over me, I realized that I had truly been searching for that same feeling again, but never found it until that moment. I stood up, wiped my eyes, and touched the gravestone as if to say goodbye. I walked to the graveyard entrance with a smile stretched from ear to ear.

Something anyone who knows me will tell you is extremely unusual. When I reached the gate, I glanced once more at that hill, which for me was no longer a sight of loneliness, but one of love and friendship. The second and last time I can say I have ever seen a ghost was at that moment. For standing up on the hill beside Lisa's grave was the blurry image of a young girl in a pink social dancing dress.

I did not run to the grave because I knew I did not have to. She waved slowly at me and then disappeared behind her gravestone. I walked home I felt full, joyful and exuberant it is almost impossible to describe that experience by the gravesite completeness will do for now

but even that cannot convey it friends wonder what happened to me around that time the truth is that I found something I did not know was missing some reading this may think that I found my faith but it was not that at all. What I found that day was companionship and acceptance from the only person I had ever

truly loved. I knew from that day onwards that the world was a far more mysterious and wonderful place than I could ever have possibly imagined. I knew that I would never fear being alone. For when I go wandering through the streets of Edinburgh and find myself on a quiet stretch of road, I smile to myself, knowing that if I listen carefully, I can hear the footsteps of Lisa, that girl I loved so dearly when I was a child, walking with me wherever I go. Thank you for joining us for Bedtime and Other Tales of Terror, a special bonus episode of the No Sleep podcast. To learn more about the podcast and to find links for more information about author Michael Whitehouse, please visit the no sleeppodcast.com. This episode was produced by David Cummings, written by Michael Whitehouse, and narrated

by David Cummings and Michael Whitehouse.