The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S11E24

Episode Date: November 11, 2018

It's episode 24 of Season 11. On this week's show we have five tales about darkness - of the night, of the soul, and of the mind. "Just Like Me"† written by Ron Riekki and performed by Matthew Bradford & Armen Taylor. (Story starts around 00:02:45) "Beyond Vantablack"† written by William Dalphin and performed by Peter Lewis & Atticus Jackson. (Story starts around 00:17:00) "The Dirt Road Man"† written by Henry Galley and performed by Alexis Bristowe & Peter Lewis & Mick Wingert. (Story starts around 00:35:10) "The Attic Angel "¤ written by Dustin Chisam and performed by Atticus Jackson & Erika Sanderson & Armen Taylor & Jessica McEvoy & Nichole Goodnight & Dan Zappulla & Jesse Cornett. (Story starts around 01:02:30) "Till Childhood’s End"‡ written by Marcus Damanda and performed by Jessica McEvoy & Dan Zappulla & Jeff Clement & Peter Lewis & Addison Peacock & David Ault & Armen Taylor & Jesse Cornett & Nichole Goodnight & Erin Lillis & Erika Sanderson & Kyle Akers & Corinne Sanders & Matthew Bradford & Marcus Damanda. (Story starts around 01:40:50) Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast   Click here to learn more about William Dalphin   Click here to learn more about Henry Galley   Click here to learn more about Dustin Chisam   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¤ "Till Childhood’s End" illustration courtesy of Charlie Cody 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 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 darkness, of the night, of the soul, and of the mind. With this being season 11's penultimate episode, we look forward to next week's season finale. We're working hard to bring that big show to life for you all. After that, we'll take a couple of weeks off for some well-deserved rest. During those two weeks, we'll have some hiatus episodes for you, featuring classic tales from past, season past episodes. And of course, season pass 11 members can look forward to two bonus episodes, our famous suddenly shocking show, and our old-time radio episode. And season 12 launches on

December 9th, just in time to kick off the holiday season with festive frights. And a big thanks to everyone who entered our Call of Cthulhu contest. We're happy to announce our five winners of a copy of the game. A big Lovecraftian congrats go out to Rachel Stewart, John Kormpopoulos, Jeremy Baker, Cassinia Rebek Blocker, and Mitch DeMaster. Thanks for heeding the call of Cthulhu from publisher Focus Home Interactive and developer Cyanide Studio. So with stories and seasons ending and new ones beginning, it's time for this episode to start. Because the tape is in the machine. The stories are ready, so let's press play. In our first tale, we meet a doctor who moves to China to learn how patients are treated in small villages,

but as explained by author Ron Riecki, he soon learns that there is a market for illegitimate medicine there, in places where it's all too easy to disappear. Performing this tale are Matthew Bradford and Armand Taylor. So don't judge people or think them different, lest you find yourself saying, they're just like me. Doing this. In fact, the doctor left the room.

Tiny dots. A Sunday afternoon in some nameless place. Making tiny dots. You'd think X marks a spot, but we tend to prefer a circle, a ring. Think of surgery as a marriage, scalpel and body, a consummation, devoutly to be wished.

You start with one dot, hold the marker for a second, and then move to the next spot. For a while there, they banned markers, afraid they would transfer bacteria from one patient to the next. But Sharpies, they found, have an alcohol-based solution which kills germs. So it's very safe. No harm done. This is the fifth time I've done this.

The thousandth or so, if you count when I've done this professionally. Please, I prefer alternative medicine. That's why I came to Guangzhou. They call it Gunzu, a mix of weaponry and zoology. The locals make exaggerated mafia claims. The truth is, I have... haven't seen a gun here once. Now back in the States, I graduated for memory. Trust me, I've seen guns in the ATL, but not in Guangzhou. I walk the alleys here. Midnight, feel completely safe.

The day I arrived, in fact, the newspaper cover was of a man shot in the head by police. He tried to rob a store with a handgun. The police sent a message. The news. The news newspaper sent an even bigger message. No guns here. Only safety for its people. I like that. I came initially to inspect, to see what it's like in a second world country, and was fascinated that the ambulances were empty. How little they seemed to be used. There were no medical supplies on board, just a bench, an uncomfortable bench. I sat in with a doctor. I sat in with a doctor. I for a day. He had a line outside of his office that never stopped. It got down to as few as seven, and as many as 50. He spent about a minute with each patient, maybe two. They would come in,

take off their shirts or pants, depending on where the pain was, and then slowly spin in a circle. Then he would give the diagnosis, which, if my translation was correct, tended to be the avoidance of cold liquids. But what particularly intrigued me was the sheer capitalism. Anyone who says China is still a communist country is an idiot. China makes the U.S. look like Karl Marx runs it. China's discovery of free enterprise has been voracious. It's like they're thirsty for money.

They want to catch up, to surpass significantly. Similar to New York nightclubs, patients could jump to the front of the line by simply slipping new end to the doctor's assistant. Then they could stay longer, ask more questions, get medicine, any medicine, with simple R&B. And I mean, any medicine. The doctor had so much money by the end of the day that it filled a small bucket hidden to the side of his desk. He threw the money in it like it was meaningless. A garbage-pail bank. The money, all untraceable, none taxable.

He told me the entire country of China was a republic of the untraceable. He asked me how many people were here. A billion or so. More. Isn't it 1.3 billion, to be exact? More. Closer to 1.4. More.

I shruged. Two billion. He could tell it wasn't registering. The number too large. Let me tell you something. Sit back. I followed his orders. Relaxed.

About half of the patients you've seen today, maybe more. They do not exist. Do you understand do not exist? I nodded. They do not exist on paper. They exist in real life. Did you see them? His eyes were intent on me.

I looked at his coat, the color of bones. 1.3 billion people. That is a joke. That is a very funny joke. Do you get the joke? No. 2 billion. One time, if you want.

I will take you to a town that does not exist. An entire... Days later, he took me there. A three-hour drive. People who were not people, who were people. We sat outside a house. Well, a shack. It felt recycled.

The sound of something chirping. A hum of chirping. Almost electrical. Constant. Like a razor being operated. He told me. that in China, anyone can disappear in a moment. He told me I could disappear. He said he could disappear and come back. He said that in China, everything is magic, including the medicine.

I coughed. The cough had no echo, swallowed by the cicadas. Feels like a ghost could be right here, right in front of us. He told me not to talk of ghosts. He said that in China, if you talk of ghosts, people start to wonder if you are a ghost. I'm not a ghost. I coughed. Like someone sick. Someone who had a ghost life in his near future. Allergies?

He asked if I was drinking cold water. He told me nothing cold ever again, at least when I was with him. I needed heat. He went in the shack. I heard talking, arguing, laughing, whispering. He came out, gave me a jar. Inside was something green and alive and dead and black. He insisted I swallow.

First he examined my tongue. For the condition of the chi, your digestion is bad. Thickness on your tongue. Swallow. I swallowed. It tasted like barn. I had just eaten earth. He took me to another house, a neighbor, a mile away. We walked down an anorexic path that snaked like earthquake cracks. He said the walk would be good for me. That walking saves more lives than any pharmaceutical. We got to a house made of bamboo, where there were no doors in the same. Sun set with such quickness that it scared me. The owner sat with us in the dark, never speaking. I wondered if he'd gotten up, left.

He didn't seem to have a presence. Why are you here? To learn. We sat in the falling dark, in a dark that didn't exist. I couldn't see. He told me a story about a boy who woke up without eyes. He told me of the woman who kidnapped him and drugged him. He said that when they first met, she said to the boy that he had nothing to worry about,

that she wouldn't gouge his eyes out. When the child awoke, he couldn't see, because he only had sockets where his eyes had once been. He said that in China, there are 1.5 million people needing transplants. He said that they always need hearts and livers, kidneys and corneous. I tried to see him through the black. It seemed as if my own eyes were gone. Electricity did not exist anymore. Not here.

I leaned my neck upwards. The stars were white melanoma. If you ever had someone... His voice trailed off, a pathway to... nothing. Had someone? Someone would be honorable enough to give an... I tried to connect the dots, to trace the big dipper. Kidney, perhaps,

or... What animals were in China, what reptiles, what insects. I lifted my feet from the dirt, cradled my legs into my chest. We stared at the poem that is the sky for almost an hour. We stayed in that house for almost a week, gave free exams. The doctor was like that, kind. He gave free medicine in exchange for stories, for meals. Rice and tongue.

Rice and liver. Rice and deer. We returned to Guangzhou. I didn't return to the States. I stayed in China. a long time, long enough to make enemies. Five, to be exact. Four of them had very bad things happen to them. It's unfortunate what falls on people. The collapsing of life. The failure so common to the world. The New Testament is filled with mistakes. History is made of errors.

I was assisting with one now. Dots. A person can go into surgery for one thing, but simple marker spots can be erased. Sanitizer, acetone, butter, simple water, and salt. So many ways to erase. You can pick any new spot on the body. You can choose from 100 different surgeries for the patient.

A person can come in for a diverticulectomy and leave with a splenectomy. A tonsillectomy can become a cardiectomy. When you choose, it's smart to pick the common surgeries. Surgery's done every day. In the U.S., in Columbus, you might do one surgery a day. In China, the doctors do five, ten, twenty, fifty. they get very good at it. They get much more practice than in the U.S.

In China, they can do everything quickly, painlessly. So far, I've chosen an appendectomy, a colisectomy, a colectomy, and a hysterectomy. The doctor now calls me, Tommy. He spells it, T-O-M-Y. I tell you my real name. but I don't exist anymore. The doctor says I'm doing great things for the world, saving lives. The dots, I've noticed, sometimes remind me of the stars in that town.

I would tell you the name of the town, but it doesn't exist. I would tell you the name of the patient, but she doesn't exist. Soon, she'll be used. ghost, just like me. Nanotechnology has made advances in recent years, especially in the field of light absorption. Author William Delphin shares a strange email he received from an artist friend. In it, we learn of an art installation which tries to show off the elegance of pure blackness, only to realize the effects it can have on the human psyche.

Performing this tale are Peter Lewis and Atticus Jackson. So let's learn of a technology which takes us beyond Vanta Black. I have a friend Tomas, who works as a freelance artist creating booths and installations for event shows. He's quite talented at designing interactive presentations for companies to showcase their products. The last time we got together, he told me that he had signed on to be part of something

big that he wasn't allowed to talk about due to an NDA. Then this past week he included me as a blind carbon copy in the following email. As soon as I finished reading this, I gave Tomas a ring, but the call went straight to voicemail. I drove over to see him, but when I buzzed his apartment, there was no response. His truck is in the parking lot, so at this point I can't tell if he's just not answering anything, or if he's not there. I know I don't have to wait to file a missing person's report, but I'm going to give him a day to call me back and then I'm taking this to the police. The email was addressed to Charles Fetterman, Tomas's client.

The subject was Beyond Vanta Black Project. As I said, I was BCC'd in. Whether Tomas did this intentionally or not, I don't know. I can only assume he wanted a witness. wanted my help. Mr. Fetterman, my name is Thomas Laurent. I am one of the artists recruited by Mr. Gustav Sorensen for the Beyond Vantablaq or a BVB project for your company.

I won't beat around the bush here, sir. I am scared out of my wits. When I was first approached and offered the chance to work with the next step in Vantablack, It was like winning the lottery. Vantablack's near 100% absorption is a fantastic achievement. I assumed that the only possible next step was perfect 100% light absorption. But when I was shown how BVB not only absorbed all light,

but even some of the scattered light of the surrounding area, I was astounded. The way it strips away the defined edges of an eye, like it's enveloping the thing in a black fog is breathtaking. I'm telling you this, because I assume you've never actually seen BVB used before. If you had, you would not have approved the production of it. The color is unnatural, sir. It does not belong in this world. When we look up at the night sky, we think we are seeing the pure absence of light.

But we aren't. Light reflected off the atmosphere, light from the earth and moon and other stars. It protects us from the true emptiness of the void. BVB is the void, Mr. Fetterman. It extends beyond the boundaries we give it and sucks away the light from everything around it. I am writing to you today because something has happened. I, along with two other artists, Genevieve Lever and Peter Adarteu, were asked to come up with three unique exhibits, with which to show off the glory of Vanta Black, which we did. My own art installation remains down in your research department, unfinished, where it shall remain, as I have no intention of working further on it.

Ms. Laverer's idea was a room, the inside of which was completely painted with BVB, save one wall which was installed with a full-length mirror from floor to ceiling. I've been inside the room, and it is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. Imagine stepping into absolute nothingness. Every step unable to determine if your foot is going to touch solid ground. or not. To make matters worse, she had the floor installed at a slant, so as you try to walk toward the center, you're going up an incline, but can't see the angle at which it goes. There is a single white light in the center of the ceiling for the matter of allowing whoever is inside to at least see themselves. Otherwise, it would be like not existing at all, just pure blackness. Because of the

unique properties of BVB, though, you cannot actually see the light in the ceiling, even when staring directly at it. Once the door is sealed, the occupant is trapped inside with only their reflection. The effect is unnerving. Yesterday, after Ms. Laverer finished her project, she shut herself inside the room. I presumed to see how it looked. I was busy in my own area Now working on my project. Half an hour later, I heard yelling. Hurrying down the hall to her room, I saw a crowd of people surrounding the area, and I was quickly ushered away before I could see what was going on. After things quieted down, I managed to ask one of your engineers what had happened.

He told me that someone had gone to check on Ms. Laverre and found the poor woman sprawled in the center of her room, bloody and crying. She had clawed out her own eyes, Mr. Federman. Somehow, her experience in the room drove her to take her own sight. When I asked Mr. Sorensen about it, he told me only that Genevieve had had an accident, but that she was taken to the hospital and she would be okay. As I mentioned, I've been in the room myself, having gone in later that day. Security had cordoned the room off, but nobody was monitoring the area, so it wasn't difficult to get inside.

The effect of the room's design, with its BV-B-blackened interior and slanted floor, is almost instantaneous. Within seconds, I felt nauseated, and I had to resort to crawling to reach the middle of the room, all the time watching as my hands disappeared into the black fog. As I went, my need for visual stimuli forced me to keep my eyes on the mirror

across the room. In it, I started to see things that couldn't possibly exist. First, the air seemed to fill with swirling dendrils of color, followed by sparks of light like the flashbulb of a camera, floating and a ghostly disembodied eye is watching me. Worst of all, though, was my reflection looking back at me. I don't know how. Maybe. the floor was curved toward the mirrored wall or the lack of defined space messed with my sense of direction. All I know is I found myself crawling toward my reflection rather than the center of the room. Or worse, my reflection was crawling toward me, staring at me, watching me approach, me watching it approach. I had tried to change direction, but I swear to you, it kept crawling toward me, no matter how I tried to orient myself.

And the more I looked into the eyes of my own reflection, the less human it appeared. Every second, it was like watching my face smear like a painting. My eyes and cheeks and nose and lips turning runny like melted wax. But the one moment I will never forget The image seared into my brain of the entire experience Was when I stopped in front of the mirror Staring at my reflection, it staring back at me And then trying to stand up

As I raised my head I found myself looking over the shoulder of my own reflection And seeing my face again behind the reflection, also looking over it. In other words, the face I had come to accept as my own was not. There was someone else between me and the mirror, someone who even as the realization came rushing at me, stared up at me with the same horrified expression on its face.

Its features melting. It was too. much. I was ready to follow Genevieve and claw my own eyes out. The only reason I'm here able to tell you about it now is that I let go. I just let myself fall backward, striking my head on the floor in the process. I blacked out a bit, but I remember rolling down the slanted floor and then hitting the wall. The door must have swung open from the force, because when I came to, I could see out into the hallway, and I dragged myself out. I swear that before I got out and shut the door, I looked back and I saw my reflection,

only it was standing in the center of the room, watching me leave. Oh, that room is cursed. BVB has turned it into a residence of something sinister and malevolent. But that's not even half of it, Mr. Favis. Peter Adartu's plan was the polar opposite of Ms. Laver's. Rather than a person in a room devoid of light, he had your team help him build a full-coverage cloth body suit using the BVB process. Now, everything upsetting about Laver's room one could explain away as tricks of the mind, ignoring the fact that she's currently missing.

What happened to Peter, though, I assure you, cannot be explained. His suit was finished a week before Miss Lever completed her room. I watched him be helped into the suit for the first time. The team struggling to find where his legs went, then his arms. Once he had all four limbs clothed, they still had to find the zipper and hood to completely seal him in. Upon donning the full body suit of BVB, the effect was truly astounding. Peter became a foggy black silhouette. You couldn't tell if you were looking directly at him.

He had his workroom installed with almost two dozen large flood lamps, drowning out every angle with harsh lighting, and still the suit cast a shadow. Nobody else in the room had a shadow, but Peter in his suit did. Even more amazing when he moved, he left a trail of blackness, a sort of after image of where he'd been. I've never seen anything like it.

He put the BVB suit on for short intervals every day, increasing the length he spent inside each time. He told me he enjoyed the way it unnerved the people around him. I asked him what it was like inside, and he remarked that he could see inside us, that he could see our bones. I'm not sure if he was joking or serious. Peter spent every workday setting up and taking photos of himself against various backdrops

to see how the BVB of the suit affected the pictures. There was one I saw of him standing in a glass box filled with water. The water looked like ink. Peter told me that the way water refracts light, it seemed to magnify the BV's absorption effect. After Lever's incident, but before I went into a room and experienced, the horror of that emptiness firsthand. I rushed to Peter's dressing room to tell him what had happened. He had been wearing the suit since before I got to work, the longest amount of time he'd ever kept it on.

He was sitting at his desk, clad completely in the BVB body suit. I told him of Lever, and he became understandably distraught, asking me to help him out of the suit so we could get to the hospital. At first, I couldn't find the zipper. My hands were. would disappear in the foggy blackness of the suit's effect. Eventually, I found it and unzipped him. There was nothing inside, Mr. Federman. The suit fell away as if draped on a frame of empty air, the hood deflating like a balloon and dropping the floor along with the rest of the material.

Stranger yet, Peter still seemed to be inside the suit. It was pulled up on the floor in an undefinable pile like a hole in the floor, but I could hear him from inside it. And whatever, wherever he was, he sounded terrified. I could hear him start to scream, echoing from out of the suit's interior, like he was falling through a great endless void, his voice never fading off like it does as someone falls away. was always right there screaming, calling my name, begging me to get him out. I gathered up the

material, and I tried shaking it, thinking maybe I could shake him out over the hole, but I had to drop it quickly because of the way that my hands disappeared inside it, I was afraid I would fall into the suit as well. I immediately hurried to Mr. Sorensen's office across the research area and told him about Peter. He seemed more put out than concerned. Made a quick phone call and told me to stay put while he marched off to Peter's room

with a group of men from your security. I sat around in his office for a couple hours before he finally returned with a gentleman named Mr. Klein from your legal department. They assured me that Peter was all right, that what I had seen was simply the BVB playing tricks on my eyes.

They fed me a bunch of pogwash about how my vision hadn't fully adjusted to the bright lighting of the room, and then instructed me to sign a form to waive my rights toward speaking about either of the incidents. It was after that, after they had someone escort me back to my own work area, that I ventured over to Genevieve's room and experienced its horror firsthand. That was yesterday, Mr. Fetteman. I called in sick this morning with no intention of going in today or any other day out of fear for my own safety. Already my phone has rung at least 20 times this morning from different unknown callers. Mr. Sorensen tried to reach me half an hour ago and left me a cryptic voicemail,

saying that he hoped he don't have to initiate a breach of contract clause. I've looked over my contract with your company, Demtronic, but I still have no idea what he meant by that. It sounded like a threat. There is something evil in Beyond Vantablack, Mr. Federman. Something Mr. Sorensen does not want people to know about. Ms. Laver is missing. Mr. Adartu is missing. I'm afraid that I may go missing.

as well. I hope that I'm not making a grave mistake by trusting you with this information. Please contact me via this email address or using the number provided. Sincerely, Thomas Lauren, artist for hire. Many of us know what it's like to work more than one job to make ends meet. Exhaustion takes a toll when traveling from day job to night job. And as author Henry Galley tells us, a woman's sleepless drive one night leaves her stranded on the road and desperate for help. Too bad help isn't being offered by the strange person out there with her. Performing this tale are Alexis Bristow, Peter Lewis, and Mick Wingert.

So if you find yourself alone on the road on the darkest of moonless nights, beware of the dirt road man. The worst night of my life happened on August 4th, 1995. I dropped out of college that year after coming down with depression, meaning I had several grand's worth of tuition debt and no degree to show for it. I was working two jobs trying to cover those costs on top of the rent on my apartment in Albuquerque, not to mention the added costs of the food and utilities I needed just to survive. During the day, I worked full-time as a cleaner at a local high school, school, scrubbing floors and cleaning out toilets, and at night I worked part-time at a chicken

processing plant way out in the boonies, which involved a 20-mile drive, followed by five solid hours of using a small knife and my hands to remove the bones from a couple hundred chicken carcasses. Before I took that job, I used to love chicken. Fried, slow-roasted, baked, but after three weeks of coming home, exhausted, stinking of raw poultry, I couldn't stand the sight of it anymore. It was an almost Pavlovian reaction of disgust. That was another thing that the night job at the plant had ruined for me, in addition to my sleep schedule and any chance at a social life. The trips out to the plant also sucked, but the trips back were worse. When I say this place was in the middle of nowhere, I really do mean that. It could only be accessed via a network of dirt roads

stretching across desert and scrubland, meaning there were no road markings, signs, or streetlights for most of the journey. That's one thing at dusk, but another thing entirely at the dead of night. Couple the dark with the exhaustion and the so-so breaking on my third-hand Buick, and you've got a dangerous mix. Of course, you could drive those roads in that condition a hundred times and be fine 99 of those times.

No problem. Not an issue. August 4th, 1995, was that one in 100 exception. I'd finished work at 12.30 a.m., washed my hands, folded up my uniform, and set off on the drive home. While driving, I felt only half awake, though that had grown to become my default, physical, and emotional state. My life was characterized by the twin stinks of the chemical disinfectant I worked with at the school, and the fuming jiblets of a thousand dead chickens I worked around at night, with very little time for cool off in between. In my tired brain, it was all beginning to congeal into a thick fog,

like the night itself. Visibility was bullshit, no moon, no stars. That probably should have been my first clue something was off. I was guided by the weak headlights of the old Buick and nothing else, which limited my vision to about 20 feet in front of me. Still, I was tired, so I rolled down the window and drove fast, figuring that the sooner I got home, the sooner I'd be able to sleep off this funk. The one upside to the school cleaning job was I at least got the weekends off. I could devote that time to a little R&R, maybe order him from a local pizza place, watch some trash TV.

The dirt road I was navigating, as best as I could tell, was lined on one side by trees and on the other by a six-foot. gorge. I was weaving around the bends, picking up speed, as I could feel the way of my eyelids increasing by the second. Getting back home before my tiredness got the better of me was the only option. A 25-year-old woman who doesn't enjoy the idea of being murdered can't just park and sleep alone in the middle of the badlands overnight. I was about to negotiate a turn when something darted across the road, too quick to even register as an object in my field of vision. The sudden sharp The shock of the movement made me jolt backwards, spinning the wheel in a sudden, desperate motion to avoid hitting whatever just flashed in front of me. My tires lost their grip, and the car skidded, then swiveled over, smashing my chest against the wheel with a loud, pained honk from the car's horn.

The whole thing was rolling, tumbling in a flurry of broken glass, wailing with the sound of warped and crushed metal. It fell sideways, brought down by its own momentum, and rattled into the... gorge. I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth, and prepared to find out what dying felt like. Even though I was bracing for it, the pain was still shockingly sudden and intense. It flared up at so many places at once that I couldn't fully discern which were real and which were imagined. Body, legs, face, head, arms, hands, ears. Pain existed in this big, nebulous storm cloud that gathered around me as I sat in the wreckage of my shitty old Buick in the dirt road gorge. Somehow, after all of this, I was still alive. I'd broken some ribs, hit my head pretty

badly, and the bone was sticking out of my skin on the left forearm like a horn. In spite of the sudden shock to the system, the crash, the injuries, and the fact that my seatbelt was the only thing stopping me from tumbling downwards through the wing shield, I felt even more exhausted. But I knew that if I fell asleep, I wouldn't survive the night. With considerable discomfort, I unbuckled my seatbelt with my broken arm and forced my aching feet against the dash to keep me in place. My forehead was slick with blood and I could feel a faint but persistent whistling in my left ear, which I assumed was probably the result of a concussion. Little by a little, yelling and groaning every step of the way,

I climbed out of the car and trudged, aching, trembling, up a slope out of the gorge. The car was totaled, and it being 1995, I didn't have a cell phone on me. In a way, the concussion was at least partially a blessing because if I'd been fully cognizant of my situation and just how screwed I really was, my mind would have shut down in fear and I'd have died right there in the road that night.

A lot of people think they know what it is to be lost in the dark, but how many of those people have experienced wilderness dark on a moonless night? Even as my vision adjusted, I could only see a few feet in front of me. And even then, only in the vaguest of shapes. I knew where the gorge was from where I was standing, so I could at least form a mental picture of where it would. exactly the road was too. Where the crash happened, I was about halfway through the journey, meaning the factory was 10 miles down the road in one direction, and the nearest homes would be 10

miles down the road in the other. In the dark like this, there was no way of knowing which was which, meaning all I could do was walk and hope. So that's what I did. As I walked, I wasn't crying, but my eyes were watering from the pain. I could feel the air turning the spilled blood on my body into a cool red film. I couldn't see the white nub of bones sticking out of my arm in the dark, but I could feel the night breeze touching it. And it made me want to vomit. I just kept walking,

no matter how much the pain and exhaustion in my legs nagged at me, one foot in front of the other, shaking with pain, trying real hard not to trip over and die in the quiet, empty dark. It felt like I was moving along by inches rather than feet, half because of the dark and half because of the pain. There was a thudding in my ears that I first thought had to be my heartbeat, but I soon realized that the noise was coming from somewhere outside me,

somewhere out in the vast expanse of the desert, A slow, steady drumbeat, getting louder, getting closer, keep walking. Makes keep walking. There was shuffling out there in the dark, moving against the surface of the dusty dirt road. So cold and shrouded and lifeless. It could have been the landscape of the moon, the center of some huge lunar crater. Out in the dark, the drumbeat persisted. soon I could hear footsteps, slow, plodding thumps of boot against dirt that were out of time with mine.

The chill set in worse across my body, this time emanating from inside rather than out, flaring up my skin into aggravated swaths of goose flesh. There was someone walking right behind me. So close I could feel their sighs and hear they're slow, ragged, Broughts in the dark coming from a few feet above me. Crooked. No normal human being was that tall. This was a freak of nature.

And somehow they were standing right behind me, walking at a steady, matched pace. He hadn't run to catch up with me. I would have heard that much. But he must have just been waiting there on the edge of the dirt road for someone to follow, and this time that someone was me. My eyes weren't just watering now.

I was crying. Big, fat tears sailing down the swells of my cheeks. I could feel his presence prickling against my back. Like the dread of him just being there was being tattooed onto me. And still there was the drumming. Quiet now. In time with the heavy footsteps of the huge man walking behind me. You're slow.

His voice was deep. but even, truly calm if a little perplexed. I couldn't tell if he was making a statement or asking a question. And if giving a thousand guesses, I couldn't have told you how old he was. Crying and walking. That's all I could do. There was no way in hell I could gather up the energy to reply. The road stretched on somewhere in front of me,

and I could only hope that I was still walking it. The darkness was still so total, so complete. I was walking on faith that any person who walked for long enough had to end up somewhere. But I was getting so, so tired. And the pain humming out of my body was getting harder to ignore. You've always been on the slow side, but you're really slow now. Look, I've almost caught up. Of course, I couldn't look, and even if I could, why would I want to?

The man behind me took a deep breath in through his nose. You smell like chicken. That low, even growl, speaking with ultimate authority. You're tired, aren't you? I can feel it on you. Why don't you just stop? Hmm? Won't it be easier?

Keep walking. one foot in front of the other. You hurt your head. If you go to sleep, you won't even feel it. You'll never even know it happened. I feared that man more than I'd ever feared anything. Every panicked moment, every second of creeping dread, every nightmare, it was all distilled into one unseeable, unknowable figure walking at a steady pace behind me.

But even then, there was some... Something seductive about his offer. About just laying down and letting it end. About... Never having to deep own another chicken or clean out another shitty toilet. Never having to wake up and spend an hour trying to talk yourself into getting out of bed. No more therapy sessions. No more calls from mom and dad asking when you're going to get a real job.

No more wondering what the hell you're going to do with your insignificant little life. He somehow said it without an ounce of cruelty. My thoughts and his words were meeting somewhere in the middle. As I considered them, I felt my pace slowing and his footsteps inching even closer to me. For a second there, I was ready to just stop, to let him catch up. But then I felt something brushed through my hair. Just a gentle, casual grasp. And I felt myself propelled forwards,

like I tapped into some unknown energy reserve deep inside. More than anything else, I just knew I couldn't let him, the wandering, marching, dirt road man catch me. Even if I had to walk until my body gave up on me and I died of exhaustion or my injuries, I just couldn't let him catch up with me. Anything.

was preferable to that. You'd be so easy to replace, as if there aren't millions of people who'd kill for the jobs you resent. You're only worth how many floors you can scrub and how many chickens you can gut. You have no value beyond that. Keep walking. It'll all get so much easier when you just give up. I had to keep walking. Of course you do.

He was replying to words I'd never said aloud. I will never run. I just walk. I just walk at the same pace. Always just that little bit behind you. Because someday soon you're going to get slower. And eventually you won't be able to keep going. at all. And on that day, you will fall into me.

There was an audible creak as the man seemed to lean forward. His lips inches from my ear, breath hot on my nape. Wouldn't it be better to just cut to the chase? In the distance, a sudden pinprick of orange light against the black canvas of the night. I almost screamed with joy the second I saw it. but I didn't have the energy. I needed to conserve every part of myself to just keep walking with a true destination finally in sight.

You won't make it. Your little heart will give out before you can get there. From the intense pain racking my body, I knew that to be a possibility. But it was a possibility I had to ignore. I fought back against the tide of hurt, crashing into me and kept walking towards that tiny spot of orange light. It may have been my last hope for getting out of this nightmare alive.

Keep walking one foot in front of the other. Anyone who walks for long enough has to get somewhere. With a head full of fear, agony and cliches. I walked and walked and walked. The tall man always walking behind me. His breath hot on my back, his presence impossible to ignore. Somehow, without seeing him, I can imagine his eyes. So hard with hate and malice, boring into me,

cutting me open and pulling out my innards for all to see. Just like one of those fucking chickens. The light in the distance was getting bigger with every step. Every so often my vision would blur. and I'd blink hard as if to reset it, to delay the onset of unconsciousness for just a little bit longer. A powerful new force had entered the arena of my mind. Spite. It wasn't just surviving for surviving's sake anymore, just to carry on doing the same dead-end bullshit.

I had to survive to show that bastard behind me that he wasn't right. That I wasn't some worthless piece of junk who summed up to how much. much menial bullshit I could complete in a 24-hour period. Nobody was walking. Do you really think you can take all those steps, Lindsay? Fuck you, that's what I think. I kept walking. Think of the life you're running back to.

Shitty jobs, shitty apartment. A shitty, depressed drop out with nothing to her name, What a few books and a stinking sense of entitlement that she deserves to live. I kept walking. You're just here, taking up space and draining resources. You're not worth a fraction of the price of the organs you're made of. You are a human skin handbag. Nobody cares about you, and nobody will miss you.

you're gone. Someone, anyone, will just fall into that empty space and you'll be forgotten. I kept walking. Aren't you fucking listening to me, bitch? I'm trying to talk to you. You think you're so fucking important limping along, a cosmic blink in the grand scheme of things. You are are nothing and nobody. Do you understand that? You're not worth dog shit. You're roadkill. A dumb animal.

You're a black hole that opportunities fall into and never come out. No matter what he said, I kept walking. I was going to survive, and then I was going to live. The light in the distance, I was. soon realized, was a lone house on the roadside. Portchlight still on outside giving me my last little beacon of hope. It was a ramshackle little place with a tin roof and timber walls, but it could have been a row of outhouses for all I cared, as long as there was someone there who could help me. I sucked a breath in through my teeth, drew upon whatever energy reserves I had left and

limped forwards at a slightly quicker pace. The bone protruding, from my arms set out a shockwave of pain with every jolt forwards, but I'd finally picked up some momentum again, and it'd take more than pain to stop me. But this isn't the end. The day will come when you'll slow down again. Later, I'll be right behind you with open arms, ready to receive. The house was coming into focus. I could make out the front door and the dirt driveway and the spindly picket fence around the perimeter. Looking up, I could make out the faint shape of black lines dangling overhead and hoped that at least some of them were phone lines. Though it was a little more distant now, the shuffling footsteps of the tall man were still grinding through the dirt behind me.

Still, I couldn't bear to turn around, not until I was safe. I somehow knew that if I saw him, if I ever met his eyes, I dropped dead on the spot. crying, bleeding, I shambled up the driveway toward the front door and started hammering away at it with my fists. The strikes found their rhythm with the footsteps with the drumbeat, with the throbbing pain that made its nest in my body, but I kept going. I yelled and thumped and screamed, did anything I could to get the attention of someone probably fast asleep inside. The floodgates had opened. I leaned against the door, sobbing, feeling the immense weight of my exhaustion laying against me. The will to live and the fear of the dirt road man were the only things propping me up.

Seconds later, the front door was open, and I was staring down the beam of a powerful flashlight and the muzzle of a double-barrel shotgun. The man holding it, an older man, probably mid-60s, with thinning hair and blue pajamas, looked like the portrait of anger. tiredness and bemusement. The fuck are you doing, hammering at my door at a time like this? I had an accident.

I think someone's following me, please. I need help. He paused and lowered the shotgun, taking in the whole sorry sight of me. The blood, the bruising, the protruding bone. His features softened into sympathy. Jesus Christ, lady, you look like you've been hit by a truck. The man looked up, beyond me, and a sudden wave of shock passed over his face.

Come on, I'll get you inside. I'll call you an ambulance. I nodded, because I didn't have any more energy left to speak, and hobbled into the doorway past him. Now that I'd finally found some semblance of safety, I stole a single glance over my shoulder to finally see if I could catch a fleeting glimpse of the dirt roadman who'd made my life a living hell for the past few hours. There was no tall man standing out there in the dark, no whispering lips, no gnarled, grasping fingers. Nothing that even remotely resembled the cold, hateful intelligence that had been behind me. Instead, in the last few prisms of light from the kind stranger's flashlight, were the glowing eyes of what must have been at least 30 coyotes.

A whole pack and then some. All poised. All hungry. Coyotes aren't normally given to attacking humans, but a whole pack, trailing behind a wounded sack of meat that stink of chicken and blood and fear, they weren't there to make sure I had a safe trip home. If I'd stopped, if I'd passed out, I'd have been lucky if the authorities ever even found my bones. Had the whispering of the dirt roadman been the quiet snarls of a ravenous pack of animals, the expression of some combined will. for me to drop dead and accept my role as that night's dinner? I'd never truly know.

Like all of the life's great questions, nobody ever bothered to write the answer down. The night passed in a blur after that. I sat on the weathered couch of a kind stranger and fought the advance of unconsciousness while he spoke feverishly on the phone to the ambulance. It was a continuous battle to keep my eyelids from falling, to the extent that I couldn't focus on anything else.

I called and thanked the man properly a week later once I'd recovered. His name was Ted Moore. The two calls I made after that were to quit both jobs, and the third was to my university to discuss re-enrolling. When the ambulance had arrived, I was pulled out of the old house on a stretcher with an oxygen mask drawn over my face, keeping the flow of air to my damaged brain steady

while EMT swarmed around me. Out in the distance, The glowing eyes of hungry, disappointed coyotes receded into the darkness. Deprived of the meal, they'd been so eagerly anticipating, that they would have gotten if I stopped. Keep breathing, ma'am. The EMT spoke softly to me as I was rolled up into the back of the ambulance. Just keep... It's a miracle you got as far as you did.

I think I must have laughed behind my mask, but I can't remember for sure. The ambulance pulled away from the curb, and I stared out of the back window as the light from Ted's house faded. The silhouette of the tall, looming man standing on the dirt road next to it faded too. We've run out of tape. It's time to press eject and end the show. We thank you for letting us perform for you. If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions of our audio program, Please visit the no sleeppodcast.com to learn about our season past program. Over 60 hours of content for only 1999.

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