The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S3E25

Episode Date: May 11, 2014

It's episode 25 - the Season Finale of Season 3. We have six tales for you in this episode featuring stories about fiendish family folks, frightening friends, and formidable freaks. "Toothache" written by Carlos Rivera and read by Rebecca Peason & David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:06:15) "Soulless" written by Anton Scheller and read by L. Bentley. Music by Brandon Boone.(Story starts at 00:26:25) "Death at 423 Stockholm Street" written by C.K. Walker and read by Rebecca Peason. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 00:37:50) "The Artist" written by CJ Henderson and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:51:05) "The Girl in the Log" written by Melissa Phillips and read by Corinne Sanders. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 01:13:30) "The Melancholy of Herbert Solomon" written by Michael Whitehouse and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:39:15) Click here to learn more about Carlos Rivera Click here to learn more about Rebecca Peason Click here to learn more about Anton Scheller Click here to learn more about Michael Whitehouse 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. Tonight, there will be no sleep. And I can't sleep. And now I was listening. There's a little boy who died. Face in the window. Brace yourself for the no sleep podcast. It's episode 25, the season finale of season three.

Welcome to the show. I'm your host, David Cummings. We have six tales for you in this episode, featuring stories about fiendish family folks, frightening friends, and formidable freaks. Well, folks, we have reached the end of our third season. It's been quite a journey, and I am so grateful for all of the tremendous support shown to me and the podcast over the past year. I know some of you like to skip ahead to the stories, but please bear with me on this final episode as I go over a few details for the end of season three and the start of season four. Starting around noon, Eastern Time, on Sunday, May 11th, the pre-orders will begin for season past season.

4. You can go to the no sleeppodcast.com and follow the link to the sign-up page. You will see a couple of new features, which I should explain. The first feature is a field called a pay-what-you-want code. This feature was added because quite a few listeners have told me that they feel the season pass is actually worth more than the 1999 I currently charge. So instead of raising the price for everyone, I have added a pay-what-you-want option. This means if you want to pay a bit more for the season pass to help support the show even more, you simply enter a code in that field. The code corresponds to the amount you want to pay.

There are instructions on the page which explains how this code works. It's really quite easy. But rest assured, if you're not able to add more funds to the amount, you will still be able to to pay the usual 1999. That price hasn't changed. This is only a feature for those willing and able to pay a bit more for the season pass. The other new feature is a dedicated credit card payment option. Instead of using your credit card via PayPal, you can now use almost any credit card via the Stripe payment system. This option can be used by anyone, and it will be especially useful for those listeners outside of North America to make easier payments using credit cards.

In order to encourage people to pre-order their season pass for, I have created a contest for everyone who pre-orders the new season. I have six t-shirts to give away, and they feature the excellent no-sleep logo used by the mods over at Reddit's No Sleep Forum. Just go to Contests. Dot the No-Sleep podcast.com to see a sample of the t-shirts. To enter, just pre-order your season pass for before June 1st, and you will automatically be entered to win one of the six t-shirts. And I know some people will ask, so I must let you know that these t-shirts are not official no-sleep podcast t-shirts. I haven't gotten around to making real t-shirts for the podcast yet. But if you like what you see and want to purchase a t-shirt, there will be a link on the contests page.

It'll take you to the sales page on behalf of our friends at Reddit's No Sleep Forum. So, dear listeners, we're at the beginning of the end, of Season 3, that is. It has been a genuine pleasure to bring you Season 3, and I hope you've enjoyed the episodes we've brought you. I am so proud of the enormous talent of our writers and narrators and the great contributions by my musical collaborator, Brandon Boone. Thank you for listening and making all of this hard work worthwhile. And if you haven't already noticed, the free version of this episode is the full-length version.

It's just my way of saying thank you for listening to the show during season three. And if you're interested in signing up for the season past three, it is still available with every full-length episode just waiting to be listened to. I hope all of you will join us in season four. So now, let's start the season finale. Our first story is about a young woman who dreams of a better life outside of her intolerable family home. As author Carlos Rivera explains, when a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger gives her a way out, she jumps at the chance in spite of the horrible risks.

Rebecca Pizond and I will narrate the tale as we discover why this woman is given the odd nickname of Toothake. Time to go soon. But before I do, I want to tell you all about my story. cowboy, the man who took me into the forever night, the man who made me hungry and then left me to starve. Listen close, I want to tell you about the man I love. I was a preacher's daughter. Daddy thundered fire and broomstone from the pulpit on Sundays. Repent or be damned and hillbillies would shout and quiver. At night he'd pull down my jammies and sweat over me, whispering the word of God in my ear. He'd take

the belt to me after. Temptation is a sin, child. Honey like yours will lead the righteous astray. Mama was soft and kind, with slate gray eyes and a voice like a sparrow song. Her makeup was caked thick to hide the purple on her cheekbones. Let's run away, I said, when as far as we can and be free.

She ppped my head and dried my tears and told me, Ain't nowhere to run, baby. It's the same all over. This is the way life is. Be a good girl and we'll find our reward in the other place. I didn't like it when Daddy spat hellfire, but I like to hear Mama talk about the other place. In my dreams, it was orange and pink.

A desert sunrise and my heart was the sky. In my dreams, I was free. I ran one night. Past brush and prairie dog holes with Daddy's voice on the chase. You get back here, devil girl, or I'll whip you silly. But I was fast and small and hard to find in the dark. I crouched low behind an old mesquite, teardrops making polka dots in the silver sand. I clasped my hands and I whispered a prayer.

Please, if you're out there, help me. Show me the way out. I heard something. Wet chewing and slurping and something scraping the ground. The sound of a hunter picking meat off his kill. I followed the sound and found a circle of rocks, like a heathen church. Something in the middle bobbing up and down, something else twitching and moaning. A hug close to a big rock and beeped my head around the side.

I saw a man. A skinny cowboy and faded denim and sneakskin boots. His skin's so pale it looked like blue jelly. He crouched and licked at the neck of another shaking on the ground. The other's eyes were wide and rolling. His mouth sucked in air like a fish on the shore. Cowboys' head shot up and he sniffed the air. Rusty red oozed down his mouth, slow as molasses.

His head jerked around and his eyes found mine. Black eyes, vulture eyes, eyes that held the night itself. Eyes that could wrap you up, squeeze you soft or tight. He smirked, and the stringy pieces of red jiggled as he talked. Ain't your mama ever teach you not to stare? I know what you are. Bloodsucker, right? I've seen the movies.

Get your head out the clouds, girl. Me and my buddy are just having a talk. Make me like you. I said. Cowboy laughed. You want to be like me? Sucking on dead meat in the dark like a mangy old dog? I am a dog.

A dog with its leg in a trap and I want you to chew it off. My mama says this is just how it is, but I'm going to run and run and look for somewhere different. Your mama's a smart woman. Who you want to kiss? Ain't no one wanna be like me lest they got someone to kill. My daddy. It's always the daddies.

Listen up, girl. This life ain't no fairy tale. It's a death rattle before every meal. It's railroad spike hunger, so heavy you can't think of nothing else. It's a forever night with no more sun. No more sunrises. No more till the last one. The one that light you up like the Fourth of July.

I told you, I seen the movies. Yeah, then you've seen the endings. It's a bad luck life, and you'd be stupid to pick it. I stepped out from behind the rock and stared hard into those marble eyes. Pulled my dress up over my head. naked and shaken. I walked toward him. I brushed my hair from my neck

and said I might be stupid, but I know what I want. Sink your teeth into me, cowboy. Find the red life inside me and make it your own. He stood up and circled me. His frozen eyes chilling me wherever they looked. Dummy, you want to run from the sun? I won't tell you no.

Ready. It hurts. He pulled me close, snuffed at my neck. Cold nose and cold breath. My heart pumping like it was out of time. His mouth open, and he breathed at blue frost. Lock jaw bites sunk into my flesh, and razor wire scraped my veins. My skin screamed and my inside swelled thick with tar.

I dropped down into the dirt. Takes a minute to get used to it. Don't go. Sorry, honey. I ramble solo. Eat soon, or it'll make you crazy. He was gone. The world was gone.

I was falling or floating in cavernous dark, nothing above or below. Heavy footsteps pulled me back from eternity. I opened my mouth and gurgled. Come back to me, cowboy. Come back. Daddy looked down on me and cracked his rusty knuckles. I think it's high time I taught you something about humility. My hands dragged me back to the yard and lifted me onto the splintery workbench.

Oh, I'm a patient man, child. Oh, but we can't have you running off like that no more. He lifted the crowbar and set it down gently to kiss my kneecap. His eyes were ablaze with white fire. The word of the Lord shall light the holy path. He said, raising the crowbar high. And the wicked shall cower under the sword of judgment. A cackle from the shadows.

Preacher. Man, huh? I ain't never had much use for the word. Daddy spun round. Who in the hell's that? The sin you ain't got the balls to commit. Cowboy stepped forward, the moon making a halo round his oil spill hair. Let her alone. Who's gonna make me? Skinny boy like you? Here, son, and I'll put the fear of God into you. Daddy swung the crowbar, and cowboy caught it. Daddy's arm snapped, a milky wet bone popped through the skin. He fell screaming.

Cowboy drove the crowbar deep into his guts, fence post pinning him to the ground. Skinny boys are hard to kill, old man, and I'm as skinny as they're. They come. You must be feeling it, bud. I was. My belly hissed and clawed like a raccoon in a cage. I rolled off the table and crawled on all fours. Daddy squealing and shouting, but the sound was distin and small.

I heard one thing and one thing only. The warm heartbeat calling me with its low rhythm. I clamp my teeth hard into his neck. Red juice spurted and dribbled down my chin like a ripe tangerine. It pumped into my mouth and filled me until I shuddered inside. Daddy was sheet white and stammering. Please. I ran sticky red hands through his hair.

It's okay. I'm gonna teach you something about humility, I said. I stuck my fingers into the whole. in his neck and pulled until the meat split apart. I threw his head into the brush and sucked his jugular dry like milkshake straw. I looked up with my belly filled with the soul of another. I could see colors I didn't have names for. I heard crickets landed on blades of grass and smelled the powder on the wings of moths.

I felt the neon night for the first time, denim dream with a sea. through skin. I looked at him, and I knew I'd follow him to the end. You never forget your first. I showed him a red smile that dropped when I heard the screams. Mama was in the yard, yelling, Charles, Charles, and staring at Daddy's big blue hands. She looked at me.

Monster, she yelled through snotty sobs. No. Mama, wait! But Cowboys hand held my shoulder. She's right. You ain't got no mama now. Our kind don't make friends with the food. Run, girl, and find the place you're looking for.

I'm coming with you. The hell you are. I got enough shit to shovel without babysitting, too. I didn't ask no questions. The world was small before I met you. Now it's big enough to swallow me up. I want to see it all with someone who knows how. Where you ramble, I ramble as long as it takes.

Cowboy shook his head. Oh, God damn, girl. You're like a toothache that won't go away. If you're coming, then come. Sun's hot on our heels, and if we don't keep moving, he's going to catch us in the open. I stuck close to his side. and we ran.

When the sun went down, we'd stalk the hills, hunting for bony, ranch, hands, and oily teenagers. My ears were sharper than his than I could hear the river rush and their veins a mile off. I'd wrap myself in a velvet shadow and wait for my meal to walk by. He taught me how to hit them with a kill strike to make it quick, how to crush their windpipe so they wouldn't scream, how to make it look like a cougar attack. Every meal was a sticky poem, sweetest candy when I looked between my fingers. During the day, we'd lay low in a cave for an old trailer, and he'd tell me stories as I floated into dreams. He called me his toothache. He didn't talk much about his life before the bite.

There'd been a wife and a daughter, but they were long gone. I asked what happened to them once, and his dark eyes looked. away. You never, never forget your first. He said, and I didn't ask again. One night, we found a couple of hikers wrapped up in their sleeping bags. His didn't even wake up, but mine was feisty. She was fighting and flailing and flopping slowly as I sucked out the juice.

Finally, she just held my back and breathed slow. I looked in her half-closed eyes. She knew it was all right, and the end wasn't really so scary. I kissed her soft and left a red stain on her lips. Just relax, hon. Relax and let go. You're going to the other place, I said. Her eyes went cloudy, and she drifted away.

Cowboys scoffed. Other place? Grow up, toothache. Ain't no place, but. here. You're a grumpy old dog sometimes. How do you know what comes after? I've been on the hunt long enough to know that the only difference between live meat and dead meat is a few twitches and grunts. Think what you want. I've seen the other place in my dreams and we're going there when it's over. He laughed. A Sunday school was a long time ago,

Kid. If there is another place, you and I ain't going to see it. We're burning for what we done. It ain't a sin. We're going to be free and happy, and you'll thank me when we get there. Kid. He said with narrow eyes. If you can point to one thing, one real goddamn thing that'll show me there's something else in the sky, I will drop to my knees and saying, hallelujah. right here. I was quiet for a bit.

I prayed that night, I said. I prayed for a way out. And there you were. Make fun all you want, but I see the other place when I look at you. Maybe I ain't got no proof, but I got a hope. I hope there's orange and gold at the end of this night. A place where all hurts are soothed and bright light fills us until we are the sun. And I hope we go together, you and me, together with knowing.

land. Why in the hell do you want that? Because I... Because I... And I was going to say the word, but he gave me a look that stopped me cold. I held the word in my mind instead, so he could read it behind my eyes. We made camp in an old bear den just before the watercolor dawn. He held me close, closer than he ever had.

No stories that day, just his arm on my waist and his breast. in my hair. You've got a sunrise in your heart. He said as I closed my eyes. I woke at dusk and reached out for him. I found a note. Been fun, toothache, but the lonely road is calling. Don't bother looking for me.

If this life teach you one thing, it's how to stay hid. Adios. I was shaking. So Mama was right. This is the way life is. I ran into the Rocky Hills, found some city folk ruffing it in an RV, and I tore them to chunks.

The red spilled into the sand, and I didn't drink a drop. I could smell him in their veins. It's been days. He told me the hunger'd make me crazy, but I don't feel a thing. There's another hunger eating away at me, turning me to dust from inside out.

The note was a lie, too. He said he rambles solo, but that ain't the truth. The truth was in his eyes that night when I almost said the word. Cowboy didn't fear nothing except that word. He was afraid I'd try to say it again, and he wouldn't be able to stop me. He was afraid I'd say it, and it'd drop him dead quicker than a stake to the heart. Maybe he was right. I made up my mind.

After I set this down, I'm going to take a walk into the cool blue desert, and I'm going to find a nice place to sit and watch. The yellow streaks over the mountains will burn my tears away, and I'll be carried off on rainbow beams like a dream upon waking. If this world is the same all over, maybe it's different in the next. There's a sunrise in my heart, and I'm dying. to dig it out. But if my cowboy ever sniffs you out in the dark and spills your neck juice down his chin, tell him something with your last breath, will you? Tell him if there's another place.

I'll be waiting there on the day when the sun catches up to him. Tell him if there's not, then my ashes will ride the desert wind and search for him in the night. Tell him real hunger only gets worse the more you've beat it, and I've been starving from the moment we met. If he doesn't give you time for all that, just tell him one thing for me, will you? Tell him I left him, please. We all know how cruel schoolchildren can be when their ranks include someone who is different and noticeably odd. Author Anton Scheller introduces us to a girl whose bizarre behavior makes her a target of derision,

while at the same time capturing the attention of a classmate who was drawn to her mysterious ways. Narrator L. Bentley shares the tale with us about why this odd girl was deemed to be soulless. The eyes aren't the portal to the soul. The eyebrows are. Shave them off and you'll know. You'll see the stairs. You'll feel how people slowly all. alter their path when you come closer. They do that even when you're far away, when they can't yet see what might be wrong with you.

They just know that there is something very wrong. Soulless. Like Martina in seventh grade, she was ginger. Soulless. So it was okay that we bullied her. You can't hurt someone that doesn't have a soul. She was a person to be pushed, not touched.

It was fun to push her into the lockers. She never fought back. She just accepted it as her fate to be squeezed between lockers and the bodies of bigger girls and sometimes boys. Nobody moved when she came. Nobody played by the rules when she was there. To move aside, make space to allow each other to pass. All just walked straight and Martina had to find a way to squeeze to the side between elbows and lockers, hoping that they didn't attempt to connect.

It wasn't us that ripped her hair out. She did that herself. Sitting in that seat on the right side of class, close to the exit, she pushed her right hand deep into her curls. Then she pulled and twisted her arm, but her head stayed in place, unmoving except for the occasional twitch. She pulled the hand out with full force, holding a tuft that disappeared in her bag.

She never looked back. She knew we were all staring. Rumour had it, at night. Her mom would sew the hair back to her head. Martina wasn't that bad, really. Just a ginger. Not like us. The 4th of May, Martina came to school.

Lucy pushed her against the doorframe. Stella and Grace made fun of her when she came into the corridor, and when she stood at her locker, and when she went into class. Nick and Luke threw spitballs at her. Nick and Luke made a bet. Nick said I would, and Luke said I wouldn't. I grabbed her left boob from behind. She was warm and soft.

Luke cursed. For the two seconds that I held onto her chest, I felt her heartbeat. It felt comfortable and warm, and like the most wonderful thing I'd ever felt. In that moment, for the first time, I thought she might have a soul after all. I said, ew! And Nick laughed and Luke laughed and I laughed. Martina bent her right arm upwards and behind her head and shoved her hand into her hair and she grabbed and we all watched how she pulled and struggled and we all heard the handful of hair ripped from her skull the teacher turned and looked at the class then she turned back to the board and to how Rome built a wall in the middle of Britain

a dark red appeared in the light red of Martina's hair gingers are so weird whispered Nick on the 4th of may we all thought that Martina didn't have a soul. That night I found a tuft of red hair in my bag. It was crusted and sticky at one end. That night I saw her eyes whenever I closed mine. That night I heard her heartbeat. I heard it in my chest, as if her heart was hidden behind mine. The 5th of May, she came to school and she entered the front door, but nobody wanted to push her. When she walked through the hallway and into the classroom, a corridor opened for her, no matter where she went. No eyebrows. On the 5th of May, we all saw that Martina didn't have a soul.

We all stopped. Stopped pushing, grabbing, throwing, laughing, just not the talking. The talking got more, but it turned into a whisper. During lunch we all watched her, watched how she chose a face, and stared that face to death, stared without emotion, without passion, without anger, without anything, just stared, so hard that all that sat next to her chosen face slowly shifted away. And the kid Martina stared at, they just froze.

They left their spoon hanging halfway between Trey and Mell. mouth and the straw of their milk packet in the corner of their lips. You couldn't even see their chests moving anymore. The bell, Martina turned and left, and the face slowly thawed. With the face, a shivering body returned to the warm inside of the cafeteria after a long and cold winter. Nick said her pupils grew and swallowed him into a world of green ice and blue water fighting against one another, and he was in the midst,

drowning without hope for air, clawing for blocks of ice and at the same time escaping their sharp edges. He spent months there, a whole winter. He didn't say much for the rest of the week. When Lucy thawed, she was gagging, gasping for air. Grace held her cross and sank to the floor. Luke dug his fingers in my arm. Stella just cried. And I was watching them all, and...

I was one of those that were shifting away. But Martina never stared at me. I just stared at her, at this smooth spot above her eyes, wondering if the eyebrows had ever been there. I couldn't remember any more what she looked like. She was untouchable in the corridors. She flew past bodies and lockers and door frames. In class, she sat with her eyes on the board and her voice turned off,

ripping single hairs out of her skull, and I watched her. Not even the teacher spoke to her anymore. She hadn't just lost her soul. She had also lost all emotion. No smile, no anger, no boredom, no curiosity. Smooth, perfect, unmoving skin above frozen eyes and framed by red curls. For years I watched her, and for years she was just there, and not.

She moved through the school as if through a magic maze, an untouchable, gliding smoothly through a tunnel that crisscrossed right through our world. She wrote exams, past classes, switched schools, and I kept watching her as she froze new people in a new world. I woke up every night, hundreds of times, with her eyes in my mind and a cough and the distant taste of hair and blood in my mouth. I dreamt of her climbing into my room and of her feeding me tufts of hair. I fantasized about her climbing into my room and pressing her naked body against mine.

Even in my fantasy her skin felt cold. In 11th grade, May the 4th, I stood at my locker. Martina glided around the corner, past the students of my world and along the corridor. Her tunnel broke. She stopped right in front of me. For the first time her eyes locked into mine, and I too saw the ocean moving within her. For the first time in years, she smiled. She raised her left hand and placed it right on the left side of my chest.

Others stopped walking and stared at the miracle of the broken tunnel. Her hand was first very cold, then slowly warm. Thank you, she said, for taking care of it. My chest grew warm, then hot. She pulled herself close to me. Her other hand rested on my shoulder. She stretched up and gave me a warm kiss on the cheek. She pulled away before I could return the touch or kiss.

She found a way through the crowd. My chest grew even hotter. Someone whistled, many voices. laughed, and while they cheered, I pressed my hands against my chest, and I sank slowly to the floor, and the floor slowly disappeared into an impalpable black. The 5th of May I woke up under a white ceiling in a white room and a white bed and a white gown, with a heavy white pain in my chest. My hands were dull and tickling, but they still felt bandages under the gown. They pulled a tumour from my chest, a tumour nearly as big.

as a fist that was pushing against the back of my heart. A teratoma, they said, but that didn't mean much to me. It was there for years, growing and feeding itself from my blood. It had grown round and thick. Teratoma, the doctor told me, often grow hair, but they never found one with as much as mine. Long, curly hair that had spread in my chest and begun to tie around my heart. It took a while, but I'm okay now.

The scar is still there as a reminder, but I'm alive. Martina, she looks pretty with her new eyebrows. Now she looks alive too, as if her soul is returned. We never talk about what happened or how, but sometimes, when she lies in my arms and thinks I'm asleep, she runs her fingers along my scar, and I can hear her whisper. Thank you. A young child, alone in their bedroom, listening to strange noises in the walls.

A common and harmless scenario, no? A cry for their father, the reassurance of paternal protection, and the world seems right again. But as author C.K. Walker describes, one particular girl experiences these strange noises over many years. without a reasonable explanation for their cause. Narrator Rebecca Peezen reads the tale for us as we find out what caused the death at 423 Stockholm Street. Told this story three times now. Once to the police, once to a jury,

and once to my psychiatrist. This will be the last time I tell it. We've always lived at 4.20. 23 Stockholm Street ever since I was a baby. So there really wasn't ever a time when I didn't hear it. And as far back as I can remember, I've always known that there was another room on the other side of my wall. When I was a very young child, I thought he was my friend. I would knock and he would knock back, though usually more slowly. I would giggle and he would moan. But as I got older, noises started to scare me. I slowly realized that he wasn't friendly, and the scratching, moaning, and sporadic knocking started to scare me.

I told my parents about it, terrified that he would come into my room one night and kill me. My mother rolled her eyes and told me it was mice in the walls. She never listened to me. My father agreed with her that it was animals, but he hugged me and told me he would protect me because I was scared. Whenever I'd hear the noises, mostly at night, I would scream and my father would come running through the door a few seconds later to see what was the matter. I would point at the wall and he would smile, knock on the wall with his fist and say, Quiet down in there, or else? The noise would stop. I would smile and dad would hug me.

He was always my protector. I miss him so much. As I matured into a teenager, I would often invite friends to sleep over. We called ourselves the Stockholm Street Ghostbusters and spent hours doing seances trying to exercise an entity, a demon according to our research. We figured the scratching must be the demon etching satanic sigils and drawings on my wall. We eventually turned to a Ouija board until my mother found it and threw it out. One night, running on heightened bravado from my friends, I waited until the loudest of the loudestead. scratching started again and I pounded on the wall just like my dad quiet down in there you're

already dead the living are trying to sleep my friends were impressed for a moment but I should not have provoked him there was a loud angry banging on the other side of the wall we all screamed and hid in the closet yelling for my dad when he came running my friends begged him to take them home I was left alone while they were gone. I could feel him, almost see him impatiently pacing behind the wall, back and forth, five inches of wood and wallpaper between he and I. I was so scared. I hid under my bed. Then the scratching started again.

And that was when I knew. It was trying to carve its way through the wall and into my bedroom. I screened again, and the bed. banging resumed on the walls. It didn't stop until the headlights of my dad's car lit up the room. I continued screaming until my dad, always the hero, came sprinting into my room and banged on the wall. Quiet down in there! Or else! Then he held me.

Let me cry out my fears and told me it was okay if I slept on the couch. Sometimes I thought he believed it was all in my head. All those murmurs, the groans, the groans, the groans, the groans. knocking the scratching, but he never let on, never made me feel crazy. I never really understood my dad, but I wish I had. I'll never see him again. One night, when I was 16, I was awoken by an otherworldly air-splitting scream. It was so loud, so high, and so disturbing that I screamed in return in terror. The scream ended abruptly, and a moment later my dad came running in. You heard it, I cried as my body racked with sobs.

How could you not hear it? I know you heard it. Oh, sweetie. My dad sat at the end of the bed, hair disheveled with a far-off exhausted look in his middle of the night bloodshot eyes. Of course I heard it, but it was just an owl. I'm sure of it. We've seen a few in the neighborhood recently. No, Dad, listen to the walls.

He nodded, and we sat and listened. We listened for the bumps, the scratches, the whispers, the groans, the knocks, anything. I needed him to know. I needed to prove it to him. It wasn't an animal. My dad was my protector and my hero. He should know the entity was there, that he was in there, trying every day to get out.

But for what reason, I didn't know. I didn't hear the noises in the wall after that night, not for a few months. The wall suddenly felt empty, like there was no one there anymore. Perhaps it had left. Perhaps it had been vanquished or sent back to hell. I rested easy for a while, but in the back of my mind I always knew. It would be back. When it did start again, I didn't notice at first.

When you've been experiencing something every night for 16 years straight, you tend to automatically catalog it in your brain as white noise and not register or process it at first. I think that's what sealed our doom in the end. The noises were so inherent to me. It failed to understand how unusual they really were and always had been. When I did realize I was hearing them again, I'm ashamed to say I felt almost relieved. I'd been so used to them that I was almost lonely in the silence, like sleeping in an empty house and leaving infomercials on so you don't feel so alone.

The haunt progressed in the same cycle. It had all my life. First, the groans, then the banging on the wall, then light tapping, and then finally, the scratching. Always the scratching. It was a familiar routine. I told my dad about the scratching and how I thought whatever it was was scratching through the wood in my wall, trying to get out. My dad laughed and told me there was two inches of solid metal on the other side of my wall and that nothing, not mice, raccoons, sparrel cats, or even ghosts, could come through my wall. And he should know he'd built the house himself.

And besides, he assured me, he would always be even. to protect me. But he wasn't. I slept a little easier for a while. I was moving out in a year and I knew I could deal with him for 12 more months. I'd already lived with it for 16 years. I grew unconcerned, lazy and complacent. I ignored the noises, even started to bang back again.

I used logic to laugh the whole thing off. Whatever it was, it couldn't come through the wall. If it could, it would have. have done so years ago. And I sensed more than anything in the world, it wanted out. And since it was still in there, obviously it was trapped. And I was right. The night it happened is the most vivid memory I have. I was at a friend's house when my mother called me and told me to come home immediately. This in itself was strange as my mother barely even acknowledged me and never, ever called me. We had almost no interaction.

That was left entirely to my dad. I drove the five miles back to my neighborhood, but I had a hard time getting in. I started to panic as I slowly weaved through all the media vans, police cars, FBI vehicles, and swat trucks. I had to walk the last three blocks to my house and tears rolled down my cheeks as I realized that my street was at the epicenter of the melee. Because I knew. As soon as I saw my house, I knew. My dad was dead. It had finally gotten out, and it had killed my dad.

I took off at a dead run, ignoring every authority figure that yelled at me to stop. I dodged in between the vehicles, pushing past dozens of people, ran through the crime scene tape, and directly into my house. And there it was. Across the sitting room, next to my bedroom, the hall closet stood with its door open. And in the back of the closet, another door. For whatever reason, no one stopped me. I stumbled into the closet, threw it, and out into the room I'd always known was there. But it wasn't what I thought it'd be.

The media called my dad the Skinner of Stockholm, and from what I saw in that room, it was a fitting name. There were knives, all sorts, really. and there were metal devices stacked along one ball, at least a hundred of them. Most I didn't recognize, but a few I'd seen in history books. There were four sets of manacles, a wall of chains, and rolls of duct tape. In the middle of the room, there was a flat table which was very obviously blood soaked. A tall stool sat at the head of the table, but the worst was the wall.

The wall that bordered my room was covered, every inch of it in carvings. But the carvings weren't satanic or evil like I thought. The carvings were words. Jacob, I love you, Diana Hobb. Tell my father I forgive him, Brian Woodland. Tara, I'm so sorry, Michael McNulty. Tell my daughters they were my world. Angela Casterly.

According to the evidence file, there were over 60 of these messages. I made myself read every single one. They haunt me every night. While I had spent 10 years tormenting them, they would now forever torment me. Even though I live in the hospital now, I still hear the scratching. Every time I close my eyes, I hear the scratching. I haven't slept in a year and my doctor says I will die soon. I spend my days watching news coverage of my father's trial.

Yesterday he was sentenced to death. I spend every night staring at the walls. The drugs don't work, though they try every day. I can never sleep. Never. I always hear the scratching. And I always will. I'm sure we have all seen examples of artwork that pushes the boundaries of convention and the norm.

It's easy to ask ourselves what exactly was going through the mind of the person who created this odd piece. As author C.J. Henderson explains, the artistic mind can be both stunningly brilliant and deeply disturbing, often blurring the line between both. In this tale, a man shares what it's like to live with just such a person, a creative spirit that embodies a full range of dark and light. It's a tale about the artist. There's this painting my wife loves called Death and Life by Klimt.

I don't know what she's. she finds so fascinating about it. I made all the right noises when she showed me her beloved framed print when we were first dating, booing and awing and making up some bullshit about warm and cold color schemes and the specific choice of angles and line. She was an artist. Our first few dates involved long walks through museums, starting in Picasso's blue period and ending in heavy petting and blue balls. I took an art history course as an elective when I was finishing up my doctorate. I remembered enough of the lingo to charm my fantastically gorgeous future wife and lure her back to my stupidly filthy apartment. We're talking me as the

foul bachelor frog, sitting on a lily pad made of empty takeout condition. Surrounded by a pond of enough unwashed clothes to keep a laundromat in business for a cool six months. I remember scrambling to find two of any sort of cup-like container for the bottle of wine we had brought back while she was in the bathroom. I rinsed out a couple of coffee mugs and ran into the bedroom to try to clean up the condom wrappers that had been sitting on my bedside table since 2000. On the bed, neatly laid out against the rest of the chaos were my wife's dress, bra and panties. She came out of the bathroom completely nude, aside from a pair of high heels, took the wine from me and took a swig straight from the bottle. I fell totally, completely and irrevocably in love. I have no head for artistic things.

I work in finance. I get creative with numbers, not paint. But I fucking love her stuff. She's made a name for herself over the past few years. Critics call her the American Damien Hurst. One of her first exhibits was composed of a dozen oil paintings of rotten pastries, surrounding an actual cake filled with thousands of dead ladybugs being fed to a mummified tarantula dressed up as little Miss Muffet. I have no idea what it meant, but it was sick, successful, and catered by Balthazar, so I ate about 20 croissants.

They did not have bugs in them. I checked. She had the body of a Laker girl and the face of a Modiliani model, and still does. She's charming, charismatic, deep, the kind of person people flocked to, want to be around constantly. She fucked like she had something to prove. She had a twisted sense of humor. As soon as I hooked a job with enough figures to keep a bit of her, girl like her satisfied the way she should be. I proposed, bought her an historic brownstone in the city with a garden full of roses and hardwood mahogany floors. And for the first few years, she seemed happy. We were the kind of couple you see in New York Magazine and scoff at because

they're just too damned lucky. But we had hit a wrong. rough spot, like all married couples do. She was still superficially the same woman I fell in love with. Looked amazing, people always asked me when she was going to host the next dinner party. She still had an amazing eye for art. I knew she was miserable. I could see it, the misery in the corners of her eyes and the curve of her mouth. It happened to gradually. First, it was the shower curtain. She bought three or four from a small boutique downtown, brought them home so we could choose one together. We decided on one, pale blue, made of a material that was impractical and way too expensive for a drapery in a bathroom. But we

had the money, and it made her happy, so why the hell not? A few days later, I was shaving and realized she hadn't put the curtain up. It wasn't until about a month after that, I caught a glimpse of it hanging up in her studio, cut to shreds, and died till it was almost unrecognizable. I chose to ignore it because I had learned it's usually not the best course of action to call an artist out on their creative license. unless you want to start an all-out war with no discernible end. A year after that, though, I had no choice.

She had been so on edge it was like she was standing on a razor. She usually had a show every three, four months or so, and if anything, she had too many ideas. The galleries always asked her to trim down her collections. When the year passed without so much as a single finished painting, I started to worry, both about her well-being and our bank account. We were extravagant spenders, and each of her shows would bring in a cool 20,000

that paid for a few months of European beaches and ski trips in Aspen. The final straw, though, was when she burned down the roses. It turned out she had finished dozens of projects over the year. She had hated all of it and had either destroyed or painted over everything. While I was at the office, she flew off the handle, doused about 16 canvases in lighter fluid, and set the yard on fire. When I got the call from the fire department, I rushed home to find her sitting in the back of the ambulance.

covered in ashes, blonde hair singed at the ends. She was smoking a cigarette. I looked over the burnt flowers, the skeletons of her paintings, the ruined limbs of broken sculptures, and asked her what happened and why. She took a drag of the cigarette and said, It was mine to burn. She took big, fancy pictures of the inferno.

A family of bunnies suffocated in the smoke. She had them stuffed and mounted in size order on a baking soda volcano like the kind you see in middle school science fairs. She gathered up a few of the charred bits and pieces, wired it together, and made some warped, pained-looking kind of Phoenix thing weighing in at 400. pounds and easily over eight feet high. She called the whole thing from the ashes, and the reviews and the times called it incendiary, her first foray into becoming a true artist. Someone bought the Phoenix. I pity the person who wakes up every day and looks at that strange thing, suspended in constant

agony. We were both drunk at a random, expensive, vaguely Dante's Inferno-themed bar in San Francisco when I finally got a chance to ask her what was bothering her. We had been making dark jokes all night about the beautiful irony of her show and our current locale. At first, she vehemently denied anything was wrong, angrily pointing out that we had made four times as much off her last show as anything before it, that it had more than covered the damages, that it had paid for the vacation we were on. I stayed silent. She tossed her newly cropped hair and looked like she was going to open up for a second. I saw her soft blue eyes fill with her. tears. Then she took a shot of whiskey from a glass that had a bull's head and smirked.

Well, for starters, she slurred, nonchalantly dangling the glass from the bull's nose ring. I'm fairly certain I'm pregnant. She let the glass drop from her finger and it shattered on the floor as she slurlid. out of her seat and stumbled to the exit. I sat there for a while and drank more, feeling furious, confused, and miserable. I remembered her face when she showed me that climped painting. I remembered how she wore glasses back then,

and how she pushed them up the bridge of her nose when she smiled, as I talked about the fucking warm and the fucking cold colors and the fucking angles and lines. We converted her studio into a nursery. Rather, I did. While she stayed in San Francisco and did God knows what with her artist friends. I had a landscaper come in and replant the roses. I worked a lot of overtime, drank myself to sleep while I skimmed through parenting books.

She came back when she was almost full term. I came home from work one night to find sonogram pictures posted all over the fridge of two healthy-looking twins. Big baby girls. I walked into our bedroom and saw her dead asleep on top of the covers, belly swollen, smelling faintly like pot and paint thinner. She had a rainbow of dried paint on her fingertips. I loosened my tie and walked into the nursery. She had been busy. The canary yellow I had chosen was covered in a layer of translucent blue,

and she had covered one wall in climp-desk patterns and curly cues. The creamy plush carpet was covered in paint splatters. She had worked furiously to finish. She had cut a swath from one of the new rose bushes and made a giant bouquet, shoving them so tightly in the vase that some had escaped and made their way from their perch on the changing table to the floor. She had scattered them in the bassinet on the window sill. It was chaotic and beautiful. The next few years were peaceful for the most part.

We bonded over raising the girls. Despite my wife's less than careful prenatal preparation, they were wickedly smart and beautiful. They both looked like her, with long curly blonde ringlets and blue eyes. Sometimes, when I put them to bed, I wondered if any of my DNA was in them at all. They were like miniature versions of her.

My wife agreed to see a psychiatrist for a little bit. She took some medication for a while, Xanax, some mood stabilizers. Eventually she and her doctor decided her crisis had been hormonal and temporary. We started having dinner parties again. soothed the gossip that had infected our social circles. She stopped painting and took up teaching at a university. She seemed content again, even happier than she was before. Every once in a while I would catch a look in her eyes, like repressed artillery fire,

like she was ready to explode at any second, but it never lasted for longer than a few seconds. before they went back to the soft cornflower blue. I knew so well. And who doesn't get a little agitated every once in a while? I rose through the ranks at work. I loved the feeling of power that came with promotions. I loved my little girls. And by God, I loved her.

my crazy, disgusting, beautiful, hateful, and loving, extraordinary wife. Then came today. Today I came home from work early. Today my wife took the day off to be a chaperone on a class trip to the Met. They were after her for months because of her expertise in the art world. They wanted the children to experience the culture in the most sophisticated way possible. I thought it was ridiculous. They were one to three-year-olds in a private daycare.

They saw more beauty in Cheerios than in Monet's water lilies. But they wore my wife down, and she was given a gaggle of toddlers and wide-eyed teachers to tour around the museum. I came home for lunch because I had forgotten my iPad that had notes on it for a presentation I was giving that night. I walked through the Rose Garden and noticed a tiny piece of sculpture left over from the Ashes exhibit from so long ago. It was half of a tiny bird. It had the kind of exquisite detail that my wife used to be so famous for. I was pretty sure it was an actual bird that she had cast in clay. I thought I could see a small piece of feather in one of the cracks.

I idly wondered why I hadn't noticed it before. I went inside and poured myself a glass of orange juice. The fridge had pictures that my daughters drew, happy, crooked stick figures that looked nothing like the beautiful, horrors their mother used to churn out. I was happy about that. I hoped they would fall in love with numbers like I did. It was absolutely silent, and I sipped the sweet citrus and enjoyed the nothingness. Then I thought I caught a vague scent of fresh paint in the air. Curious, I walked into the living room. And there was my wife, sitting on the leather couch with a bottle of wine, looking

like an angel of death. She was covered head to toe in blue-gray body paint with a special concentration underneath her eyes. She was wearing a revealing patchwork blue dress, covered in crosses of various shapes and sizes. Not a dress, I realized, but the shredded shower curtain from so many years ago. I could still see most of her still perfect breasts, the curve of her waist. The bottle of wine was elongated

and painted a strange shade of orange. The smell of paint was strong shade of orange. of paint was stronger in here, an overwhelming smell of lighter fluid and something else I couldn't place. She had shaven her head. I stared at her for a while, minutes, an hour, maybe. Eventually she took a swig of wine from the bottle, swirling it around in her mouth. I know I noticed paint, deep blues, and even deeper reds around her fingers. I sat down in the armchair across from her, unable to think of what exactly I wanted to ask her. Maybe because I knew.

Maybe because I didn't want to know. I noticed a camera on the table between us. I went to pick it up, and she rested her gray hand on mine before I could, softly, gently with all the familiarity of years of marriage. She opened her mouth to speak, soft pink lips made pallid by the paint. They were mine. And I've been sitting here. knowing what's behind the door to my daughter's room

with the climped wall we never repainted knowing why my phone keeps ringing with calls from the school from the NYPD knowing why I couldn't find my sleeping pills last night knowing what that smell is seeing in my peripheral the romew the romew the red pooling and staining the carpet from underneath the doors. The pile of clothes neatly folded next to my wife on the couch

can picture that thick wire she used to fit all of her subjects where she wanted them. What a perfect, detailed recreation it must be. because she's so perfect. I see the phoenix in my minds. When she flicks that cigarette, she's about to light. We both fucking... We're young, the idea of leaving home

to spend time at our grandparents' home can be an exciting and fun-filled experience. But as author Melissa Phillips explains, When a young girl only has one remaining grandparent, and he's a rather surly old coot, time spent with him is anything but pleasant. Narrator Corinne Sanders reads the tale for us about how this young girl's visits are made worse by an odd experience in the surrounding woods when she meets The Girl in the Log. I always hated visiting my grandpa's old cabin.

That might make me seem spoiled or ungrateful. What kid doesn't enjoy seeing her grandpa? Especially considering he was the only grandparent I had ever known. Both of my mom's parents were killed in a car accident before I was born, and my dad's mom walked out on him when he was very young. He still doesn't know where she is or if she's even alive, so that only leaves my paternal grandfather. My parents desperately wanted me to have a good relationship with him.

My dad insisted that, although Grandpa was stern and quiet, he really did love me. He just didn't know how to express it. I figured that was probably true, but it didn't change the fact that trips to his house were filled with idle hours watching television and reading while he worked during the day, followed by awkwardly silent dinners in the evenings. I rarely saw him, and he seldom spoke in any loving way. He just kept a wary eye on me, like he was waiting for me to break something of his or talk out of line. Still, my parents insisted on sending me to spend a week with him every summer since I was 10, old enough to look after myself for the day.

I had visited his isolated cabin in the woods several times before with my parents, but this would be the first time I stayed overnight by myself. There were no kids my age around, or neighbors of any age for that matter, so I would have to pass the time by reading and watching the few channels he had on television. This may sound awful for a 10-year-old girl, but I was used to being alone. I was an only child and was always a bit of an introvert. Truthfully, I knew I probably wouldn't be able to make new friends even if I had the option. So, on my first day at the cabin, I set out into the woods with a Nancy Drew book

tugged under my arm to find a peaceful area to read, away from the musty old person. person's smell of the cabin. After walking for a while, I found a little clearing illuminated by the sun breaking through the trees. Pushed against a large oak and surrounded by pretty flowers was a large hollow log. The whole scene reminded me of a place where the characters and my stories would have their adventures, so I decided to make this little clearing my own special spot for the next six days. I plunked myself onto the center of the log, leaned against the trunk of the oak tree, and began to read, thinking that I might be able to enjoy my week here after all. I was incredibly comfortable in my new place,

the smell of the flowers, the hum of the insects around me, and the gentle breeze soon had me drifting to sleep, content with the feeling of nature. The wonder was gone when I suddenly awoke hours later to find that the sun had set. The moonlight cast eerie shadows on the ground. The trees that felt so welcoming during the day were spooky silhouettes against the darkness,

bending and snapping in the wind. The insect's pleasant buzz was replaced with a distant howl and the low hoot of a nearby owl. The dry leaves scraped against the forest floor beside me with a rustle that chilled me to the bone. I sat up on the log, rubbing my eyes and attempting to clear my sleep-fogged mind. Just as I was realizing the trouble I would surely be in for coming home so late, I heard it. To my left, at the end of the log, I heard a voice say two words. Hello, Ella.

I froze. I have never felt so cold, so vulnerable. There was something wrong with that voice. It was too creaky, too low, too dry. I heard the leaves scrape against the ground again, but I felt no more wind. The air was oddly still. The realization suddenly hit me That this creepy wrestling noise was not leaves

It was the low, raspy giggle of whoever had spoken They were laughing, laughing at me Slowly I turned to the source of the awful laugh And felt my blood freeze at the sight beside me A little girl crouched at the end of the log Her cracked and bloody fingernails scraping the dark wood Her hair was probably blonde, but it was also slick with dark red blood, boring from the horrible cache on the side of her head. The blood trickled onto her gray, bruised face.

Her eyes were bloodshot, as though she had been crying for hours, maybe even days. But I could only assume she eventually ran out of tears and decided instead to smile. Oh God, that smile. A grin stretched unnaturally wide on her bruised face, clashing with the sadness of her eyes, giving her the look of one who has truly gone insane. Her teeth were mostly stained with blood, but the parts that were not shown white, bright white. She continued to giggle, but did not part her teeth. She giggled through them and stretched that grin even more as she watched me.

She sprang from her crouched position. on the ground and perched beside me on the log. The movement was so sudden and I clambered back, crashing onto the soft ground and staring in wide-eyed terror at the thing above me. She giggled louder at my terror, sounding with a static on a phone, and tilted her head to the left as she observed me. She tilted it so far that I could swear I heard her bones cracking before she spoke.

You're scared. she said, grin never wavering, head still tilted. It was not a question, but I could somehow tell that she wanted a response. I tried to speak,

but all that escaped was a pitiful squeak. I then did what any child would do, what most adults would probably do in this situation. I peed my soul. The creature noticed, her awful eyes observing

the growing dark, darkness on my jeans and let out a hiss of delight. Good, it said. At this point, my mind finally gained control of my body, and I managed to get up and run. I got back on the path and was out of there. The girl didn't chase me. She stayed perched on that log like some gruesome bird

and continued to laugh. I couldn't get away from that laugh. It didn't get quiet as I ran. On the contrary, it continued to get louder and louder the closer I got to my grandpa's cabin. Only when I reached the yard did it start to fade. By the time I threw open the door to the house, it was only a whisper. Once I ran through the living room, down the hall and into my bedroom, it was barely audible. Just before it faded completely away, I heard it say one more thing.

So softly, I wasn't certain. heard correctly. Better lock the door. It was gone. No whisper, no laugh. I turned on the light switch and slammed the bedroom door, cleaning against it to catch my breath. Where have you been? A gruff voice demanded from behind me. I spun around, thinking for one horrible second that the creature had followed me home and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my grandpa kneeling beside my bed. I began to stutter about dead little girls and chilling grins and evil laughs. My grandpa rolled his eyes and cut me off before I'd formed one coherent sentence.

Whatever, I don't care. He grumbled, climbing to his feet. Enough excuses. You're home now, but know that you won't get off easy next time. No crazy. Ghost story will help if this happens again. I was devastated. He didn't believe me.

Of course he didn't. Well, I don't would. Definitely none like my mean old grandpa. Something smells. He griped, wrinkling his nose and glaring at me. What's all over your pants? Oh, right. I uh

I wet myself I admitted quietly blushing at my shoes when I got scared grunged disgusted I thought you were old enough to be done with that sick crap

clean up and get to bed I'm not going through this every night my loving grandfather then stomped out of of the room, ignoring my apologies and slammed the door. Great guy, that gramps of mine. Admitting defeat, I changed into my nightgown in clean panties, putting the soiled ones in the washer.

I felt better. As mean as my grandpa could be, he's still an adult who I knew would protect me from whatever was in the woods. After all, the giggling had stopped once I reached the guest bedroom. I felt safe there until I went to bed Still on edge I left the lights on and read a funny book to calm me down

I was beginning to drift off Feeling safe and warm When I heard the dry raspy voice Say the words I would never forget You didn't lock the door Ella I shot straight up and looked at the window There she was was. Both hands pressed against the glass, grin, grin. The wild red eyes looking for me

to the door. The unlocked door. The giggle was mocking me, celebrating that she would win, even though she gave me a head start. She continued to laugh as I flew from the bed to the door and locked it. As I heard the satisfying click, I heard her croak. Never forget. It stopped. She was no longer at the window. The raspy chuckle was not heard. I didn't go back to the woods that week.

I stayed in the house to watch the news and read. Boring was good. Boring was safe. I locked my bedroom door every night, and every night I woke up to the rattle of someone trying to get inside my room. The doorknob would shake loudly As the creature would grow frustrated with this resistance The banging against the strong wooden door would shake my bed

I never moved nor made a sound I waited for her to give up which she would The shaking would stop and I would hear low deep breaths just outside the door Sometimes the breathing would cease after a few moments And sometimes it would follow me into my dreams but it was always gone in the morning. Years went by. I continued visiting my grandpa for one week during every summer,

and I continued to spend the days indoors. Locking the door became a ritual, and I knew to expect the rattling as the creature tried to get to me. It no longer phased me. Part of the reason for my lack of fear was that I knew that the thing couldn't get past my locked door for whatever reason, but I also wasn't afraid because I was fast.

fascinated. The incident had sparked an interest in the paranormal. I was no longer a frightened child. I was a no-at-all teenager. I wanted to know more about the ghoulish girl. Who was she? How did she know my name? Why did she tell me exactly how to escape her? There came a point where my curiosity outweighed my fear. I had a chance to encounter something few people ever will. I could find an answer. I could find answers others would never find. That is why, when I was 15, I made the decision to unlock the door and confront the spirit. I was an idiot. The first night of my stay that summer, I got ready for bed and closed the door, resisting the natural urge to lock it. I tried to ignore the heavy dread that settled on me as I climbed into bed. I had made up my mind. I would no longer be a scared little girl.

So I waited I had no intentions to sleep that night I pulled out my iPad and played some games Alert to every creek and groan of the old house It was close to midnight when I heard them Footsteps Coming toward my room This was it

I froze Goose bumps all over my body My heart pounding out of my chest I set my iPad a side and watched the door that protected me for so long. The doorknobs slowly turned. I held my breath. The door was opening.

This all happened in just a few seconds, but it felt like ours. The door was completely open now, revealing a larger silhouette than I expected. I fumbled for the lamp next to my bed, grabbed the thin chain, and tugged. Light flooded the room to turn. reveal. My grandpa. I laughed. I couldn't help it. The relief was overpowering. There was nothing to fear. My disappointment that I would not discover the secrets of the dead was pushed aside by the sheer joy that I was safe.

No dead girl stood before me. It was only my grandpa, smiling at me in a way he never has before as he stepped into my room. Grandpa, you scared me, I laughed, pushing my hair back with shaking hands. You left the door unlocked for me, he noted, smiling warmly and closing the door softly behind him. Yeah, I did. I couldn't stop laughing at my own foolishness for leaving it locked for so long. I knew you'd come around, pretty girl. My grandpa whispered, sitting beside me and tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

I knew I just had to be patient for you. Uh, what was he talking about? I could have unlocked it myself. I have the key, of course. I thought many times about using it. But I resisted. I knew I had to give you the choice to let you. me in. It's more special that way. I knew you'd come around.

This wasn't my grandpa. My grandpa was strict and never smiled. He never had a kind word to say. My grandpa doesn't sit on my bed and touch my hair, and he certainly doesn't run his hand up my thigh like he's doing right now. Stop it, I cried, slapping his hand away. and jumping out of bed? What are you doing? A flicker of surprise passed his face quickly before he relaxed back into that sickly sweet smile.

Oh, honey, I won't hurt you. Just come back to bed and we'll take it easy. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. I felt like I was going to vomit. I wanted something paranormal, something otherworldly. But this, this was real, far too real. Shy all of a sudden? The man on my bed asked, chuckling.

Allow me to break the ice, then. With that, he grabbed my hand and pinned me onto his lap before I had a chance to react. With surprising strength, he squeezed my arms to my sides and silenced my cries. with a crushing kiss. No. No! No! Summoning all my strength,

I broke away from him and tore out of the room. I heard his surprised yelp and his pounding footsteps as he quickly chased after me, but I didn't look back. I hurried out of the cabin, and ghost or no ghost, I was heading for the woods.

I wasn't sure where I was going or what to do. I just ran as fast as I could. my grandfather right on my heels, cursing and screeching that I would regret this. You get the fuck back here. I ran, hoping there would be a house on the other side of the woods. Or maybe he would trip and break something. Or maybe he would grow tired and give up. I didn't know.

We reached the clearing where I had met the little girl five years earlier, and I was struck with an insane idea. I'm not sure what I expected to happen. I just knew what my grandpa was threatening, and I was desperate to stop him. I raced to the old log and fell to my hands and knees, peering into the hollow darkness within.

I screamed, my panicked voice echoing back to me. Please help. It was unlocked. Two strong hands grabbed my shoulders and whirled me around. I was looking into the face of the lunatic I once called Grandpa.

His eyes rolled wildly in his head. His thin white hair stuck out at odd angles and his mouth was twitched. I twisted into a furious snarl. Panting and heaving, his red face was full of hatred and contempt for me. I saw no love there, no mercy. You are going to regret. He stopped.

I heard something move behind me, and his eyes widened and terror as he gaped over my shoulder. With a scream, he pushed me away and jumped back. I fell on my butt and fell. backed away, turning toward my savior. Her skin was still gray and her wound was still bleeding. That impossibly wide grin was still plastered across her bruised cheeks. Her eyes, however, were no longer sad. They glowed triumphantly as she approached my whimpering grandfather.

You! He stammered, falling backward and attempting to scramble away, seemingly unable to break eye contact with the dead girl. She chuckled as she watched his horror. Giggled louder when he let out a painful cry and clutched his chest. Giggled louder still as he fell to his side, clawing at his heart. Lapped harder and louder than ever when he turned his head toward the night sky, the life fading from his eyes. I squeezed my eyes shut, my back against a tree, and prayed for it to end soon. It did. The girls laughed baited away, whispering one last message. Goodbye, Ella.

The next day I called the police to let them know that I had gone for a hike that morning, only to stumble upon the corpse of my beloved grandpa. Some nice officers arrived to comfort me and get my statement before driving me home. The cause of death was a heart attack. Some people thought it was odd that he had been in the woods when he died, but no one questioned too much. It wasn't unheard of for him to take late-night walks. I didn't tell my parents what happened.

I didn't think there would be a point. It would only cause more pain. He was dead. That was all that mattered. I even went to help them clean out his old cabin. I was tasked with boxing up the books. As I pulled an old photo album off the shelf, I managed to let it slip through my fingers and hit the floor.

sending poorly secured photos flying everywhere. Cursing my clumsiness, I bent down to gather them all. I picked up the photo closest to my feet and froze. It was her. Sitting on the porch of my house, holding a baby and grin that was much more pleasant when it matched her eyes. Her skin was creamy white and her cheeks were rosy. No wounds spilled blood onto her beautiful blonde hair,

but there was no doubt. This was the grinning girl I had feared for so long. I hollered for my father and asked who she was. Looking at the photo, he paused for a long moment as tears filled his eyes. Well, the baby is you. And the girl holding you, she's your sister, Abby. He looked at me with a sad smile. Sorry, kiddo.

We weren't trying to hide her from you or anything. It's just difficult to talk about. You see, she died when she was ten. You were barely a year old. We should have told you all of this sooner, but we weren't sure how to go about it. At some point, I guess we just decided to let it go, figuring it would come up when the time was right.

I could hardly register what he was saying. I heard myself ask how she died. She was playing in these woods out here, running around and having fun. When she tripped, banged her head on a log, and died instantly. She was found in the same tree.

general area, they found my dad. At these words, he broke down in fresh tears. I comforted him numbly, knowing I would never tell him when I knew in my heart. He need never question his idea that his daughter was playing happily before she died. It would be cruel to tell him that Abby died running away in terror of the man he called Dad, nor would he ever know how long her spirit lingered in that place, unable to rest in peace until she had warned the sister she knew so briefly of the danger, only leaving once the monster was dead. Looking at the photograph of the smiling girl who held me so securely in her arms, I could only think of two words as my eyes filled with tears.

Thanks, sis. In our final tale of season three, we are taken on a journey from many centuries. centuries ago. It's a story discovered by an academic who is scouring the libraries of Britain, looking for evidence of the supernatural. As author Michael Whitehouse writes, this man finds a book describing a bizarre series of events surrounding a strange outcast man who strikes fear in the citizens of a small Scottish village. Join me, as we discover the most intriguing tale about the melancholy of Herbert Solomon. On several occasions, my interest in the supernatural has taken me to some of the most prestigious

seats of learning in the entire United Kingdom. From the venerable halls of Oxford and Cambridge to the more humble surroundings of inner city colleges and schools, my pursuit of evidence to substantiate such claims has rarely been fruitful. However, while exploring the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, I found a rather interesting tome hidden away in a dark and musty corner of the campus library. The book itself was unusual, its cover bound in a weathered and blackened leather which unashamedly wore the wrinkles and cracks of time. It dated back to the 16th century and seemed to contain various descriptions and accounts of the daily lives of the people of Etric, a small isolated town built in the South Moorland, of the country.

Perusing the volume, there were a variety of entries from a number of authors spanning a 60-year period. It seemed to have been handed down from town elder to town elder over that time, and to be quite frank, most of it contained idle musings on the townsfolk, and plans for a number of humble building projects and improvements. Just as I was about to conclude that the book was of little interest to me, I noticed on the inside of the back cover that someone had drawn a picture. It was elegantly depicted, but I would never have described it as a pleasing sight. In fact, my immediate reaction was one of disgust upon first.

viewing it. The combination of the harsh, almost angry black lines used, and the stark imagery of the scene, as relayed by the artist, left me with a thoroughly unpleasant impression of its subject. I shuddered as I cast my eye over it in an attempt to take in the picture of what seemed to be of a man, tall with long, thin arms and legs. His face was partially obscured by one of his gaunt white hands. But what could be seen was monstrous. Prominent veins protruded from his forehead, leading up to a pallid, bald head. His eyes were deep set into his skull, and the surrounding woods seemed to twist and lean away from him fearfully. At first, I assumed that the picture was some form of hideous graffiti, but at the bottom of

the page was inscribed the date of 1578, and a rather unusual name, Herbert Solomon. Whether this was the name of the menacing figure in the drawl. or of the artist, I did not know. Disturbed yet compelled by that dark woodland scene, I decided that the book required further study. I desired greatly to know who this creature was and why someone had felt the need to capture his strange form in a drawing, a drawing at the back of a book otherwise used to record,

the lives of the townsfolk. On closer inspection, what surprised me further was that the same image seemed to recur elsewhere in the book, but drawn by apparently different individuals. Within the book, I found numerous mentions of Herbert Solomon, and it became clear quickly that he was indeed the emaciated man in the picture. He had lived in the 16th century on the outskirts of Etric Town. It was a small and underdeveloped place, surrounded on all sides by the thick cover of Etric Forest, which itself sat in the midst of a vast region of southern Moorland.

The town had a small parish church with one humble steeple, an inn normally used by those travelling through the unforgiving countryside and quaint cobbled streets which wound their way around the stone cottages and town hall. According to the descriptions in the book, during the December of 1577, children began to disappear from the town. The first was a young girl by the name of Alanna Sutherland. She had been playing with some friends by an old well on the outskirts of the town, but had dropped a small toy doll down it accidentally, which had caused her much distress. Unable to retrieve it, she returned home to borrow some string and an old hook in the hopes of being able to fish the doll out of the water below.

She was last seen walking towards the well just as the sun set. In a panic, the townsfolk searched. They dredged the well, they combed the wheat fields, and even sent several groups of those willing into the surrounding woods. Alas, the girl was not found. A few days later, a young boy by the name of, Eric Kennedy was running an errand for his grandmother. It was dark, but he had only to take some wool over to the Monroe Place as a way of thanks for the grain they had provided, and they lived

but only a few streets away. It was assumed that at least the center of the town would be safe, but the boy never completed his errand. He vanished as if he were two. He vanished as if he were torn from existence. By the end of January, an unusually bitter wind had caused significant damage to the town and its people. Large, thick sheets of ice and snow covered each house and building. Several people died from the cold alone, and the general mood of Etric Town was a somber one. Despite these trying times, the townspeople were more concerned with the safety of their offspring. In total, seven children had now disappeared without rhyme or reason. Whole families wept in despair, and the people of Etric began to view one another suspiciously.

They knew the truth. Someone was taking their... children from them. By mid-February, two more had gone missing, and accusatory glances were now being shared between every family and every member of the community. The town elder decided to act and took upon himself the arduous task of identifying and catching the fiend. Bureaucratic discussions were had. Church groups convened, and in every house, in every street, in every corner of Etric, one name crossed the lips of its inhabitants, Herbert Solomon.

The more the name was mentioned, the more certain his guilt became. Herbert Solomon was an outsider. He lived in a small wooden cabin amongst the woods which surrounded the town, and due to his unfortunate appearance tended to avoid human contact. What his malady was, no one was sure, and in the unenlightened times of the 16th century Scotland, well, many believed that he was cursed. Modern eyes would have guessed him to be the victim of a wasting disease.

He rarely ventured into town except on a few occasions to trade for supplies, and even in those instances he covered his face with a brown tarnished hat and a gray piece of cloth, which obscured his features below two deep set and darkened eyes. Several of the townsfolk told stories of Herbert Solomon. According to these accounts, he would stand on the edge of the forest, watching the farmers till their land and their children play in the fields. It was his fascination with children which left many feeling uneasy. Some of the town's children returned home from playing near the woods,

on a number of occasions with beautifully crafted dolls and toys. They were a present from Herbert Solomon, and being innocent children, they could not know of the dangers therein. When the children began to disappear, eyes immediately turned to the strange man living in the woods. accusations were carried by the whispers of fearful parents, and as the whispers increased in number, so did their volume, until it was decided that Herbert Solomon must be stopped. On a cold February night, the elders of the town decreed that Solomon should be arrested immediately. grief, anger, resentment, and fear grew to a fever pitch with this news, and every man, woman and child sat out across the fields, entering into the surrounding forest in search of the child killer Herbert Solomon. Details of exactly what occurred that night are limited, but it seems as though the people of Etric Town attempted to remove Herbert from his small cabin by setting it on fire.

The crowds cheered as the heat grew and the fire rose. His screams echoed throughout the woods, finally to be silenced by the flames. The townsfolk believed that justice had been done, and while the grief of the parents whom had lost their children could never be quenched, there was at least the satisfaction of knowing that the man responsible was now dead. However, over the following few days, an unease descended upon the entire town. Stories began to spread of strange encounters in the streets at night. A gaunt, shadowy figure prowling the cobbled stones, hiding in the darkness. Within a week, numerous residents claimed to have woken up during the night to the petrifying sight of an unwelcome visitor. One account was of an elderly lady.

who woke to the sound of something rustling under her bed, only to nearly die of shock as a tall, thin man pulled himself out from underneath. She fainted, but not before she saw his face. A withered complexion as if ravaged by disease. His eyes blacker than night, and his hands comprised of tightly pulled, skin over a bony interior. Another story consisted of a local tradesman, who, while investigating a noise from his cellar,

was confronted by a hideous figure, so tall and gaunt that it had to hunch over to avoid the low ceiling entirely. Its sheet-white face flickering in the candlelight. The man managed to escape, but he refused to re-enter his premises. It became clear to the townspeople that the vengeful ghost of Herbert Solomon was still searching for other victims from beyond the grave, his hate and hideous form haunting the town which murdered him. With each passing day,

the sightings grew in intensity and number. A fog descended on the town, and the people wept and grieved as the sound of Herbert Solomon terrorized each person night by night. He was seen wandering amongst the wheat fields, in the cellars and lofts of cottage houses, his long gaping footsteads, steps ringing out each night through the streets of Etric Town.

They had been cursed. In life, Herbert Solomon had taken and murdered their children, and now in death he seemed to possess the twisted means to terrorize the entire town. Then the unthinkable happened. Another child went missing. A young orphan girl, who often wandered the streets when she could not find a place to call home for the night, was heard screaming for her life. The townsfolk rushed to their windows, looking out but not daring to leave the imaginary safety of their houses, paralyzed by fear. The screaming ceased quickly, and moments later, wandering aimlessly out of the fog,

came the menacing figure of Herbert Solomon. He rushed down the street, his lifeless arms bashing against the houses which he passed, scraping the doors and windows with his rigid fingers, emitting an unnatural yell of anger and hatred on his way. The girl was gone, and the town grieved once more. In the preceding days, the fog grew denser, and with it came the unwelcome news of two more children taken. One, a girl whom after having a raging argument with her family, left the house never to be seen again.

The other, a boy named Matthew, the son of a notable drunk, who was taken from his own bed by the hands of Solomon while the father lay unconscious from drink. During a church service, the unthinkable happened. Solomon appeared briefly in the aisles of the church, seemingly unaffected by consecrated ground. The congregation whimpered in horror and disdain as his wart. Spindly form walked slowly behind a pillar and then vanished. It was indeed a show of influence. Hope was almost lost. Not even a place of worship could deny him,

and he was now capable of entering any home at night and then taking whatever or whoever he wished. Or the town had to act or abandon the place altogether, but there was no garrisoned. guarantee that the curse of Solomon would not follow. The local vicar, a man by the name of Mackenzie, was asked by the people of Ettrick to use any sacred power which was ordained to him. In an attempt to destroy or banish the spirit of Solomon, a plan was provided.

The vicar and a few chosen individuals, armed with torches, swords which had been blessed, and vials of holy water, would take God over the town, waiting for the cursed figure of that child killer to show his face once more. Then they would confront him. Observing as much of the town as possible from several house windows, roofs and strategic street corners, Mackenzie's chosen waited. They did not, however, need to wait long. At night, the lonely figure of Herbert Solomon approached through the mist,

walking the streets of Etric with purpose. Yells and screams rang out as people alerted one another that Solomon had returned. Families held their children close as dark thoughts consumed the town. Please spare my child, take another's. Mackenzie was the first to confront him. His will was shaken by the sight of Solomon's hideous, pallid face, rotten and ravaged. The gangly spindling figure stood staring intently at the vicar through black, clouded eyes.

Another man now joined, then another. Before long, Herbert Solomon was surrounded. McKenzie instructed the men to slowly close the circle, drawing their swords with one hand while randishing. flaming torches with the other. Fear gripped them, but they knew that this could be their only chance. McKenzie threw a vial at Solomon's lumbering feet, and as he uttered a Christian psalm, another man struck out with his torch.

The blow crackled as the cloth-covered arm of Solomon caught fire. Cheers rang out from the townsfolk, watching from their homes above. But the man had strayed too close, providing a gap in the circle which Solomon claimed with purpose. He fled. His spindling legs and flailing arms cast spider-like shadows on the walls and cobbled streets as he passed. The townsfolk gave chase, following the pathetic figure as it negotiated each street corner, lane and courtyard in an attempt to escape their rage. The noise alerted the town. Herbert Solomon is trying to flee!

From every home across the town, people poured out of their houses carrying what? whatever they could as a way of a makeshift weapon. They flooded the streets and ran towards the protestations, shouts and screams of Solomon's pursuers. With every turn of a cobbled street corner, Solomon was running out of places to hide. Finally, as he stumbled down the town's main street, he stopped.

The townsfolk had blocked all escape routes. He was trapped. Mackenzie pushed his way to the front of the crowd, asking for quiet and calm as he approached the hunched, defeated figure of Herbert Solomon. He and his chosen few were going to rid the town of Etric of this of abomination once and for all. Vile in hand, accompanied by several large, bullish men brandishing swords,

Mackenzie approached slowly, reciting verses from the Bible. Through dark eyes, Herbert Solomon observed the townsfolk. Their faces etched with hate and thoughts of race. revenge, moving towards him, and then he simply turned and entered an open doorway next to him. The people gasped, and McKenzie and his followers rushed inside after him. The house they had entered was still, and lying on the hard wooden floor of the main hallway was the pale body of a young girl. The creaking of floorboards underweight sounded above as numerous pursuers searched the house,

disappointed to find nothing. Then something miraculous occurred. The little girl gasped for air. She was alive. She had little or no strength. All she could do was utter one word. Below. In the cellar of the house, Mackenzie found a grim and horrific scene.

The floor was covered in blood, and the quite dead body of a man lay face down upon it. Chained to the walls of that dim place were the children who had been taken. They were partially drugged, malnourished, and traumatized, but they were alive. The town rejoiced with the news. Families were reunited, lives were mended. The mist of a bleak and horrible winter slowly lifted and all seemed well. On regaining their strength, the children recounted what had befallen them. Each of them had been taken by a man called Tom Sutherland.

He was the father of the first girl who had gone missing, and it appeared that it was he who had killed her. No one knew for sure, but many were aware of his bad temper, and on more than one occasion, he had beaten poor Alana. Consumed by guilt and loss, Sutherland began taking children at knife point and locking them in his cellar, often drugging them with a local herb, and occasionally beating them while pathetically weeping in self-pity. On the day that the children were found, Sutherland entered the cellar, drunk, carrying a knife and rope.

He began striking the children once more and told them that one would die that day. He untied one of the children and pinned her to the ground with his knees. The knife hovered over her neck, but just as he was about to plunge the blade into her, someone entered the house. Sutherland grew ferocious with anger, but whoever was standing at the top of the staircase struck such fear into him that he quickly backpedaled into the cellar. Ducking under the doorway was the tall, scarred figure. of Herbert Solomon. At the sight of him and now being free, the little girl crawled

quickly between Herbert's long legs. She was free, but too weak to run. She fainted before she could escape the house. Details of what happened to Tom Sutherland were muddied by the unstable semi-conscious condition of the witness. But it was clear that his neck was broken. His head twisted with such force that it faced an unnatural opposite direction. There were various accounts of subsequent glimpses of Herbert Solomon, and some of the children claimed to find beautifully crafted dolls and toys on occasion. sitting at the edge of the woods.

But of course this cannot be substantiated. Indeed, I would have said that the entire story could not be substantiated if it were not for the events which I experienced several months after reading that old book in the depths of St. Andrews University. A colleague and dear friend of mine invited me to stay at his family home for a few days in the countryside. I knew that the house was in the borders, not half an hour's drive from Etric, and could not miss the chance to have a closer look at the area. I had managed to persuade the powers at B to allow me to take the book from St. Andrews and show it to. my friend. He had a particular interest and not insignificant knowledge of the history of the area.

I thought perhaps he could shine a light on this curious tale. His family were very kind to me, and the house and its grounds were serene in the summer sun, with his children playing in the fields having a carefree and happy time. After reading the book, he told me that it was fascinating, and that he knew of a local poem which had been written in the 17th century about a man called Solomon who killed children. But he could not tell me anymore. The next day we heard screams coming from nearby the house.

It was my friend's little girl. We raced outside, following the cries for help over an old fence and down a steep grassy hill. We reached a winding and furious river. The girl had fallen in and was clinging to a large tree root which thrust out from the opposite embankment into the water. The root was wet and my friend let out a scream of anguish as his daughter lost her grip, being swept downstream towards a large formation of huge, sharp rocks which jutted out from beneath the surface. The river would not let go and was throwing her around with such force that it was difficult to see how she was. could survive. Filled with abject terror that she could drown, we finally made it to the water's

edge. As we rushed into the murky torrent, we watched helplessly as the poor little girl was about to crash into the rocks. We were too far away. Suddenly, our attention was grabbed by the and creeks of a tall, gaunt figure at the other side of the river, rushing out of the woods at tremendous speed on the opposite bank. With one swift motion, a thin, bony hand plunged into the violent water, prevailing against the immense current, finally pulling the young girl to safety was alive. Frightened, crying, but alive and unhurt, the pale-faced, emaciated figure placed the girl gently on the ground,

stared at us from across the water through darkened eyes as we ourselves clambered to safety, then turned and disappeared into the woods, fading away to me. Nothing but a memory. Even in death, Herbert Solomon was the kindest and gentlest of souls. This concludes our stories for Season 3 of the No Sleep Podcast. I want to thank everyone who has made this a most enjoyable and vibrant season. Thank you to everyone who has listened to our. frightening tales, especially those people who have made this season possible, the season past members who have supported the show.

Join us on June 1st as we launch into season four and many more sleepless tales. This is David Cummings, saying thank you for joining us during the darkness of the night.