The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S3E22

Episode Date: March 30, 2014

It's episode 22 of Season 3. We have six tales for you in this episode featuring stories about creepy costumed critters and frightening female fears. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first two tales.  "Jessie's Collection" written by Amanda Lewis and read by Peter Lewis. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 00:06:45) "Cold Room" written by Eric Cleveland and read by Jessica McEvoy. (Story starts at 00:19:40) "I Was Never a Cat Person" written by Ann Drenner and read by L. Bentley. (Story starts at 00:38:40) "Character Within" written by Mateo Hellion and read by Matt Grant. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 00:50:10) "The Last Train Home" written by L. Chan and read by David Cummings & L. Bentley. (Story starts at 01:05:15) "Pro-Life" written by M. Grayson and read by Corinne Sanders. (Story starts at 01:25:00) Click here to learn more about L Chan Click here to learn more about Mateo Hellion Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music & Sound Design by: David Cummings, unless otherwise noted The NoSleep Podcast uses the PSE Hybrid Library exclusively for its sound design. This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons License 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the sunlight fades to darkness, the frightful tales creep into your mind. There will be no sleep. And I can't sleep. And now I was listening. There's little boys who died. A face in the window. Brace yourself for the no sleep podcast. It's episode.

Episode 22 of Season 3. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, David Cummings. We have six tales for you in this episode, featuring stories about creepy costumed critters and frightening female fears. Before you jump ahead to the stories, I want to take a minute to talk about the podcast

as we begin to wrap up season three and look ahead to the future. I've had a number of people asking about season four and whether or not the podcast will go forward after the end of this season. First off, I have to say that season three has been a big success. Moving to the paid model with the season past was a big risk, but I am so grateful to the many fans who supported the show by investing in a season past three. The podcast is now self-sustaining. It pays all its authors and narrators, and has allowed me to recoup all the expenses incurred from the first two seasons.

I have used some of the funds to donate to other podcasts in order to help keep the wonderful world of speculative fiction podcasting, robust and growing. And it's all thanks to our members. Out of all the goals I set for season three, only one has not yet come to pass. That's my goal of being able to do the podcast on a full-time basis. I still have my 60-plus hour-a-week day job, which leaves me very little spare time to actually work on the podcast. This show is becoming more and more like a 40-plus hour-a-week job that I have to try to fit in to about,

20 hours a week. It's been a tough road for the past 18 months as I try to balance these two full-time jobs with my personal life. My long-suffering wife and I are doing everything we can to maintain some sanity amongst this hectic lifestyle. So the big question my wife and I have is this. Do I stick with the hectic status quo and move into a season knowing that I might never be able to become a full-time podcaster? Do I risk another 14 months of this overwhelming workload? Well, after a lot of thought, we have decided that we are close enough to that tipping point that there really is no point in turning back now.

So I am happy to announce that on June 1st, we will be launching season 4 of the No Sleep It'll work exactly like season three. There will be free episodes around 35 to 45 minutes long, and season pass four episodes around two hours long. I'm also happy to announce that the season past four will not go up in price and remain at only 1999 for the 25 full-length episodes, plus the three exclusive bonus episodes. If the wonderful fans who paid for a season pass three can renew their memberships for season four, and some new fans can come on board in the new season, maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to take this show to the next level and produce it full time.

Now, what would that mean for you, the listener? Well, the most exciting change would be the move to weekly episodes. A new show, every single single. weekend. It will also allow me a chance to produce more bonus material for all the listeners and not just our season passers. How about an extra 30 to 40 minute episode of flash fiction every couple of weeks? How about some experimental stories that show up in your feed a couple of times a month? How about more fully produced radio drama style shows with a full cast of narrators and full cinematic sound production.

It would all be possible on a full-time basis. Okay, I've gone on long enough. You know the possibilities. You know where I stand. I am so appreciative of the current support from our fans, and I hope all of you will seriously consider either renewing for season four or signing up for season three and season four when the time comes.

Together, let's make the No Sleep podcast the biggest best horror audio fiction podcast on the planet, with the most prolific output we can. And speaking of that output, let's start the show and listen to some of it now. In our first tale, we meet a young girl named Jesse. Sadly, Jesse is one of those girls who is an outcast among her. schoolmates. She is shunned because she just doesn't fit in. But as author Amanda Lewis explains, she has found a unique way of coping with her situation. Narrator Peter Lewis narrates the tale about how Jesse has discovered a sort of hobby, and you'll be quite interested in learning

more about Jesse's collection. The cheers and screams of laughter crawl up Jesse's spine, awakening the gnawing itch. She can't quite banish. She twitches, trying to ease the discomfort. But it's not on her skin. It's deeper than that. And no amount of scratching will banish it.

She knows she's tried. Eventually, her mother made her wear gloves around the house to stop her from clawing her skin off. Now she doesn't try anymore. It makes the adults in her life think she's moved on, gotten, which makes life a little easier. Jesse looks at her watch. Recess is almost over. Soon the teachers will come out and the yard will empty, and she will be forced. forced to go back inside for the rest of the day.

Best make the most of the minutes she has left. Looking over the group, she selects one kid at random and stares at him. He trips. She finds another. Her long hair snags on a branch. A third bangs his knee into a pole. Jesse watches secretly hating all of it. them, their collective stupidity, their idiotic laughter, their cruel blindness.

She listens to the wails of the hurt ones, watches as the monitors come to their rescue, coddling them needlessly. Weak, she sees their camaraderie, their happiness, and despises them all. Once the kids bullied her. Now they just act like she isn't there. It hurt at first like sea water on a scraped knee, but not forever. Not since she discovered the cure. It worked first on the cat, who lashed out and scratched Jesse's arm. Rage instantly kindled Jesse retaliated,

slapping both hands together around the cat's head, The room turned white, her palms tingled. When her vision cleared, the cat was gone. No blood, no fur, just gone. But in her hand was a small charm, a perfect replica of their tabby under glass. That night, Jesse strung the glass cat on a chain and clasped it round her neck, humming quietly to herself,

while her mother scoured the house for the animal, food bowl in hand. The next morning she tried it on a butterfly, just to see if it would work again. She waited, motionless in the damp grass, until one landed on her. Then she trapped it between her palms and thought of all the things that made her mad.

Doors that open the wrong way, socks that don't match, the clink of dirty change, the feeling of eyes boring into her back, the smell of bleach, the squeak of styrofoam cups, greasy fingerprints on glass. Once she started thinking about all the little things that drew her crazy, she couldn't stop. By the time the scene regained its color, her palms were bright red and cradling a tiny glass butterfly. That night, she slept without bad dreams for the first times since she could remember. Jesse stares at the children, counting down the seconds in her head until the bell rings. It's been a week, and the itch is getting harder to. ignore. She fingers the cat charm hanging from her neck. After the butterfly, the itch stayed asleep, just long enough for Jesse to get used to it being quiet. It's not quiet anymore, though.

She hitches her shoulders up and down as if the sparse movement could satisfy. The bell rings. The children file back in reluctantly, and Jesse steps silently from behind the tree in the corner. The teachers know not to touch her now, so being the last person in doesn't matter anymore. She sits down at her desk in the far back corner, the only one in the classroom who doesn't share. They all learned that, too, after her last seatmate had that. Nasty accident on the stairs. After the solitude of the outdoors,

the classroom is too small, and the kids are noisy and smelly. All of it threatens to overwhelm her. She nearly screams aloud, throws things. Instead, digging her nails deep into her palms, Jesse pushes everything to the edges. There are plans to make. a new charm to design.

As the last bell of the day rings, Jesse tucks her books away and hitches her backpack onto one shoulder. She waits to be the last one out of the room, walks behind the crowd to the bus. The row at the very back is open as it always is. She slides onto the hot vinyl seat, picks it a crack in the plastic,

Sweat drips down the back of her neck. The engine roars and the bus lurches forward, knocking her ankle painfully against the metal wall. Anger flares. She clenches her fist tightly. Not now. The ride is long and hot, but she uses it to deliberate, weighing danger and need. It isn't until the doors open at her stop, though, that she finally decides. Jesse follows the girl up the street, unnoticed, carefully channels her rage.

Slimy, filthy skin touching her, the sound of gnats in her ear, the smell of raw meat. Her vision begins to blur, her hands shake. She waits until they turn the corner, holding in a... breath. You dropped this, she says, holds up a pencil, hesitant to address the weird girl with the ice blonde hair, but it's just a pencil. Thanks, she says, stepping closer. Jesse hands over the pencil, pockmarked with dents from her teeth, then she claps her hands hard against Kate's ears, freeing her pent-up rage. The world blanks out.

Needles flood her veins stabbing and poking. She bites her lip to hold in a scream, tasting blood. Her head throbs, her skull suddenly several sizes too small. Dropping to her knees, she rides out the violence, determined to make this work. Pain means. means nothing. The light fades slowly. Jesse kneels on the cracked sidewalk alone, holding a new charm. It looks like the tiny, perfectly formed girl within the glass is screaming. She gets to her feet, staring at her newest charm in the sunlight. For an instant,

Jesse swears she sees the tiny girl's eyes blink. She holds the charm closer, watching fanatically. It happens again. Jesse curls her fingers slowly around the glass and puts her hand in her pocket, humming a little tune. The feeling of the charm, still slightly warm, makes her smile. Instead of sawing against the grain of her nerves, the itch vibrates throughout her body like a plucked string. Colors seem brighter, smells more intense.

She feels more alive in this moment than she has her entire life. At home, she strings the charm onto a length of pale pink ribbon, ties a strong knot, and goes to her closet. Inside, behind a big piece of cardboard, arranged in carefully measured columns and rows on small hooks, hang hundreds of glass charms. Only the real ones are there. A few attempts left her with blackened bits of razor-sharp glass that clinked together when her daddy took out the trash. It took her a while to realize that only living things make true charms. She stares at the collection trying to decide how best to catalog the Kate charm.

She empties a hook near the top, close to the butterfly, and hangs the pink ribbon by itself. None of the others made her feel this powerful. None stayed alive. either. She disperses the old charms to new groups, replaces the cardboard, concealing her collection from her mother, and carefully shuts the door. And on the smooth wood, she closes her eyes and drinks in the feeling of sated satisfaction coursing through her. She'll sleep well tonight, and many other nights, too. After all, there are lots of people out there, even some who actually make her angry.

Back in my day, we didn't have fancy smartphones to listen to music, nor did we have the internet to download all kinds of entertainment. When I was a kid, I enjoyed going through the old records of my parents or older siblings to put on the turntable and, listen for hours. Some of my fondest memories are the times I would listen to LPs, which featured scary stories being read to spooky music. Does that sound familiar? Imagine what it was like. The house is quiet, and you creep up the stairs to the attic.

You look around amongst the dusty boxes and old clothes when you speak. by an old portable turntable with its speaker attached, mono, of course. Next to it are a bunch of old records. You scan through them, seeing a bunch of bands you've never heard of, and some you'd never be caught dead listening to. Then you spot an album that grabs your attention. The cover shows a dark room with spooky shadows and a daze. dingy bed.

The text is written in a scary font, and you see that it reads, Tingling Tales Presents Cold Room by Eric Cleveland. Near the bottom, it reads, As told by Jessica McAvoy. You flip the album over and see a dire warning. Do not listen to this story in the dark. Your life may depend on it. Well, you can't resist such a cheesy warning now, can you?

You pull out the turntable, plug it in, and, hey, it still works. You slide the vinyl LP from its sleeve and place it on the turntable. Volume adjusted, you find an old pile of clothes that you bundle into a makeshift seat and you settle in. As you sit there in the dark, quiet attic, you slowly lower the needle onto the spinning disc. At 12 years old, I was quite the explorer, getting into every little space I could fit my little body into. in the kitchen cupboards, behind bookcases, under beds, etc. Living in an old Victorian house, there were plenty of these hidden spaces to discover. In these spaces, I would hang out by myself, reading books with a flashlight or building Lego sculptures.

I loved these little areas, which only I could fit into, so my parents couldn't bother me about anything. It was also a good getaway for when my parents would fight, and back then their fights had been growing more angry and aggressive. I could feel safe in these places. They were quiet and calming. I had dozens of these spots mapped around my house, but one day, I stumbled upon the greatest of them all. I found my way into my parents' storage room upstairs, and there was a closet built into the wall. I crawled into the closet, and pushing aside all the dusty clothes, I suddenly felt a cold breeze. It was like discovering Narnia. I made my way to the left end of the closet and saw what looked like a rotting block of wood against the side.

The block was only about a foot tall and a foot and a half wide. I grabbed it and dragged it away. It was a lot heavier that it looked, and the instant it was removed, a small breeze of frozen air hit my face. I stared into the darkness. There was no light whatsoever coming from the space beyond the small, disjointed hole, which looked like it had been smashed in by a large sledgehammer. I couldn't see a thing. I stuck my arm into the hole and moved it around to see how big the area was.

And to my surprise, I couldn't feel anything but the ground and the cold air around it. I couldn't reach any walls. The area was much, much bigger than the closet. A bit intimidated, I shuffled my way out of the closet and back into my parents' storage room to go look for a flashlight. I found one, and double-checked to make sure my parents weren't watching me. This was my secret. I was ready to explore. I slowly crawled back into the cramped closet and instantly felt the breeze and began heading towards it.

I reached the hole and clicked on my flashlight. It was absolutely astonishing. What I saw before me was a bedroom. A very dusty bedroom with furniture that looked very outdated, like something from the 20s. There was a bed, covered in a colorful quilt with a blood-red pillow, a rocking chair with white yarn strung around it, and an empty wooden desk. The floor and wall seemed to be made of a polished dark wood. There were no windows.

I could feel with my hand that it was cold inside, but the moment that I crawled in, I could feel that it was literally at a near-freezing temperature. Being in my casual 10-year-old clothes, the cold was impossible to handle, and I jolted back out of the hole to grab my thickest jacket, along with multiple large flashlights. Somehow managed to get all that through the tiny hole, I got to work, setting up the flashlights all around the room, lighting the place up. I took a quick look around and noticed that I was making footprints in the thick dust. Dust was everywhere. Nobody had been in this room for a very long time.

It was hard to shake the eerie silence. A million questions were raised him through my head. Why didn't my parents tell me about this room? Do they even know this room exists? Why does everything look so old? Why is it so cold? I had to explore every nook and cranny. I was playing detective now, and it was my duty to discover the secrets of this ominous room.

I began with the bed. I wiped a bit of dust away from the quilt and looked at the patterns. At first they seemed strange, like abstract shapes, but I finally was able to make out a pattern. Triangles and lines, like a family holding hands. This pattern stretched all around the blanket. I pressed my hands into the bed and felt its softness. It wasn't stiff like a new bed.

It was tender. Someone had definitely slept here before, for several years at least. I walked to the wooden desk. It wasn't polished at all. I could see several splinters sticking up from it and it had a dry, gray tint to it from all the dust and aging. The chair was not much better, but at least it seemed to be lacking the splinters. A large chunk of the seat had been broken off.

Lastly, I headed to the rocking chair. It was slightly colder than the other areas of the room. White threads were tied all around the chair, round and round, as if they were used to hold someone down to the chair itself. The yarn was droopy and not tightly laced. I picked up a loose end and pulled. it a bit. I managed to rock the chair, but I couldn't free the string from its rustic place. Confused, I moved a bit closer to the chair.

There was some minuscule text carved into the seat unevenly. Jagged parts of wood stuck up from the text as if it were scratched in with a knife. I read it aloud. When my friends fall apart, I sew them back together. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain rising into my toe. I yelped in agony only to have my voice echo around the room. I grabbed my foot and found a tiny sewing needle sticking out of the bottom of my big toe. Tears in my eyes, my shaking fingers pinched the needle and tore it away from my skin.

Blood was trickling out. I grated my teeth and looked down at the floor. Pure horror. Dozens of tiny sewing needles all scattered around the rock and chair hidden under the layer of dust. I jumped back away from that death trap. My toe was still in pain, but I was a strong girl back then, and I refused to abandon my mission simply because of a small laceration. Wiping a tear from my face, I turned around, and spotted a giant closet that I didn't see before.

It was hiding in the corner, blending into the wall. As I began walking to it, I noticed a weird smell coming from it. I was hesitant to open the closet. Every step I took closer, the rotten smell strengthened. Finally, my curiosity got the best of me. I held my nose and creaked open the closet doors. Hanging were several strings of white yarn, tied in what looked to be four tiny nooses and one large noose.

There were no clothes, just the strings. The stench was overwhelming. I slammed the door shut and ran to the other side of the room to get away from that disgusting odor. I noticed that in my process of fleeing, I had kicked up heaps of deaths, now lingering around in the air. But it was weird. I stared at it in fear and confusion. In the cloud of dust, I could barely make out something that looked like a figure, standing almost 10 feet away from me. There was no movement. It just stood.

It was getting hard to breathe in all that dust. I was more bewildered than scared. I couldn't tell if it was real or even truly in the shape of a man. I strained my eyes toward it, trying to confirm what I thought I saw, but I couldn't hold my breath anymore. I began coughing uncontrollably in the dust cloud and ran to the hole, diving back into my parent's storage room, my heart pounding. I honestly didn't know what to think, or what to do. So I left the flashlights in the room to eventually run out of battery, and I put the heavy block of rotting wood to cover up the hole. A week passed, and I still wasn't sure what had happened that day. I finally decided to ask my dad to show me the blueprints of the house.

Luckily, I had been obsessed with landscaping and building houses with my Legos lately. so I had a legitimate excuse. He gave me the quick rundown on how to read the blueprints, and I got to work. Did anyone know about this hidden room? I began to feel a strong mix of fear and utter amazement when I could not find the room on the blueprints. It was missing. I began to obsess over it.

As an intelligent, curious 10-year-old, I attempted to piece together the story that was torn from our family history books. Our house was almost 200 years old, and four generations of my family had lived and died here. Somewhere down the line, the storage room was renovated, and the hidden room was closed off for whatever reason. And somewhere down the line, someone had broken back into it, leaving that tiny hole which I discovered. But because of my lack of resources, I was only left with the stories of my childish imagination. In reality, I was clueless as to the origins of the room. One night, my parents were fighting aggressively, shouting at each other much louder than the rain outside.

I was afraid. I tossed and turned in my bed trying to ignore them and fall asleep, and hopefully wake up to a brighter day, but it was impossible. I was shaking and crying. I knew that they would bring me into this very soon, trying to get me to side with one of them. I wanted a place to feel safe, a much quieter and calmer place. I considered many of my hiding spots, but them were big enough for me to lie down in. I considered running away, but it was raining too hard outside. Then I remembered, the hidden room.

How quiet it was. It even had a bed. My head hurt, and I needed to sleep badly. Even though I was still a bit intimidated from my last visit into the room, I gritted my teeth, slipped on heavier pajamas, and crept into the storage room closet, flashlight blaring into the darkness. It was so quiet. I shivered from the cold temperature.

I could see that the dust had settled, but I had to do double take when I realized all my flashlights had been knocked over. I concluded it was probably because I ran to the hole so quickly the last time and shook the room a bit. But I felt uneasy. Nevertheless, I headed to the tender bed, wiped away the dust from the dark red pillow, and slipped under the heavy crue.

quilts. I couldn't hear my parents yelling anymore. My mind was calm. These blankets were warm. I turned off my flashlight and the pitch blackness intoxicated me. I woke up sometime later. I had no clue whether it was morning or still night. There were no windows for me to see. I didn't even know why I woke up. I just did, but something disturbed me. I gripped at the blankets. I could sense a presence, but it was too dark to see anything. But I knew that something or someone was standing at the end of the bed. It smelled horrible, like the center of the closet. I froze, cataleptic and sheer terror.

I gripped the blanket so tightly that I thought the bones of my fingers would snap. I slowly began sliding my arm to my flashlight. I grabbed it. I trembled and pointed it towards the presence. had no bodily features, no eyes, no mouth, no fingernails. It was a figure of a man, wrapped tightly and would look to be pale skin. It stood at least six feet tall. It made no movement.

My eyes were watering now. I began shrieking, throwing off the covers, and abandoning the flashlight. I dived toward the hole. And while I was crawling out of the room, I looked back. The man was still standing in the same place. But he was facing me, staring with his featureless face. I cried and screamed as I scrambled through the small hole. I tumbled through the storage room and saw my parents running towards me.

My dad swooped me up and hug me while my mom asked me worriedly, Where have you been? What happened? We were looking all over for you. She had more concern on her face than I have ever seen in my life. I couldn't stop crying, so they took me into their bedroom to sleep with them. They said we would talk about it in the morning. I told them the whole story. My dad said I was just dreaming, so I told him to go see the room for himself, as long as I didn't have to go near it.

I warned him not to go into the room. I was also afraid that the skin-wrapped figure was still standing there in the room, so I warned him of that, too. He went up to the storage room, and I gave him instructions on how to access the hidden area. I stood cautiously outside. There's a rotting block of woodblock in the entrance. You need to move it out of the way.

I shivered as I gave him this final instruction. There was a pause before he answered me. I see a hole, but there's no block of wood. I stood there, eyes wide. I had forgotten to put back the block. The block was there for a reason. The room was boarded up for a reason. The room was hidden for a reason.

I stood there panicking as my dad was silent, staring into the darkness with only his flashlight. I panicked that I may have let the skin wrap figure out of the room. I may have let this ghost or demon into my home. My dad peeked his head inside, his flashlight wandering at every angle of the room. My dad described all of what he saw in the room, but he didn't see the horrible thing that I had witnessed that night. Everything seemed to be in place. Until he described four small, poorly woven dolls made of white yarn sitting on the side of the bed. Their necks looked like they had been stretched out and pulled at.

All the hairs on my body stood straight up. The story was coming together. The yarn, the nooses, the horrible stench in the closet. The larger noose may have been four. My dad was unable to enter the room due to the tiny size of the hole. But he was amazed, just as I was, at the hidden room in its vest. visible contents. Absolutely stunned.

He told me he would look into our family's history and talk to any surviving relatives to see if he could find some clues. We even cleared out the closet and smashed the side with a sledgehammer. It only chipped paint and a few rocks. Whatever that wall was made of, we couldn't break through it, and we couldn't make the hole any bigger. I was the only one who could access that room, and I was too afraid to do it.

A month of nightmares passed. My parents divorced soon after, and my dad sold the old Victorian house, keeping quiet about the hidden room. As for myself, I've had to live with the horrible repeating dreams of the skin-wrapped apparition for eight years. These nightmares are unnervingly realistic, and when I wake up from them, sometimes I feel a presence at the front of my bed. I've hidden this story from everyone I've come to know, but today I've decided it needs to be documented. minute. This is not an option. This morning, I found a white yarn noose tied around my head. Your episode has come to an end. Thank you for spending time with us at the No Sleep Podcast. If you would like to learn how you can hear the full-length version of this episode,

featuring many more stories, please visit The No Sleep Podcast.com and click on the Season Pass link. Purchasing a season pass will help support everyone who contributes to the podcast, and in return, you'll get 25 full-length episodes and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999. This is David Cummings. Thank you for listening, and join us again for the next episode of the No Sleep Podcast.