The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S10E21

Episode Date: April 15, 2018

It's episode 21 of Season 10. On this week's show we have four tales about vicious voyeurs, grotesque gambling, and fatal friendships. "Hell's Mortician"† written by Rona Vaselaar and performed by Mike DelGaudio & Erika Sanderson & Peter Lewis & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts around 00:03:20) "Thin Ice"† written by David Hubbard and performed by Matthew Bradford & Addison Peacock & Elie Hirschman. (Story starts around 00:17:50) "House Full of Eyes"‡ written by Henry Galley and performed by Nikolle Doolin & Jessica McEvoy & Jeff Clement & Kyle Akers & Erin Lillis. (Story starts around 01:04:20) "A High-Stakes Game"¤ written by Sam Raffield and performed by Jesse Cornett & Dan Zappulla & Mick Wingert & Nichole Goodnight & David Ault. (Story starts around 01:41:20) Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast   Click here to learn more about the Escape the Black Farm Tour   Click here to visit the home of Peter Lewis   Click here to listen to the Summer Series   Click here to learn more about Rona Vaselaar   Click here to learn more about Henry Galley   Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone Audio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡ & Jesse Cornett¤ "House Full of Eyes" illustration courtesy of Mark Pelham Audio program ©2018 - Creative Reason Media Inc. - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The following audio horror presentation is intended to frighten and disturb. Join us on this dark and unsettling journey at your own list. Because behind these doors, there will be no sleep. Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. It's the No Sleep Podcast. I'm David Cummings. Thanks for joining us. On the show this week, we have four tales about,

vicious voyeurs, grotesque gambling, and fatal friendships. I hope by now you have all discovered the fun little bonus episode we released last Friday the 13th. It's the story written by Peter Lewis, which played out over the five episodes he hosted while the live tour was going on in February and March. All the segments have been massaged into one continuous storyline so you can experience it, or relive it, in all its singular glory. It's a captivating glimpse into the fertile mind of Mr. Lewis. And speaking of Peter, did you know he recently launched his own website? Indeed, he now has his own internet estate,

a decrepit dwelling with a black picket fence for you to visit. There you'll find lots of info about Peter, his voice work, more of his excellent writing, and even his new merch store. Be sure to go there for all your Peter Lewis needs. Well, not all of those. needs, you dirty-minded people, but most of them. Check the show notes for a link to Peter's site, or just spell his name backwards, s-I-W-E-L-P dot com to find him, hiding in the dark. And speaking of bonus material, many of you know about the great series by author Marcus

Demanda featuring Jessica McAvoy as Summer. Well, on episodes 23 and 24 of season 10, will be featuring two new installments on the season pass episodes. So if you're not caught up, we've made each of the previous eight installments available on our SoundCloud page. They're set up as a playlist, so you can either listen to the two recent installments from season nine, or you can listen to all eight. That's five and a half hours of entertainment just waiting for you, available to one and all. So visit with dastardly little summer once again before she makes her way back into your hearts,

and livers and other vital organs. So, even with all that bonus content available from not so good little boys and girls, we can't forget about this episode. Season 10 deals a 21. The stories are ready, so let's start the journey. In our first tale, we meet a man looking to make a deal, a deal with, well, let's just say it, a deal with the devil. But as we discover from author Rona Vassilar, the devil is far more pragmatic than the trickster he's usually portrayed as, but that doesn't make things any more pleasant.

Performing this tale are Mike Delgado, Erica Sanderson, and Peter Lewis. So consider what your hellish role will be, so you don't wind up as hell's mortician. It was 3 a.m. I sighed. That was the third. time this week. Normally, it doesn't happen this often. I groaned and pulled myself out of bed, wondering if I'd made the right choice. I pushed that thought pretty quickly out of my head, though. Doesn't matter if I made the right choice or not, because there's nothing to do about it now. When I offered to sell my soul to the devil, I was almost offended when he rejected it.

I don't do souls anymore. He waved his hand dismissively. Since most of you will end up in hell anyway, I don't get anything worthwhile. There's nothing in it for me. There must be something you'll take. I was truly desperate. I'd stared at the blood I'd spilled, listened as the voice poured from it like steam. They say the only way to summon Satan is by killing something you love.

I really hoped my daughter wouldn't miss our cat too much. Why haven't you asked your God for help? I could hear the sneer in his voice. God hasn't answered my prayers. I can't afford to wait anymore. I'm running out of time. I wasn't ashamed that I'd turned away from God. Everyone always says that God has a plan,

especially when a horrible tragedy occurs. Well, this was one plan that wasn't going to happen, not if I had anything to do with it. The voice fell silent for a moment. The blood continued to bubble on the floor. I knew that if I touched it, I would scald my hand, but it was hard not to reach out to plead my case through touch. There is something that I want. Relief flooded through me. Anything. Anything. That, of course, was the trouble.

When he told me what he wanted, I was shocked and confused, and, of course, afraid that he was going to renege on our deal. I am not the trickster you think I am. I will give you what you most desire. In exchange, you'll do this for me again and again and again. Whenever I ask it of you, if you fail me, our deal is up. If you cooperate, then so will I. This arrangement is to our mutual benefit.

I have no reason to double cross you. That was true, but it still didn't sit right with me. Amused on that as I passed my daughter's door on the way downstairs. Daddy? The realization that her door was cracked open and my daughter was staring at me jolted me out of my recollections. She was rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Daddy, I heard something. I smiled and lifted her into my arms.

She was so tiny, only seven years old, and so, so precious. Her hair was a wild tangle on her head, and her Tweety Bird nightgown was in tatters she'd worn it so often. But she loved it so much. much that she'd never let me buy her a new one. I just held her close to me, just to reassure myself that she was still there. I heard it too. Don't worry, little birdie. Daddy'll take care of it. You go back to sleep. Her head was already drooped down on my shoulder. I carried her back to bed and tucked her in, placing her favorite stuffed rabbit in her arms. She cuddled it reflexively and looked up at me on the verge of falling back asleep. I love you, Daddy.

My heart swelled. I bent down and gave her a kiss on her forehead. I love you too, sweetheart. I get some sleep. Tomorrow you and I will spend the whole day together. How would you like that? But she didn't give me an answer. She'd already fallen fast asleep.

I patted her head and walked out of the room, closing her door softly. Yes, I'd made the right decision. I walked downstairs and covered my nose. Oh, God. I was forget how badly it stinks. You think you'll get used to it? But you never do. I know what death smells like. When I was a child, I used to play in the woods behind our house, and one day I passed to this pit. It was at least four feet across, and I'm not sure how deep it was, because it was filled almost to the brim with rotting animal carcasses. I'll never forget the way that smelled.

It took days to get the stench out of my clothes. The stench of death? I still can't compare to what I was smelling right then. I suppose it's because these things have never actually been alive. I looked at the thing on my living room floor. Its hide was caked with pus. It wasn't very big, only about four feet tall if I had to guess. Its leathery wings were crumpled and tiny bones were sticking out.

through the flesh. It winced. That had to hurt. It had no arms, but it did have a pair of stick-thin legs. I didn't imagine they were very useful. Its thigh bone was twice as long as its shin and its leg bent backwards, the opposite of humans. It looked like an overgrown perversion of a bird, a sick one in that if its face was any indication. It had a skull kind of like a bird's too, beak and all, except the beak, of course, was covered with more skin, red and irritated, as though it was infected. Its eyes were swollen shut and leaking blood. Something was oozing out of its mouth. I grimaced and headed for the kitchen to get a pair of latex gloves. I didn't want to get infected by whatever diseases that thing was carrying, even if I wasn't sure if it was

possible for me to get sick from it. Once I was properly prepared, I wrapped the body in a tarp and dragged it out the back door. By now, this sort of thing has become routine, and it goes fairly quickly. It helps, of course, that we don't have neighbors. Our quiet house in the country has done wonders for my side business. I grabbed the hatchet from the shed and doused it with holy water. Otherwise, it's like trying to chop into a steel wall. And I got to work dismembering the body.

Each time I hit it with my hatchet, the flesh. it, the flesh would shriek. Not the entity, mind you. That thing is long dead, but whatever it's made of doesn't react well to the holy water, which isn't really surprising. It took me about 20 minutes to chop it up into small enough pieces. Then I built the fire. I built a fire pit especially for this purpose. My daughter helped me. She liked laying the brick. Our progress was slow, but I'd cherish it. every second of it. As soon as the fire was hot enough, I started to feed pieces of the body into its depths. The pieces would jerk and hiss, but they succumbed to the flames quickly enough.

The first time I did this, I threw up out of disgust. By now, though, it had become commonplace. It's funny, these things, well, they're built to resist the fires of hell. But hellfire is markedly different than what burns in our world. It's rather convenient for me. It makes the disposal much, much easier. As I fed the body to the fire, piece by piece, my mind drifted back once again to that fateful day. The day I refuse to regret.

We don't have any more room in hell for all the bodies. Bodies? Not human bodies, of course. Humans can't die in hell. It's part of its charm. I could almost hear the smile in Satan's voice, one of fondness and a hint of exasperation. Then it was back to business. Demons, on the other hand, can.

Mindless little creatures that they are. Sometimes they simply expire, having run out their natural lifespan. Sometimes they kill each other. Sometimes a particularly ambitious human will kill one of them. It's almost impossible to destroy the bodies in hell, so they are dumped at the edge of the 12th circle. The 12th? I thought there were nine. He didn't deign to address that point. But centuries of dead demons have put a serious strain on our environment.

The easiest place to get rid of them is the human realm. You must become the human realm. You must become the human. destroyer. I considered this for a moment. The horrors I would see. The ongoing slavery that would plague me for the rest of my days. But then I thought about her. And if I do this, if I agree to this madness, you'll cure her?

Your daughter will become well again. She will never see the inside of another hospital as long as she lives. And that was good enough for me. I had to take the deal. You understand, don't you? A parent must do whatever they can for their child. And I couldn't watch the cancer eat away at my little girl anymore. She was only five years old at the time.

How do you tell a five-year-old that they're going to die? The doctors had told me there was no hope. She only had a few weeks left at bed. I watched her grow more and more tired every day. I saw her eyes growing listless. And the day, the day that she asked me if dying would hurt? That was the day I decided to do the unforgivable. I fed the last piece of demon flesh into the fire. Ten minutes later, I extinguished it. All it was left now were ashes and bones, which I sweat. into a small wooden box. I built them myself, another father-daughter project.

My daughter, you know what? My daughter is going to be very handy when she grows up. I can already tell. And, thanks to me, she will grow up. I buried the box in the woods. I don't think the pieces are dangerous, but I can't be sure. Anyway, hopefully nobody goes looking for them. But if they do, it's not my problem. long as my little girl is safe and happy, I couldn't care less what happens to the rest of the world. I guess that makes me a bad person. I returned to the house at 4 in the morning. I'm getting faster now. I went to my study and pulled out a journal, leather bound and padlocked. I keep the key right here on a chain around my neck at all times. I wouldn't want my little girl to go snooping and see something that would give her nightmares. I cataloged to the body in great detail. I drew it

the best of my abilities, described its structure, size, and wrote out my intuitions about how it tortured people. Well, that's what demons do, right? I'll need this information one day. I know that I'll be in hell myself. That's what happens to people who make deals with the devil. But I don't mind. Because when I die, my daughter will take over the family business. I'll teach her well so that she can live. so that my death doesn't inadvertently cause hers as well. And then, once I'm dead and gone, I will kill each and every one of those fuckers. I will murder every demon that I can get my hands on. I will fight my way through hell, climb out of its sulfurous pit, and drag my way to heaven,

where I will slay the greatest demon of all time, the one that betrayed me and left my daughter to suffer and die. My name is Simon. I am hell's mortician, and I am going to kill. Finding out you've been accepted at a highly coveted school might seem like a good thing, but don't tell that to author David Hubbard. In his tale, we meet a man who finds out that his spot in the school came about due to the mysterious disappearances of previous students. Performing this tale are Matthew Bradford, Addison Peacock,

and Ellie Hirschman. So learn to be a good student so you don't end up on thin ice. Whenever people talk to you about Jack Friars, they never refer to the building itself. They'll talk to you about the town, about the weather, and about the lake. Never the school itself. In my head I'd been picturing your stereotypical conservatory. I'll think Hogwarts, but instead of reciting spells, everyone spends their time talking about semi-quavers or cavaliers, soliloquies, or pastitious. I had applied expecting to enter this frozen castle in the north, full of only the most promising young artists, where I would devote my life to my craft with the intent of emerging as

the next prodigy. So you can imagine my disappointment when we pulled up in front of an ugly concrete slab of a building with the name Jack Friars Institute for the Arts, written in rusted iron over the door. There were no front gates, no water fountains, no lawns, and certainly no battlements. It was, for all intents and purposes, just another drab-looking building hiding amongst the pines. I would be lying if I said the rest of town wasn't any better. You would spend a few minutes driving through dense forest, only to be met with a small clearing of squat wooden houses and frozen concrete tower blocks,

and then straight back into the forest again. The town formed a crescent moon shape around the south shore of the lake. Most days, you could look out across the water at the densely packed trees on the north bank that formed a thick black band separating the water from the sky. Jack Friars was on the west side of the lake at the left point of the crescent moon, the building that marked the edge of town in the start of the wilderness that ran virtually undisturbed all the way up to the north pole. Standing at the doorway to the school, however, it was hard to imagine that the thick forest

ever came to an end. I had been warned that the lake was frozen for most of the year, but that didn't prepare me for how cold the air was as it peppered snow against my raw cheek. I was running late already, so before I could say goodbye to my parents, I was whisked away inside. I won't go into all the details of my first day there. Picture your own first day at a new school, but substitute me for you, and subtract a couple dozen degrees from the temperature, and you'll probably get a good sense of what it was like. I bumbled around in my uncomfortable new uniform, making friends with people who stopped talking

to me after a couple of weeks, forgetting teacher. and trying desperately to prove that I could draw. It wasn't bad and it wasn't good. It was just awkward and long. I put all of the stairs down to the fact that I was a new kid in a small town. It wasn't until I'd been there for a month that I found out why no one really talked to me that much. My parents were nice enough to buy me a couple of settling in presents.

I think they were more worried about my time at school than I was. I was used to being a quiet kid, but I think they saw all of the dance and drama students running around town together raising hell, and thought that I should have been like them. But, hey, I'm not complaining. Because they felt so bad for me, Dad bought me a Sega Genesis, and Mom got me a Walkman. There was only one music store in town, so my album choice was pretty limited. But I managed to snake BIG's ready to die, which I listened to one. on repeat on my walks to and from school every day.

My first day, taking the walkman out into the wild, I walked into class with my headphones on, whistling to myself. I kept my eyes on the floor and made my way to the back of the room where I always sat. Just like every other day, I reached into my bag and took out a notepad, a bottle of water, and my pencil case, still whistling away. Once my bag was on the floor, I glanced up to see every face in the room staring straight at me. Quick as a flash, I threw off the headphones and sat up straight. My first thought was that I was in the wrong classroom, but the faces looking at me told me otherwise.

I then snapped my neck round to the teacher's desk, worried that I'd arrived late and interrupted the lesson, but the desk was empty. Silence and a sea of faces were my only clues. For the first time in weeks, my cheeks felt hot. No one said anything. They just kept looking at me. I couldn't quite identify what their faces were saying. If I didn't know any better, I would have said that they looked scared. I was just about to open my mouth when the teacher walked in and the moment was broken.

It seemed like everyone. having been so transfixed by me a moment ago, was suddenly very keen to have an excuse not to look in my direction. Briggs. Everyone called each other by their surnames here for some reason. He was pretending not to hear me. Breaks! What? He only half turned to look in my direction.

Brakes was generally alone, and he'd been distantly friendly to me in my first couple of weeks, probably because he couldn't pretend that he had other friends to talk to. What the hell was that? Don't know. Briggs. He turned back to his desk. Briggs, I swear to God. Look, just drop it.

I can't drop it if I don't know what it is. I was struggling to keep my voice down. The teacher started taking attendance. What did I do? You did what he did. What, who did? Here, sir. What hooded?

Walters. And who the hell is that? Seriously? Has no one told you? Briggs was looking increasingly uncomfortable, and he shifted in his chair. Told me what? Here, sir. Sir, sir.

A few eyes were glancing round at me. Briggs, what the hell is going on? Look. Briggs shifted his entire weight now to face me again, and I was shocked to see the same look of fear that had been facing me before. You started here three months. late, right? Ever wonder why a space suddenly opened up after three months? It's a competitive course. Every seat in this building is worth an arm and a leg. Someone dropped out. Someone died. Walters. Walters died. You're sitting in his seat right now, and every morning he would stroll into class,

listening to his walkman, whistling that exact tune that you just whistled and sit down in that seat. You get it now? The teacher called for us to be quiet. I could see in his face. I could see in his face, that he knew the exact conversation he was silencing. I no longer felt so comfortable in that wooden chair. I had become acutely aware of just how misshapen it was for my body. In fact, looking around the room, it dawned on me just how much of a divide there was between myself and my classmates.

It wasn't like there was a huge black line drawn between myself and the others, but there were little things. Everyone had their bag on the floor, but they all seemed to be as far away from me as possible. In fact, each chair was angled ever so slightly away from me, and everyone had their pencil cases and bottles on the side of their desk furthest from myself. It was like they were trying their very best not to even accidentally glance at me. I shrank back into my chair and decided that it would probably be best to keep a low profile. At break time, I made no effort to go and talk to anyone.

Instead, I sat at the bottom of the main staircase with a notebook open on my lab. I'd been playing a Japanese copy of Castlevania, which had somehow wound up in a video store in town. And so I was going through and sketching out every monster that I had encountered. I wanted my notebook to look like the explorers ones from the olden days. the guys who would travel the world sketching and writing about plants and animals. Since I couldn't understand any Japanese, it meant that I could just make up all the descriptions for the different monsters myself. This particular monster was quite a simple one, just a floating ball of fire that would chase you around the castle until you swiped it away with your sword.

It was drawn in no time, but I ended up wasting most of recess just staring at the blank space above it. trying to come up with a name. Frustrated, I slammed the notebook shut and got up from the stairs. I had been sat directly opposite the front doors to the school, and so I glanced out of them as I started to walk away. The street was empty, except for one man. He was wearing black leather work boots, which looked so heavy that he could almost have been part of the asphalt he was standing on.

All his clothes were black too. He must have been a large guy already, but he had so many layers on to protect him from the cold that he had inflated past the size of any normal man. His face was hidden under fur, hood, hat, and scarf. But in the narrow slit of exposed skin, I could see eyes, too small for his hulking frame, staring right through the doors at me. I ran, almost tripping over myself as I rounded the corner. If anyone had asked me why I was running or who I was running from, I don't think I could have explained it. I just knew in that moment when my eyes met those eyes, that I was in danger. So much for keeping a low profile.

I got to my class a good five minutes before anyone else did, so I took a seat in the back of the room and tried to slow my heart rate. Why was I so scared? He was just some guy waiting outside the school, probably waiting to pick up his kid or something. It's not like he could have got in anyway. I didn't think. I couldn't focus in any of my lessons that day.

Try as I might, I just couldn't shake the conversation I'd had with Briggs that morning or the man stood outside at recess. Whenever I'd finally forget about one, the other would bubble up to the surface. I sought solace in my notebook, going back to amend my older monster drawings. and staring blankly at the page for the fireball creature. It helped, and so when lunchtime came around, I found a quiet spot to sit and draw on my own. I couldn't face going to the main staircase again

in case that man was still there. Stupid, I know. So I went to my locker to wrap up warm and sat outside the back of the building by the garbage bins, staring out into the never-ending forest. I had been drawing there for maybe 20 minutes, when the bin sneezed. I stared at it, incredulous.

There was no way that just happened. There it was again, a second sneeze, just as high and girlish as the first one. Very quietly I closed my notebook and rose to my feet, staring at the bin. Something was in there, something sinister. I quietly hooked my fingers under the lid and gave an almighty yink, throwing the thick layer of snow off the top.

Something screamed. Heart hammering I peered inside to see. Nothing. Just a few sodden black bigs. Don't tell me you're that hungry. Now it was my turn to scream. I jumped back to see a girl making her way out from behind the bin, dusting the snow off her legs. Most of her was buried under layers of coats.

the lower half of her face hidden behind a scarf. A few locks of platinum blonde curls had escaped her head and were dancing in the wind. It sneezed. No way. Her eyes opened so wide they almost looked too big for her face. Yeah, I was sitting here drawing and... And?

It was you, wasn't it? She burst out laughing. After a moment, I joined in. Still laughing, I shut the lid and... picked up my abandoned notebook from the snow. Our laughter faded, and we stood facing each other with a smell of garbage hanging in the air. I started to wonder how long it would take until she realized that I was the guy who now sat in Walter's seed.

Well, let me see it then. See what? You're drawing, dummy. Oh, right. Um, I guess. I mean, it's not done or anything, and I can't think of a name. This isn't my best notebook either. I have another one at home that I...

She snatched the book from my hand and started flipping through the pages. Her smile quickly disappeared and her eyes widened again. This time though, it didn't seem like she was mocking me. We stood there for a minute in silence, her turning page after page, as I waited for the inevitable moment when she would put two and two together about who I was and awkwardly excuse herself. Finally, she got to the last page. the one with the fireball.

After a moment of staring at it with the same wide-eyed expression, she snapped out of her trance and grinned at me. Willow wisp. What? Willow wisp. That's what that one is.

That's what you should call it. I stared blankly at her. Oh, come on, don't tell me you haven't heard of a willow wisp. In this town of all places. What do you mean in this town? Ooh, story time! She squealed and did a little dance. The movement made her trainer start flashing bright blue and red lights,

as if they too were excited to tell a ghost story. She noticed me looking. You like him? I think so. I was still a bit too shy to properly compliment her. Sit down, sit down. We'll have to go in soon. And so we kicked a clear patch of snow against the wall and sat down side by side.

She sat first and I settled about a foot away from her. She shuffled over so her arms were touching. You ever look out across the lake? Yeah, pretty much every day. No, but like, really look. Like when you just stand by the water's edge and just stare out there until you forget about school and friends and home and even time. Yeah, I do.

She seemed taken aback slightly and looked at me with a surprise smile before continuing. Well, they say that some nights, if you look out far enough, you can see a light, just a small one, somewhere over the water. Okay.

Everyone sees something different in that light. Some men see treasure, a light guiding them to riches beyond their wildest dreams. Some people see a guide home when they're lost. Some people see love. Some see people. people they used to love. She paused, looking almost sad. Some people see escape, a way out,

a place where they can stop, become something else, something normal. What is it really? The light. It's just a trick. It doesn't really exist. People follow it and get lost, lost forever. Is that what happened to Walters? His name caught in my throat slightly. She nodded after a moment. She nodded after a moments thought. Yeah, it is. His parents think he's still alive, but come on. She gestured out at the snow-laden forest in front of us. Who could survive in that? No, he's gone. Chase the light, just like all those kids who came before him. What kids? Before I knew it, she was skipping off round the corner of the building, the opposite direction that I was heading in. I'm Lucinda, by the way.

She paused just before disappearing out of sight. Her trainers were flashing blue and red again. Call me Lucy. I'm Harrison. Call me Harrison. See you around, Harry. And with that, she was gone. As I walked back to class, I had a smile on my face.

I couldn't for the life of me remember what had gotten me so on edge that morning. For the next two weeks, in fact, I didn't think. I didn't think once about the man who had stared at me outside of school. I went to class every day, listened to my walkman, drew in most of my lessons, then would go outside to sit by the bins with Lucy at lunch. I'd finish the day with a smile on my face, go home and play video games,

and go to bed thinking of what to talk about with Lucy the next day. We didn't have any classes together. She was part of the drama department, lighting or something. And so she spent most of her time on the opposite side of the school to me. I can't remember ever seeing her anywhere except outside at lunchtime. But I didn't mind. It was nice to have someone who didn't stare at me like everyone else. They've got a bet going, you know.

Who does? Like everyone. They're all arguing about how long I'll last. What, until the willow wisp comes to get you? She waved her hands around with spooky wiggly fingers. That or I drop out. They don't think I've got any friends. Well, you don't, do you?

You're funny. We sat in silence for a moment. I noticed that where before only our arms had been touching, we now had our legs leaning together as well. I still hadn't seen the bottom half of her face under that scarf. Can I show you something? Yeah, sure. Anything.

I cringed. I sounded too keen. All right, you have to promise you won't laugh, okay? It's not very good. Of course, I promise. Pinky swear? She took off her glove and extended her pinky finger out towards me. How old are you?

All right, fine, I won't show you. I swear, I swear, I swear. I swear. I grabbed her hand before she could put the glove back on. Her fingers were cold to touch and slightly damp. I giggled slightly when we locked fingers. She hit me on the shoulder You said you wouldn't laugh Sorry, sorry, I won't

I promise Lucy reached into her bag And pulled out a notepad And looked older than mine Leather bound with slightly yellow pages She held it up close to her face And flipped through it Not letting me see what was inside

Until she found the right page She took a deep breath And held it out to me Here The page was laid out identically to my own notebook. The right page was covered with writing about the drawing on the left page. A freakish man-fish hybrid grinned up at me, covered with intricately sketched scales, so real that the light seemed to dance off the slimy gills. The most terrifying thing, however,

was the head. It had the face of an angler fish realized in eerie detail, with a giant slack jaw, dead eyes and a piercing light dangling inches away from its waiting mouth. It was a long time before I said anything. You drew this. Yeah. I've been working on it for a couple of weeks now since I saw yours. I was too scared to show you. I suddenly felt ashamed of the drawings in my own book.

This is... Why don't you study art? Oh, I'm not that good. No, seriously. I look back at the page. This is incredible. Really, it's... But there was something else in the image.

Something lurking just below the graphite. I couldn't put my finger on what it was. It was almost like recognition. But I couldn't find the words. The bell sounded before I could. That night when I was walking home, the man came back. It was faster for me to stick to the main road back into town and walk with all of my classmates,

but I had a habit of cutting down to the lake and skirting along a little footpath that ran beside the water's edge. I could avoid most of the stairs from other people and look out across the lake. A lot of the time, I wouldn't think about anything. Sometimes I would think about Lucy. I wasn't quite sure what to make of her.

She was my only friend, and I was starting to get the telltale signs that there was possibly something more there. That said, I still knew almost nothing about her. I assumed she was a bit of an outcast, too, because whenever I would try to talk about school, she would avoid the subject or turn the question back on me. I felt like I had told her my life story,

received almost nothing in return. I was so deep in thought looking out over the lake, but I walked straight into something solid. I cracked my temple against it so hard that my headphones fell off. off and dropped to the floor. Off balance, I stumbled back and caught my heel on a tree root and went sprawling in the muddy snow. My head snapped back and caught a stone. My hand immediately went to the back of my head. I couldn't tell whether it was wet from snow or blood. Before I could bring my fingers to my eyes to check, I caught sight of what I'd walked into. At first glance,

you would have thought he was a tree. Up close, he was so much taller than he was. He was. had been on the day he looked at me through the window. Six foot, six and a half, seven. Every time I tried to put a number on it, he seemed to grow a few inches. A wind ripped through the forest and swayed every tree around him, but he remained motionless, still staring down at me with those small dead eyes between his scarf and hat. I'm... But the words never came.

I didn't know whether to apologize. I'd introduce myself, or tell him I was more scared than I'd ever been before. I could hear the muffled dripping of blood falling into the snow right behind my head. All he had to do was lift one of those giant workboots, and I would be crushed so deep into the mud that the police would have no hope of ever finding me. Maybe that's what happened to Walters, whispered a voice in the back of my head. That was all it took for me to be up and running. I scrambled back along the path, lurching from side to side to side.

side. My head was pounding and the motion was making me woozy. A rock gave away under my foot and I went sprawling. My knee jarred against something and refused to help me get back up. I looked back and stopped dead. The path was empty. Snow was kicked up and muddied all over where I'd just been running, but past that was nothing but trees. In fact, my footprints ended right at the base of a thick, dark tree where my walkman lay in a tangled mess. I got to my feet, spinning this way and that, looking out through the darkening trees. There was nothing. No one. My head was swimming. I looked ahead, feeling nauseous from the movement. I approached the tree uneasily. I wanted to touch it just to be sure it was only a tree,

that my eyes weren't hiding danger from me. But I chickened out. Instead, when I scooped my walk, out of the snow and dashed off home as fast as my pulsing head would allow. I couldn't sleep that night. I managed to bandage up the back of my head before Mom and Dad got home and wore a beanie over it to hide the wound from them. Probably would have been a good idea to go to the hospital and get myself checked for a concussion. I was too embarrassed, too scared to tell them what happened. I just couldn't get the events straight in my head.

I lay awake telling myself that I had fallen, hit my head. and the impact made me see the man standing there. That was what happened. I kept the bandage on for about a week, getting up early every morning to shower and change it for a new one. Fortunately, the headache went away after a couple of good night's sleeps, but I kept the wound hidden anyway just in case. My parents didn't notice a thing.

Neither did anyone at school, actually. Well, no one except Lucy. Who won? I stared blankly at her for a moment. Her eyes smiled at me from behind a couple of loose curls. She reached out and tugged on a small strip of bandage that had somehow poked its way out from under my hat. Oh, that.

Yeah, not my proudest moment. Who was he? He was about 40 feet tall and strong as a tree trunk. Wait, let me guess. He was a tree trunk. I shrugged and blew air out of my mouth. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. I have to say, I'm impressed you managed to hit the back of your head against a tree.

Well, it wasn't really the tree that did it. It was a panic scramble as I ran away from it. Every word that comes out of your mouth somehow manages to be less heroic than the last. It's an art form. We talked for a little while longer before going in. It was only when I was walking home that I started to wonder how she could have known that I had hit the back of my head. All she could have seen was a small corner of bandage poking out from under all my winter layers. I meant to ask her about it the next day, but she had something to ask me first that made me forget all about it.

Do you want to come to mine today? You're what? My space station just got it renovated. You're stupid. You're stupid. What did you think I was talking about? I don't. I just didn't think that...

So, do you want to come around then? I mean, my parents will be expecting me home. You don't have to stay for long. My dad will be coming back late, but you'll probably want to be gone by the time he gets in. It'll be dark. You walk home in the dark every day. Yeah, from school, not from... Where do you live?

North side of the lake. I felt my stomach turned slightly, though I wasn't quite sure why. Town was to the south. No one lives on the north side. Stop being a dick and accept the invite. I felt myself go red. When she said, it like that, I suppose she had a point.

This was my chance to see if I could get somewhere with her. Besides, and all the time I'd known her, I still hadn't got a proper look at her face. She took my silence for a cent. All right, meet me on the path by the water after school. She scooped her bag up out of the snow. And don't be late. The sky was a brilliant orange as I walked out of the main doors. It lit up all of the pines with a glow so warm.

You would have thought they were smoldering in the evening snow. Now one looked twice as I cut down away from the main road towards the lake. I gave them the creeps, and I knew it. To be honest, all their staring had been giving me the creeps, too. It was nice to be away from it. The path was empty. The well-trodden route heading south beckoned me invitingly, but I bit back my nerves and looked north instead.

It was almost impossible to pick out. path from undergrowth. But here, a hundred meters along or so, stood a wrapped up figure waving at me. I grinned, forgetting my apprehension almost immediately and scrambled over towards where Lucy stood. I could hear her giggling as I struggled to keep my balance. Do you walk here every day? Looks like no one's used this path in years. To be honest, I normally cut across the lake. The lake? Lucy, that's dumb. I don't mean to tell you what to do, but seriously, that's, that's dumb. The ice isn't that thick, and in the dark, you can't see where the thin ice is until you're standing on it.

By then, it's too late. I've lived here a while, okay? I know what I'm doing. She stopped by the water. I could see her trainers flashing in the snow. Let me show you. No. Come on, don't be such a dweeb. It isn't even dark yet. Lucy, no, I'm not walking on there. You shouldn't be either.

Fine. We'll go the boring way, then. I could tell she was annoyed, so I did my best to relieve some of the tension as we walked. So what is there to do at your house? Got anything on VHS? Got anything on what? VHS, you know, videos? You mean like television? Um, sure, I guess.

No, sorry. I've tried to get one, but Dad says no. Well, you could maybe come to mine next time instead. You're what? My space station. With that, we were back on good term. We didn't really talk the rest of the way, but we didn't need to. Kind of like when you see your family for the first time in a long time,

and you run out of things to tell them about. You just take a moment and enjoy them being physically there with you. I felt myself smile. Lucy was a bit weird, but I guess I was too. It just felt nice to have someone to be a bit weird with. The shack seemed to appear out of nowhere. One second, I was looking at a dense patch of forest, and the next, there was a small wood building a few feet in front of me. It took a lot of restraint not to say anything.

My first reaction was fear. It looked like the kind of cab in a group of teenagers would stay at in a crappy horror movie. My next impulse was to make a joke about it, but I knew immediately how rude that would be. Lucy inviting me here felt like a really big deal for her. just like how it felt like a big deal when she showed me that fish monster drawing in her notebook. Thank you. She looked confused. For what?

Inviting me, I guess. You're kind of my only friend. Yeah, same. We stood there a moment longer, smiling at one another on the doorstep of this little shack in the middle of the darkening forest. There were no sounds at all. If we both held our breath, we probably could have heard the snowflakes touching the ground. Very slowly, Lucy reached up to her head and lowered her hood. There were several golden curls poking out from under her hat.

And as she then pulled that back, hair sprung out like fireworks, falling to land on her shoulders. She paused with her fingers on the scarf, still covering the bottom half of her face. Her eyes looked away. Promise you won't laugh. I held out my pinky finger. Promise. The scarf fell to the floor. Lucy's jaw was crooked.

Her bottom row of teeth stuck out in front of the top, and her chin protruded out further. One side of her face was indented slightly, causing the bottom half of her mouth to be slightly misaligned. It looked as someone had smashed her jaw at an early age. and allowed it to heal in its contorted state rather than take her to a doctor. A tear was running down her cheek. You can leave now if you want to.

You're a nice guy. I'll always remember that. I tried to find the words to say to her, but they all stuck in my throat. None of them felt good enough. Instead, I took a step forward and kissed her. Her lips were cold and a little salty. When I pulled away, I saw her expression was both the happiest and saddest I had ever seen. I leaned in to kiss her again. The door to the shack flew open, drenching us in yellow light.

I jumped back from Lucy and world round to see a hulking dark figure in the doorway, tall as a tree trunk and darker than the night sky. He was wearing the same heavy black boots. that he'd worn the day I saw him outside school. The same boots as the day I'd walked into him on my way home. The same boots that were now striding towards me. He had a torch in one hand and a heavy-looking mobile phone in the other. I grabbed Lucy and ran.

As difficult as the path had been to navigate in the sunset light, it was almost impossible in the dark. All I had to help me see was the glowing beam of a man's torch and Lucy's flashing trainers. Red, blue, red, red, Blue. We fell and went sprawling several times, and each time my chest at the ground I could feel the rhythmic thumping with a man's approaching steps. Lucy! His long legs were gaining on us. Baby, come back to Daddy. We need to have a little talk.

Lucy sobbed inarticulately, but that noise was enough to put the pieces together for me. He was the reason she never brought friends home. He was the reason she was the reason she was had a busted jaw. He had the same eyes as the monster in her notebook. I hauled Lucy back to her feet and kept running. Harry, Harry, the lake, the lake, please. I stumbled again and cursed out. Ah, shit, fine. Yeah, the lake, go. We darted off the path, down the short slope to the ice's edge. Lucy shot straight onto it, but I hesitated. Looking out in the darkness, I could see that the fog that had been creeping along the banks earlier had thickened and spread. Out in that mist, in the darkness,

there was no difference between what's in front of you, the sky, and the ice. Everything blended into everything else. I could see her trainers flashing in the darkness. The torch lit up the world around me, and another bellow echoed out over the ice. I snapped and ran out onto the lake, almost slipping over straight away. Lucy's hand found me in the fog and pulled me out further. She was running wildly

With no real thought or direction We would only see a few feet to either side And try as I might I couldn't tell if the ice under our feet was white or black The only things I could see clearly were her flashing trainers Lucy Lucy stop stop Crazy do you know what he'll do if he catches us Shut up stop wriggling Lucy stop it

What? Your shoes he'll be able to see them through the fog You've got to slow down and stop them from flashing Jesus. I let go of her arm and we stood for a moment catching our breath. We could hear the ice yawning as her dad made his way out onto the surface. His heavy footsteps softened lightly, but they still sent shockwaves out. I was suddenly very aware that I couldn't see the shore anymore.

In fact, I wasn't even sure which direction would come from. Lucy! His voice boomed out from everywhere at once. The banks of the lake parroted at about. to us. Lucy, baby, where are you? Lucy clamped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide, staring at me. I put a finger up to my lips and geared out into the fog. If I could just see the light of his torch. Lucy, I just want to meet your little friend. He must be lovely if you're so keen on him. There, a light, very faint.

this way and that. Those stories of the willow wisp drifted back into my mind like fog over the ice. Honey, come here. I'd hate something here. The light dropped downwards and disappeared with an almighty cracking sound. Lucy pulled away from my arm running off into the fog in the direction of the sound. Dad, no! Lucy, wait!

But she was already disappearing into the darkness. I ran after her. seeing only the blue and red flashing of her trainers. We stopped by a hole in the ice. Wider than the pair of us were tall. We were running so fast that we almost went into the black water ourselves. Lucy was crying. Lying next to the hole with a torch and phone that her father had been carrying,

Lucy started to take her coat off. Lucy, you can't. She threw it to the floor and bent to untie her shoes. Lucy, stop, you can't go in there. I have to. He's my dad. He's more than twice your weight, and that water can't be much above freezing. I have to try. She pushed me backwards.

Even if you get him to the surface, how are we pulling him out? And even if we get him out, what do we do with him? Where do we take him? Shit, I can't. I have to. She was grabbing at her hair, pulling at it, panicking. Lucy stopped. Lucy. I pulled her into a tight hug. Lucy, we're not getting him out.

We're not. His phone's on the ice. We have to call the police. Police? She looked at me, blurly. Please, come on. I stooped over by the hole in the ice and grabbed the phone. I pulled Lucy back away from it as I dialed the number for the emergency services.

Let me talk to them. It's fine. I can talk to them myself. Let me talk to them. You don't even know his name. I wanted him. to argue, but I knew it wouldn't help. I handed the phone across to her. We stood there shivering in the darkening fog by the hole in the ice and waited. Lucy had told them all they needed to know,

and was holding the line open as we waited. Time itself seemed to be frozen. I couldn't tell whether we had been waiting there out on the ice for seconds or hours. With nothing to see except one another, and the gently sloshing slate black water in the hole, we could have waited there forever. But forever didn't come. Red and blue lights faded into view, dimly at first, but growing brighter until all the world around us seemed to be flashing. Stay here. She picked up the discarded torch off the ice. Flash this on and off, and I'll lead them over here. Lucy, I... Yeah, I know. Me too.

The flashing of her trainers blended into the flashing lights. in the fog as she walked away from me. I looked back down to the hole, or where the hole used to be. Now all I saw was the even dark white of the ice. It couldn't have frozen over that quickly. Surely, I spun around, flicking the torch on, scanning the ice. But the bean was washed away into the fog before it could go more than a few feet. Lucy?

Lucy, where are you? The ice beneath me shift. I took off running along the ice, heading straight towards the red and blue flashing lights. No matter how far I ran, they didn't seem to get any brighter. I could have been running for seconds or for hours when I found the hole. Lucy! I ran to the edge of the water. Down there, in the cold black water, I saw two tiny lights flashing red and blue,

red and blue. I pulled my coat off. The water was not far above freezing. I threw my shoes away. Even if I got her to the surface, I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull her out. My shirt buttons popped off. You can't save her, my brain screamed.

I was in my underwear by the water's edge. My bare feet were screaming from the cold. I hesitated. Her trainers flashed one more time from the deaths. I dived in. Any breath that I had been holding was wrenched from my lungs immediately by the cold. None of my muscles worked.

I was screaming silently at myself to swim, but my body barely moved. Water flooded my nose and made me cough out half of the air from my lungs. I writhed around, forgetting which way was up and which was down. I kicked out and my foot found ice and suddenly I remembered where I was,

where I was going. Lucy was there. Just on the edge of the abyss, her wide eyes found mine, and I felt a warmth flowing through my body. Now I could swim. Now I could save her. Down I went, sinking further and further into space. The blackness was infinite. The cold was impossible, but there, just out of my reach, was Lucy, sinking further and further.

Her hand was inches away. The water felt warmer, the closer I could. got to her. With one last kick, I closed the gap and wrap my fingers around. Pondweed. Lucy was gone. There was no hand. No flowing curls, no flashing trainers. Only the silty bottom of the lake. Now my lungs started to scream. The last of my breath left my body in a panic. I felt as if all the air had been squeezed out of me. Reality dipped in and out. My foot found the bottom of the lake and pushed off. I swam up, up to where the hole had been.

My blurred vision could just about make out a dark shape on the surface. Halfway up, the convulsion set in. I was shivering so hard that it was almost impossible to move, and my lungs were ripping my insides apart in panic. My head struck the underside of the ice. I was dimly aware that a light was flashing very close to my eyes. With the last of my strength, I looked up and saw two pairs of feet standing over me, one pair of heavy black boots, and one pair of flashing red and blue trainers.

In unison, they walked away as I sank back into the darkness. I couldn't tell you how long I've been down here. It could have been seconds. It could have been years. I'm drowning, but will never pass out. I'm freezing, but will never die. Walters is down here too. If you dug around in the silt, I'm sure you would find hundreds, maybe thousands of kids.

Everyone with their eyes still wrenched open, looking up at the ice, trying to get one last glimpse of light to draw them up out of the black water. knowing that it will never come. It's time to rest on our dark journey. We thank you for joining us. If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions of our audio program, please visit the nosleeppodcast.com

to learn about our season pass program. 25 episodes, each over two hours long, and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999. On behalf of everyone at the No. sleep podcast. We thank you for listening. Join us again next week when the journey resumes its descent into the sleepless night. This audio production is copyright 2017-2018 by Creative Reason Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of

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