The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S13E02

Episode Date: June 30, 2019

It's episode 02 of Season 13. On this week's show we have tales about the bonds which connect us all too tightly together. "Eight Little Lies" written by Alison Cybe (Story starts around 00:02:20) Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Carly – Nichole Goodnight, Emily – Jessica McEvoy "The House of Edges" written by C.M. Scandreth (Story starts around 00:15:40) Produced by: Jesse CornettTRIGGER WARNING! Cast: Narrator – Erika Sanderson, Ruby – Addison Peacock, Jeremy – James Cleveland, Tama – David Ault , Mary Mudgeway – Penny Scott-Andrews, Robbie – David Cummings "Seven Hand-Tied Knots" written by E.Z. Morgan (Story starts around 00:59:20) Produced by: Phil Michalski TRIGGER WARNING! Cast: Rebecca – Sarah Thomas, Bubbie – Erika Sanderson, Baba Yaga – Erin Lillis, Mom – Alexis Bristowe "Silence" written by F.I. Goldhaber (Story starts around 01:16:00) Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Narrator – Nikolle Doolin, Janine – Addison Peacock, Demon – Nikolle Doolin, Dad – David Cummings, Doctor – David Ault "Consumed" written by Sarah Fannon (Story starts around 01:41:50) Produced by: Jeff Clement Cast: Georgia – Jessica McEvoy, Marilyn – Addison Peacock, Grocery Man – Jeff Clement Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast   Click here to learn more about The Black Rainbow Anthology   Click here to learn more about Alison Cybe   Click here to learn more about C.M. Scandreth   Click here to learn more about E.Z. Morgan   Click here to learn more about F.I. Goldhaber   Click here to learn more about Sarah Fannon   Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone "The House of Edges" illustration courtesy of Naomie Ronke Audio program ©2018-2019 - 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

Close our eyes. Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. To the No Sleep Podcast video store, I'm David Cummings. Our VCR is ready to play stories about the bonds which connect us all too tightly together. In honor of Pride Month, this episode will feature stories by authors from the LGBTQ community. And all the stories this week are featured in a new anthology project coming out soon. It's called Black Rainbow, and it's a book which is presenting horror stories with realistic depictions of LGBTQ people, not the typical stereotypes.

This is a book full of stories from experienced and published authors and one which would be an excellent addition to your horror library. To learn more, go to black rainbowhorror.com or check the show notes for more details. And so it is with pride that we kick off this episode. So turn down the lights and grab the remote because it's time for our feature presentation. In our first tale, we meet a couple who decide to play a little game, but this game involves truth and lies. And in this story shared with us by author Alison Saib, we learn trust is important, but sometimes it can be misplaced. Performing this tale are Nicole Goodnight and Jessica McAvoy.

So when you're looking for the truth, you should prepare to be told eight little lies. About trust. Do you trust me? Emily and I were curled together on soft bed sheets, our limbs becoming one another's blankets to shield us from February's midwinter bite. Candles illuminated the matchbox room, scenting it with vanilla and honeysuckle. Unthinking, I ran my finger along a tattoo that tailed its way around Emily's arm. thin beads of ivy forming an intricate lattice of skin and ink. I love you. That's not what I said. I asked if you trust me.

Her voice was caramel smooth. I surveyed the gaze she gave me, drowning for a moment in the chestnut depths. She blinked. You're serious? Emily nodded, little cascades of her hair bristling. The biting wind outside bellowed. I glanced towards.

towards the window and then back to Emily. Her hand touched my shoulder. My hesitation spoke to her stronger than words. I had problems with trust. That baggage weighed around my neck, my own personal millstone that I tried as best as I could not to belabor onto Emily. I pressed a smile,

a sensation of muscular movements that came so readily in her presence. Let's play a game. I leaned closer, feeling her breath against my skin. my fingers velvet on her thigh. Noddy game? An honest one, Carly. I slid my head back unsure of her words.

After so many months together, games came to us both frequently, hide and seek among the towering stacks of the university library, which changed instead into a game of hushed and eager lovemaking while dodging the eyes of hungover students. Only last Saturday we had raced along the chilly seafront, beating back the cold with our heavy breaths, finally collapsing into one another's arms by the moldering ruins of the pier. I inhaled, almost tasting her.

Endgame. It's an easy game. It's called Eight Little Lies. Eight Little Lies? She rolled her lips against the nape of my neck, nuzzling gently. We all tell them to make ourselves seem better than we are. A lie we tell people, or tell ourselves. And you want me to start?

A tender little smile and a glimmer of candlelight in her eyes. I'll start. Gradually, and with hesitating concern, Emily touched her necklace. Fingertips brushed the small pendant that hung there. Little silver wings formed into the impression of a soaring eagle. I told you this was my grandmother's. I nodded in response. It isn't.

I bought it from a stall in town last year. Why? I liked it. but I wanted to give it a story, wanted to make it sound important, but it isn't. She let her fingers drop releasing the pendant. That's a little lie. Do you understand how the game works? Okay. I exhaled, considering my reply. Nothing came to mind. My thoughts remained a silent void.

Um, what should I say? Anything. Anything at all. It's just the game. Do you remember how we first met? At the student union. You were drunk. I was trying to read. You came over from the bar and asked me if you could sit with me. That wasn't the first time I had seen you.

I noticed you before. I'd actually wanted to talk to you for a while before I worked up the courage to. I was nervous and didn't even know you were into other girls, so that's why I'd had a few drinks to work up the courage. A few. As I remember, you'd had about seven. That's how nervous I was to talk to you. I laughed.

Then like a cool breeze on a hot summer night, so did Emily. Her laughter caught the fire of mine, and soon we were both alight with it, giggling like school children. Her face, I thought, became illuminated with her smile. Okay, your turn. I never knew my parents. Not my real ones. I was raised by my aunt. They lived far off in the forest.

She took care of my schooling, and I didn't have many friends. Wasn't it lonely? No. Aunt and Nancy had everything I needed. She took good care of me. She paused and kissed me. Playfully, she lightly nipped her teeth at the skin of my chest. Your turn.

I looked down at Emily. She looked so frail in my arms, a spindly bundle of long limbs and dark eyes. I felt a yearning, a gaping earth. urge to tell her more. When I was a child, I ran away from home, stayed away for three nights hiding in an old warehouse at the docks. Why? I can't remember.

That was a lie. I hadn't wanted to tell her that had been over some stupid, trivial little argument with my father. Did I want to tell Emily how much I hated my father? Or that he was the only person in my entire life that I hadn't come out to? I had already opened one door by confessing to her about how hard it had been for me to approach her in the first place. Maybe this step was too much. It was a long time ago. My turn?

Emily shifted, letting her weight slide to her side. I bobbed my head. My aunt basically raised me. Taught me everything I know. How to cook, how to knit, how to hunt. You hunt? Grew up in the forest, remember? I thought, yes, it makes sense.

It was sensible that growing up in a forest, Emily would have to learn how to hunt. Still, the idea seemed so different, so unlike the small, fragile, calm-spirited girl who sat beside me. I pushed away the thoughts, the silly image of red-coated lords and ladies on horseback, pursuing panic-stricken foxes, and tried to imagine Emily. I tried to picture her hunched over a deer, a rifle resting against her slender shoulders. A proud smile on her lips as she posed for a photograph. Still, the image I'd drawn didn't quite settle right. It's your turn.

I don't know. Try. One more. I don't like this game. Are you afraid? Emily pulled back slightly. Something about her voice made the lump in my throat swell a little. No.

I closed my eyes. That had been the second time that I had lied during this game. game and I felt a pang of guilt deep inside me. Okay, one more, but then we stop. Agreed? She nodded, my lips pressed tight. That scar on my shoulder? It was a tattoo.

Really? What kind was it? I turned my gaze. I wasn't sure what thought hung the heaviest in my mind, that she would think me young and wild for getting a tattoo in the first place or ashamed enough of it later to have it removed. It was stupid. It doesn't matter. For a moment, her look grew stern.

It was an expression that she dawned when seriousness was called for, when the time for joking had fallen to the side. Tell me. I didn't look up. A small doubt crossed my mind. Had I offended her? I regretted my decision. Feeling guilty, I forced out my answer.

It was my brother. You never told me you had a brother? He passed away four years ago. I had his name on my shoulder. Emily looked at me, her eyes wide open as though to absorb the stars around us. I'm sorry. No, it's all right. I thought that I would carry him with me.

You changed your mind. It didn't seem right. I mean, it felt more like I was celebrating his death instead of honoring his memory. I could sense the confusion in her gaze. She looked at me, almost as if examining me. I continued the words tumbling from me. While I had his name tattooed on my shoulder, I felt bad. Guilty, I suppose.

It felt like I was forcibly tying him to me. When I had it removed, it felt as though I were releasing him, letting him move on. Does that make sense? I didn't know if it did. The words were clumsy to me, as if they were too heavy and ill-fitting to put my thoughts into a sharp relief. I looked at Emily into her smooth and beautiful face. I expected distance from her, a look of hesitation. Instead, she nodded.

It does. You wanted to carry him with you, but you found a different place to keep him. She touched my chest, delicate fingers over my heart. In here. Notting, I slipped my hand around hers. You want to keep playing? I nodded. Emily righted herself, letting her laughter fall.

The name of her name. of this game. Eight Little Lies? That's from a nursery rhyme my old Aunt and Nancy used to tell me. Oh, I don't know it. Eight little lies to catch the flies. To snare them in webs spun by eight little legs. Then sit back and watch your eight little eyes. The lump in my throat returned, only now it sat lower, hovering high up in my chest. Something about the laughter I'd experienced just a moment before felt wrong, somehow deeply improper. Don't understand. It's just a nursery rhyme.

My aunt taught me to say it to any prey that I'd hunt it. Coldness drifted over me. The skin of my forearms bristled. I leaned back trying to move, but Emily held me in her warm smile. Don't worry. She kissed my neck. Outside, the wind bellowed. I winced.

I was no playful nibble. It stung hard enough that my hand slid to my neck before I even realized it. I looked down at my fingers, barely noticing the blood they'd carried away from my neck. I tried to move my fingertips, but they were already growing numb, alien to me, like little phantom limbs. What is this? Shh, you'll be fine. Just a neurotoxin. You bit me.

My tongue was becoming a numb, heavy organ hanging limply in my mouth. She didn't reply. The room grew deep. Jim, and my body met the bedsheets as Emily cradled me down onto them. It'll act. You won't feel a thing. She was right. The sudden sense of fear was gone, fading into a foggy mist. Emily watched me, slowly spinning her fingers together. I could tell that you were the right choice. What you said about your brother, about him being

part of you, I knew you'd understand. Gradually, with almost deliberate care, she drew a thin strand of webbing from her fingertips and started to fashion it into a cord. I told you that you could trust me, and I was right. You'll get to be part of me now. We'll be together forever. That's what love is about, right? I wished that I could have formed a smile as she slid the silken trail of string around me.

She was right. We'd be together forever. I didn't feel afraid. My panic had become as numb as my body. I did trust her, and I always would. I looked up into her loving face and caught the reflection of the candlelight, shining against her pupils like eight tiny little eyes. Have you ever been to a house and instantly felt like something just isn't quite right?

Flowing out into its inhabitants, creating a sense of unease? In this tale, shared with us by author C.M. Scandrith, we're introduced to one such unsettling dwelling. Performing this tale are Erica Sanderson, Addison Peacock, James Cleveland, David Alt, and Penny Scott Andrews. So prepare to find out that there's no place quite like home, at least not when you live in, the house of edges. The house is never empty. I listen to the other inhabitants leave, heavy feet on the dilapidated stairs, voices receding, swallowed by the wood and plaster of the long corridors.

Even after those sounds have dissipated and I'm left here alone, I can feel those who lived here before. Many essences suffuse the bones of this sprawling manner. There are far more rooms than current residents, as the house isn't exactly the most desirable living space. It hunches on the edge of a cliff at the end of a cul-de-sac, and one might think it was the sort of place which the hip and wholesome would flock for romantic sea views and artful isolation.

But were you to view the house yourself? You'd soon see why they don't. The landlord, a tall, skeletal man of Polynesian descent, told me that it was once called Hedges House. It was a beautiful place in its heyday, surrounded by thick privet and spreading elms, their boundary boscage concealing interior gardens rampant with camellias, almost maze-like in their placement.

But time was not kind to the lands around the house. One coastal storm too many had eaten away the land behind it, bringing the edge of the cliff creeping ever closer. Eventually, the owners had abandoned it, finally moving out when only a narrow strip of grass separated the walls of the house from the 50-foot precipice. That had been more than 20 years ago, and hungry erosion had since claimed even that strip of sward.

On the stony beach below the house, lathes of timber and chunks of plaster bleached in the salty air, the cliff having claimed the outermost room of the house, the solar or conservatory perhaps. The glass from its windows were now smooth, transparent jewels, tumbled by the lashing tides. No one in their right mind would live in a crumbling house teetering on the edge of such a deathly fall. But then, not a single soul living here could be called sane. In a piquant display of irony, someone had knocked out the first H from the rusted wrought iron gate that sat across the gap from the outer hedge, so that it read, Edges House. I'd moved here due to financial constraints, as the house was by far the cheapest place around for the size of the rooms. I think the door to my second floor abode was lime green when I first moved in.

But in a curious twist of fate, the paint had slowly flaked away until it revealed an undercoat of vibrant yellow orange. my favourite colour. Things like that seemed to just happen in the house, and over time you stopped questioning it, as each coincidence seemed harmless enough. My room was spacious, airy and high-ceilinged. The regular pattern of scuff marks that scarred the wooden floorboards made me speculate whether the previous occupant had been a dancer,

a theory borne out by a bloody-toed ballet shoe I found behind the ancient steel-oil-oil-oil heater. The windows were huge and arched, letting in all the blue-white light reflecting off the ocean below the cliff. That first night was a hard one. I'd moved in during a manic phase, the newest medication still finding its way through the maze of my brain, and I'd cleaned the room all day until my body, at last, was exhausted. But lying in the unfamiliar single bed that night, springs creaking beneath me, sleep did not come. Instead, my ears betrayed my racing mind by picking up and amplifying every sound the house made, and it made plenty.

Oh, it creaked, and it groaned so loudly that I feared some part of it was alive and in pain, imminently collapsing. When something snapped, forcefully in abruptly, sending a shudder through the entire place, I could bear no more. I ran down the darkened stairwell in my pajamas, weeping in terror and hoping that I had would make it out before the whole house tumbled over the cliff. But it did not fall. It seemed so impossible that it still stood. I could not bring myself to go back inside.

So I stood there in the tangled camellia garden, shivering with fear, looking up at the strange hodgepodge of windows that peppered the outside of the manor. The scent of tobacco wafted through the air, and a woman's warm voice called from the edge of the light near the front door. It's not to worry about love. The house is always shifting, making strange noises. If it was going to fall down, it would have done so long, long ago.

And that's how I met Mary Mudgeway. In the flat next door lives one Mary Mudgeway, hanging half in the hall and half in her door. She stands there for sailors who came for her favours in the days of her past, but don't anymore. I've never been a smoker, but I became one after Mary befriended me. She gifted me her spare pipe, and we would pack the bowls with a fragrant blend of her own making, and puff away like a pair of Victorian gentlemen watching the sun set over the peninsula. Stuck somewhere between old and young, Mary was still beautiful in a faded way, like a dry. blossom hanging forgotten in a florist shop. When she smiled, the crow's feet multiplied,

and when she spoke, a webwork of lines tugged at her lips, themselves plumped with products she made from bee-venin and lemon. She said she still had a few clients who came to her, but as her body had betrayed her by aging, most of the work had faded away. Having never learned another trade and suffering extreme dyslexia, Mary had chosen the house for the same as the rest of us. The rooms were large and the rent was low. One night, as we chuffed sweet herbs by the porch, she asked me if I'd ever made love to another woman and delicately placed a hand on the curve of my hip. The gesture had thrilled me briefly, but through beetroot blushes I told her that I didn't feel that way about women. Long after she had gone, I could still feel the heat of her palm where it had

grazed me. I climbed the gap-tooth spiral stairs to the balcony on the corner of the third floor, where you could see into the windows along the southwest wall of the house. Mary undressed languidly and sensually, as though quite aware she was being observed, slipping on a gown of faded coral silk. She opened her window wide. For a moment, I thought she was going to jump, that she'd had enough of life in the crumbling house. I may even have been vain enough to wonder whether my rejection had been the last straw, but instead she just waited there, the breeze from the ocean stirring the hems of her robe. And it was then that I smelled the change. Rank with the reek of dead fish, the air turned foul. Rising up from the stony beach below, the fingers of the stench curled around

the balcony and gripped my throat, making me gag. Decay and sweet rot, dusted with the sharp mustiness of rotting seaweed. Mary saw him before I did, her head tracking him as he lurched up the rocks and dug strong fingers into the face of the cliff. A stinking man, his oil-skin coat and hat and greasy, fluttering tatters. Paralyzed, I watched with guilt and trepidation as he scaled the precipice, then gifting a final waft of death into the night air. he hauled himself through Mary's window. I saw her step in, and I saw her lips brush the grey flesh under his hat.

So gently and tenderly she undressed him, removing first the heavy coat, then the sea-battered woolen rags he wore beneath, until the pallid, naked corpse of a sailor stood before her. His ragged, crabbed and erection stood proudly below the cavity where his organs had once clustered, long gone to the creatures of the deeps. I'd like to tell you that I was not such a voyeur that I watched an undead sailor ravaged my neighbour, but that would be a lie. Spellbound with horror, I watched as Mary expertly plied her trade, and when the lusty corpse was done, I watched him place a pile of tarnished

silver coins in her shaking hands, then leave the same way that he arrived. I understood then exactly why Mary had made a pass at me. For if her bed had been full that night, there would have been no room for dead men. And she knew I had no access to any sunken treasure to pay for her services, even if I'd wanted to. Down on the first floor dwells a Peter Petrowski, bald as an egg and skin thin as a call. Not catching, he told me of his wasting malady, but other than that, never speaks much at all. When I first chanced upon Peter, I thought him some kind of ghoulish spirit wandering the house.

Shamefully, I squealed in fear rather than saying hello, then ran to Mary, who told me that the gaunt man was a resident, not a revenant. With a thick Polish accent and very little command of English, he was a quiet man who kept mostly to his rooms, which had an outer door to the gardens, an appealing veranda. Some days his skin had more colour, but his general pallor spoke of some grave illness, as did the dark circles that bruised the pouches

beneath his watery blue eyes. When the hearse pulled up outside his door, I assumed the mystery illness had finally bested him, and he had finally shuffled off this mortal coil. But instead, Peter hauled his grey-suited bones from the driver's seat, quite alive. I admit I enjoyed the black humour of a man, so close to the edge of death working with the dead.

Anyone stumbling into his workplace might think him a client, not a mortician. As I understood it, his work was sparse. Exclusively serving the local Polish community, he lived off their deaths like some ancient, bald vulture, hauling bodies home to the house where he meticulously embalmed them. Whenever he had a client, the eye-watering stink of potent chemicals wafted up from his church-like windows.

He seemed an ascetic and antisocial man. But one restless night when my mania would not let me sleep, I crept down to the gardens for a pipe of merry, sweet herbs, and rather than the formaldehyde fumes, music and laughter were emanating from Peter's steepled windows. Peeking through the warped stained glass, I chanced a glimpse of him inside. He was dancing as if illness had never once visited him.

A tall woman, resplendent. in an orange and yellow dress, pressed her rosy cheek to his grey flesh as they turned about the floor, and her pin-up curls shone golden in the candlelight. That old Peter was such a ladies' man, who would have guessed? As my weeks in the house turned to months, I observed three different women in his room at night. None visited more than once, and stranger still, each were the same bright dress. There was a story here that needed to be written. a mystery that needed unraveling. I watched him for days, coming and going in his great black car.

When eventually he hauled a heavy coffin from the back of the hearse and wheeled it to his little workshop, I decided to brave the fumes. With a handkerchief knotted around my face, I peered through the crack of the opened window. The deceased was a woman, and I watched as Peter carefully and reverently prepared her body. When he methodically laid out a dozen old-fashioned hair curlers and draped an orange and yellow dress over the back of a chair,

I felt a preternatural thrill shoot up my spine. In his tiny kitchen, Peter had set a table for two, complete with guttering candles and large glasses of scarlet wine. He gently arranged the dead woman in her seat, then put the needle down on a battered record player and took his place opposite her as a scratchy violin began to play. For many long minutes they sat there, the half-dead man and the all-dead woman. Then, with a small sigh in a tilt of her head, colour blushed her cheeks and she opened her eyes.

As though this was a perfectly ordinary thing, Peter began to speak in his own language. Gone was the halting, broken English. In his mother tongue, his voice was lyrical, deep and hypnotic. Even from my hidden perch by the window, its resonance sent pleasant tingles across my scalp and down the nape of my neck. I suddenly wanted Peter's lips to whisper mysterious words against my skin. They drank and they laughed. Her hand brushed his and they shared a kiss. The record changed and they danced to some lively polka,

the orange and yellow dress swirling about her hips and their mouths meeting more and more often, until he picked her up in his arms that no longer trembled with illness, and he carried her through the door to his bedroom. In the morning, the bright dress was hung in a locked closet, and the woman's body wheeled back out to the hearse, dead as cold wax once more. I returned to my room to write down what I had seen, perplexed by the events I had observed.

Had I not already witnessed Mary's Trist with the dead sailor, I might have written the whole incident off as delusions born of a full, maldehyde adult nightmare. But I knew that there was something highly unnatural happening in this house, some uncanny power at work. And I needed to know more. The ransoms are fighting, a clattering racket, thrown pans and dishes hit the walls and the floor. No children in evidence in their first floor residence, just a man and his wife in perpetual war. We all heard the ransoms fighting. When the wind blew from the south, it was unavoidable. The breeze pushed their shouted imprecations back through our windows and made all of us cringe. She should leave him.

Mary would shake her head as we drank tea in my kitchen, her comforting presence soothing my nerves as much as the hot brew. There's no doubt that she's right. And yet Ruby and Robbie stay together, despite the incendiary hatred that fills their part of the house. He is a tall, thrust-jawed man with a widower's peak and his heavy workman's boots thump up and down the stairs, like artillery warning that the fighting will shortly begin. There's always a good ten minutes of calm after he comes home, a golden window of silence where neither husband nor wife says anything to one another,

and all we hear is the bang of pipes from their shower while he sluces off the dust and grime from the demolition sites he works. on. Oh, they don't always fight. Sometimes there are ordinary conversations and dinner sounds, which are quickly followed by some of the loudest fucking I've ever heard in my life. He grunts and balls like a rabid hog, and she screams while the headboard smashes into the walls until my lampshade starts to swing in time to their rhythm. You don't see Ruby very often, usually only at night and in the weekends. She's a delicate thing. long dark hair framing a pale face and bruised red lips.

A waspish hourglass frame the exact opposite of her husband's hulking brutish trapezoid. Their domestic disputes seem to revolve around the fact that Robbie works hard and expects Ruby to fulfil all of her wifely duties to his satisfaction on his return home. In turn, she resents being locked away all day, her whole existence captive to his whims and desires. Why she didn't just leave him was another, albeit more prosaic, kind of mystery. Every time I passed her during my sleepless explorations of the strange house,

I would feel a pang of guilt that I wasn't doing anything to help her. When I lost a whole night of precious sleep to her screaming, No, no, no, during one of their hours-long fucking sprees, concern and compassion finally overcame my complacency. I decided I was going to do something. I knocked until my knuckles were bruised, listening for any signs of life inside the ransom's quarters, but not a sound betrayed the presence of anyone inside. Robbie was at work.

I had listened to his boots stomping away hours ago. I knew that he locked the door fast behind him, so if Ruby wished to leave, her only aggress would be a precarious climb down the ramshackle side of the house over the cliff. I was angry now, angry enough to do something stupid. When I'm in one of my high phases, I need to do things, to change the world around me, to frenetically create or destroy. In this instance, being denied entry to their rooms was the focus of my frustration and determination. The room beside theirs was empty, full of flattened cardboard boxes and broken furniture. But the windows were wide enough to climb out.

Clinging to the side of the house, laughing wildly into the wind at the terrifying drop to the beach below me, I swung around the exterior and craved along the narrow ledge until I reached their rickety balcony. A single, lonely chair sat upon it, warped by the weather. Inside, their apartment was a curious duality. One side of the windows were draped with lacy curtains, while the opposite side was shaded by old bamboo blinds, dusty and bug-eaten. Men's clothing was strewn about the lounge, but shelves and hooks meant for books and crockery held only women's clothing,

washed, ironed and neatly folded or hung. To the left of the bathroom sink was an impressive array of neatly placed cosmetics and beauty products, while the right side of the porcelain unit held only a bar of abrasive soap and a pungent tub of Swarfaga, both sitting in a pool of greasy grime. In a water-spotted glass behind the sink sat a single toothbrush. The door to the bedroom was closed. I vividly imagined that beyond it suffered Ruby, bound and gagged, cuffed to one of the steel radiators ubiquitous to the house.

Or worse, no longer suffering, lying murdered in a pool of her own blood. Britting my teeth, I pushed open the door to see only a drooping, single bed, narrow and empty. Now, I didn't know what to think. It was as if Ruby didn't exist. Before I could pry further or stop to muse on exactly what was happening here, the sound of heavy, angry steps began thumping up the stairs. Robbie was home early. There was no way I could make it out over the balcony in time.

I'd have to resort to the age-old trope of hiding in the wardrobe, hoping that I could make my escape while he showered. I waited in the camp for darkness, listening to Robbie undressing, muttering to himself. The shower came on, a stutter of ancient pipes in the wall near my head, making me jump. Incongruously, Robbie's hateful voice began to sing, and I crept out of my Heidi hole. Then something odd and miraculous happened. As I listened, his voice rose one octave, then another.

Before another three bars were done, the beautiful soprano voice of Ruby rang, out clearly from the bathroom. The door was ajar, and pressing my eye to it, I saw only one body in the shower. The pale curves of the diminutive wife shrouded in the steam. She froze, her voice dying away. Who's there? The girl from the second floor. We pass on the stairs sometimes. What are you doing in here? I came to help you. I came to talk to you about Robbie. Where is he? The door opened, and Ruby stared out at me. She was stark naked, her hair, beading water on skin so translucent she seemed slightly transparent, and her dark eyes were huge.

You had to get out before he comes back. What do you mean? Look at the balcony. Through the cloudy glass of the double doors, I saw the single chair I'd passed on the way in. But now a shaman. sat in it, roughly the size and shape of Robbie, and as I watched, it grew more solid, more substantial and real. I don't understand.

Unselfconscious, she began to move about the lounge, picking out clothes from the neat feminine piles. He's not real. He's the person I have to be during the day to survive. This is the real me, but I can all. I can only exist in this house. Do you understand? The shadow on the balcony turned its head, resolving smears of dark eyes and a bulging jaw now, insubstantial fists clenching and unclenching. He'll kill you if he realizes you're here. You need to get out.

And so, fear and confusion lending me speed. I fled. I've seen her since, on the stairs and in the garden. those great expressive eyes pleading me not to tell anyone, not to expose her secret. I think that when Robbie sleeps, she can exist alone, and that's why she lets him beat her and rape her in that sagging single bed. Perhaps after he has expended his towering rage and frustration, after he has grunted his seed into her, he becomes a shadow and fades away, only reappearing when dawn breaks over the side of the house.

Like all of us here, Ruby has found a precarious balance that allows her to exist. I think for me, her price would be too high. In the southwestern spire dwells Jeremy Jackson, green-painted nails and tufted spike hair. As a butcher's apprentice hands red to the wrist, he hauls bags of offal leaving stains on the stairs. There are always seagulls circling the spire on the corner of the house. and I don't know how Jeremy stands it. Their incessant calls would drive me mad, and I think before long I'd borrow the slug gun the landlord uses on rats

and I'd blast every screeching bird out of the sky. With carefully drawn eyebrows, twin lip piercings and a hint of a lisp, Jeremy's sexuality is proudly on display to the world, almost as obvious as his ribs. Thin to the point of painful, his wrists like cotton reels, any whispers of gay behind his back are probably less frequent than hushed murmurs of anorexia. Still, having run the gamut of eating disorders myself, I'm not one to judge. And Jeremy seemed happy enough, living alone in his crumbling tower like the queerest wizard of them all.

We have a sort of unspoken friendship that is quite different from the one that I share with Mary. As an artist of rotating disciplines, my own colourful appearance seemed to mark me as a sort of person Jeremy can count on as an ally. Sometimes he'll join Mary and me for a pipe, though the pungent tang of his own smoke tells me that his blend is much less legal than ours. He always offers me a puff, of course, but I decline. Experience taught me long ago that weed wreaks merry havoc with my medication, and the immediate hazy benefits aren't worth the suicidal lows that follow. How he survives as a butcher's apprentice, let alone how he got the job in the first place, is quite beyond me. But I do know that he's very good at it, and he really seems to enjoy it, even

though it pays a pittance. And there's an added bonus, worth more than money as far as Jeremy is concerned. He gets to take home all the awful he can carry. For quite a long time I couldn't figure out what his secret was, what fell bargain he'd struck with the house. All the rest of us found a knife edge to balance upon, so what was his? emboldened by my other discoveries and suspecting Jeremy's very feigness might predispose him to know what I was talking about. I decided to simply ask him. Green eyes regarded me levely. Then he replied quietly.

I feed it. How? Come by tonight after sundown and I'll show you. The stairs grew dusty the higher I climbed and mildew spread a dark patiner across. the ancient plaster walls. To reach the spire, you had to briefly exit the main part of the manor, braving the walk across a narrow span of crumbling brick. The rusted iron rails to either side would be no help at all

should the wind roaring around you get its wish to throw you off. Stain spattered the bricks, bloody and bold, a slippery reminder of Jeremy's grizzly trade in animal flesh. I wondered just how many double-bagged bundles of gore had been dragged over the causeway and how often he had nearly fallen. The pea-green door opened at my touch, revealing a neat room that had been largely converted to a kitchen. Gas bottles and a stove sat to one side, and a large wooden table dominated the rest of the spire, well-scarred with knife marks.

But what I truly noticed first were the smells. Several huge pots were bubbling on the gas stove, vats of broths and gravies, which Jeremy stirred by turns as he waved hello with the other emaciated hand. Inside the oven, large baking dishes lurked. A waft of rich meats made me salivate as he opened the door to prod something with a skewer, unfamiliar colour in his cheeks. Right on time. The meal he served was massive and exquisite,

and he gave me a quirky smile as he placed the steaming plate in front of me. I really hope you like paleo. Which part or which animal each delicacy of the meat-rich meal had come from, I didn't ask. But it was clear that everything consisted of organs or waste off-cuts, the faintly rubbery texture of liver and heart mixing pleasantly with fatty marrow gravy and blood sausage. But what struck me even more than Jeremy's cooking? ability was his ability to eat. Plate after plate vanished into that scarecrow body. The mismatched bone china licked clean by his eager tongue. It belied belief that his shrunken stomach could hold so

much, and I stopped eating long before he even slowed, unable to prevent myself from staring as he wolfed down even more. Eventually there was nothing left bar the scraps of meat on my own plate. His eyes fastened on the congealing remains, ravenous and sly. Are you going to eat that? With a shake of my head, I pushed my leftovers across the table. He sat for a while, silent but for his gut rumbling as he digested the epic feast. Anticipation bubbled somewhere beneath my own ribcage as I waited for something to happen. He began taking off his apron and shirt.

The next part isn't a very pleasant. I just thought I'd warn you. Dumbly I nodded as he walked bare-chested to the window. Every bone in his torso a stark stripe of shadow. The balloon of his belly was shiny as a ripe boil in the moonlight as he rested it tenderly on the sill. Hanging over the lintel, Jeremy opened his mouth and began to vomit. It came out in a torrent, thick and bloody.

The force of it even gushed twin jets from his nostrils. I heard a nearly subsonic moan escape from the boy as the geyser of puke pumped down the side of the house. Far below, under the trajectory from the window, a darkened split opened in the roof quickly widening to an eager hole. A mouth, but one ringed with broken glass and chunks of brick for its grinding teeth. And into that more the nutritious vomit poured. Jeremy fed the house just as a mother bird would feed her chick. It was too much. The rich food was already sitting poorly in my stomach,

and I felt my gut heave in sympathy, a brown slurry splattering the floor. Jeremy didn't notice. His eyes were rolled back, showing only silvery whites as the river of semi-digested food continued to flow. Eventually it had to stop, and the wasted boy slumped sideways to the floor. His chin and chest caked with a bill.

of macerated offal. The hole in the house closed with a crack that made the entire spire shiver. And Jeremy opened one eye and regarded me weakly. If you wouldn't mind, carry the meat's bed. I cleaned up as best I could. I washed the dishes while the boy slept, ensconced in the tiny gabled attic above the kitchen. His gentle snores keeping me company. What this house was, I was no longer sure. At first I thought it offered each of us what we wanted at a price. But the more I saw and the more I learned, the less this seemed true.

If I wanted to know what was truly going on, I would need to speak to the person who had resided here longer than anyone. The landlord. In the bowels of the building labours Tamar Tai Phi. Shirt stained with the sweat of landlord and master. He hauls concrete and planks to shore up. the shanks of the teetering house made of edges and plaster. When he's not labouring somewhere amongst the crumbling foundations, the landlord is often found in a little office at the end of the

entry hall, one hand pressed to his forehead as he scribbles in his neat books. Not a man fond of technology. He barely tolerates a landline in the house and is prone to long rants about the government if you even mention the possibility of Wi-Fi. His slacks are always dusted grey with the cement he carries on his bony shoulders two bags at a time, ropey muscles wrestling each other beneath his sweat-soaked shirt. On a quiet night, you can hear the electric concrete mixer grinding away and feel the faint thrumming through the floorboards like something alive. Apart from insisting that the rent is paid before nine o'clock in the morning every Monday,

he seems an amiable enough fellow and leaves us to our devices. If your kitchen tap breaks, he will fix it within the room. the day, and if a window blows out in a storm, he'll repair it pretty much immediately. And he must know exactly what the house is and exactly what it does. I was absolutely certain of that. The door to the basement is always locked when he's not down there. It's a great white thing of reinforced wood with an imposing padlock. I did speculate that I could probably duplicate the key if I pressed a plasticine mould of it while he slept, but there was no need. I have found certain passages and pathways within the house that allow access to areas I shouldn't be in,

especially if one is mad enough to climb around the cliff side of the house. And when I can't afford my meds, or I just can't bring myself to swallow them and the mania kicks in, I'm more than mad enough. The room that was taken by the sea some 15 years ago still gapes open over the cliff like a wound that never heals. In the ruins of that place is a doorway And that doorway leads to a boarded-up hallway With a hatch in the floorboards From there I found I could enter a duct

And crawl through it into the basement It's cold down there In the stone heart of the cliff And the darkness lies heavy A pulse switch turns on a single dim bulb Barely illuminating the cracked foundations of the house And the rough wooden beams that shore up the floors. In the corner crouches the bulbous shadow of the concrete mixer, its long electrical

cable looping up the stairs to the power outlet that feeds it, and empty bags of cement are scattered everywhere, half consumed by their own drifts of dust. As I hunch in the half-light, there's a hum and a whine, and the electric mixer turns on loose chunks of cement planking inside it. In this house of edges, have you never wondered which is your own precarious precipice? His long legs take the steep steps three at a time, his close-cropped hair grazing one of the support struts. The strange shadows here distort perspective, and he seems impossibly tall,

the angles of his limbs all wrong. Brightened and cornered, I glance around the room for another exit. The duct above me is too high to reach without assistance. Well, have you? The concrete is cold against my back, and my throat is trying to be. drier than old cement dust. It...

The house balances my moods. It gives me things to do when I'm high, and it blanks out my lows. And what price do you pay? I don't know. His teeth are too white under the dim orange bulb. His smile unnerving. See this crap? He gestures with a broad brown hand at the seaside wall.

which drips glistening moisture. The crack runs floor to ceiling, widening at the base and arcing across the floor. Somewhere deep inside it, water sloshes in and out to the rhythm of the tide. No matter how much concrete you pour into it, the damn thing won't fill. A thousand bags I wasted once upon a time

trying to solve the rhythm. He's directly in front of me now, looming over me. I can smell the, the rank sweat and the clinging dust as he places his arms on the wall on either side of me. You have a choice to make about it. With each syllable, I feel the darkness widen. Watch the thin edge race across the concrete as it spreads.

If we don't fill it soon, the house will fall and all of us with it. Then fill the damn thing. I won't stop you. But with whom shall I fill it, dear Liza, dear Liza, but with whom shall I fill it? but with whom shall I fill it, dear Liza, with whom? And it all makes a sudden, horrible sense. While Jeremy has been feeding second-hand food to the house, the landlord has been feeding it too, with human lives. Why me? Why do I have to choose?

Because that's your price. That's how you pay. The girl who had the room before me, the dancer, Who did she choose? The landlord's smile flickers and dies, like his bulb has blown a fuse. She didn't choose. The floor shudders under our feet, and a cold wind howls out of the crack. Closing my eyes, I speak a single name. In her new rooms dances one lies a ledger, so spacious and safe the ground floor.

She keeps records of sins, of all losses and winds, and when they, don't balance, she must settle the score. I think the others know about the power I now wield. Mary is still friendly, but it's careful and deferent, like someone speaking to a minister or judge. And in a way, I suppose that's what I am. While the house is a living creature in its own strange way, it still requires human eyes and ears to keep track of its residents, to ensure that the pendulum never swings too far in either direction for any of the souls that make up its organs. I can feel every one of them, the others who tipped the balance, those who became part of the foundations. Each of them thought they could beat the system, that they could take more from

the house than it gave, and for a while, some of them did. They rattle their concrete chains, deep within the filled-in chasm, bones through cement, hair mixed with stone. I don't feel sympathy for them. They knew the price, and they ultimately paid in full. I think my own price is worth it, and it comes with some perks. Ruby agrees. She says my new uniform is very beautiful. The dress fits like it was tailored for me.

Oh, she'll need to wash it a few more times before the smell of formaldehyde comes. out. But I've always loved orange and yellow, and it swirls so beautifully when the polka plays. As the lights come back on, our stories come to an end. Please remember to be kind and rewind. 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. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast. We thank you for listening. Join us at the video store next week. Our door is always open. This audio production is copyright 2019 by Creative Reason Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication

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