The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S15E20

Episode Date: January 24, 2021

It’s Episode 20 of Season 15. Our lost highway journey takes us over the edge.“The Impossible Ones” written by Nick Botic (Story starts around 00:05:00)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Matt Bradford, Jesse Cornett“The Urban Decay” written by Maxfield Gardner (Story starts around 00:23:10)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Chris – Dan Zappulla, Zoe – Nichole Goodnight, Malcolm – Atticus Jackson, Foreman – David Cummings“Things That Happen in Small Town America” written by Jonah Tennant (Story starts around 00:48:00)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Harrison – Graham Rowat, Jake – Kyle Akers, Stranger – Graham Rowat“The Edge” written by Rhokis B. (Story starts around 01:05:00)Produced by: Jeff ClementCast: Mr. Murphy/Narrator – Jeff Clement, The Agent – David Cummings, Mother – Erin Lillis“Gaslight” written by Sydney Daile (Story starts around 01:33:00)Produced by: Jesse CornettCast: Dan – Mike DelGaudio, Katie – Mary Murphy, Chris – Peter Lewis, Nurse – Erin Lillis, Dr. Johannsen – Mick Wingert This episode is sponsored by:Betterhelp – Betterhelp’s mission is making professional counseling accessible, affordable, convenient – so anyone who struggles with life’s challenges can get help, anytime, anywhere. Get started today and get 10% off your first month by going to betterhelp.com/nosleepShipStation – ShipStation makes it super easy to manage and ship all your orders from all your sales channels faster, cheaper and more efficiently. You can import orders from any sales channel and ship with any carrier using their deeply discounted rates. Go to shipstation.com and click the microphone icon at the top of the page. Enter code NOSLEEP to get a 60-day free trial. Click here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast team Click here to learn more about William Stuart’s book: “A Trick of the Light” Click here to learn more about Nick Botic Click here to learn more about Jonah Tennant Click here to learn more about Rhokis B. Click here to learn more about Sydney Daile Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone“The Impossible Ones” illustration courtesy of Jen TracyAudio program ©2021 – 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

Hey, Jessica. Yes, David? Did you know we've been telling our listeners about BetterHelp for a year now? Has it been a whole year? I'm glad we've been able to let people know about BetterHelp. They provide professional counseling online for when you need to speak with a licensed professional therapist. We've talked a lot about how easy and affordable the service is, about how clients can message their counselor or schedule weekly video or phone sessions,

and how BetterHelp offers a broad range of expertise to anyone worldwide. with clients never having to leave their homes. And so many people are using BetterHelp. They've even been recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states. That means more and more people are getting the help they need. Let's share some verified reviews from actual Better Help clients,

like this one for counselor Somalia. Last year I had a hard time coping with myself. I could not see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. And after trying other options without success, I was told about better help. Samalia guided me through the tunnel without prying, telling me what to do, or any of those other measurements tested before.

I know there will be down times, but I also am confident they'll turn around. And here's one for Dr. Moreno. Dr. Moreno is smart, kind, and wonderful at her job and has held up a mirror for me to look at my life and make hard, necessary choices. She has helped me change my life and been a huge support system to me as I take difficult steps.

I'm beyond grateful. Here's one more about counselor Rhonda. Very positive and accepting. She is compassionate and empathetic. I found her suggestions to be helpful and not at all judgmental, which was such a relief. Simply put, BetterHelp wants you to start living a happier life today. Get the help you need.

Visit betterhelp.com slash you. No Sleep. That's Better H-E-L-P. And join the over 1 million people taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. And as a special offer for no-sleep listeners, you'll get

10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash no sleep. Feels good to share such positive things, right? It does. But we can't forget about sharing some dark, creepy tales, can we? That's why we have some starting.

right now. Tales of horror. Grace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. Season 15, episode 20 of the No Sleep Podcast. I'm David Cummings, and now

it's dark. We're coming to the home stretch of season 15, and I confess, I forgot to mention our continued season pass rent-to-own program this season. So if you've been buying individual full-length episodes this season, and have purchased at least 14 of them,

you're eligible to upgrade to the full season pass 15. You just need to send an email to Admin at the nosleeppodcast.com and list which episodes you've purchased. We'll get your season pass set up for you. And it's always great to see one of our authors release a new book. Author William Stewart has graced us with a number of excellent tales in recent seasons. He has a new collection of his short stories called, a trick of the light.

Haunted houses, vengeful spirits, and crazed killers are just a few of the things waiting for you in William's second collection. You'll find a link to it in the show notes. And speaking of a collection of horror stories, ours are ready to go. Now, let's begin our journey down this lost highway. In our first tale, we meet a grandfather sharing stories with his grandson. Sounds wholesome, right? Well, it's not so wholesome when granddad is a former detective

sharing some of his more gruesome cases. And as we learn from author Nick Botick, when he starts recalling the mysterious cold cases that still haunt him, things take a very dark turn. Performing this tale are Matthew Bradford and Jesse Cornett. So enjoy those old cases, just try to avoid the stories about, the impossible ones.

I've heard a lot of stories from my grandfather. He was a detective for 27 years of his life, and I grew up listening to the tales of he and his fellow lawmen. Now, as a child, he obviously amended the stories quite a bit to make them age appropriate. But as I grew up, more and more of the true stories came out. Starting about two years ago, my grandpa got sick. He's been on a slow decline ever since.

And while it's been one of the hardest things I've ever had to deal with, his illness acted as the catalyst for a set of stories he'd never brought up before. He said he kept them filed away deep in the folder he doesn't like to open. He calls them, the impossible ones. But this last one, the one he told me last night, he says it's the one that still keeps him up some nights, the one he thinks about every day. He said he's looked over the case files more times than he can count, done a full re-examination of it more times than he can remember, and it never makes any more sense. He said he only told me now because he can feel in his bones

that he doesn't have a lot of time left. I recorded him telling me the story. So what follows is my transcription of the case, verbatim. I've only excluded his coughing fits and any off-topic remarks made during the telling of the case. It was murder kidnapping. At least that's what a little like. And it was me and Olson.

I've told you about him. There was a family, the Nebels. There was Benjamin, the husband, Jennifer, wife, and Katie. A six-year-old daughter, one of their neighbors had gone out for the paper around 6 a.m. and saw the Nebel's front door wide open. When she went over to see if everything was

okay, she saw the wife's body. The neighbor called 911 and eventually we were sent over there. Now, when I say there were no hour's signs of a struggle, I mean it. There was no sign whatsoever than anything had happened for the dead body. But even her body works of any kind. I'm getting ahead of myself. Came over the radio that the husband and daughter were unaccounted for. If you're thinking the husband did it, we did too. Obviously, the problem was both the family's cars were still in the garage.

So we think they might be on foot. Some officers canvass the neighborhood. and no one had seen them, including two neighbors that were on their porches for hours starting in the early morning. No one had heard any kind of commotion coming from their house either. I mentioned the wife's body. She didn't have a hair out of place. She was on her back in the kitchen, and a third of her upper body was under the table. We found out after the autopsy that, well,

She'd just died. There was no cause that they could find. She'd been a perfectly healthy woman. Didn't smoke, didn't drink, ate right, exercised. It was like she'd just blinked her eyes and gone from alive to dead. Anyways, we searched the house, tooth comb, a basement to add. found nothing. No evidence of a struggle, no weapon, nothing. So we spent hours in that house, thought maybe we should come back in a day or two with some fresh eyes. We went over to where

Benjamin worked. He was a supervisor at a lumberyard. According to his co-workers, he'd shown up at work that morning just before 5 a.m. When he got in, he worked on this narrow crate, this thing he was building in his office, something he'd told his co-workers was a project for his house. According to the morning supervisor, he'd only built about half of the thing. Around 6.15, he said he was running to the bathroom, and that was the last anyone saw of him. They never saw him leave. We're at the lumberyard.

I realized I'd left my notes at the house. We drove back over there, and we got there while they were taking the wife's body away. As soon as we walked in, the stench hit us like a bus. It was... Well, it was what a newly discovered but long dead body smells like. We knew it obviously couldn't have been the wife. We asked a few of the officers and forensic folks that were still at the house what the smell was, and they told us that it had only started a few minutes before we'd gotten back there.

I'm not exaggerating when I say the smell was everywhere in the house. I've smelled some dead ones before, but this smelled like every wall. the place was lined with corpses. Pretty quickly, we found that the smell was strongest leading up to the attic. Now, I told you before, we checked the attic. I checked it myself, probably five times, but we went back up. Me and Olson, I was up the little pull-down ladder first and when I poked my head up I saw something. I saw a piece of wood like a box, you know, a crate. It was shaped kind of like a rifle case, maybe three feet tall and two feet wide, maybe six inches deep and rectangular. Then it was standing straight up.

and there was blood leaking from it. We called the photographers and all the people in there. They'll do their thing. Finally, they pull out all the nails and open the box, follows the husband. Think about that. This guy was maybe 5'10, 140 pounds, and he was put in a three-foot-by-two-foot-by-st-foot-by-state. six-inch crate. Ones were just a mess.

His insides, all of his organs, they were flattened. They were just squishy pieces of fabric almost. He was stuffed in there like, I don't know. Just a rectangle of blood, skin, and parts.

His skin and the discoloration of a body that had been dead for about two weeks, which obviously didn't make sense since they'd seen him at work that morning, also missing his eyeballs. We were standing there trying to rationalize the whole situation when something caught everyone's ears

at the same time. A little girl's voice, calling out for help. And what followed was a sequence. of all the people in the attic and the rest of the house and the people out on the lawn and the people that were standing

on the other side of the yellow tape all saying some variation of the phrase it sounds like it's coming from over there. Problem was, every single person swore they heard it

coming from a different direction. Me? I heard it from above me, no kidding. The first time I heard that little voice say, help me, straight up, right up to the rafters. Of course, she wasn't there. It's just my brain's response to where it perceived her voice was coming from. We had to listen to every one of these people tell us where they thought they heard the voice coming from. People swore up and down, they'd heard it coming from the kitchen cabinets, in the bedroom closets, and the refrigerator, the tank behind the toilet for God's sake.

People on the street said they heard it from underneath cars, from behind trees, on the side of the houses next to the nibbles. Everyone heard her voice For about a minute and a half Two minutes, tops And And then it It Just stopped

About two weeks after that day The wife's sister had a funeral for Jennifer And it went fine And they buried her All that and the husband's remains were cremated not long after that and put on display in a different part of the cemetery. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but at some point over the few weeks after he was cremated, someone stole his urn.

It was missing for about six months, and then one day we get a call. and find out a groundskeeper at the cemetery had called in. The wife had been dug up and posed like she was leaning against the grave and just relaxing. She had the urine in her hands and was wrapped and skin tested it and it was the husband's skin. They'd pretty well reconstructed the man after he'd poured out the crate and he hadn't been missing any skin. And remember, I told you his skin was discolored. Well, this skin was perfectly preserved. And inside the urn, with his ashes, there were three eyeballs.

was the husbands. It's been, what, 22 years? I still hear that girl's voice calling out sometimes. And I don't mean my memory or mind is playing tricks on me. Ask her grandmother. She's heard her, the same six-year-old voice. And then, I remember it was May 12th. 2007, I was going to pick up a pizza for us.

I saw that girl. I saw Katie Nebel. I saw her grown up. I don't mean I saw a little girl that looked like her when she was young. I mean, I saw that fucking kid. She was standing outside the Walgreens right by our old house. crying, I pulled over and got out of the car, and I started to walk up to her. I can't explain how I felt in that moment.

I was nauseous. I was so, so afraid, terrified, more than I've ever been. She looked right at me and said in that same voice. happened, just disappeared. I never took my eyes off of her. She was just there one second and gone the next. I thought I was losing my mind. I was seriously worried about my mental health,

but then about an hour after I got back home, the phone rang. And was Olson. Hadn't talked to the son of a bitch in five years, and he called me that night. Said he saw Katie Kneebone sitting on a bus stop bench, crying. He lived on the other side of the country, killed himself the next day. There's never a good ending to the stories I know.

If there was, it wouldn't be the impossible ones. I figured them out one way. One or the other? And I know I've told you some others, but that girl's voice still wakes me up in the middle of the night. Sometimes I hear it from downstairs. Sometimes, from the bathroom. Sometimes I'll be laying on my side, facing away from your grandmother. And it'll sound like it's coming from her mouth.

I ever found a trace of that girl, nothing. I told you what they do with those cases that... God damn it. I'm sorry. I... That's... That's it. That's the worst one.

Some of the other ones might sound worse to you, but that's... The worst for me. He told me he didn't want to talk about it anymore and said that now that he told me, he'd never talk about it again. Sadly, we're all no doubt aware of the areas in our town where the neighborhoods aren't what they used to be. Abandoned buildings and boarded up homes. And as we learn from author Maxfield Gardner,

some friends reminisce about an art project they used to work on which documented the fall of these parts of town, but some of the memories aren't ones they want to recall. I join Dan Zapula, Nicole Goodnight, and Atticus Jackson in performing this tale. So try to focus on the restoration of things. It's far better than dwelling on the urban decay. I hadn't thought of Zoe in about three years.

There was no grand falling out. We went to the University of Pittsburgh together, and after our sophomore year, we just grew apart. Zee and Malcolm were photography majors, and I was Polly Sye. So we saw each other less and less as our coursework took over more and more of our daily lives. We fell in with new friends circles and eventually graduated and went our separate ways without much more than a few words exchanged after commencement. Good luck, let's get together in a year or so after we're settled. We knew it wasn't actually going to happen.

I was surprised when Zoe called me. I still had her number in my phone, but it had been buried under work contacts in the last. laws, friends I'd made since college. When her name popped up, I just stared at it for a few seconds, unsure of what to expect. A death in the family, maybe. As it turned out, she just wanted to meet up for coffee. We had both stayed in Pittsburgh after graduation, so this didn't entail traveling across the entirety of Pennsylvania, like visiting my parents did every year around Christmas.

We found each other at a Starbucks in Oakland, not far from our old campus. campus. And I could tell from the moment she waved at me, something was wrong, an almost imperceptible hesitation to her movements. When we sat at a corner table and talked, the wrongness at first was nothing but a slight tension in her voice, but it was there. And I think she knew I could hear it. We made small talk for a while, dancing around whatever it was Zoe really wanted to talk about. So have you made out otherwise? Not bad. Married.

Nobody we went to school with. No kids yet. Maybe no kids at all. We haven't really decided. It just feels like we're too young, you know? What about you and Sarah? Dude, I haven't dated Sarah Reynolds since junior year. She laughed.

It was maybe the first genuine display of emotion from her I'd seen since we'd sat down. It loosened up something inside her, I guess. Because next, she asked what I thought was a weird question. Hey, Chris. You, uh, you remember Malcolm? Z, we hung out every day for like two years. The memory's not that bad. How's he doing?

He's gone. I felt my stomach lurch unpleasantly, like the whipped cream from my coffee had suddenly curdled. I said nothing for a few seconds. I'm not sure what that means. You mean, gone? Or... I just mean...

Gone. That tension had come back into her voice, worse than before. She hadn't been drinking her coffee. It was just there to give her something to wrap her hands around. She turned the conversation toward a project she and Malcolm had been working on during our sophomore year at Pitt. She didn't suppose I remembered, but I did. Not well at first.

But it came back to me once we started talking about it, as though she hadn't just told me Malcolm was simply... gone. Later, I wished she'd never brought it up. It started with an empty lot. I forget where it was, somewhere in Squirrel Hill, I think. For some reason, it stood out as we walked past. A corner parking lot covered with rubble from a demolished building none of us remembered behind a chain-link fence. Nothing remained of the structure but a single wall that stood over the piles of broken concrete wood, and rebar. We couldn't think of what had been there,

and Google Maps had been updated at some point, showing nothing but the building and the process of being demolished. Maybe it had been like that for a year or more. No construction equipment was in evidence. A few weeks later, Zoe brought up the idea that had been germinating in her head since we passed by the lot.

Malcolm was already on board when she told me about it. It was always their project, and since we still got together regularly at the time, I sometimes found myself peripherally involved. Zoe wanted to chronicle urban decay in and around Pittsburgh through photos, the eventual goal being an exhibit in the Carnegie Library in Oakland. My coffee was now getting cold in front of me. I wasn't entirely sure where this topic was going, but it jogged loose a vivid memory from that time

that had somehow slipped my mind despite the impression it had left on Zoe and me. We were out walking somewhere near Shenley Park, scouting for vacant lots, condemned buildings and stuff like that for Zoe to shoot when we passed by a construction zone. Anyone who lives in Pittsburgh will know how obnoxious summer construction is around here.

Apparently they schedule everything at once in the middle of the day, so it takes forever to get anywhere, especially downtown. If you're really lucky, they'll schedule it during a game at Heinz Field, so you could be at an absolute standstill for an hour getting from one block to the next. It's so ubiquitous that you could go right by it day after day and not even notice until something draws your attention to it. We were walking past one of these patches of construction work. Half the road blocked off as a detour around the face of whatever building it was they were working on.

We could see several workers up on the scaffolding, standing on plank walkways are perched in a scissor lift about 30 feet off the ground. As we walked by, they started cat-calling. I figured this was nothing Zoe wasn't used to, but the sound was unnerving. One of the workers whistled down at her and laughed. He didn't even say anything. No, nice cans, sweetheart.

No, give me a smile, honey. Just a whistle. The guy in the scissor lift picked it up, the same whistle, the same pitch and length, even the same rude laughter at the end. All of them, half a dozen men in orange vests and hard hats, stood 30 feet above us and whistled and laughed one after the other, then overlapping. We hurried past, creeped right the fuck out at this, and only started walking again when we'd turned a corner. Once we'd moved past them, we didn't hear them talking to each other.

We didn't hear anything. The noise had just stopped. We said nothing as we waited for the bus. My skin prickled. The incident had made me think uncomfortably of birds mimicking one another, something false and strange. Fuck. Yeah.

It was all I could think to say. The bus showed up a minute later. The incident moved to the back of our minds for a while since finals were coming up. But it still lingered at the edges as something unusual that had happened. I dismissed it as some sort of weird prank, but even that felt wrong. A friend back east had construction workers in his family, an uncle and cousin, I think. so I was used to hearing vulgar jokes on a construction site. They could be assholes, but I didn't think they were ever, at any point, outright weird and creepy, like the guys near Shenley Park.

We went home after the residence halls closed for the summer, and I thought of it only rarely until the following semester. Zoe had been thinking about it, though. I could tell as soon as we met up on campus that fall, it had been on her mind. Sure enough, she wanted to go back to the same site. And I guess she had told Malcolm about the incident, so he wanted to come. He was always sort of overprotective of Zee. I didn't think he'd start anything with the workers if they were even still there, but that building was the last place I wanted to be.

We got there around noon that Saturday, and my first thought was that we'd somehow gotten turned around in the park and ended up at the wrong site. but then I recognized the storefronts to either side, now empty and boarded up sometime over the summer. The building was gone. All that was left was a vacant lot behind a chain-link fence plastered with construction warnings,

overgrown around the edges with weeds and a jumbled mess of concrete and broken glass. The scaffolding had been pushed to either side up against the walls of the empty stores. Seven or eight workmen were getting. gathered in front of a backhoe talking, though I couldn't hear what was being said at that distance. Before I could ask Zoe if she was in agreement

that this was kind of fucked up in some way we didn't yet understand, Malcolm had pried open a loose section of fencing and ducked inside. Camera held up in front of him. Hey, can I talk to you guys a minute? I'm doing a photography project. The reaction from the workman was immediate. First, the foreman, or I guess he was the foreman, he looked like he was in charge at least, started toward Malcolm, one hand raised.

I could hear him asking something. The other men sort of funneled around after him, caught up in his wake, until they settled in a half circle around Malcolm, all talking animatedly while he tried to make himself heard. Hey, hey, hey, what's your problem? Hey, hey, hey. I couldn't make out anything else they were saying. I remember thinking that his voice had such.

a heavy New York accent, that it was a parody of a New York accent. It was the voice he would expect to hear from a city construction worker, if all you had to go on were stereotypes. He looked like that, too, a stereotype, with his dusty jeans and orange vest over a flannel shirt, and the tattoo on his arm that didn't look like anything in particular. Malcolm finally held up his hands and came back to the fence, ducking underneath the loose part. The workman watched him go, kept watching. until we walked past one of the empty storefronts.

And then when I looked back, I could see them returning to their original position in front of the backhoe. Were they even doing anything? Zoe tried to pass the whole thing off as normal, but she knew it wasn't. I could hear it in her voice. So what did they say? Nothing.

Malcolm kept looking over his shoulder. I mean, you said I couldn't have a camera in there, and if I wanted to take any photos, I'd have to talk to the union. I don't even know what that means. What union? I didn't see company name or... He shook his head and was quiet on the bus back to campus.

None of us said much of anything. That was the last time we went out looking for sites to photograph. And we started falling out of touch not long after as the semester kicked into high gear. I hadn't thought about the Shenley Park site again until I met up with Zoe in the coffee shop. I was about halfway through my cold coffee because it cost six bucks and I wasn't letting it go to waste. So, did you guys ever finish the project? No, I stuck with it for the rest of the semester, but it was just making me uneasy, so I switched my focus. I kind of bailed on Malcolm, actually, which I felt bad about, but he was getting obsessive about it.

Zee was looking over her shoulder every other minute or so now. Had she been doing that the whole time? I hadn't noticed. We still met up after class, went to the movies, or whatever, but he was never around on the weekends. He was always out looking for abandoned buildings or dead shopping malls. It was my idea, but it wasn't my project anymore. He was still working on it after we graduated. Jesus.

After he went missing, I went to his apartment. I don't know why. I hadn't talked to him in over a year. I told his mom I was just picking up some stuff I'd left with him, and she gave me her spare key. But I guess I just wanted to see if he'd left anything behind that would clue me in on where he'd gone. And did you find anything? I barely registered the people sitting around us. And I was acutely aware that the place had the AC cranked way too high.

She set her bag on the table and took something out of it. A digital video camera and about a dozen DV tapes labeled by date. Most of these are just Malcolm walking around the city. Downtown, Oakland, Southside, just filming places he'd come back and photograph later. I want you to watch this one, though. She almost pushed the camera into my hands. At first, the video was nothing unusual, just Malcolm filming around downtown Pittsburgh, pointing the camera up at some construction happening on one of the bridges.

After about ten seconds, it cut to a night shoot. It was raining, but the DV camera. camera was a waterproof model, so it didn't amount to much more than a sort of white noise in the background. The camera turned around to face, Malcolm, pressed against a familiar empty storefront. Rain dripped from his face and hair. There's still there. Any lights? The camera turned back around, and then he was running forward toward the chain link fence. He ducked behind one of the Jersey barriers in front of the site, pointing the camera inward. In the rain and the dark, the scaffolding didn't look like it served any purpose.

It was just a tangle of pipes and planks. There were none of the floodlights you expect during nighttime construction, but enough light from the nearby street lamps penetrated the shadows of the empty lot to render visible a half-circle of figures, standing in front of something blocky and yellow. Maybe a steamroller or a bulldozer. I couldn't tell. Something about the shape was wrong.

The men just stood there, rain pattering on their hard hats. The one on the end held up an orange sign that said nothing, just a solid orange square. And he gestured as if directing traffic. They looked up, all of them, and Malcolm took off running. Where did you find this in his apartment? My mouth was dry. You know where I found it? There wasn't anything else there.

The stores on either side are gone now, too. She took the camera back and rewound a few seconds, then paused the image and turned it back to me, playing it forward one frame at a time. She zoomed in as far as it would go. What does that look like, Chris? Zee, this is some crappy DV footage taken at night in the rain. It's pixelated and he was in motion and...

There are a hundred different things it could be. It looks like their faces are blurred. That's all. It was a lie. I leaned back in my seat. It looks like they don't have faces. There were boxes of photos in his apartment. I just told his mom they were mine.

Some of these are as far out as Ohio and West Virginia. She took a stack of black and white photos from her bag, and I looked through them one after another. I wanted to get up. I wanted to just go. But she turned her phone toward me and opened her photo album. She'd taken the shots in broad daylight. I didn't recognize the location.

I took these at some abandoned strip mall between McKee's Rocks and Esplan where Malcolm had been shooting about a year ago. He pinned up photos of this place all over his wall. The place looked desolate, abandoned for years and left to Molder. A chain-link fence had been set up along one side of the parking lot, and I could see about ten workmen standing by an old video store. Most of them were turned away from the camera, all but one. Who is that? I squinted.

The shot wasn't great. Zoe had zoomed in far enough that the details of the face were blurry and I couldn't see the face under the man's hard hat. But the build was familiar and the facial hair. I stood up. I think I knocked my chair over in the process. Z didn't even call after me as I ran outside and threw up cold cafe mocha on the sidewalk, which made it worse. I left her there. alone, and I never saw her again.

I still have her number, but I haven't called her since then. I've almost done it a dozen times in the years since that meeting, but then I put the phone back in my pocket and try to push her from my mind. I'm afraid that if I call, she won't answer. I still don't know why she wanted to meet with me, why she wanted me to see those photos. Maybe Malcolm was just obsessive and in her need to make sense of his disappearance. Zoe had been pulled into that delusion.

Maybe I had narrowly avoided being pulled down with her. But then why do I have this guilt? I don't believe for a second that Malcolm had just gone off the grid overnight and taken up a job in construction out in McKee's rocks. And I've been noticing things recently that I would have otherwise walked by without a second glance. You know those spray paint marks on the streets and sidewalks around construction sites? My friend's uncle tells me they're color-coded to mark underground pipes and maintenance lines.

Green for sewage, blue for drinking water, and so on. Sometimes I see markings that can't possibly have any meaning. I think I remember some of them from the brief look I'd taken at Malcolm's photos a few years ago. I've seen a wavy pink line spray painted on the sidewalk, with a circle at one end and a square at the other. I've seen a white square filled with random numbers, some painted in reverse. On a desolate stretch of fenced-in Allegheny River shoreline, I don't think I'm given to paranoia. I have a stable job and a happy family life all things considered. Sometimes when I can't sleep at night, I still think about those workmen who whistled and laughed in exactly the same way.

I think about how I couldn't see even the hint of a face on any of them from a disson. Mostly, I think of mimicry and of camouflage, of caterpillars eating away it leaves, their coloration blending in with their surroundings, so nothing will notice them unless they're really looking. I wonder if I'm not crazy, if I'm right about what I've seen. What would such a thing become once it has eaten enough? I should have moved past all of this, and I meant to. I really did. But my daughter has been playing at the end of the street with her friends.

And there's absolutely nothing unusual about it. Except that I can't remember what used to be there, if anything used to be there at all. And I hope that it's only an empty lot. Don't let that story decay your mind. We'll have more horror online shortly. Gosh darn it. What's wrong, Nicole? You seem frustrated. You bet I am. I'm having trouble with my online business.

You have an online business? What's it all about? Well, in 2020, I took advantage of all the stay-at-home time to start selling stuff online. Let's face it, everyone was shopping online last year, and this year is only going to be bigger for online sales. So, what do you sell? I make these little Brandon Boone voodoo dolls, made from his real hair. That's really weird. But what's causing so much frustration? Is it tough getting his hair?

No, he's got tons of that. It's the shipping. Matching orders and getting them shipped is a real headache. Well, then you need to learn about Ship Station. No matter how much you sell, Ship Station makes it super easy to manage and ship all your orders from all your sales channels faster, cheaper, and more efficiently. You can import orders from any sales channel and ship with any carrier using their deeply discounted rates. Wow, that sounds like a really helpful system for online retailers like me. You bet. You can automate just about any shipping task.

With ShipStation, you'll spend a lot less time on shipping and a lot more time growing your business. It's no wonder ShipStation has more five-star reviews than any other shipping software. I knew it was the perfect time to start selling my creations. Right. No matter where you're selling, Amazon, Etsy, your own website, ShipStation brings all your orders into one simple interface, making them really easy to manage from any device, even your cell phone. Am I limited to certain carriers? Not at all.

Ship Station works with all of the major carriers, including USPS, FedEx, and UPS. so you can compare and choose the best shipping solution for you and your customer. ShipStation even offers big discounts on shipping rates. Now any business can access the same discounts usually reserved for large Fortune 500 companies. You'll always know that you're getting the best deal. There's a good reason ShipStation is the number one choice of online sales. ship more in less time with some of the best rates available anywhere. I am so glad you told me about Ship Station.

You'll be even happier when you get 2021 off to a great start by visiting Shipstation.com. Just use my offer code, no sleep, to get a 60-day free trial. That's two months free of no-hassel, stress-free shipping. You mean all I have to do is go to shipstation.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page, and type in no sleep? That's shipstation.com and enter offer code no sleep. Say, about these Brandon Boone voodoo dolls, do you have a lot of customers? Actually, I only have one customer at the moment, but they buy a lot of them. Oh dear, let me guess.

Your customer is Jim. Jessica, Jessica McAvoy. She buys all the Brandon voodoo dolls. Don't ask me why. Well, as long as you use Ship Station and make ship happen. And now we'll ship out some more horror. Everyone likes the familiar things in life, the comforting routine and seeing faces we know all too well.

But in this tale, shared with us by author Jonah Tennant, we meet Harrison, who is unsettled from his routine because of a familiar face he keeps seeing. I say familiar because it's someone who looks just like him. Performing this tale, are Graham Rowett and Kyle Akers. So you can chalk this up to something bizarre. Or you can accept that it's just one of those things

that happen in small town America. The man wearing my face was sitting at the bus stop bench, reading a book. I live in the Midwest United States in an in-between town. I moved here about five years back, which makes me one of the few people to move in and not out in the last decade. We're pretty small, too small for most chain restaurants. The kind of town where you got your McDonald's and all, but no Appleby's. But we're big enough that you don't really

know the people around you so well. The girl at the counter of the coffee place knows my name and my usual order, and not much else. We're too out of the way to be a pit-stop town on the way to the nearest city, but the county buses run through because people need to get to work. Was that too much detail about the local food scene? I don't know. I think it's important. I want you to understand. Anyway, I was at the coffee place when I saw him. I work at an auto repair shop a bit out of town, and I'm an insomniac, so on my lunch break I get a coffee just about every day so I can make it to the end of my shift. Jake teases me about it. I'm kind of a big grimy dude, and I get the girliest drinks. Sue me for having a sweet tooth. So I'm standing by the windfing,

waiting on my order. At first I didn't think anything really, beyond just, oh, that's a new face. But my eyes linger, and I get that prickly sensation all over, like my brain twigging me that something's wrong. I only ever felt it so strong a couple times before in my life. Once when I was out deer hunting with my dad and we saw a coyote, which we realized in a minute was rabid, come limping up towards us. The other was at trade school, and I saw some fuckhead posted up by my truck and just knew he was waiting for me. The first thing I could recognize was the haircut, then height, the general shape of his face. He was at a distance and hard to make out, and I might not have even noticed if my subconscious hadn't hooked him. I heard someone say once that you've

never seen your face, just pictures and reflections, but I have seen it, I guess. It was sort of like the first time you see a video of yourself, distorted compared to what you see in the mirror. The barista broke my attention to give me my coffee, and I forgot him for about a minute before I walked out to get to my truck. I was just across the street from him, and I looked at him, and fuck, those were my eyes. He even dressed like me. Not like he was in the exact same clothes, but the kind of nondescript thing that I'd usually wear, flannel over denim, work boots. His clothes were cleaner than mine usually looked. By this point, I was full on staring. Coffee hot in my hand.

And he looked up. Made eye contact. He smiled just a bit. He waved, awkwardly. His smile went to his eyes, like a really earnest smile that somehow made my stomach seize up. Just like that, he went back to his book. Coming out of this, I was woozy,

about to stumble every step back to the truck. I never locked the doors, but I did now. It sounds fucking ridiculous in hindsight, but it's hard to explain how it felt to see him, practically like I was leaving my own body. My skin was clammy and a little numb. To my credit, as much of a baby as I was, I pushed through the rest of the day like normal. Had my coffee, went back from my lunch break. Somebody in town's brakes were wearing thin. Somebody else had junked up their transmission.

Ordinary day. The whole time, though, in the back of my head. I was still there on the sidewalk, staring at the guy with my face. I slept worse than usual that night. I've had sleeping problems since I was a kid. Doctors said it was a routines thing. Any big change from my normal day, I can barely get a wink in. When Jake first moved in, I got so ornery from the sleep deprivation

that we ended up fighting just about every day until I started sleeping on the couch. I stayed up that whole night, just staring at the computer. I'd gone on some childish Google rabbit hole on doppelgangers and found nothing that seemed helpful. And at some point I stopped reading and my eyes just glazed over and it was morning. First half of my shift was hell until I hit my second wind. I went to the coffee shop and the dizziness started to set in on the drive over. I know I should blame the fact that I was running on empty, but I still can't help thinking maybe it was because of him. He was there in the same spot when I pulled up.

up. I wouldn't look directly at him, just rushed through to get into the store. Even about 10 yards off, he was like a physical presence, like he might as well have been right up in my ear. I could feel his breaths, slow and even, puffing on the back of my neck. I shook the entire time I was getting my drink. Coffee girl seemed a bit nervy, too. She dropped my change on the counter and didn't smile at me, which just made me more unsettled. She was normally really really. perky. Even if it was just fake customer service bullshit, missing it made the atmosphere all that much more alien. When things get bad, I'm the kind of guy who just fades out into his own head. It's a skill. Like a bad one, obviously, but a well-fucking practiced skill. I let myself recede back

into my skull, waiting for my drink, thought about the work I had to get to at the shop. Sleep deprivation made zoning out even easier. Up until I was... left the shop, that is. I didn't even look at him. Maybe it was because I was moving on autopilot and so deep in my nothing place, but I was absolutely punched with sensation as I got up to the outdoor bistro seating. The feeling of paper against my fingertips as I turned a page, a foggy half-image of black text on creamy white. I full body rocked to a stop and caught myself. Coffee spilled on my hand. It was boiling hot and I could barely feel it. There he was.

Reading his fucking book without a care in the world. Smiling with my mouth. He had a shadow of stubble. I hadn't shaved the night before. My first thought was that it felt like he'd tried to rip the soul out of my body. I couldn't move. I had to know what was wrong with him or wrong with me. I sat down and didn't take a sip of my coffee.

just stared. He didn't feel me looking at him today, or he pretended not to. But at least when I watched him, I didn't get any more of whatever the fuck that had been. The longer I looked, it was weird. I thought I could see things around him, but not really see them. It was this subtle haze like heat shimmer all around him. And as I looked, I could almost see it forming this membrane stretching out in every direction, this clear web.

A thick fucking tendril of it stretched between me and him. Almost present and iridescent and real, the harder I stared. If I had the balls, I could have reached out and touched it. After a little while, I realized that other people were starting to notice him. They'd stop, double-take, then stand there gawking at him. It seemed weird at first, until I realized, of course they'd be freaked out. I was sitting right there across the street. I mean, you'd be startled to see two of your neighbor one day, right?

Even comforting myself that way, it didn't seem quite right. Like, shit, they didn't know me that well. I could have had a twin or something. But when he lifted his head up out of his book and smiled at them, gave a little wave to whoever he'd caught staring, they'd act like he'd punched them. From an outsider's perspective, it was somehow... I don't know. Embarrassing. I must have looked that dumb yesterday. He sat there for almost an hour

with his book, and then the bus came. I could see him pay with change, laugh a bit at something the bus driver said, and then he escaped, down the road and towards civilization. I went and threw up in a garbage can, and I'd broken out in a cold sweat, so I called into work and said I thought I had food voicing. I got chewed out for taking off, but like, what were they going to do? Bring me in, have me puke on people's cars? My boss can be such a dick. I texted Jake on the way home and crawled into bed. He waited for me to wake up on my own, even after he got to the house, and he brought a big thing of baked mac and cheese into bed with him for us to share. Homemade, not that velvita shit. God, I love him so much. You're feeling better.

Ringo? My parents named me Harrison after the beetle. He calls me Ringo when he thinks he's being cute. Yeah, I am. This is what happens when you stay up all night online reading scary stories or whatever. I stay up all night all the time and never throw up over it. Well, that's because he must be getting old. Your elderly body isn't taking kindly to how you treat it no more. I pinched him on the arm. We chatted about other things. God knows what. He can talk for hours without me having to say a word. It's nice. I'm pretty much quiet and recalcitrant by nature, and so was my dad. It's nice having someone who can make you laugh and feel like a human being. But he said something after we'd flicked on the news that made me sick all over again. Oh, and I heard the craziest shit from Susie today

when she came into the office. I only just barely hurt her the first time. She was up at the nurse's station, you know, and I'm trying to read some kids' chart. And I nearly put it down. went over and asked her if she needed to go to a hospital or a fucking, fucking psych ward. But I asked nicely later, and she said, baby, guess what she said? I was half paying attention at this point, splitting my ears between him and tomorrow's weather report. She's pregnant? He threw back his head and laughed. That'd be harder to believe than what she actually said. Now that you mentioned, but she was, like, adamant that someone, woman was trying to steal her soul.

Cold rushed over me, and I muted the weather. She what? Yeah, I didn't think she was religious or anything, but... No. He stopped and looked at me, all bright and concerned. What did she say? Harry? You okay.

You've been acting funny all day. Jacob, please. He sighed. Kind of frustrated now. I don't know. She just said, when she was in town yesterday, before her show, she passed by this woman who tried to rip the soul out of her body? I don't know what it means. It's just Susie being a crackhead.

I squeezed the remote and almost broke the damn thing. There were more of them. More doppelganger things. Maybe they were feeling the town out slowly, resident by resident, until they found what they needed. She's not crazy. I know what she means. He squinted at me. This was getting him more agitated.

Well, what the fuck does that mean? It dawned on me that I couldn't possibly explain what I'd been seeing without sounding like an insane person to my licensed medical professional spouse. I made a half-assed attempt, mostly vague and avoidant, before I asked him if he'd let me drive him into town before work. He agreed, probably because he was planning on talking me into seeing the clinic. Then maybe he wanted to get a coffee. I don't know.

So I brought him there. and the stranger was there, familiar as ever, in his same old spot. The moment I laid eyes on him, face buried in his book, I could feel him dig into me. Jake stiffened up like a corpse by my side. His hand tried to grab for me, but I was already out the door and making a beeline for the man with my face. I barely even waited for traffic. I was so hopped up on being right, on being proven, on knowing I wasn't going crazy.

At that point, even against all evidence to the contrary, I was half sure that Jake wouldn't see him at all. The closer I got to the guy, shoulders up and tight, the stronger the pull was. I put everything I had into staying clear-headed and ignoring the ghost images of words on paper. I almost got hit by a car for my troubles. People were already staring at him, but as I approached, some of their eyes turned onto me, too. I could feel them. like claws and arrows, like the way he pulled at me. I stopped a few feet away and squared my shoulders.

Hey! He sat up and looked straight at me. The air around him shimmered. It was like a web, all leading back to him like some kind of spider. For a second I could see the cord between me and him, and it was as thick as my wrist, twice what it was yesterday. Harry, right? Looking down at me,

He smiled and shook his head. No, son. I think you got me mixed up with someone else. He pointed at the book in my hands. My knuckles had gone white, gripping so tight onto it. Can I see that for a minute? Before I could nod, it was his book. Or shake my head.

Hadn't I been in the middle of reading it? My hands were empty. One by my side, the other aimed down in a casual point to the book in the stranger's lap. The next thing I noticed is the air had been pulled right out from my lungs. Breathing in was like breathing fire for that first second, and I grabbed my chest. Before I caught my breath, rocked with dizziness and pain in my chest, I would have sworn I was having a heart attack.

The fuck! You ought to be more careful, Harrison. You could get real hurt pulling a stunt like that. He sounded sincere. That was the sickest part of it to me at the time. I was so angry. I was shaking with it. Sure, I would swing at him any moment. Don't you dare give me that. He sighed. The whole time, he never got angry or raised his voice. Well, hey, don't shoot the messenger. You're the one going around looking into things that ain't your business, aren't you?

Not my business? You come into my fucking town where I live, and you tell me it's not my business? I haven't done anything. Whose face are you wearing then? He reached up and touched my face, his own face, at the edge of our stubble. I don't want any trouble. We'll tell your friend. I don't have friends, Harrison. Not in this town, leastways. He gave me a long, slow blink and looked me up and down.

My skin crawled like a ripple tracking with the movement of his gaze. He smiled and spoke with my voice. I'm just passing through. Don't pay me any mind. What the fuck to you? I just try not to think about it. You can't go through your life trying to understand everything that happens to you. His smile all of a sudden got real damn sad.

I felt the ache in it. I remembered the times I'd smiled like that. I couldn't think of anything to say to him. And he could tell I was struggling because he lifted his book up like he wanted me to leave him to it. Crime and punishment. I pressed my hand to my chest where the tightness was turning into a proper, not. I'll be gone after tomorrow. He turned his eyes down to the page. I should have told him to get out of town today if he knew it was good for him. Hell, I should have chased him out myself,

but I just ripped myself away. The more I walked, I could feel the hooks under my skin pop off and disappear, and the tight feeling started to fade. I got into the car and turned to Jake. Tears were pouring down his face. His hands were class. over his mouth to catch the sobs, but I'd never seen him cry like that. I started fussing instantly, but he was crying too hard to speak. I asked if he needed to take off the rest of the day, and he nodded. We could pretend he'd picked up a stomach bug from me yesterday. He cried for hours, just uncontrollable.

To this day, he won't tell me exactly what happened to him while I was talking to the stranger. I kind of have an idea. I don't like to think about it. The one thing he did tell me was that the man had his face. That's when I knew. I went back the next day as early as I could, and sure enough, the man with our faces was there. The air was thick, like the humidity just before a big storm. He didn't seem to notice.

All the nice people whose routines he'd disrupted were stalk still staring at him, and I wanted more than anything to shop for him to get out of there. What the hell kind of a game was he playing? Didn't he know this shit was dangerous? And didn't he care about? But anyway, I couldn't get my voice up over the thick silence sliding down my throat. I wasn't the only one. Nobody was willing to make the first move.

Then Jeff, the old man who runs the liquor store, came up behind the stranger with the driver he keeps behind the counter for security. The stranger sat up a little. He knew the old man was behind him, and he didn't even turn around. The metal bulb smacked against his shoulder and keeled him right off the bench. I rolled with the blow. His book fell, and I never saw it again after, because in that moment everything turned into chaos. A little under a dozen people rushed for him.

I'm not oversensitive or hysterical or what-the-fuck ever. I swear on God that I could feel everything. I haven't asked anybody else if they felt it too. steel-toed boots to the gut, dirt and asphalt, and nice folks hate in your mouth. I don't know if it's worse if they couldn't or could. It was the kind of shit you only see on the really gritty nature docks, or when you spend a long time sitting still in a deer stand, when all the birds descend on one among them and rip its throat out,

or a mama fox bashes her kit to death. It's not malicious. It's a survival instinct. but I've never believed for a second that natural doesn't mean it can't be evil. And he looked up, made eye contact. His eyes were so big and bloodshot and scared. I could feel him pleading inside my head so loud, and I could feel the bruising and breaking like a phantom sensation under my skin.

I just stood there. Somebody brought their foot down on the center of his face, and it made this horrible cracking sound. and that was when I finally looked away. That was when I stopped feeling it. There were a few more moments of scuffling before everyone stopped. He'd quit moving, and I think it made everyone realize all of a sudden what they were doing and where. After a while, someone got a big sheet and draped him in it, staining it red everywhere.

I don't know what they did with him after they wrapped him up and moved him. The coffee shop owner got the hose he used for the flower boxes in his winter. and sprayed down the street until the gore washed away. I'd watched my neighbors murder me. I haven't disguised myself before sharing this. I could have spared the personal details and changed people's names. It'd be very consistent for a cowardly fuck like me. But I think the least I can do for us both, me and him, is to be honest.

I'm scared as hell every day. I never stopped thinking about the way his bones cracked and his teeth came out. and his skin sloughed away where they'd beaten it to mashed potato. If you hear this, if you're from my town, you know who I am, and I know who you are. And I think you deserve to be a little scared, too. Yesterday, for just a minute, I thought I saw my boss flinch looking at me. He had this look of horror and rage, and when it happened, I knew him inside out. I saw myself, and I looked like him.

Maybe sometimes, if you're that scared of seeing your reflection, that's your own fucking fault. 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 Mikulski, 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 past 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. As the darkness fades, it feels like you're going to be. Audio Production 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.