The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S15E15

Episode Date: December 6, 2020

It’s Episode 15 of Season 15. Our lost highway journey has us hungry for more. “Honk If You’re Hungry” written by TJ Lea (Story starts around 00:05:55) Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Narrator – Kyle Akers, Jesse – Atticus Jackson, Clown – Jesse Cornett “The Escher Room” written by C.M. Scandreth (Story starts around 00:26:45) Produced by: Jesse Cornett Cast: Madeleine – Erika Sanderson, MI5 Agent – Joe Shire, Edgar – David Ault, Father – Andy Cresswell “The Whi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, this is Graham Rowett. We have some great horror stories for you this week. I'm glad you enjoy listening to the disturbing tales we offer. Isn't it oddly funny how horror can help take our minds off the dark struggles in our real life? But when more than just a distraction is needed, I'm thankful for what Better Help offers us. Look, we all go through struggles, and being able to talk to someone trained to provide the kind of help we need is important. That's what makes BetterHelp so effective. Better Help assesses your needs and matches you with your own licensed professional therapist, so you can start communicating in under 48 hours. There's a broad range of expertise available, which may not be locally available in many areas.

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And in the meantime, enjoy some of the No Sleep podcast's delightfully devilish distractions. Tales or grace yourself for the No Sleep podcast. Episode 15 of the No Sleep Podcast. I'm David Cummings, and now it's dark. I'm excited to announce a brand new contest where one of our lucky listeners will win a brand new car. Sorry to interrupt, but I have some exciting news of my own. Do you mind if I cut in to share it with the listeners?

Well, actually, it's not really the best time to be... Oh, thank you so much. So, I know the world of audio drama is packed with amazing stories. But those of our listeners who haven't checked out the Leviathan Chronicles are missing one of the best. It's an epic adventure and has just finished season three, bringing the main story to a thrilling conclusion.

And it's available for free wherever you get your podcasts. You may hear some voices you recognize in there too, like Erin Lillis, Dan Zepoula, Erica Sanderson, Ellie Hirschman, Nicole Goodnight, Mike Del Gordio, Graham Rowett, and me. And my good friend Christoph has now launched a Kickstarter to build new stories both within the Leviathan universe and without, and you can find all the info at Leviathan Chronicles.com.

Please do listen and support if you can. And in other news, the horror podcast I run with Mark Nixon, Shadows at the Door, has finished its second series, and we're releasing some bonus content like Drunk Ghost Stories, a Christmas special written by Gemma Amour, and an actor's roundtable with the lovely Erica Sanderson and others. We pride ourselves on bringing a mix of adaptations of old stories, from such authors as M.R. James, Charles Dickens and Washington Irving,

to new tales from modern writers, but all with the quiet atmospheric chills that are so apt for a Christmas Eve by the fire. You can find shadows at the door just like the Leviathan Chronicles, wherever you get your podcasts. So, thank you so much for letting me share that. So you were saying something about a lucky listener winning a new car? No, no, no, no. I was saying they could win a new carbonated beverage

of their choice, but it seems anticlimactic now. Yeah, it does rather take the fizz out of things, doesn't it? I'll let you get on with the show. Agreed. So now, let's begin our journey down this lost highway. In our first tale, we meet two friends heading home after a concert. You know what it's like, buzzing from the music, trying to find your car in the parking lot,

feeling like a post-show bite to eat. But in this tale, shared with us by author T.J. Lee, the friends find they're not alone in the parking lot, and someone there is doing more than just clowning around. Performing this tale are Kyle Acres, Atticus Jackson, and Jesse Cornett. So stick to the drive-thrus if you want some food. And whatever you do, don't honk if you're hungry. A portly, haggard clown stood opposite. clutching a pathetic sign from rotting cardboard with crude marker scribbled across the front. His putty-stained gloves and sour facial expression, giving the whole thing an even weirder vibe.

His frayed white outfit was smeared with red, black, and gray putty. Some of it practically dripping off of him as he moved his body at awkward angles to accommodate the feats of the cardboard. What the fuck? Jesse and I exchanged a look of bewilderment. at the absolute state of the man some 20 feet away from us in the rapidly dwindling parking lot. It was late. There'd been a phenomenal concert across the street where my ever-daring friend Jesse got a little too rowdy and had his face kicked in.

We were absolutely engrossed in his hilarious wincing before the sound filled our ears. The smell assaulted our nostrils and our eyes felt like they needed bleaching after reaching the source. Well, I don't think you be hungry. I think you mean honk of your horn. Ow! Jesse still clutching his nose sounded almost comically congested. I punched him hard on the ribs and refused to break eye contact with the meat clown as he gingerly twirled the sign around, the cardboard threatening to shatter like his pathetic frame.

The sound carried on the wind, but it wasn't strong enough to make out. I thought maybe he was coughing as Jesse continued to bitch and moan. Now, what the hell, Rich? He rubbed his arm dramatically, barely paying attention to the meat clown shuffling towards him. But I was. Something about him just felt off. So when he started swaying from side to side and closing that gap, my hair just stood on end. Jesse, on the other hand, fueled by adrenaline, walked confidently towards him and held a hand to his ear.

Tell me a joke, brother Penny! He bellowed. fully expecting laughter to break out at any moment. But it didn't. The sound became clearer. Each consonant gurgled out in a guttural drone. His eyes wide and piercing amid a sea of white makeup and thick black eyeliner. A red sigil painted on both sides of his cheeks and joining down at the chin.

He edged closer, gripping the sign tightly, nails digging into the cardboard, and I swear one began to peel as it was forced further in. black flesh poking out from underneath. You'll have to speak up, my man. So far, your outfit is way funnier than your routine. But when the clown kept walking closer, his laughter petered away very quickly. Before I'd even had a chance to close the gap and pull Jesse away,

this macabre mascot was face to face with him, literally. I immediately walked towards them, sensing danger, but with every step came, new clarity on his features. And I'm ashamed to say I slowed down when I heard him properly. But it was guttural, low, elongated, like a rumble in his diaphragm that his throat was barely able to push out beyond a croak. The last gap of a dying soul rushing to leave a decaying corpse.

His eyes were the sole thing on him that looked alert. The white paint wasn't white paint. It was sallow, malnourished skin, stretched to the absolute brink over gaunt cheeks and frail limbs. His outfit's putty was covered in flies and maggots. The stench was enough to make me gag. Jesse stood frozen in horror as the clown pressed his face directly onto his, unblinking as he continued his bizarre and unnerving cry.

As I pulled Jesse back by the scruff of his neck, a sickening squelch sound followed by a snap, cut the air, and stopped the bizarre haunt. It was a portion of his nose. The gangrenous flesh was still attached to Jesse as he screamed and pulled at it, desperate to get it off of his face. Though the clown seemed completely non-plussed by the issue. He simply bowed, wiped his hand, and held the sign up, walking away from us, and towards a small food shack at the far end of the parking lot, where the woods began.

It had a few benches with some people sat around it, and black smoke was billowing out of its chimney top, but the inside was a mixture of too far and too dark to make out. Dude, that is the grossest prank ever! This isn't YouTube! Jesse shouted after him, but was clearly too frightened to pursue. He finally ripped the clown's flesh off of his nose and stomped on it, calling it shitty putty as he did. But as we got a little bit further away, the same sound rang again.

A guttural almost muffled and elongated honk. Maybe that's not the best way to describe it. It didn't sound like the honk of a car horn or any horn, but the physical sound we would make if we just lengthened out the word when saying it. Still, it filled the empty parking lot, and I looked around for its source, unlocking the truck as I did so. Jesse, the fuck you think he is? I was craning my neck as if somehow the weird fucker had grown wings and turned into the ultimate nightmare fuel for any sane person, a flying clown. When I turned to look back, expecting Jesse to be halfway into the car and grabbing the, the ox cord so he could blast my ears with coat orange. I saw him kneeling on the floor and clutching

at his stomach. I'm so hungry. He winced, pulling at his stomach, his head shaking profusely. I thought he was having some kind of food poisoning moment and didn't know if I should move him or give him some room for the impending explosion. But before I could even move, I heard that sound again, clearer and more pronounced. "'Hunk!' Jesse was making it. I looked at him while he was still clushing his stomach. His mouth hung open and the noise rang out,

filling my ears and giving me goosebumps. Not knowing what else to do, I got him to his feet and started towards the truck. Come on. I've got food at mine if that's what you need, but I really think he should get to the hospital. No! He pushed me away with surprising strength. It took me aback.

I stared at him in shock as his face grew wide. instinctual, maddened. It's too far, but there's that place right there. He pointed a shaky finger to the shack that the mascot had wandered off to. That we'll do. It's not far. Come on. He winced again before setting off.

You just want to follow what could be the end result of Pennywise fucking a zombie? Dude, he just freaked you out. He freaked me out. Can we just get food at home? If I'm honest, I was pleading more from me than him. Clowns bothered me at the best of times. But this one, being devoid of joy entirely, set me off all the more. Jesse wasn't having any of it, though.

He sauntered off and spoke less and less as we got closer. The shack was pretty sizable and there was no car attached. Instead, it was just placed directly onto the concrete with huge metal clamps on the corners jutting out. It had a dingy side and written above it, but it must have been in another language or made up of the same symbols on the clown's cheeks because I couldn't make heads or tails of it. The cook must have been absent as the inside was pitch black, save for some swift movements from something within. The benches had a couple of homeless people sleeping on them, but given the part of the city

we live in and the late hour, I wasn't surprised. That rotting stench hit me again as we got closer and I had to hold back vomit, covering my mouth and my nose with my sleeve. Oh my God, Jesse. Can you smell that? Come on, man. They're obviously closed. We should...

But Jesse was practically rushing to the table and ringing the bell. A fucking plate with a stack of discolored meat appeared before my fucking eyes. If there were a pair of hands doing the work, I didn't see them. Jesse didn't even wait to pay. Just left his wallet on the side and took the food to the nearest bench, gorging himself on the food and moaning. I tried to get closer, but the smell was so utterly overbearing. A sweet tinge with sickly rot that I have...

I thought it was going to pass out. Wait in the truck. I'll be ready as soon as I'm... Oh, God. Oh, my... Yes! Jesse was drooling between bites. Thick globs of saliva as he scarfed the food down,

almost choking before continuing. I was so lightheaded at the time that I didn't think it'd be so bad if I went for a quick drive to clear my head. I nodded and rushed away from the smell as fast as I could, desperate for clear air. Turning on the AC and putting some piano music on, I tilted back the driver's seat and rested my eyes for a few minutes.

Jesse knew where the truck was and he'd wake me when he got in. What's the harm? I felt my eyes grow heavy and before I knew it, sleep overtook me. I came too before I'd opened my eyes, and I'm so thankful I didn't immediately do so. I could hear the groans, the dripping of the meat. The gaudy, shambolic outfit swam into focus. The meat clown was leaning over me.

making that fucking noise. I heard a sound I couldn't place, like he was scraping the wet meat from his clothes. I wasn't about to let him put that shit on me, so I instinctively leaned my head forwards and smashed into his. I immediately regretted my choice. My head collided firmly with the dashboard, and my ears began ringing.

He was sat in the driver's seat, and I had miscalculated. But as I turned to scream at him to get out, I saw his face, wide-eyed, and with a switchblade to his eyelids, he was rapidly slicing through them with remarkable precision and skill, all the while making that dreadful sound, but it was changing. He split one eyelid free, the eye rolling in its socket. He started on the lower one as I stood frozen in fear and horror. In less than 30 seconds, both eyelids were gone, and he cut the soft stalk. removing the eye in one slice before cupping it in his hands making that sound. He put his hands out towards me as I rapidly scooted away.

I could see the eyelids and the eye were rotted, fetid, and decayed. He persisted, pushing it towards my mouth until I had no room to move. My hand reached for the handle, and all my weight fell out and back onto the concrete. The next thing I knew the clown was holding me down as he forced his hand down onto my mouth, filling it with soft meat. He pushed hard on my jaw against my will, and as it burst in my mouth, I felt my vision fade and the world around me shake.

His expression never changing as that sound carried me into unconsciousness. The first thing I felt when I awoke was pure disgust. I reched and tried to vomit, but it wouldn't come up. Not even when I put my fingers down my throat, as if there was nothing in my body to regurgitate. Confused, I looked around and saw I was in the driver's seat. The clock showing it had been three hours since I'd left Jesse.

I couldn't taste anything in my mouth, and there seemed to be no damage to the car, so I chalked it up to a horrific nightmare. Concern overtook confusion rapidly, and I got out of the truck to find Jesse. It was still early hours, and the place looked even darker than before. But in the short time, it took to reach the food truck. I could see far more people aimlessly wandering around, some on the benches and others congregating. Was there a late-night craving or something?

Maybe the bars had just let out, and they wanted that drunk and fast food experience. The rotting stenchrom earlier was gone, too. I could smell the succulent aroma of sizzling bacon, tender, crispy chicken, a medium, rare steak, and flavors that took me straight to being a kid again. My dad making a barbecue on a summer's evening, and playing Nintendo, while I happily ate and kicked my feet. God, I wanted that feeling so badly. I couldn't help but feel hungry in that moment, captured by the memory. I totally forgot I was still walking towards Jesse.

When I snapped out of it, I saw him. All of him. He was still eating. His jaw locked and ripping at the hinge. Muscles still pumping and the tongue lazily drooping over the side as gnarled hands shoved more cold meat into his gullet. The throat akin to that of a duck and just absorbing it into his frame, not even properly chewing.

But the eyes were vacant and milky. The nostrils weren't moving and, his stomach was bloated. Whatever was pushing him to continue eating, it had taken his soul with it. This was autopilot. I looked around wondering why nobody had stopped him or called for help, but when one of the women passed me, I noticed the similarities between her and the meat clown. Sallow skin, sunken eyes, gaunt features, all signs of pure malnutrition and a zombified state. What the hell was I in the middle of?

The smell was overbearing in much the opposite way from earlier, threatening to take me away into another beautiful memory and making my stomach squeeze and groan in protest. But I fought to keep focused, my shock, the only thing stopping me from crying at the sight of my dead friend. Something cut the air, though. It ripped through it and every person surrounding me perked their ears up and snapped their eyes to where Jesse sat.

It sounded like someone stamping on a packet of sauce. It was squishy and followed by a distinct pop and a wet thud. Jesse's stomach had ripped open, his entrails scattering on the floor and in his lap. Immediately the people around rushed to him, knocking me aside as they fought each other to grab at the plates, scraping or, in a truly barbaric fashion, pulling at his entrails,

and squeezing out pieces of dighting. digested meat to savor. I stumbled back until I bumped the counter of the truck, hitting the bell with a horrid ring. Snapping around, I saw the sign in clear English. Pav loves meat. Just like before, a pair of unseen hands rushed to attention as the smoke billowed and a smell so overpowering filled my lungs and made me cry. The violence ten feet away, a distant memory. Even the meat clown's distant, horrifying smile wasn't enough to sour my mood, or my craving for that memory food again. Nothing was. There was a small package in my hands. I didn't even realize I was holding it, not until I was back in my car. Sunlight will be creeping over the horizon soon,

and I've no doubt people will ask where Jesse is, but I doubt they'll ever find him. The package is a small to-go box, wrapped in foil, and still hot to the touch. The smell making me smile when it wafts my way. The emotion like looking at a puppy you're taking home after losing your former best friend. The issue I'm faced with now is that in addition to the horrific hunger I can feel building in my stomach, I can look around and see people going about their early morning routine. Each one of them with that same sign the meat clown is holding. All of them directed at me.

Honk, if you're hungry. I can't see the food truck. the people, Jesse, or anything else but the signs and the visions of better days with better food. I can only hear the honking, and I am so, so hungry. Now that we're done clowning around, we'll have more horror for you momentarily. But first, are there things other than that last story that you need to clear from your head? Wouldn't it be great if there were a pocket-sized guide that helped you focus better? and simply be better?

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complete and I noticed a change very quickly. Headspace's approach to mindfulness can reduce stress, improve sleep, boost focus, and increase your overall sense of well-being. For me, it wasn't so much about trying to eliminate bad stuff in my head, it was more about quieting my mind. And Headspace helped a lot with that. With screens in our faces all the time and our attention being drawn in every direction, I've found that taking 10 minutes to shut out the noise and quiet my mind, has been extremely positive. Headspace is backed by 25 published studies on its benefits, 600,000 five-star reviews, and over 60 million downloads.

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But for now, we demand you fill the space in your head with more horror. Sometimes it's only after a person passes away. way that we learn more about them, how they lived their life and what they did, like Madeline did after her father passed. And as we learn from author C. M. Scandrith, her father possessed a photo of a strange room that seems to defy the laws of physics, and now she's determined to finish her father's research on the room. Performing this tale are Erica Sanderson, Joe Sheary, David Alt and Andy Cresswell. So when faced with a mystery that seems to have no logical solution,

it's best to leave it alone, lest you get trapped in the Escher Room. It's an evocative name, Escher. Whenever I mention it to someone, I can almost see the cogs working as their head is filled with fantastic physics-defying landscapes, where concepts like up and down are subjective to the point of view. My father was also a physicist, like myself, and he enjoyed Escher's work immensely. He claimed to appreciate the artist's work purely for their mathematical elegance,

but I would often catch him staring at the framed prince in his office like he was lost in them, a curiously childlike expression on his face. I suspect that it wasn't the mathematical precision of the prince that entranced him. Instead, it was the allure of existing in a world where conventional, universal laws no longer apply. I think that's why Escher's work speaks to so many people. And I understand that longing. I can feel what my father flirted with in those moments, and more, because I have been to one of those places. I have seen the fabric of our reality stretched and warped beyond the bounds of relativity.

I have seen the Escher Room. Like many other projects, the code name was unoriginal. Its official designation was Special Project 881. but it quickly earned the moniker Project Escher because of the nature of the research. And it was the right name at the right time. If my father hadn't been so obsessed with his prince, it's possible that I wouldn't be writing this tale now. But Dad's love of all things Escher had him pursue any information he could find on the great artist,

and the name alone would have been irresistible to him. I wish I'd found out earlier that I had been able to speak to him about all this, although that would have been difficult at the end. His death was almost a kindness. Alzheimer's disease had stealthily bereaved him of his razor intellect, as though his mind were an untempered carving knife, growing duller and duller as it soared through years of tough problems and knotty equations. After he left us, his office was a mess, much like the inside of his head.

I tried to be the good daughter, but, truth be told, I was never very good at the more domestic tasks, the cooking and the cleaning. I was, and always will be, his daughter. My mind just as bright and sharp and just as easily distracted from mundane affairs. It took me a long time to go through all his papers, the random stacks of messily handwritten notes

and his piles of photographs. His affair with Escher ran through them all like a tangled thread. Part of the tapestry eventually revealed when I uncovered a curious black and white photocopy of an image. My father's crap script on the back labeled it, the Escher Room. It appeared to be a photograph of a massive irregular sphere, hooked up to an extensive array of pipes, cables and ducts.

The fine details of the surface were difficult to make out, but it seemed to be layered with oversized circuits, each solder point the size of my hand. More importantly, there was a hole in one side of the sphere, a doorway, and through that doorway was a structure, a room, which appeared to completely defy the known laws of physics. Of course, my first thought was the same as any rational persons. It was a hoax, a poorly Photoshop image that had been photocopied too many times. But the date on the image, in my father's own hand, stated he acquired it in 1982,

the year before I was born. I found only a few more cryptic notes on the subject after that date, Then any research connected to the image stopped. His last note about it ended with a strangely personal and somber passage. With the birth of Madeline, I no longer have time for such fancies. I must become a good father and put an end to this obsession. While I believe without a doubt that the Escher Room exists, it cannot be the focus of my life now. In fact, I am content to leave it largely a mystery.

It is more poignant that way. It seemed unfair to me that my father had put aside his hobby just because I'd been born. I felt oddly hollow at this revelation, as though my very existence had stolen some vital spark from his life, had condemned him to a life of banal child-rearing and robbed him of his true joy. Holding that piece of paper in my hand, I truly understood why he stared so wistfully at those impossible prints in his office, tracing lines of infinity with his deteriorating mind. In that moment, I decided I would find the room for him. I would uncover the origins of the photo

and put to rest his dream of finding the Escher Room. Being an academic gives you access to all kinds of information that isn't readily available to the public. With enough connections, palm greasing and pocket lining, you can find out all manner of things you shouldn't know, or at least enough clues to glimpse where to find the rest of the information. Having a security clearance helps too. So does being the grieving daughter of a very well-respected scientist.

Initially, I found very little. The original photo didn't exist in any archive I could access, nor were there any obvious references to it by name or description. My father scattered notes on the subject intimated that it had been a government project during the Second World War, one of many attempts at creating a superweapon with which to defeat the Nazis. It was in a margin note on an incomplete research paper from around that time that I finally discovered an oblique reference to it. We've made little progress compared to the boys over at Escher. Still, we have high hopes that will crack the secret of biochemical fuel production.

It's only a matter of enough people and time. The author of that paper was a Dr. Howard Littleton, a biochemist. After taking a photo of the page under the dim light of the archive stacks, I put the file back in its box and returned it to its home on the sagging shelves. Whether Littleton had intended for this paper to be found, I did not know, but this was the first true lead I found in my investigation of the Escher Room. If he was still alive, I had to find him. He was dead, of course.

It turned out that the man had been in his 30s during the war and would have been over 100 if he'd still been alive. But his only child still lived in England, just outside of Birmingham. Now an elderly woman with a cottage full of collectible porcelain plates and three yappy terriers. She was kind, but vague. In a quavering voice, she apologised that she didn't know much at all about her father's work, only that he'd been trying to synthesise oil from organic waste. An explosion near the end of the war had ended the experiments,

and he'd taken up a comfortable tenure at Oxford, lecturing in biochemistry. Of the Escheram, she knew nothing. She told me that she was sorry she couldn't be more health. and insistently pressed a tiny parcel of homemade shortbread into my hands. I awkwardly pocketed them. Thank you. It was a short walk from her house to my car, parked one street over. There weren't many people about, but as I made my way along the footpath,

a man in a suit fell into step beside me. Excuse me, Ms Dinsdale? I paused and turned to look at him warily. Yes? I'd like you to come with me, please. His voice held a certain weight and resonance. The kind that comes from years of saying such things to people and knowing the best ways to get them to respond.

Are you police? He shook his head and offered an insincere smile. No, Miss Dinsdale. I'm in my five. Shit. Please, don't worry. You're not in any trouble. We just want to ask you some questions. About what? His smile was slightly more genuine this time.

About why you are asking questions. I'd just like to reiterate, Miss Dinsdale, that you really aren't in any trouble. The office was small, sparse and impersonal, as if the agent didn't spend much time in it. While he hadn't threatened me in any way, and had been as polite as any other mid-level public servant, I had the distinct impression things might not be so pleasant if I didn't cooperate. The story spilled out from me in a babbling rush, from finding the photo to talking to Miss Littleton. As I spoke, I vaguely registered his expression changing from concern into something approaching relief. Right. So it's the room that you're interested in them?

Well, yes. Isn't that why we're having this conversation? What on earth else would I be after? He didn't answer. Instead, he unlocked a drawer in his desk, and after sorting through some innocuous items, took out a USB thumb drive. The password is relativity, and the contact details of the project director are inside,

along with some pertinent information about the project. This wasn't how I had expected this to go. Why are you giving me this? He placed the thumb drive in front of me, then leaned back in his office chair and gave me a speculative look. They tried to recruit your father, you know. They baited the hook with just enough information to entice him, and we're about ready to reel him in.

I thought about that for a moment, picking up the drive and turning it over in my hand. So, why didn't they? He would have jumped at the chance. They don't like recruiting people with family, especially when they have young children. My own failure to procreate flared hot and shameful in my head. head and coloured my ears red. Then realisation prickled through my brain and replaced the

shame with a surge of hope and something triumphant. Am I being offered a job? I suppose you are, Miss Dinsdale. Project 881, the Files on the Drive told me, had been started in December 1940 by a team of physicists, funded under the auspicious of the British Armed Forces. Six bright young men with outstanding credentials were given virtually unlimited resources. sources, charged to build a weapon which would bring Nazi Germany to its knees. Instead, they created something which shouldn't have been able to exist. A bunker was excavated under a swath of privately owned farmland, and Project Escher began in earnest, its rapid progress borne from an unusual synergy between the six scientists. They didn't seem to know what they

were making at first. Their only goal was to push technology to its limits, to see what was over the horizon. Huge electromagnets were built, formed into rings, then doubled, tripled, and retained by more powerful magnetic fields. Without knowing what they were doing, they had built a sort of analog precursor to modern particle colliders. But it was more than just that, much more. They built circuit configurations that were 30 years ahead of the time, just to a massive scale. The Escher sphere from the picture was almost 50 metres in diameter and veined with gold, copper and silver circuits, like some sort of semi-organic quasi-futuristic fairground ride.

But none of that explained the entirety of the puzzle. Even though its fathers were the cleverest men alive at the time, the sphere should not have been able to do the things it could do. It's hard to tell what was science and what was coincidence. The flavour and desperation of the age permeable. the notes in a way that seldom happens now. Early on, one of the scientists had insisted on the location, on that particular stretch of land being used for the bunker,

else he would leave the project. He claimed it was some sort of universal confluence point, or in more primitive terms, the conjunction of ancient druidic laylines. If he was right, if it was his superstitious influence that tips the balance, the scientists never found out, because as soon as the sphere started to warp space and time inside itself, it was already too late. Initially, everyone was incredibly excited, exuberant as children. Inside the structure, you could walk upside down and shout down at your colleague standing on the floor.

Up and down no longer held any meaning, and in the focal point of the sphere, objects phased and multiplied as they drifted through an unknown nexus of something. cubicles and furniture were set up inside the Escher room to allow experiments that would plumb the depths of this new marvel of science. Two of the scientists even made permanent work spaces inside, claiming that inspiration came to them more easily inside the impossible structure. When they disappeared, it heralded the unraveling of Project Escher. One morning, the room abruptly began to suck more electricity,

then the interior fractured inexplicably into what I'd seen the photograph, a sort of kaleidoscopic impossibility of furniture, walls, objects and doors, all at vertiginous angles to one another. The two men at their desks were nowhere to be seen. The room was immediately sealed off, and the remaining four scientists were pressed for an explanation which they were unable to provide. In fact, the more they try to understand the rupture inside the room, the less they seemed to comprehend. Their responses in the transcribed interviews became more and more simple, and less than a week later, the most capable of the four confessed that he couldn't even read his own notes anymore. Proximity to the spirit seemed

was eating away at their intellect. But removing them from the project didn't help. By the end of the war, the scientists who had created the Escherum were virtually vegetative, unable even to toilet themselves or speak in coherent sentences. Electricity was cut to the bunker, but the rupture refused to seal, and the sphere remained powered by an unknown source. A demolition crew was sent in to destroy the thing, but upon detonation of several tons of TNT, the explosive forces roared into the rift and vanished. The immense kinetic energy most likely distributed over an infinite number of parallel interstices. The sphere was, to all intents and purposes, indestructible, and anyone who spent any amount of time in proximity to it

became a drooling imbecile. The contact number left on the flash drive put me in touch with a man named Edgar Hughes, who invited me to brunch with him at a cozy cafe in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was a short, nervous man with a greying, walrus moustache, and initially wouldn't talk about Project Escher at all. He made largely irrelevant small talk as we ate, also asking after my late father,

who he seemed to have known fairly well. I was replete with poached eggs and a wash with tea by the time he walked me to an ordinary-looking office building, where an elevator took us to the third floor. Through a swipe-access security door was a short corridor, which ended in a very ordinary room containing a desk and a computer. He spread his hands with undisguised dramatic irony. Welcome to Project Escher.

Other than a half-filled bookshelf, a water cooler, and another door to what I presumed was a bathroom, there was virtually nothing else in the room. Right, I'd expected a little more. Tapping a password into the computer, he graced me with a sardonic smile. Of course, so did I when I was first recruited. How many others are on the project? If you decide to stay, that will make two people.

His stubby, clever fingers quickly clicked open a series of windows, displaying CCTV images in black and white. I caught my breath. In three of them, I recognised the rounded hulk of the Escher sphere, dangling severed pipes and cables like a vast organ that had been ripped from a giant's chest. Nobody is allowed near it still due to the limiting effect it has on people's mental capabilities. I still monitor it for any sign of activity, but it hasn't noticeably changed in over 60 years. How does nobody know about this thing?

Well, people do know about it, just not ordinary people. Britain turned to America for help after the end of the war, but after two of their preeminent physicists lost their minds studying it and a nuclear detonation failed to destroy it, nobody wanted very much more to do with the thing. I blinked, staring at the images on the monitor. Pipes or no pipes, it was clearly large. largely still intact.

They nuked it? He grinned, clicking through several folder trees on the screen. Well, they tried to nuke it. Here, watch for yourself. A grainy monochrome video clip filled the screen, showing the weirdly organic bulges of the sphere. On a sort of articulated steel tripod

rested a complicated-looking device, which I assumed was a nuclear warhead. Watch carefully, or you'll miss it. As he spoke those words, there was a microsecond flash of light, then both the nuke and the tripod were gone. The sphere remained in place, squatting calm as a monstrous primitive egg inside the unscathed cavern that had been excavated for it. Jesus, it absorbed all the energy, didn't it? Just like it did with the TNT just after the war. As far as we can tell, that's exactly what it did, yes. I paused to ruminate, thinking about what I would have done.

Why didn't they just bury it? Pour tons of concrete over the thing and leave it to rot. Ms Dinsdale, this thing eats nuclear energy. Do you really think that the US or UK governments were going to just bury it and completely forget about it, not monitor it at all? No, I suppose not. There was an awkward silence as the man closed out of the video window and pulled up the CCTV images again.

So why am I here? We're hoping you can offer a new perspective on the problem. There had been others before me, apparently. Bright young things, each one confident that they could tease out the Gordian mystery of the Escher Room. Much like the pilgrims who had tried and failed to untangle that historical knot, most of my predecessors had given up and moved on to more productive pastures. Others had ignored Edgar's warning and sought out the room for themselves,

quickly deteriorating after the sphere's influence rotted their minds into pulp. I don't tell the researchers where the room is anymore. That way, the temptation to visit it in person is removed, so you needn't ask. I thought about them a lot, those whose minds had been eaten alive by the Escher Room. The work itself was tedious. Various pieces of monitoring equipment had been installed in the bunker that housed the sphere, thermographs, spectrographs and seismographs, but nothing new had been added. So although the data spanned almost 60 years, what it measured hadn't changed since the day the devices were installed.

I didn't ask who had brave proximity to the mind-eating sphere to place the equipment in the first place, but I strongly suspected whoever had performed that unenviable task hadn't been told about the sphere's influence. I learned that there had been a few unmanned attempts to enter the Escher Room, using the same sort of robotic platforms employed by bomb disposal squads. but any signal cut out the instant they crossed the boundary and the robots couldn't be retrieved. Over one of our regular brunches, I asked Edgar if he thought the sphere was aware.

You're not the first to speculate that. He was concentrating more on stirring honey into his tea than on what I was saying. It just seems so unlikely otherwise that it would instinctively know the precise instant to reorientate the rupture to absorb a nuclear blast. I suppose so. And more to the point, it could simply have redirected the blast upward or outward and destroyed everything around it.

Why didn't it do that? That's a very good question. I had begun to suspect that Edgar was no longer particularly interested in solving the mystery of the Escherum. The fires of his scientific inquiry for the sake of it had burned low over the years, damped by practicalities. His salary was very decent. He had a lot of free time in between the easy tasks of work. logging measurements and writing reports, and he was essentially his own boss. For any man pushing 60, it was an enviable job, a job that he had no real incentive to jeopardise.

I think the sphere doesn't want the cavern destroyed. I think it still needs us to have access to it for some reason. Why do you say that? Well, the two attempts to destroy it with very different types of detonation. Wouldn't you expect some variation in the distribution? of energies. In the first attempt, they just covered it with sticks of T&T and let rip, while the second was a controlled blast directed into the opening. Yet both resulted in the sphere somehow absorbing the respective blasts completely with no external damage.

Yeah, not even a shockwave. He shook his head, placing the spoon primly beside his saucer. Anyway, this is all just speculation. We simply don't have enough data. to draw any conclusions about the potential self-awareness of the sphere? I pushed away the teapot before he could reach for his customary top-up, a particularly English ultimatum. Well, Edgar, that's why we're going to gather more data. The military, it turned out, still funded Project Escher. Purchasing the equipment I needed wasn't difficult.

I just had to complete several reams of paperwork, then curb my impatience while I waited for the drones to arrive. Demonstrating one of the quadcopters to Edgar at the local park, I had to smile. He whooped and cheered like a schoolboy as I flew the little aircraft in a dangerously close loop around the white pillars of a rugby goalpost. He was becoming engaged again, despite his initial protests and doubts. Do you think the signal will be able to penetrate the sphere's interior? I carefully brought the drone back down and into a muddy landing. I'm not certain. But even if it doesn't, at the very very...

released it might provide us with some high-quality images from the entrance. The four remote quadcopters were boxed up and sent off. They would be delivered to a brave, or more likely, poorly aware, intermediary, who would take them to the unknown stretch of farmland where the Escher sphere held residence. I knew there would be lag, piloting the devices through remote mobile data, but I didn't have any other choice, considering the restrictions I was working under. I lost the first drone immediately, flying it too far and too fast. After a few wonderful, confusing seconds of sharp colour images, it crossed the invisible threshold of the sphere's electromagnetic influence.

Guess that proves it blocks cell signals? Once I'd positioned the next quadcopter near the sphere's aperture, I set it to hover and record until the low battery warning prompted it to return to its dock. At least we'd have some quality digital data to work with now, not just old-school analogue CCTV footage. The video physically hurt to look at it. I gave up after 10 minutes due to eye strain. It was like staring into the world's most mathematically complex kaleidoscope. Coffee and painkillers helped, but not enough to give me more than another 20 minutes

before the telltale rainbow flashes of a migraine occlusion began to dance across my field of vision. There had to be a better way to analyse the images, but until I thought of something, I'd better stock up on pharmaceuticals. After a few painful viewings, I had at least identified several recurring markers inside the the room. An old desk, a collection of chairs, some shelves filled with bottles and a workbench

littered with papers and books. The rupture's bizarre effect on the sphere's interior meant that those objects were doubled and trebled, showing me views from different angles simultaneously. The markers also changed abruptly between recordings. The chairs moved and came back huddled in a different arrangement. The workbench gained or lost bits of equipment, and new objects constantly appeared and vanished from the room. It was as though it was in a constant state of flux, but what the cause of that state was, I could only guess. As I spent another blindingly unproductive session

going through the download video logs, I finally saw something that caused my adrenaline to spike so sharply it's at my heart pounding. Seated at one of the desks in the room was a man. At first I thought he was a mannequin, so stiff was his posture. But when I zoomed in on that area of the recording, I realised he was most certainly alive, and alive in a particularly horrific manner.

His features were a flickering mess of contorted facial expressions. Changing so rapidly was as though someone was erratically jabbing at the fast-forward option on my playback controls. Two minutes into the footage, his face vibrated and smeared into a white blur, then abruptly stilled, bloating and decomposing into that of a sagging corpse. His body remained bolt upright in its chair, even as his limbs began to wither. And for the barest fraction of a second, the slackening lines of that face resembled my father's just before he died. His eyes empty, his wits fled. Once disbelief receded and the shock set in fully.

My stomach clenched and I vomited wretchedly into the waste bin beside the desk. I showed Edgar stills from the footage. That was one of the original scientists' long. lost inside the sphere. I suppose we at least know what happened to him now. The sphere is in temple flux then, not just spatial flux. It's nice to have that confirmed. He sounded neither convinced nor happy about my discovery. The still image of the war-era scientists Richter screaming in his paradoxical prison disturbed me greatly.

So I closed the picture and turned away from the screen. I need to buy a better drone, an autonomous one that can fly in. into the sphere and fly out again without our control. I wasn't aware those existed. They do, and they're expensive. But I think the cost is justified, considering what we just witnessed here. Edgar looked pensive. You think you can save him, don't you?

My eyes ached from staring into the nightmarish collision of colours and shapes. I ground my knuckles into my temples and nodded. If the room is in temporal flux, then it's possible we might be able to get a message to those lost inside it. Perhaps prevent this from happening, or even bring them through into our time. I don't mean to rain on your parade, but this is all very far-fetched. Are you sure it wouldn't be better suited for some work of speculative science fiction? Edgar, you've spent 30 years babysitting a phenomenon that can fracture known reality. and you think this is bordering on science fiction.

He gave me a one smile. I suppose familiarity breeds contempt. Where the drone had come from, I wasn't going to ask, but I strongly suspected it was military hardware, probably American. Your discoveries seemed to have renewed interest in the project. I began unboxing the device to configure it. Though it was an incredibly sophisticated

machine, I had no idea how its sensors would interpret the shifting impossibilities inside the sphere. To try and compensate for this, one of my original drones was set as its beacon, with a bright orange balls suspended underneath it as it hovered in front of the aperture. The new primary drone was set to attempt a short circular flight path inside the sphere, then return to the aperture. We need to see if it works before we try to map the entire interior. I didn't add that the possibility of losing several hundred thousand of equipment in a few minutes made me distinctly nervous.

But as I headed to the office the following morning to begin my final preparations, a phone call interrupted me two blocks from my destination. An official expressionless male voice on the other end informed me that my presence was no longer required on Project Escher and that I would be debriefed after the drone run had been completed. Thank you. The military had taken over operations. Breakfast at the cafe was tasteless.

alternating waves of indignation and rage washed over me, barely eroding my bitter disappointment. I should have known that the moment we'd had a real breakthrough, the military would take charge again. It had been so utterly idiotic of me to assume that our autonomy as researchers would stay intact, and I hated feeling stupid. Edgar didn't turn up for his usual Tuesday special, and I wasn't sure if I was upset or relieved at not being able to speculate about it with him over crumpets and marmalade. in a way that would have made it more real and I wasn't sure I could handle him telling me

it was probably all for the best as I strongly suspected he might I went back to my flat and tried a few distraction techniques I hadn't watched daytime TV for a long time and the banality of it increased my impatience rather than assuaging it scrolling through social media had never been my thing but I managed to lose myself down in internet rabbit hole

long enough to stop my knees jittering When my phone screen finally flashed up an unknown caller, I answered even before the ringtone kicked in. Madeleine speaking, on my way. His face to shade more grim than last time. The agent ushered me to a seat in a small boardroom, where a wall-mounted television displayed a paused video window. There was an incident today during the testing of the drone. His voice was as mild as his choice of words. Incident is such a convenient, innocuous word, but it's been so overused it's come full circle.

It's become a euphemism for something horrible. My internal voice was screaming at him to get the hell on with it and play the video, but I forced a pleasant smile and nodded amiably. The video has some content that you may find disturbing, but it's important that you view it. None of us can fully explain what happened, and we're hoping that you can help her. understand the events that have transpired. Yes, fine. I tried not to make it sound like I was forcing the words through my teeth.

As the video began, it showed Edgar seated in front of a computer, ringed by half a dozen uniformed military staff. He gave a detailed explanation of my discoveries regarding the room, then blithely passed off the drone experiment as his own innovation, greeted with murmured approval from the gathered observers. He'd sold me out. Fists white-knuckled under the table, I listened to him prattle self-importantly

as the two drones on his monitor deployed smoothly, heading for the aperture. When he announced that the primary drone had crossed the threshold, the gathered personnel trained their next to watch the incoming footage from the beacon drone. Then all hell broke loose. Audio abruptly cut out

and a stark black box appeared over a box, portion of the video which showed Edgar's screen, clearly edited into the video after the fact. The little man stiffened in his chair, then his head lulled over the backrest, his face slack, nerveless, only the whites of his eyes showing. Around him the uniformed men and women collapsed where they stood like a ring of felled trees. Two of them convulsed with seizures, white froth bubbling alarmingly from their lips stretched tight over clenched jaws. I was glad there was no sound. The video ended with a still frame of the macabre scene. No movement now, with the slowly growing pools of urine spreading beneath the bodies on the polished floor.

They're not dead, but they are all vegetative. What happened to the drone? What did the beacon drone see? They're not sure. The drone's link was hijacked by another signal, which began broadcasting some sorts of pulsed audio and video signal. He licked his lip. He licked his lip. eyes darting nervously at the TV screen, which he turned off. Now he almost looked like a real person. As far as we can tell, it was coded to do something to the human central nervous system. Like a sort of primitive audiovisual virus? The implications of that alone were staggering, but I tried to put them aside.

There was a more pressing issue here, the footage from the primary drone. As though anticipating my next question, the agent brought up another video, one of the CCTV feeds from the interior of the sphere's bunker. It took me a long moment to recognise exactly what was being shown, because I'd never seen it without the sphere dominating most of the space. The sphere vanished shortly after that coded signal was sent. Surely I hadn't heard him correctly. I was losing my wits.

What? It vanished, Miss Dinsdale. and it hasn't been seen since. I couldn't offer them much in the way of an explanation, just a list of speculative scenarios based on the limited information they'd given me. The powers that be seem happy enough to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the project director,

and conveniently, of course, he's currently languishing on life support in a private facility. The most plausible scenario, or at least the one that everyone was most comfortable accepting, was that the drone's electronic emissions had somehow destabilized the rupture, and the resulting temporal instability had caused the sphere to implode. The broadcasted signal, the one that had rendered the direct observers into mindless husks, was blamed on the massive seismic and gravitational fluctuations caused by the disappearance

of the sphere. And the subsequent recording has been destroyed, since it had caused cerebral deterioration in anyone who had been foolish enough to view it. But even though that's what science suggests, Some part of me refuses to accept that outcome. Coiled in my gut is a knot of intuition. An unfamiliar, superstitious, inner voice screams a different scenario. Tells me the Escher Room isn't gone. Then instead, it has somehow transcended the limits of our reality and is now free to roam wherever its unfathomable desires command it to go.

I think that when the drone entered the room, it didn't trigger an instability at all. Instead, the sphere tried to connect with it, just as it had done with the minds of the original scientists. And then it attempted to flay it of all of its knowledge. But this time, instead of the contents of a few limited human brains, it discovered technology. A level of technology 70 years more advanced than its own, and it immediately integrated the device into itself, giving the sphere access not only to the drone's sophisticated software and hardware, knowledge of our cellular and Wi-Fi networks.

And I think, no, I know that the sphere knew exactly what it was broadcasting when it lobotomized Edgar and his cronies. I'd be cautious of screens if I were you. Having written out my account of the Escher Room, I intend to destroy my electronic devices and never touch another as long as I live. Any notes I make will be in longhand, just like my father taught me. I'm still his daughter, because the Escheram is still out there, somewhere, somewhere connected to the myriad signals covering our planet.

And when it finds a mind it thinks is a suitable candidate for its unfathomable purpose, it won't hesitate for a second, and it will ream you of everything that makes you who you are. I've seen too many empty faces. intellectual oblivion behind their eyes where precious consciousness once lived. I don't want to see any more. Thank you for joining us on our journey down the Lost Highway. The musical score was composed by Brandon Boone. Our production team is Phil Mikalski, Jeff Clement, and Jesse Cornett.

Our creative content manager is Olivia White. I'm your host and executive producer, David Cummings. If you would like to find out how you can hear the extended editions of our audio program, please visit the no-sleeppodcast.com to learn about our season pass program. 25 episodes, each over two hours long, and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 2499. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening. It's the darkness phase.

It feels like you're going to... is copyright 2020 by Creative Reason Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc.