The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S11E06

Episode Date: July 8, 2018

It's episode 06 of Season 11. On this week's show we have five tales about wicked water, repellent relatives, and diabolical deals. "The Tunnel Boy"‡ written by Liam Phillipson and performed by Kyle Akers & Peter Lewis. (Story starts around 00:02:20) "Full Bloom"† written by Tadd Mecham and performed by Jessica McEvoy & Addison Peacock & Nikolle Doolin. (Story starts around 00:24:20) "Blind Contract"† written by Molly Lankford and performed by Addison Peacock & Armen Taylor & Nichole Goodnight. (Story starts around 01:01:20) "Good Strawberries"† written by LP Hernandez and performed by Atticus Jackson & Mick Wingert. (Story starts around 01:20:30) "It Came Out of The Rain"¤ written by Marcus Damanda and performed by Jesse Cornett & Mike Delgaudio & Nikolle Doolin & Jessica McEvoy & Addison Peacock & Atticus Jackson. (Story starts around 01:47:20) Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast   Click here to learn more about the Chilling Tales Anthology Kickstarter   Click here to learn more about Liam Phillipson   Click here to learn more about LP Hernandez   Click here to learn more about Marcus Damanda   Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone Audio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡ & Jesse Cornett¤ "The Tunnel Boy" illustration courtesy of Hasani Walker 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

This audio program presents horror which is frightening and disturbing. You left us into your mind at your own risk. The sunlight fades to darkness. The frightful tales creep into your mind. It's time to give you to because tonight there will be... 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 five tales about wicked water, repellent relatives, and diabolical deals. I hope our many North American listeners enjoyed their national celebrations this week. And with plenty of summer still ahead of us, I know a lot of you enjoy reading horror books, be it on the beach or wherever you find yourself. So with that in mind, I'd like to make you aware of a new Kickstarter in support of a great collection of horror stories. It comes to us from our friends at Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. It will feature 30 new original scary stories from an outstanding group of authors, many of whom you've heard on this podcast.

Their plans include not just a print version of the book, but also a fully produced audiobook version. Check the show notes for a link to the Kickstarter campaign and help them make this project a reality. But you don't have to wait to turn five stories into the audio format. We have them for you now. The tape is in the machine. The stories are ready, so let's press play.

In our first tale, we meet a college student whose campus has a unique design feature. But as we learn from author Liam Philipson, the passageways beneath the school can be a convenient way to get between buildings, as long as you don't get lost. Performing this tale are Kyle Acres and Peter Lewis. So keep your wits about you when you're down there, lest you meet the tunnel boy. There's a set of tunnels underneath my school. They stretch across the housing side of campus, elevators leading to each of the dorms. Stray pathways lead to small shops, my campus post office, the dining hall, and a few rooms dedicated to clubs. They're not the tidiest, with pipes jutting out of the walls and empty, greasy garbage carts smelling up the corridors.

but the tunnels aren't scary. Everything is well lit and reasonably clean. There's at least one map per corridor, keeping the labyrinth easy enough to navigate. Usually. I was making a late-night run to one of the campus shops for, God-Nose-what, potato chips, I think. After one in the morning or so,

the tunnels are always emptied out. Most of the more reasonable students had long since checked in for the night, so I didn't have any company as I made my way through the halls. lined with event posters and club advertisements. I'm not sure where or when I took the wrong turn. All I remember is a feeling of unease, which turned into the realization that I'd been walking for too long without reaching the store.

Thinking I'd see some familiar wall mural or advertisement, I tried turning around and retracing my steps. None of the murals made sense. Each mural felt familiar, but I couldn't remember its place in the labyrinth. what turn or distance at mark. I kept trying to retrace my steps, certain that I'd figure it out eventually. Instead, the tunnels grew stranger. I started seeing murals I couldn't remember, sloppy paintings of cartoon characters I didn't

recognize, tributes to bands I'd never heard of. I tried to read an advertisement for what I figured was a chess club. It was printed on that garish neon yellow paper clubs like to use, with a huge photograph of a bishop chess piece in the center. I'm not dyslexic, but looking at the small text on that yellow flyer in the too bright light of the tunnel, I understood dyslexia. Letters seemed to shift without moving, comprehension escaping me like broth through the tines of a fork. I started to panic. My legs moved me faster along paths I couldn't begin to recognize past nonsense murals.

When I tried to look at them, my experience with the chess club flyer repeated. I could see the image is just fine, but... Their contents wouldn't explain themselves. The proper avenues in my brain tangled with traffic. There was no phone signal as Steve, and the campus Wi-Fi was notoriously shitty down here. I begged for a dead end, praying that I'd come to some landmark or at least an opportunity to start making a map. Instead, my brisk footfalls changed from the hollow smack of shoes on concrete to a thin, wet slap. I looked down and saw the floor had grown damp, with a few tiny puddles scattered around.

flooding, exactly what I needed. Retracing my steps, I just found more flooding. To my distress, the puddles behind me seemed even deeper. I headed that way, reasoning that if I could find the source of the flooding, at least I'd have a stable point of reference. I'd been in the tunnels for about an hour. My shoes soaked through and my socks squelching when I noticed a coppery tinge in the liquid. By now it was about an inch deep. Any direction I went, it only got deeper. The walls were barren of murals now, and the few flyers were indecipherable, written in a language I'd never seen. You know those holographic images on cards or posters, where looking at it from a different angle gives you another image, the illusion of movement? That's kind of what I was dealing with.

Tilting my head or moving, reshuffled the letters, if they could even be called letters. When I looked at one for too long, it overwhelmed me, so I didn't. Two hours in. I know because my watch still work, though it was getting trickier to read. By now the flooding was up to my ankles. I noticed the tunnels changed shape. The square corridors rounded on the edges. I scooted around the edge to avoid the thin red liquid pooling in the center.

My feet were still cold and damp from being submerged for so long. The liquid was at least a foot deep now. It had gone from copper tinge to a stale peppermint red, violent crimson in the glow of the lights. I wondered at occasional white streets. I assumed it was water, but could it be some more esoteric or dangerous substance? I pushed the thought away, too much to worry about without the paranoia of poison. At this point, I was shivering, trying to stave off tears,

still holding onto some threat of hope that I might find my way bad. My mind was playing tricks on. I'd gotten lost in some unused part of the tunnel system that just happened to be open for maintenance. clearly a pipe had sprung a leak, spitting metallic water all over the section. Poison control or something would be down here soon, or I'd find a stairwell. I tried to ignore the facts that the lights were still on, bright as ever. In retrospect, I wish it had been darker. I looked at my watch.

Past 3 a.m. I sat down on the ground, leaning as far as I could against the curved tunnel wall to avoid the water, and finally broke down. I was so tired. I needed to use the bathroom. I shook out my shoes and socks, hoping it would somehow help. My socks were dyed a deep red, and my already worn shoes almost fell apart in my hands. And then a sloshing sound, slow and deliberate, and I froze where I sat.

Something huge cast a shadow on the floor, heading toward me from the tunnel on the right. Trembling in place, I sat terrified and helpless as it waded into view on thick legs. Imagine a cockroach standing six feet tall at the shoulder. cover it in a layer of human flesh, in a thin coating of skin, occasionally dappled with patches of thin, curly hair. It had six legs, trunks ending in soft deformed pads rather than feet. A meaty tail hung loosely from its dirty backside. When it turned its head toward me, a kind of primal panic gripped my spine and twisted hard.

Its face was human, and it looked a lot like mine. You're people like me, like I used to be. High-pitched, saccharine sweet, a child's words. Don't hurt me, the thing rolled its eyes, a moody teenager. Not lots like this, not here. It could talk. It was so much larger than me. I'm certain it would have crushed me to death in a second if it wanted to.

And maybe I would have led it. What did I have left to do at this point other than talk to it? This monster was the only friend I had, the only living thing I'd seen down here since this place all went to shit. Please help me. The thing cocked its head. What? I need to get out of here. I need to get back to the campus.

Its eyes lit up at the word. Campus. Edge. Edge. The edge of here. of the tunnels? Do you know where that is? It nodded, a slow, stiff gesture,

up and down with its nodded neck, moving almost without the faces notice. I stood up, nearly hitting my head on the side of the tunnel. Can you tell me where to go? The creature frowned. Can't explain the way from near the edge. It's really not an explaining thing, only from the center.

Please. Please, I need to get out of here. I need to get back home. The creature stared at me for a long moment, unblinking, and my body remembered the menace of its form. What if it decided to attack me? I could flee if I needed to, but where would that put me? I made a conscious decision to resist the urge to run.

Through the center, I can take you, maybe through to the head. Climb on. Without a second thought, I grabbed a fistful of the creature's long, dark body hair and pulled myself onto its back. I almost sank into the surplus flesh as I swung one leg and straddled the thing like an awful pony. We can walk now. And we began our little journey. We moved slowly along the tunnel, heading back the way I came from. The corridor fully rounded out as we moved.

Any remaining flyers or ads were plastered onto the edges, damp and indecipherable. Is there a building? I jumped. I hadn't exactly been expecting small talk. A building? Campus, campus. Oh. Maybe two, maybe three, maybe more.

Yeah. My fingers gripped its lumbering bolt tighter. There's a lot of buildings. Its voice hit excitement behind a poor mask of indifference. How long to the building? Sorry? Never mind, never mind. It shook its head so violently that for a second I thought it was going to buck me off.

Just want to, want to get to class on time. We're pretty short. The word class came out like a kidney stone. I thought I'd ask a question of my own. My voice trembling, I managed to spit it out. What's your name? my companion snorted. No further elaboration.

We walked like that for hours. I can't tell you how many because by this time my phone had died and my watch was as unreadable as the posters on the walls. Disgusting as it was, I was glad for the creature's company. The liquid now, fully red, rose up well past its huge ankles and almost to mine. I looked on as my grotesque steed opened its mouth too wide, an enormous tongue emerging. pushing aside folds of flesh.

From the end of the tongue protruded a limp penis, covered in sour liquids and threads of throat mucus. My hands tightened around the hair clumps as its penis, like a probiscus, began to sip at the liquid. As the creature drank hungrily, the penis grew more erect, until finally, with a loud echoing moan, it spewed. Streams of white in the water was the only thought I could put together. My companion swam like a sea turtle,

occasionally its back sank a few inches below the surface, sloshing cold liquid all over me. My pants were soaked, my shoes ruined, but I was beyond cleanliness. Eventually we reached a dead end. The red liquid, by this point I was beginning to think of it as blood, but even now I fear it could have been something worse. Rose almost to my knees. The center. I saw the dead end for what it was. A thin, vainy membrane stretched across the tunnel.

Tiny hairs curled out of its surface, writhing. Its surface beat like a thin drum, rattling with the muffled noises of something beyond. Is this how we get back to campus? Campus, here, here. Okay. I waited for something to happen, anything to get me out of here. You have to break it. It swam closer and turned its head around, eyes expectant.

My face staring into my face. Not enough sharp parts on this, friend. I looked down at my fingernails, immaculately trimmed, stained with blood and dirt. Without letting myself think about it, I clawed desperately at the membrane. My fingers drew blood. The membrane shivered, a shriek echoing in the distance. I grabbed damp, warm fistfuls until I was sure it was stretched to its limit. No dice.

When I pulled on the skin, more seemed to appear around the edges. It was never loose enough to give and never taught enough to break. Finally, I'd had enough. The first bite did almost nothing. I kept at it, sweat glands unloading into my mouth. Their acrid cargo mingling with the taste of copper, something I barely noticed now. Bile climbed my throat, and there was nothing I could do but let it come out. I kept chewing on the membrane, ignoring all sensation, until I felt it give way and let myself fall onto the creature's back.

still coughing up bile and the blood I'd swallow. This is how I stayed for five minutes or so, until I weakly sat up and looked over my work. I'd chewed a small hole. My hands reached out, independently of my mind, and ripped it open as far as they could manage. Skin doesn't tear the same way it does in the movies. It happened quietly, like a wet noise.

Once the hole was large enough, the creature did the rest, sticking its awkwardly large head through the membrane and forcing in its front legs. I ducked as the creature brought me through to the other side, and finally I saw the source of the shrieks and the murmurs. A Bosch painting, overwhelming and brutal. Everything covered in a thin layer of that same membranous skin. It hugged the walls and dangled in sheets down from the lights, casting the tunnel bright red.

A flashlight held against the palm in the dark. On top of the skin, clinging to the wall, in the ceiling and swimming in front of me, nightmares spun and dance, moaned and wet. Like lichens, raw muscles and tendons clung to the diorama of living meat. Struggled to take it all in. This new world shoved itself down my throat. An unwanted ideology of flesh and fluid. To my left, something with no eyes and no neck gummed at an asymmetrical wheel of meat with six malformed human heads as spokes.

It bit without teeth uselessly and furiously, a flurry of frustrated, noises. Chickens' feet poked out at odd angles from the sides of its body, steadying its struggling form on the tunnel's slope. Next to it, a face protruded from the skin's surface, a zit in the smoothness. Its uneven eyes stared me down, chalk white like the skin around them.

A huge tongue thrashed out of its thin mouth, ravenously tasting the wall, never looking away from it. To my right, a mobile joint sprouted two legs in an arm, mechanically torturing and picking it, a brightly lit, ball of flesh. I wasn't close enough to discern anything more. They took their time with it, taking no joy in its shrieks, showing no sign of speeding up or slowing down. Here in their veins formed valleys and mountains, the landscape of these creature's lives. These and too many more

bustled around me, busy, banal terrors. At the very end of it all, hundreds of feet away, a mouth larger than my companion. Dirty calcium spikes punched through the concrete, skin, floor and ceiling. It swallowed endlessly, a reverse gargoyle, drinking milky gore forever and ever. A tattered cloth banner hung limply from its jagged teeth, and I could just barely make out the words clumsily sewn on. The first words I'd read since this began. It said, as I am, I am as. I watched the banner flutter in and out, hot sweaty breasts that created clots of condensation all around the tunnel. Pulpy droplets that became rivulets and fed the river.

A cycle of blood. Evaporation, condensation, precipitation. Second grade lessons rushed my adult brain. I laughed and laughed more. Second grade. As the tears stung my cheeks and the world around me echoed, hundreds of twisted beings, no two alike, answered with cackling and howling

and soft sensual giggling. No two voices alone. Flesh rubbed on flesh, skin tore and healed and fed the river. We all laughed together, me and the ferrymen and our friends. The ones who didn't have mouths bobbed along, not knowing, but feeling. My veins throbbed with a new language, an academia of soft meats and stringing gristle, a language always known but never translated. My friends knew this language.

They had known for a very long time. It crushed them into pigments and painted a new picture, one that revealed all the forms flesh could know. As I laughed without purpose, soggy and fluent and aimless, floating toward the mouth. I recalled a trace of my old languages, and an epiphany entered my already bursting head.

All of the faces down here were familiar to me. Each one belonged to someone I knew, whether I'd just seen them around campus or they taught my classes. I turned left and stared straight into the eyes of my former statistics professor, a shambling wreck beyond hell. I had done pretty well so far all things considered, but this, it was just too much. Something in my brain folded in on itself, and my fingers, still burrowing deep in the ferryman's back, I blacked out. When I came to, the floor beneath me was dry, aside from the filth dripping

from my clothes. I scrambled to my feet, slipping on my own seepage, and immediately I recognized my surroundings. The tunnels I knew, leading straight to the stairs up to my dorm. I almost screamed with relief tears streaming down my face, and then I saw my ferryman. He was crying, too, but his eyes held no joy. He seemed almost painted onto the wall, a damper and rounder tunnel stretching behind him, fluorescent lights and smatterings of flesh tracing eternity. I looked at this horse-sized thing, all legs and lumps and beads of sweat, and could not muster disgust. Only pity. Overwhelming my heart like the grotesque. pesqueries of flesh had overwhelmed my senses. Payment for...

For this a friend to keep. Of course. It wanted some token of our interaction. This poor, pathetic thing wanted something to remember me by. Slowly I removed both my shoes, now little more than damp wads of deteriorating claw, and placed them in front of my Savior where he could reach them. He reached a stunted, soft-knuckled foot out of the wall, and pulled what was left of my shoes in through to his side, the barrier rippling. Skin started to grow in from all sides, and concrete followed.

The wall learning how to be a wall again. Whatever gash had been carved in the surface of this world and let me into that place was healing. As the space closed over, the creature gave me one last plant. Its face wet, its eyes wide, and thankful. It opened its cracked lips to say something, but before it could start, the skin. and concrete closed, and my ferryman was gone. Without my pitiful new friend to worry about, I quickly remembered the situation I'd just been in

and made a mad, clumsy dash up the stairs, entering the dorm coat and rushing into the hall, smelly and familiar and beautiful. I kept running, bile rising in my throat, tears staining my cheeks, stomping past the lounge, confusing a few late-night tabletop gamers. Out of the window I glimpsed the edge of the sunrise.

I threw open the bathroom door, and unable to make it to a toilet, vomited into the sink. My eyes shut themselves to keep from getting splashed. I coughed up strings of bile and small chunks of food for two minutes, the awful taste grounding me in this new, old reality. When I opened my eyes, there was a bit of blood in the sink, along with a few teeth,

a chunk of something that I couldn't identify. I panicked and felt around my mouth with my tongue. Aside from being coated in foul stomach juices, nothing was amiss. all my teeth were accounted for. Nothing was bleeding. And as I looked at the sink, dirtied with my cargo, I could swear for just a moment that it looked like something else.

Something that was trying its best to look like a sink. There are times when we crave solitude. Few of us want to live a life of isolation. It's a life shared with us by author Tad Meekam, a tale of two sisters living alone in a strange old house. struggling with ailments and the other simply struggling to survive. Performing this tale are Jessica McAvoy, Addison Peacock, and Nicole Doolin. So let's hope for the promise of spring when life returns to full bloom. Seventh day of winter. What might my life have been like

outside of these confines? What if Beatrice had never been born and we had never been sisters. What if the manor had not been constructed or my parents never wed? I suppose I would not exist then. Many nights, I believe this life would have been better, unlived. Fourteenth day of winter. I woke early to the harsh ringing of the bell from Beatrice's room. I removed myself from the warmth of my covers in a less timely manner than is appropriate, and began to draw the curtains of the entire second floor. Had Beatrice seen me, yawning and lolling about, she would surely have called me an uncaring sister. Perhaps early in the morning, it is a bit true. These mornings, when her condition gives her a spell, as mother often referred to it,

are my darkest of times. To wake and shut out the sun seems ungodly and primal, as if Beatrice and I are nocturnal beasts living in dank caverns in a forgotten wood. I often steal moments during these days, while preparing tea or retrieving a book from the library, to find a window and stand at the light. I weep often, and had I weep often, and had I wed, my husband would surely have thought me to be hysterical.

But I refuse the notion that anyone else in my position would do different. Wandering this pitch-black maze could drive anyone mad. Worse still is when Beatrice feels well enough during her spells to wander. Her condition illuminated by a soft candle as she sweeps through the cloud of black like a specter in a tomb. I retreat to my room on those days, locking the door and remaining in bed, ignoring Beatrice's knocks and inquiries. I tell her I've caught a cough and don't wish to worsen her condition with my illness. Then I listen to her drift away, the crack under the door returning to empty dark. Eighteenth day of winter. My sister requested my sister,

my presence at her bedside in deep night, and I travel to her room without my lantern, moving to my destination as assured as a blind woman, and too tired to let my mind drift to absurd curiosities and ghost stories from our youth. Jane, the strange whistle had gone from her voice, a sign I had begun to associate with her recovery from a spell. I rushed to her side and took her hand. B, I nearly fell into tears, as so often I do, and let her stroke my hair. Bee's skin was soft and snow-pale, the complexion of warm milk, and she often smelled sweet like an infant, the heated scent of clean, unmoving flesh, and the pure, saltless sweat she would bathe in while a spell worked her over. Her soft pink lips smiled.

Her kind brown eyes slit over her rosy cheeks. She brushed back her curled blonde hair with the gentle flourish of an albino hand and spoke with angelic sweetness, a bedridden angel. Sorry to worry you. Nonsense. I squeezed her hand. I'm so happy you're feeling better. I love you.

She said this, as if the words were payment for my labors. I would be lost without you by my side. And I love you. I offered a weak smile as my mind ticked around her statement over and over again. I would be lost without you by my side. Indeed. But I never had opportunity for any other life. Any suitor that came along to ask for my hand

Or simply to court me Would catch eye of Beatrice And her beauty and grace And once they discovered her condition And were told she was not well enough For the duties of a wife By then they would only regard me As one does a broomstick

Or a dishrag Disillusioned Mother had always told me from a young age that no man would ever court me for my looks. It did not matter how handsome my hair was pinned or how much rouge adorned my pallid flesh. I remained incredibly unremarkable like a gangly boy in skirts with crooked teeth

and a modelled complexion. But I would take my ugliness over my sister's ailment without any complaint. My suffering is not accompanied, need with physical pain. Mine is quiet and reserved. Mine is hidden beneath my plain flesh in a place only I know. And whenever I look into a mirror, I know it will always be the same face looking back at me. 25th day of winter. Beatrice felt in unusually high spirits this morning and burst into my room, squealing with delight at her marvelous idea.

Jane, shall we have a camp out? Her fingers were clasped together as if in prayer, and her straight white teeth were bared in an excited grin. Oh, do say yes! A camp out? I scoffed and pointed to the window. The drapes had blessedly stayed open for nearly a week, and out to the blankets of blinding, powdery snow. We will catch our death in an hour.

Now move off my writing desk. You've smudged my pages. I tugged my manuscripts from under her bottom and put them safely on my night table. Not outside, you nitwit. The dining hall's large enough to construct a fort, yes? Beatrice. We are grown women.

Imagine if Georgette entered to polish the silver and found us tousled on the floor under a ramshackle pile of bedding and furniture. She would wish to join us, I expect. Please. Please, Jane. I haven't had any fun in months. I, of course, opposed the idea harshly.

Two grown women frolicking about, telling fantasies well past their bedtime and falling into sleep on a wooden floor? Ridiculous. However, I have always had trouble telling Beatrice no, especially as she's so rarely in good spirits. Oh, all right. Beatrice rushed off, shouting in excitement as she went to forage for building materials.

I washed my face and prepared myself for the day. and the night. Beatrice had found our late uncle's memoirs, a haphazard collection of drawings and ill-penned fiction he'd given to our mother just before his passing. Within these pages, written poorly or not, were ideas and fancies that had caused my mother to gasp with fright or disgust. I do believe she meant to burn them

before her condition took her from this world as well. Yet, here they were. Look at this. Beatrice offered a page of yellowed stationary. At the center of the page was a headless figure seen through a large picture window, its hands resting on the glass as two children cowered from it into the corner. I looked at B with a hand over my open mouth. you remember?

Do I remember? Of course I remember. I'd hoped to forget. I looked at the page again, at Beatrice and I cowering from the headless figure. Mother wouldn't allow him to read to us again after this. I remember how frightening it was to see us in the drawing. It made the story almost feel like a memory over time.

I had trouble remember. if I had actually seen the headless man outside my window at night. Our night terrors nearly did mother in. I nodded. There are more. Beatrice sat a stack of pages on the hardwood floor. The title page had one word. Monstrous.

Monstrous indeed. Uncle Matthew's tales of monsters and phantasms were punctuated by the chill of the drawings and accompaniment. vulgarities and atrocities never before seen or uttered were contained in a handful of pages under the same roof as all of our childhood memories. The thought made me queasy, yet I still leaped through this horrid treasure.

Her eyes featured a blind woman who wandered the forest in search of children. When she happened upon them, and the children laid eyes upon her, they would be stricken blind and then drowned in the sludge of the bog. B read this one aloud. Much to my embarrassment, I found myself becoming somewhat distressed and stood to draw the curtains closed.

Afraid she might peek in on us? Hush you, we cannot chance the sun coming in in the morning if you have a spell. Her smile fell away. I returned to the pages. A starved brood contained the drawing of a large tiger, suckling ten hungry human children. The tiger ate them all at the end of the story, and Beatrice had gasped. I suggested we turned to another activity, as this story had set my imagination into a grim overworking of the disassembly of infantile flesh as they screamed at the mercy of the great cat. Beatrice would not relent. The candle lit our linen shelter in a soft orange glow,

the crystal of the chandelier winking in subtle sparkles above. Around us, the dark may well have been a deep forest. Beatrice drew the blankets around her and asked for another macabre tale. I read on, I had wondered what had crept into our uncle's mind in order to instill such strangeness. A small child depicted a scene of sexual violence so vivid, I had to toss the script aside and demand a new activity be found at once, or I should retire to my quarters for the night. Beatrice sighed then and wandered off for father's ivory chessboard. One last drawing caught my own.

eye, and I pulled the story free from the rest. Full bloom, it would seem Beatrice had more influence on this devilry than she'll ever know. Her spells had created these horrors just by existing. But I suppose I understood, as I pocketed the story and put the rest back in the ledger. I knew the seed of such imaginings that Beah. Beatrice's condition could plant. I might have penned the very same atrocities had my mind allowed for such creativity. I know, more than anyone alive, the taste of such fear. I know well the fear that the darkness will part and out of it may bleed a strange figure. She was a moment ago my sister, but is now, as my belated uncle put it, in full 30th day of winter.

Had I been stripped of pen and paper years ago, when mother passed and father took his own life, I would have followed closely in their footsteps. I often think this pointless journaling remains the only drive to force me from bed in the morning. Even so, I more often wonder what has kept my fingers from father's pistol, as it still remains in the bottom of his armwar. Why do I hesitate? For Beatrice? For myself? Perhaps it is simply the idea that Georgette would discover my slumped form in a scatter of gore, and she would surely be the one to clean it up. But if that were the only reason,

Could I not simply walk out into the tree line or step into the lake? Surely foul and fish would make quick use of my flesh before a single soul would know what had become of me. So why do I wait? 45th day of winter. Beatrice has been overcome with a spell of unrestrained proportions. Her screams caused poor Georgette or jet to flee, her arms waving above her head and tears falling down her plump old cheeks.

I do not suspect she will ever return. I have not slept since this spell began, nearly 48 hours ago, and have reached an exhaustion so advanced that sleep is now out of reach for the moment. Beatrice fell unconscious once the spell began to affect her face, the pain too tremendous to process, I suppose. And I have spent the last hour removing her blood-soaked bedding and carefully sponging her where I can. If she were aware that she lies naked and with no cover,

I would receive a scolding, and she would demand her clothing at once, no matter the pain or irritation to her condition. She is getting worse. I believe she may die. And I now fear for my own soul, as I understand how this realization has affected me. Relief. My disgusting brain has so callously informed me. You are feeling relief.

47th day of winter. I felt ill once I had reached the 72nd hour of her spell without a moment of sleep. I fell unconscious at her bedside. and woke sometime later. She was gone. So often I had seen this image that it should be ridiculous to feel little other than annoyance.

Still, I found myself overcome with a gripping fear and followed her trail of blood to the door. Squinting through the flicker of candlelight, I nearly broke into tears as I found her leavings snaking their way towards my room. Beatrice, I whispered her name,

knowing I did not want to attract her attention. I did not wish to see her appear like a ghost, the hum of candlelight tricking the eye and causing her apparition to go transparent as if she might dissipate at a harsh breath. I did not wish to hear the wet rattle of her breathing and the clicking of her dry and exposed. teeth. I stepped in the opposite direction, deciding I might allow a bottle of gin to accompany me

as I took refuge in one of the many guest rooms in the West Wing. I thought perhaps I might also stop at the library as well and collect a number of books. My heart raced as I crossed the manor with only the candle as my guide. The house groaned in the wind outside. reverberations that followed each beam and stud, and often gave the feeling of being in the bowels of a great sea vessel, the ocean pressing endlessly behind each curtain and closed door to be led in, the creatures beyond whispering indecipherable messages. With them, out in those glassy depths, I imagined Beatrice in bloom, As I hurried into the library, pressing an ear to the door to listen for any following footsteps,

I chose happy, sunlit tales to keep me company. It was then I was reminded of something my mother had told me. Beatrice is a very peculiar girl. Her condition is a very peculiar condition. If bedridden, she can be avoided from eyeline. and can be tended to through veils and bed sheets. But it is when your sister wanders during these spells that I find myself, unable to cross her without crumbling into hysterics.

She had dabbed at her eyes. It is not just the sight that frightens me so, but her words and her mystery. She vanishes into the dark, and I can often hear her laughter from behind my locked door. Years and years ago, men would have called her a witch. I believe that rudimentary term may apply. She's a vessel for something unseen.

I'd allowed my mother, drunk and babbling, to rest her head in my lap until morning, as Beatrice's footsteps continuously crossed by the two sets of double doors. Her whispers angry and wet, the sound of her voice carried through the hallways, as if an echo, and pulled me from this memory. My movements grew frantic as I hurried my way back into the darkness of the hallway towards the kitchen. In the dark, the house seems to grow, producing hallways of its own accord, and often convincing me I have turned full circle when the desired doorway finally material. materializes from that wall of black fog. I fear being lost in this house, as absurd as it may seem,

and left wandering the halls until I am overcome by exhaustion and starvation. I fear that Beatrice will come for me in that labyrinth, her bare feet padding over creaky floorboards and splashing in her own warm fluids. I fear that Beatrice will not die. as the rest of us die, and her flesh will spread apart, lifting away from her bones to expose their impossible white, and she will wander in her spell for all eternity. I fear that she will open up and never close again, and her sweet voice will be replaced by that guttural clutter of clicks

and chokes. She will wander by candlelight in slick garments, her blooming flowers. Her blooming flesh staining against the fabric of her blood-soaked gowns and leave a red trail of pain and insanity as she shifts through the dark. Should she succumb and wander this estate as something inhuman forever, her whispers and screams haunting the halls, I would hope to leave. I hope to have that strength. The kitchen is too large for a two. person home, and half of the room has gone unused for nearly a decade. Georgette had kept it immaculate, not a spot of dust allowed to rest on neither surface nor pan, but I imagine that will change in time.

She has not returned since Beatrice gripped her collar and pulled her close as her face split open, her skull and eyes beneath in a shriek of agony. I had watched Georgette run into the woods like a madwoman, her body covered in a wash of blood and spit, screaming into the night. She had run the opposite direction of the village in her fit, and I wonder whether she ever came to her senses. I do not know. Perhaps she is still screaming her way through that darkening tree line, like a banshee from a fairy tale. I gathered cheese and bread, a sack of apples, and a parcel of cured meat. After a moment of internal arguing, I snatched the bottle of gin after all. The last time Beatrice had a similar spell, she'd wandered the house for four days uninterrupted

while I sat in the second-story linen closet, too afraid to leave. I would never make that mistake again. The blue room was my destination. It was my mother's favorite guest room that she had decorated with bronzed tackle and enormous mounted fish, and she had painted the walls the color of the summer sea. I often go there when I miss her

and read her journals and her letters she'd sent father during the war. I can still feel her. if my own sadness is cavernous enough to swallow my preoccupations with practicality. I once spoke aloud to her and immediately burst into tears when I had the realization that I would never hear her voice again. It's on days like these I am convinced I heard the pistol fire in father's study once again and the muffled sound of his form crashing to the floor. I am brought back to the doorway where I watched the life leave his eyes so many years ago.

It seems that Beatrice's wanderings wake every such cruel memory, and the sweep of her lidless eyes uproot every phantasm that remains restless in the walls of this manner. I often avoid ghost tales for fear that they may be true. My sensibilities wear down. the longer I find myself in the dark, and I fear my sanity may one day leave me as it did my father. I left the kitchen, my own shoes and hands, so as to move without sound across the floorboards, and made for the guest wing through the entry hall. The marble flooring chilled my bared feet through my stockings, and I quickened my pace.

Father had meticulously designed the entry hall and had often sat in one of the armchairs in a smoking jacket with pipe in hand to admire his own architectural prowess. He was fond of the staircase in particular. It led up to the second floor into a lavish walkway with a sitting area high above the decorative marble flooring. From here, one had access to either side,

of the manor and a marvelous view of the gardens through a wall of stained glass windows in a most subtle shade of rose petal pink. At sunrise, the light pouring in above the main doorway, the entire entrance hall was gauzy and sparkling, as of straight from a dream. At night, however, the ceiling vanished above in a void of shadow and the moonlight only served. And the moonlight only served to cast human-like silhouettes in dark corners and around staircases. It felt like an entrance to somewhere cold and inhuman, welcome only to the boogey men that appear in cautionary tales. I rushed through and gripped the crystal door handle. Just as it turned, I heard a door on the walkway above creak open.

Shane. The whisper was past. around the room by the shadows, and I saw Beatrice's form in the doorway, her candle nearly out. Her silhouette was mauled by the flowering of her flesh, and I could hear her blood tapping on the wooden floor. You've left me in the dark, alone. Contemptuous.

Her voice was filled with a vicious anger. It was not her own. I must go. I opened the door and hurried inside. As I turned to shut it behind me, she had appeared at the foot of the staircase, and I let out a small shriek as the lock snapped shut. I don't feel well, B.

I don't want... I'll find a way in, Jane. You can't hide from us forever. I had no more time for her. her threats and ran, scattering two of my apples into the sitting area in a panicked sprint to the blue room. Once inside, I laid on the bed and cried like a child. My bounty still clutched in my arms. Beatrice laughed outside the door, 55th day of winter. I found Beatrice outside of the blue room. Her fair skin drained, and her face no longer a shock of white bone, and carried her to her bed.

She peered at me wearily, her eyes full of tears, and asked me to kill her. This was not the first time I'd heard the request, and had always admonished her for suggesting such a thing. But this day, after nearly starving to death and climbing and. to the garden to piss like an animal. I shared no sentiment. Do it yourself. She sighed then, hiccuping on her own grief, and ran her fingers along the completeness of her own face, and the closed seams along her arms. She wept. I found no tears left, and excused myself from the room, opening the drapes in the hallway just outside the door to stand in the sun. 58th day of winter.

Beatrice had convinced me to read to her last night in the entryway. She was once again in good spirits, seeming to forget her last spell completely and held to me like a little lost pup. I allowed it, though her touch has begun to repel me as of late, and read her one of our childhood stories she'd rummaged from the library. Our mother had read Little Girl Gone to Us every night as children, and it has found a special place in our hearts.

The little girl, her name Lilith in the story, but modified by our mother to either Beatrice or Jane, finds herself outside on a cold winter night. Every door she finds is locked, and not one stranger can be seen in the whole of the city. She wanders the streets, becoming very frightened when she realizes she may not find shelter at all and begins to cry. A great owl, the size of a grown man, appears and asks after her tears. Have nowhere to go, she tells the owl. Where do you wish to go?

The owl asks. Her great eyes peering down at the small girl. I just want warmth. Never have I received a task so simple. Come. And the owl envelops her in its great wings and takes her away. The story ends with only images of the girl warm in bed, with a mother kissing her forehead,

running in a sunny field and picking sprays of wildflowers and eating around a dinner table with a family. Once finished with the story, we had a conversation we'd replicated numerous times before. Beatrice sighs, as if refreshed by the memory this story had just conjured. Who do you believe is the owl, Jane? I answered as I had many times before. Death. I wonder if she asks solely to test the determination of my answer.

She's died in the street, and death carries her off to the afterlife, where she has a family and food and plays in the warm sun. No. What then? I believe it was a dream. Beatrice seemed to whimper, though her eyes remained dry. Sick in bed, when she had a dream about a life without. what she has. Then what point does the story serve?

At this, she paused, then turned to me. Things can always be worse than they are. Her smile was faint and forced, and I could only concede. I did not wish for an argument, though I do not share her sentiment. Things can always get worse. I opened my mouth to speak. Perhaps I had intended to ask how exactly our lives could possibly get any worse, but she began to bloom. The seams in her skin, along her cheekbones and down the center of her face, appeared as if penned in crimson ink.

Beatrice looked at me a moment. The lines seemed to pulse in rhythm. with her heartbeat, until they had pulled far enough apart to weep blood. The rosy complexion of her cheeks lifted away from her skull as a rosebud opens to the sun, and she began to scream in the pain. The curtain! And turned away from her bed. I walked to the door and pulled it gently shut behind me.

Her screams muffled by the thick mahogany. I listened to her thrash and beg. I prayed for some sort of end. Sixtieth day of winter. I had gone into the woods. I ran from Beatrice's screams and stumbled past the tree line in the frost and snow. My night clothes breathing in the frozen air and my lips fading to blue. The metal of Father's pistol was cold enough as to feel white-hot in my hand.

I let the menacing wind whip my hair about my shoulders, and I found a clearing among the white-trunked aspens. I disrobed the idea of neither God nor passer-by hindering the exposure of my flesh in its entirety, and I felt nature embrace me in its painful chast. I placed the pistol in my mouth, my lips sticking to the barrel, and closed my eyes. The crack of the gunshot jerked me from sleep, and I sat up in my bed. It had felt so real. I bask in the examination of this dream as I wait and absently listen for my sister to approach slowly from the dark.

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