The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S11E07

Episode Date: July 15, 2018

It's episode 07 of Season 11. On this week's show we have six tales about terrifying treasures, fractured families, and touching terrors. "Yes/No"† written by Jon Grilz and performed by Nikolle Doolin & Dan Zappulla. (Story starts around 00:02:40) "A Canister from the Ashes"† written by William Dalphin and performed by Kyle Akers & Erika Sanderson & Alexis Bristowe & Jeff Clement & Elie Hirschman. (Story starts around 00:18:00) "The Room Upstairs"¤ written by Leo Harrison and performed by Mike DelGaudio & Tanja Milojevic. (Story starts around 00:30:15) "The Baby Monitor"† written by E.Z. Morgan and performed by Mick Wingert & Nichole Goodnight & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts around 01:04:10) "Fapper"† written by Alix Reeves and performed by Matthew Bradford & Kyle Akers & Dan Zappulla & Nichole Goodnight & Mary Murphy. (Story starts around 01:12:35) "The Start of a Haunting"‡ written by Ashleigh Banks and performed by Jessica McEvoy & Atticus Jackson. (Story starts around 01:31:20) Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast   Click here to learn more about Abby Howard   Click here to learn more about Tanja Milojevic   Click here to learn more about Jon Grilz   Click here to learn more about William Dalphin   Click here to learn more about E.Z. Morgan   Click here to learn more about Alix Reeves   Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone Audio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡ & Jesse Cornett¤ "A Canister from the Ashes" illustration courtesy of Abby Howard 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. The sunlight fades to darkness. The frightful tales creep into your mind. It's time to give it to your fear because tonight there will be... Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. It's the No Sleep Podcast. I'm David Cummings. joining us. On the show this week we have six tales about terrifying treasures, fractured

families, and touching terrors. We have two new talented contributors joining the show this week, an illustrator and a voice actor. Our illustrator is Abby Howard. Abby creates the apocalyptic horror web comic, The Last Halloween, as well as the far less grisly graphic novel series, Earth Before Us. She's a writer, an illustrator, and a lover of both dinosaurs and the macabre. Thanks for your great art, Abby. Welcome to the show. Our voice actor is Tanya Milavich.

Voice acting is a passion of Tanya's, and the last decade has been filled with numerous voice acting roles of all types, both challenging, emotional, and fun. She's enjoyed putting voices to characters since she was a 10-year-old with her tape recorder. Horror has been a part of her life from the moment she discovered Stephen King back in high school. She's been a member of the audio drama podcast community for a few years now, and she loves the positive, safe, and creative space it offers. Welcome, Tanya. Thanks for sharing your voice with us. Check the show notes for links to where you can learn more, see more,

and hear more from Abby and Tanya. And speaking of hearing more, we have lots for you to hear right now. The tape is in the machine. The stories are ready, so let's press play. In our first tale, we meet a woman who is being sent a series of VHS tapes, not a common format these days, but as author John Grills explains, it's what's on the tapes that has left the woman deeply disturbed as she tries to solve the mysterious puzzle therein. Performing this tale are Nicole Doolin and Dan Zapula. So try to find the questions being asked when the only choices for answers are yes, no. I didn't think much of it the first time a VHS tape showed up in my mailbox. Who even uses VHS tapes anymore? It was unwrapped with no label, resting on top of the other

mail. It had been a couple of days since I'd even gotten the mail, so I had no idea how long it it had even been in there. I just tossed it on the counter with the rest of the junk mail and went about my day. A couple of days later, another tape showed up in my mailbox. Again, this was weird, but I don't have a VCR, and I don't know anyone who does. It's not like I could just go to Best Buy and pick one up. Maybe a pawn shop would have one. But I really didn't have enough interest to put forth any effort over two random VHS tapes. Who would? It was after I got the third tape the next day

that I had enough interest and annoyance to just order a cheap VCR off Amazon for $45, which I thought was almost too much. But if I knew then what I know now, I would have spent more. It took two days for the VCR to arrive, and in that time two more tapes showed up in my mailbox. I'll admit that by that time,

I was interested enough in what was going on that I wanted to see what was on the tapes. But I also knew well enough that I might just end up looking at a tape of some guy dancing around naked in front of his camera. Or more likely, they were blank and had just conned me into buying a VCR, which, if you think about it, would be a kind of cool marketing campaign. But the tapes weren't blank. It took me a little while to get the VCR hooked up to my TV, along with a trip to the store for a cable. they either didn't pack or I didn't realize I needed. Finally, I slide one of the tapes I received into the machine with that familiar click and hum

that brought me back to the days of being a middle school kid getting her hands on the once fabled faces of death tapes and regretting seeing the monkey scene. Or a flash of college. When the Internet was still new enough, the people actually paid money to buy VHS tapes off late-night infomercials of people getting naked at Mardi Gras and spring break. All things considered I would have been happier seeing the monkey scene again,

or even a naked guy dancing around on my TV. The black screen buzzed for a moment with the nostalgic tracking beginning as the image adjusted before cutting to a face I knew. My brother, Dan. He was sitting in a room, his back to a brick wall. The camera was zoomed in far away. enough that I could only see his head and the top of his shoulders. He just sat there staring at me. It looked like there was something dark under his nose, but the quality of the tape and the

cheap VCR was so shitty that it was hard to tell. It kind of looked like he'd had a bloody nose. Thinking this was some kind of stupid internet prank that I wasn't up on, like Rickrolling or something, I grabbed my cell phone and dialed his number. It went right to voicemail. Of course it did. It had to be a prank or some of his art house bullshit. Asshole. I sat there on my couch watching the tape of what felt like my brother watching me. He just stared at the camera for a couple of minutes, kind of looking nervous before his eyes started to dart back and forth like he was thinking about something really hard. Finally, he spoke. No.

Then nothing. He just sat there for a while, but he was thinking. He just sat there for a while, but he was thinking. before starting to think again. Then once again he spoke. No. This went on for ten minutes. The next word was yes, then no again. Those were the only words he would say, after what started to look like

more and more frantic moments of thought. Then the tape ended. I didn't get it. I can't imagine how I could have gotten it at the moment. I called Dan again and again got voicemail. You reached Dan. Leave a message or don't. Dude, I don't get what's going on,

but you owe me $45 for buying a fucking VCR. Could you at least have sent me a tape of something I'd enjoy? Like 80s anime or something? Whatever. Call me when you get this and at least let me in on what the joke was supposed to be. I tossed the phone on the counter and looked at the tapes. I didn't immediately put in another tape.

I don't know if it was that I wanted to talk to Dan first, or if it was something else. But it wasn't until the next morning when I still didn't get a call back from Dan that I put in another tape. I sat down with a cup of coffee and pressed play. Again, after a few moments of black, Dan's face appeared. This time his left eye was almost swollen shut. It was puffed out in purple and almost shined. It looked so raw.

I choked on my coffee burning my throat in the process. What the fuck? I said it as if Dan was going to answer. Again, he just stared at the screen for a while before finally speaking. Yes. His voice trembled this time. Another ten minutes went by of him saying only yes and no randomly, before he got this panich look in his eyes and the video shut off again.

I called Dan Sell again, and again it went straight to voicemail. You reach Dan, leave a message or don't. Dude, what the fuck? fuck is this? This isn't fucking funny. Just call me back. I don't know if you hooked up with another one of those performance arts chicks or what, but I'm not laughing. Call me back. I put in another tape. They had been scattered on my counter at some point, so I really had no idea when I'd gotten each one. I swore when I saw Dan's face appear seconds after pressing play on the third tape. His nose was bleeding. His eye was a grotesque, purplish yellow, and blood ran from his mouth.

Yes. When he finally spoke, I could see that he was missing several teeth as more blood poured out of his mouth. I scrambled to grab my phone. I called Dan again, but this time his voice mailbox was full. He lived alone. No roommates. No girlfriend, nothing. He was an artist who spent all his time doing some kind of shit I didn't understand.

Sometimes he traveled for art shows or gallery openings. He wasn't great about returning calls, but I didn't believe for a single moment that he would be doing some kind of performance piece this fucked up and just leave me hanging. Or would he? I had no idea. He was my brother. I loved him. He was the only family I had left, but we were different people. I didn't think like he did or like the people he spent time with.

Some of those people he hung out with would do some weird fucking shows just to get reactions. But this? This wasn't just makeup. If this was real, even if he was doing it to himself, it was beyond the pale. He needed help. I tried to remember the name of one of the galleries Dan had sold stuff to, but blanked as I stared at his broken face. As I searched Google for galleries in the area, I started to mumble to myself.

Is this a fucking joke? No. I froze. My eyes slowly moving from the phone to the TV. I wish I could say that the wheels were turning in my head, and I was figuring it all out. But in that moment, I was stuck in neutral. I wasn't thinking about anything.

I just sat there and stared at the television screen as Dan spoke again. Yes. His words were a jumbled mess. The letter slurred. If he had tried to say anything other than yes or no, it would have been impossible to understand. Still, I couldn't shake the simple thought. Dan wasn't just saying yes or no.

He was talking to me. I grabbed another of the tapes and put it in. This time it was Dan's face completely clear of any marks. He sat there, stoic and composed. He breathed slowly and after a while looked up, like he was resigning himself to the moment and spoke. Then again. Then again

No Then Then Yes The tape cut out as Dan just stared at the screen I wanted to warn him Yell at him of what was going to happen I ran out of my house and checked the mailbox

It was empty There was one more tape sitting on my counter I walked back into the house Afraid to play the last tape Not sure of what I would see Would it be something? something in between what I'd already seen? Would it be an explanation of what was happening?

Would it be something worse? The face that appeared on the screen might not have even been my brother. If it had been the first tape I'd watched, I don't think I would have watched anymore. His face was so beaten and bruised and smeared with blood that it looked like a mask. He was missing his right ear and most of his teeth.

And that's just what I could see of him. And still, after a few moments he started to talk. No. He was slowly shaking his head. He knew he could barely say the words and had to help them along. Yeah. He nodded his head. He was trying to talk to me.

That was the driving force behind it all. The will to keep trying something. Anything to get me to understand. He wasn't saying anything. He was answering questions. Questions he thought I would be asking. How he was even managing the words through the pain on his deformed face, I don't want to imagine. I finally called the police.

Your emergency. My brother's been kidnapped. What's your name? Michelle Polky. And your brother's name? Dan Polky. How do you know he's been kidnapped, ma'am? I got these tapes in the mail

What kind of tapes? VHS tapes I got five of them over the last week or so What's on the tapes, ma'am? It's my brother Each tape he looks more and more beaten up Like he's being tortured Is there anyone else on the tapes?

No, just him Does he say anything about his location Or abductor on the tapes? I don't know All he says is yes and no I think he's trying to tell me something? Do you think he's trying to answer questions for you, ma'am? What? I said, do you think he's trying to answer questions for you, ma'am? I don't know.

I guess so. I think so? Okay, stay there, ma'am. Someone will be there soon. I went to the front door and left it open for the police, hoping they would get off their lazy asses and actually help out. I grabbed the first tape again, the one where he wasn't hurt, and I put it in. I wrote down all his yeses and knows, and I tried to work it out. Over and over, I tried to write down the questions I thought he was trying to answer. But there were too many options. Was he telling me he was okay? Was he trying to tell me directions?

Was he trying to identify his abductor? There were so many options, and I just couldn't slow my mind down enough to concentrate. I hadn't received any more tapes. Dan might have been dead and I couldn't even figure out the question to his first answer. So let me ask you, if someone took you and gave you a chance to be saved, I could only answer yes or no to a conversation you had to imagine having with the person you chose to save you. What would you say? If your life depended on answering yes or no to questions that someone else would have to ask on their own accord,

what would you say? Because no one is good at this game. I guess most people can't even guess the rules by the end of the fifth tape. And the game goes on. That's why I'm telling you. Because I get to. So you understand the game. Because Dan was all I had.

With him gone, I have no one. So I leave it up to you. No, no. Exploring the woods is a common and usually fun pastime for kids. But don't tell that to author William Delphin. In his tale, a young boy discovers something in an old burned-out cabin in the woods, and he soon finds that someone wants it back. Performing this tale are Kyle Acres, Erica Sanderson,

Alexis Bristow, Jeff Clement, and Ellie Hirschman. So be careful poking around old burned buildings and definitely never steal a canister from the ashes. I was nine going on ten years old. We lived in a small town in Vermont, in a large greenhouse at the crest of a steep hill. Up the street from us, the road ended at a large forest. My brothers and I would walk up there

and play in the shelter of the thick tree branches. None of the trees were suitable for climbing, but enough had fallen over that we could build makeshift forts from their remains. We'd explore the pine needle carpet for bugs, whack through the ferns with sticks like explorers, or just play hide-and-seek in the dense thicket. Just beyond the edge of the forest at the top hill, there was a little stream. Beside the stream was the burnt-out skeleton of an old house. We'd been told that the property belonged to somebody, so stay off. But on occasion, we felt brave enough to explore the wreckage and find buried. treasure. One time, which was to be the second to last time I ever dared set foot among the

blackened walls and scattered junk of that house, I found a small cylindrical container. My brother was busy looking through a pile of dead books. The moment I picked up the container, there came the snap of a twig behind us, setting both my brother and me off at a sprint from the site and deep into the heart of the woods. When we caught our breath, I realized that I had taken the container with me. So I twisted and clenched at the screwed-on cap, trying to get it open, but I couldn't. My brother egged me on, but when given the opportunity to prove his might, he too failed to pry the jar open. And so, the jar remained a mystery to me for several days. When we returned home, I hid it in a drawer I kept for things I found lying around, called my junk drawer.

It wasn't until my friend James came over to play that weekend that the contents of the jar were discovered. When I showed him the canister, he instantly snatched it up and began trying to open it to see what was inside. His face turned red with the strain. He groaned. His hands shook, but lo and behold, the lid made a grinding sound and shifted. Eagerly, we fought over taking the cover off the rest of the way, but James won out, as he had been the one to get it open. He twisted, he popped the lid, and immediately we were assaulted by a powerful smell. I shied away, disgusted by the aroma, which to me was like a mix of baby powder and a bar of soap. James held the jar away from his nose and gag.

Oh, smells like puke. Resecuring the lid, we took the jar outside to keep from drawing my parents' attention to it. We went down a hill in the backyard toward the swamp located on the outskirts of the property. There was a large rock there, where I had discovered a crag suitable for hiding things I didn't want found. We opened the jar again, blanched at the smell. then looked inside. What we found was some sort of cosmetic makeup, thick and buttery, and the color of skin. I suggested to James that he tried putting some on, and he gagged at the thought.

We had no idea how long it had been in the jar, and we certainly did not want to get that smell on us. People would think we'd been rolling around in a field of old ladies. I resealed the lid on the jar and tucked it into the nook in the rock, obscuring it from sight. The next day my family left to go see an air show that my sister's boyfriend was a part of. I'd been temperamental, got an allowed argument with my mother, and was ultimately left behind to fend for myself. Half an hour after they left, there was a knock at the side door. I went to see who it was, and there was this middle-aged-looking lady standing there. She had dark hair and brown eyes, and was tall and slender.

She was wearing a big overcoat. She smiled at me through the glass outer door and asked if my parents were home. Naively, I told her they weren't. Do you mind if I come in and wait for them to return? I didn't know who she was, but the last thing I wanted to do at that point was upset my parents by refusing to let in a friend of theirs who dropped by. I opened the glass door, only to find that the air outside was heavy with the smell of that jar of makeup. Only this time there was some underlying odor beneath it that made me queasy. The woman reached toward the door as if to take a hold of my wrist, and I quickly shut the door.

I felt really hot all of a sudden. The air seemed thicker. I'm sorry, you'll have to wait outside. I'm not allowed to let people in who I don't know when I'm by myself. The woman looked disappointed. Her brows seemed to furrow for a moment as if puzzling over my behavior. And then for a moment she seemed angry. I felt scared by her expression. And before I'd even thought about what I was doing, I shut the door in her face.

She knocked a few more times and got quiet. When my family returned, they came in by themselves, talking and laughing about the air show. I asked them if the woman was still outside, and they asked me what woman I was talking. about. I told them about the woman who had come to the door and asked about them, then asked to come in. They told me I had done the right thing by not letting her inside, and then I got a lecture on talking to strangers, or even answering the door when I was home alone. I saw her again on Monday when I was at school. It was recess, and we were all outside playing. I was taking part in a game of soccer. The ball got kicked through our goal and disappeared into the bushes by the edge of the schoolyard.

I went looking for it and came out on the nearby road. As I picked up, the ball, I felt the sudden need to look up. Just down the road from where I was standing was the woman in the brown overcoat. She was beckoning to me with one hand, while the other seemed to be holding her coat shut. On the breeze, I could smell that same smell of baby powder and soap that the contents of the jar smelled like. I fled back onto the soccer field. Tuesday, I couldn't get the smell out of my head. I awoke to it smothering me. It masked the taste of my cereal. It was there with me on the bus, in the home room, during silent reading at recess, at lunch, at gym, at every one of my classes and all the way home. My tongue felt ready to shrivel up in my mouth. When I got home,

the smell slapped me in the face at the front door. Exasperated, I threw my backpack down and ran back outside and down the path to the swamp. I turned around the corner of the large rock, and the woman was there. Her back was to me, but it was clearly her, and her large overcoat. She was hunched over, muttering to herself. and I could smell that choking aroma all over her. As soon as I stepped up around the bend, she stopped what she was doing and with her back still to me, stood up, set the jar of makeup down on the rock and turned to look at me.

You took my makeup. I had lost it, but you found it. I can't go out without my makeup. She turned her head all the way around, and I saw her entire face. Where she hadn't yet applied the makeup, the skin of her face was red and swollen. It was covered in blisters.

In some places it was black. She looked like a cook piece of meat. She cocked her head slightly and smiled at me. Half normal. Half burned. I just wanted to say thank you for finding my makeup. Her eyes seemed to say otherwise. I was frozen in fear.

As I watched, she pulled open the front of her overcoat, revealing a tattered black dress. It wasn't black to begin with, I was sure of that. The bit of it that fluttered and hung off of it, had some sort of floral print. But almost the entirety of the dress was burned to cinders. Beneath it I saw more blackened flesh. Her shoulders, her legs, her feet, and a pair of roasted heels.

All of it was burned. And the worst part of it all was the smell. She smelled like she was still cooking. Even as she stood there exposing the destruction of her body, Timmy, she seemed to be shriveling and flaking away. And the air was rife with the aroma of it all. Don't I look better now? She reached out to grab me, and I ran.

She yelled at me. It was almost more of a wild growl like a wolf bearing down on an animal that plans to eat. I sprinted up the path, never looking back, for I was certain she was right behind me. Her smell, the smell of her roasted body mixed with the smell of makeup. It was all over me. I jumped the steps to the side porch and nearly injured my shirt. throwing myself through the door in the same instant that I opened it. I didn't want to risk it being locked or jam.

If it was, I was going to bust it down to get in before she touched me. I was out of breath when I stumbled into the kitchen. I was babbling and waving my hands frantically. My mother watched me for a moment from the sink thinking I was playing some sort of game. Then her nose turned up and disgust. What is that awful smell? What have you been up to? There's a burned up lady chasing me.

Is this some sort of game? I watched you from the window here bolting up the path like it was you that was on fire. There's a lady down in the swamp. She's all covered with burns. Well, now that got my mother moving. I was warned that if I was lying, my father would hear about it. This was not the sort of thing to make jokes about, I was told. My siblings overheard the commotion, and before I knew it,

everyone in the house was marching down the path to the swamp. I led them around the rock to where the lady had been, but as you would expect, she was gone. The canister of makeup had been dashed against the stone face. Broken glass was everywhere, as was the goopy concealer. And the smell. My brothers and sisters covered their noses and turned back home. I was dragged home by my arm, scolded and punished. It was weeks later that my brother and I were back at the burned house in the woods,

looking at blackened books and other junk. I'd been having nightmares ever since the incident with the woman. But somehow I did not correlate the fact that the jar of makeup. came from this old ruin of a building with what had happened. It wasn't until I found the smoked over glass and brass frame, pulling the yellowing photo from it. And I saw the black and white picture of a middle-aged couple that I realized. As I knelt there, my hands shaking as I looked at the photo.

I heard a whisper from somewhere close. I can't go out without my makeup. There was a clatter of junk from behind me, and I turned in a panic. My brother was standing there, leafing through a brown book. He looked up at me and grinned. A little jumpy. His expression paled suddenly. He dropped the book and ran,

stumbling over the rubble. I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders. Before they had a chance to grip my shirt, I took off after my brother. We hid in the woods for almost an hour. We had plenty of practice at not being found among the ferns and branches and falling logs.

When we finally felt it was safe to come out, we broke from our hiding spot, sprinted for a path we knew and followed it out, not once slowing down. We had the pavement of our street and continued our dash until we were home. We never went back to that place ever again. Many people long to leave the busy city life and find a more peaceful rural existence. As shared by author Leo Harrison, one man decides to purchase an old house far from the city

while his wife teaches overseas. But when strange dreams and mysterious things start happening, It becomes clear that his home might not be so peaceful. Performing this tale are Mike Delgadoo and Tanya Milovich. So when you're looking at buying a home, make sure you check the room upstairs. In the summer of 2014, I settled into a new house, rural, far from the city limits, and free of the city's hollering drunkards and roaring mufflers. It was a quiet and quaint place.

a rundown shingle-style home with brown cobblestone paneling decorating its exterior. When it grew dark there, only frogs and cicadas disturbed the quiet evening. And if I lay on the hammock, I'd hung in the woods behind the house, I could look up and see seven or eight stars, which was at least better than seeing none at all. Because I knew that my wife Ellen would soon repatriate to the U.S. from South Korea, where she'd taken a temporary job teaching English to young students. I spent the chilly mornings and humid afternoons

preparing the house for the two of us, mending all the structural problems that were so nicely concealed by our home's appealing exterior and, well, so sadly indicative of our financial strain. By day, I'd go about repairing the plumbing or the air conditioning while the boughs and leaves of the trees would brush up against the windows. the sunlight filtering through the green forest canopy and tinting the room's emerald. By night, however, when the boughs and leaves would vanish amid the darkness,

I would set aside my chores so I could spend an hour rehearsing my comedy routine. I would shut off all the lights in the house, save for one stage light I'd shine from the far end of the living room. Then I'd stand in the spotlight with a dummy microphone spouting off my various jokes. I'd listen to the sound, the timing of each word, and make mental notes whenever a punchline seemed to fall totally flat. Our dog, Tanya, would always act up whenever I'd do this. She'd emerge from the shadowed living room and then rush into the spotlight where I stood,

bearing her teeth and growling at the impenetrable darkness that surrounded our small circle of light. Given this odd behavior, I soon started worrying that she might be sick. When I called Ellen to ask her opinion, and strained to hear her voice over the cries and laughter of her students, she suggested I take Tanya to the vet. Well, one windy evening, after leaving Tanya at a nearby clinic, I followed the winding country lanes back home.

I returned in the damp twilight and noted some storm clouds gathering overhead. After struggling against forceful winds to check the mail, I jogged back to the front of the house, where I was startled to find a furry mass laid upon the welcome mat. Closer inspections showed that it was a rabbit. It was apparently dying and had come to rest before my door. Its nose was bleeding incessantly, blood leaking from its nostrils and staining the cement. Flies were already gathering.

Even though the oddness of this scene unsettled me, I watched the rabbit for a while, and when its pulse had stopped, I put on gloves, grabbed a shovel, and buried the corpse in a shallow grave. By now a light drizzle was showering the leafy canopy, the sun dipping behind the western mountains. I tossed some leaves and rocks over the rabbit's grave and then rushed back home through the shadowed forest. That night, I shut off the lights, as usual, so I could rehearse my routine. While the rain pelted the windows, I stood, staring out at the unlit living room, at the narrow corridors that led elsewhere and that snaked further and further into darkness. I tried to narrate some joke about a time my friend got kicked out of a Garthbrook's concert,

but I stumbled and stuttered, despite my days' worth of meditation upon my stupid joke. I continued for a bit longer, feeling unnerved by a sudden and unshakable intuition that I wasn't alone. I felt gradually more threatened, unguarded, vulnerable. Until in due time, I lost control of myself, key patches breaking out across my feet. flesh, palpitations overwhelming my heart, breaths growing more and more shallow. I turned on the lights and looked around the house with a baseball bat in my hand. Someone was there, told myself. I was convinced of it. Of course, I saw nothing at all, and my convictions withered away. Soon, I felt foolish enough to quit scanning every nook and cranny of the house.

I put some music on it, tried to rest, acts at all. As I reclined across the sofa, I had this recurrent, intrusive thought that some being would soon peer out at me from behind the sofa's back. Once more, I sensed I wasn't alone. On the house's upper story was one solitary room I'd never had any use for, a spacious bonus room with a single window that overlooked the surrounding acres of countryside. To my mind, it was an unremarkable room, saved. for its checkered black and white tiling. In every other part of the house, the floors were either hardwood or carpet. On the same night that I searched the house, I dreamt of this room, as if I were staring at

an old photo of it. When I awoke, I felt depressed and nauseous. Although I felt progressively more ill as the day went on, I forced myself to drive into town and collect Tanya as soon as I'd heard back from the vet. I waited in the lobby, listening to Bad Muzac, trying in vain to craft a joke about loitering and waiting rooms. Sometimes I wonder about these people who write this waiting room music, the joke would begin,

but I was too ill to develop the idea. At last a nurse brought me to see Tanya. He explained that everything looked more or less all right, although Tanya was demonstrating some symptoms that might warrant a CT scan. I humored him and asked how much a CT scan would cost me. When I heard his estimate, I promptly turned him down. It was a few days later that the notes started showing up. I found the very first one beneath my sofa while I was vacuuming,

a dirty folded up piece of notebook paper. I unfolded its creases and read what it contained and then smiled from shock, felt a reflexive chill, and tasted something bitter beneath my tongue. The message, written in childish crayon handwriting, simply read, Eternal hatred. That night, as I sat glaring nervously out my living room window at the dark forest, I called the previous owner of the house and asked if they had any children who could have left such a note lying around. He sounded surprised and responded that, no, he didn't.

I thanked him and the notes started showing up once or twice a week, beneath furniture and cupboards under pillows. Most of them were variations on the same theme, that of hatred or eternal hatred. One of them bore a crude drawing of a stick figure with what looked like hair, a bunch of wiry, squiggly lines flowing from its head. Beside this simple image was a crudely printed phrase,

I hate you. The more of these letters I received, the more often I dreamt of the room with the chance. checkered floor. I went through a circuitous, frustrating process with the county police, who didn't take me seriously at all. Probably they thought I was crazy, that I was writing all the notes myself. Accordingly, they maintained that they couldn't do anything until better evidence came forward. In lieu of their help, I started operating a rig of security cameras. These, however, revealed absolutely no evidence. The notes would always materialize in those spots that went unobserved by the cameras.

I dismantled and sold the cameras. As for the notes themselves, I saved them for a while, as if I'd actually make use of them to some end. In particular, I considered that I might show them to Ellen, at the very least. But then when I really thought it through, I saw that she'd think I was losing it again, and I couldn't have that. So ultimately, with no use for the notes, I simply took to burning them. Tanya, meanwhile, continued to act defensively. By now, I lent actual credence to her size, so that whenever she'd start growling, I would move to a new room or even pack her up in my car and drive off into town. One night, I dreamt again of the room with the checkered floor. There was a chair in the middle of it, and someone sitting there turned away from me. Neatly combed, jet black

hair streamed from their head, fell onto the checkered floor, and pooled in a small pile. I woke up from the dream, feeling that my throat, my airway was constricted, but I couldn't breathe. I hyperventilated and tried in vain to move, though I couldn't shift a single muscle. My eyesight was filled with flickering white static my ears assaulted with deafening tinnitus worse of all i struggled to think clearly struggled to recall who or what or where i was so that i felt i was disintegrating and surely dying surely losing control over myself i couldn't move i couldn't scream i couldn't pray eventually oh i I lost consciousness. In the morning, I awoke to gray sunlight streaming in through the windows.

My head throbbed as if I'd slammed it into a cement wall, and my throat was arid as if I hadn't drunk water in days. Not wanting to go too far along one way of looking at things, I sat down with a pen and paper and outlined a few courses of approach. On one hand, I would behave rationally. I'd check for a gas leak in my home's pipe. On the other hand, I would cede some control to a strange idea that was starting to overwhelm me. I would seed some control to the idea that an intruder was in my home.

The idea that because I couldn't see this intruder, but I could feel it in the air, it must be incorporeal. No matter what, telling Ellen about the situation was not an option. If I told her about all the dreams, all the letters, about everything, if I told her, then she'd more than suggest that I go back on the medicine. I imagined showing her the notes, imagining her reply. She'd say, I can't believe you're doing this again. An inspection of my home's piping revealed nothing relevant, no gasoline. Now more convinced than ever of my paranoid superstitions, I started sleeping with the lights on,

though sleep rarely came. All the while, the room with the checkered floor remained unused. Tanya would act strangely whenever she approached it. Sometimes she'd bark at empty corners, while at other times she'd whine and whimper and run away as fast as she could from the deserted room. I started ignoring the notes, stopped giving them attention, took to just try and whimp her. throwing them away. On one occasion, however, I found a letter hidden beneath my pillow. I threw it in the trash downstairs and returned to my room, only to find the letter replaced. When I opened it, I found that it contained another crude stick figure sketch. Come nightfall, I lodged at a motel in town. I pressed a paper towel to my face,

soaked the cold tap water from my skin, turned off the faucet, and then observed my haggard countenance in the mirror. My skin was pallid and unevenly stabbled. Glaring now at the dirty bathroom tiles, I saw a cockroach skitter across the floor and decided to go back to my table. In the diner proper, I resumed the cigarette I'd left in the ashtray, and through plumes of smoke stared half-heartedly at a perforated menu. you. My nauseated stomach revolted at the photos of waffles and the hash browns. For two weeks now, I'd had the same vile, sloshing nausea at the pit of my stomach, constant headaches compounding the queasiness. Thoughts were muddled. My whole experience of life was dragged down into lame dullness. I couldn't even focus enough to read, and the words on the menu were practically meaningless to me. On my budget, a simple visit to the doctor was impossible.

I hadn't made enough in the past month to pay the utility bill on time. And I couldn't turn up copay either. An elderly waitress appeared beside me and asked that I want more coffee. To which I mumbled, sure, why not? I glanced at my phone again, staring at the notification. Two missed calls from Ellen. Thinking dimly of what I might possibly say, I finally finally. called her back. As usual, I heard Korean students screaming, laughing, and running around

just with an earshot. Everything I said to her was cloaked in shadowy rhetoric, betraying reticence and buried concern. Of course, she picked up on this, and as she narrated the events of her day, I could hear her gathering the fortitude to ask what was wrong. Midway through her account, she broke off and sighed. You sound terrible. I feigned surprise Oh I'm starving as all

Still waiting for my food At some diner in town Oh come on now That's a load of bullshit The house The repairs You're overwhelmed I withdrew the phone

From my ear and rubbed my eyes Then lifted the phone back up Take a break from the repairs Stop if you feel you have to All right Hey it's okay Really I'm just I'm just famished

I swear, I'm okay. Though I knew she wasn't sold, she had a class to teach in five minutes. She needed to go. We said goodbye. I could hear frustration in her voice, sure as she could hear artificiality in mine. We'd been married for three years, and we'd been having these sorts of passive aggressive exchanges for two. Afterwards, I'd always feel a pang of guilt sear my heart. And then I'd daydream about old times.

The way she looked when I'd first seen her at a park downtown playing frisbee with Tanya, just a pup back then. The look in her eyes, which seemed to radiate calmness, honesty, balance. The first four years of dating, my avid and naive belief in some vague notion of true love. The wedding, the honeymoon, the first house. then later all the troubled I'd had keeping a job all the looming stress and anxiety that started one morning and which never ended the mounting dread the sudden belief that I was being monitored by the government

and that they were trying to poison my food the look on Ellen's face when she'd found me in the garage trying with scissors to get the tracking device out of my heart Now, in the diner's parking lot, I had a dizzy spell while getting into my car and fell to the ground, causing my phone to slip from my pocket and smash against the cement. Some onlookers gathered, almost called an ambulance, but I waved them off, saying I would be fine. I returned as night was falling, determined to convince myself that nothing was wrong with the house, that nothing stood in the way of our peace and security, and that I wouldn't have to be. worry Ellen with my paranoid ideations, my odd theories. I parked and then stepped out into the driveway.

An expanse of ashen clouds loomed overhead, further darkening the night. The house looked sinister in its windows like angry little eyes. I didn't want to take a single step inside the place. After forcing myself, I stepped into the unleit foyer. The room, Lattest window panes filtered the moonlight so that the blue diamond-shaped patterns cut into the shadows that fell across the hardwood. Since the AC was shut off, the whole interior of the house was plagued throughout by shapeless darkness and awful silence, the sort you might encounter in some abandoned church. I flipped the closest light switch. The bulbs overhead burst to life, but the light didn't dissuage my dread. It only drew more attention to the relative

of darkness of the adjoining rooms and halls to the darkness of the forest outside the windows. I walked on, first through the resplendent foyer, next into the adjoining kitchen, the floor creaking as I went. At the kitchen doorway, I stopped. A note lay on the granite counter. I flipped on another light switch, then took a hesitant step into the kitchen. I could feel my skin flaring up, my stomach agitating, my heart palpitating. I drew a deep breath, unfolded the note, and read it. Beside a crude, smiley face, there ran one line. I want to kill you. Just then, a sound startled me. I dropped the note and stepped backward from shock, unsure as to what exactly I'd heard. Although I knew it was a low sound, a rumble, a

a thudding, a thudding coming from overhead. As I glared up at the ceiling, my thoughts threaded to a conclusion. Footsteps. I'd heard footsteps. I imagined the house's floor plan and soon recognized that the sound must have come from the room with the checkered floor. Reasoning that Tanya may have gotten loose, I stepped into the garage where I'd left her. But she lay on her dog bed, waking at my approach. I said stay and shut the door.

Back in the kitchen, the note was where I'd left it. I fumbled around in my pocket for a second in search of my phone before pausing. And I'd broken it earlier. I snatched a knife from a nearby drawer. More thudding sounded from overhead. And Tanya, having awoken, threw herself at the door she was trapped behind, clawing at the wood, barking and barking. Tanya? Stay, girl. Stay.

A muffled whimper sounded at the door, but still I ignored her while I approached the stairs. I climbed them, and at the top, halted. My body overcome with chills. I could see down the unlit hall that led to the room with the checkered floor and could see just barely that the room's door was shut. Whoever's there? I'm armed. Try to hurt me. I'll hurt you. Although I spoke as if to a burglar, I felt certain at some unconscious depth of mind that the thing waiting at the end of the hall wasn't human. I half expected when I opened the door to confront the image that I knew so well, the chair in the center of the room, the stranger with the black hair.

But I walked on as if I didn't believe. After making myself open the door, I found little more than... on the shadows of trees casting grotesque shapes across the checkered floor. As usual, not a single piece of furniture occupied the room, not even the chair I'd almost expected to find. I sighed, walked to the end of the room, and listened. Tanya was still barking in the garage below, and upon hearing her, I felt as if I'd awoken from a dream.

I found myself marveling at my own stupidity, how I'd expect to barge into the room and find some sort of phantom, some sort of ghost. I dropped the knife and sat cross-legged on the floor. My hands clasped it to my face. My amazement turning to shame. Tighter and tighter I pressed my hands against my face as I recalled all the strange behaviors I'd taken up during the past month. My poor hygiene, my surveillance system, my paranoia, And the letters, for God's sakes, I must have written them all myself. I must have, for there was no better explanation. Now I grasped the truth plainly. I was losing my mind again. And once she found out, Ellen would threaten to leave. I'd go back on Risperdall or some other medication, and I'd give up comedy, give up my dreams. Perhaps worse yet, I'd have to see Ellen say Ellen,

suffer. I'd have to watch shame and sadness cloud her face as despair and trauma set it, doing irreversible harm. There, in that awful room, I worried on and on like this, cross-legged, tearful, falling deeper and deeper into fear and rumination. Suddenly, however, all my rumination halted. A cold, wet sensation caught my attention. some cool liquid dripping from my nostrils and trickling across my palms. I flung my hands from my face and looked at them. Blood streaked my palms. I stumbled to my feet and then ambled towards the door I'd entered through,

feeling woozy, almost drunk. The sensation was almost narcotic. This unusual feeling I later learned was migraine aura, a state that in rare cases precedes strokes. I groped my way into the hall, unsure of what exactly I was trying to do. I had no name, no beliefs, no memories, no way of seeing anything. White static clouded my vision, and bright little stars kept cropping up at random, as if I were watching an old, damaged film strip.

I eventually paused at the top of the stairs and rested my hand on the uppermost part of the banister. By then I was struggling to control my breathing, and couldn't think to do anything else but hyperventilate, and try with all my might to get the blood flowing back into my left arm. I was so stupefied. I couldn't even think to get away from the stairs, which soon seemed to grow larger and to more prominently occupy my field of vision,

until I could see nothing more than the polished oak of the fourth or fifth step as I tumbled head first towards it. My head collided with the steps, and my body slid rapidly, down towards the landing. Pain overwhelmed me until I finally lapsed into a black and dreamless slumber. When I sat there in the room with the checkered floor, worrying about how I might hurt Ellen if I told her I'd lost my mind again, how her face might cloud over with shame and sadness, I'd failed to imagine just how badly misery and fear might actually contort her features. That's what I thought,

Anyway, after I'd awoken and seen her at my bedside in the hospital, she was tired. Her gray eyes were ringed and darkened, her thin lips parched and bloodless, her narrow forehead creased and ashen, so that she looked much older than she really was, as if she'd not spent several years but several decades at her job in South Korea. I couldn't have looked much healthier myself. What, with the oxygen mask hugging my face? the drips feeding my veins, and the stroke's aftermath paralyzing half my face. As I recovered in the hospital, I didn't attempt to convince Ellen we should abandon the house,

didn't try to persuade her with my ridiculous ghost stories, because I needn't bother to. Our insurance provider did an adequate job of convincing her to leave the house behind. The copay was mercilessly high, so high that our mortgage installments were now insurmountable. Once the CT scans, the chemo, and the operation were factored in, we stood no chance of paying the mortgage. So rather than rack up some unfathomable loan debt, we chose, at risk of lawsuit, to default, ditch the house, rent an apartment in the city. That next September I went into surgery and had the tumor excised from the base of my skull. It had grown for three months I'd learned and had been pressing against the blood vessels in my nostrils. Even though I was now cancer-free, the wake of my surgery presented a series of harsh ordeals.

What, with the move, the surgery? Worse yet, the default had obliterated our credit score and hiked our taxes. But, to quote some friends and family who counseled Ellen and I, that's life. After my surgery, I spent a lot of time bedridden and took to reading. On my good days, my able days, I'd roam over to the bookseller. just a few blocks down from our apartment to purchase some mystery novel. One evening, I stepped into the store and started flipping through books in the occult aisle. To my amusement, I found a paperback published in 1988, a compendium of sorts,

which described all the haunted locales of my region. On a whim, I bought it and eventually read it. Near the end of the book, I found one account that stood out to me. In 1926, as the book explained, a young girl named Selma Thornton, 18, vanished on her way home from a regional dance. A local search party discovered her corpse, lodged in the trunk of a eucalyptus tree, in the heart of the forest on the unoccupied plot of what used to be Slaversland. She'd been abducted, tortured. Four decades later, in 1965, a retired, albeit renowned architect, one Armand Caldwell, purchased that very same plot for a pittance and built his dream house in a clearing just off the road.

His isolated rural house was, apparently, an impressive piece of architecture for the time. Its construction received a considerable deal of attention from the culturally impoverished locals. Many of the local reporters took a special interest in one of the house's rooms, the third-story room, which, with its checkered black and white flooring, deviated from the wood panelling that cozily furnished the rest of the home. Armand Caldwell claimed that the idea for this unusual room had come to him in a dream when he'd stayed the night in his then unfinished home. He dreamt of a lost young woman with long black hair,

sitting in a room full of checkered tiles. Her back turned towards him. He awoke with an odd feeling of grief and loss that, so he said, immediately convinced him to give life to his dream vision. Whenever he'd speak of the room, the dream, and the girl, his eyes would sparkle. He was so passionate that he claimed the house was not for himself and not for his family either, but rather for that girl, for her lost soul, he said. Meanwhile, back in town, people gossiped that he'd become deranged.

For all his passion, Caldwell didn't live happily in his dream home. After spending a year on the property, his wife was hospitalized. with a malignant brain tumor. She passed away shortly thereafter. Caldwell remained alone at the house for four more years, becoming a reclusive man, rarely glimpsed by anyone. A local mailman reported that he'd seen Caldwell in passing, and that the old recluse had, before his death, slowly come to resemble a skeleton, his skin baggy, his bones accentuated. One day, in October 1968, Caldwell deserted his home. leaving all its doors wide open.

After finding the house in such disarray and realizing Caldwell had stalked off, his mailman called the police. A search party discovered Caldwell's corpse a mile away, thinly clothed in the hollow of a eucalyptus tree. It seemed he'd tried to take shelter from the air, which had been below freezing. When the local authorities searched Caldwell's home, they found an unusual scene in the upper room. Its checkered interior was empty, save for a single chair placed in the center.

Its arched back turned to the entrance. A fresh receipt on the desk in Caldwell's study indicated that he'd bought the chair just one day before leaving. The study, meanwhile, was full of newspaper clippings about Selma Thornton. In one cabinet was a copy of her yearbook portrait, taken just a month before she'd been abducted and murdered. In the photo, her long jet black hair. was undone and neatly combed. Armand's autopsy revealed a malignant tumor growing at the base of his skull. I never disclosed my entire story to Ellen, the dead rabbit, the letters, the dreams,

the story of Armand Caldwell. I thought I'd only worry her if I rambled on about all that. But when we came home one day from the grocery store and found Tanya splayed out in our apartment's kitchen, dead from a brain tumor that had been festering ever since, our brief stay at Caldwell's home, I almost expounded the whole story to Ellen. Ultimately, however, I knew better. And like so many others in the world, I decided to never speak of what I'd learned about the other side. I have, however, developed certain rules to protect my family and I. One rule is this. If Ellen and I ever find ourselves near that house,

where the spiritual aftermath of Selma Thornton's pain and trauma has unfathomably, incomprehensibly, resulted in some malevolence, carcinogenic influence, some hateful entity well beyond my understanding. If my wife and I are ever so much as a mile from that house, I do my utmost to get us far, far away. It's time to press eject and end the show. We thank you for letting us perform for you.

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